by Siara Brandt
He jumped across the water-filled ditch, his long legs clearing it easily. As he started off again along the shoulder of the road, all he could think was that the kids must be scared to death out here on their own in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully, they had been scared enough to stay put. He didn’t even want to think about how he would go about finding them if they hadn’t.
He knew there would be no traffic, of course. Despite the road, there was no possibility of someone coming along because they were on a leisurely moonlit drive. So no one was going to give him a ride in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Trudging doggedly alongside the narrow road, accompanied by the occasional crunch of gravel, he was well aware of his own rough appearance. He had needed a haircut for a long time. His long black hair reached past his shoulders now. He hadn’t shaved in days. The dark beard stubble shadowing the lower half of his face probably made him look- well, the kids had always told him that he looked like a video game assassin, which was a good thing in their opinion. In his own opinion, he was far from being a hero. But they probably needed to believe in heroes. Even now, when life seemed to have become one unending, frightfully-realistic, apocalyptic video game. Unfortunately, it was one they couldn’t turn off when they got tired of playing, no matter how much they might wish it.
His appearance was just one more reason why no one in their right mind would be giving him a ride, even if they did come along. At first glance, he probably looked like one of the undead himself. Besides, he knew that anyone coming along the road was likely to be a threat anyway. He tried to look at things from a brighter perspective. At least he didn’t have to try and get across the river. At least he was almost there. At least-
He was flashing in and out of the patches of wan moonlight and the black shadows cast by the trees, when he was startled by the unexpected sound of an engine. Twin beams of light immediately probed the mist-laden sky above the crest of the hill ahead of him. Right away, he searched for a place to conceal himself. He veered sharply towards the deeper shadows of the trees and was about to drop down beside the flooded roadside ditch, but it was already too late. A vehicle came roaring over the hill. Bright headlights slashed a path right at him, like some kind of spotlight searching for escapees from a prison camp.
Not a car, Thayer realized in a split second. A four wheeler was speeding down the shoulder of the road. On the same side as he was. And it was headed right for him.
It was already too late to try and conceal himself, but he reacted instinctively. Although he threw one hand up to shield his eyes from the blinding lights, the vehicle was already bearing down upon him. It swerved at the last second. There seemed to be an attempt to avoid hitting him, but the driver apparently couldn’t maneuver fast enough. The four wheeler bounced violently over the uneven ground and tipped precariously. Then it bumped into something solid and came to a jarring stop, almost rolling onto its side as the front tire splashed through the water-filled ditch.
Thayer twisted his body away from the impending impact with the front corner of the vehicle. He was too late to avoid it altogether, however. The rounded metal edge of the bumper didn’t do much more than graze him, but it felt like a blow from a sledgehammer. It pitched him off his feet in a glistening spray of water, spun him around and threw him down hard in the tall weeds growing beyond the shoulder of the road. He rolled over once near the strands of barbed wire of the fence he had just climbed through, hit a fence post and groaned deep in his throat as he collapsed on the sodden ground like a discarded rag doll.
Chapter 2
Lawton Quaid held his weapon in two hands as he flattened his camouflage-clad back against the rough brick wall and sank deeper into the shadows. Every military instinct he’d ever possessed was in hyper-drive. All around him, bullets impacted like a rain of hailstones. Wood splintered. Metal pinged. Glass windows shattered. It was like he was overseas all over again.
He realized right away that the attack was as well thought out as it was unexpected. And he knew who they were. They called themselves the Mulada. They had breached the metal wall that had been erected on the bridge and the gate at the other end of Main Street simultaneously. But those had only been diversionary tactics. Like a swarm of locusts they had also poured over the walls in the darkness, catching them completely unaware.
Lawton had warned Jedrik Holt about this very thing. Of course, Jed hadn’t listened to him. He never listened to anybody. Obviously, he hadn’t taken Law’s military experience or tactical advice seriously. But it was just like Jed to cling stubbornly to his own ideas even if they were flawed ones. He was the kind of man who couldn’t admit that he didn’t know all there was to know about everything. So he hadn’t made one single preparation in the case of an attack like this. Not that it mattered a helluva lot now. It was too late to go back and change any of it. And Jed was way past listening to anyone ever again.
Giving in to a growing paranoia, Jed had stopped letting anyone cross the bridge, for any price, about a month ago. He was just plain afraid to let anyone pass because he didn’t trust anyone. He didn’t want strangers to see inside what he referred to as the Fortress. He didn’t want anyone to know how heavily armed or manned they were. Even more than that, he didn’t want anyone to see their weaknesses and there were plenty of those. Ultimately, it had been another mistake. A lethal one. The truth was that they had dwindled down to a pathetically-small group. There had been just a handful of them left. Eleven in all. Nine men and two women. Numbers would have made them stronger, but he never could make Jed see that.
From his position in the darkness, Law had a clear shot of Main Street. Bodies littered the ground everywhere. Even the two women were among the casualties. Anger made him clench his teeth tightly together. A muscle in his jaw jumped as his eyes narrowed with the flow of his thoughts. Some good people had died tonight because Jedrik Holt had been a lousy leader. Good people who had fought hard to stay alive all this time had been mercilessly gunned down in a matter of minutes. And it shouldn’t have ended that way. It didn’t have to end that way.
It was clear by now that the Mulada soldiers weren’t taking any prisoners. But then, the Mulada’s take-no-prisoners policy was well known. Law had already seen Jed’s lifeless body lying crumpled in the street. And he’d gotten back in time to see Evry Wylen fall to the ground. Cut down by some heavy fire power, Evry looked like he’d been rammed by a tank. Their attackers were not only well organized. They were obviously heavily-armed with military equipment.
The Mulada was nothing more than a terrorist group. They were the same as a gang of armed thugs in any big city. Their reputation was well known, and that’s just the way they wanted it. They tried to scare people into submission. When that didn’t work, they used more lethal methods to get what they wanted. You knew them when you saw them. They wore masks over the lower parts of their faces, though a lot of people had been doing that since the beginning. It had started as a precaution against disease, though maybe it had been a useless one, since no one was sure how this plague of zombieism was spread. The Mulada had readily adopted the style and then they added to it. They marked their faces with tattoos and ringed their eyes with black so that they looked even fiercer. Their objectives were simple ones. Ancient ones. To loot. To plunder. To kill. To possess. The bridge, and the walled town beyond it, Law knew, had presented too tempting a target for a group like that to ignore. It had just been a matter of time.
Law, himself, had been on his way back to the Fortress when he had heard the shooting. He’d made his way back inside as fast as he could, but it was already too late. As he watched helplessly, he realized that the fighting was already over. The firing had already slowed down to a few scattered shots. And then it abruptly ceased altogether.
A fire had broken out in one of the buildings. A handful of Mulada soldiers were gathered around it, frantically trying to put it out. No doubt they intended to occupy the town when they were done with their killing spree and they didn’t want to
lose any of the buildings, or, more importantly, what those buildings might hold.
Law shifted his gaze, keeping his gun at the ready. He saw masked soldiers holding assault rifles and patrolling Main Street in small groups. They were in no hurry now since they had already eliminated any resistance. No one was fighting back. No one was left to fight. And there was no movement among the bodies to show that anyone had survived the slaughter.
The wind shifted. Laden with the heavy smell of smoke from the fire, the night air now carried the ranker scent of death. Through the breaches in the walls, had also came some of the scavs, the half rotted, lost souls trapped somewhere between life and death. As a few staggered along Main Street and further away on the bridge, more shots were fired as they were picked off one by one like they were target practice.
Law knew that the sound of gunfire, along with the flames, would only draw more of them. They were going to have to close those breaches in the walls soon or risk the chance of being overrun.
He tore his own mask off and sank deeper into the shelter of the darkness, a hard look in his eyes as he watched a Mulada soldier prod one of the bodies in the street with his rifle. As he stood concealed in the shadows, Law was faced with something he did not want to think about. There had to have been someone working from the inside for it all go so smoothly. There must have had been a traitor who had opened the locked gates and let them inside. If, and when, Law learned the traitor’s identity, he vowed silently that whoever it was would pay for their betrayal.
As he stayed hidden behind a section of brick wall, he watched the shadowy forms of men in the fitful firelight. Vacant windows reflected the bright, writhing flames. Suddenly a burst of laughter drew his attention. He looked at a group of men standing just outside the abandoned grocery store. Lit by the glow of the fire, he could see their faces clearly. He focused on one of the men.
Mogue Hobson.
Damn the little bastard to hell and back. He was conversing with the Mulada soldiers like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was still armed. Had he been a prisoner, they would have taken his weapon. Or they would have killed him by now. He was probably telling the same lame jokes he always told when he was trying to be the center of attention, which was pretty much all the time. And he was probably laughing at those same jokes, which had always irritated Law to no end. Always an opportunist and a coward, the ferret-faced little prick obviously had been the traitor. And he must have been offered something in return. Besides his pathetic, worthless life. One corner of Law’s mouth drew back in a wolf-like snarl as he stared at the bald spot on the back of Mogue’s head. It stood out in the firelight like a clearing in a dark forest and presented a tempting target.
Most of the Mulada soldiers had begun to drift away from the fire, no doubt turning their attention to whatever loot they could find. It wasn’t hard to figure out what kind of men they were. They were just like Mogue. They were opportunists who didn’t think much beyond their own immediate needs. They entered buildings in small groups, still being cautious, not sure if there might be someone hiding who had escaped their bloodbath.
Law knew he couldn’t kill all of them. Not and live to tell about it. But he could give them something to think about. Especially Mogue. Yeah, especially Mogue.
The smoke was thick now. It hung in heavy layers low to the ground and made the night air even more murky. Law could still see the top half of Mogue down there in the street. He was strutting around like some cocky soldier wannabe, thinking about whatever it was that traitors thought about.
Law’s gun barrel suddenly swung around. Keeping his eyes on the scav that was headed right for him, he backed up, unlatched the gate behind him and stepped through it. He closed the gate and locked it again. The scav had definitely seen him. It staggered right up to the fence and tried with jerky, flailing arms to get at him from the other side. It snarled in its frustration, snapping its teeth and growling aggressively. But it wasn’t able to get past the gate. Not yet at least.
Law moved quickly, keeping within the deep shadows of a row of thick bushes. When he neared the end of the fence, he hunkered down in the darkness and rapidly re-assessed his surroundings. Seeing no immediate threats, he cleared another fence and headed down a deserted alley.
Fate, perhaps, gave him a clear view of the old school addition. A fate that favored retribution, apparently. The building was one of the places they used for storing weapons and munitions. Right inside one of those second-story windows, he knew, was a substantial stash of black powder. He’d helped put it there just last week. It had been a good find.
He had an entirely different view of Main Street from here. He glanced down at a group of Mulada soldiers. One of them was going through the pockets of a body in the street. Mogue was standing there watching the man, still blabbering endlessly, completely unaware of the narrowed eyes that were watching him from the darkness.
Taking his time, Law lifted his rifle and rested the stock against his shoulder. He focused and eased his finger on the trigger. Drew a deep breath . . . Released it . . .
Then he squeezed the trigger and fired.
The night, and the entire corner of the school addition, exploded in a ball of fire. There was an immediate secondary explosion. And shortly after that, a third.
The Mulada soldiers scattered, scurrying for shelter like rats into the dark alleyways, though they couldn’t know what might explode next. Law slowly lowered his gun as all hell continued to break loose. A hard smile briefly tightened his mouth as Mogue Hobson ran screaming like a cat with its tail on fire before he dove for cover behind a garbage can. A big black plastic one.
Through an opportune opening in the smoke, Law continued to watch the curved shadow of Mogue’s exposed backside. It was the only visible part of the man’s body as he cowered behind the garbage can.
“Idiot,” Law muttered to himself.
While a grim smile played about his lips, Law lifted his gun and sent a last, blistering message down into the street. One that very clearly stated, for one of them at least, that traitors could never let their guard down. He could hear Mogue howling even from where he stood. He was still howling and holding his backside with both hands as Law started jogging along the deep shadows of the bushes again, re-tracing his steps. Settling his own mask over the lower part of his face once again, Law cleared two more fences and left the fiery, chaotic scene that he had just caused far behind him.
When he reached the gate at the far end of Main Street, he found that it was closed, but still unlocked. Foolishly, it had been left unguarded. He pushed it wide open, and, without bothering to close it after him, he headed out into the darkness of the river bottoms. A deep, impenetrable silence immediately surrounded him, a sepulchral gloom that reminded him that he was on his own again. The mist had thickened, mingling with the smoke. It seeped into the shadows that shrouded the woods and turned everything into a surreal, ghostly landscape. The moon was rising. It looked like a blood-filled, smoky crystal ball that was caught in the lower branches of the trees.
Law didn’t look back. He already knew his future. He knew he was leaving the Fortress forever. He was already well beyond its boundaries, heading for darkness and solitude again.
She had come too far to turn back now. She was at the end of her strength, but still she kept going. Even though her overworked lungs were on fire and her legs were so tired that they felt like leaden weights. Soon her exhausted body would fail her. Soon she would collapse. Then almost certainly she would die. If she did not find what she was looking for soon. There were so many dangers out here, how could she not fall prey to one of them eventually? What had she been thinking when she’d decided to do this on her own? Against everyone’s advice. They had been right. She didn’t know anything about surviving out here.
No. She shook her head. She would not let herself think that way. She would find the crossing place. She would not allow herself to even think about failure. She silently repeated the familiar mantr
a from childhood: Winners never quit and quitters never win. It had never been truer. Sometimes, she had learned, you had to talk yourself into surviving, especially when there was no one else around to do it for you. She had seen too many people give up already. She wasn’t going to be one of them. She had a reason to keep going.
So Sidra Wycliff kept counting her footsteps, concentrating on that instead of how exhausted she was. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-one . . . She must be close to the river. She had to be close. But it seemed to her that she should be there by now. Was she lost? Had she gotten off course somehow so that she was far from where she needed to be? That was her greatest fear. That she had missed the path that led down to the river in the darkness without even being aware of it. To make matters worse, for at least half an hour now, it had ceased to be a matter of what she was running to. It was a matter of what she was running from. How many more of the undead were going to come at her out of the darkness? And what was going to happen when she didn’t have the strength to fight them off anymore? Or outrun them? Of course she already knew the answer to that. She just didn’t want to have to think about it. If she let fear take over her-
Another unearthly shriek rang out in the darkness, startling her and making her focus her attention in a new direction. She still hadn’t gotten used to those unexpected, terrifying cries. Although it sounded like it had been made by something feral, something hunting in the darkness, she knew it wasn’t an animal. But it was something that wasn’t quite human, either.
She stopped suddenly. Right before her was a wide swathe of tall grass. She paused to listen carefully. She didn’t hear anything so she cautiously continued on. But the deep silence was just as eerie as the shriek had been and she had no choice but to slow her pace. She had to steel herself against the fear that something hidden was going to rise up right before her and take her by surprise. In addition to having to avoid or fight off the undead that were continuously coming at her out of nowhere, the heavy pack on her back weighed her down. It made her grueling travel even more difficult. It probably made her more vulnerable, too. But she couldn’t abandon the backpack. Not if she wanted to get across the river. Food was not only hard to come by, it was worth its weight in gold now, so it had become a valuable commodity. Unlike money, which had become absolutely worthless.