Tooth & Nail: A Rot & Ruin Story Read online

  7

  Rattlesnake Valley

  Southern California

  The four girls kept shifting their desperate stares from the zombies converging on Tiffany, then to Samantha, and back again. For her part, Samantha was working it all out. Distance, speed, the presence of the two dozen strangers, the terrain, everything. She was the leader of their pack because she knew how to work things out. Ida had called it three-dimensional thinking.

  Samantha had to weigh the safety of the remaining girls against the small chance of saving Tiffany, and factor in the personal risk for all six of them. A trap set for one could catch a rescue party as well. All too easily.

  She also had to try to assess what total strangers would do if the girls made a rescue attempt. The people in black and red were clearly alive, and somehow—impossibly, or so it seemed—they’d discovered ways to both control the dead and keep themselves safe from them. Until a few minutes ago Samantha would have thought neither of those things could be done.

  However . . . the evidence was clear and irrefutable; therefore it could be done. Her view of the world needed to change to accept that and work with it.

  “Okay,” she said quickly, an idea forming in her head. “Heather and Laura, I want you to go two hundred yards north. Stay low and stay hidden. Prep arrows and wait for my signal. Go!”

  The two youngest girls, both of whom were superb archers, dropped from the tree, using the trunk to hide them. They melted into the high grass the way they’d been taught. Even Samantha, who was the best hunter in their group, lost sight of them at once.

  “Good. Amanda, you and Michelle go south. Fifty yards will do it. Kindle a fire but use the driest brush you can find. No smoke. Wait for my call and then put wet stuff on the blaze. Soon as you do, leave it and go west. Find that old farm road and head for the barn. Wait as long as you can, but if we don’t catch up in ten minutes, get out of there.”

  “What about you?” asked Michelle.

  “I’ll be right here. We have to move fast. Tiff is running out of time.”

  The girls moved fast. They dropped from the tree like squirrels and vanished into the brush.

  Tiffany had a lead of maybe thirty yards on the main body of the dead, but she had six hundred yards to go to reach the creek. Two lines of dead were converging, and Samantha judged they’d cut her off sixty or seventy yards shy of safety.

  Samantha counted off the seconds she judged were required for the other girls to get into position. It was going to be tight. So tight.

  She still had the binoculars and, while she waited, she took a longer look at the people in black and red. The field glasses were very powerful, and now she was able to see the design each of them had on their chests.

  Wings.

  White angel wings.

  So strange a symbol for people who were driving the dead like a pack of dogs to try to murder a teenage girl.

  What made it even worse was that the people with the wings and the knives were all smiling as they hunted Tiffany.

  Smiling.

  God.

  Who were these people?

  Over the years Samantha’s ragtag family had met more than their share of wild loners, badlands human predators, bounty hunters, and worse. The fall of the world had driven so many people mad and corrupted so many others. That’s what Ida always said, and she’d prayed for them to find their souls again.

  Samantha studied these smiling hunters of innocent girls and wondered how long it had been since they’d lost their connection to either God or humanity. The fact that there were so many of them, and that they were acting in a coordinated way, suggested intelligence and control. And yet what they were doing was mad.

  It made no sense to her.

  There was a loud birdcall to her right, and she glanced north. She could not see Heather and Laura, but she knew the call. They were in position. Samantha turned to the south and saw a few thin wisps of smoke. Amanda and Michelle were ready.

  Samantha slung the binoculars over her shoulder, took a deep breath to steady her nerves, took her spear in both hands, and dropped out of the tree. She bent nearly in half and moved down to the closest point of concealment near the creek.

  Tiffany was running as hard as she could, but by now she had to know that there was no chance she’d slip through the closing jaws of the trap.

  Not unless . . .

  Samantha set her spear down, cupped her hands around her mouth, and gave a sharp cry. The screech of a hunting hawk.

  Instantly two threads of darkness stitched across the sky, and suddenly arrows struck quivering in the throats of the zombies closest to the right-hand part of the trap. One zombie fell at once, the brain stem clearly severed. The other staggered and crashed into another of the dead. They fell heavily, and the zombies behind them tripped and fell over them.

  The zombies on that side of the field turned toward movement as first Heather and then Laura rose up, fired, dropped down, and rose up again a few yards away. Arrows flew across the creek, and each one hit a target. The girls were not trying for a kill, not at that distance, but they were good enough to hit heads and necks. Nerve and brain damage, even if not fatal, made the zombies far more erratic and confused. Within seconds that whole side of the trap was a jumble of falling bodies, thrashing limbs, frustrated snarls, and grasping hands.

  Tiffany saw this and for an awful moment she slowed almost to a stop, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Then there was another birdcall—an eagle’s shriek—and within seconds thick white smoke billowed up from the south. Amanda and Michelle had thrown wet grass on the fire. The smoke was so dense that it did exactly what Samantha wanted it to do: It cast a writhing shadow on the waving marsh weeds. The zombies on that side of the trap staggered to a clumsy stop, and with Tiffany barely moving, their attention was now drawn by the column of smoke and its wavering shadow. The zombies turned and lumbered that way.

  The path was now wide open, but Samantha knew it wouldn’t be for long. The people in black and red had spotted the smoke and the arrow-struck dead. They began moving toward those points, weapons glinting in the sunlight.

  Samantha rose up out of the grass and gave a third birdcall. The wild, mournful call of a marsh bird.

  Tiffany jerked erect, looked the wrong way first, and then swung around toward the cottonwood. When she saw Samantha, she didn’t waste a single moment gaping or waving. Instead she broke into a run again, pouring on the speed, racing with all her heart and fear and muscle toward the blue ribbon of water.

  Samantha ran to meet her and as Tiffany splashed down into the deepest part, Samantha was there to catch her under the armpit and haul her to safety on the opposite bank.

  “Who are those people?” demanded Samantha.

  Tiffany was too breathless to say much, but she gasped out a single word.

  “Reapers.”

  There was no time to learn more. The dead had heard the splashing and saw the movement of the two girls in the water. So had the people in black and red.

  The reapers.

  Holding on to Tiffany, lending strength to her exhausted friend, Samantha ran toward the high ground and the tall grass. The forest reached out with shadows and green arms to enfold them.

  However, behind them they heard the moans of the dead, the splash of feet in the water, and the yells—the very human yells—of the reapers as they ran in pursuit of their prey.

  8

  South Fork Wildlife Area

  Southern California

  Saint John of the Knife stood in the shadows of a live oak and waited for the slaughter to begin. He stood on a grassy knoll, looking down on a country lane that wandered lazily through the countryside. Birds sang in all the trees, and the air was alive with the buzz of honeybees and bluebottle flies. Sunlight slanted through the boughs, dappling the road in yellow and purple.

  The wagon clattered along the road, wheels crunching against the edges of ruts worn into the cracked blacktop. Four heavy-boned horses pulled the wag
on, their bodies wrapped in carpet coats and draped with metal mesh. Two men sat on the wooden bench seat, one with the reins in his hands, the other with a shotgun across his knees. The wagon was an old-fashioned chuck wagon that had probably been looted from a cowboy museum. The sides had been reinforced with metal sheeting, and the words gunderson trade goods had been painted in bright colors. Two men walked beside the wagon, one on each side, leading their horses. Fifty yards behind the wagon, another man rode slowly on a slate-gray Percheron that stood nineteen hands high and wore a helmet covered in spikes.

  The man who sat astride the Percheron had flaming red hair gathered back into a ponytail, dusty jeans, cowboy boots, a Western shirt with flowers and hummingbirds stitched across the chest, and crisscrossed army gun belts around his lean hips, from which holstered Glocks hung. A widemouthed sheath, from which one half of a compound bow protruded, was slung from the saddle horn. It was a metal-and-fiberglass hunting bow fitted with cables and pulleys. A quiver heavy with arrows was slung across his back.

  The man was big—tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular. His chest and arms were almost freakishly huge, nearly simian, but for all his mass there was something about him. A lurking potential to use that power with deadly speed. Saint John could see that right away; he was an excellent judge of combat potential.

  This was the man they were looking for, he decided. He fit the description given by the Night Church’s newest reaper, Brother Tony. This was the man who knew where Mountainside and the other eight towns could be found.

  The trade wagon and its guards were walking through country that was virtually empty of the gray people, and it showed in the slack disinterest of each of those men. Only the big man seemed to be alert. In fact, Saint John saw the precise moment when the red-haired giant realized that the woods were not as empty as they appeared. His horse passed through a patch of shadow thrown across the road by a crooked willow. As the rider passed out of the shadow and into the sunlight, his head jerked up and he looked around. First to the right-hand side of the road, then to the left. His body language changed as he shifted forward in the saddle.

  He raised his head, and Saint John had the strange impression that the redhead was sniffing the air the way an animal would. Could he somehow smell the chemicals on the tassels of the hidden reapers? With all the wildflowers that bloomed on either side of the road, it seemed unlikely, improbable. It was why Saint John had chosen this particular spot for the ambush.

  “Bobby, Harv,” called the big man. “Hold up.”

  The two men leading their horses turned to look back at him. “What’s up, Mike?”

  Iron Mike Sweeney used his thighs to guide his horse forward as he continued to look around.

  “I don’t know . . . something’s . . .”

  He let his voice trail off. And then it seemed to Saint John that the big man’s whole body appeared to blur. His hands were empty and then they were not. He’d snatched up his bow so fast that the eye could not follow it. An arrow seemed to appear on the string as if by magic, there was a vibrating twang, and then a wet scream tore the air. A reaper staggered from between two thick bushes with that same arrow buried to the fletching in his chest. He took two wandering steps and then toppled forward onto his face with no attempt at all to catch his fall.

  “Trap!” yelled Iron Mike.

  Before Harv and Bobby could even react, Mike had begun filling the air with arrows. One after the other, so fast that Saint John felt an electric thrill race through him. It was like nothing he’d ever seen. Screams filled the air as each arrow plunged into dense shadows to find a chest or throat or eye socket. Reapers fell, writhing in agony or still in death.

  The shotgun man on the wagon stood up and swung his barrel around, firing blindly into the trees. Then he shrieked and pitched backward, a hatchet chunked deep into his lower back.

  There was a thunderous cry, and the reapers rose up from behind bushes and rocks. A wave of them crested the top of the grassy knoll and washed down toward the road.

  Harv and Bobby drew their guns and fired.

  And fired and fired.

  The reapers were so closely packed that every bullet hit a target.

  The guns clicked empty and the guards tried to reload.

  Tried.

  The reaper wave slammed into them, and they went down in a froth of red as silver knives ended them. Other reapers dragged the driver down and cut him into red inhumanity.

  The arrows of the big trade guard never paused. He killed seven reapers, ten, fourteen. Twenty.

  They surged toward him, and he hooked the string of the bow over his saddle horn and drew his Glocks. The reapers, the killers who served Saint John’s god, ran into the storm of bullets. They screamed the name of Thanatos. They screamed the name of Saint John.

  They screamed the names of their mothers as the bullets tore them down.

  Iron Mike filled the road with the dead.

  His mighty Percheron, twenty-six hundred pounds of warhorse, reared up and lashed out with steel-shod hooves. The elite killers of the Night Church were flung into the air with shattered skulls and arms and chests.

  And then a blade whistled through the air, turning end over end, and its point bit deep into the Percheron’s throat. The horse screamed and twisted sideways and fell.

  Iron Mike leaped from the saddle and landed hard, tucking and rolling, coming up onto the balls of his feet, dropping empty magazines, swapping them out, turning, firing, killing. He dropped those magazines and slapped in his last two.

  The reapers formed a wide circle around him, the diameter thirty feet across, the ranks of killers thirty deep. Hundreds of knives and swords and scythes glittered in the sunlight. The red-haired giant held the pistols out as he turned in a slow circle.

  Everyone knew how this was going to end. He had fifteen rounds in each gun. He had no more magazines.

  There were a thousand reapers around him.

  Saint John walked slowly down from the top of the knoll. He paused to retrieve his knife from the horse’s throat; then he gave an order and the reapers parted to create a corridor. The saint wiped his blade clean on his thigh and slid the throwing knife into its sheath as he strolled toward the last trade guard. He stopped ten feet away.

  The big man said nothing, but he lowered his pistols.

  “I am Saint John of the Knife,” said the saint. “You understand that if I wanted you dead, you would be dead.”

  The big man shrugged. “Everybody dies.”

  His eyes were strange. The irises were red except for a rim of gold. Saint John had never seen eyes like that except in church paintings of vampires and demons.

  “The question is, my friend,” said Saint John, “do you want to live?”

  9

  Sanctuary

  Area 51

  It took twenty-five grueling, exhausting, sweaty minutes to climb all the way up to the goat path. For most of that time the goat stood there, quietly chewing on a tough piece of vegetable root, watching him with placid curiosity. Each time Benny slipped, he could swear there was a look of pitying amusement on the goat’s face.

  Only when Benny climbed onto a flat shelf near the goat did the animal move away. Even then it was at so leisurely a pace that it was as if the goat was daring Benny to give chase. The path it took was less than a hand’s-width wide. Giving chase was very low on Benny’s list of things to do in this lifetime.

  Following, however, was another thing. He didn’t want to catch the goat, but he definitely wanted to know how it had gotten into Sanctuary. On his climb he’d figured out what was bothering him.

  If a goat could climb over the mountains and reach Sanctuary, so could a person.

  Or a lot of people.

  The dead would never be able to manage it, of course. They were too clumsy and mindless, and climbing required strength, coordination, observation, sharp wits, and good judgment.

  The reapers had all those things.

  Benny smiled griml
y. If he was able to prove that Sanctuary was unsafe, that it was vulnerable to a sneak attack because of goat trails like this, then he would be able to throw that right in Captain Ledger’s face.

  This was being warrior smart.

  That’s what Benny’s brother Tom called it. Warrior smart. Using training and good judgment, courage and determination to confront an obstacle and overcome it. The same rules of common sense and education applied. Faced with anything from finding food in the wasteland, avoiding the zoms, preparing a battle plan, to escaping a trap, or defeating an enemy.

  Warrior smart was a better way of thinking than the gung-ho stuff Ledger wanted to teach.

  Grinning, he began moving slowly and carefully along the goat path.

  His courage and confidence stayed with him for almost three hundred yards, but after the first time the walkway cracked beneath his shoes, he began to doubt the wisdom of this plan.

  Half an hour later he was only a third of the way to the crest of this broken hill, but the ground looked like it was a thousand miles down. Hot sweat ran down his face, but cold sweat tickled in lines beneath his clothes. His breath came in ragged gasps, and he tried to drill his fingers into the rock wall.

  Once, when he closed his eyes, he thought he heard his brother Tom speaking to him.

  Yo! Boy genius, said Tom. Exactly what do you think you’re doing?

  “Shut up,” breathed Benny. “I’m trying not to die here.”

  How hard are you trying?

  “Bite me.”

  Not even if I was alive.

  They both laughed, but the laughs were ghostly and unreal. What Benny really wanted to do was sob. The ache he felt for his lost brother was almost unbearable at times. He kept seeing a hole in the world in the shape of Tom Imura, and he couldn’t imagine anything filling it.

  However, he believed that he was supposed to fill it. He was supposed to become the next Tom Imura.

  Him.

  Not some old guy who used to be a soldier back when something like that mattered. Before the dead rose and humanity fell. Now—and especially to Benny—meeting an actual soldier was like being handed proof that the old system was never good enough, that it wasn’t strong enough. That it wasn’t warrior smart enough. The world still ended.