Dean’s point of view narrowed into a tiny tunnel as his wife screamed. A few more shots vaguely rang out in the back of his consciousness as his executive brain stepped aside for his amygdala and he drove the stock down hard with a vicious blow into the back of the attacker’s skull, smashing it wide open. Someone else screamed, but he barely heard it. Instead, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the fear and anguish that Hansel and Gretel poured out across the landscape, their eyes glued to their mother’s horrible injury.
As Dean turned to them, he instinctively scanned the scene; Frankel wasted a bullet into the head of an already dead monster, the thing laying face down across Lieutenant Silver’s legs, the wounded lieutenant holding her hand across her torn bloody cheek; Littlefield, unarmed, turning around and scanning the woods for more; Jon and Nikki, back to back, guns aimed in a near water-dance of coordination; the councilman’s servant stepping in front of his charge and putting his shoulder into a male, deflecting the thing away from his boss, Dietrich then calmly firing a bullet into the raving creatures head, splattering brains and bone across the dead leaves; Billy pushing a body off his own legs and standing while picking up his gun. All of the attackers were now splayed out dead, their bodies in the grotesque positions of violent ends. The situation seemingly secured, Dean turned his focus back on Eliza. She held her arm in obvious agony, blood seeping through her fingers. The pucks continued to send out their personal anguish — total loss of self-control. Dean yelled at them, “Stop! Pull it together!”
The pucks yanked back their emotions, and crouched to help their adoptive mother. Dean grabbed his auto-ruck’s built-in first-aid kit and pushed the pucks aside to help his wife.
Lieutenant Silver, still sitting on the ground, began weeping. “I’m bit. After all these years I’m—“ Everyone was jolted as a gunshot ended it — a clean bullet to the forehead. Frankel let his own head hang, the gun following suit. “Sorry, LT. Protocol.”
Shell-shocked, the group gave Dean the time to properly attend to Eliza’s horrible wound, while Nikki explained at gunpoint, Eliza’s immunity to a disbelieving and still armed Frankel.
Eliza quietly looked into her husband’s eyes. “You’re thinking of George.”
He shook his head and tore off another piece of tape. “Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you.”
She nodded unconvinced. “We need to keep moving. That gunfire…” She winced as he carefully applied the last piece, then dug into the pack for an old packet of acetaminophen.
She said, “Those have got to be long expired.”
Gretel said, “I can help you mother.”
Eliza smiled warmly. “Of course you can, Gretel.”
Gretel breathed a sigh of relief and reached out to Eliza’s pain. Eliza sighed herself. “Ah, that’s much better.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t think of it sooner, Mother.”
“Me either, Mother,” said Hansel. “I am working hard to feel more Chosen nearby. I still don’t know how we missed the one who carried the baby.” He looked at Dean. “I’m so sorry, Stewart Dean.”
Dean closed his eyes for a brief moment, then used an ace bandage to bind Eliza’s arm to her chest. He stood back to observe his work. “You’ll need to ride.” He nodded at all the gear on his back. “Jon, you’ll need to carry this. Can you walk doctor?”
Littlefield offered what he hoped was a strong smile. “Not as well as you attended to that wound, sir, but I’ll manage. Impressive work.”
Dean patted the man’s shoulder. “We’ve all seen too many battlefield wounds.”
“Mason and I will help you, Doctor,” said Dietrich while holstering his gun. “You can put an arm over each of our shoulders.”
“That’s very kind of you, thanks. I’ll take the help.”
Having switched auto-rucks with Jon, Eliza was helped onto Dean’s back. The exoskeleton had a foldout seat designed for such a situation, allowing the wounded woman to ride and hold on with her good hand.
Full Face, Patch of Blue, and Extra One had all felt Teeth Broken On Bones disappear. Having shared an intimate connection, the four Chosen were linked, not in a unique way, but in a way that all Chosen who spent time in close proximity felt together. They only knew that his mind had been suddenly lost to them, like he’d fallen in a deep hole. One moment he was a presence in the background of their existence and the next he was gone, a light snuffed.
As the now official caretaker of Paul’s son, Extra One was required to stay with the Four that remained of The Five. Full Face and Patch of Blue were given permission to go back and find their friend.
When they reached the farm, it was nearly dark, but their huge eyes more than made up for the loss of light. Upon stepping into the house, they were surprised by a burst of large black birds flying out of the doors. A host of flies were feasting and laying eggs. Teeth Broken On Bones lay where he had fallen, his eyes plucked out by the birds, his skin pecked and ripped raw.
A bad end to our friend
A bad end, yes. No story to tell
We can make one
A scan of the hole in the floorboards, and the smaller ones at the feet of their dead comrade, roughly filled in the blanks.
It is not a good story to tell
We should make one anyway. No Chosen should die without a story
The two stepped back outside and scanned their surroundings. It didn’t take them long to zero in on the telepathic breadcrumbs that led to Hansel and Gretel. Stepping back inside, they cleared off some of the flies from the remains of Dr. Mitchell, and ignoring the freshly hatched maggots, quickly ate for some energy.
Outside once more, they began to run down the road that headed west.
Hansel said, “Chosen know of us. They are coming.”
“What does that mean?” asked Dean, unable to keep the frustration from his voice. They were moving too slowly for comfort. Caution and a need to keep a sharp eye and ear out made their movements painfully restricted. Now it was nearly completely dark — the human’s ability to see, almost wiped out.
Hansel said, “I can only say that they are coming. I don’t know how far, but they know of us.”
“Because they can feel you.”
Hansel hesitated, “Yes.” He shared a thought with Dean alone. We can stay back here, Gretel and me. We can wait for them and let you get to the water.
Dean spoke out loud in return so the others could guess at Hansel’s unselfish offer. “Thanks. I mean that, but we need your eyes. In a few minutes it will be so dark we won’t be able to see the hands in front of our faces.”
Gretel said, “Even I can almost not see right now.”
Dean said, “How much farther, Doctor?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t come this way. We followed a brook and it took the better part of a day. It was kind of slow going.”
Jon said, “If we were close, we’d smell it. Can’t miss the smell of briny water.”
A half an hour on, Hansel and Gretel both let them know that it was too dark. The humans were relieved. They couldn’t see at all. They’d been picking their way along in an elephant parade of sorts, holding hands, the pucks in front and back.
With the group sitting in a circle, their backs to each other, Dean said, “Three on watch, two-and-a-half-hour shifts, except Eliza, Billy and the Doc who need to sleep.”
Billy said, “Dad, I can take a watch.”
Dean looked at his son. “You’re pretty scraped up.”
“I’m fine.”
“Then you, Hansel, and Frankel will take the first.” To Hansel he said, “If you can’t see, neither can they. If it feels like they’re still coming, wake me.” To everyone he said, “Eat, then sleep. Jon, Nikki and Mr. Pelham take the second shift, then Gretel and myself, and Mr. Mason is it? Our telepathic friends on either end. As soon as Gretel can see again, we are up and out.”
Littlefield said, “I can take a shift. I’ve been through worse than this.”
Nikki patted his arm, barely able to make
out the doctor’s face. “You need a break, Doctor. We’ve got this.”
As the silence of the night built around them, a light breeze swept across the treetops. It created a symphony of scraping and cracking sounds, creaking trunks, dropping branches and pine cones, rustling twiggy fingers rubbing together in forced urgency. It made for heart rates that pulsed in the ear and drummed through the neck. An hour after they had eaten, those who had finally achieved some sleep were woken again by a crunching across the nearby leafy floor. The omnidirectional nature of the sound made it hard to pinpoint the location.
Hansel, who felt all of their minds come back to consciousness, sent out the thought, It is nothing but a small foraging beast.
Frankel, who’d never really experienced a puck in his head whispered, “Whoa. So strange that is. Did anyone else hear that?”
Billy put his finger to his lips, shushing the private and leaning in close. He whispered, “They can do that. The pucks.”
Frankel said, “OK. I understand now.” But he didn’t. Not really.
Nikki and Jon lay in the leafy cover with their backs to each other, guns in easy reach. Jon turned his head to her, whispering over his shoulder. “Deja vu.”
“Yup,” she whispered.
“You remember? On the island? Our little shelter?”
“Like it was yesterday.”
“Almost wish we were back there.”
“As I recall, you wanted a room with a view. Go to sleep.” He reached back and patted her hip. She slipped her hand over his fingers and held his hand there.
Dean spooned his wife and felt her body shake with an escaped silent sob. He held her tight while wishing for the thousandth time that they had stayed down in their palm tree paradise. Hansel had taken over the job of anesthetizing Eliza. He slipped into her mind and did a little more, seeking out and soothing the anxiety that she felt. For once, she was perfectly content to let one of the children take charge of her consciousness. The nightmare of an infected hag biting a piece of meat out of her arm settled into a fog, and she slept.
At 4:36 AM, Gretel said, “I can see well enough,” then regarding their pursuers, “and so can they.”
They were all instantly awake and ready to move. Water was consumed. Food would wait for a safe place to stop and eat it. Eliza was helped up onto Dean’s back, Littlefield assisted again by Dietrich and Mason. It was still too dark for the humans to make out more than moving shapes. Gretel led, with the rest in a line behind her, each in turn with a hand on the one in front, Hansel at the rear. It was terrifyingly slow and awkward.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Choices
As dawn filled in the picture, they could make out the Chesapeake beyond a farm that had most likely been abandoned back in the first days of the Exodus. The main house and the outbuildings had long ago burned to the ground. A lone, partially collapsed chimney was the only thing that stood tall — an exclamation point over the rubble. The road they walked on came to an end at the farm’s still partially fence-lined driveway. A struggling apple orchard filled in the left side of the property, the fruit picked clean, the trees themselves looking gnarled and badly abused. Fallow fields to the right, which, with the short summer sun, had filled in with new grass, were now trampled flat — the evidence of thousands of passing feet. Hundreds of boats of all sizes were beached along the distant shore or drifted aimlessly in the bay beyond. With a means of escape clearly in sight, the small group’s pace picked up.
As they reached the scrub covered rocky beach, they saw thousands of makeshift oars and paddles cast aside, creating a minor obstacle course to get to the water’s edge.
Frankel attempted to help Eliza off Dean’s ruck, only to have Nikki step in. “I’ve got it,” she said. Frankel shrugged and stepped back, but not without noticing the sheen of sweat on Eliza’s upper lip and forehead.
Eliza looked grimly into Nikki’s eyes, acknowledging the obvious fever she was fighting. She grimaced slightly with pain and glanced around for Hansel and Gretel. The pucks stood atop the beachhead, their backs to the water, their focus inland. Eliza moaned slightly saying, “They think there are Chosen close.”
As he stepped out of the auto-ruck and scanned the shore for a suitable vessel, Dean didn’t take the time to look at his wife, and remained clueless to her deteriorating condition. Jon saw Eliza’s condition next and cast his eyes to the ground for a moment before looking up again to take in her acknowledging smile. Billy looked at her and the blood drained from his face. “Oh, Eliza.”
She stepped toward him and reached out to squeeze his shoulder, warding off a hug, the proximity too close as it was. He was nearly as tall as she, and he put his face into his own hands, a sob bursting from his lips.
Littlefield stepped over and gently put a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Please step away, son. I’ve seen folks at this stage pass it along.” An even more fearful look came over Eliza’s face and she stepped back from Billy, then another step, as if to isolate herself from the rest.
Frankel began to raise his rifle. Jon pushed it down. Frankel looked surprised, like a child who’d been unfairly scolded. “But protocol it is,” he said.
“It’s not your choice,” responded Jon. “We deal with this our way.”
“Besides,” said Littlefield, “It’s possible she is suffering from a minor infection from the wound and nothing more.”
Either out of willful ignorance or a deep need to find them the boat they needed to get away with, Dean had moved further up the beach, his focus on a thirty-foot sailboat that still had a tattered and bleached cover protecting the mainsail. The boat was in the water, but its keel was clearly beached, the hull slightly listing to port.
Eliza called out to him, trying to sound hopeful, “You find a good one, honey? Hansel and Gretel say we’re going to have some company soon.”
Dean called back, “This one out here’s looking pretty good. Just gotta find an anchor and some line and I think we can winch it off the bottom.” He began to wade into the water. “Billy, snap to, son. Jump in that rowboat. We’ll use it to drop the anchor out there about forty meters or so. Councilman, you and your man there, help Billy get the boat in the water.”
“What can we do?” called out Jon.
“You’ve got critical gear on your back. Wade out here. Nikki, you and Frankel help get it loaded. Councilman, when you’re done, help the Doctor, grab the stuff off my ruck and bring it as well.”
With the port side low to the water, Dean pulled himself up on deck and walked forward to the anchor hatch on the bow. He flipped it open, saying, “Bingo. Billy, meet me at the stern. I’ll hand it off to you.”
Billy, wiping the tears away from his eyes, climbed into the aluminum rowboat and let Dietrich and Mason push him out over the small lapping waves. He rowed out to the back of the sailboat, taking the offered anchor from his dad.
Hansel’s thoughts urgently interrupted all of their’s. You must hurry now.
Billy put his back into the oars until his dad called out, “That’s goo—“ Dean lurched to a frozen halt, except for his head, which he tried to shake violently. Billy, who’d been a captive in Nicaragua, had seen it a hundred times before. His father’s mind had been grabbed by Chosen.
“Dad!”
Frankel and Nikki were nearly finished unloading Jon’s ruck, when Gretel yelled out and charged out of sight toward the farm. Hansel quickly followed, his scream like that of a raging soldier.
“Children!” yelled Eliza after them.
Jon glanced up at Dean, struggling to get loose, the man higher up on the boat and clearly within sight of attacking Chosen. He looked back down at the various built-in satchels on his ruck and spotted a bag holding a red gas mask. He pulled it out and began yanking it over his head.
Nikki said, “What’re you doing?”
“There’s this.” He lifted what looked like a small grenade launcher from where it was attached to the ruck. Stenciled along the side was the word CHLORI
NE.
He ran splashing out of the water.
Nikki called out, “Wait! What’s your plan!”
He ignored her, M4 in one hand, the gas launcher in the other. The auto-ruck increased his speed and leaping ability considerably and he practically flew up the beach and over the embankment onto flat land. Right in front of him, maybe 30 meters away, a huge hairy male Chosen brought a thick club of a branch down on Hansel’s arms as the smaller puck tried to protect his head — snapping one arm nearly in half with the blow. As the arm folded and dangled like a broken twig, Hansel screamed out in agony and scrambled backward as more blows came.
Gretel, who was facing off against a female, was bleeding from several scratches on her face, the two of them circling each other until Gretel unexpectedly leapt to her brother’s defense, diving onto the male that was swinging the club. That left the feral female looking at Jon as he ran toward her.
Full Face was taken back by the strange figure. Fooled by the mask and the exoskeleton, she didn’t at first compute that it was a Fresh One. She knew what the fire stick was though, and with extraordinary reflexes, dove to one side as the gun began to blaze.
Running and shooting one handed, Jon’s aim was way off, the bullets harmlessly firing off into the orchard. He stopped and lifted the grenade launcher instead.
Free of the female, Gretel bit down sharply on the pointy ear of the big Chosen who attacked her brother, tearing it away from the creature’s head, the action saving Hansel from a fatal blow that landed in the dirt to the right of his skull.
Just as Jon’s finger was about to pull the trigger on the launcher, Full Face understood her adversary, spotted his eyeball in one of the circular pains of glass and locked him up with her mind.
Jon went rigid. To his horror, he could feel the female rummaging around in his head.
Arthur says eat. Eat your face off first, then your man parts, then strip the skin and muscles off your chest so I can watch your beating heart.
A House Divided: Book 3 of The Of Sudden Origin Saga Page 28