by Ben Tripp
Even pushing seventy years old, Wulf was a superb lookout, a deadeye shot, and from his perch up on the roof of the giant vehicle, nobody had to smell him. Danny was right: From that vantage point, he’d seen how the attack unfolded. She put the issue of Kelley out of her immediate thoughts. Her sister might have been destroyed. She might still be out there in the darkness. Danny would find out soon enough either way.
She and Wulf—now sheepish and docile because Danny had controlled the anger he wanted to stir up—patrolled the scorched zone around the gas pumps. He indicated what happened as he’d seen it.
“That trailer over there where the dead zeroes were stacked up? Must be parked over a cellar or something. Heard a door bang. The zombies come out from under it. They were under the fuckin’ ground. Come out in a swarm, like ants.”
“So they waited all that time before they attacked? Just sat under there and waited?”
Wulf snorted dismissively. “Ain’t in their nature. Seems to me they were locked in, and somebody released ’em. That’s what I think. Some prick waited until your posse rode off, and then opened the door.”
Danny was discreetly flexing her bitten arm. The hunter’s teeth had deeply scored the skin but hadn’t torn any flesh loose. Nonetheless, it was the kind of wound that could kill, if a secondary infection set in. Nothing filthier than the teeth of a dead thing. She pushed it out of her mind.
“So you heard a noise, and you saw them come up out of the hole. But did you see who let them out? I’d have thought you’d notice somebody moving around like that.” She knew it sounded like she was blaming Wulf for negligence. Fuck it. Maybe she was.
“I wasn’t looking for regular people, Adelman,” the old man blustered. “I don’t know every face in the Tribe, and I don’t want to. If I saw him, he was just another civilian chook. If he went behind the trailer, he was just taking a piss. The fuck do I know? Who the hell expected this?”
“So he must have looked human, then.” They were walking toward the trailer now. Danny could see a steel access door set in the ground. Sure enough, it had been flung open. The air was greasy with decay.
Wulf punched his fist into his palm with a noise like a baseball hitting a glove. “He must have been human. You think a fuckin’ zero can just walk among us? Other than your pet sister, anyhow. You’re right: I had her in my sights tonight, Adelman. Had a bead on her.”
“You leave Kelley the fuck out of this. It won’t work—I’m not taking the bait.”
“Are you tellin’ me you really believe she didn’t have nothing to do with this?”
“She was with me when this shit started. She wasn’t even here.”
Wulf shrugged. He didn’t give a damn what Danny thought.
They had reached the trailer, beside which was the heap of inanimate zeroes they’d found on arrival. The postaction mop-up crews had already checked it out; there weren’t any more zeroes down there, but it stank like a flooded tomb. The trailer had been deliberately parked on top of some kind of below-grade sump pump room with a diamond-plate iron lid over it. There was a double door set into the lid, and the creatures had come up through that. Danny knelt beside it and studied the scene, her shadow swaying in the light of the burning gasoline.
“So they stacked up their own dead right here on top of the hidey-hole. That’s why our dogs didn’t smell these ones underneath. But this is the tell. See that piece of rusty pipe? See the fresh scratches on it? I bet somebody threaded it through these door handles to keep ’em closed, and pulled it out when the time came. But there’s no rope or anything, so he must have been standing right here. If it was a man, he’d have been the first one they killed. So I think our perpetrator is a zero. A thinker. And I’ll tell you what else: so is the Chevelle driver who’s been following us around. I’m sure of it.”
It all came together in Danny’s mind. The thinkers were using the hunters like dog packs.
Draw the most competent defenders away with a diversion and spring the trap. This had been a coordinated attack. And it had almost worked. The enormity of the idea was terrifying.
“Bullshit, pardon my fuckin’ French,” Wulf said. He spat on the ground. Most of it ended up in his yellow-white beard. Danny looked sharply at him, surprised at the objection.
Wulf squinted past his crooked purple nose at Danny, as if he was only now seeing her properly. “Sheriff, you and me go back a ways. Probably you don’t remember when this whole thing started and we saw our first zero, but I do. I said it was a zombie. You said bullshit yourself. Turned out I was right. Well, now I’m gonna say your latest theorem is bullshit, and if it turns out you’re right, I’m real sorry.”
Danny did remember that first zero, the mindless, stupid thing with a fly walking across its unblinking eyeball. Wulf had been absolutely correct, and nobody, least of all Danny, had wanted to believe it at the time.
“You don’t buy that the Chevelle driver is undead, or you don’t believe they could put together an ambush like this?”
“There’s ones that are plenty fuckin’ smart, Adelman. Ain’t denying that. You’d know better than most. Thing is, they’re not that damn smart. They’re caveman smart, not you and me smart. Hell, that one of yours, she don’t hardly talk.”
“She’s smarter than you, old man,” Danny said. “Why can’t you believe it? Just tonight, she drove my car and fired a flare gun. Tell me how that’s not smart enough for this.”
“That thing’s getting to be a liability, Sheriff. You gotta do something about her. What if she was in on this job? Just ’cause she didn’t open the doors herself don’t mean she wasn’t passing information to some other nasty-ass rotten fuckers. No offense.”
Danny thought again of the distinctly undead figure she’d seen slipping out of view in Kelley’s feeding ground. Had they been conspiring? But it couldn’t be true: This trap was set up long before Kelley had gone anywhere.
“You let me worry about that,” she muttered. “She’s on our side. You saw it through your goddamn rifle scope. She was killing hunters same as the rest of us. Alls I’m saying is you underestimate the thinkers and you got a problem.”
“That’s why I can’t believe it. If they’re good enough to set us up like this, we’re fucked.”
“We fought human enemies, you and me. Thinkers are the same as that.”
Wulf shook his head slowly, as if at a funeral. “Except human enemies have a weakness—they got a desire to stay alive. These fuckers don’t. ’Cause they’re not.”
He fished a pint bottle of whiskey out of the front of his pants, drained half of it with six loud swallows, and belched fragrant, invisible fire. He shivered.
“Losing my touch,” he said. “Can’t drink like I used to.” He offered the flask to Danny. She took the bottle between finger and thumb like a dead rat, wondering if the liquor was strong enough to defeat Wulf’s bacteria.
“Don’t get lit, Sheriff,” a rough voice interjected. It was Topper, a machete still in his fist. He was soaked in the oily black blood of the undead, like Danny was. They both stank unmercifully. Danny tossed him the flask.
“We got a problem,” Topper said, taking a grateful swallow.
“No shit,” Danny said, her eyes on the team of men that was dragging the corpses of the zeroes into the fire.
“I mean, we got another one. I just found Maria back there—she’s okay but she rounded up most of the kids, and four of ’em are gone.”
“They’re probably hiding out there in the tall grass.”
“No, I mean they’re gone. Maria saw some fuckers grab them. Two thinkers, she says.”
“They didn’t eat them on the spot?” Wulf said.
“They got away with them,” Topper said. “Like that Mike guy tried to do, except these fuckers are undead. Maria swears it. She saw their eyes.”
A sliver of fear stabbed Danny’s belly. “That new boy, the Silent Kid, is he still here?”
“Somebody said his dog run off a minute before th
e attack, and the Kid followed. Ain’t seen him since.” Topper couldn’t meet Danny’s eyes.
Danny turned to face the scene of the carnage, took it all in. The ragged line of vehicles, a couple of them burning. The dead and wounded scattered around with Amy, Patrick, and anybody with a little medical experience doing their best to keep the fallen alive a while longer. There wasn’t much hope for most of them in the long run. Blood spattered all over the asphalt. Even as Danny watched, someone cried “Mercy shot!” there was a pistol report, and one of the dying was hastened on his way out of the world.
The inferno must have been visible for thirty miles, a pillar of orange flame licking at the guts of the black smoke rising into the night sky. Every ambulatory corpse in the area would be on its way soon. The survivors were sweating in the heat, although it was a chilly night beyond the fire. The nearest building, the service center, was ablaze. Everywhere Danny looked, there were weeping, stumbling, hurt people. No direction, no defenses. They needed her. They might not be able to put themselves back together after this unless she was there to snap them out of the shock.
But she was also needed on the road. Those stolen children were still alive, getting farther away by the moment. Freshly yanked out of the arms of their protectors. Danny picked out the parents, the guardians. They were the ones searching everywhere, running back and forth as if the fight was still on. Imploring people to help. They would spot Danny soon and come to her and demand she do something, they way people always did. What could she say to them? That she’d seen other children hanging from hooks, devoured alive by the very creatures who had kidnapped their own?
“Sheriff?” Topper was watching her. Waiting for an answer. Danny shrugged. She didn’t know what to say. Her bitten arm was swelling up, tightening around the tooth marks. They started back toward the survivors.
Amy was soaked in human blood, her own arms as gory as the skinned corpses back at the ranch. She left her work to Patrick when she saw Danny. Patrick wouldn’t turn in Danny’s direction.
“Ouchies?” Amy said.
“Nothing to speak of. Did you hear about the kids?”
“We lost some,” Amy replied, and it sounded as if she thought that was an end to the matter. That was uncharacteristic.
“Topper says they were taken alive,” Danny said.
“Zeroes don’t do that,” Amy said. “I bet you’re just changing the subject. You’re hurt, aren’t you. I see a bite hole through your sleeve.” Amy doesn’t want to think about the kids, Danny realized. It’s too much.
Wulf, who was following Danny around now like a bear looking for sandwiches, shook his shaggy head. “These ones do. Shit’s getting worse.”
Danny hawked and spat, mostly to buy herself a few seconds before she had to speak. They were all looking at her, and for once she simply didn’t know what to do.
“It’s a whole new fuckin’ ball game if they’re kidnapping the little ones,” Topper observed. Despite everything, a plan was formulating in Danny’s horror-stricken mind. There was action she could take.
Amy saw the look in her eyes and shook her head. “Danny, those kids are probably already dead. We need to grieve for them and move on.”
“You didn’t see the ranch we found tonight,” Danny said. “There was barbed wire all around it but it was on the wrong side of the fence . . . I thought they just set it up wrong, but now I see—it wasn’t to keep people out. It was to keep them in. We found . . . kids. That fuck is stealing human kids, and he has accomplices. That place was a slaughterhouse.”
“But we need you here now. Nobody else has the nuts to keep this bunch together.”
“Nobody else can find those kids. I found Kelley, didn’t I?”
Danny was breathing hard through her clenched teeth. She wouldn’t have bothered to explain that much to anyone but Amy. She would have decked them for daring to question her, at this point. And then she would have gone and done what needed doing. But part of her wanted Amy to come up with a good counterargument. Talk her out of it. Because the last time Danny had gone on a lone-wolf mission, it was to find her sister. Which was when disaster hit the people she left behind—Amy included. They needed her now, more than ever. If she was off on a wild goose chase and they stumbled into another trap . . .
Amy stared down at her red hands, turning them so the firelight glittered on the coagulating blood.
“If you’re going after them, you better haul butt,” she said. “They could be a hundred miles away by morning.”
That was it, then. Danny had permission. Like she needed it. Fresh anger flashed into her mind, and she crammed it down. This was what she’d wanted, right?
“Amy, get the Tribe out of here as fast as you can. Just a few miles, but get away. Every zero in the territory must be on its way. Me and the scouts will find you up the road.”
“What about Kelley?”
“I don’t know. If she comes back, I . . . don’t think I can keep her safe.”
“Come back alive yourself,” Amy said, and walked away.
• • •
Danny was on her way back to the interceptor when she heard someone coming up behind her. She assumed it was Amy, reversing her decision to let her leave without argument. But when she turned around, there was Patrick, again wiping his fingers with a cloth. But this time it wasn’t food—it was a clotted glaze of human blood from the triage he’d been engaged in.
“So was it Kelley?” he asked. No point being subtle. He wasn’t forgiving Danny yet.
“I don’t think so,” she said. She debated whether to leave it at that, but there was more to be said. And Patrick was one of very few people she felt she could talk to. She had to try.
“Listen: Kelley was with me when it started, and she kicked some ass in the middle of it. Wulf tried to kill her and he shot one of the wounded instead. That’s what you walked into. I’m not going to ask you to put yourself in my position because that’s bullshit.”
“Are you apologizing?” Patrick said. He was frankly astonished.
“You’re a good guy, Patrick. And Kelley is still my sister. She’s in there, man. Somewhere. But I promise you, if she was involved in this thing tonight, I will destroy her myself.”
Patrick nodded. Good enough for him. He glanced at his hands and used the cleanest one to grip her briefly by the shoulder. Then he went back into the firelight.
• • •
The motorcycles pulled out first. They could cover ground faster than the interceptor. Topper and Conn this time. Ernie had stayed behind to ride herd on the caravan. There were enough tough hands to fend off another attack, if it came to that. Fighters Danny trusted to defend the soft center. But no leaders. Not really. Troy Davis the ex-fireman came close, but he was more courageous than commanding. In fact he avoided Danny. She’d noticed.
She could only hope the retreat went smoothly and nobody was left behind. The Silent Kid would either come back or go his own way. He’d made it this long alone, although when hard winter set in there was no way he’d survive. He and his dog would freeze while hiding in a culvert or something. But it was up to him now. The wounded would be kept in the shuttle bus until they got better or died, usually a matter of hours. If the survivors didn’t have time to burn them, the bodies of the dead Tribespeople were always wrapped up in the back of a pickup. They would be making a cremation stop tomorrow. For everybody else, it was business as usual.
Except Kelley, the unwelcome voice in her head remarked. Maybe she’s not part of the usual business anymore.
Danny rolled slowly past the devastation at the truck stop, as always wondering what she could have done better, what detail she’d missed. They should have shifted the pile of hunter remains. That was obvious. But it was a world of corpses. They became part of the scenery, easy to ignore as long as they weren’t moving—especially in cold weather, when they didn’t stink so much and the flies were dormant. Danny would never make that mistake again.
The interceptor
left the jumping ring of light cast by the fires and Danny turned her attention to the road ahead. Her foot sank the gas pedal halfway down and she felt the acceleration pushing her into the seat back. Then there was something coming into the headlights, a ragged bundle of limbs. She slapped the brakes.
Kelley.
Danny drew her sidearm and stepped out of the interceptor, keeping the door between them.
Kelley stood between the lights, her muumuu smeared with blood like an abstract painting. She had torn the bandages away from her head, revealing a face like an old black-and-white photograph.
“I think we’re done,” Danny said. “I think it’s time for you to go.”
“The blood,” Kelley said, and sucked in a long-forgotten breath.
“Yeah, the blood. If you go back there I think they’ll kill you. I won’t be able to stop them. And I think—” she couldn’t say what she thought.
“Are you going to kill me?”
Kelley had guessed it. Danny thought about her answer. She could chase Kelley off, or kill her, or let her keep on existing at her side. Those were the options. Chase her off and she’d most likely feed on the living. Maybe start with the Silent Kid, if he was left behind, and then work on ambushing travelers on the road. Or join up with that other thinker, the one Danny had glimpsed.
If Danny killed Kelley, that was that. Danny didn’t know what was left after such a thing. It would be the end of her, too, somehow. Maybe she’d kill herself. Maybe she’d go insane. There was only one option, until Danny knew the truth.
“I won’t kill you unless you go for me again,” Danny said. She fed her gun back into the holster.
Kelley made fists of her hands and stared at them with bulging gray eyes, as if they were a jury of bones and this was her confession.
“I tasted the blood. It was an accident. But I tasted it. You don’t know. The blood, it tastes like God. It tastes like everything you ever wanted, Danny. I’m so hungry, my insides are on fire.”
“I can drop you off somewhere far away. Eat rats or coyotes. Just don’t eat people.”