She heard the buzz of flies. She covered her mouth with her hand, but the smell of death was already making her gag. She knew it was a human. What was left of it.
There was a crimson stain spread out over a large area of the weeds. There were the remains of clothing, but they were shredded and blood-stained, too.
Ailin saw hair, bones, a pair of combat boots . . . And were those fingers still wrapped around the gun? She groaned and turned away as her stomach roiled.
Brannet Sneadley was beyond help. He might not have been the nicest person she’d ever met, but surely he hadn’t deserved such a violent death.
Eli stared at Ailin’s back. This had to be hard for her. He knew what it was like to see human remains for the first time. He wouldn’t have let her see it, but it was too late now. There was no erasing it from her memory.
He placed his hand on her shoulder. “You all right?”
She nodded without saying a word. As she remained silent, he couldn’t suppress a faint smile. That just might be a first.
But he quickly sobered when he looked over her shoulder, knew from the way her spine suddenly stiffened that she had seen it, too.
“Shhh,” he whispered as he dragged her down to the ground and counted.
One. Two. Three of them. They were fighting over the remains, so they were occupied at the moment. But they needed to get out of there fast.
Josiah knew he was pushing the kids to their limit, but he didn’t have any choice. The shadows were deepening in the timber. Night was close. So was the storm. And so was something else in the darkness behind them. He could hear the faint crashing sounds in the brush.
“Come on, Zach,” he urged. “We’ll carry the smaller kids if we have to.”
Like Zach, Josiah was already spent and out of breath. His legs were burning and his muscles were on fire. He knew Tessa couldn’t be doing much better.
He turned to look back and reassure her, but what he saw made him drive the others, and himself, even harder. Four of those things were closing in on them. They were fanning out like lions closing in on their prey.
For the first time he was assailed by doubt. Maybe they would have been better off if they’d stayed with the bus. Maybe . . .
He shook his head. No. Now was not the time to be second guessing himself. They had to get to the Creyvan House before dark. It was their only chance of surviving.
Following the regular road all the way around would take too long. They found a place where the rock was broken and not so steep and they could climb with relative ease. As if something was guiding them, they found another path of ascent and they started to climb higher still.
“Go up, Zach,” Josiah urged. “Hurry. Pull Caleb and Bobby up.”
Before he could grab hold of Zach’s hand, Bobby tripped and fell back. He sobbed in terror, but Josiah swept him up off his feet and hauled him up under his arm. And then with a mighty effort, he pulled them both upward.
Zach had Caleb by the hand and Tessa and Sisha were laboring through the brush together.
“Come on, kids,” he gritted under his breath as he ran. “Come on.”
Were they going to make it? They had to.
Once they reached a level, they ran through darkness so dense now that he could not even distinguish the Creyvan house, wherever it was. But the lightning guided them. By its brief flashes the black bulk of the house suddenly loomed before them. They had almost reached the front porch when a shadow separated itself from the trees. Josiah swung the axe but it had little effect. It barely slowed the zombie down. Their only salvation now was speed. They ran across the yard under the black walnut trees.
They crashed into unseen brush but didn’t dare slow down. Sisha cried out in terror when her dress caught on something. Nobody knew what it was because she was suddenly free and she was running again.
There wasn’t a moment to spare, Josiah knew. Without a moment’s hesitation he broke the lock off the front door with the axe. The door banged shut just as one of those things crawled up onto the porch. There wasn’t time to check the interior of the house. They had to hope there was nothing inside. Either it was a safe haven or it wasn’t.
“Hold the door,” Josiah yelled.
They worked together to drag heavy furniture over to the door, barricading it with everything they could find. The old house had heavy wooden shutters. They hurried through the house and closed all of these. And then they huddled together in a terrified little group as thunder crashed and rain began pelting the old house with big, heavy drops.
As the storm came shrieking down with a vengeance, they prayed together and tried not to listen to the snarling and the clawing of the things that wanted to get in.
“You’re breaking in?”
Ailin answered her own question. Of course he was breaking in. He didn’t have a key.
“Do you have a key?” Eli muttered over his shoulder a second before the door swung open.
“Wait here while I look around,” he told her before he disappeared inside, so she waited while thunder muttered ominously, lightning flashed and the weathered floorboards of the porch creaked beneath her gym shoes.
“It’s empty,” he said when he came back.
“Are we safe here?” she asked when she stepped inside the doorway. It was so dark she couldn’t see a thing.
“Safer than we would be out there.”
They didn’t have much of a choice. They kept seeing more and more zombies. Eli doubted they would last the night out in the open. They’d stumbled on the cabin by pure luck. He wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“No lights,” Eli cautioned. “Your eyes will adjust.”
By the flashes of lightning she could see his profile in the dark room.
“We won’t be having a steak and lobster dinner,” he told her. “But someone’s been thoughtful enough to supply this place with food.”
Ailin released her breath in a slow sigh as she relaxed for the first time since this had all started. She smoothed her top and the skirt down and brushed her hair back from her face. Most of it had come loose from the braid a long time ago.
It seemed that longer than a day had passed since- since her whole world had turned upside down.
When her eyes adjusted and she was able to make out dark shapes in the room, Ailin dropped down on the sofa. Only then did she realize how exhausted she was. She must have been running on pure adrenaline for the past few hours. Right now it seemed to be all catching up with her.
Odd that it didn’t seem strange to her anymore that she had put her very life into the hands of a man that she barely knew. That she had come to trust him on several levels after knowing him for such a short time. On her own, she admitted to herself, she would never have survived. She owed him a great deal.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve been up since two o’clock this morning. I’m dead on my feet.” There was a silence as Eli realized what he’d just said. “We’ll fix something to eat and then get some sleep.”
After a cold dinner of canned foods, Eli told her to take the sofa while he spread some blankets and dropped a pillow on the floor.
“Are you sure you’re okay sleeping there?” she asked him.
He let his breath out in a long sigh as his head dropped back on the pillow. “I could probably sleep on a bed of nails and not even notice it.”
“Do you think they’ll get the TV and the internet going again?” he heard her ask in the darkness.
“I don’t know. I kind of doubt it. Once they take something away, they don’t usually give it back. I’m sure the situation will continue to degrade. For a while at least.”
“How bad do you think it will get?”
“Bad.”
“Do you think it’s like this everywhere?”
He was arranging his blanket. After a silence, he asked, “You’re thinking about your sister and your sister-in-law?”
“I can’t help but think about them.”
A long peal of thunder followed a bright flash of lightning.
“Do you believe what that soldier said about the vaccines?” she asked in the darkness.
“For now, we don’t have any reason not to believe him.”
Yeah, the alternative was pretty grim, Eli thought.
“Do you think those things sleep?” he heard.
He glanced over at her above him and said, “As far as I know, everything has to sleep.”
“Maybe they’re nocturnal.”
He lifted his arms and laced his hands behind his head. He wasn’t used to conversations before bedtime. Especially with a beautiful woman lying next to him. But she, apparently, seemed to need to talk to unwind.
Rather than finding her talk annoying as he might have expected, he was finding that her voice was soothing him and lulling him into a drowsy state.
“They were human once,” she went on. “So that doesn’t make much sense, does it? Them being nocturnal. That can’t be right,” she answered herself.
She asked another question. “Do you always sleep with your boots on?”
“Not usually.”
But then it wasn’t life as usual.
Ailin rolled over onto her back and stared up at the dark ceiling as she thought about the little dog out there all alone. She prayed that he was safe somewhere. That he wasn’t scared.
It began to rain. A hard, drenching rain. It didn’t take long for her eyes to close. She soon fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof and Eli’s deep, even breathing next to her.
Chapter 17
_______________
A birdsong awakened Ailin. She didn’t have to open her eyes to know that there was daylight beyond the windows. Still half lost in a dream, she wanted to go back to that world where there was no desperate flight. No violent death. No zombies.
There was a chill in the air, so she snuggled deeper into her blanket. When she finally did open her eyes, she saw that sunlight was filtering through the leaves on the porch and that there was no wind and no rain. Everything was still. Everything was so peaceful, in fact, that it seemed that yesterday could have been some nightmare and she’d woken up to the real world.
Her hands itched and she saw that she had two mosquito bites on her fingers. They must have been in the cabin last night. She also saw that she had chipped two of her finger nails. So much for her expensive manicure.
But she was alive. She had made it through the night. That was something. And she had Eli to thank for it.
Where was Eli? And what state was the world in this morning? Maybe things were better. Maybe whatever it was, was over. Maybe . . .
It was so quiet that she had a sudden stab of fear. Maybe Eli had abandoned her. Or maybe something had happened to him. She bolted up on the couch.
“You awake?” she heard.
“Barely,” she answered as she finally located him by the sound of his voice.
“Were you outside?” she asked.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And?”
“Nothing’s moving. Everything’s quiet out there.”
She assumed that meant he hadn’t seen any zombies.
He had obviously been up for a while. She noted with some surprise that he was cleanly-shaven.
“Have you been up long?” she asked, easing down a bit.
“A while.”
“What have you been doing,” she asked after a leisurely yawn and a prolonged stretch.
“Waiting for you to wake up. I have breakfast ready.”
She saw a new assortment of cans on the table.
“You could have woken me up sooner.”
“There wasn’t any reason,” he said. “I kind of liked sleeping in late for a change.”
It wasn’t really late, she thought. But then, Eli did look like the kind of man who usually got up at the crack of dawn.
“Is that coffee I smell? How did you manage that?”
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” he replied without looking up. He was seated at the table, going over the map. “And it was necessary that I had some coffee.”
“Necessary, huh?” She pushed her blanket back and stood up. She shuffled across the room and sat down at the table across from him, shivered and rubbed her arms to warm them up.
Without looking at her, he tossed a jacket at her that had been hanging on the back of his chair. “You can put that on till it warms up.”
“So you really waited for me to wake up before you had breakfast?” she asked as he finally set the map aside and picked up the can opener.
He arched a dark, questioning brow at her from across the table.
“You don’t strike me as the patient type,” she commented as he slid a can of peaches across the table. He’d already picked up on her favorites.
Beyond the kitchen windows, the air was still and suffused with mist. It looked like an incredibly beautiful fall morning.
“I used to love the fall,” she said wistfully as they ate. “What am I saying? I sound like I’m writing my obituary.” She speared a peach with her fork. “I still love the fall.”
He stared at her for a moment and then devoted himself to his own breakfast.
“It’s quiet here,” she said. “But I can’t help but wonder what Willow Grove looks like right now.”
She probably didn’t want to know, Eli thought to himself. He had seen plenty of war zones and the after effects of battles. Willow Grove probably looked a lot like that. Houses and stores would be burned out shells because the fires would have spread. People would no doubt be hiding in the buildings that were still standing. Some would try to shelter in place. Some would try to get out of town. Mostly, people would be frantic to find their loved ones. There would be wounded people to take care of. And dead. Both kinds of dead.
“I found some clothes in the laundry room,” he said. “They’re boy’s clothes but they’re clean and they look like they’ll be a lot more comfortable than what you’ve got on now.”
Ailin looked at the gun setting on the table. “Where did that come from?”
“I found it in a canister in the pantry. Along with some ammo. So we’re a lot better off today than we were last night.”
“So . . . Um.” There was something she needed to know. There was no other way to find out than to come right out and ask him. “Did you have the vaccines?”
“No, I didn’t have the shots. I was overseas at the time they were giving them. Like Snead said, there are all kinds of things in vaccines that shouldn’t be there. And I’ve always been of the opinion that you can’t keep putting artificial things into the human body without seriously compromising the immune system and a person’s well-being. So you don’t have to worry about me turning into one of those things.”
Gazing at him sitting across the table from her, Ailin felt a tremendous sense of relief. Overnight she had found herself relying on him. Not just physically, but emotionally, too. Who wouldn’t? The man seemed reliable and rock steady. He had proven that he could, and would, protect her.
She looked down at his strong fingers wrapped around the coffee mug and asked, “What do you think it’s like out there?”
“Well, the last I heard, they were shutting down airports, schools and public transportation systems. Government offices and businesses were also closing. My guess is that regular transportation would be next when businesses shut their doors. Which means no food and no gas deliveries. In a matter of days, no one who hasn’t already prepared for a disaster is going to be able to find either of those things. Basic human necessities will remain the same, so the need for food, water, and shelter will drive everyone. Winter’s not far off. If utilities shut down, people won’t be able to heat their homes, which means people will freeze to death.
“People will be desperate to keep warm, but they’ll also want to isolate themselves so that they’re not exposed to the virus. Not having reliable communication is going to make everything that much more confusing. No one will know just how
bad the disease has gotten or where it’s spread to.
“Unfortunately, most people won’t be able to just stay in their houses because they’ll need food and water at the very least, so they’ll be forced to go out and look for it. Since there won’t be enough to go around, not only will they have zombies to worry about, but there will be armed gangs migrating out of the cities that won’t think twice about threatening anyone who has what they’re looking for.
“A good percentage of the population will attempt to gather their families in one location. The smart ones will know they have only a few days to get to wherever they plan to hunker down. After that, it will be too dangerous to move around. Unless you’re heavily armed and you’re not alone. Most people won’t be prepared for that.
“The main roads will be used to ambush the people who are foolish enough to try to use them. Everyone will be looking for preppers who will be the only ones who have stores of food, weapons and ammo. When it comes to facing real starvation and keeping their families alive, a lot of people are going to be forced to readjust their thinking and make some hard choices.”
He told her everything, not sparing the details. She had to know what she was up against in case something happened to him.
“I’m not going to sugar-coat it. You need to know what it’s going to be like out there. That’s the only way to stay alive. And if you do something foolish, that puts me at risk, too. So we have to work together. As a team.”
A team. Together. That didn’t sound so bad.
“After we go to the inn, if we could get to my house- ” she began.
“Where’s it at?”
“It’s about eight miles south of town.”
“Is it defendable?”
“What do you call defendable?”
“Is it two stories? Or one? What’s it made out of? Wood? Brick?”
He kept firing questions at her like it was a military inquisition.
“Do you have a reliable water source?”
“I have a well. But there’s an old hand pump well on the property, too. I’ve never seen it run dry.”
Blood Storm: Deadrise II Page 16