The Redemption Trilogy

by A. J. Sikes

  Jed stared at Greg for a second, then motioned for McKitrick to get them out of there. She reversed them away from the garden space. Tears streamed down her face as she looked in the rear view mirror. Jed checked over his shoulder.

  Keoh’s head was just visible over the back seat.

  They drove to Baytown in silence. Greg hailed him once, but Jed didn’t respond. He had plenty he wanted to say to the man, but it wasn’t Greg’s fault they’d been blown up. It wasn’t Greg’s fault that Keoh was killed.

  I shouldn’t have taken us outside the wire. Should have hung back and made sure my people were okay instead of this shopping trip bullshit.

  They got back to the fire station, and the still-standing clinic. Doctor DuBois came out to meet them as McKitrick pulled in beside the fire station doors.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Greg told me—”

  “Good,” Jed shot back as he jumped out of the vehicle. “So now you know what happens when I take orders from you. That ends now. You’re going to give us whatever we need, food, water, and ammunition. We are moving out on a payback mission. And we can talk about why that clinic is still standing when I get back.”

  Doctor DuBois met his gaze and crossed her arms.

  “Sergeant, the council—”

  “Can eat a dick. We aren’t having this conversation, Doc.”

  He stormed off, calling for Garza and Mehta. They came out the fire station’s side door.

  “It’s Keoh,” Jed told them.

  Mehta ran to the SUV and looked inside. He stumbled back, puked on his boots, and fell to his hands and knees sobbing. Jed walked over to him. He paused when Greg shouted for his attention.

  “Hey! Sergeant Welch! North gate says your hippie pal just rolled up. He says he has intel we want.”

  “That’s fucking great,” Jed said. “We’ve got something for him, too.”

  Jed grabbed Mehta by his armor and hauled him to his feet, then called for his squad.

  “Mount up, Hellhounds!”

  McKitrick took the wheel. She had to weave them around a group of people running from the direction of the gate. Doctor DuBois went to greet them. Jed watched them in the car’s mirrors. The doctor darted away from the group and ran after Jed’s squad, waving and hollering for them to stop.

  “Hold up,” Jed said. He let DuBois catch up instead of reversing to meet her halfway. She was half out of breath but Jed caught the important words.

  “Variants… In the housing tract.”

  — 31 —

  Emily and Danitha huddled together in the dining nook of their cottage. The council offered it to them in exchange for help with planting the spring crops. Every backyard in the housing area had been converted to farmland, and they’d spent the morning putting plants in the ground, sowing seeds, and digging irrigation trenches.

  Now they hid, their safety ripped from them in a flash of claws and blood and screaming. All around the area, she heard echoes of people shouting Red Event, the community’s code for a Variant attack. The monsters lurked outside, in little clusters on the fence. They clung to the metal barrier and rotated their heads back and forth, like devilish birds of prey. The dogs stayed on the ground, and moved their heads the same way.

  “We can’t stay here,” Emily said. “They will find a way in.”

  “Only if you keep giving them something to look at,” Danitha said. “Get away from the damn window.”

  Emily had been watching a Variant crawl along the fence line. It would skitter around, then twitch its head back and forth, slowly stalking along the edge of the farmland. A trio of the dog monsters followed it through the gardens, all the time rotating their heads as they moved.

  The hunting packs had leaped the fence and torn through the people working in the gardens. Their bodies were still out there, torn and bloody in the mud. Emily and Danitha were lucky that they’d worked the earliest shift. They were inside on a break when the monsters came.

  Now they were stuck here, trapped in a two-room house with an attic they could hide in, but couldn’t reach. The only furniture in the house was a fold out couch and an end table, and neither would get them high enough to unlatch the attic trapdoor.

  “Dani, we need to leave. I only see one now. We have to run back to Chava and his people.”

  “We go outside and we are dead.”

  “And if we stay in here, then what? When the monsters start looking in every window, sniffing every door. Then what do we do?”

  “Where are they now? What’re they doing?”

  Emily peeked around the edge of the window again. A dog monster relieved itself on a patch of concrete that used to be the cottage’s back patio. It ambled off to join two others still following the larger Variant through the gardens. The smaller monsters moved just like dogs, trotting and stalking. But their heads stayed up, instead of lowered to the ground like a dog’s would.

  The larger Variant kept swiveling its head as it moved, reminding Emily of something. She heard a clicking sound from nearby and shrank away from the window.

  “What’s that noise? One of them in the attic?” Danitha asked.

  “I don’t know. It came from outside.”

  The clicking came again. It wasn’t the harsh ratcheting of the Variant’s joints, but a softer, more rapid sound, almost staccato like—

  “They are echolocating,” Emily said.

  “They what?”

  “Like a bat. The monster makes noise to locate prey. This means I was right about the virus. It hibernated in bats, just like rabies does. And now it has changed what it can do to people it infects.”

  Danitha gave Emily a deadpan stare. “And how is this supposed to help me feel better? What the fu—”

  “We can distract them. Like the bats we ran from in the woods. Enough noise will interfere with their ability to find us.”

  “Won’t they just see us?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so.”

  “Look out the window. They don’t use their eyes. They make the clicking noise and move their heads to hear where the echo comes from.”

  Danitha leaned up to see outside, then jerked back down and hid.

  Claws scraped somewhere nearby, then raced up the outside of the house and onto the roof. Another, smaller set of claws followed the first, and then another. After that, the only sounds Emily heard beneath her and Danitha’s frightened breathing were scrabbling and clicking as the monsters ripped at the roof tiles.

  When they shattered the attic window and raced into the upper story, Emily spun from the window and into the kitchen. She flung open a cabinet with her good hand, calling for Danitha to help. The monsters were in the attic, scraping around and snarling.

  Emily yanked out the sauce pan and cast-iron skillet the council had given them.

  “You really think we can kill these things with a couple of pans?” Danitha asked.

  “These will help. Trust me. We will run to where my brother is. If we see the monsters, we bang the pans together and keep doing it. That should be enough noise to distract them from fixing on us.”

  Danitha grabbed the skillet and spun to face the attic trapdoor. It had begun rattling as the monsters clawed at it and tried to force it open. The latch held for now, but it wouldn’t last. It gave a jump and almost opened.

  Emily took the saucepan and went to the front of the house. She looked out the window at the empty street.

  “I don’t see them. I’m going out.”

  Danitha helped her unlock the deadbolt. They opened the door and stumbled onto the front walk as the attic trapdoor began to crack open. A snarling muzzle shot out. Another followed.

  Emily and Danitha ran for the street. A truck turned a corner up ahead. It had a machine gun mounted in the back. Before Emily or Danitha could get the driver’s attention, the truck sped forward, across the street and into the area behind the houses. Heavy chopping gunfire echoed around the neighborhood, mixed with the screec
hing and howling of the dog Variants.

  The women continued to run, and Emily listened for the clicking sound she’d heard earlier. Danitha veered away from her, and she yelled for her to stay close.

  A dog Variant climbed up a house and perched on a roof behind them, making a clicking sound and howling. The screeches and whines of other dogs echoed around the houses. Then they came, in groups of two or three, until a cluster of at least a dozen formed in the street and raced for them.

  Emily got close enough to Danitha and swung the saucepan at the skillet. “Hold it still!” she shouted. Danitha stopped running and turned to face the onrushing swarm of dog Variants.

  “We’re gonna die banging a couple of fucking pots together!”

  The dogs were a few houses back still, but they would reach them soon enough.

  “We are not going to die, Dani! The monsters evolved to hunt and kill better than any other animal, but they are still animals themselves. The virus changed them again, and this time, they have a weakness we can exploit.”

  Emily held the saucepan against her hip. “Strike it!”

  Danitha brought the skillet down with a clang. The dogs kept running, but a few of them staggered off from the main pack for a few steps. They quickly rejoined the group though.

  “Again!” Emily screamed.

  Danitha hit the pan again. The dogs staggered. She grabbed the pan from Emily and hit them both together in front of her. The pack split up as pairs and single dogs peeled off to the side. One of them went headfirst into a tree stump and wheeled around only to be hit by another dog as it ran from the pack.

  Emily and Danitha jogged backward, casting looks over their shoulders as they moved. And Danitha kept banging the pots together, until Emily’s ears rang with the echo. But the dogs did not follow them. Some wandered in the street, and some got into fights, snarling at each other and rolling around biting and barking.

  The truck with the machine gun came around a house farther back on the street. It roared forward and Emily urged Danitha out of the line of fire as the gunner shot at the monsters, scattering them and killing several.

  “The cottage!” Danitha yelled. “There’s a big one in the cottage!”

  Emily felt her stomach turn as the monster flew out of their front door and across the street. It leaped onto the tailgate before the gunner could spin around.

  Danitha slammed the pans together, but the Variant had already attacked. The gunner’s screams drowned out the sound of clanging metal.

  The driver got out with a gun and shot the monster, then climbed in and drove to where Emily and Danitha stood in the street.

  Two dog Variants stalked out from behind the truck as it pulled to a stop. Danitha banged the pans together and the handle of the saucepan broke off.

  The dogs recovered their direction and stepped forward, snarling and dripping spittle from their muzzles.

  Emily waved for the driver to get out. “Two dogs! There’s two dogs here!” she yelled.

  The driver got out, and was jumped from behind by another dog that had climbed into the truck bed. The two in front of Emily and Danitha leaped for them.

  — 32 —

  “My sister’s there!” Garza yelled as McKitrick sped them away from the doctor.

  “Hold up!” Jed shouted. “Make a call, Garza. Where you want to be?”

  Garza was out the door and running back to Doctor DuBois. McKitrick stomped on the gas as soon as the door was closed.

  “You want to settle yourself, McKitrick,” Jed said. “I know you’re burning. Same with me and Mehta.”

  Jed held his weapon out the window, ready to fire on the hippie as soon as they spotted his vehicle. The road to the North gate had a few cars on it now as people from the junkyard dropped their work to respond to the Variant threat.

  “What about the Variants, Sergeant?” Mehta asked from the back seat.

  “We’ll join the fight as soon as we finish things with this hippie-ass bomb maker.”

  As they neared the gate, Jed saw it wouldn’t be long before they were turned around and heading toward the Variants. A Subaru wagon sat just inside the North gate, with two guards holding weapons on the driver from either side. The driver-side door was open.

  McKitrick sped them forward and braked a few feet from the Subaru’s grill. Jed was out before they’d fully stopped and put two rounds into the passenger side of the windshield. The hippie tumbled out of the car, flopping to the ground. He got to his knees with his hands out, shaking like he’d piss himself.

  The gate guards yelled at Jed to stand down, but he kept his weapon up and fired two more into the dirt next to the hippie’s knees.

  “I didn’t do it!” the guy screamed through tears. He fell forward and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

  A car door slammed behind Jed and more rounds cracked out of McKitrick’s rifle, striking the hippie in the arm and chest. He fell onto his side, still alive, and clutching at his wounds. Jed stalked forward. He put a hand up to hold McKitrick back, maintaining his aim on the bomber.

  The gate guards had stepped away, but one of them hollered at Jed. “He said he had information. But I guess you’re one of those shoot first, ask later types. Fucking asshole!”

  Jed had to fight the urge to swivel his aim and put the guard down. The hippie had blown up their only road home, and he’d killed Keoh. Or he worked with the people who did. Either way, Jed was writing the ROE for this one. He’d reached the end of his patience. Or maybe his sanity. Staring at the dying man on the ground, Jed wondered how much either of those things mattered anymore.

  “Why’d you blow us up?” he asked, staring into the hippie’s eyes.

  The man’s face shook and wobbled with fear. He sobbed around his words, making it hard to understand him. Jed only caught a few words.

  “I didn’t… Pills. I need…”

  A plastic prescription bottle rolled in the dirt next to the car’s front tire.

  Jed put the muzzle of his weapon against the bomber’s forehead and leaned down to pick up the pills.

  It was some kind of anti-viral drug.

  Jed looked at his enemy’s face, stared into his eyes. A yellowish haze began filling them in, but receded to the edges.

  “He’s infected!” Jed shouted, stepping back with his weapon up.

  The bomber shouted, “No! It was Ewell!”

  Jed double tapped the man, ending it. McKitrick came forward, but Jed put an arm up to bar her from going closer. She spit at the ground, turned and got back into the vehicle. Mehta had come out and stood off to Jed’s right. He’d circled to flank the hippie and was looking into the car.

  “Sergeant, he had a radio.”

  “A what?”

  Jed darted around the passenger side of the car and ripped open the door. A radio was piled on the front with camera bags and two notebooks. The backseat was a mess of clothing and sleeping bags. Jed went around back and opened the hatch. He grabbed clothing and blankets and tossed them to the ground, looking for ANFO, C4, anything that could be used to make a bomb. He stopped when he saw boxes full of pills.

  They were all sealed, and most of them were the same drug as what had been in the little bottle on the ground.

  “Sergeant Welch!” Mehta yelled.

  Jed went around the car with his weapon up, but Mehta was fine. He held the mic from the radio in the front seat.

  “Traffic just came from Radout. He’s talking to someone on the council.”

  “How the hell does that radio—ah, shit! He’s been listening in the whole time. That’s how he knew our AO.”

  Jed took the mic from Mehta and hailed Radout.

  “Six, Shorewatch. Over.”

  “We’re handling the Variants. Your man Garza’s okay. He helped put three of them down, but reports are at least two more got inside the wire. I think we’re good to go. Could use your help making sure.”

  “Roger. We’re inbound. Shorewatch out.”

  Jed tossed the m
ic on the front seat next to the radio and notebooks. Mehta had opened the camera bag. He had the guy’s fancy rig out and was flipping through pictures on the viewscreen. “Sergeant, this is fucked up,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “It’s Gunny—Oh fuck, look at this!”

  Jed grabbed the camera. The picture was taken at night. Gunny Ewell stood outside the TOC with his head turned to the side, like he didn’t know he was being photographed. A dog Variant sat by his feet. In another picture, Gunny and Sergeant Jordan led a Marine from Jordan’s squad into a covered patio between two houses. It was a building Jed recognized from Galveston.

  The next photo sealed Gunny’s fate. He and Jordan held the young Marine to the ground while Gunny’s pet bit the man on the arm.

  “He turned them, but he controlled it,” Mehta said.

  Jed thought about the drugs in the hippie’s wagon, and the bottle that fell out with him.

  “Mount up,” he said. “Grab the radio and the notebooks, too.”

  The gate guards milled around the base of their watchtowers. One of them came over as Jed made to leave.

  “Hey, you just gonna leave this shit here?”

  “The car has medicine in it. Keep it secure.”

  “What about the body, asshole?”

  Jed stared at the guy. He was dressed like most of the Baytown security people in some combination of military costume under a Carhartt jacket.

  “Okay, Operator,” Jed said. “The body is a biohazard; don’t touch it,” he said, and left the guard standing there with his mouth open. Jed climbed into the SUV with Mehta and the gear they took from the hippie’s car.

  “Get us back to the fire station,” he said, then lifted the mic. “Six, Shorewatch.”

  “Go ahead, Shorewatch.”

  “Bomber wasn’t working alone. We’ll help mop things up here. Then we gotta hit the road.”

  “Where to?”

  “Gotta see an old friend. I’ll tell you when we get back.”