They cuddled for another half hour, just enjoying each other's closeness and intimacy. Occasionally they would kiss or chat, but mostly they just stared at each other, smiling. They had crawled under the covers, as the building got pretty cold toward the winter without any heating, but they had them pulled down to their waists, leaving their upper bodies exposed. Noah enjoyed the view of her bare breasts and the way that they spread out and flattened slightly on her chest as she lay on her back. He traced his finger along the contours of them and felt the warmth radiating from her. She rubbed her hand on his chest, playfully swirling her finger through his chest hair.
"So when Kathy was in here today," she said, "did she... say anything?"
He laughed. "What, you mean telling me about every single goings-on under the sun around here? That's nothing new."
"Did she say anything about Mark?"
"Only that he's a menace to society and should be thrown out into the wild to fend for himself."
She paused, uncertain if he was serious or not.
"Relax, Sarah. She's been doing that since she got here. She thinks she's getting imaginary points for ratting everyone out, I guess."
"So... you're not going to throw him out?" she asked.
"Of course not," he said. "To be honest, I'm a little glad she told me so that we're aware of the problem and he doesn't end up hurting anyone, but we're not going to do anything to him. I'm just surprised you didn't tell me about it."
"Jenny asked me not to. He's just a little worked up right now with everything, and she wants to take care of him."
"I get that. And that's not a problem. So don't worry about Kathy; as long as you're on my good side, she's harmless," he said with a laugh. He gave her a peck on the lips and then rolled out of bed, walking toward the window.
She turned on her side and propped her head up on her hand, admiring his naked body as he peeked through the blinds at the camp outside. "Are they out there?" she asked.
"They're just lining up now," he said.
She got out of bed and joined him at the window, wrapping her arms around him for warmth. She pulled down one of the blind slats with a finger and peeked out.
An enormous amount of armed men started to funnel toward the front of the camp. They came out of the bunker, loaded up and ready for war. Kenny was at the front surveying the group as Wayne ran back and forth in and out of the armory.
"I should let you go," Noah said. "I want to see them off."
"Okay," she said reluctantly, squeezing him and kissing the back of his shoulder.
He turned and wrapped his arms around her, giving her nude body one last once-over. They shared another long, sweet kiss, then they both got dressed and left the office.
Sarah went back to the lavatory and cleaned herself up, then snuck back into Noah's office, looking out the window and watching the activity.
Before long, it looked like nearly every man they had in Noah's Ark had huddled in formation at the front of the camp. Noah was at the front standing with Kenny and talking to him in private. Wayne had joined the two of them and double-checked the men, making sure they were ready.
Sarah thought about Delroy and wondered if he had any idea at all what was coming. After what he pulled this morning, she didn't know how he couldn't. Annihilation was about to show up on his doorstep, and the sea of men lined up outside was only half of the army.
She thought about wanting to go with them again and witness Delroy's destruction. Noah wanted her to become more involved in affairs around here, and she admitted to herself that she was strangely curious about seeing this. She was bummed out that he said no, and she knew she was in for a long, anxious night of waiting for word on how it went. The constant feeling of being useless grated on her, and she was tired of feeling helpless and afraid, too.
A wild idea came over her, and she realized that maybe she should go after all. Noah wouldn't let her, but maybe he didn't have to know about it.
She turned and left his office, excitement washing over her. She went back to her dorm and grabbed her coat, then left the building through the back. When she came out the door, she looked around for activity, but all the men fighting were already at the front and the only others around were just a few residents sitting out under the stars.
She casually walked around the building and headed past the greenhouse. When she reached the edge of it, she cleared the main building and was standing behind the back corner of the small army. She kept her head down and casually walked by, hoping Noah wouldn't spot her.
The front gates of the camp suddenly opened and the soldiers started to file out with Wayne and Kenny leading them as Noah stood to the side and observed their departure. Their synchronized march made the ground rumble, and their gear rattled like a sea of angry locusts swarming out for vengeance.
Sarah slipped into the tool shed without being spotted and shut the door behind her. She walked up to the shelf at the back wall and pulled it away, then unscrewed the wall panel and slid it to the side. She pressed open the loose section of perimeter wall and turned around, squeezing through it butt-first. Before she was through, she pulled the shelf back toward the wall as close as she could and slid the panel back into place. She backed up and slipped out of the loose sheet of metal, taking a few steps back and looking up at the top of the wall. She scanned the length of it, searching for any guards that might be peering down, but it looked like she was in the clear. She turned around and trotted to the woods, slipping through the trees and disappearing from sight. She started to head south and waited near the edge of the woods for the army to come into view. She had never been to Delroy's camp before, but she knew it was somewhere southwest of camp, and that's where they would be heading.
Wayne and Kenny appeared with their men in tow as they marched out into the field from the other side of camp. They were headed south, and Sarah skirted along the trees, not wanting to emerge yet and be seen.
She glanced over her shoulder occasionally to make sure nothing was sneaking up on her. She was completely unarmed and unprotected, but she wanted to do this; she wanted to prove to Noah that she had what it took to be a part of anything.
When the men reached the bottom of the field, they split up and started walking in different directions. Wayne and Kenny started going southeast with about a third of the men while the rest of them traveled southwest.
Sarah watched them in confusion, not understanding what they were doing. It didn't look like Wayne and Kenny were leading their smaller group of men toward Delroy's camp; in fact, it looked like they were starting to follow the exact same path that she and Kenny traveled to Zed's camp that morning.
When they were far enough away, she emerged from the trees and followed the smaller group heading for what used to be Zed's camp. She had no idea what was going on, and she got a bad feeling that she couldn't shake.
She followed them the entire way to the camp, keeping well behind and out of sight. When they reached the perimeter of the neighborhood around the trucking warehouse, they spread out and surrounded the camp, a few men on the north side closest to Sarah slipping into the house where she and Kenny had delivered one of the black boxes. They each had a huge military-grade sniper rifle on their back that she saw shining in the moonlight before they disappeared through the back door and into the blackness inside.
The rest of the men waited in the wings outside, and Sarah slipped to the other side of the house from the rest of them and peeked around the corner, getting a view of the camp.
Barrel fires blazed on top of the tractor-trailers and the roof of the warehouse as guards patrolled, their rifles at the ready, but seemingly aloof. Embers flickered and wafted through the air as the heat from the flames bent the light that they cast, warping the shapes of the men as they patrolled behind them.
The smoky smell of burning wood filled Sarah's nose and the night was completely silent aside from the crackling of the fire and the soft footsteps of the guards. She figured that Zed's forces must have alread
y moved out to meet Noah's, but she still couldn't understand why they were here. If they were here for reconnaissance like Kenny had said, it seemed like far too many men, and they were way too armed.
As these thoughts swirled through her head and she started to put together what was happening, a sudden and coordinated barrage of .50-caliber bullets shattered the silence. All at once, every guard patrolling on the tractor-trailers and the roof fell over dead with massive, bloody craters where their heads used to be.
The noise made her jump and she let out a cry before she even comprehended the quick splash of blood in the firelight and the falling bodies. A moment later, yells emerged from inside the camp, but all of Wayne's and Kenny's men remained still.
Sarah clung to the edge of the house, her fingers tightly gripping the peeling blue siding, waiting for something else to happen.
A pair of strong hands clamped down on her shoulders and she shrieked and spun around.
It was Wayne.
"Sarah! What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Are you out of your mind!"
She opened her mouth, but she was dumbstruck. "I... uh..."
"You can't be out here!" he barked. "Get inside and don't come out until I get you." Before she could protest he dragged her behind the house and shoved her through the back door.
She stood alone in the dark on the ground floor of the house that the few men had disappeared into. She could only see the faint moonlight coming in through the window in the door behind her, and she could hear the floorboards creak upstairs from the men shifting their weight.
Suddenly, a sound louder than the gunshots echoed through the night, and this time she could actually feel it, too.
She started to panic and ran across the dark room, trying to remember where the stairs were when she came here with Kenny this morning. She stumbled into them and tripped, bruising her shins on the carpeted edges. She clambered up the stairs just as another tremendous bang shook the house. She didn't know if the siege was happening to the house she was in or somewhere else; her mind had fallen into fight-or-flight and everything was a blurred frenzy.
She reached the second floor and found her way to the bedroom, which was illuminated by the soft moonlight, casting the room in dark shades of blue that gently highlighted the outlines of three men in front of her. They all stood near the window, with one of them holding up the black box that had been left there.
The lid was open, and the man standing directly in front of the window reached into it and pulled something out. But it wasn't a pair of binoculars at all; it was a long cylinder, thin and red. It was too dark for her to understand what it was, but then the man pulled out a cigarette lighter and flicked the spark wheel, producing a tiny flame. He held it up to the red cylinder and suddenly there was a brilliant scattering of light, almost like a sparkler.
The man stood in a wide stance with most of his weight on his back leg, then he lurched forward and threw the cylinder out of the open window. It sailed through the air and landed on the ground, rolling against the sandbags stuffed under the tractor-trailers.
A huge explosion knocked the truck toward the building a yard or two, blowing the sandbags apart and tearing a hole in the side of the semi-trailer in a concussive cloud of dust and debris. The sound of the explosion was ear-splitting and Sarah pressed her hands to the sides of her head.
When the man pulled another one out of the box and lit it, she understood now that it was dynamite. She watched as sticks of dynamite rained from the windows of the four houses where she and Kenny had planted the boxes. They fell on every part of the camp, blowing huge chunks from the trucks and the walls of the building.
Screams and chaos came from inside, only audible through the gaps in the furious destruction of the explosives. When the assault was over and the men had run out of dynamite, there was a brief period of quiet among Noah's forces, leaving only the raucous din erupting from inside the warehouse.
Sarah thought it was over, but then the man in front of the window reached into the box again and pulled out what looked like a glass bottle, with something hanging out the end of it that swayed with the movement of his hand, like a piece of fabric.
He ignited the lighter again and held it up to the fabric, which caught on fire. The flames started to slowly spread up to the opening of the bottle, and the man tossed it out the window with a strong throw.
It sailed through the air and landed just past a destroyed tractor-trailer at the bottom of the warehouse's wall. It shattered and flames splashed everywhere like liquid fire, igniting everything around it. The fire burned in a wide puddle as more bottles started to rain from the windows of the houses. One of them from the house on the opposite side landed through a hole that had been blown open in the wall of the building and suddenly there were terrible, bloodcurdling shrieks coming from inside.
And they sounded feminine.
Sarah backed up in the room slowly just as the rain of hellfire stopped. The three men with her left the empty black box on the floor and retreated out of the room, giving her confused glances on their way as pockets of fire surrounded the building out the window.
She heard Wayne call out a rallying cry outside and order the men to advance. She turned and followed the three men downstairs, lingering by the back door until they were out and well on their way.
She poked her head out the door as gunfire and more screams came from the camp. There was no one around behind the house and it looked like she could sneak out without anyone spotting her. She ducked through the door and stayed low, creeping again to the edge of the house and getting a view of the camp. She could feel the heat of the flames licking at her from where she was, and faintly, behind the wall of deafening gunfire, she could hear screams and pleas of mercy.
And some of them didn't just sound feminine; some of them were shrill and childlike.
Her head felt fuzzy as she watched the men step through the blasted holes and enter the building. She came out from the edge of the house and stumbled toward the camp, not really aware of her actions or in total control of them either. Her stomach churned with each step, and every ounce of her screamed out, not wanting to know what was inside the camp, but yet her legs still moved, compelled.
All of Noah's men had infiltrated the building and their assault sounded like a chain reaction inside a fireworks factory.
She stepped over a smoking pile of metal and concrete and slipped through a hole blasted in the wall of the warehouse into the receiving cage. A wide shelf in front of her had been blown against the fence of the cage behind it, bending the fence to a 45-degree angle. Boxes and materials from it had been scattered in every direction, but they still provided some cover, blocking her view from the rest of the warehouse. There was a gate in the fence to the left and she shuffled along the narrow passage to it. When she stepped through, she could see the whole of the warehouse and all the chaos that was happening inside.
The interior of the building was about the same size as the main building from Noah's Ark. Aside from the receiving cage that she had entered through and a few offices and closets tucked to the edges, the entire building had an open design, with numerous pillars throughout, supporting the weight of the roof, and rows of wide shelves stretching almost up to the ceiling filling up the space.
Crates of supplies were blasted from the shelves from barrages of gunfire, creating tiny explosions of wood and other materials as each bullet struck them. Noah's men marched through the makeshift camp, chasing people through aisles and around corners, hunting them down and executing them. It was clear that most of Zed's men had already left the camp before they had arrived and probably had no idea what was happening right now. The remaining people seemed to be a skeleton crew of armed guards and a great number of others fleeing through the building that were unarmed. And none of them were the hardened, scarred and brutal men that Noah had described to her.
Sarah came to the edge of a tall shelf and a little girl who couldn't have been any older than s
ix ran past her, fleeing and crying, looking over her shoulder. The corner of the warehouse nearest to Sarah had rows of cots set up for sleeping, and there was a howling mother there yanking her two young children by the wrists away from danger.
Sarah walked to the end of the aisle she was in and saw skirmishes between Noah's men and Zed's men, but Zed's men were woefully outnumbered and outgunned. Their bodies were cut down in flurries of bullets and their blood soaked the floor.
In the distance, Kenny appeared from behind a shelf. "NO SURVIVORS!" he screamed over the gunfire. "BOSS'S ORDERS!" He stepped out into the open and she saw that he was carrying one of the black boxes cradled in his arm. He reached inside and pulled out a Molotov cocktail, awkwardly trying to hold it with the box while he fumbled with his lighter and lit it.
A fleeing old woman who looked to be in her seventies ran through the space in front of him and his eyes followed her along as she went. He pulled back his arm and whipped the bottle at her, hitting her square in the back and engulfing her body in flames. She shrieked and fell to the ground, rolling and spasming as Kenny bellowed laughter.
Sarah's stomach lurched and she bent over and puked on the ground. She felt weak and her head was dizzy. Everything around her felt like it was going a bit dim, like her vision was lit with only one fading candle, struggling to hold the darkness around it at bay.
She stumbled through another aisle and stopped at the end of it, looking to the side and seeing Wayne standing a few rows over. He was motionless, his arms limply at his sides. He just stood there and watched the death and destruction as the firelight danced across his eyes. And as she stared at him, she could see a single tear fall from his eye and shimmer in the brilliant orange light.
17
Contraband
The building had turned into a slaughterhouse. Pools and splashes of blood covered the interior, filling the air with the nauseating scent of metal. It was so heavy and so pervasive that anyone who wasn't used to it would have vomited on the spot. But even worse than that was the smell of burning flesh. Bodies littered the floor like so many ruined crates and boxes, just lifeless things to be stepped over and disregarded. Small pockets of fire still burned, sending up thin pillars of black smoke that filtered out through the holes blasted in some of the walls by the dynamite and dispersed into the night air. Some of the bodies were charred by the fire. They were just black husks, twisted and curled into obscene shapes of anguish and terror before they died.
A Rising Tide (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 2) Page 16