The Warlord w-1

by Jason Frost

  "What do we do?" Tag asked.

  "Wait. For now."

  "What about Dr. Dreiser?"

  "I haven't forgotten her."

  Season leaned her back against the plastic wall of the bus stop cabana and closed her eyes. "Christ, it won't be the same without her tramping around the place in her filthy jacket, complaining about her bad feet." She opened her eyes, giggled. "It was Dr. Dreiser who had the foresight to make sure we stocked all those contraceptives in the beginning. Foam, suppositories, condoms. Hell, even you didn't think of that."

  Eric smiled. "No, I didn't."

  "Wouldn't expect a man to," she teased.

  "He's not a doctor," Tag said, feeling defensive.

  "It has nothing to do with being a doctor. Joan thought of it because she's a woman. She's-"

  Eric bolted to his feet. "She's a woman!"

  Season looked at Eric. "I hope that didn't come as news to you."

  Eric's eyes blazed as he shook his head angrily. "Of course! Damn it, I'll kill them. If they aren't dead already." He stood up, grabbed his bow, and ran across the street to Molly and Rydell. Season and Tag scrambled after him.

  "What's up, Coach," Rydell said. "Is this a forfeit?"

  "We may have already lost," Eric growled, clawing at the pile of backpacks, dumping them onto the ground. Thick books spilled out onto the ground tumbling over one another. Eric flung the backpacks to the side and snatched up a handful of books, reading the titles: "A Guide to Social Etiquette, Rollout: Improve Your Racquet-ball Game in Six Weeks."

  Rydell reached down and grabbed some books. "Look at this. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. Ten Days That Shook the World."

  "What's going on, Eric?" Season asked. "This isn't what they asked for."

  Tag started stuffing the books back into the backpacks.

  "Leave them," Eric said. "We don't have time. We've got to get back to University Camp."

  "Hold on," Rydell said. "I don't get it. What about Dr. Dreiser? The swap?"

  "There is no swap. Let's go."

  They started running, Eric leading the pack by ten feet.

  "But who kidnapped Dr. Dreiser?" Rydell called after him,

  "Who?" Eric said, his voice tight and menacing as it drifted eerily out of the darkness. "It was Dr. Dreiser."

  17.

  It wasn't the sight of blood that sickened Eric. It was the smell. Heavy. Thick. Like overripe fruit rotting in the sun. Cloying like dried rose petals. It drowned alt other senses, submerged them until the act of breathing became claustrophobic.

  Eric forced himself to breathe evenly as he waded past body after mangled body, but the air, once charcoal-laced with the memory of raging fires, now swarmed with the sourness of death. It was as if the air were too dense to be breathed, or didn't contain enough oxygen, or just didn't want to support any life form capable of this carnage.

  'They didn't have a chance," Rydell said, stooping to check the pulse of one of the guards. He let the wrist flop limply to the ground and stood up.

  "Jesus," Season gasped as she stepped over the toppled barbed-wire fence.

  Molly and Tag jogged up behind her, their mouths gaping as they stared dumbly around what was left of University Camp.

  "Right," Eric said sharply. "Let's get to work. Rydell and Season, start fixing the fence here. Molly and Tag, scout the perimeter for any other breaks."

  "Shouldn't we check for survivors first?" asked Rydell with some shock.

  "Yes," Tag agreed, "or search the grounds to see if there are any invaders still around?"

  "They're gone," Eric said. "This was a hit and run operation. They're not sitting around raping women or getting drunk. As to survivors. They'll be coming out of hiding soon as they know it's us out here. The wounded will just have to wait until we've secured our defenses. We don't want them coming back. Or any of the others waiting out there. Do we?"

  Molly grabbed Tag's arm, tugged him after her. "Let's go check the perimeters, partner."

  Rydell glared at Eric for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to argue. Eric stared back, his eyes unflinching, his face grimly set. Finally, Rydell nodded reluctantly. "C'mon, Season, grab that post. We'll wedge it between these desks."

  Eric sprang off across the grounds toward the bookstore, ignoring the corpses and moaning wounded he passed or hopped over. Why hadn't they heard the alarm bell or drum? They could have been here sooner. Helped. Done something. As he edged around the cafeteria, he saw why. The kettle drum was smashed in, the post with the iron bell was splintered in half. Griff Durham, the hammer clutched in his hand to strike the bell, lay sprawled in the parched brown grass, two arrows sticking out of his back.

  Eric forced his body to do what was militarily correct, what he'd been taught, rather than what it wanted to do. It wanted to throw his bow down and run for Annie. To see if she was okay, or if she'd managed to hide herself and the kids in time. But Eric didn't bolt. He ran purposefully to the bell, unstrapped it from the wood beam it had hung from, pried the hammer loose from Griff Durham's death grip, arid banged that bell with an All Clear pattern any survivors would recognize. At least now he and his soldiers could move around the camp without fear of being accidentally shot while mistaken for the intruders.

  "Come on out, people!" Eric shouted. "We need help. There's work to do."

  As he hammered the bell dangling in his hand, he could see doors opening, faces peering out of fourth-floor library windows. Some staggered from wounds, others staggered from shock. But they came, their weapons hanging limply at their sides.

  "Those of you still armed take guard positions around the perimeters. Anyone outside comes near the barriers, kill them. Anyone. You three-yeah, you-start checking the bodies. Help the wounded first, then start dragging the dead over in the open quad." Everyone wandered off wordlessly, following orders because it was something specific to do, easier than thinking about what had happened.

  Satisfied that they were at least defensible again, Eric now ran for his home, for Annie. He checked each dazed face as he dashed past, hoping to recognize her features among the living. But she wasn't there.

  Perhaps she was still home, hiding there with the children, huddled behind the desk with a bow. Waiting for him to come back and protect them.

  "Help me. Please, help me," someone begged hoarsely as Eric ran by. Out of the corner of his eye he recognized

  Fred Donnelli, a stockbroker whose father had been a tailor, qualifications enough to make Fred part of the clothes making group at University Camp. A crossbow bolt had pinned his shoulder to door, blood spiraling down his arm. Eric kept going, the image of Annie fixed in his mind. Fred could wait.

  But Eric couldn't. He pivoted sharply around, ran over to Fred Donnelli. He quickly examined the bolt, saw that it was a broadhead hunting tip. "This is going to hurt, Fred," he said.

  "It already hurts." Fred sagged weakly. "I had another one in the side, but I managed to work that one through." He pressed his left hand against the wound. Blood seeped between his sticky fingers. "I just don't have the strength anymore, Eric, to aaiiiieee."

  Eric snapped the samurai sword from the scabbard on his back and leaned Fred forward to expose an inch of the shaft sticking between his back and the bolt's tip. Then with a chopping sweep, Eric severed the wooden shaft and yanked the arrow from Fred's shoulder. Fred slid to the ground.

  "Thanks," he said, his eyes heavy, his tongue thick in his mouth.

  Eric whipped the sword back into the scabbard, grabbed his crossbow, and ran on without answering. Fred's shoulder wound was minor, but the hole in his side had looked bad. Maybe fatal. He needed medical attention right away, but not from Eric.

  Lanterns were being lit around the camp as people busied themselves with the wounded, secured guard posts, dragged the dead away. The wretched sounds of sobbing and crying echoed throughout the camp like distant cries of a mournful bird. Eric ignored their pain and suffering, concentrating on his own fears of what lay ahead.<
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  He took the short cut through the locker room and around the pool, finally rounding the last corner. What he saw sent electrical currents buzzing through his heart.

  The door was open.

  He was through it in seconds, his eyes raking every inch of the room in a glance. Empty.

  No Annie. No Timmy.

  He ran back out to the main grounds, grabbing people roughly by the shoulders, shaking them for answers. "Where's my wife? My son?"

  No one knew. Some too devastated by their own loss to care.

  "The hospital," he said aloud, already running in that direction. Of course. Annie would go to the hospital in the library to check on Jennifer. Hope surged through his body, catapulting him toward the library.

  Susan Connors was holding the door open with her backside while two men carried a woman in on a stretcher. A long deep gash divided her arm lengthwise, exposing muscle and bone. "Get her in here," Susan urged. Half a dozen people were asking her questions at once. She answered each patiently, but quickly, sent them running for whatever she ordered.

  Eric saw her react when she saw him coming. She looked over her shoulder, hollered something he didn't hear from that distance. He saw Tracy running up behind her, the two of them talking, looking at Eric as he approached.

  "Is she here? Annie?" Eric said.

  Susan and Tracy blocked the doorway with their bodies. "No, Eric," Susan said. "Annie's not here."

  "Where is she?"

  "I don't know."

  "Don't feed me that crap. If she's dead, tell me."

  Tracy put her hand on Eric's arm. "Really, we don't know where she is. Most of us have been in hiding in the top floors of the library. It all happened so fast. One minute everything was quiet, normal. The next, they were all over us. Killing and looting. I don't know how it happened." A sob caught in her voice, but she shook it off, aware that there was no time for that now.

  "If you two don't know where Annie is, why are you trying to keep me out of the hospital?"

  "We're not, Eric. It's just that Annie isn't here."

  He stared at the two of them, the nervous shifting of their eyes, the fidgeting. They were hiding something. "Jenny," he said suddenly, shoving them brusquely aside as he plowed through the door.

  He knew the way, weaving among the patients, jostling nurses. He vaulted over the circulation desk that now served as a nurses' station, through the back offices where the contagious were kept. Behind him he heard Tracy and Susan calling his name, pleading for him to stop.

  "For God's sake, Eric, wait!" Tracy hollered.

  He pushed open the door marked Film Library, practically toppling a black male nurse who'd been swabbing a woman's cut and bruised forehead with alcohol.

  "Hey, man, watch it." Then he recognized Eric. "Sorry, Eric. I, uh, sorry…" The rest trailed off into mumbled apologies and condolences.

  But Eric didn't hear. He was already through the open door where he'd last seen Jennifer, only a few hours earlier. She'd been lying on her mat, the covers pulled up under her chin the way he used to tuck her in when she was a little girl. She'd been coughing slightly, but the worst was over, she'd be home in a day or two. Eric had played his scratchy Beatles tape while Jennifer made faces and called him old-fashioned. "Get with it, Dad," she'd grinned. But she'd been delighted that his gift worked. She'd praised Rydell Grimme so lavishly for fixing it that Timmy teased her about having a crush on "Rye Dill Pickle." Jennifer had protested and blushed and thrown a crumpled tissue at Timmy. Eric had laughed, the sound of his own laughter surprising him slightly, the way it sounded so normal. Annie must have noticed it too, because she'd squeezed his hand affectionately and laughed.

  But that lump under the bloodstained sheet couldn't be his little girl.

  "Jenny," he whispered, as if not to disturb her.

  He took a step, held the sheet gently between thumb and forefinger and slowly peeled it back. She revealed herself in stages, like a vampire in a cheap horror film, The blood-matted hair, the open-eyed death stare, and…

  "Don't, Eric," Tracy said, grabbing his arm.

  He shook her off, knocking her into the wall with a thud. He lifted the sheet.

  Jennifer's throat lay gaping from ear to ear, the dark wound hanging open like a grotesque, drunken smile. Blood had cascaded down her neck and soaked the sheet beneath her. It was a clean, crisp slice, done with a single motion by someone who'd done it before. Practiced. Professional.

  Eric felt a constricting at his own throat as he tenderly lowered the sheet. He imagined the knife puncturing her skin just under the left ear, slicing the tracheal cartilages, her terrified cries, begging, explaining they were making a mistake, surely she had never done anything worth dying for. Before they'd severed her vocal cords, had she cried out for Daddy to save her? He was sure she had.

  He felt a gentle hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Eric," Tracy sobbed. "I'm so sorry."

  "This is how we found her a few minutes ago," Susan Connors said. "Sally Zimmerman out in the hall saw them do it. They knocked her on the head when she tried to stop them."

  "And Annie?"

  "Don't know. Haven't seen her or Timmy. Sorry." She began to nervously twirl her stethoscope, caught herself and stopped. "You okay, Eric?"

  "Susan!" a voice called desperately. "Gotta bleeder here with internal injuries."

  "Eric?" Susan said.

  He looked up from the covered form of his daughter and glanced at Susan. "Go on. You're needed out there."

  She hesitated, saw Tracy nod at her to go. "Be out there if you need me."

  Tracy took a tentative step toward Eric. "You want me to organize a search party to look for Annie and Timmy? We can comb this place in half an hour."

  "First things first," he said, brushing past her.

  Outside the room, the black male nurse was taping a bandage to the woman's forehead. Eric recognized her as Sally Zimmerman, the nurse who'd witnessed Jennifer's murder. He nudged Dennis Gilbert, the male nurse, away and stood in front of her. The bandage, only partially taped, flapped down, exposing a nasty bruise.

  "Hey, man," Dennis protested, "I'm trying to patch this lady up."

  "It'll keep a few seconds." He stared into Sally's frightened eyes and he realized that she was frightened of him. He realized something else: he didn't care. He wanted information; she had it. That's all he cared about. "What happened. Try to remember every detail."

  Sally's eyes shifted nervously to Tracy and Dennis, avoiding Eric's. "It all happened very fast. Very fast. I mean, I'm not really a nurse or anything. I just help out here, do what I'm told." A sob caught in her throat and she blinked out a couple tears. "I was in with Jenny, picking up her food tray from dinner. I always forget these rooms so I have to come back at night. Jenny was asleep. Suddenly we heard a lot of noise, some screaming. Men carrying big flashlights and weapons came in here."

  "They came straight to this room? They didn't bother anyone out there first?"

  Sally shook her head. "I didn't hear them talk to anyone. They marched straight through."

  "How many?"

  "Well, there were four who came in here."

  "Describe them."

  She touched her bandage gingerly. "Am I still bleeding, Dennis?"

  Eric grabbed her wrist. "Describe them."

  "Christ, Eric," Tracy said. "Stop bullying her. She'll tell you."

  Dennis stepped closer, though his voice was nervous. "Come on, Eric, Sally's had a rough time too."

  Eric held the wrist a few seconds longer, then released it. "Describe them."

  "Well, they were all dressed in army fatigues. Two of them were young, about my age, late twenties. One of them carried a bow, the other had a submachine gun but I guess he never used it, because one of the older guys congratulated him on his restraint."

  "The older guys. Tell me about them."

  She dropped her voice as if afraid they might overhear her. "I'll never forget them. Ever. I close my eyes and I can see them r
ight now, as if they were branded on my eyelids." She took a deep breath, composed herself. "One of them was huge, biggest man I've ever seen. Like that basketball player, uh, Kareem something. Only meatier. He grabbed me by the neck and shoved me against the wall." Her fingers traced the bruises on her neck, "He was scary, I'll tell you, but not nearly as much as the other guy. The one with white hair and the square jaw. My God, his eyes were so pale I thought they might be infected or something. But I guess not, because he moved around pretty well. He kept calling the big guy Cruz, I think. Cruz only called him Colonel. No name."

  "Fallows," Tracy gasped. "My God."

  "Go on, Sally," Eric urged.

  "Like I said, it all happened so fast. They marched into the room, shined their flashlights into Jenny's face. Then the colonel, what'd you call him?"

  "Fallows."

  "Yeah, well, he asks her in a real sweet voice, like he was her uncle or something, if her name's Jennifer Ravensmith. Jenny doesn't answer him at first. The colonel pats her on the head, smiles, and…" She burst into tears, shook her head wildly, unable to go on.

  Eric kneeled beside her, patted her on the head. When he spoke, his voice was soft and gentle. "I know, Sally. It must have been horrible for you. But you've got to go on. Just a little more." He lifted her head, wiped some of the tears from her eyes.

  "Like I said, he was stroking her head, smiling at her, when suddenly he turns to the big guy, Cruz, and says, 'Kill her.' Just like that, still smiling."

  "What did Cruz say?"

  "That's another spooky thing. He doesn't say anything. He just nods, walks over to Jenny, and starts strangling her as simply as if he'd just been asked to pass the salt. I don't know what got into me, but I screamed and jumped at him, trying to pry his fingers from her throat. He looked at me like I was a pesky gnat or something, reached up, took a handful of my hair, and tossed me head-first into the wall. I sank to the floor kind of dazed, but I saw the rest. The colonel tells him not to strangle her, that strangling didn't make enough of a statement."

  "Enough of a statement?" Eric repeated.

  "I don't know what he meant, but that's what he said. So he handed Cruz a knife and said, 'Cut her.' Just like that. And he, well, he did it. He cut her. Thank God Jenny was already mostly unconscious from the choking."