by Geo Dell
“Ronnie,” she called into the darkness.
“Yeah, right here,” Ronnie answered.
“Jeff?”
Silence...
She raised her voice, “Jeff?”
But only silence greeted her.
“Fuck it. We got to go, Ronnie. Cover me; I'll go first. If nothing happens when I hit the road, I'll turn and cover you,” she told him. Gunfire was still heavy from the direction of the camp.
“Got you. Go,” Ronnie said.
Candace took a deep breath, tensed, and came up running. She made the road, encountering no resistance at all. Ronnie was up and moving before she even motioned to him. She waited for a second, wondering what had happened to Jeff, and then Ronnie was there and they were running off down the road, covering opposite sides of the road and the shadowy trees as they went.
The gunfire began falling off as they closed in on the camp. That only made Candace worry more. Why had both her and Jeff gone to the hilltop? They were the two best, leaving no good shots in the camp. She slowed, and Ronnie matched her pace, really only a fast walk now, then a slow walk, and then they split up, taking opposite sides of the road, creeping tree to tree.
A shadow popped up directly ahead of Ronnie and fired a burst into the camp. Ronnie fired back at point blank range and the shooter collapsed. They both faded back into the trees.
Candace squatted behind the cover of a large pine and whispered into the VHF. “We're coming up behind you, copy?” she asked.
Nothing... Then a quick click of a mic button.
She clicked her own mic button once in answer, stood up and began moving tree to tree once more.
Cindy had said there were ten total. That left six or seven depending on what had happened to the one Cindy had called Chloe. They had killed two by the road and one here. She had only seen four come down this way, that left three or four depending on where the girl had gone.
As she was thinking, she nearly walked right into another one of them crouching behind some bushes. She didn't hesitate but walked up and fired a quick burst into their back. Not even realizing it was a young woman her own age, until she fell backwards, and Candace caught a quick glimpse of her face as she went down.
A burst of gunfire came from somewhere up ahead and ripped into the trees next to her. She dove to the ground and rolled several times. She rolled up on to her feet and only realized she'd been either hit by a bullet or something else when she felt blood running from her forehead and into her left eye. She wiped it away and scanned the surrounding trees carefully. Two or three left, she thought to herself.
She took several deep breaths to calm herself and began moving forward once more, moving tree to tree. Across the way she saw a shadow gliding through the trees matching her pace. She didn't know if it was Ronnie so she didn't dare shoot.
Another shadow stepped partly from the trees just ahead of the shadow she had been tracking and looked her way. Ronnie! She realized as the moonlight painted his face. And even as she had the thought, she tracked back with her rifle and sprayed the trees behind him.
When she looked back, Ronnie's face wore a shocked look. She pointed behind him where a young man crashed out into the road holding his chest. Ronnie quickly faded back into the trees.
She keyed the mic. “You hit any?” she whispered. The speaker clicked once, paused, then clicked again.
She keyed the mic once more “If you're sure you got two,” she whispered, “then we got...” And that was when the girl stabbed her.
~
The blade bit into her arm, but hit the bone and didn't pass her arm and plunge into her chest as the girl had hoped. Her first thought was, Thank God my arm was there. Her second thought was... she means to kill me.
Candace swung the machine pistol downward with all of her weight, forcing the girl's knife hand away from her body. She looped one foot behind the girls leg and pushed her forward, sending them both to the ground. The girl was like a snake, turning and twisting under her to get away. The machine pistol had slipped from her hand as she fell, and it landed somewhere between the two of them. The girl had held on to the knife though, and Candace felt the point scratch across her throat as she struggled to keep the girls arm away.
She brought her knees up and leveraged them between the girl's thighs, driving them apart, then drove one knee into her crotch. She gasped, but would not let go of the knife.
Candace looked at her face in the sparse moonlight. So much like Cindy's had looked, stress lines, puffy eyes, but this girl's eyes were flat, hard and determined. There was no soft edge to these eyes. She meant to kill Candace if she could.
Candace tried to leverage herself with one knee again, but the girl came up with one of her own, catching Candace in the stomach, driving most of the air from her lungs. The girl took advantage of that by rolling Candace over and straddling her.
Candace struggled to hold the knife back, but it was sinking lower and lower. A face suddenly appeared over the girl's shoulder. Another one, Candace thought. A shot exploded like a thunderclap, something warm splattered her face. Blood, she thought, and then the knife was falling away as the girl slumped onto her side.
Mike's face appeared above her as she struggled to push the girls dead weight off her. Mike grabbed the girl by one arm and flung her off into the brush.
Candace got shakily to her feet.
“Jesus,” Mike breathed.
“Yeah, this shit has got to stop,” Candace joked in a shaky voice. Then she burst into tears.
~Janet's journal~
We are somewhere to the southwest of Kentucky. Maybe even long out of Kentucky by now. We have heard nothing from the ones we left behind, and we are all worried.
We ran the logging trails at first, but they ran out. So we ran the rows between the tall pine trees, obviously a reforestation effort; all the trees are planted in fairly straight lines. But it had to have been years ago. The trees were giants. There are about sixty miles showing on the trip meter on the dashboard.
We left the straight lines of the trees behind and rolled out into a grassy valley a short time ago. The grass was cut short, or we thought it was cut short until, in the distance, we saw enormous Bison grazing, or are they Buffalo? They look to me to be bigger, like real buffalo, but it's too dark to tell.
We have half a tank of gas, about the same for all of us. But we each have another ten gallons riding in cans on the back. We're all tired. We're all worried. We're going to stop here and wait for morning to arrive. Hopefully some of us will get some sleep.
God is with us, please.
~Through the woods~
The trees grew ever taller, the darkness deeper as the moonlight's path to the ground was blocked by the high canopy of the branches as they closed in.
An hour before dawn they came to a wide and long valley. A small village was nestled in the bottom next to a broad river. The smell of wood fire hung on the cold night air, the glow of fire in the distance.
The boy came slowly up on one side, the twins on the other, scenting the air with their eyes, listening to the tale that it told. The horse, somewhere in the darkness behind them all, silent, its large eyes wild in the moonlight. She knew that was true, even though she could not see it. It was coming to her, finding its own way, miles away still.
There where ten breathers there in the small village below, camped among the ruins, on the road, just stopped for the night. Out of the ten, five were to be part of them, walkers, their souls only waiting to be claimed. The air carried their story to them, and another, more complex story with it. A story of the next ones that were to come, the next additions, the army that would be assembled and the place that it would be assembled in.
The boy and the twins trembled and whined, rusty nails on chalkboard whines, high pitched, slightly crazy, sounding like bats on the wing in the darkness. She did not correct them or scold them. Her hands rose and fell upon their thin shoulders as the air told its tales. A few moments later, the sp
ell was broken, and they were on their way down to the village, winding through the thinning trees, finding the broken parts of what had been the main road, walking close to the tree line as they made their way closer to the fire.
Fire was their enemy, smoke the messenger of that enemy. Fire was heat; heat consumed. That is what it had been created for.
This fire frightened her, but it did not set the terror loose inside of her that it once had. It could not, would not kill her. And if it could not, then there was no real reason to fear it. If it could not, then it was no real protection to the breathers. Maybe it could still drive away the living predators, the wolves, the big cats, but she could know about it, reason it out, think around it... feel it. And it said that it was not able to hurt her. Not this time.
That was another change. Not so long ago she could not think around anything. Every thought was a challenge, and she had been born into this like that, like a blind and dumb baby of sorts, growing blinder and dumber as the time passed...
And then the change had come. The change brought to her on the air, delivered to her eyes, and these, the boy and the twins, born into that change on the air, struggling less and less, knowing more and more, bodies changing faster and faster. And the horse gone to do.
She didn't really know what part the animal played. Some part. Some part that was needed for the larger purpose. Maybe this other life would not be the only other life.
They came to the edge of the darkness, where the fire light refused to lend its light, and stood staring at the small group of breathers bedded down around the fire.
The one who was supposed to be on guard had dozed. The fire had burned low. He would probably chastise himself for it, except he would never have the opportunity to do that. He might have a split second in which to ask his God to forgive him, but he would probably waste that split second drowning in his fear, cursing, fighting, dying before he realized he had wasted his time.
She was by his side a moment later. He slept on as she bent and prepared to take him. The boy and the twins had made their own choices. Her hands pinned his arms and her head darted quickly to his throat. The killing began.
Chapter seven
Evidence
~ April 2~
Morning came slowly, golden light filtering down through the trees painting light and dark shadows on the pine covered floor. A light breeze shifted through the limbs causing the shadows to chase each other.
They searched through the first gray light of dawn, but they had not been able to find Jeff's body. They combed the top of the hill to the highway. All of them had ended up at an area near the top of the hill. A scuffed area of dirt showed something had transpired there, but there was no way to know what or whether it had anything to do with Jeff. A few minutes later Ronnie had found a jacket that they were sure was Jeff's near the bottom of the long hill. It had lain crumpled and bloodstained in a ditch that lead up to the road surface. They had gathered around it, staring down. Candace had finally crouched down and studied it. A few minutes later she picked it up to look closer.
Several dozen bullet holes stitched the jacket across the back; two punched through the hood. The jacket was blood drenched. She let it fall from her hands and stood, rubbing her hands against her jeans in an unconscious scrubbing motion, her mouth tight and trembling. “He couldn't have walked away from that,” she said.
Mike lifted his eyes to the trees and then the road. Beside him Ronnie did the same. His eyes came back to Candace to find that she also had checked the surrounding area, even though she knew he could not possibly have walked away. He shook his head. “I... We can look back up the hillside...” He trailed off. Looking anywhere after finding the jacket made no real sense at all.
Candace shook her head. “They must have taken his body. But why?” She looked at Mike and Ronnie.
Ronnie shook his head as well. Mike spoke. “Makes no sense to me. People? Wolves?”
“Could be... Could be either. And what do we tell his woman?” Ronnie added.
Candace toed Jeff's jacket where it lay at her feet. She hesitated and then bent and picked it up. “If it's all they left us, then we'll give him a burial.” She looked at Ronnie. “Wolves,” She said.
Ronnie shrugged. “Could be. Why would a person take him?”
“Mike?” She looked at him
“Maybe... Maybe a couple of wolves could have made off with his body, I guess.” He looked up and met her eyes. “We'll run it past Bob. He should know.”
“Yeah.” Ronnie agreed. “Bob will know. Makes sense.”
~
Mike spoke to Bob, but he thought the wolf idea was unlikely. They spoke in quiet tones as Candace insisted on digging a hole and burying the jacket.
Candace had found herself wishing for Lilly. Her own relationship with God was stretched to say the least, filled with animosity to say a little more. But she spoke some words about the shadow of death that she remembered from Sunday school, and they piled the rocks upon the shallow grave they had dug for Jeff's jacket.
They walked as a group down to where the trucks had been parked next to the woods. One was still idling, the other had either run out of gas or had been damaged by the spray of bullets Candace had hit it with the night before.
Candace reached in and turned off the switch of the one still running truck. The silence of the trees and the forest behind them descended.
~
They had parked and had climbed out through the windows. From there they had walked through the shadows down to the park road, and it had almost worked. Only a shadow of movement had alerted Candace. And if were not for that, the night could have turned out completely different.
Back in the camp, after the gun battle was over, Mike had checked Candace over, building up the fire that he had started earlier to make dinner so he would have enough light to see by.
The wound on her forehead looked like a cut, possibly from a rock as she had dived to the ground and rolled. The stab wound in her arm was red and swollen where the blade had bitten into the bone. She admitted it ached when she moved it too fast. Another shallow cut lower down had completely escaped her attention. And a neat round hole through her jacket showed how close one particular bullet had come.
After they had taken care of Jeff's jacket, they searched for the bodies of the others.
They searched for over three hours, all of them, but they could not come up with the ten bodies they were sure they should have come up with.
They came up with only five. Two of the young women were missing, and Cindy couldn't tell them which ones. Either Tammy or Chloe lay dead where Mike had shot her in the head. Too much of her face was missing for Cindy to tell. The body in the truck was missing, and the other that had lain in the road, Death, was also gone.
Candace shook her head. “No. This guy was dead. I kicked him. I also shot into him twice more to make sure he was dead. He was dead, no doubt about it.” She walked further down the road and then stopped and walked off into the trees. The others followed after a second when it was clear she did not intend to come back.
Mike walked up beside her where she had squatted down in the tall grass. A large jelled pool of blood lay stuck to the root mass of the grasses. Ants crawled all over it.
“Nobody walked away after losing this much blood.” She shot to her feet; her eyes darted around at the trees. “Mike,” She waited until his eyes met her own. “I dumped most of a clip into this one. No way they got up and walked away. No Fuckin' way.”
“I believe you.” Mike told her. His eyes looked worried. “I just want to know they're dead not... not coming back at us again.” His eyes also swept the trees. Cindy, Ronnie and Bob exchanged uneasy glances.
“Had to have been more of the others,” Ronnie said.
“No, Man,” Cindy said.
“How do you know that?” Ronnie turned to her. His voice was raised, but she did not flinch at all.
“Because I was there. I know. I was there. I wouldn't
lie. I would be the first one they'd kill... and not fast either,” She finished. And then she did flinch as a shudder ran through her.
Ronnie turned away embarrassed. “I'm sorry,” he said clearly, albeit as he was turning away. Candace tried to catch his eyes, but he refused to look at her.
Mike shook his head. “Let's not go at each other. Let's let that whole thing that just happened slide. We're all tense. It doesn't mean shit, except we're a little spooked... and... with good reason too.” He kicked at the ground. “What the fuck,” he muttered. “Listen,” he shook his head once more... “Okay, listen, Jeff told me this. I said nothing about it, but maybe it...” He shook his head again, but he brought his eyes up from the ground where they had been watching his boots scuff the dirt into a small pile.
“So... Jeff said this... a little more about what happened. They had come upon this small town somewhere, didn't say where. He's by himself, like he had said before, looking through this little drug store... busted up, but still somewhat intact. Turns the corner in an aisle, and there's the dead woman there. Bad, but, well, we have all seen so much death that after his initial jump back, he takes a close look at her because... well, his words, and he said it to all of us... she didn't look quite right. Somewhere east of okay.” Mike shrugged. “As he is trying to put his finger on what it is that is not quite right, she sits up in the aisle, looks around likes she's blind, then sort of focused on him.” Mike shrugged again. “Said she was blind or seemed blind, but she focused on him...”
“He didn't just stumble over her like he said to us. Anyway... Jeff don't know what to do or say, forgets to breath for a second, and then starts forward to help her. But the first thing he notices is that she has a hole the size of a fist in her chest. The blood is old. There's a puddle on the floor; she pulled herself out of it. And before he can think even a little more, she snarls and begins to backpedal on the tile floor. His mouth drops, and he stands there watching even after she's gone.” Mike had turned his attention back to the ground as he spoke. The little pile of earth had grown considerably.