Annie watched the man turn and the gun rise. The rain had left the cement wet and slippery. Her running shoes did not have enough traction to allow her to stop or even dodge for that matter. She had no choice but to ride out her speeding trajectory. She realized that the distance was against her. The man would shoot her before she was in range to deliver her knife’s deathblow. She considered throwing herself to the ground, but the thought of being shot to death while she rolled pathetically along the wet road pissed her off. She didn’t bail out for the pavement; instead, she did what she always did when faced with trouble. She ran at it faster.
She raised her blades as the man raised the rifle the last few inches that he needed to take a clean shot. Annie refused to close her eyes. She would not give the fucker even a moment of satisfaction in her death. She would show no fear. She prepared for the bullet. The sound of Nick’s voice startled her. It was louder than it should have been from this distance. It felt like it resonated along the walls of the alley and shook the pavement. It startled the gunman even more, and he must have imagined that Nick stood directly behind him because he turned around as if he intended to shoot. Annie smiled. She sprinted the final distance, and the knives whirled. The gunman’s head came off in her first sweep. The bomb carrier caught the second blade as she twirled.
Nick’s voice, as loud as thunder, woke Thorn from his shocked stupor. It woke them all, and they began to fall back behind the Tahoe. Thorn looked from his friends to the pile of out-of-reach weapons in the street and then to the open Tahoe door. Bart was never letting them leave, he realized. The Creeper threat against the children was just a ruse. He never intended to kill the children. It had just been meant to draw them out and to disarm them. A way for Bart to coax the lambs to the slaughter. Thorn’s anger brought out his wolf. He saw the other wolves waking around him.
Thorn ran toward the Tahoe. Someone fired a gun, and he felt a bullet pass by his ear. He ran harder and then dove into the driver’s seat. He started the Tahoe and without hesitation dropped it into gear and sped forward. It was a short trip. He turned abruptly in front of the weapons pile. His friends now had a very large barricade to protect them while they retrieved their guns. He jumped from the vehicle and ran to Adam. He picked Adam up and carried him in a sprint. His friends grabbed weapons and prepared to defend themselves.
“Susan, Caroline, come on! There’s still a chance, but I need your help,” he yelled as he ran up the stairs to the dining hall with his injured friend in his arms. Thorn had seen the shot. It was a gut shot for certain, and Adam was unconscious, but it didn’t have to mean the end for the boy. Not if Thorn could stop the bleeding or at least slow it.
“Sir, they’re getting their weapons. Should we open fire?” the man with the crew cut asked Bart.
Bart smiled and remained calm.
“Not yet,” he answered.
“But if they get dug in over there, it’s gonna be difficult to … ah … remove them.”
“Have faith, my friend,” Bart assured the man. “The goal was to have them in a tight little group, and well, look: they’re all clustered around the vehicle.”
“I think the doctor and his girlfriend went into the dining hall,” the man pointed out.
“The doctor is of no concern or consequence. We will deal with him later,” Bart said, dismissing Crew Cut’s concerns.
Bart looked at his congregation. He marked the ones who were with him, but more importantly, he marked the ones who looked down or had moved away. Those not with him would be eliminated the moment he had finished with the pain in the asses behind the Tahoe. He knew he should have killed Devin the moment he met him that night in his office. He knew better than to let that kind live. The ones who had some sense of justice and morality and the balls to back it up always turned out to be a problem. He had foolishly held out hope that the kid could become a convert. Dani had failed him, though. She was supposed to seduce Devin, and instead she fell in love with the useless idiot that they had just shot.
Bart shook his head. Too many mistakes had been made this time. He needed to clean this up quickly and get back to business. The one certainty he held was that Kyle would not fail him. Kyle had the bomb, and any moment now, he would rush the kids, press the button, and send them all to heaven in a fiery inferno. Kyle was loyal even if he had initially resisted the idea. Seemed his loyalty wavered under the prospect of his own death. Josh was with Kyle to provide the proper motivation. Kyle could die for the cause, or he could die when Josh put a bullet in his head. Josh would not hesitate. The guy was an absolute psycho. He’d enjoyed removing Dani’s eyes. He had begged to be the bomb runner. Bart had refused only because men like Josh were a precious commodity in Bart’s world. If Kyle failed, however, Josh would not waver in the mission’s completion.
“Any moment now,” Bart said aloud.
Golden fell to her knees in the slick fluids that had leaked from Brother Paul’s corpse. Her guns were almost empty, but she continued to pump the remaining bullets into the Creepers. When her knees hit the floor, her momentum sent her sliding across the slippery cement. Her high-speed slide took her directly at the SUV’s open back door. At the last second, she raised her arms to prevent a face-first plunge into it. Her arms caught the door, and her body slammed it closed. The impact shook her teeth, but she stood quickly.
The Creepers saw her direction change and turned to follow. Golden scrambled through the driver’s open door and into the Escalade’s front seat. The Creepers were fast but uncoordinated. They clawed at one another in a frenzied attempt to reach her. In the intertwined and awkward shuffle, they fell against the door and unintentionally closed it. They banged furiously at the glass.
For a slight fraction of time, Golden sat with perfect clarity of mind. Then her thoughts turned to her friends and family, to the fact that her survival might still be all for nothing. The mist that had disappeared while she had slid returned. It did not consume her, but instead settled about her and whispered and waited. The closet door, which had opened just a crack, again slipped closed.
She turned the ignition key, dropped the shifter into drive, and sped out of the garage. Her departure crushed several Creepers beneath the SUV. A few hung on until she made the wild, high-velocity turn back toward the fort. Outside the garage had been an even larger group of Creepers. In the horde, she recognized a familiar face. It was impossible, but for the moment, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was her return to her family and friends. She pushed the accelerator to the floorboards. The clock ticked.
“Sir?” Crew Cut’s apprehension-filled face turned to look at Bart.
“I told you to have faith, my friend.”
“Yes, sir, but what exactly are we waiting for?”
“You’ll see,” Bart said and smiled.
“Sir, if they start shooting, though?” Crew Cut asked.
“They won’t. They can’t risk hitting the children.”
Crew cut looked over at Bart’s position in front of the van. He looked over his own shoulder and realized the van position provided him no such insurance.
“But, sir, we’re not all in front of the van.”
“You’re trying my patience,” Bart yelled. His anger was evident. “Stand your fuckin’ post.”
Crew Cut looked at his friend. He and Jack had been coworkers in a bottling plant. They had drunk a lot of beer, hit on a lot of women, and occasionally kidnapped a drunken coed from the local bars and did things—well, things they shouldn’t have done. At the end of the world, Bart had seemed like their kind of guy. In private, he talked about the stuff this new world could offer. Things they would be allowed to do that the old world would never have tolerated.
It had sounded like a dream come true. This, however, was a little outside of Randy’s league, and by the expression on Jack’s face, his too. A little sexual coercion was one thing. The drunken girls they had taken ma
y not have gone along with the games sober, but hell, it wasn’t exactly rape. At least none of the girls had ever gone to the police. Now Bart had them ready to kill a bunch of kids. Kids who had proved a lot more resilient than anyone had expected. Randy wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea, but waiting around made it worse. It gave him too much time to think about it. He didn’t like to think, and he didn’t like being exposed to a possible bullet of his own.
He considered just taking off and then shit broke bad and Bart went insane with rage.
Bart grew impatient. Exactly what were Kyle and Josh waiting for? His instructions were simple and clear. He considered sending Crew Cut around back to check things out, and then the bomb flew through the air and landed in the street. As it rolled, a second bomb took flight and landed next to the first. That was all wrong. Kyle was supposed to carry the bomb and press the detonator at the last moment. Also, there was only a single bomb, so there could not be two rolling in the street. As the bombs came to rest, Bart studied them with confusion. The bombs had eyes and hair.
A woman from the congregation screamed. Bart looked at the bombs and saw that they were Kyle’s and Josh’s severed heads. A small pang of fear threatened to take hold in his gut. He didn’t like fear. He didn’t like losing. It made him angry.
The young girl with blonde hair walked out of the alley. She had his bomb in her hand. She looked directly at him and held up her middle finger.
The rage took him.
“Kill them!” he screamed. “Kill them fucking all!”
His congregation fired at the Tahoe. The blonde girl slipped behind it before they could kill her.
Bart screamed again.
Vengeance is mine
Bart’s entire congregation did not share his lunacy. When the gunfire began, more than a few decided they had seen enough. Most ran into the alley behind the garage and took shelter in their homes. Several others either forgot the dangers outside the fort’s walls or decided the risk was no greater than remaining in Bart’s company. They fled to the back gates and ran into the woods.
More than half remained by Bart’s side. They clustered near the van for added protection and fired at the Tahoe. The bullets shattered windows and punched holes in the metal, but none of their weapons carried a high enough caliber to reach the targets behind the SUV. The man who held the Creeper struggled to maintain control. The noise and the proximity of warm flesh drove the thing to a frenzied state, and the man had to work hard to prevent the Creeper’s escape.
Devin and his friends huddled behind the vehicle.
“Nick!” Devin yelled. He grabbed Nick by the shirt.
“Where is she?” he asked over the noise of the gunfire.
“Who?” Nick asked.
“Golden. You screamed she is alive; where is she?”
“Yeah, bro, you screamed it pretty damn loud, too,” Brandon added.
“I-I—it’s hard to explain,” Nick stammered.
“Hard? What the hell does that mean? You either saw her or didn’t.”
“Dev, this sounds crazy, but … but it was like—I don’t know, a vision or something.”
Devin stared at him and then released his friend’s shirt.
“Hmm,” Brandon said and then changed the subject. “Well, out of the frying pan and into the fire. What now?”
“I can get a shot on a couple of them,” Austin called out.
Devin shook his head.
“Can’t risk it, bro. We might hit one of the kids.”
“Can we use this?” Annie asked and held up the football-sized bomb.
“It’s got a three-second fuse. Are you volunteering?” Brandon asked and smiled.
“Doesn’t matter,” Devin answered. “Same problem; we risk injuring the kids.”
A bullet pierced the window above them and they covered their heads as safety glass fell in gummy chunks.
“We can’t just sit here and wait to die,” Austin said.
“Brad,” Devin called. “Go behind the dining hall and make sure they don’t flank us.”
Brad nodded and looked to Annie.
Devin looked from Brad to Annie and then back again.
“Yeah, yeah, go ahead, keep him company, Annie.”
The couple stayed low as they sprinted away toward the alley.
“Do you want me to go to the other side?” Austin asked, pointing to the alley near the weapons depot.
Devin looked at the open street between the safety of the Tahoe and the buildings.
“No, just keep an eye in that direction.”
“Sooner or later,” Brandon said, “someone over there is gonna be smart enough to lie on the ground and shoot under the Tahoe.”
They all looked down at the empty space between the Tahoe and the pavement. They quickly shuffled behind the protection of the wheels.
“Devin,” Brandon said, “we might want to head inside. Can you walk on that leg?”
“Not fast enough to avoid the bullets,” Devin answered.
Brandon nodded and said, “Okay, then we’ll wait here for a miracle.”
“Hey,” Austin called. “Do you hear that?”
They shook their heads.
“It’s music. You can’t hear that?” He looked at each of them.
“What kind of music?” Nick asked.
“I think”—Austin paused and listened—“I think its disco.”
A few seconds later, the fort’s big wooden entrance doors began to slide open.
She’d only had one close call with the Escalade, which was acceptable considering the speed she’d maintained along the curving roads. She reached the fort and pulled the Escalade up to the main gate. When she left the vehicle, she heard the sounds of gunshots over the Escalade’s stereo. Gunshots meant trouble, but it also meant that someone was still alive to cause trouble.
She found the silver lock exactly where Bob had said it would be. She removed the key from her pocket. She had made a promise, and she was about to make good on it. She slid the key into the lock and turned it. An engine whirred, chains rattled, and then the big wooden doors began to slide open. She grabbed the exposed part of the key. She pushed down hard and it snapped off, leaving half of it jammed deep inside the lock mechanism. The doors would open, but the destroyed lock would make them difficult, if not impossible, to close. This had been Bob’s final wish. Leave Fort New Hope exposed to the outside world. Let the Creepers get them. She tossed the remains of the key into the woods.
She slid back into the driver’s seat. The doors weren’t completely open, but there was ample space for the Escalade to pass. She could see the chain-link fence on the far side of the foyer. Beyond that, she saw the parked Tahoe. Her brothers squatted behind it with Brandon and Nick. She rolled down the windows, she turned up the music, she dropped the SUV into gear, and then she gunned the engine.
The four of them watched the rumbling twenty-foot-high wooden doors. The emergency batteries were still operational but the low power caused the doors to hitch and squeal along their tracks.
“Damn, I do hear disco now,” Brandon said. “Is that—”
“Yep, KC and the Sunshine Band,” Devin finished.
“Well, you know what that means?”
At the same time, all four said, “Golden.”
The black SUV tore through the chain-link fence. The gate and several feet of fence on both sides crashed to the ground, and the SUV drove over it. The vehicle sped the distance between the Tahoe and the entrance and then turned to form a second barrier. Golden leapt out, gave them a stoic look, and then went to the back hatch. She opened it, reached in, and threw Nick a rifle. She took one for herself and began feeding bullets into the chamber.
“Good to see you too, sis,” Austin said. He hurried to the Escalade’s open hatch to grab his own ammunition.
; Golden saw Devin’s leg. She went to her brother, knelt, and gave him a hug. She whispered, and then she sat back on her knees.
“It’s okay, sis, nothing to be sorry about,” he told her. “This will heal, and you did great.”
She seemed satisfied with that, got up, and took a firing position behind the Tahoe.
“Brandon, help me up,” Devin said.
“What’s the plan, bro?”
“We can’t shoot straight at them without the risk of hitting the van,” Devin said. “But now we have enough weapons to take the two alleys and flank them.”
“About time,” Austin said. “Can you walk?”
“Vengeance is a powerful motivator,” Devin answered as he fed shells into his shotgun and looked at his sister.
Kira lay in a warm open field with her eyes closed. The green grass was soft and sweet. She opened her eyes and stared up at the deep blue sky and its orange sun. A shadow fell over her, but she didn’t need to look to see the owner.
“Hello, Dani.”
“Hi, Kira,” Dani said. “I’m sorry I had to leave you.”
“It’s okay. I think I did fine.”
“You did, but we have one more thing to do,” Dani said.
Kira chuckled.
“Dani, we’re dead. We can’t do any more,” Kira said but didn’t think that would suffice.
“You’d be surprised what a dead girl can accomplish and what a few seconds can mean.”
Dani placed her hand over Kira’s blue-gray eyes.
“Here,” she whispered, “let me show you.”
Kira saw what was required and she sighed.
“I will do it if you want. I owe you that much, Kira,” Dani offered.
“No, I’ll do it. It has to be me.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Dani asked.
“No, it won’t take but a minute, and then I’ll be back.”
“Okay,” Dani said. “The man wanted me to thank you again.”
You and Me against the World: The Creepers Saga Book 1 Page 28