The Awakened World Boxed Set

by William Stacey

  The dogs were still silent, likely sleeping.

  Erin dropped to a knee and took aim at the back of one of the Ferals. Angie did likewise. "We fire, alert the settlement, then run. You keep up with me," she whispered.

  "Got it."

  Erin opened fire, and her target dropped. She switched targets, firing in rapid succession. Another Feral down. Two more. Her empty casings spun into the air as she kept up a nonstop onslaught of lethal fire. Angie shot as well, although Erin doubted that she saw what she was shooting at. The Ferals, understanding they were being attacked from behind, turned and fired at them, their bullets cracking over the women's heads. Now gunfire came from the watchtower, muzzle flashes lighting up, and a single red flare rocketed into the sky from within the settlement.

  Erin rose, gripping Angie's arm. "Time to go," she said breathlessly, surprised to realize she was enjoying the hell out of this.

  They ran, with Erin still holding Angie's forearm.

  They were at least a kilometer away, still running, when they heard the mini gun from the Shrike open fire. Turning, Erin saw the red tracers arc down from the sky as the rapid-reaction aircraft shot up the Ferals. Then she saw the duo-rotored stealth aircraft bank to light up the Ferals once more. She chuckled in amusement when an air-to-ground rocket exploded, imagining how angry the Ferals must be. "Well," she said to Angie. "As much fun as that was, we just told everyone we're out here."

  "Maybe," Angie answered breathlessly, "but I'm glad we did."

  "Me too. Come on. I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep."

  "Robert Frost? You're full of surprises, Erin Seagrave."

  "You have no idea."

  They slipped away to the sound of heavy machine-gun fire, punctuated by the occasional air-to-ground rocket.

  She grinned. The Ferals were having a really bad night.

  Chapter 15

  Angie paused to adjust the straps on her backpack, letting her rifle hang by its sling, and then hurried after Erin through the dark night. After the mad sprint from the Ferals, Erin had eased the pace but still maintained a faster tempo than Angie was used to. She's worried about the Shrike, Angie knew. The response aircraft was going to scour the woods anywhere near the settlement for Feral stragglers, with successive sweeps going farther out. The state-of-the-art stealth aircraft were equipped with night-vision canopies and infrared targeting. A good crew could track a rabbit through dense brush, and the Home Guard's crew were all very good at what they did. If they pick up two-people sized signatures this far from a farming community, they’ll fire a rocket first and ask questions never.

  And I have no shade for protection anymore.

  But the attack she feared never came. They moved north, keeping the broken remains of the old Highway 43 on their right while staying in the woods that paralleled the one-time major artery. Sometimes, Angie saw flashes of the highway through the trees. In the bright partial moon and clear night sky, the ruined highway was littered and blocked by long lines of burned-out vehicles, cars, trucks, buses—anything that could have carried people away from the deathtraps the cities had become in the absence of power or order.

  The highways had been no escape. Most of the people in those vehicles had starved to death; she didn't want to think about the others. The things humans did to their own kind were infinitely worse than anything the Fey had done.

  After three hours, Erin called a halt, and they sat, resting their feet and drinking water, eating another MRE. Erin wanted Angie to change her socks, replacing the ones she had taken from her apartment with a dry pair from the backpack, but Angie didn’t want to put on socks that were too large until she had no other choice. A poor fit produced blisters just as quickly as wet ones did, and they had a long way to travel in dangerous country. All too soon, Erin rose to start hiking again. With a weary sigh, Angie followed her.

  The air was hot and dry, but at least it was marginally cooler than during the day. The scents of pine and wildflowers thrilled her. There was an earthy smell to being out in the wilderness, decomposing leaves and animal droppings, but it was all so ... clean when compared to the city—or the sewer. Her sweat dried on her skin and turned salty, and soon her clothing stiffened and began to chafe. At one point, she heard coyotes howling, and the sound sent a shiver down her spine.

  Erin glanced at her over her shoulder. "Don't worry about them. They're just telling me they're there. Kind of a courtesy."

  Angie forced a smile to her lips as she followed the other woman. A courtesy, she says.

  It wasn't as if she hadn’t ever been out in the wilderness before. After the incident, she had ridden all alone from the Bunker to Fresno in a single day, even if she barely remembered it. She had been out of her mind at the time, driven to extremes by her hysteria at killing all those people. She must have had a horseshoe up her butt, because she had made it safely. By contrast, walking wasn't only slower but infinitely more dangerous. Should I have held out for horses when bargaining with Mads? She sighed at the thought of trying to bring horses through the sewer.

  They stopped after another three hours and made camp within another copse of trees. They had walked almost twenty-five kilometers, half the way to Fresno, which was easily the longest march Angie had ever made. The ruins of Selma were several kilometers ahead of them, dark against the approaching dawn, and Erin was leery of moving through them in the daylight. Angie knew she should have been more concerned about the ruins at night, but she kept that to herself. This far from the Fresno Enclave, there was little chance of running into any of Ephix's vampires, but there were other, older things that prowled the ruins of humanity.

  They had been on their feet for nine hours, and Angie wasn't ashamed to admit she was exhausted, the soles of her feet hot. Erin made her remove her boots and socks and examined her feet, pronouncing her “fine.” They didn't feel fine; they felt like swollen lumps. She hung her wet socks over a tree branch, took one of the Cloridine pills—ignoring the glance Erin gave her—stripped down, crawled into her bivvy bag, and pulled her blanket up to her chin. In moments, she was out.

  This time she was too exhausted to dream or at least to remember the dream if she did.

  Or maybe it was the pills.

  Either way, she slept like a log until late in the afternoon. Erin was gone, no doubt on sentry, and Angie felt a stab of guilt.

  When Erin returned an hour later, Angie offered to take a shift and let her sleep, but the other woman shook her head. "No offense, but after the Ferals last night and alerting the Home Guard, I don't feel safe trusting your senses."

  "You can't stay up all night and all day."

  "I don't. I told you, I snooze on sentry. I'm good." She flashed a smile at Angie, but to her it looked a bit forced. There was a hint of fatigue in the other woman's eyes, no matter what she said about naps. "Besides, I kept hearing one of the Shrikes all day. Didn't see it, though, so it must have been pretty far away."

  "You can hear a Shrike? During the day?"

  Erin snorted. "That surprises you?"

  "What do you think they were doing?"

  "Don't know, but if they picked us up on IR, they'd have tagged us as Ferals, part of the group last night, and engaged us already."

  That was the standard operating procedure whenever an aircraft suspected Feral activity. Foreboding snaked through her, tightening her gut. No, Erin's right. If they had picked us up, we'd be dead. She changed the subject. "We made good time last night."

  "Not bad," Erin agreed as she tore open one of the MRE foil-wrapped meals and dug into it with her fingers, talking and chewing at the same time. "If we do as well tonight, I expect we'll reach the outer limits, the old suburbs, of Fresno before sunrise."

  Angie's head jerked up. "We can't go into the city at night."

  Erin watched her. "Why not?"

  "Trust me. You don't go in at night. The vampires."

  "Oh." Erin’s lips tightened. "That's true? What they say—vampires are real?"
>
  "Real enough. They're not immortal undead lovers, though, not even remotely sexy like in the old books and movies. They're a type of Fey. They guard the enclave at night."

  "There's no guards during the day?"

  "'Course there are, but the gargoyles won't ... look, I don't want to get into it, but there's always been something about me that drives the vamps a bit loopy."

  Erin's brows knit closer together. "Define loopy?"

  "Like instead of watching and reporting us to their mistress, they're just as likely to attack and drain my blood—a vamp gang-bang, only not at all in a fun way."

  "Oh, okay then." Erin finished off her MRE, licking her fingers. "We'll wait for daylight."

  When darkness fell, they slipped past the ruins of Selma, giving the dead city a wide berth. Like most people her age, Angie was afraid of the old cities. They gave her the creeps. Even eighteen years after A-Day, much of the supernatural world and many of its creatures remained undiscovered by humanity, many preferring to hide within the ruins where there'd be no people; far too many people just vanished within them. Angie suspected most of the disappearances were a result of the vampires, but she also knew enough of the paranormal to know she didn't know nearly enough.

  Once past Selma, they moved northwest, this time keeping Highway 99 on their right. Like the previous night, a star-filled, clear sky lit the surrounding countryside. Highway 99, a much larger highway, was even more clogged than 43 had been, particularly the closer they got to the outskirts of Fresno.

  This night, Erin stopped after only two hours—when she saw Angie limping—and ordered her to take her boots and socks off and show Erin her feet. The hot spots from last night had become blisters, large, painful ones on her heels and soles filled with fluid. Erin sighed, Angie's foot on her lap. "You should have said something."

  "I'm fine."

  She removed a needle from her backpack's first aid kit, squirted it with something, and then lanced the largest blister.

  "Ow!" Angie exclaimed.

  When she tried to draw her foot back, Erin gripped it tightly by the ankle. "Don't be a little bitch."

  "Thanks," she said sarcastically.

  "You're welcome." She squeezed the blister between her thumbs, the watery discharge squirting out. Then she cleaned the surface of Angie's foot, patting the blister down. Finally, she rubbed cold gel on it, releasing the strong scent of alcohol into the air, and taped it over with a small bandage. "Other foot," she ordered.

  Angie gave it to her, and she lanced two more blisters on that foot, treating them the same way. "Thanks," Angie said when she put her socks and boots back on and found she could walk without limping.

  They continued, making slower but acceptable progress. The land was wild and overgrown, and the closer they got to Fresno, the more animals they saw—or rather, the more animals Erin claimed to have seen. Animals were drawn to Char, Angie knew, and always had been. Maybe they just sense they're safe around her. Char had a way with wild animals—and lonely little girls who can cast magic. Ephix had always chastised Char for never turning away a stray.

  Just after three thirty, they passed the remains of the town of Fowler. It had long since been reclaimed by the wilderness, but once it had been a thriving farming community of several thousand people. This close to Fresno, the farmland had been gutted when the hungry hordes abandoned the cities in search of food. The violence that had begun in the cities spread to the rural regions when the farmers tried to defend their homes. There was no telling starving people they couldn't have food because you were saving it for yourself. No one had any real idea how many people had died in the first few months. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? More? She had been too young to remember the Food Wars and the anarchy, but she had lost her entire family to them.

  They were much closer to Fresno now, maybe only another five kilometers to the remains of Malaga on the city's outskirts. They had decided earlier Malaga was as close as they'd go before sunrise.

  She almost walked into Erin before she realized the other woman had stopped, her posture stiff. Then Erin gripped Angie's shoulder and pulled her down to lie among the knee-high needlegrass. Instantly, her fears raced to Ferals. If captured, the best they could hope for was to be killed outright and eaten, but for two young women, their fates would be much worse, their deaths long in coming.

  Angie held her rifle in a death-grip. She'd kill as many as she could first, but she'd never be taken.

  Then she heard what Erin must have heard long before her—the whine of a Shrike's muffled turbine, its rotors nearly silent in the night. Her heart raced in fear, knowing the first indication they'd have that the aircrew were hunting them would be the fireball that consumed them.

  The explosion never came.

  The sound of the turbine passed overhead, and Angie saw the dark bulk of the aircraft, high overhead, blot out the stars as it swept past. Moments later, the sound of the muffled turbine was gone. Erin had her remain prone for several more minutes, and then she rose, motioning Angie to follow. Not us, Angie realized. They weren't after us. But what was a Shrike doing this far north?

  They slipped forward once more, unbelievably lucky to have escaped notice.

  Chapter 16

  Neither Angie nor Erin heard the helicopter again. Angie wondered at that. Maybe it took a different route back; maybe someone was meeting with Char; maybe someone thought it a good idea to sweep the enclave. If that was what had happened, it wasn't a good idea at all. The Fey distrusted humans at the best of times, those that didn't hate them outright. Besides, the terms of the Concord specifically stated humans would stay away from the Fey enclaves. Reconnaissance missions would only piss them off. Surely Nathan knew that.

  Did he?

  Nathan's anger with Char and the Fey tended to blind him.

  Tired and on edge, they slipped through the countryside, seeing nothing. At least Angie didn't see anything. She had no idea what Erin could see. Just after four thirty, they reached Malaga on the outskirts of Fresno. Angie could just make out Fresno's skyline to the north where it blocked the night stars—or at least those skyscrapers that still stood in the city's downtown core. Most of those buildings were now little more than burned-out husks.

  Erin looked about, scanning their surroundings, before pointing off to their left. "There's some thick vegetation over there," she said softly. "We can sleep for a few hours, at least until the sun's up, and then—"

  Her words were cut off as an angry buzzing storm swept upon them, quickly overwhelming them. A vast cloud of biting insects attacked, enveloping them both before either could react. In the darkness, not realizing what was happening, Angie opened her mouth, and the insects rushed in, choking her. She gasped, coughing, and fell to her knees as the insects kept up their onslaught. Erin's rifle fired several quick shots, and despite her predicament, Angie saw figures rushing at them—people, running into the insect swarm. Her initial panicked thoughts were Ferals, but no Feral could command insects. Could Char?

  A figure slammed into Angie, knocking her forward onto her belly. Her backpack was wrenched from her as someone knelt on her back and yanked her head back by her hair. She felt the cold bite of a sharp knife against her throat and lay still, knowing it was already too late.

  The swarm of insects dissipated, literally falling out of the sky and splashing onto the ground. Not insects but liquid, blood—it was blood. Even the insects that had flown into her mouth were gone, replaced now by the coppery taste of blood.

  Now her terror mounted.

  Erin lay nearby, four men holding her down, one on each limb, her eyes dull, blood trailing from her scalp where she must have been struck by a weapon, likely a rifle butt.

  A torch flared to life, its flames chasing away the darkness but revealing their attackers and the two corpses of men Erin had shot. At first, Angie thought they had been captured by the Home Guard, because the men, at least a dozen of them, wore advanced night-vision glasses over their faces, sub
-guns in their hands. When the men raised the glasses atop their heads, she saw they were all strangers. And they were wearing not Home Guard uniforms but an assortment of military fatigues. The fact that the men had been lying in wait to ambush them was obvious. What wasn't was how. Why hadn't Erin heard or smelled them?

  "You're probably wondering how we could take you so easily," a woman said in a strange accent.

  Angie's blood turned cold as Mother Smoke Heart stepped into view, now wearing the same odd uniform as the others. She wore her hexed scimitar on her hip but hadn't bothered to draw it.

  "Let's just say you're not the only one with gifts."

  "Damn you. Leave me alone," Angie said, the knife edge tight against the skin of her throat.

  Mother Smoke Heart's eyes narrowed in surprise, and she smiled, although the smile was hardly friendly. "You? I want nothing from you and never have. In fact, you've caused me considerable trouble." She sighed. "And I lost one of my favorite scarves. Not at all a trade I'd have made."

  The men forced the groggy Erin to her feet, held her in place as the woman approached. Erin's rifle was gone, the strap hanging broken. Very slowly, Angie's hand drifted down her thigh, and she felt the cold metal of her assault rifle, still hanging from its strap, but she'd never be able to use it lying like this, with a man on her back and a knife against her throat.

  "You, on the other hand, young lady, I'm very happy to finally meet. You have caused me quite a bit of unhappiness, but all's well that ends well."