by Michael Lane
Grey moved in a doubled-over shuffle, taking a position a hundred yards to Georgia’s left, behind a forked tree that was nearer the northern end of the bridge, and which overlooked the tangle of rubble where Mal and Clay hid.
The fork was at shoulder level, and Grey stood, leaning against the trunk, resting his rifle across the crotch of the tree.
The riders were cautious, moving in slow advances. They kept close to the staggered string of rusted vehicles that had died on the bridge, screening themselves as cover allowed. Near the column’s far end, Grey caught a brief glimpse of a figure in beige, sandy-haired and erect. It was strange to see Kingsnake without his bandana, Grey thought, but his posture was unmistakable. He shuddered; a mix of emotion rising into a knot in his chest. There was hate there, and self-loathing, and an odd sadness. He shook himself and raised his head from his rifle. The column’s head was two hundred yards off, now, the trailing end where Creedy rode perhaps six hundred. He glanced to his left, to the warrens where Mal and Clay would be hidden.
Something, mottled brown and white, moved on the road to the bridge, darting behind the rusted hulk of a pickup. Grey shifted, swinging the rifle and peering through the scope.
Clay rested with his back against a sun-warmed section of brick wall in a ruined house forty yards from the bridge. He fought the urge to peek at the span and the approaching men, and slowly rolled the cylinder of his revolver with the fingers of his left hand, listening to the click of the pawl as each chamber rolled under the barrel. He had folded his heavier coat away, and wore a light denim jacket. Its right pocket was heavy with several speed loaders, each filled with fat yellow cartridges. A handful of loose shells counterweighted the left.
Stay quiet, let us pull them, Grey had said. When they’re all across, hit their rear quick and hard and then get out of there. No heroics. We do what we can, then fall back. If we get separated, meet up tomorrow where we camped yesterday.
“Simple as pie,” Clay whispered to himself, adjusting his hat. He wondered what Georgia was doing. He wondered if Doc and Sowter were all right, and if they’d gotten Ronald home, yet.
Some sound or flicker of shadow made him turn his head to the left, and Clay gaped, his eyes going round.
Something with matted, filthy hair was sprinting at him, low to the ground and silent. Its feet were bare and made almost no noise as it rushed through the debris. Its face was hidden by the tangled locks and stained beard that blew back with its speed, and eyes surrounded by a circle of white sclera stared madly from the darkness under the brows.
For a split second Clay thought it was nude and had some terrible skin disease that made its hide sag in dusky wattles. Then he realized the apparition was wearing the badly tanned skin of another man, crudely altered into a jacket and trousers, held in place with thongs of hide. The crotch of the pants was adorned with the shriveled penis of the former owner, jouncing stiffly as the creature sprinted.
Clay froze while much of his mind gibbered and refused to process what he was seeing. A tiny corner of rationality screamed at him to move, but without effect. He would have been crouching, gun drooping from nerveless fingers, while the thing cut his throat with its knife, but it jerked upright just a pace away. A half-second later the boom of a gunshot rolled across Brewster. The creature stumbled, muttered something that sounded like “nana”, and fell forward. Clay could see the raw red hole in its back where the bullet had exited, toothed with white bone fragments.
Clay looked right, and another of the things crouched an arm’s length away, mouth hanging open, eyes on the fallen one as it twitched. Clay could smell the sweet rot stink of it. It, too, wore the tanned remains of someone. This one clutched an aluminum baseball bat crusted with dark matter.
“Bugs,” it said, sounding surprised. “You killed Bugs?” It shook its head, hair flopping. “That’s wrong.”
The talking creature’s head exploded and it fell back in a heap. Clay blinked and saw the revolver smoking in his hand.
“Mother f-,” he began in a stunned voice. He was cut off by the sudden rapid hammering of a handgun.
Rat ran in a crouch, dropping to all fours at times and propelling himself with his hands as he ducked beneath snarls of timber and subsiding walls. His blind eye bulged in a white dome of excitement and he ground his teeth, his narrow jaw rocking from side to side.
Uncle was ahead, sneaking up on one of the strangers, and Rat wanted to get there quick. He was hungry, so hungry. Uncle was strong and a good hunter.
Despite his speed, Rat moved quietly. He slowed as he spotted Uncle’s broad back, ahead. Uncle held a hatchet and was peering around the fender of a rotted sedan at something Rat couldn’t see.
Rat crouched, waiting, listening for whatever Uncle was watching. He could hear Uncle’s breathing, and the distant crunch as someone shifted on the gravel, but beyond that he could hear something else. More horses were coming. Many more horses were coming. Rat began to creep forward as quietly as he could.
“Uncle,” he hissed, jaw still sliding back and forth in sharp jerks. “Someone is coming. Lots of them.”
He would have said more, made Uncle leave with him, but a gunshot boomed from the hillside, and Uncle darted out of sight with a growl. Rat started forward, took Uncle’s place and peered as he had. A second shot boomed, this one from Rat’s left and much closer than the first. Rat didn’t look around; he was too busy watching Uncle as he leaped at a man in a dark leather coat. The man sat at the end of a cul-de-sac with walls formed of rusted vehicles, peering through a crack toward the bridge. The man shifted at the sound of the second shot, just as Uncle swung the hatchet, and the looping strike missed his head by inches. The hatchet buried itself in the door panel of the car with a resonant thump; paint chips and rust showered from the door as Uncle heaved on the weapon, trying to free it.
Rat watched as the man in the jacket shot Uncle three times, fast. Blood bloomed across Uncle’s back in a triangle as bullets exited his body, one low in the gut, two high in the chest. Uncle grunted and tried once more to free the hatchet, this time pulling the door free of its hinges. The weight of it twisted the hatchet from his hand as it fell, and Uncle crouched and snarled at the man in the jacket.
“Merde,” Rat heard the man say, just before he shot Uncle in the face.
The rifle boomed again, and Rat heard a high wail that sounded like Little Fingers. He began to run back through the maze of cars and wreckage, weeping from his good eye for his family, and for himself. Mama would be angry.
Georgia started when Grey fired. She raised her head and glanced at him, saw that he had turned and was firing down into the ruins where Mal and Clay were hidden, and turned her attention back to the bridge, snuggling into the rifle’s stock and peering through the scope, both eyes open.
The Castle men milled and unslung weapons, some dismounting and seeking cover behind the stranded wrecks. The nearest were barely a hundred yards away, the furthest perhaps four hundred.
She started with the nearest.
Creedy pulled up hard enough that his horse half-reared, the bit tearing into its mouth, as the first report echoed across the river.
Hollis stood in her stirrups, then sat again as more shots came.
“Orders, Mister Creedy?” Gregor asked, digging an aerosol air-horn from his saddlebag.
Creedy sidestepped his horse behind a wheel-less panel truck that hunkered in the left lane and peered down its side, watching as his men scrambled for cover.
“Wait,” he said. He listened to the sporadic fire. “One rifle, one or two handguns.” He scanned the bridge. “Do you see anyone down?”
Hollis was about to answer when a heavier, throatier report rolled across the water. One of the men in the forefront fell back from where he had been crouched against a burnt-out car. Before he had come to rest a second, running tucked over, went down in a tangle of limbs, screaming.
Creedy gestured to Gregor, who held the air horn high and triggered a seri
es of three blasts. The men began falling back, firing sporadically at the far shore. Behind them the snipers on the south bank opened fire.
“God only knows what they’re shooting at,” Creedy said. He kicked his horse into a gallop, lips set in a thin line. Behind him the reports continued, smooth and regular, a handful of seconds between each. One bullet cut the air, near enough that he heard the harsh hiss of it. He felt the skin on his back crawl, waiting for the slam of the next slug, but reached the bridge’s south end unharmed. The teamsters turned the trailers around on the cracked and weedy concrete of an old gas station’s apron and the column moved out.
Georgia came out of the chill place she went when she worked, sliding a fresh magazine into her rifle and pocketing the first, which was still half-full. Creedy’s men were too far now for accurate fire. She switched her attention to Grey, who had fired twice more. Beyond him in the rubble the gunfire had ceased, after three or four brief fusillades. Staying low, she moved to his position by the tree and set her rifle up on its bipod.
“What was it? Scouts?” she asked.
“No, not scouts,” Grey said, his voice strange. “Something else. I think they’ve run off now.”
Georgia looked down the long line of the bridge. Half a dozen bodies lay scattered near its northern terminus, and figures made tiny by the distance were just exiting its south end.
“Everybody’s run off,” she sighed, shifting to scan the ruins. She could see Clay and Mal moving cautiously toward the overgrown park where they had tethered their horses. She saw no one else.
“Get ready to move, we need to follow them,” Grey said.
“I have never seen anything like that in my damn life,” Clay said for the third time as they rode out after moonrise. They crossed the bridge slowly, stopping to loot the corpses of ammunition and weapons. There were six in all, each shot through the center of the chest. One of the dead men had a small canister with an attached ring.
“Anyone feel like carrying a thirty-year-old grenade?” Mal asked, waggling it. There were no takers, so he pitched it over the railing and into the river.
“You didn’t pull the pin before you threw it?” Grey asked after listening for a minute.
“Why would I do that to the innocent little fish?”
“Point,” Grey conceded. “You’re quiet, Georgia. You all right?”
Georgia shrugged. Wrapped in her black poncho against the night chill, she was nearly invisible.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just feeling old.”
“Not too old to shoot,” Clay said, and whistled. “That was amazing. Thank you.”
“Thanks for what?” Georgia asked.
“For keeping my saddle-shaped ass alive. With those whatever-they-weres trying to eat me, these boys would have killed us for sure if they’d crossed over.”
Mal nodded in agreement.
“Yes, my dear. You have the undying gratitude of Malcolm Barnes, esquire. If you weren’t already the apple of our man Clay’s eye, I would woo you with fine liquor and questionable dancing.”
“One wonders what ‘questionable dancing’ is,” Grey said, clicking his horse into a walk.
“It’s dancing with lewd contact and clothes composed largely of velour,” Mal offered. “More important, though, what the fuck were those things in the mansuits?”
Grey shook his head. “I haven’t a clue. I’ve heard bullshit campfires stories about cannibals and zombies and God knows what else, but I’d always figured that was pure fantasy.” They rode in silence for a minute.
“Well, we can leave zombies in the realm of rumor, but I’m going to have to add ‘inbred cannibal attack’ to my list of things best avoided,” Mal said.
“Do you think we killed them all?” Clay asked, glancing over his shoulder at the ruins.
“You want to go see?” Mal asked, arching his eyebrows.
“No,” Clay said, shuddering.
Rat waited until the four Bad People left. Then he waited extra just to be sure. Then he got Spider to help him drag the bodies in under the school. Little Fingers was hurt. She’d been shot in the leg, and she just snarled and wouldn’t come help. Rat didn’t know if she would die.
Spider and Rat spent the next three days cutting strip-meat for jerky. Any parts they couldn’t jerk they ate right away. All the soft parts went to the babies. They’d have plenty of food for a long time. But Mama cried, and that made Rat sad.
Still, he thought, not everything was bad. Now maybe she wouldn’t look at him so hungry.
Chapter 21: Fireworks
Rastowich stared through the binoculars at the drab gray block of the Larson Facility.
“What the hell is going on in there?” He asked. Five fresh corpses swung on ropes across the building’s facade and black smoke billowed up from the courtyard concealed within the complex. In the upper floors several windows had been knocked out. The Colonel assumed there would be snipers in place in those. He’d already issued orders and sharpshooters were in position to deal with them.
Captain Nakamura whistled through his teeth. “I think they’re waiting on us to make a first move. They probably assume they’re safe inside that pile of concrete. They can’t have missed us riding up and making camp.”
Rastowich rubbed at his moustache and grunted.
“The engineers packed the recoilless?”
“Yes sir.”
“Break it out. We’ll make a breach after dark and go in. That’ll keep their sharpshooters off us, and our men are the better trained and armed. Make sure the vests are issued and that everyone is wearing them.”
“Yes sir.”
“We have to get those books. That’s our legacy,” the Colonel muttered.
And it won’t hurt your chances for a promotion, Nakamura thought, not unkindly. He saluted, and went to find the engineers.
Maybe he could get a promotion, too.
Sam had disappeared before Creedy left. Marcia had cultivated enough contacts throughout the Castle that she often knew more than Sam, who existed in the bubble surrounding Creedy. The old cook had managed to slip her a note when she helped deliver dinner to Creedy and Hollis. It was short and to the point; word was that when Creedy left he was taking nothing except guns and two wagon loads of loot.
It wasn’t a surprise. Creedy had been eyeing her strangely for days, with a mixture of suspicion and mild regret. Sam had already decided that he would want to dispose of her before leaving. She’d heard as much or more of his plans as anyone, and he wouldn’t let that sort of information remain behind.
Creedy never went anywhere alone, now. He hadn’t called Sam to his bed since the last bruising bout of abuse, and though she fantasized about it, she could see no way to kill him that wouldn’t result in her own immediate death. It was time to get out.
The labyrinthine subbasement was locked, with chains and padlocks securing the two sets of steel doors that accessed its stairwells. The gates saw a lot of foot traffic, and while not all of it was screened as carefully as it had been, they would notice Sam trying to leave. Nervousness just short of panic ran through most of the more imaginative members of the garrison. Creedy’s banquet lies had done their job and kept things together long enough to bring in a last few weeks of tribute, but even the dullest gunhand had heard the rumors: Creedy was leaving the Castle and the CDF was coming. Anyone with dreams of leadership began to maneuver to take advantage of the vacuum, and bodies were discovered every morning; some with knife wounds, some strangled. Creedy, his monstrous aide Gregor and Hollis lurked on his floor of the west wing, with several squads of soldiers that now bunked there, and seemed to watch it all with disinterest.
The upper floors were a better option, despite leaving her few routes of escape. Sam didn’t imagine Creedy would believe she would stay in the Castle. Taking a knapsack of food and several jugs of water, she disappeared into the upper floors. She had remained there for the six days leading to Creedy’s departure, and only once heard anyone in
the hall outside the room she occupied. They tried the door, found it locked, and went on.
She watched Creedy leave, upright in the saddle, looking jaunty and dapper. She had noted the two black cases slung in a leather harness across the back of his horse, and the identical ones riding behind Gregor and Hollis. She watched as they trailed off to the North, disappearing into a gauzy morning ground fog that would be gone within the hour. Then she settled in, with a dozen books stolen from Gregor’s collection, and waited for the cavalry. They arrived the following afternoon.
Nakamura watched an engineer assemble a chest-high steel tripod while a second fussed with the long tube of the recoilless rifle itself. A soldier stood nearby, watching over a box of shells, each one the size of a man’s forearm.
“Do you need anything else?” the Captain asked. The engineer adjusting the weapon glanced up.
“No, sir. We’ll have the gun set up inside the hour, and we’ll be ready.”
Nakamura nodded. “I’ll tell the Colonel.” He took a few steps up the slope until he could peer across the hillcrest, studying the bulk of the Larson facility.
“How far are we?” He asked.
“About fifteen hundred yards, sir, give or take,” the engineer said, rising and wiping his hands on a rag.
“And you’re sure this will breach the wall?” Nakamura asked.
“Yes, sir.” He tapped the weapon’s barrel with a boot, lightly. “It will probably take six or eight shells to make a big enough breach, but it’ll be pretty quick. Maybe a minute, maybe a little less.”
Nakamura studied the ranks of windows. Unbroken panes were mirror-bright with reflected sky on the shadowed wall.
“After you’ve made a hole, watch for flashes from the upper floors. If anyone starts sniping, stop them.”
The Colonel called Nakamura into his tent just before dinner. Nakamura stood to attention, dressed in baggy green battledress. He stared at Rastowich, who was similarly attired, with the addition of an armored vest.