Thoughts processed in her rapidly developing, alien brain.
Her instincts screamed for her to act.
Ghoul stood over the mountain lion and bared his teeth. Shirtless, wearing only black leather pants and black engineer boots, he was tall and thin, hard with muscle – both from his human life and as a result of the change – and his skin was a deep crimson mottled with gray patches. Lank, black hair hung below his shoulders and framed a severe, blade-like face. His eyes were the same, soulless black he’d had in life, and just as predatory.
The word GHOUL was tattooed across his chest in gothic script, and the image of a fanged and hooded revenant was inked down his torso. More tattoos sleeved both arms, all of them images of death, torture and supernatural beings. Covering his back was a detailed image of Jesus, crucified in an inverted position and screaming as scores of tiny demons rended his flesh. While alive, Ghoul had been a problem for anyone he encountered, a cruel being with a passion for sadistic violence.
He was much more now.
Red screeched, showing her teeth, standing in a hunched-over position that nearly put her on all fours, her thigh muscles tensing. Both Cross and Snapper edged away, each wanting to feed on the fresh kill but more interested in the two Hobgoblins facing one another across the clearing. Their own synapses were firing as well, images and sensations coming at them in bursts, but at a slower pace than the rapid-fire development going on in the redheaded Hobgoblin’s brain.
Ghoul’s brain was firing at a speed equal to Red’s. In response to her challenge screech, he growled again, then seized the dead cougar just under its jaw, and with a snarl, tore the head from the body. Ghoul straightened, glared at Red with his black eyes, and tossed the head contemptuously into the trees.
The female let out a piercing howl and leaped across the clearing. Ghoul charged, meeting her half-way, and in an instant they were two crimson figures locked in a deadly embrace, rolling across the ground, clawing and biting, hissing much as the mountain lion had done. Ghoul pinned Red beneath him and bit off the top of one ear. Red dug first her fingers and then her entire hand into an open wound on Ghoul’s side, put there by a cougar claw, finding one of the Hobgoblin’s ribs and snapping it. They rolled again, and this time Red ended up on top, trying to grab Ghoul by the sides of his head, still snarling.
The male heaved and threw her off, scrambling to his feet, sinking broken fingernails into the dead meat of Red’s shoulder, the other hand groping for her face. The female crouched, spun, and powered up under Ghoul’s ribcage, lifting him for an instant and then slamming him onto his back. When he rolled to his stomach, she straddled him and gripped his hair in one hand. The other found his open, snapping mouth, her fingers slipping inside,
Ghoul bit down, severing Red’s pinkie finger.
Her other hand released his hair and pushed down between his shoulder blades. She held on as he thrashed, keeping him on his belly in the snow and mud as she pressed him down with one hand and hauled back on his head with the grip she held on the roof of his mouth. There was a CRACK from somewhere in Ghoul’s neck, and at once his noise and motion stopped. Red held him in that position for a moment, holding his head back at a sharp angle. Ghoul slowly extended his tattooed arms out to each side and turned his palms up, going limp.
He let out a single, whining cry, his primitive brain understanding that a strong, backward pull would likely tear his head from his neck.
Red, her muscles still bulging beneath her taut, scarlet skin, applied just a bit more backward pressure, enough to force a shudder and another submissive whine from the creature beneath her. Then she shoved Ghoul’s head back into the muddy snow and leaped off him, crouching once more, teeth bared and her chest rumbling. She looked at Cross and Snapper.
Both Hobgoblins crouched and lowered their heads.
Ghoul climbed slowly to all fours, his head hanging a little askew on his neck, and stared at her between long strands of oily hair. Then he lowered his head, too.
Red stood and flung her arms at the winter sky, letting out a long shriek that carried for miles. The others remained head-down.
Sanchez stumbled out of the trees at that moment, moving stiff-legged toward the remains of the mountain cat, ignoring the other creatures in the clearing. They were similar to him and thus not prey; he wanted only to tear into the dead flesh on the ground.
Her brain still flaring, flush with the sensations of victory and dominance, Red leaped and seized the intruder by the sides of his head, biting him repeatedly in the face and tearing away strips of skin. Then she flung him away with a snarl. Sanchez bounced off a tree, fell, then climbed to his feet and shuffled into the forest.
Red moved to the dead mountain lion, tore open its belly and began to feed. The other three watched her from a short distance, unmoving. After ten minutes, the redhead stood, held a hand toward the carcass, and gave out a dry, barking noise she had never made before but one which her brain said was right. Ghoul, Snapper and Cross fell on the meat at once.
Red sank into a crouch and watched them feed.
Sanchez lumbered away from the clearing, bumping into trees, staggering more than usual, croaking softly. He only made it a hundred feet before he collapsed into the snow, his body shuddering. Thin scarlet lines were racing across his dead flesh, emanating from the fresh bite wounds in his face and spreading out in a spider web pattern. His vision went crimson, and as he began convulsing, Sanchez curled into a fetal position.
He arose twenty-four hours later as a newborn Hobgoblin.
No longer clumsy and mindless, Sanchez spent an hour marveling at himself, at his red flesh and layered muscle, at his flexibility and the wonders of the new thoughts and sensations darting through his crackling brain. He scented a raccoon and took off after it in a run, growling. When the terrified animal went up a tree in an attempt to escape, Sanchez scrambled up after it, catching the hissing and yowling thing among the pine boughs and snapping its neck, feeding on its tender insides.
Back on the ground again, Sanchez sniffed at the air. The fragments of scent told him that his own kind had vacated the clearing some time ago, but even those traces left a powerful trail easily followed.
Sanchez loped through the forest, following the Hobgoblin pack.
CRIES IN THE WILDERNESS
NINE
Pepper felt like an ape.
Her long, once-luxuriant blond hair was greasy and pulled back in a hair tie, the scalp beneath sour and itchy. Skin that had been cosmetics-ad perfect was sallow and blotchy from poor nutrition and an absence of hygiene, and she’d lost twenty-five pounds from an already slender figure. At thirty, it was hard to believe that this wretched, filthy creature had once been named People Magazine’s World’s Most Beautiful Woman.
Dressed like a bag lady in layers of mismatched clothes and wearing a stocking cap, Pepper tried to remain still under her mound of blankets, watching her breath gather white in front of her. The morning sun threw white bars through the bedroom window blinds and onto the wall. She didn’t want to get up, wanted to stay where it was relatively warm, but she had to pee and couldn’t hold it any longer. With a sigh she slithered out from under the pile and off the not-quite king sized bed, pulling on a pair of scuffed Timberland boots three sizes too big for her. Extra pairs of socks helped them fit a little better.
She moved slowly down the hallway, joints popping, rubbing at her arms to get the blood flowing. A plastic bucket served as her toilet, standing just outside the actual bathroom. The door was closed. It reeked in there from the backed up septic tank and brimming bowl, and she hadn’t been inside in months. A dirty rag lay on the floor nearby. She missed toilet paper.
With the most important part of her morning completed, Pepper walked forward through the tour bus. Her bedroom was at the extreme rear, and she passed other bunk bed-style sleeping compartments as well as a second bathroom (also backed-up and closed-off) before emerging into the kitchen. Other than a bag of trail mix with a few
crumbs in the bottom and a can of Mountain Dew with only a sip left, it was a place completely devoid of food. The cleaning products were long gone as well. An inch of water stood in a plastic bowl on a black granite counter, next to a plate with a pool of hardened wax that represented the last candle. The water was easy enough to replace, but she’d have to make a run today. She could put it off no longer.
And that meant this could be her last day. Again.
The living room was carpeted, spacious and appointed with fine leather couches and bolted-down, swiveling recliners. An expensive guitar rested in one of the chairs, an electric blue-lacquered beauty with silver frets and signed by Garth Brooks. Pepper moved past it and stopped at a panel set on one wall just in front of the driver’s compartment. It was covered in small gauges, switches and lights, and she checked the settings to ensure that the rooftop solar panels were still showing as operational (she’d been up there yesterday to clear fresh snow away) and that the bus generator was in its green, standby mode. She was able to put it on a timer so that it would power the heater for a short time during the coldest part of the night, then shut off so it wouldn’t be overworked. The creeping cold also got her up in the morning, and for some time had been the only thing preventing her from simply lying in bed all day. Not that there was anything pressing demanding her daily attention.
The light for the solar panels was flickering, indicating that the stored power was low. There’d probably been more snow during the night, so she’d have to clear them off again or it would mean the end of her heat.
In many respects, Pepper’s tour bug was “green,” and that fact, more than any other, was what had kept her alive as winter came on and the combination of deep cold and snow settled on the Sierras. She had never been a person to really care about going green – she had a very busy life and other things always seemed more important – but her manager had said it would endear her to her fans, and so she’d purchased a new bus with supplemental solar power that left a smaller footprint on the environment. Her manager had been right; the fans responded positively, and she’d even received praise from a few environmental groups for being so responsible. At first it had been her private joke, and a little shameful. Now it had saved her life.
I’m still probably going to die from starvation.
Or something worse.
Pepper leaned her forehead against the control panel and closed her eyes. “Want to do some writing?” she asked. “I’ve been working on a new song.”
“You’re stalling,” her brother said.
“Yes I am.” She turned and looked at Scott, who was sitting in the recliner opposite the one with the guitar, feet flat on the floor, palms resting on his knees. He looked as if he’d just gotten a fresh haircut, and he was wearing his dress uniform, the same one he’d been wearing when she said goodbye to him. Twenty-five and recruiting-poster-handsome, her brother looked back at her with steady blue eyes.
“You have to go,” he said.
Pepper nodded. “I know.” She liked the dress uniform, sharply pressed with all his ribbons in place, the Silver Star he’d been awarded posthumously hanging around his neck. Much better than the bloodstained desert camos. Sometimes when he wore those she could see the ragged head wound just above his left ear. Those days were more than she could bear.
“Let’s see what’s out there,” she said, kneeling on a leather sofa and putting her face to one of the big, frost-rimmed windows on the left side of the bus. Scott remaining sitting.
The sun was blinding on the January snow, and she squinted until her eyes adjusted. Above, the cloudless sky was a brilliant, pale sapphire. As she’d suspected, several fresh inches had fallen during the night, turning many of the snow-covered vehicles out there into slightly larger mounds. She didn’t need to see what was underneath the covering; she’d been in this same spot since August, and knew the world outside her tour bus by memory. That lump was a green Volvo wagon with a dog rescue sticker on the bumper; this mound was a gray Camry with Nevada plates, and that little bump was a bright orange Prius with a dead old lady still buckled into the passenger seat, endlessly batting her gnarled hands against a window.
Just off Interstate-80, a little east of Truckee, California, the truck and traveler center had been fairly busy when Pepper Davis’ convoy of two buses and two tractor-trailers pulled in for fuel. Touring for her new album, Shy Girls Don’t Dance, Pepper and her band had just finished a two night gig in Reno, and with one day of travel in between were next scheduled for three nights in Sacramento. Only at mid-tour, they would have headed south to play L.A., then back across the Southwest (Phoenix, Dallas, Austin and other cities) before hitting dates in the South and finally ending in her home state of Tennessee for the tour finale.
That all ended in mid-August.
If only her driver hadn’t taken the keys with him when he got out and walked to his death, she’d have tried to drive the vehicle to safety. Wherever that might be. But he had, and she didn’t.
Pepper looked at other bumps in the snow she knew well; a Mercedes SUV, a Mini Cooper with a British flag painted on its hood, mini vans and rental cars. A collection of eighteen-wheelers parked side-by-side in a row sat beyond the gas pumps for the big rigs. She could see these easily enough, the snow wasn’t that deep yet, and down at the left edge of the parking lot, furthest from the center itself, was a pair of CHP Ford Explorers parked next to each other, nose to tail the way cops did when they wanted to talk to each other and stay in their cars. She’d wanted to get to those two vehicles, to take what she’d hoped was inside, but it was too far. They would never allow her to make it. In the summer and fall, slow as they were, they would have closed in and cut her off from the bus. Now, the snow was simply too deep.
On the right, about a hundred yards away, was her second tour bus and the two tractor-trailers filled with the stage setup, sound systems and instruments for her concert. Both trucks had PEPPER DAVIS scrawled in giant, pink letters down the side, surrounded by stardust. Next to her name, a huge, smiling headshot of the beautiful country music star herself looked back at the world.
Pepper scratched an armpit and looked at the parking lot.
She hadn’t been outside the bus – other than to take trips to the roof – in more than a week. The recent and almost constant accumulation had obliterated the narrow paths she’d made through the snow.
“Maybe this isn’t a good day,” she told her brother. A painful twist in her gut and a long rumble argued that it didn’t matter what she thought.
“You’re still stalling,” Scott said from behind her.
Pepper pressed her forehead against the cold glass and closed her eyes again. She knew he was right. She’d have to go out today.
“I miss you,” Pepper said.
Scott didn’t reply.
Pepper squinted out at the truck and traveler center again, examining every bump and mound in the fifty yards of white between her bus and the main building.
Winter wonderland.
Fifteen feet beyond her window, the snow shifted and a gray head with strands of white hair broke the surface. Two gray arms followed, and the dead thing flailed at the white field that held it in place. Its face was so drawn, the skin so tight that the thing wore a perpetual grin. She couldn’t tell if it had been male or female.
Sleeper. There’s the real problem.
That was what she called the ones that lay dormant under the surface, erupting upward with snapping teeth and clutching hands like a horrific landmine, hidden and waiting for something to trigger them. What had set this one off? Maybe nothing. Sometimes they just did that. Who knew what was going on in those rotting brains, if anything?
The next question; how many more were out there?
She’d been grabbed by a sleeper a little more than a week ago, felt its fingers lock onto her ankle as it pulled itself toward her. Two more had burst through the surface nearby, and she’d known she was going to die. Somehow she’d made it out. She couldn
’t remember how; it was all a blur of fear and adrenaline, and the singular reason why she hadn’t ventured outside again.
Pepper looked at the deep snow. The absence of trails would slow her down, make it easier for them to trap her. The thought of being hip-deep in the stuff and feeling a cold hand wrap itself around her calf, knowing the teeth would be coming next, was paralyzing.
“You’re out of food and you’re going to die,” her brother said. “You don’t have a choice. Toughen up.”
She closed her eyes again and lightly bumped her head against the glass in a slow beat. Toughen up. How many times had their father barked those very words at them, trying in his own way to prepare his children for an often unforgiving world? She knew that in her case, it hadn’t taken. She had always been a girly-girl, and although Daddy had insisted she learn to shoot and hunt, frequently taking Pepper and her brother into the Tennessee woods, she preferred clothes and makeup, pretty things and the endless chatter of young women. And her music, of course.
When she’d complained about this character flaw to her manager, the man had laughed, shaken his head and reminded her that she’d had to develop a thick skin to have survived the music industry, and that was tough. But that wasn’t the kind of tough her father intended. That was more like an unstoppable drive to succeed and achieve her dreams. Grit.
“You don’t think it’s the same thing?” Scott asked.
“Not even close.” She still wouldn’t look at him. “You were tough, though.” And he had been. Scott Davis, never the biggest boy in his group, had learned early on not to cry when hurt, to get back up after every fall, to never complain and never quit. He didn’t let anyone push him around, and he hadn’t allowed anyone to push other people around, jumping in with fists flying when he found a smaller kid being bullied. He’d taken his share of beatings because of it, but he’d always gotten up and stayed in the fight, eventually showing even bigger, older boys that they were simply going to have to kill him to make him go away. It didn’t take long before they went away, leaving Scott and those he’d chosen to protect alone. That was tough. Hero kind of tough.
Omega Days (Book 5): The Feral Road Page 8