Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire Read online

  She studied his eyes but did not ask questions.

  They moved on.

  Once they were on the main road they made better time but they were also more vulnerable. They compromised by running along the edge of the road that was not bathed in direct moonlight, letting themselves be invisible against the darkened trees. That saved their lives, because as they rounded a bend in the road five miles from the bus they nearly ran into a group of men.

  Joe and Dez froze, hands on their guns.

  A few hundred feet ahead of them were six men. Two walked in front, one with a flashlight and the other holding an old Vietnam-era military M-16. Two others trailed behind, both of them with shotguns. But the other two walked singly, one in front and one behind a line of eleven other figures. All female, ranging in age from late forties to early teens. Ragged, sobbing, terrified, and helpless, with their hands tied and ropes tied around their necks, connected each to the woman in front and behind.

  Ledger heard Dez utter a low sound that was barely human. It was a primitive sound of bottomless animal hate. He glanced at her and then put his hand out to stop her from raising her pistol. She glared at him but he put a finger to his lips, shook his head, and then leaned close.

  “There has to be a camp,” he said very quietly. He did not whisper, because the sibilant ‘s’ sounds carried. “We follow and we see.”

  Dez clearly didn’t like it, but the men were going in the same direction they were. Toward the bus.

  “They’re dead men walking,” was her reply. It wasn’t a joke. Merely a promise.

  “Yes,” said Ledger in a voice every bit as cold and murderous as hers, “they damn well are.”

  Like ghosts, they followed.

  The party of men and their prisoners kept to the main road. Every action they took made a statement: this road is ours. Everything was theirs. The women, the world. There was no doubt they were part of the larger NKK group. All of those men with all of their weapons and brutality. Of course, they’d believe that they had become the new apex predator in this broken world.

  They had no idea at all of what else hunted in the dark.

  And what followed them down that moonlit road.

  ~28~

  Rachael Elle

  Rachael’s heart had dropped into her stomach, but she couldn’t let the children see the fear on her face. The twelve or so Orcs were more than she could take on right now, not with all of the kids. And some of these Orcs looked fresh—faces mostly intact, no rotting, fresh blood glinting in the moonlight.

  But she couldn’t wait here, not with the small handful of Orcs coming up behind them. Instead she gestured the kids forward.

  “We just need to run. Run fast! We’re going to get to the farm, and then get onto the porch, and we’ll get inside. They can’t get us if we’re inside. Heroes, get ready, fight if they come near you but don’t go after them if you don’t have to. Just get past them.”

  And before she could let her fear overcome her, she rushed forward, leading the group through the path of least resistance.

  The zombies were slow, and fear kept the children moving quickly, but they were tired and their legs were short and heavy. Rachael stayed in the middle of the pack, cutting down any Orc that came too near to her sword, taking off hands, slicing at their heads, trying to keep the children safe. The first two, one smaller child and one of her heroes reached the steps first, climbing up onto the porch and hiding down behind the railing.

  Driving her dagger down through the top of the head of one of the Orcs that came too close, she looked around as the next pair made it to the farm. Her eyes glanced back to the woods, where the small group of Orcs that had almost overtaken them in the woods was making their way into the field. That was bringing the number of Orcs coming their direction into the high teens, and Rachael didn’t want to have to face them while worrying about the kids.

  The group was almost to the steps, though, and the last few children were climbing up. They were almost to safety.

  Not all the children.

  Supergirl yelled out to her, pointing at one of the smallest boys who had separated himself from the group, darting away from the porch, down the path away from safety, crying as he fled in terror. Rachael’s heart dropped, and she rushed after him without hesitation.

  The boy tripped, screaming out as he fell down, hitting the ground hard. The nearest Orc was only two steps away from him, and Rachael was three. Throwing all of her body weight into it, she dove at the Orc, tackling him from the side and sending them both tumbling to the ground, but away from the boy.

  Rachael’s sword was knocked from her hand and fell to the ground as Rachael struggled to keep her skin away from the gnashing teeth. Bracing her arm against the Orc’s neck, she drove her dagger through his eye socket.

  But there was no time to rest, and she jumped to her feet as another Orc bared down on the boy. Grabbing her sword again, she knocked the Orc back with a squared kick to the chest, before using the Orc’s lack of balance to slice down through his head.

  One more now, coming at her from the side, and she sliced through the air with her dagger, which missed the sweet spot and bounced off the hard bone, knocking her off balance. The Orc rushed her, knocking her over, his teeth latching down onto her forearm, denting the leather bracer and pinching her skin. She cried out in pain, but used the angle to shove her knife through his temple.

  Kicking him off, she didn’t stop to check to her arm for any broken skin. Instead, shoving her dagger back into her scabbard, she rushed back to the little boy, scooping him onto her hip with one arm, wincing a little at the weight.

  It was harder to run now, but she moved as quickly as she could, dodging the oncoming Orcs, swiping her sword left and right, severing necks and dropping bodies as they crossed her path. She was fighting with a furor, a need to save these children, and nothing was going to stand in her way.

  The porch was only a few more steps away, and she rushed up them, dropping the boy gently into one of the other children’s care and doing a quick headcount. They were all there. There were still a handful of the dead in the field, close enough to the house to be a threat, and, checking to make sure that the kids stayed in place, she stepped into the path again, driving her heavy sword through bones and heads, dropping the last few of the fresh Orcs.

  They made it. Safety.

  Sheathing her sword, she turned to step up towards the door, but was greeted by the loud snarling growl of the huge dog stepping out of the dark doorway.

  So close.

  ~29~

  The Ranger and the Cop

  After half an hour, Dez gripped Ledger carpet-covered sleeve to stop him.

  “They’re headed straight for the bus,” she said, panic bursting in her voice.

  “Shit,” he said, realizing she was right.

  “How do they know about it?” Dez demanded. “No one knew we were there.”

  “Maybe they don’t,” said Ledger. “I ran into some of these clowns near here. They had a camper in the woods. That’s where they took Lindsey. I chased her through the forest and came to the farmhouse. This road would go right to that campsite, and it’s the easiest route. These guys must have used a forest path or some farm road to maybe try and catch some stragglers from Appomattox. They’d have stuck to the woods for their raid, but to take prisoners back to their camp is easier if they used this road, especially at night.”

  “But they’re going to go right to the bus.”

  “They probably don’t even know it’s there.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because these guys have been working the woods west of you, staying off the main roads to avoid National Guard patrols. It’s your good luck that they didn’t find you sooner and, sorry to say, it’s also good luck the Guard didn’t find you and bring you in to the rescue station. Being out here probably saved your lives.”

  It was a small, cold consolation and Ledger could see it on her face. “We have to do
something. They’re going to walk right up to the bus. Maybe some of them already have.”

  Ledger thought about all those kids and felt a coldness in his heart. “I know,” he said, “and we have to be ready for that possibility. But consider this, Dez, these assholes are out here rounding up prisoners. They’re not going to kill those kids. They’ll want to add them to their catch and take them back.”

  “Only women and girls,” she fired back. “There are boys back there. They’ll just up and kill them.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Why the hell not?” she demanded.

  He looked at her. “Don’t be naïve.”

  Her face, already pale in the bad light, went whiter still. “God.”

  “How much farther?” he asked, then had to jab her in the shoulder to get her to focus. “Hey! How much farther to the bus?”

  She blinked and then looked around. “Three miles, tops.”

  “Okay,” he said quickly, “new plan. You keep following them. I’m going to see if I can circle around and get in front of them. The bus is our target. If there’s anyone else there—more of them, I mean—then you and I will regroup and make a new plan. Don’t look for me—I’ll find you.”

  “And if it’s just these six?”

  He shrugged. “Then it’s going to suck to be them. But listen, don’t go Billy the Kid on me, okay? You follow and wait and then we hit them on my go-order, capiche?”

  She clearly didn’t like it, but Dez nodded. As he began to move off she caught his wrist. “Ledger,” she said, “we’re going to get my kids back. No matter what it takes. No matter what we have to do. You understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and sketched a salute.

  “Ledger—?”

  “What?”

  “Call me ma’am again and I’ll kneecap you.”

  He grinned and moved off into the woods.

  It was rougher terrain, but that did not matter. The group of men could only go as fast as their weakest and smallest prisoner. He had no such restrictions. Within minutes he’d pulled parallel to the group and then raced on ahead. He stayed in the woods, dodging vines and two zombies he didn’t bother to stop and kill. The ground sloped upward and he ran up, trying to ignore the protests of old scar tissue and middle-aged knees. Instead he accepted the pain and ate it, fed on it, let it fuel the anger that drive him on. He tried not to think about what horror might have come for his wife and child while he was away trying to save the world from the wrong doomsday weapon. Had someone come to help them? Had they fallen to the dead? Or had it been men like these who had arrived when no one else would come?

  That was another kind of pain that threw gasoline on the fires of his hate.

  Ten minutes later he found the bus.

  It sat on dead tires and all around it there were bodies.

  None of them were alive.

  ~30~

  Rachael Elle

  The snarling dog bore down on Rachael, and she drew her knife slowly, trying to keep the kids behind her. She didn’t want to hurt the animal, but she only had one knife and the dog had a mouth full of dangerous weapons. She’d never been on this side of a dog attack, never quite witnessed how many teeth a dog that size could have, but she knew how much damage an angry dog could do, to her, to the kids. And after everything, she wasn’t going to let any of the kids get hurt.

  “No, Baskerville—don’t.”

  A young girl’s voice rang out from the darkness behind the snarling dog. It wasn’t one of the heroes, though. Rachael’s eyes darted up to the doorway as the dog stepped back, his dark eyes still fixed on her, still giving a low growl, but teeth no longer bared.

  “You got bit,” the girl said from the darkness. “I saw you.”

  Rachael glanced down at her arm, before holding her hands up, dagger still in one of them. Then she raised her arm. “It didn’t break the skin. See?”

  “Prove it,” said the voice and there was a metallic click. Rachael knew the sound of a shotgun hammer being cocked back. “Show me.”

  Rachael fumbled with the buckle on the bracer for a moment before sliding it off, then she raised her bare arm to show the bruised but unbroken skin. “I’m not infected. None of us are…but there still some of those things out here. It’s just me and some kids. Please…can we come in?”

  “No. I don’t know you.”

  One of the little ones called out, “Is Miss Dez here? Rachael said Miss Dez would be here….”

  The little girl stood with her arms wrapped around the boy that Rachael had saved.

  There was a scuff of a footstep and then a young woman stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight. She held a heavy shotgun with the black barrels trained on Rachael’s chest, however her eyes flicked toward the kids. The dog stood with her and Rachael could see a horrible wound on its head and the line of fresh stitches. The dog looked mean and maybe a little crazy.

  The young woman frowned. “You know Dez?”

  “I don’t,” Rachael admitted. “But these are her kids. She’s been protecting them and she went looking for supplies or a new place to hole up. She was supposed to come back and get them, but she never did. I found them in a bus out on the highway. There were monsters everywhere…and some bad men, too. I’d seen this place and thought I’d bring them here so they’d be safe while I went to look for her.”

  Rachael glanced over her shoulder, before looking back to the girl. Uncertainty was carved into her young features.

  “Look,” said Rachael, “we can’t stay out here. It’s not safe. You have the gun and the dog. You can even take my knife, just let us in.”

  The girl considered for a moment, before lowering the shotgun slightly. Baskerville stepped down to sniff at Rachael and then at a couple of the kids. He’d stopped growling when the girl lowered her weapon.

  In the fields behind them one of the Orcs moaned. Far away another seemed to answer its plaintive, endlessly hungry call. The girl nodded to herself. Then she stepped to one side and jerked her head toward the front door.

  “Get in,” she said, “but don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Thanks,” Rachael told her and began gently but quickly pushing the kids up the stairs. When they were all inside, she paused and glanced back over the field, over the shadowed mounds of bodies in the moonlight.

  We made it, she thought. We’ll be safe here.

  Then she spotted a figure standing at the edge of the field, almost lost in the shadows of the forest. The girl with the shotgun followed her gaze.

  “It’s one of the zombies,” said the girl.

  The figure walked a few paces forward and moonlight bathed his face. Rachael saw dark eyes and a wide, white smile. Hair stood up all along Baskerville’s spine and once more he uttered a low, deadly growl, however this time it was directed to the shadowy figure. Then the man turned and, without haste, walked into the utter blackness under the trees.

  Rachael watched him go. Then she turned to the girl to tell her that it wasn’t an Orc out there, but it wasn’t necessary. The girl looked like someone had punched her in the gut. No, worse.

  “It’s them,” whispered the girl in a voice that was full of sickness.

  “We need to talk,” said Rachael.

  The girl nodded and her face was a ghastly white. “Not out here.”

  She went in and the big dog followed. Rachael lingered a moment longer, looking at the featureless blackness of the trees.

  Okay, she thought, this is really, really bad.

  ~31~

  The Ranger and the Cop

  Ledger drew his gun and moved down the hill.

  The camp Dez had built around the bus was ruined. There was blood everywhere—splashed on the side of the bus, spattered inside, and streaked along the ground. Bodies lay in ungainly sprawls, but Ledger could not find bullet wounds or shell casings. The wounds he did find confused him. They weren’t the normal stab or slash wounds, nor were they the deep clefts left by an axe-blade. No,
these were very long wounds, the kind a sword might make. From the angle, depth and length of the cuts, ledger guessed the weapon hadn’t been a Japanese katana, which left injuries more like scalpels. A cavalry sword? Or something stolen from a museum, perhaps. That wasn’t out of the question. He’d been planning on looting a museum for older and sturdier weapons and maybe some real armor.

  Whoever had used the sword was a little sloppy but had some moves. He saw boot marks from small feet. A teenage boy with a narrow foot or a woman. That didn’t square with Dez’s intel. The adult she’d left in charge, Mr. Biel, would have been too big and—according to Dez—not much of a fighter. And none of the kids were supposed to be old enough to do this kind of damage.

  So, who was the swordsman. Correction, he thought, swordswoman.

  “Curiouser and couriouser,” he murmured. The corpses had head wounds, but there were smears to suggest that at least one of the dead had reanimated and walked off. There were no small bodies, and he thanked God for that. If God was up there and listening.

  As best he could by the pale moonlight he tried to read the scene and it soon became clear that there were several overlapping stories here. Based on the orientation of footprints—particularly of which sets were more recent and overlapped others—the truth began to emerge. The teenager or woman—and he was moderately sure now that it was a woman—had led the kids away from the bus after the fight. However there was a second group of prints that seemed to almost obliterate the marks of the swordswoman’s group. All of these footprints were male. It was a large party of men, and they’d come to the bus, poked around for a while, and then left. However they went in exactly the same direction as the woman and the kids. Following them.