Righteous Apostate: Raptor Apocalypse Book 3

by Steve R. Yeager

  Eve and Cory were directly behind him, near the Humvee. Kate was off to his left, standing on a boulder that had been blown loose by an explosion and now lay on the cracked asphalt of the freeway. The Humvee had taken them as far as it could. Jesse knew two paths they could take from here. Both held their own dangers. Both had to be made on foot.

  He stooped and inspected the ground for signs of recent passage. Others had passed this way, but he also could see his own fading footprints and those of Eve and Kate, coming up and out of the crater and going in the opposite direction. Pulling at a weed, he worked it loose, tore off a few blades, and tossed them in the air. The wind was coming from the southeast, which would make their passage through the dead zone even more treacherous.

  “What are we waiting for?” Cory asked.

  “Sec,” Jesse replied. Left or right? he thought. He stood and hoisted the shotgun, draping it over his neck and wrapping his hands around it. Kate hopped off the rock and held out the Glock 17 he had given her. She leaned backward and stared down the sight as if she wanted to shoot at something. He had told her to hold off unless it was a choice between life and death. Bullets were just too important to waste now that they would be forced to carry their arsenal on their backs. For himself, he had chosen the scoped rifle and his trusty shotgun, along with the familiar M9 on his hip. Eve, he didn’t trust enough to arm with a gun just yet, so she carried the sharpened metal spear she’d carried for so long, both as a weapon and as a walking stick. They’d found it on their trek north, right where Jesse had stashed it behind the house with the GTO. Cory refused to take either a handgun or a rifle, opting instead for his sword, which he’d spent half the time polishing while they drove north.

  With a quick glance back at the Humvee, Jesse wondered if he should bother disabling it. Would it matter? They were leaving nothing behind in it, so if it were gone when he returned, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but he sure would miss the damn thing.

  Eve began tapping the butt end of her spear on the roadway. He wasted a glare on her then looked skyward. He figured they had about an hour to get through the dead zone and maybe three more to make it through the city all the way to the northern edge where his shelter was located. He planned to make a stop there. He glanced at Kate, hoping she would understand. She would have to.

  He pulled the shotgun down to his side, remembering what Walter had said to him when they had offered their goodbyes. Should have sent a Marine instead. You Army rats have no business saving the world. Jesse’s dad would have gotten along well with the guy. Walter had also promised to take Andrea south where they could look for help for the women still locked inside the mountain. Jesse hoped they would be successful and they could all reunite soon, but he was not overly optimistic about it.

  Pursing his lips, he blew out a long, deflating breath.

  “Ready?” he asked as he retrieved the rifle from the back of the Humvee and slung it over his shoulder.

  Only Eve answered him with a “Yes.” He knew the others were ready and didn’t need to state it so openly.

  He led them into the dead zone, through one of the many gaps in the fence, and then back up to where the interstate resumed on the other side. Along the way, he saw no signs of passage other than the many three-toed tracks left behind by the raptors hunting along the path. But, the entire way, nothing had attacked them nor harried them, which made Jesse doubly cautious for what might come next.

  The sun was shining high in the sky when they stepped onto the city streets and walked through the valley of empty buildings. Around him, shadows formed, cast by the many birds flying above in disorganized patterns, shooting in and out of broken windows, keeping watch on the newcomers to their dominion and hoping for an easy meal. Their fluttering wings created tiny echoes that carried far on the moaning breeze.

  As he led the way, he scanned every alleyway, every bomb crater, every abandoned car, every shadow, every broken window, anything that could offer a potential point of ambush. So much of it was old hat. Kate was doing much the same. The familiar sense of calm alertness was returning. He’d hunted these streets before and been hunted by what lurked in the shadows. He’d explored so much of the city that he had constructed mental maps of which areas offered danger and which offered safety. But as he looked at it all now, things seemed different somehow. Where he had once seen a wild jungle punctuated by concrete cube shapes, he now saw only dry rows of orderly buildings, filled with black cancers caused by the incendiary shells that had once rained down on the overrun city.

  It took nearly the entire three hours he had anticipated to reach his shelter in the bank building. Along the way, he picked out signs of raptors hiding in the shadows, but none seemed willing to set foot in the bright sun. That prickly feeling on the back of his neck told him when they were close, but only the wind had spoken in his ear, and not in warning. Debris fluttering in the distance had resolved into the leavings of a dead and decaying city. He realized with a little regret that the haunting voice of his daughter had truly left him for good.

  He stopped their advance on the sidewalk in front of the familiar bank building. His shelter was located on the fourth floor. He noted every sound, every smell, and nothing alerted him to danger. Still, everything remained different, as if he had left a dream world behind and now saw things as they truly were.

  Putting the melancholy behind him, he led them all to the bottom of the elevator shaft. The same rope they had descended on still hung against the far wall. Looking up, he wondered if his traps were still in place, and if he would remember where he had set them. He couldn’t tell for sure, but not having the elevator car sitting crashed at the bottom of the shaft had to count for something.

  “Let me go up first,” he said as he turned on a flashlight and shined it up the shaft. “Then Cory after me. We’ll pull you two up after we get up top.”

  “I can do it myself,” Eve said. But she didn’t look so sure of herself.

  Before he could start up the rope, Kate stepped past him, grabbed the rope, and quickly scrambled up the wall, walking sideways like Batman. Jesse held the flashlight and watched as she neared the top, grabbed the edge, and tugged herself over the lip with ease.

  “Just like that,” he said dryly.

  “Right,” Eve replied, shaking her head.

  He knew his climb was not going to be nearly so easy. He spat in his hands, rubbed them together, and grabbed the rope. As soon as he started out, his shoulder barked in pain. He let go and rubbed his hands together again, not wanting the others to recognize his failure.

  “Not so easy, is it?” Eve said sarcastically.

  He grunted and nodded at Cory. Cory gestured back with a you-first gesture. Shaking his head, Jesse glanced up the rope one more time, realizing just how weak he had become. With a muted prayer for success, he gripped the rope tightly and pulled himself up so his feet rested on the side wall of the shaft. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the pain, dug deeply into his reserves, and climbed sideways up the wall. Once he made it to the top, he collapsed on the tile flooring of the landing, rolled over to the edge, and looked down.

  “Packs,” he said, out of breath. Cory affixed them to the rope, and Jesse hauled everything up, followed by Cory making his own labored climb.

  At the top, Cory gave Jesse a questioning look as they gripped hands. Jesse pulled him the rest of the way up. Together, they leaned over the edge on all fours to peer down at Eve.

  “She’ll make it,” Jesse whispered reassuringly.

  “Are you taking bets?” Cory asked.

  Jesse ignored him and leaned out farther to hold the rope steady. “Your turn,” he said down the shaft. “One hundred thousand dollars.” he added softly for Cory’s benefit.

  “Done,” Cory said.

  Eve rested the spear she had been carrying against the wall, grabbed the rope, and started to climb. Her feet kept slipping off, and she fell back to the same spot where she had started.

  Cory glanced at
Jesse, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “She is not going to make it.”

  “Have some faith, will you,” Jesse said, smirking.

  Eve tried again, and again slipped off the wall.

  “Stop,” Jesse said. “Tie the rope around your waist. Make sure you get the knot right. You do know how, or do I need to show you that too?”

  “I can do it myself,” Eve said. “You don’t need to tell me how.”

  “She says she can do it,” Jesse whispered to Cory.

  “You already own me a hundred grand,” Cory said.

  “Sure,” Jesse replied. “I’m a little short this month, maybe you can spot me? I’m good for it.”

  It might have taken fifteen minutes of coercion and demonstrations of how to tie a strong knot, but between them they managed to get her up and over the lip.

  “You really should make it easier to get in here,” she said as she dusted herself off.

  “Easier for who?” Jesse asked as he got up from the floor, panting from the exertion.

  His shelter was as he had left it, almost. The rats had been enjoying themselves. They were still frittering here and there, scurrying across everything. He and Cory spent the first few minutes chasing them all off, which turned the entire office area into a moving mass of furry gray balls and whipping black tails.

  After the initial shooing away, he rummaged through a storage closet until finding what he was looking for and returned to Kate. He gave her a three-pronged gaff he’d made long ago for dealing with rats.

  She rolled it in her hands and smiled wickedly.

  While he went about getting the water and electricity systems back in working order, he heard the death squeal of various rats, one about every other minute. When he returned from the rooftop, there were six fat rats lying on the countertop, ready to be cleaned and cooked.

  “Dinner,” he joked, staring mostly at Eve. She gave him a look of complete disgust. Another rat died screaming, and Eve grew even paler. Jesse had to turn away to keep her from seeing the sudden grin he could no longer contain.

  Cory was standing behind him. He was not smiling. “Anything we need to worry about?”

  “Not right now. It’s okay,” Jesse said. “Things are good. Nothing in the skies and nothing on the ground. At least nothing I could see close by. I heard them, though, so there are still plenty of raptors out there. But I saw no signs of pursuit or indications of fresh kill sites.”

  “Then we leave tomorrow?” Cory asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Jesse said, shifting to a more formal tone and confirming his answer with a nod.

  In the background, another rat died screaming.

  -24-

  LEFT BEHIND

  “WE NEED TO talk,” Jesse said as he approached Kate.

  The night had passed, and the morning had come unburdened. While he was once again in comfortable surroundings, he hadn’t slept all that well. Something was weighing heavily on his mind, and he knew he was already staring down the barrel of a long, arduous day. He figured he needed to confront the most difficult task early on, before he lost the nerve to do so.

  Kate sat cross-legged on the floor concentrating hard on her task. Sunlight leaking through the scratched tinting of the building’s side windows illuminated her, making her shadow appear three sizes larger than she actually was. Deftly, with a knife in her delicate hand, she carved a groove into the tip of a slender wooden shaft. Against the wall behind her rested a small a bow made from a single piece of PVC piping strung up with a braided string. Various handmade arrows rested on the floor around her in differing states of completeness. While Jesse knew the bow and arrow set would not be effective against raptors, he was certain that any rats still left in the building had better start worrying.

  “We’ll be leaving soon,” he said, scuffing the ground next to her with his boot. “Maybe in an hour or so at most.”

  She did not look up from her work.

  “You know I’ve got to go do this, don’t you?” he said. “I promised I’d get him there in one piece. And…chances are good he might just be right about all this.”

  Kate ignored him, focusing instead on the nock she was carving in the stick. She twirled the arrow shaft and checked it for trueness.

  “You know that I keep my promises, don’t you?”

  She said nothing.

  He sighed. She wasn’t biting, so he shifted his approach. “Going ratting again soon?” he asked.

  Nothing.

  He cleared his throat. “I know I should have asked you about all this, I know. No one has, and that has been an oversight on all our parts. You don’t speak up much, so we kind of forget about you. But you are important to us. All of us.”

  She stopped what she was working on and met his eyes. He crouched down on his haunches.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Do you think this virus business is for real?”

  She kept staring at him blankly.

  “Yeah, me too. Kate, I just don’t know what to think about you.” He picked up one of her arrows and examined the fletching she had made from raven feathers wrapped with thread. He spun it in his fingers and kept doing so. “We’ve been traveling together now for…what, a month? Two? And we still have not exchanged more than a few words between us. I know that you can speak, so I’ve got to assume it’s something else. Some other reason you don’t talk much.”

  Her eyes remained cold and impassive. He watched her as she picked up another stick and started to sharpen the tip. After drawing in a long, slow breath, he decided to get to the point and say what had kept him awake for most of the night.

  “Kate, you’re going to have to stay behind. It’s for the best. And, you’ll be safer here.” It was easier to say it than it was to actually believe in what he was saying. The decision hadn’t come easy, but he was sure it had been the right one to make. Deep down he knew there was a good chance he would not return.

  He picked up another of the makeshift arrows and flexed it, smiling crookedly at her. “I just hope I don’t end up with one of these stuck in my hide when I return.”

  She kept her focus on her hands as she worked the knife to make another notch in another stick.

  “I’m going too,” she said.

  He sat on the floor, scooted himself closer to her, and reached out to place a hand on her knee, but stopped himself, and put his hand on his own knee instead. “Yes, I wish you could come along. And, yes, I think you would be valuable to have along. You are an asset, Kate. I hope you can understand that is how I see you. You mean a lot to me. If…”—he stopped to breathe—“…if I wouldn’t have found you… I…”

  She set the knife down along with the freshly nocked arrow and reached out to touch him on the bare skin of his forearm. He felt a tingle as if a mild electrical current had passed between them. Her eyes never left his, and he peered back in wonder. Who was she? She was so young, and yet he found himself thinking of her as someone much older, much wiser. It was difficult to keep the two separate in his mind. Hell, she probably was smarter than him too. He was just a dumb cowboy from Texas, after all, with nothing more to his name than a good stint at high school football and a couple of tours overseas courtesy of Uncle Sam, and a whole long string of failures after that.

  He shifted again, flattening his hands on the floor and pushing himself upright to readjust to the many aches and pains that had awoken with him this morning.

  “There is something important you must do,” he blurted out as he resettled. He picked up one of the sticks. “You seem to have it partially figured out already.”

  She glanced away.

  “I will return for you,” he said. “You know that, and you can count on it. You’ve got my word. And, I’ve always done what I’ve promised, haven’t I?”

  She continued whittling away a long shaving of wood, letting it curl up slowly around the knife blade. When the blade finally cut through, she blew away the coiled whisker and set it to rolling across the tile floor.
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  Jesse watched it go. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure she had believed him, or that she would stay. He was having trouble believing his reasoning himself. But this was for the best, though, no matter what the truth of it was.

  “And,” he added, “Eve will be coming along with me. She won’t be here to bother you.”

  Kate stopped what she was doing. “Good,” she said and resumed her carving.

  He shared a fleeting moment of humor with her, savoring it like a last meal.

  “You can’t come after us, either, you know. So I’m counting on you to protect our things here. I’ve got a lot of important stuff that needs watching. It’s really our stuff, Kate.” He glanced around at all the orderly stacks of assorted crap that filled the place, wondering if, in his maddened state, he might have developed a problem with hoarding.

  She looked him over with a question clearly on her lips: Ours?

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “That is if you still want to hang around with an old fart like me when I get back. I might not be the best company at times, but you know I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

  She resumed working on her stick carving. She picked up another, checked it for straightness, and drew her knife along it lengthwise to take off a perceived imperfection.

  “Are you going to be okay with this?”

  “I’m not Hannah,” she said bluntly.

  He drew back in bewilderment, shaking his head from side to side. “What…? No…”

  She did not reply.

  He climbed to his feet and backed away a step.

  “I hear you calling her name when you sleep,” she said. Her tone was level and matter of fact.

  “No?” he whispered, head still shaking.