“You won’t be going far on that leg until it heals.” Laurie said and shook her head.
“Please, I have to find them. They might still be there but if they’re not, I know which way they are headed. Do you have a car? Can you help me?”
Spivey leaned forward and looked at her. “Yes, I can help you, but you have to trust us. You need to rest up some, you’ve been comatose for days. It’s almost dark and I don’t travel at night. In the morning, we’ll do everything we can to find your friends.”
“I need to go now. They’ve got to be worried sick and if they leave, they don’t always follow the roads. We might not find them. I’m not afraid of the dark. Doesn’t your car have lights?” She implored.
He smiled. “Trust me, I can find them whether they’re on the roads or cutting through the woods and no, I don’t have a car. I have something better. Take it easy tonight and I’ll show you in the morning.”
25
Swan
While Analise was having a home cooked meal miles away, the tribe was making camp in a farmhouse down an unnamed dirt road. The mood was heavy, Tobias didn’t cook and they ate right out of the cans. Harper made the heartbroken boy use the medicinal shampoo to kill the lice. He said he deserved the pain, the aggravation and annoyance of the little vampires. His last words to her had been mean, he’d said he wanted to stab her in the face with an icepick. The rest of the tribe wasn’t having it, though.
“If we get rid of them and you don’t, you’ll re-infect all of us.” She said. “And besides, if she catches up, you don’t want to give them back to her do you?”
He’d sighed and used the soaps, medicine and shampoo but not because he thought she’d be coming back. They’d given up hope of seeing her again although they pretended they hadn’t. Donny left markers, signs pointing her down the roads they traveled and Tobias had spray painted her name on the asphalt every few miles with arrows to mark the way. The tribe moved slowly, barely covering twenty miles a day before seeking a place to rest. They said it was for Otis, he shouldn’t be pushed so hard but the truth was they were all weary. The lure of Lakota wasn’t what it once was and they were in no hurry to get there. Tobias sat on the roof of the old two-story house, hair wet from the shampoo and stared back the way they’d come.
Swan couldn’t stand the melancholy mood and was chasing supper for the animals. She needed something to take her mind off Analise. She ran through the woods trailing her pack. They’d caught the fresh scent of deer and she’d given them leave to run it down. They were far ahead, easily outdistancing her but she’d catch up. She always did. She kept a steady pace, bow slung over her back, her boots nearly as silent as her wolves’ paws. She instinctively avoided fallen branches and the rains over the last few days had left the leaves damp. They didn’t crunch and crackle with each footfall. She ducked under a tree limb and continued her pursuit, following their trail of disturbed leaves or occasional tuft of fur in a briar. The deer droppings she’d found a quarter mile back were still hot. They were closing in for the kill, the animal wasn’t too far ahead. She could call them back with just a whistle but that would mean no fresh meat tonight and she didn’t even consider it. She let them chase the deer, let them be the mighty hunters that they were while she played catch up.
A blur of motion on her flank snapped her attention to the beast coming for her. Terror, then rage filled her as Diablo lunged out of a thicket and ran straight at her. He barked his laughing bark and launched himself. He caught her by surprise and she didn’t have time to whistle for the pack or bring around her bow. He slammed into her, tumbled her over backward and opened his maw wide. She shoved his muzzle aside as he tried to clamp his oversized jaws down on her face. He snapped and snarled, spittle flew and she could smell the gangrenous pus oozing from the roof of his mouth. She tried to yell but he’d slammed her in the ribs, most of the air had been knocked out of her. The bow dug into her back as he snapped and attacked again, his heavy feet stomping her and clawing at her armor. He lunged for her face again, his jaws wide, large enough to cover her whole head. She threw up a protective arm, tried to roll out from under him but couldn’t move.
His strong jaws clamped down on the plastic guard protecting her forearm. It kept the canines from piercing her skin, but the powerful force of those massive jaws was like a hydraulic press and she felt the bone snap in her arm. She cried out in anguish and fury as he ragged her arm back and forth. She was at his mercy, she couldn’t shove him off and the grinding jaws would tear her hand completely off. She’d seen what they did to Derek on the first day of the outbreak. They had ripped him apart. She ignored the pain and reached for her tomahawk with her free hand. He shook his head and dragged backwards towards the dense thicket he’d sprang from. She wouldn’t be able to move in there, he’d rip her to shreds. Desperate, she swung her blade. There wasn’t much power behind it, but the keen edge sliced through fur and skin and bounced off his skull.
He growled, shook it off and kept dragging her to his lair. It felt as if her arm was being torn from the socket. She screamed in agony and rage, swung the tomahawk again and again and tried to wrest her arm out of his mouth. Blood splashed down from the gashes, hot and bitter as it covered her face. She was hurting him, he no longer savagely attacked, he tried to back off and come at her in a different way. He let go of her useless arm and snapped at her neck to rip her head off. She swung wildly at his drooling, blood drenched muzzle and drove the spike into his eye. She smiled through bloody teeth when he howled in surprise and pain. The gooey fluid from his eye mixed with blood raining down on her but she spit and kept swinging. Diablo snapped at the steel that was hurting him and bit down on the fist holding the tomahawk. Fangs sunk deep into flesh but the steel cut him and stopped biting down before he could chew her hand off. In only a second, the battle had turned. She was no longer driving him off, Swan was losing. She was on her back with a beast the size of a small bear ripping into her. It wouldn’t back off, it wouldn’t quit and her kicks were useless. They had no effect on him. Her own blood joined the hunchbacks pouring down on her. The world started going dark as she struggled to draw breath as the thing kept stomping on her, raking his claws across her flesh and armor. She drove a knee into his underbelly. The hyena ignored it, kept a grip on her hand and started dragging her towards the thicket again. He was winning, the fight was going out of the human. He felt her weakening and tugged harder to get her into the dense undergrowth where he could eat her at his leisure. This moment had been coming for a long time and the taste of her blood in his mouth heightened his savagery. Even the pain from his ruptured eyeball wasn’t enough to make him lose his grip. It would be over in moments and he’d feast on her corpse while the hot blood still flowed through it.
The black was clouding the edges of her vision. This fight was almost over, she felt consciousness slipping away from her as he tugged her out of the clearing. She heard them before she saw the flashes of black, gray and silver seemingly glide across the ground. Their panting breath, the whisper of paws on damp leaves, the guttural growls as they leaped. Time slowed as the darkness gathered around her and the hyena looked up at the new threat. She saw them as they cleared the trees, powerful legs leaping and covering the distance in a slow-motion eternity, graceful in flight, teeth bared and murder in their eyes. Zero remembered the beast, the hulking monstrosity that had taken his mate. The mottled hunchback creature with the distinctive smell that was hurting the pack mother. He slammed into the hyena, easily twice his size and then time sped up again. Swan rolled away, snatched up her tomahawk and ignored the punctures pouring blood. The pack tore into the beast from every angle, brutal and lightning quick they dove in and out, avoided his snapping jaws and savaged him relentlessly.
They attacked with a fury and ripped chunks of flesh from the hyena. It swirled and snapped but his jaws closed on empty air. Zero sprung and grabbed the beast by the throat and tore out a chunk of skin and fur. Blood sprayed across his muzzle and Mead
ow leapt in and tore the windpipe and veins out. They knew how to kill, how to bring down prey. Zero spit out the chunk of flesh and watched as his cubs snapped and snarled and tore in to the beast again. Swan was ready to finish him off, prepared to sink steel between his eyes but she didn’t have to. Her pack left him lifeless and lying in a puddle of spreading blood.
She got unsteadily to her feet, held her broken arm close to her chest and winced through the pain of every step. Night was coming. She had to get back to the tribe. To her friends. To her family.
26
Tribe
Tobias spotted her from his perch on the roof and ran to meet her. He knew from a half mile off something was wrong. They stumbled through the door of the house and he yelled for Harper. Swan was battered and bloodied and almost out on her feet. They eased her into a chair and Vanessa draped a blanket over her shoulders. She was shivering and cold from loss of blood.
Kodiak and the boys stood back to give them room as the wolves whined and stayed underfoot. Harper had to push them aside so she could assess the damage.
“Diablo.” Swan said. “It’s over. We killed him.”
“Her arm is busted.” Tobias said “it looks bad.”
When he met her at the edge of the woods, he had wrapped the holes in her wrist with his shirt. He was afraid to pull off the shredded armor on her other arm, it looked like it was helping to hold the bloody arm in place.
Vanessa cut Swan’s mangled armguard away and they could see the punctures and bruising. The skin was torn from the hyena’s teeth, it had bit through the plastic, but the guard had distributed the pressure. Instead of sawing in, snapping the bone and ripping her arm off he’d only managed to break it. Harper probed at the wound. Swan winced and hissed through her teeth.
“It’s definitely broken. I’m gonna have to set it back in place before the swelling sets in. Donny, find me something to splint it with. Some flat boards. Kodiak get some t-shirts from that bedroom and tear them into strips. Vanessa, bring me my saddlebag. I have peroxide and painkillers in it.” Harper said.
The boys scattered to look for the necessary items, while Vanessa grabbed the satchel that had just been refilled from the botched Walmart raid.
Swan sat at the table, erect and proud, and kept her face a mask. She wouldn’t wince. She wouldn’t cry out. Her pupils were pinpoints from the pain rolling through her body in waves but her breathing was controlled.
Pull air slowly in and push the pain out. One breath at a time. Breathe in life, exhale the hurt.
She smiled a bloody smile at Harper. “You should have seen it. It was a glorious fight. We killed that humpback bastard, we killed him hard. Lucy can rest in peace now.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks and left clean lines that cut through the war paint and blood but she didn’t cry out when Harper set the bone in place. She splinted it as gently as she could then turned her attention to the other rips and tears and slashes from the hyena’s claws and teeth. Her armor had saved her from the worst of it, nearly every piece had deep gouges.
Harper ran the boys out and they stripped her to sponge away the grime and crusted blood. Tobias brought a nightgown down from upstairs and by the time she was cleaned and bandaged the Vicodin had kicked in. She was feeling no pain as they moved her to the couch and within minutes she had drifted off.
Kodiak’s heart ached as he stared at her. The road was slowly devouring them. Otis, then Analise, now Swan. Tobias had seemed to come around while he was helping Swan but he was a wreck. His eyes were empty and hollow and he’d gone back up to the roof to keep watch. Donny was heartbroken. He’d seen the looks between the pale beauty and the silent boy when they thought no one was looking. He spent more time looking behind than forward. He knew the boy was a whisper away from turning around to search for her. It was best to know, to bury a body, then it was to not know, to think you may have abandoned her. Part of him wanted to turn back, too. Maybe they had missed her, maybe they should have searched farther away from the river. Maybe they should have broken into every house, not just the ones closest to the water. Maybe she was curled up in a crawlspace, hungry, hurt and alone.
Or maybe she was hunting humans, mindless and a different kind of hungry.
He stared at Harper while she inventoried and repacked her medical bag. He felt the lump in his throat at the thought of anything happening to her. It would kill him. They were getting close to Lakota, close to safety. Close to their new home and he couldn’t lose any more of his people. He had to be more careful, take more precautions but wasn’t sure what he could do differently.
He realized they were alone, everyone was taking splash baths with the lice soap or tending to their animals. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his head against hers. She smelled like blood and lavender. Sweat and leather. Old fear and new worry.
“I think I’d die if anything happened to you.” He whispered. “I don’t know if I could go on.”
She turned into his embrace, placed her head against his armored chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”
They held each other silently for a while, a thick layer of plastic and leather between them.
“I’ll be so glad when we get to Lakota.” She said “We won’t have to wear this stuff anymore.”
“Soon.” He said. ‘We’re getting close.”
“You should check on Tobias.” She said “Make sure he’s not planning anything crazy. I’m worried about him.”
He kissed the top of her head then headed for the stairs. He scaled the balcony and sat on the roof beside the pale boy and they sat in silence for a time as the moon rose in the starry sky.
“She’s out there.” Tobias said. “I feel it. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s true. She’s not dead. I don’t know the word for it, but it’s like we have a connection.”
Kodiak nodded. “I’ve always heard that about twins.”
“I was a jerk to her.” Tobias whispered. “I didn’t mean it. She was just being so bitchy, and I lost my cool.”
“Do you want to turn back?” Kodiak asked. “We will. We can spread out the search, look farther away from the river.”
Tobias stared into the darkness for a long time and Kodiak thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“No,” he finally said. “She’s not there. We looked everywhere. Daisy would have scented her if she was anywhere close. She either went down river a lot farther than we looked or she got bit and didn’t smell like herself anymore.”
He said it flatly, almost without emotion. He’d been considering the possibility for days but hadn’t wanted to voice it.
“Did you know polar bears can smell underwater?” He asked. “They can smell a seal even if it’s ten miles away. Even if we weren’t able to find her, Daisy or Popsicle could have. You can’t hide from a bear.”
“Or Donny.” Kodiak added.
“Yeah.” Tobias shrugged. “Or Donny. You know, I think he loves her. I think she loves him too, but she’s never admitted it and he doesn’t give away anything he doesn’t want you to know. I don’t know how to feel about that.”
“He’s a good guy.” Kodiak said. “He’s hurting too. I won’t be surprised to find him gone in the morning to look for her.”
“He’d be wasting his time just like we would if we went back.” He said. “You want to hear something funny? She’s ok. I don’t know where she is or how she got away, but I know she’s fine. When I’m still and quiet, I feel it. I can’t explain it, but I feel it right here.”
He thumped a fist over his heart. He supposed he’d always had the connection but he hadn’t felt it like he did now. When he sat on the roof and emptied his mind of all the worry, when he relaxed his brain, he could feel her. She was still out there somewhere.
“She’ll find us. We just need to keep going. She might even beat us to Lakota, who knows.”
“I believe you.” Kodiak said. “You might try talking to Donny. He could use it.”
“I will.” Tobias ag
reed. “He should stay with the tribe.”
Kodiak stood and stepped to the edge of the roof.
“I won’t give up on my sister. We’ll see her again. Either here or in the halls of Valhalla.”
27
Analise and the Spiveys
Spivey came into the house and watched as Analise hobbled around the kitchen on the crutch he’d made for her. The medicine had knocked her out and she had slept well. They let her rest until she woke up grumbling about it being so late, the day was already half gone. It was nice to see her up and about. She wore some of Sara’s clothes although they were too big and hung limply on her small frame. Without all of the armor she was half the size. Her almost white hair was tied back in a loose ponytail and she reminded him of an elven princess from an epic fantasy novel.
“Wash up.” She said. “Breakfast is almost ready.”
She wielded the knife with a surgeon’s precision as she sliced the shoulder from the deer he’d shot early that morning into thin steaks. She was a study in efficiency as she seasoned and floured the meat and tended the pot simmering on the stove. Laurie and Sara tried to help but she good naturedly shooed them away. Sara had flour on her cheeks and was stirring up the bowl of seasoned eggs.
“Someone is feeling better.” He said.
She was. A good night’s sleep had done wonders. Her ankle bothered her more than the gouge in her shoulder but she couldn’t really remember a time when she wasn’t recovering from some kind of injury. Laurie had offered her another pill to help with the pain but she’d turned it down. It was only a sprained ankle.
“And a fist-sized hole in your shoulder.” Laurie had said.
The Feral Children [A Zombie Road Tale] Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 69