Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire Read online

  She stopped and Ledger didn’t ask for details. They’d both heard enough horror stories. Retelling them only did harm.

  “I was overseas when it started,” he said. “On a job. I’m with—was with—the military, like I said. Things all went crazy while we were half a world away. By the time we got back everything was falling apart. I…I tried to get home, you know? My wife and our kid had gone to my uncle’s place in Maryland. Nice big farm, lots of land, away from the cities.” He shook his head.

  After a long minute the girl asked, “What happened?”

  He sighed again. “It took me too long to get home. You know how it is. The roads, the crowds, the walkers, the nukes. By the time I made it to my uncle’s place there was nothing but burned fields and ashes where his house was.”

  “Your…your family…? Were they in the…you know?”

  Ledger shook his head. “No. There were no bones. I looked. God help me I really looked. And the thing is, I don’t even know if my wife made it to my uncle’s place or not. Communication was lousy even in the first few days. I know she was going there, but that’s all I know.”

  “What did you do?” The girl still held the knife, but no longer raised to strike. Instead she clutched it to her chest. Baskerville laid down and placed his big head on his front paws.

  “I think I went a little crazy,” said Ledger. “I looked everywhere I could, went to every refugee camp and rescue station. Spent months doing that. And then there was a while where I think I was out of my head.”

  Baskerville whined softly as if he understood.

  “He helped me get through it all,” said Ledger. “Big goof of a dog gave me a reason to keep moving, keep fighting, keep going.”

  The girl looked at the dog for a moment. If Ledger had wanted to he could have reached over and plucked the knife out of her hand, but he did not.

  “His name’s Baskerville? Like in the book?”

  “Yup.”

  The girl nodded, and they sat for a moment. A breeze stirred the corn and starlings flew overhead.

  “Lindsey,” she said.

  “What?” asked Ledger.

  “My name’s Lindsey. Lindsey Brewer-Munoz.”

  Ledger smiled. “Good to know you, Lindsey Brewer-Munoz.”

  “You’re…Mr. Ledger?”

  “Captain Joseph Edwin Ledger,” he said. “My friends call me Joe.”

  She nodded but did not repeat his name.

  “How long have you been alone?” he asked.

  Her answer was a stubborn shake of the head. It wasn’t information she wanted to share. Not yet. He accepted that, letting her set the rules.

  “When did you meet those NKK lamebrains?”

  Lindsey looked away and down. “This morning. Only a couple hours ago. I ran away and…” She shook her head again.

  “They didn’t mess with you?” he asked.

  “No. They were…they were…”

  She didn’t finish the sentence and he didn’t need to know what threats or promises the dead men had made.

  “They’re gone,” he said.

  Lindsey turned slowly and stared at him. She had very green eyes. “You killed all of them? All four?”

  “We did,” corrected Joe, nodding to Baskerville. “And I’m sorry if you saw any of it.”

  “Good,” she said, and her pretty young face instantly became a mask of such utter hatred that Ledger almost recoiled. It saddened him, hurt him deeply to see so much contempt on a young woman’s face. On any human face. It hurt worse to know that this girl would live with the knowledge of what almost happened to her, and have to bear the fear of the very real possibility of it happening in the future. Her innocence, or a chunk of it, had already been stolen from her. She would never again be able to believe that the world was not, at least in part, a truly vile place. And Ledger wanted very badly to put that genie back in the bottle, to seal it up, to make it not so, but the world was the world. Wishing for a better one wasn’t going to change what had already happened.

  He said, “I’m sorry.”

  The girl held onto the knife and the moment, ugly and raw, stretched and stretched.

  Suddenly Baskerville leapt to his feet.

  At the same moment Ledger heard the sounds coming from off to their left. The swish of cornstalks.

  And the moans.

  He shot to his feet, too. “Stay close,” he ordered. There were more moans now. From their right. And more in front of them.

  The dead were coming from all sides.

  “Oh god,” cried Lindsey and, still clutching the knife, she broke and ran into the cornfield, vanishing from sight.

  ~11~

  Rachael Elle

  Rachael and Pablo walked beneath a canopy of green trees. The road seemed to never end, though the signs for the River station were becoming more and more frequent, and newer looking the further she traveled, which Rachael took as a sign she was moving in the right direction. But she still hadn’t seen any people, any survivors, which concerned her. It had been over a week since the last living person she’d run into, and she’d hoped the closer she got to some sort of sanctuary the more survivors she’d find.

  Had the world slipped further into chaos? Was she the only one left out here, like a Twilight Zone episode gone horribly wrong?

  Please let this be the right way. Please let there be people there, let this not have been completely in vain.

  A sound rang out, deafening, startling Rachael in the silence.

  A gunshot.

  People. Her heart began hammering and hope—that lovely, dangerous thing—flared in her chest.

  There were survivors somewhere nearby.

  In trouble? Or hunting? Or…

  Rachael urged Pablo forward, letting him take his lead but coaxing him into a canter and then a full gallop as she became more certain of the direction. The horse was fast and it raced along the blacktop. Rachael strained to hear above the sounds of his hooves. The wind whipped through her hair and made her cloak billow out behind her.

  Another gunshot.

  Closer this time. Much closer. She was almost there.

  She rounded a bend in the road at full speed, and nearly slammed right into a mass of Orcs.

  Pablo reared, hooves flailing, kicking back the arms of the dead that turned to attack them, giving Rachael a split second to pull her sword, one hand clinging tight to the pommel of the saddle. She swung the blade, slicing through an Orc and kicking it back. There were more Orcs that she could easily count, most of them attacking what seemed to be an old broken down bus, its sides caked with old blood and dirt, fingers clawing against grimy metal, trying to get whatever was inside of there.

  Was there anything inside of there? She couldn’t hear any sounds, not over the sounds of the dead, but the gunshot had to come from somewhere.

  Her horse bolted as an Orc attacked from their right, nearly unsaddling her as she clung tightly with her knees, keeping her grip on the sword, swinging it as best she could at the dead, but more focused on trying to stay on as clawlike hands tried to grab on to her legs or saddle.

  Stay alive. She could hear Brett’s voice in her mind, though if it was a memory or her imagination she wasn’t sure.

  “I’m not dying here,” she growled to herself under her breath as Pablo turned sharply, ears flat against his head. She reined him in, trying to get him back under some semblance of control. He didn’t want to be here, and she didn’t want to either. It would be better to leave this place, leave the dead for whatever they were after.

  She was turning him to go, to keep riding far away from this place, when she heard it. The terrified wail of a child.

  Rachael’s heart dropped. There were kids on the bus.

  Every ounce of flight reflex was gone, every ounce of self-preservation. Now she had a mission, something she needed to do, someone to save. She might not be a superhero or the heroine of a book, but she was the only hero they had right now.

  “I’m sorry
, Pablo.” The horse’s ears were flat on his head, eyes panicked. “I know you want to run, but we have to do this. I know we can do this.”

  Most of the mass of dead was still distracted by the people inside the bus, their trapped prey, but Rachael was glad for that. A swarm of even five dead could overpower someone, and there were probably twenty or so, though it was hard to get an exact count. They were all slow, stained and tattered clothing falling off of bone and flesh. They all seemed a unified rust color as they moved, not individual people but a large mass of monsters.

  This was life or death now, the big bad boss at the end of the level. She was staring it in the face, and there was no escape. She would have to fight.

  “I am Arwen and Eowyn, I am Alanna and Arya.” She yelled out loud to an unresponsive mass of the dead, raising her sword above her head as if she were inspiring an army to charge into battle, “I am Sif, I am Xena.” She took a breath, trying to gather her courage. “I am Rachael, I am a warrior and I am not afraid.”

  Squeezing Pablo’s sides, she urged him forward, charging down at an Orc that had turned to respond to her yelling. Her sword sang through the air, the crunch of splitting bone as the sword pierced the skull and the body collapsed. Her horse seemed to understand what she was thinking and kept to the edge, dancing out of the reach of the snapping grabbing hands that were now turning their attention to her instead of the bus.

  As he ran, a handful of the Orcs turned to follow, giving Rachael the time to slice and stab, dropping their bodies and turning her attention to the next ones that came through.

  There were five down now, but the horde kept coming.

  Rachael was losing track, she felt like she had already killed more than a dozen, but there never seemed to be an end to this mass of bodies. She had no idea how many she had actually killed, all she knew was that she needed to keep going. Her arm hurt, and her hand was slippery from the sticky black blood of the dead. She clenched her fingers tighter around the hilt of the dagger. Any mistake meant her death. She knew that.

  An Orc grabbed onto her leg, teeth attaching to her boot as she tried to kick them away, dragging her out of the saddle as it pulled her down. She yelled, whether from fear or surprise or as a war cry she wasn’t sure, driving the dagger down through its skull with such force that she fell as the body crumpled, carrying her blade and her with it as another Orc latched its teeth onto Pablo, ripping a gash into his side as the horse let out something akin to a scream, more Orcs diving for his legs, teeth driving into the soft flesh they found there.

  She hit the ground hard as Pablo fell, the air driving from her lungs as she rolled, trying to jump back up to her feet. The horde was split, half of the Orcs still continuing their assault on the bus, the others stumbling towards her, yellow teeth gnashing. One grabbed onto her forearm, teeth sinking into the thick leather. She swung her sword jerkily, ribs protesting, and she missed the skull, sinking her sword into the base of the neck. Wincing, she let go of the sword, using the hand to grab a dagger out of her belt and sinking that into the weak part of the skull at the top of the head of the Orc, which dropped hard.

  Okay, this was bad. This was so very, very bad.

  Pablo’s panicked cries continued, but Rachael couldn’t look at him, so instead her eyes fixed on the next body that lunged at her. Her eyes tracked the bodies, trying to figure out the best way to clear them without backing herself into a corner she couldn’t get out of.

  There wasn’t time to try to retrieve her sword so instead she turned to face the next Orc in a half crouch, jumping to the side as it tried to lunge at her, turning in midair to drive the knife into the back of the head at the base of the skull. There were only three left coming, and she backed up a few steps, trying to judge which to take first. One came at her from the side and she dodged it, shoving its shoulder and using its stumble to grab onto the shirt and drive the blade between the eyes. Using a well-placed kick to the chest to knock the next one to the ground, she dispatched it with a quick stab. The last one’s hands tried to grab hold of her, clumsy fingers attaching to a loop on her armor and pulling her towards its teeth.

  With a cry she switched hands on the knife, driving it hard into the side of the Orc’s forehead.

  Her chest was heaving, ribs sending sharp warning pains as she moved. She ached everywhere already, but there was no time to wait.

  Pablo had fallen silent, and Rachael didn’t want to look. She couldn’t look, she would have been able to handle it if she did. Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, she swallowed down her emotions.

  Heroes couldn’t cry. Not when there were people to save.

  Another gunshot rang out across the road, followed by the agonized screaming that Rachael had come to associate with death. Her heart sunk, and, using her foot as leverage, she pulled the sword out of the Orc’s neck from where it had lodged, ignoring the protests in her side. Sprinting forward, she sliced through the back of the head of an Orc that had turned to follow the screaming, and kept going. She couldn’t see anything from this side of the bus, and she ducked around the back of the bus, hoping that most of the dead would be on the other end.

  Slicing her sword through the side of the head of another Orc, she rushed towards the man that was laying at the foot of the door of the bus, still screaming as two Orcs dug their teeth and nails into him. The blood was everywhere. Rachael felt nauseous, but she swallowed it down, driving her dagger into the heads of the Orcs one by one, shoving their bodies to the side.

  The man wouldn’t stop screaming, clawing at the bites on his neck, and Rachael knew what she had to do.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, before driving the knife up through the side of his skull.

  Then it was silent.

  Rachael had the unnerving feeling tickling on the back of her neck that she was being watched.

  ~12~

  Dez Fox

  Dez had spent a lot of time hunting the forests of western Pennsylvania and northern Maryland. She understood the woods as well as any experienced hunter. She’d also hunted men in Afghanistan during the war. Being a soldier, a hunter and a cop had taught her a lot about how to read what the land wanted to share. In a police academy forensics class she’d also learned that contact always leaves a mark. Tracking, then, was looking for marks. Mankind itself made marks on the world—roads, buildings, cultivated fields, and more. These impositions on the land were mostly overgrown and eventually would fade, but that created a different kind of pattern, a different kind of trail. Where weeds and new growth grew it spoke to a lack of use, and in some places it was crystal clear to Dez that no foot—living or dead—had come this way in months. Elsewhere the weeds were bent and broken, or pushed aside. The passage of random passage suggested a single person using that route infrequently. Crushed foliage told a story of heavier and more frequent use.

  Dez could read the stories of each. A careful living person, even one trying not to be seen and making maximum use of natural cover, still left tracks that showed they were in control of their bodies. The steps were more orderly, more evenly spaced. Dead feet tended to wander, to drag, to ignore cover and follow the path of least resistance. There was evidence of both kinds of travelers in the woods.

  Twice she spotted zombies standing in the forests doing nothing. It was a phenomena she’d begun to realize was a thing. Unless drawn by scent, sight or sound, the dead would often slow to a stop and simply stand there. When the dead moved in packs the movement of the whole tended to draw the others, but Dez figured that even these groups would eventually slow down when the ones out front had nothing new to chase. It made a weird sense to her. After all, why would they just keep moving? Zombies were opportunistic hunters. They attacked and devoured life—animals, humans, birds—and they had already begun stripping areas of everything that could feed them. In the absence of prey, they stopped, no longer pulled by their senses.

  That created a new kind of danger. The motionless zombies were like landmines and IEDs. They c
ould be anywhere and because they remained so still and so quiet it was easy to walk right past one and accidentally trigger its appetite and aggression.

  Dez paused in her search long enough to cut a green branch from a tree. She used a knife to strip the leaves and bark from it and to trim it down to a twenty-inch length with a sturdy Y at one end. She held that in her left hand and carried her blackjack in the other. That gave her a formidable set of tools for a technique she wished she could patent and sell. She’d be a millionaire with the first post-apocalypse must-have invention. Great for Christmas, perfect for stocking stuffers, she mused.

  She had to use it less than two miles from the bus.

  As she cut along an overgrown fire access road a solo zombie suddenly lurched toward her from the shade of an oak. One moment it was invisible, merely part of the landscape, and then next it snarled and lunged at her, gray fingers clawing at her shirt and hair.

  Dez backpedaled to get her footing, set her weight on the balls of her feet, and as the creature shambled forward she used both weapons to slap its reaching arms down and then thrust the Y-stick hard against its throat. The mouth of the Y snugged in tight under the chin of that snapping mouth, and Dez quickly moved close and brought the blackjack down on the crown of the monster’s head. The blackjack was made from a heavy pellet of lead wrapped in leather. The weapon’s neck was flexible, which allowed for a lot of snapping speed. Handled one way and it would deliver a soft, penetrating blow that would render a criminal dazed or unconscious, often with a mild concussion. Used any other way it crushed bone and drove splinters through dura-matter and into the brain. There was a reason it had been outlawed by police forces across America. Just as there was a reason Dez Fox had taken it out of the box of weapons she’d kept in her trailer home when everything was falling apart. She’d nearly lost her job for using it once while busting up a biker gang brawl, now she was glad she hadn’t thrown it away.