Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire Page 12

  Or hunting them.

  More of the NKK? The sinking feeling in Ledger’s gut told him that his guess was right. If there had been better light he might have been able to tell how much time had passed between when the woman took the kids and when the men began to follow. Best case scenario was half a day. Men could move faster through the woods than a bunch of kids, even if they had to follow the trail at night.

  Ledger heard a sound and paused to listen. It was the rude laughter of the men leading their captives along the road. Ledger was already tired of them, of their existence. And although he’d just met Dez Fox and had never met any of the kids, they belonged to the Stebbins County refugees. He’d liked Billy Trout and liked the things the man had said about Dez. She was a little harder to like in person, but he reckoned that he wasn’t seeing her under the most convivial circumstances. Fair enough.

  Ledger checked his weapon, looked around for the best vantage point, and then stepped into shadows. He had no doubt at all that Dez would be following the men, or that she would be ready. His concern was that she would not freak out when it was clear the bus was empty. Nothing to do about that now but try to ride the wave once it started and hope for the best.

  He waited through five endless minutes, and then he heard a male voice ring out in sudden surprise. “Hey! Look at that shit!”

  The man with the flashlight and his partner with the M-16 came running up the road. Ledger heard the rifleman yell, “Jose, Nucks, stay back, keep an eye on those bitches. Barney, Turk, get your asses up here.”

  Ledger waited until the four guards—the two from the front and the two working the rear of the sad caravan began stalking forward, all of them with guns, all of them alert to danger.

  And all of them looking the wrong way.

  Ledger hoped Dez Fox was ready, because he damn well was. He stepped out of the shadows, closing in at an oblique angle, behind the range of the rearmost man’s peripheral vision. He moved without a sound and made it all the way to the closest of the four. The man, a bruiser with huge hands clamped on a double barrel twelve gauge, never saw Ledger coming. One minute he was working his way forward with his friends and then he was dead.

  Ledger shot him in the back of the head from three feet away, then turned to fire two rounds at the other man in the back, and then four rounds at the first two.

  Pop-pop.

  Pop-pop.

  Pop-pop.

  Pop-pop.

  Eight shots. Eight muzzle flashes brighter than the moonlight. Four men falling.

  It hadn’t been a fight. Ledger hadn’t wanted a fight. Not a fair one. Never a fair one with men like these.

  He spun in time to see more muzzle flashes in the darkness. There were screams, high and shrill and filled with terror as the women saw the fire from the guns, heard the shots, but did not yet understand. All they could know is that death and horror had once more reached out to them. Helpless, bound, humiliated and afraid, all that was left for them to do was scream.

  And so they screamed.

  Suddenly a voice rose, louder than the thunder of the guns. A woman. Dez.

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up!”

  She bellowed it with all of the leather-throated volume of a drill instructor. The sound of her voice, and the power promised by it, smashed through the screams with more shocking force than a slap to each screaming mouth. The women flinched back, stunned to silence, all turning to stare at the woman who had appeared out of the night as if conjured by dark magic.

  Dez lowered her smoking gun. The two men who had been guarding the prisoners were down, their heads pulped by hollow-point rounds.

  “Officer Fox,” said Ledger, being formal in order to make a statement. To suggest that some kind of old-world order still existed. “All the hostiles are down.”

  Dez glanced at him, then nodded. “Secure the perimeter. I’ll release the prisoners.”

  He was pleased that Dez had understood and was quick enough to roll with the drama. He had put her in charge of the moment, and she took that role and ran with it. A woman in charge, a man taking her order. It was a useful fiction in the moment, and he could see the panic ebb ever so slightly among the prisoners.

  Ledger faded back and gave Dez a moment to cut the first woman free, then watched with approval as she handed her knife to the woman. It gave the freed prisoner a task and it gave her power. She would free her fellow prisoners, and it set a precedent that as each one was freed she turned to help with the person in captivity next to her. Dez was doing it exactly right. This wasn’t stuff they taught in the military or in the police. It was the kind of thing learned through experience and compassion out here in the storm lands. It was a kind of benign manipulation that turned a helpless prisoner into a member of a winning team.

  “Ledger,” called Dez, “report.”

  He trotted over. The women shied back from him, and pulled the children close. Assuming a role of strength and protection even in their fear.

  In quick words but a deferential tone, Ledger told her that the bus was empty, there were no indications that any of the kids had been hurt, and that they had been led away by an armed woman. He paused and told her than a party of men had come along sometime later and appeared to be following. This dragged some sick cries from the women, but Dez kept her cool.

  She looked around for the oldest and calmest-looking of the women. “What’s your name?”

  “Shannon Byrd,” said the woman.

  “Okay, Shannon, here’s the deal. Captain Ledger and I are going to find my kids. We’re going to leave right now. You and the others can take the guns from the dog meat over there on the road and stay here until we come back…or you can all come with us. You get to make the call, Shannon. This isn’t a democracy.”

  Shannon studied her for a moment, then looked at the others. As she did so she idly touched the rope burns on her throat and fingered the edges of her torn blouse. There were bruises in the shape of a man’s grasping hand on her upper arm. She walked over to one of the dead men, bent, picked up his shotgun, hefted its weight in her hand, paused for a moment, spit on the corpse, and then walked back to Dez.

  “We’re going with you.”

  The other women milled around for a moment, and the kids stared in shock and uncertainty, then a teenage girl who had a split lip and a black eye went and got the other shotgun. She cracked it open, checked the rounds, knelt and picked the dead man’s pockets for extra shells, stuffed them in the pockets of her jeans, and rejoined the group.

  “I used to hunt wild pig,” she said in a thick southern accent. “I’m okay to hunt some more of ‘em.”

  That did it. The other women and some of the kids took guns, knives, ammunition, and water. Dez and Ledger gave them the world’s shortest course in gun safety, and then they turned toward the trail of footprints leading into the woods.

  “This isn’t going to be easy,” said Dez.

  “Nothing is easy anymore,” said Shannon.

  “Nothin’ was ever easy,” said the southern girl.

  They headed into the woods.

  Hunting.

  ~32~

  Rachael Elle and Lindsey

  “We need to get the kids somewhere safe,” Rachael insisted as she followed the girl through the living room, dining room and into the kitchen. She buckled her bracer back on as she walked. The kids—heroes and little ones—had settled around the big kitchen table. Most sitting, some standing, all of them looking around at their new surroundings in silence. There was almost a sense of wonder in them, as if they’d forgotten what it was like to be anywhere but inside a bloodstained bus.

  “They’re safe here,” the girl said, setting the shotgun down on the table.

  “No, they’re not. Look…let’s start with who’s who, okay?” Rachael asked. “I’ll go first. I’m Rachael. I’m from Pennsylvania. I’m a long way from home, but I’m trying to find people to bring them to safety. Your name is….”

  “Lindsey,” the girl finally r
esponded.

  “Okay, Lindsey. I’d say ‘nice to meet you’, but that would be kind of weird.”

  “Tell me about it,” Lindsey muttered.

  “There are some really bad men after us,” said Rachael, “and I think that was one of them out there, so we need to get the kids somewhere safe. Is there an attic or a basement? Somewhere they can hide?”

  Lindsey nodded. “There’s a basement and the door’s really solid. Someone put a crossbar on it, you know, after, and they reinforced the wood with some kind of metal. Stainless steel, I think. There’s lots of stuff down there but as long as they stay quiet they’ll be able to hide.”

  “Mind showing me?”

  Lindsey nodded and opened a door that was built into the wall so that it looked like the front of a pantry. It was hard to tell if that was something done before the dead rose, or after. Probably after, Rachael decided. To hide it from scavengers. She wondered what happened to the clever people who did that, and who reinforced the door so heavily from the other side. After all those precautions, what had tripped them up? What was the mistake that killed them?

  She wanted to ask Lindsey, but doubted the girl knew. And maybe that wasn’t the right conversation to have in front of the kids.

  The basement was large and very solid, with a poured concrete floor, wooden rafters, and boxes of canned food. There was a big stack of furniture pads in one corner, more than enough for everyone to have a bed and something to cover themselves. The pads were old, covered with cobwebs and spider eggs, but who cared? Rachael tapped Supergirl on the shoulder and drew her to one side.

  “Okay, I’m going to go check the rest of the house with Lindsey,” she said. “You’re in charge down here. I need you to make some smart choices. Everyone gets food and picks a spot to sleep. You and the other heroes make sure they all stay calm, understand?”

  The girl nodded, eyes wide with fear but her chin was firm. Being a hero, thought Rachael. Nice.

  “Now,” she said, lowering her voice, “if anything happens upstairs I want you to close the door and bar it from the inside. Once you do that no one will know you’re here. But you have to be absolutely quiet. Not a sound from anyone. Promise?”

  “I promise,” said the young hero.

  Rachael held her fist out for a bump, smiled, and turned to the group of kids. “Okay, troops, we need to wait for Miss Dez. She’s going to come back soon but until then you need to stay completely silent down here. I know all of you can do that! Wonder Woman, Black Widow and all the other heroes would be so proud of you. Whatever you hear upstairs, stay here and stay quiet.”

  The kids nodded, their eyes huge and haunted. Rachael followed Lindsey back upstairs, praying to herself that this would work.

  ~33~

  The Ranger and the Cop

  It was a nightmare trip through the woods.

  Ledger could feel it and he was a trained Special Operator. Dez Fox had been a combat soldier in Afghanistan and was an experienced cop, but he knew she was feeling it, too. The women and children who moved through the black forest with them were refugees of an ongoing horror. He hoped that their worst memories were behind them and not waiting to be experienced.

  The moon was moving behind the far hills and it dragged its generous light with it, yielding the woods to armies of shadow. It would have been difficult enough if the only dangers waiting for them were rabbit holes, vines, and deadfalls.

  If only.

  Ledger had Dez’s Mag-lite and picked out their trail. The group of men had not been gentle with the forest, instead choosing to smash obstacles out of their way as often as possible. That, Ledger knew, had to have been noisy because the passage of those men had pulled behind it a wake of hungry dead. Drawn to noise, movement, lights, and the smell of human flesh, the zombies had come from all over the forest and were trying to catch those men—and the party of children that went through here first.

  Ledger covered his light and stopped his party fifty feet back from a loose knot of shambling dead.

  “We have to go around,” said Dez.

  “We can’t. We’ll lose their trail and lose too damn much time.”

  Dez pointed with her Glock. “We don’t know how many of them there are.”

  “No, but the wind’s blowing this way. They won’t know we’re coming up on them and we can take them out one at a time. These things don’t learn from what happens from their buddies. Killing them is rinse and repeat.”

  “It’s not that easy, Captain Macho.”

  “Of course it isn’t.” He holstered his pistol, handed her back the flashlight, drew his rapid-release knife and a heavier Ka-Bar. “Here’s the plan. You keep the civilians together and keep them moving. I’m going to see if I can clean up our trail.”

  “Why you and not me?”

  He smiled. “You know the kids,” he said. “The women trust you. Lindsey trusts you. You’re thirty years younger than me and that makes me the most expendable of the two of us.”

  “But—.”

  “And, no offense meant, Dez, you’re a cop and I’m what I am.”

  “Which is—?”

  “A killer.” Ledger could hear the bleak sadness in his own voice, and he left her without another word, moving quickly along the path.

  ~34~

  Dez Fox and the Refugees

  Dez watched, squinting through the gloom, not risking the flashlight to see what Ledger was doing. All she could make out was a confusion of dark forms moving within the greater wall of shadows ahead. Soft sounds drifted back, but they were indistinct. The other women and kids crowded around her, asking hushed questions, seeking comfort. It made Dez feel weird. Back in Stebbins County, despite wearing a uniform and badge, she was hardly the pillar of the community. Known for her drinking, sleeping around, off-duty brawling, on-duty brutalizing of child molesters and wife beaters, and being generally regarded as a redneck hick cop. No one had ever held her out as a role model or a leader.

  And then the world ended.

  During the outbreak she’d stayed alive and on her feet while other people fell. Even her partner, JT Hammond, a seasoned cop and the closest thing to real family Dez had, was bitten. He’d died a hero’s death, but he’d still died. It left Dez in charge of the kids who had gone to Stebbins Little School because that was the town emergency shelter. The parents and teachers who’d taken them there, along with most of the county’s children, had died. Only a few hundred kids and a dozen or so adults were left. All of them deferred to Dez, drawn to her strength more powerfully than they were repelled by her pre-outbreak reputation.

  For the last months she’d protected the kids at the bus. Now she had a bunch of women who had been brutalized by the living, by the kinds of men Dez had always despised. Instead of playing nursemaid or team leader or whatever the hell she was supposed to be, Dez wanted to be ranging ahead to find the NKK thugs and see how many of them she could dismantle. Maybe she’d go crazy and make a bandolier of nutsacks. That might be fun. Might be a good way to go all the way nuts.

  Except…

  Billy Trout was alive. Alive. The other kids she’d saved from Stebbins were alive. And the kids from her bus were still alive. They hadn’t found any small bodies along this path.

  She forced her hands to stop shaking and hoisted a convincing smile of confidence onto her mouth as she calmed the women. She assured them that everyone was fine, it was all cool, and that Ledger was following her orders to clear the road. The women, desperate for something to believe, clung to her words as if they were gospel.

  Then, much sooner than she expected, Ledger came back, moving quickly but without reckless haste. He waved Dez over for a quick private chat.

  “I took out a few of the deadheads,” he said, “but there weren’t as many as I thought. Stragglers, mostly. I was going to keep going, but I spotted the hunting party.”

  “Jesus. Did they have my kids?”

  “No,” said Ledger, “and that means we caught a break. No, make
that two breaks.”

  “What do you mean? Since when was lady luck giving us anything but a bad handjob?”

  He grinned. “Stealing that,” he said. “But, to answer the question, I think whoever’s with the kids is smart and it’s pretty obvious she knows she’s being followed. There were a couple of times along the way here that I thought she tried to hide her trail, and up ahead the NKK guys are trying to decide which of three separate trails to follow. The gal with the sword pulled a fast one.”

  “I guess this is a ‘you go girl’ moment, but how’s that help us. We don’t know which trail she took, do we?”

  “I think maybe we do. One trail heads off southwest and I think it’s supposed to look like the kids are circling back to the bus. The second trail heads due northeast towards the Appomattox rescue station.”

  “That’s been overrun.”

  “Sure, but I think sword gal wants whoever’s following to think she doesn’t know that. Right now that trail looks best and it follows the path of least resistance.”

  “Oh. You said there was a third track, though.”

  “Yup. And even though it’s not much of a trail to follow, I think it’s what the sword gal took.”

  “Why are you so sure? Are you a Cherokee scout or something?”

  “No, and not a boy scout either, toots,” said Ledger. “I guess I ‘get’ devious people, and the third track is devious.”

  “Devious how?”

  “It looks like one person went that way, and the prints are the same shoes as sword gal. But they’re too deep.”

  “So…?”

  “So, I think she had the kids walk that way in single file, making sure they each stepped in the other’s footprints. And then she walked over that so it looks like only one set of prints went that way. If you don’t know much about tracking, it just looks like a clear track left by a single person.”