The Lingering (Book 2): Rangers

by Ben Brown

  “Steady,” Mary said as she took his arm and guided him to a nearby rock. “Yer still weak and the fresh air can sometimes make a poorly person feel faint.”

  Callum berated himself inwardly for his light headedness, and for not hearing Mary’s exit from the cave. Normally, he could hear a sparrow’s fart at a hundred yards, yet he had not heard her approach from mere feet away.

  He sat on the rock and lowered his head. After a minute or so, his head stopped spinning and he looked up at the woman still holding his arm.

  “Thank you,” he said weakly, and rose once more.

  He stood a good four inches taller than the petite blonde holding his arm. He looked down at her and saw how pretty, but stern her face was. Despite the fact Izzy had dark hair and brown eyes, she bore a striking resemblance to the blue eyed blonde now helping to support him. Mary was clearly a Maxwell, and a close relation to both Izzy and Tilly.

  “Is Izzy your kin?” he asked as he gently pulled his arm free of her grip.

  Mary nodded. “She’s my cousin. Her Pa and my Pa are brothers.”

  At that moment, a rustling of branches caught Callum’s attention and he spun on his heels to see what had caused the noise. La Roux ambled out of the undergrowth with a bush turkey in each hand, and a couple of rabbits slung over one shoulder. He looked up, and on seeing Callum, his face erupted into a grin.

  “I didn’t expect to see ya up and about so soon. How’s the arm?”

  Callum looked down at his mutilated wrist. On seeing the blood covered bandages that wrapped his stump, his mental fortitude momentarily wavered. Suddenly, a new and intense pain rushed him like a pack of attacking dogs. The pain was not only physical, but emotional too. He knew the Ranger Corps did not tolerate weakness of any kind, and what was weaker than a Ranger missing a hand? He now realized his life as a Ranger was all but over, which caused a wave of nausea to rise from his gut. The sensation threatened to consume him, so he closed his eyes and forced the bile and fear back down into his stomach where it belonged. He then quickly and systematically, stowed away both his worrisome doubts and his physical pain in one of the many mental boxes that lined the walls of his mind. Finally, he looked up at La Roux, and offered him a weak smile.

  “It hurts, but I’ll make it. I see you’ve been busy.”

  La Roux looked at the dead birds in his hands, then at the rabbits hung over his shoulder. “A man has to eat,” he said with a comical lick of the lips. “Are ya hungry?”

  “Not particularly, but I’ll force something down.”

  “I’m starving, and I know my kin are too,” Mary blurted uncontrollably.

  Both men turned to look at her, and they saw that she seemed embarrassed by her outburst.

  “Well I am, and so are they,” she said sheepishly. “Here give ‘em to me.” She approached La Roux and took his catches. “I’ll get one of the others to come out and help me clean ‘em. In a few hours we’ll all have full stomachs, which always makes things seem better. I know it’ll take more than a full stomach to get us out of this, but it’s a heck of a good place to start.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” La Roux said as he moved and sat on the rock beside Callum. He then looked at his friend intently and said, “We need to talk.”

  Callum nodded. “I know we do. Firstly, how the hell are we going to take that camp?”

  La Roux looked at the young Ranger in disbelief. “Callum, there’s no way in hell we can take that camp. The priority now is making sure all these women get out of here in one piece. You do realize we’ll be lucky to get out of these here mountains alive.” La Roux looked off thoughtfully toward the tree line. “Although, I have to say I’ve seen no signs of us being pursued. Last night I heard people and Lingerers hunting us, they seemed to be everywhere, but now the woods seem empty of everything but game. By now we should have the whole Maxwell clan after us, plus all the Lingerers they held at that camp.”

  Puzzled, Callum looked at La Roux and asked, “What makes you think they’d release their Lingerers.”

  “When I found ya, you were out cold. I had to fight off a whole bunch of undead before I could get ya out of there.”

  “The undead you fought were most likely the ones that broke out of the pen after I cut off my hand. They most likely tracked me by the smell of my blood, but there’s nothing to suggest they’d release the rest. Lingerers aside, why haven’t they started looking for us yet?”

  La Roux looked off into the undergrowth. “Good question, and it’s one I don’t have an answer to.”

  “I know why.”

  Both men looked toward the voice, and they saw Izzy stood by the bush that sheltered the mouth of the cave. Mary, along with the youngest looking girl of the group, stood at her side. Izzy turned to Mary and said, “While I have a yarn with our two new friends, you and Jess start on cleaning them there animals.”

  Mary nodded and took Jess by the hand. She led the girl to the small pile of dead game, then they both crouched and started inspecting the animals.

  Mary’s gaze then turned to the two Rangers. “I don’t suppose one of ya gentlemen could lend me something to skin these here varmints?”

  La Roux pulled his knife from his belt and strolled over to the two. “It’s right sharp so watch how ya use it.”

  Mary frowned at him. “Ya do realize I’ve skinned a rabbit or two in my time, and I managed to do it without losing a single finger.”

  La Roux’s cheeks turned red beneath his beard. “Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to insult ya.”

  Mary smiled. “Don’t assume all women are frail and helpless. Some of us can look after ourselves.”

  He tugged at his hat, and nodded his understanding. He then turned to Izzy. “You say ya know why there’s no one tracking us yet. Why would ya know something like that?”

  Izzy looked at Mary, and as if she had given some unspoken order, her two kin picked up the game and moved away. She waited for Mary and Jess to move out of earshot before she explained further.

  Chapter 12

  Izzy looked back at the cave for a moment, and then turned and moved to join Callum on the rock. La Roux followed her and hunkered near their feet.

  “Your attack isn’t the first the camp has ever suffered.” Izzy began as she looked in the direction of her former imprisonment. “Since it was first built, the camp’s been attacked at least two or three times a year. Mostly the raiders were after just two things; women and food. Nearly all the raids failed before they ever got a chance to turn and run. The men of the camp would out gun, or out fight those who attacked, and then they would feed ‘em to the undead. Sometimes though, the raiders would get away with women, food and other supplies.” She shook her head slowly. “When that happened all hell would break loose.

  “Pa soon learned that if you couldn’t catch the raiders—and more importantly the women they’d taken—in the first few minutes of the chase, then a different tactic was needed. Something more than just running into the woods blindly hoping to find those ya hunted. You see, as mad as my Pa is, he’s still a real smart man.”

  Callum shifted position, and winced as a lightning bolt of pain shot up his arm. With a grimace that caught La Roux’s attention, he settled again and turned to Izzy. “It’s been hours since we escaped. Any chance of picking up our scent is all but gone. That is, unless he knows about this cave. No, I think our trail is well and truly cold, and I think he stands little chance of tracking us.”

  “He won’t be tracking you, he’ll be tracking the women he’s lost.”

  “What do you mean?” La Roux asked.

  Izzy stood and moved to the edge of the small clearing. As if a sudden chill had settled on her, she wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. She then turned and looked back at the Rangers.

  “He has Hunters for each of the women in that cave. Hunters who will never tire or give up.”

  Callum stood and move to her side. “What do you mean?”

  “Ya have to understand,
my Pa is more of a monster than any Lingerer could ever be. The undead hunt and kill because something has taken away what makes them human, but my Pa kills because he’s crazy. He’s far worse than the undead, because he knows exactly what he’s doing … and worse of all, he enjoys it.”

  Izzy slowly rolled up both her shirt sleeves to reveal her forearms. Each arm was covered in a tight latticework of scars, each no more than an inch in length. So tightly woven were the scars that barely any untouched flesh could be seen.

  Callum moved closer and peered down at her arms. He grimaced and said, “I noticed scars like this on Tilly and Mary. What be they?”

  “Every woman from camp Maxwell has them. My Pa made each and every one of these scars himself.”

  “Why?” La Roux asked as he gently took her arms and examined them more closely.

  “Pa values the women of the camp above all other things. We breed his young folk, and we pleasure his men. He would rather us dead than see anyone else have us, and that’s where these marks come in.

  “He cuts each woman every couple of months or so, and then feeds the blood to a Lingerer on a piece of bread. He makes a big ceremony of it … kinda like the Catholics do. Only, it ain’t the blood of Christ he’s feeding to those things; it’s our blood. Each woman has her own Lingerer, he calls ‘em, ‘Hunters’.”

  Callum’s jaw dropped and he simply stared at Izzy in disbelief. “But if ya ain’t cut or bleeding, then how can those things track you?”

  She shrugged. “I truly have no idea, but they do. As soon as a girl becomes a woman, Pa will select one of the most aggressive undead he can find, and he’ll then move it to the Hunters’ compound. From there on in—except for the small amounts of our blood soaked bread—he never feeds it again.

  “If one of the women is due a flogging, then he brings out her Hunter and chains it up just out of reach. With every lash of the whip, the thing gets more crazed by her blood. Often, the men have to beat it back to keep it from breaking loose and ripping her to bits. We’re all forced to watch as she screams for mercy.” Izzy’s shaking hand went to her pale face, and she wiped away a tear. “As the Hunter gets more and more inflamed by her blood, the man doing the flogging always increases the force behind each lash. It doesn’t stop ‘til the flesh on her back is nothing more than raw meat. It’s both terrible, and terrifying.”

  “Jesus,” Callum breathed.

  Izzy nodded. “And that’s not the worst of it. If a woman really gives him cause to punish her, then he might cut off a finger or a toe, sometimes even a hand, and he’ll feed it to the Hunter too. He’ll make the woman watch as her Hunter eats part of her own body. I’m telling ya, once those things get a taste of your blood, they’ll follow ya to the ends of the Earth. The thought of being chased down by one of those things is more terrifying than watching it eat part of ya.”

  Callum placed a hand on her shoulder. “Yer talking as if you know the fear first hand.”

  Izzy bent and pulled off her left boot, to reveal three of her five toes were missing. She then turned and pulled up her shirt. Her back bore more scars than Callum’s own, and they were more tightly laced. It almost looked as if the scars were the result of flames rather than a whip. Her whole back appeared to be one massive scar, which looked hard and knotted.

  La Roux made a retching noise, and vomited in the dirt. After two more dry retches, he cuffed his mouth clean, and then uttered, “Sweet Jesus. And that man is supposed to be your pa, and this is how he treats ya! God damn if that don’t make me want to rip off his head with my own two hands!”

  Callum moved forward and gently lowered Izzy’s shirt. “I still don’t understand how the Hunters can track you if ya not bleeding. I’ve seen those things track the scent of blood, but never the scent of an uninjured person.”

  “I’ve seen it before,” La Roux said as he settled on the edge of a rock. “Back before ya joined our unit, we had a rookie called O’Toole. Anyhow, we were on a mission to flush out about thirty Lingerers from the basement of a church. As the undead weren’t biters, everything went pretty much to plan. We led ‘em out of the building, but there weren’t enough wagons to take ‘em all at once, so we were left with four to watch over ‘til the wagons got back.

  “We tied them up and set about fixing some grub. Well that fool O’Toole cut himself as he peeled the potatoes, and it sent the undead we was watching into a frenzy. They were tied, so we weren’t too concerned. I told O’Toole it was his fault they’d got ornery, so he had to take care of ‘em. Well, he shot the first three straight between the eyes, but with the last one—which by the way was making the most noise—he took off his bloody glove and shoved it in its mouth. I guess he was trying to look tough in front of us, but ya know how strong those things can be when they taste blood.”

  Callum held up his stump. “I sure do.”

  La Roux patted his friend on the back, and then continued. “Well, of course the thing broke loose of its ropes and it went for him. O’Toole panicked, dropped his gun and fell to the ground. I ran over and I managed to pull him free of the thing. Once he was clear, I belted the Lingerer in the face with the butt of my rifle. I damn near caved half its head in, and it fell to the ground. It looked deader than a rock, so I turned back to O’Toole and gave him a piece of my mind. He just sat there with his head hung, and took everything I threw at him. Back then, we still used to bury the undead, not burn ‘em. As part of his punishment for being a fool, I made O’Toole dig all four graves and then deal with the undead on his own. Sure enough, he buried all four.

  “Six months went by, and we were some twenty miles from that there church when O’Toole met his end. Ya see, I may have caved that things face in, but I sure didn’t mash its brains up good enough.

  “We were sleeping and O’Toole had watch. Next thing I know, he’s screaming, and we’re waking like God himself is calling to us. I find O’Toole with half his guts torn out, and the Lingerer with the mashed in face is feeding on him. That thing dun dug itself out of a grave, then found O’Toole some twenty miles from where we’d left it. And all because it got the taste of that fools blood.”

  Callum shook his head. “Why have ya never told me that before?”

  La Roux just shrugged and said, “Boy, if I told ya every gruesome thing I’ve seen, then we’d never sleep at night.”

  “True,” Callum agreed as he looked back at Izzy. “But it still don’t explain why your pa ain’t marching his way up here right now.”

  “Pa’s a showman. He likes to make everything bigger than it needs to be, so he always starts the hunt at noon. All the men head to the Hunters’ pens to watch ‘em being released. They keep a fair ways back, but they follow those monsters ‘til they find their prey. Then they watch as the Hunter rips the woman apart. Normally, there’s only one Hunter … today I think he’ll release all fifteen.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before,” La Roux growled as he pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time.

  “We—I mean my women kinfolk and me—needed rest before we ran. Plus, Callum was hurt and he needed some fixing up. No way could we have moved ‘til day break at the earliest.”

  “She’s right,” Callum said as he placed a consoling hand on her shoulder.

  “Well, right or not, we have a little under five hours ‘til he lets loose his undead hounds. Tell Mary the food will have to wait, we have to run now.”

  Izzy took La Roux’s big hand in hers. “But they’re starving, Pierre. They won’t make it more than a few miles without food. We all think we’re going to meet our end, at least let us do it with full bellies.”

  “Again, she’s right,” Callum said as he looked back toward camp Maxwell. “Izzy, where does your pa keep these Hunters?”

  She turned and looked in the same direction as Callum, she then pointed to his left. “See those rocks?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well they’re about two miles from the camp, the Hunters are there.”

&nb
sp; Callum then turned to her. “Why didn’t your pa use the Hunters to find your sisters, Tilly and Alice?”

  “Alice were with child and Pa wanted the babe. If he sent out their Hunters, they would’ve ate ‘em.”

  Callum nodded and turned back to look at where the Hunters were kept. “I think we need to take those undead out, and we have less than five hours to do it.”

  La Roux moved to his side. “I don’t know what it is yer thinking, but yer in no shape for a fight.”

  Callum looked at his friend and smiled solemnly. “Whether I’m in shape for a fight or not really doesn’t matter. What matters now is keeping the Hunters off the women.”

  “And ya think we can do that?” La Roux said as he followed Callum’s gaze.

  “Maybe, maybe not, but we have to try. First things first, let’s get that food cooked and the women fed.”

  Chapter 13

  Jacob Maxwell stared up at the mountain above him, and pictured his daughter—as well as the rest of his women—cowering in a hole somewhere. He had to admit, the sensation brought him a certain amount of satisfaction.

  His hands went to the wide expanse of his stomach, and he caressed it in much the same way as a pregnant woman might caress her own child-filled abdomen. His girth however was the result of living to excess, while others around him starved. He knew others in his group went hungry while he gorged, but the knowledge of their discomfort brought him neither pain nor pleasure.

  As far as he was concerned, all of mankind was doomed. So if his people starved, then all the better. Besides, as the voice of God, he had earned the right to eat and drink as he pleased. God had made it abundantly clear to him that he was to be his mouth piece on Earth, and as such, he could enjoy all the world’s bounties without fear of retribution. So with God’s blessing, he indulged in all the pleasures afforded to him. He enjoyed sex with his women, and he also found great pleasure in the pain he inflicted, but above all things, he enjoyed his food.