However, sometimes things are so downright loony-tunes that even I wonder if my insanity dial has been turned to eleven.
Mind you, as a rule I am too old to be shocked by much anymore. I have both been there and done that and seen a lot of this world’s weirdest shit. Trust me on this. Sometimes, though, the universe just up and tries to fuck with you.
Case in point.
The random woman being carried into the woods was Rachael. Don’t ask me how the hell she got from where I last saw her to here. Don’t begin to ask me to calculate the odds or explain the probabilities of chance necessary to put the two of us together again like this. Stephen Hawking couldn’t have worked out those numbers. It not only proves there’s a god, but He’s also out of his fucking mind.
I stood at the edge of the clearing, with Baskerville at my side. Everyone else was frozen into a tableau of felony murder and aggravated assault. And Rachael Elle—the tough-looking woman I saw being dragged out here—was sitting on her ass with a dead guy holding her ankle and a crazy lady with a knife poised to stab her. Everyone else seemed to be a mix of Rovers and the Happy Valley residents who dragged Rachael and her two friends out here. At the moment, one of those two friends looked dead, or as near as makes no never mind. The other, a girl, looked like she’d gone all the way over the edge into total freaksville.
The moment was not a happy one for anyone.
I, however, thought it might be entertaining as fuck. Baskerville did, too. He sniffed the air in the direction of Rachael and gave a big, happy whuff.
The sound he made seemed to pop the balloon of frozen silence that held everyone immobile. And just that fast everyone was trying to kill everyone else again.
Way I saw it, the people in Happy Valley were murderous dicks. And the Rovers were a step down from sewer rats. The only civilians in this mix were Rachael and her friends.
I pointed to the three of them and told Baskerville they were friends. Then I told him to play. Actually, what I said was: “Baskerville—hit! Hit! Hit!”
He hit like a goddamn missile.
And I did a little damage my ownself. Can’t let the damn dog have all the fun.
As we rushed in, I heard a sound from the woods closer to the town. Whistles. Dozens of them blowing in patterns, like drills sergeants ordering around their troops. I knew that couldn’t be good.
One thing at a time, though. Rachael and her friends needed help right damn now.
— 38 —
THE SIEGE OF HAPPY VALLEY
Neeko hurried over to Dahlia, grinning while also casting uneasy looks at Van Sloane.
“You were right,” he said, “they only had like one guy on the back wall. I mean, there were five originally, but after the Rovers started blowing their whistles, they left just the one. He didn’t even know I was there until I was up the tree, over the wall, and standing behind him. Me and Brenda and Tonk.”
She kissed his cheek. “You’re like a little ninja. You’re so adorable I could eat you up.”
He flushed to the color of a ripe tomato and squirmed away from a hug. “It wasn’t anything special. Anyone could have—”
“Hush,” she told him. Then she glanced at Van Sloane. “Neeko’s sixteen. Brenda and Tonk are fifteen. They scaled a tree, jumped over the wall and captured the only fucking guard you left to defend the rear wall of this town. Seriously? Did you think that bad guys only break in one door at a time? No, don’t answer. Clearly you’re just not that smart.”
“Watch your mouth,” snapped Van Sloane, but although she bridled with indignation it was clear to everyone that her outrage had no power behind it. And nowhere to go.
“We could have taken over the whole damn town and killed you all in your sleep if we wanted to,” continued Dahlia. “Hell, a couple of halfwit hamsters could have—”
Church touched her arm. “Stop showing off,” he said mildly. “It’s unseemly and inefficient. Clock is ticking.”
The whistles were getting louder, emphasizing his point. People were coming from all over the town—many of them—and as they approached, the members of the Pack moved among them in pairs, one pointing a weapon, and the other taking any weapons held by the townies. It was a process that should not have been easy, and Dahlia had expected violent resistance, but the clockwork efficiency of the Pack, the confusion, and the obvious lack of training on the part of the townsfolk made the process a rinse-and-repeat. There were only a few instances of townies resisting, but the Pack members won every tussle. There were a few bruises and one smashed nose among Van Sloane’s people, but that was all. It was very nearly a bloodless takeover.
That was not a comfort to Dahlia, though. The Rovers were coming and she had no idea how many of them there were. Or how well-armed they were.
Dahlia nodded and addressed Van Sloane in a calmer voice. “Listen, Mayor Van Sloane, those whistles are the Rovers. That’s not a joke. I think the reason they’re making so much noise, and the reason they aren’t already climbing over the walls, is that they’re playing a game. They’re drawing your attention here. It worked, too, because you pulled most of your guards away from the rest of the walls. It’s a magic trick. They make a big show of letting you see how empty their hands are, but they already have a bunch of stuff hidden in little pockets. Bunnies and scarves and stuff. Point is, you fell for it. They’re going to hit you hard right here at the main gate and as soon as they’re sure they have your complete attention, they’ll hit you from behind.”
“You can’t know that,” said Van Sloane, but there was no confidence in her tone.
“Sure we can,” said Dahlia. “Nothing else makes sense. The Rovers want this place. They don’t want to destroy it to take it, so distraction and infiltration makes perfect sense.”
“I . . . ” began Van Sloane, and then she faltered.
More whistles now. Louder and louder.
“Here’s the way this is going to work,” said Dahlia, raising her voice so everyone could hear. “Anyone in this crowd who came here looking for shelter and has had to work for it, step forward. Anyone who is a ‘helper.’ Anyone forced to work. Anyone who’s had their stuff taken away. All of you step forward.”
Out of a crowd of nearly three hundred people, more than a hundred people moved through the crowd toward Dahlia. They looked at her, and then at each other, and it was clear to her that they were surprised at how many there were. Van Sloane had probably kept them in small groups so they wouldn’t have exactly this kind of realization.
The people were a mix of races—several kinds of Asian, and every shade of brown skin, from one couple who looked more African than African-American to Latinos and Middle Eastern faces. There were some white people, too, but they might as well have had “fringe crowd” tattooed on them. They were skaters, squatters, street kids, and others. No one who would easily fit into the world of manicured lawns, upscale socials, or summers in the Hamptons. They were dressed in a kind of uniform—as much as available clothing supplies allowed, she reckoned—jeans and T-shirts. All soiled by hard work, except for the ones who probably worked indoors or with kids.
As Dahlia climbed up onto a low brick decorative wall, she felt a whole speech rising to her lips, but she had to bite it down. Anything she said would be obvious to everyone, and they would all know that this wasn’t an aberration. This was an extension of how it so often was—of an affected few using force, or laws, or trickery, or money to subjugate anyone who did not have the same skin color, the same politics, or belong to the same exclusive bloodlines. It made her want to stab Van Sloane in the face. A lot. It made her want to take all of the assholes who ran Happy Valley and toss them over the walls so the Rovers could do whatever they wanted to them. It made her hate being who she was—a child of privilege herself, a white girl. Fuck, it made her loathe being a carbon-based lifeform in this twisted world.
What she said aloud was different, and it took a great deal of willpower to say what she needed to say rather than what she wante
d to say.
“This is all going to happen fast, so here’s the deal,” she shouted. “The helpers are free. No debts, no obligations, no bullshit. Anyone from Happy Valley who doesn’t like it—too bad. But here’s the thing. A gang called the Rovers are about to attack the town. Those whistles you hear are them coming. There are a lot of them. They won’t give a crap if you’re a resident here or a slave. They’re coming to take this place away from all of us, and they aren’t going to be nice about it. We don’t have time for a debate and this isn’t a democracy. I’m in charge.”
“Says who?” growled one of the men from town. One of the helpers, a tall black man wearing work gloves and with grass stains on the knees of his pants, got up in his face.
“How about you shut the fuck up while you can still make that choice on your own? Right about now she’s the first person to say something I want to hear in a long damn time.”
“You watch your mouth, nig—”
And that was as far as he got before the helper hooked a hard right fist into his gut and then brought his knee up as the man folded.
Then everyone was fighting.
— 39 —
THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
There were about a dozen of them, give or take. Everyone looked pretty well battered from the brawl they’d been engaged in. That didn’t seem to matter, though, because by now they were all pumping adrenaline by the gallon.
Baskerville went crashing through them to Rachael, and his bulk—with all of the leather and spikes—slammed into the zombie holding her ankle. Baskerville is trained not to bite the dead, but he has no issues at all generally and enthusiastically fucking them up. I saw parts fly and then Rachael shimmied backward with the hand still clutched around her ankle, but no arms attached to it. She kicked it off and got immediately to her feet without wasting time on shock and surprise. Smart.
The Rovers and the townies were caught in a moment of indecision as to whether to fight me or each other. That was stupid. They should have fought me.
Ah well.
I didn’t bother with my gun. Too noisy and bullets are hard to find. I had a katana and forty-plus years of practical experience with it. So I laid in with a will.
The blade is so perfectly made. The layered steel hammered and honed to a thing of art by a master sword maker. It’s not a chopping weapon; it’s surgical, and in the hands of an expert it seems to melt its way through flesh and bone with long, sweeping movements. I am an expert.
So, long story short . . . they all died.
Rachael killed a few. Baskerville took some. I killed everyone else. The forest was ringing with whistles and war was coming, so there was no time for anything but the killing. There was no time for mercy or giving quarter or anything else.
Does that make me a monster?
No. It makes me alive.
— 40 —
THE SIEGE OF HAPPY VALLEY
It all nearly fell apart right there. Right then. The crowd seemed to come alive in the wrong way and surge toward each other like a raging surf and a fragile levee. People were going to die right in front of her, and then no one would be left to fight the Rovers.
Suddenly a shot rang out and everyone froze. Mr. Church had climbed up next to Dahlia and he held an automatic pistol in one gloved hand. The gunshot and the gun itself were nothing compared to the actual palpable presence of the old man. He owned the moment and every single person there knew it. Felt it.
“Dahlia was speaking,” he said into the uneasy silence. “She was telling you how you can all survive this. Be smart and listen.”
He lowered the pistol but did not put it away. It lifted Dahlia’s heart to have him there, but in the brief fight she had seen her Pack members move to break up the battle rather than descend into mindless violence. That lifted her even more. Even Slow Dog seemed to want to calm things down rather than bust heads.
“You people from town, you have to make a choice right now,” said Dahlia. “Either you fight with us, or you go into those pens where you kept your helpers.”
None of them spoke. She saw hard faces and resentment and anger. She wanted to see remorse. She wanted to see lightbulbs of understanding flash on, but this wasn’t one of those old Hallmark movies. This wasn’t a Disney ending.
She turned to Slow Dog. “Do it.”
Immediately the bigger members of the Pack began herding the townies toward the pens. The few members of the Pack who had guns—their own or those taken from the townies—had to use the threat of them for emphasis. No shots were fired, though. No one died. There were angry, ugly words, and some people still had to be pushed, but it got done. Mayor Van Sloane turned coldly and walked, with a show of great dignity, after them.
That left the helpers—a word she hated but had no immediate replacement for—and her own Pack. An army of two hundred. She immediately had everyone share out arms and count ammunition. Forty-nine guns but not enough ammunition for a war. Plenty of bows and arrows, though.
“Okay,” she said, “here’s what we’re going to do . . . ”
— 41 —
THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
When it was done I hurried over to Rachael, who was flushed and weeping. She stood by the guy who had been tied next to her, and as I approached I saw that she wept for more than what had happened to him. She wept for what she had to do. Her friend’s eyes were open, but they were empty of everything except that bottomless hunger. The other intended victim, the girl, was crying hysterically, banging her head against the pole to which she was bound.
“I’ll do it,” I said, reaching for the weapon Rachael had removed from the dead fingers of the woman she’d been fighting. But Rachael shook her head.
“Jason is my friend,” she said. Using “is,” not “was.” That hurt to hear. I waited until she’d quieted the young man before I cut her friend loose. The girl wrapped her arms around Rachael, clung to her.
I cut Jason down and laid him on the dirt. The two women knelt with me. The younger one, I learned, was Claudia. She bent forward and buried her face against Jason’s chest and wept with deep but silent tears.
Rachael grabbed my wrist. “Joe . . . how are you even here? I feel like I’m in a weird dream.”
“There’s no time for campfire tales, kiddo,” I said. “Those whistles are trouble coming.” I gave her the rundown on the Rovers and she told me about Happy Valley.
“Is it me,” she said, “or has a disproportionate number of total fucking assholes survived the apocalypse?”
“Sadly, it’s not you.” The whistles were constant, but they weren’t that close to where we were. That wasn’t all that much of a comfort.
“They’re heading to Happy Valley,” said Rachael, reading the sounds correctly.
“Yes. Do you still have friends there?”
“No, but there are a lot of people who need our help.”
“Pardon me for saying this, but fuck the residents.”
She shook her head. “Not them.”
Rachael told me about the “helpers.” “I can’t just leave them there. Even if the townies stop the Rovers . . . ”
“Yeah,” I said and sighed. “Guess this is going to be a long day.”
She started to say something, then stopped and smiled, shaking her head.
“What?” I asked.
“No . . . it’s just that I almost said that it isn’t your fight, but that’s dumb. The Nu Klux Klan wasn’t your fight, either. Neither was helping me and Dez Fox and those kids.”
I got to my feet, then glanced down at Claudia. When Rachael caught me looking, she nodded and moved to put her arm around her friend. They spoke together very quietly for a few minutes, then Rachael kissed her cheek and came over to me.
“Claudia’s had too much lately, you know,” she said very quietly. “She’s going to see to Jason. Bury him if she can. And she wants to cut down all of the other people the townies brought out here. Don’t worry, she�
�s pretty smart and sharp and if the Rovers come out this way, she knows how to hide.”
I didn’t ask if Rachael was sure about all this. It was her call to make. I clicked my tongue for Baskerville, who bounded over like an overgrown puppy, despite the blood splashed on his armor.
Without another word we set off into the woods.
As we ran, I had no real idea how this was going to work. The odds were looking really damn long. We were a young woman barely out of her teens, an overgrown dog, and a crazy middle-aged guy. Against an army of Rovers and a town full of assholes.
Shit.
— 42 —
HAPPY VALLEY
Dahlia positioned her army on the walls, doing a lightning fast survey of skills. Anyone who had skills with weapons or who could swing a stick or bat became fighters. Anyone with first-aid knowledge was ordered to set up triage centers. Those who weren’t able to do either task were assigned to protect the children. The guns were put into the hands of the Pack members who could shoot or helpers who’d either served in the military or hunted.
She had runners collect wheelbarrows full of rocks and river stones used in decorative gardens, and these were hauled up to the walls for those fighters who said they could throw. One older Latino man used to be a pitching coach for AAA ball and swore that he could hit whatever he aimed at.
The whistles were louder than ever and just as Dahlia turned to look up at the wall, Neeko twisted around and yelled down at her. “They’re coming!”
Dahlia hurried up to see. At first there was nothing but the sound of those damn whistles. And then a figure broke from the woods. If it was a Rover, though, then he was dressed differently. Instead of wearing leather, this one wore a set of mechanic’s coveralls and what looked like a kind of screen-covered head net. The sound of the whistle came from beneath the head covering. And there was something strange about the coveralls. They were wet. They glistened, as if covered with oil.
Still of Night Page 28