by Joe McKinney
“Yeah,” she said. “Go ahead.”
Nate was standing right behind Richardson when he turned his tiny blue LED light into the darkness. He saw a flash of movement, a woman, battered and snarling, moving fast. She lashed out at Richardson, the heel of her hand smashing into Richardson’s nose, sending him flying backward.
The penlight hit the floor and rolled away.
Nate was watching it when an iron grip locked onto his throat, fingernails digging deep into his skin.
He couldn’t breathe.
Whoever had him was holding him from behind. He started to thrash. His resistance earned him a kick to the back of his knees. He collapsed, but not all the way to the floor, for his captor had grabbed his left arm and twisted it up behind his back.
The grip on his throat slackened for just a moment.
“Stop it!” Nate said.
The grip tightened.
Then a woman leaned in close to his ear and whispered, “Stop fighting me or I’ll tear the windpipe from your throat.”
He tried to speak and couldn’t. He nodded instead.
A little pressure came off his throat, but at the same time his captor bent his arm farther up his back. Nate arched his back against the pain, a little whimper escaping his lips.
“Please stop,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Nate Royal.”
She wrenched his arm even farther up his back. “I want to know why you’re here. Answer me.”
But before Nate could speak Sylvia grabbed the penlight and turned it up at her own face.
“Niki, it’s me.”
Nate was thrown roughly to the floor. He landed on his chin with an audible umph and stayed there. It felt like his arm had been pulled out of its socket and his throat crushed.
It took him a long while before he could sit up. When he did, he saw Sylvia and Avery and the woman they called Niki hugging. Avery was crying. Sylvia looked like a worried mother. She couldn’t take her hands off Niki’s wounded face.
She kept saying, “Oh, sweetie. Oh no. Don’t you worry. We’ll get you out of here.”
Nate finally rose to his feet. His eyes had adjusted to the dark now, and he could see the three women in shadowed relief. He saw Niki turn his way and there was just enough light to see the distrust on her face.
“Who’s that?” she said.
“His name is Nate,” Avery said.
Even Nate could recognize the hopeful timbre in her voice, as though she hoped Niki might offer some encouraging words about him. Nate couldn’t help but feel a touch of pride. He was thirty years old, but he couldn’t ever remember being the cause of making a woman sound like that.
Niki too, it seemed, picked up on it. She regarded Nate with a look he couldn’t quite articulate, but it felt like he was being summed up, evaluated in some way. It made him feel all of about two feet high.
“I think your friend is hurt,” Niki said.
Nate nodded. “Uh huh.”
“You might want to help him,” Niki prodded.
“Oh, yeah.”
Nate went over to Richardson and knelt by his side. He examined Richardson’s face, the smashed nose and upper lip, the blood, the missing front tooth.
“Wow, she fucked you up good.”
Richardson groaned. He tried to sit up, but his eyes crossed and he sagged back to the ground.
“Can you stand?”
After a moment, Richardson nodded.
Nate helped him to his feet. The women were standing in a huddle a short distance away, Sylvia and Avery both trying to talk at once.
Niki noticed him and her bruised smile receded.
“Is your friend okay?”
“My friend?”
Nate didn’t catch her meaning. He was too busy looking at her face. In the low light it was difficult to make her out clearly, but Nate thought she might have been pretty before she got beat up. Her eyes were blackened and puffy, her lips crusty with dried blood. Her left shoulder drooped, like she was too tired, or too badly hurt, to stand up straight.
“What happened to you?” he said.
Niki huffed. “Your boyfriend’s not the brightest bulb in the box, is he?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Avery said, though she wouldn’t look any of them in the eye.
Though he couldn’t be sure, Nate was certain he saw a high blush rise in her cheeks.
“I’m alright,” Richardson said.
“Well, okay then,” Niki said. She extended her right foot and shook it so they could all hear the chain cuffed to her ankle rattling. “Somebody got a flat piece of metal? A screwdriver, maybe?”
A pause.
“I do,” said Richardson.
He urged Nate to one side, hesitantly standing on his own. “I got it,” he said. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a flat strip of metal about the size of a well-chewed pencil. It had a little squiggly hook at the end.
Nate squinted at it, then looked questioningly at Richardson.
“It’s a lock pick. On my way to the Grasslands, I traveled with this ex-cop named Michael Barnes. He said he used to carry one of these in his back pocket all the time, just in case somebody handcuffed him.”
“That’ll work,” Niki said. “Here—give it to me.”
Richardson handed the lock pick over. Nate stepped forward, instantly fascinated. He’d always found it mystifying that people could manipulate things the way they did. Even back before the world got all messed up, the sight of somebody working on an engine, or installing cable on a new entertainment center, or turning some old appliance into something completely new and clever, was a mystery to him. Machines and electronics were like some puzzle too strange and too big for him to fathom. He was completely incapable of doing it himself, but it still fascinated him.
Like Niki Booth was fascinating him now.
She was digging the pick into the gap between the cuff ’s ratchet arm and base, her bruised lips pursed in concentration.
The cuff clicked open.
Niki kicked the metal away, then went down on one knee to rub her ankle where the cuff had chafed her.
She got back up quickly.
In the faint blue glow of the penlight Nate could see the dark bruises on her cheeks, the dried blood at her ears and down the sides of her neck, the missing tooth. She swayed uncertainly on her feet. Her captors had really hurt her. But despite the damage, there was an unmistakable aura of certainty and control about her. This one, Nate sensed, was tough. The Red Man had battered her, bruised her, but he hadn’t gotten to her core. He hadn’t been able to get that deep. There was still a hard grain inside her that was as of yet undaunted and true.
“What day is it?” she said.
“Um, it’s Wednesday,” said Avery.
Niki grunted. “We don’t have much time. I’m supposed to meet Fisher at sunset.”
She touched Avery’s hand lightly, and the younger woman looked up expectantly.
“How you doin’, baby? You okay?”
Avery nodded. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You too. Listen. I need you to help me. Do you know where we are, on the river I mean?”
Avery nodded again.
“Do you know how to get to a little town called Chester from here?”
“Sure. It’s only fourteen miles south of here. We could just follow the east bank of the river.”
“That close, really?” Niki looked impressed. The faint glimmer of a smile appeared at the corner of her damaged mouth. “I’m supposed to meet Fisher there, at St. Mary’s Cemetery. You know it?”
“You bet I do.”
Niki looked at Sylvia and the two women traded real smiles now.
Nate heard something. Behind them, in the dark.
Richardson was a few feet away, still bleeding, his breath coming in wet, nasally pulls through his busted lips. At first that was the noise Nate thought he’d heard, and he was about to turn back to the wom
en when he saw a dark shape moving slowly across the ground just behind Richardson.
Nate turned the penlight on it and let out a gasp. It was a man, definitely a man, completely nude and covered in blood. Deep oozing cuts ran down the length of his body and some looked deep enough to show the yellow layers of fat beneath the skin. A wide smear of blood marked his relentless path through the darkness to this spot.
But as injured as he was, the zombie moved with surprising speed. It extended a gnarled hand and locked it around Richardson’s ankle. At the same time he pulled his open mouth toward Richardson’s calf and bit off a huge chunk of denim and flesh.
Richardson screamed as he collapsed to the ground.
Nate took a step in that direction, meaning to kick the zombie in the face to get him away from Richardson, but he had barely begun to move when he felt an iron grip on the back of his shirt.
It was Niki.
She pulled him back, nearly throwing him to the ground in the process. “Get out of the way,” she said.
The zombie reached for her. She knocked his hand away, got behind him, and pushed the man facedown on the pavement with the sole of her boot. He tried to clutch at her, but his movements were awkward and he couldn’t figure out how to turn his arms over to get a grip on her. Niki gave him a solid kick in the ribs for good measure, then stood over top of him and brought her boot down hard on the back of his neck.
There was a loud crack and the man went still.
But Richardson was still screaming.
“We need to keep him quiet,” Niki said.
She took the penlight from Nate and turned it on Richardson. His face had gone pale and his mouth was quivering. His eyes were wild with fright. The blue glow of the penlight made his skin look unnatural, like fine marble.
He watched Niki drawing closer, and he started shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, stay back.”
“It’s alright,” she said. “Don’t make any noise. I just want to look at you.”
“The crows,” Richardson said. “No, please. Stay back.”
“The crows?” Niki said. She looked back at Nate, but he had no idea what Richardson was talking about. He shrugged.
Somewhere in the darkness, they heard wet, gurgling moans. Lots of them.
They all froze. Even Richardson stopped whimpering.
“What was that?” Nate said.
“Shhh,” Niki hissed.
She turned the penlight into the darkness.
Nate strained his eyes to see into the shadows. There were figures moving around in little side rooms along the walls, some just rising to their feet, others already awake and surging against the chain-link fence that had been placed over the entrances to the rooms, turning them into cells. Out of habit Nate tried to count them, but there were way too many for that. All he could see was a blur of ruined faces and shredded fingers trying to squeeze through the diamond-shaped holes of the fence.
One of the zombies tried to climb the fence, and the weight peeled a corner of it away from the wall. He fell, and was trampled by the others surging forward, reaching for the opening that was getting wider with every second.
A moment later the fence tore loose from the wall, and soon dozens of zombies were stumbling across the floor, crunching the pile of trash beneath their feet.
“Time to go,” Niki said.
Nate knelt down next to Richardson and tried to lift him, but even he knew the older man was as good as dead. Richardson was already starting to convulse, a sure sign that the necrosis filovirus was waging war in his bloodstream, and winning. His eyes were rolling up into his head and little specks of blood were already starting to appear on his lips.
Niki grabbed Nate by the shirt again and pulled.
“Let’s go,” she said. “You can’t help him now.”
Her grip was surprisingly strong. Even if he had tried to resist he probably wouldn’t have been able. And she’s injured too, he thought. Such strength.
“But Ben . . .” Nate said.
Niki shoved him toward the door again. “Move,” she said. “There’s no time.”
Nate let himself be led out the door and into the hallway, where torches cast a flickering orange light on the black floor and the wood-paneled walls. He was still in shock, unable to resist.
He looked into the darkness of the room they’d just left. The moaning was growing louder, and he could see the shambling forms of men and women moving toward the lighted doorway in which he stood. He knew he had to run. Behind him the others were already heading down the hallway. But something inside him was telling him this was huge, too huge to just walk away from. That was Ben Richardson in there. That was the man who had entrusted him with his life’s work. A man was dying in there, and somebody had to pay attention.
Ben Richardson, he thought, trying to wrap his mind around all that the man had come to represent for him. A new beginning. A purpose redefined.
Not since Doc Kellogg had anyone ever bothered to talk to him, really talk to him, about the way the world worked. But Richardson had. They had shared some conversations about this blighted world and how Nate might fit in with it. They had had such huge conversations. They had talked for hours on end. The man’s words had been a gift to Nate, the kind of gift that saved lives. And now, Nate was left wondering why Richardson died muttering something crazy about crows.
It didn’t make any sense.
He couldn’t quite come to terms with that.
CHAPTER 20
“You okay?” Jimmy Hinton whispered.
Gabi had slipped on the muddy bank and landed on her hands and knees. For a long moment she didn’t move, so long that Jimmy almost asked her again if she was okay.
But she finally looked up at him. “The ground here smells bad.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s an evil place.”
She stood up and shook the mud from her hands. It was a frustrated gesture, like she was trying to restore her pride. But it was a moot effort at this point. There was more mud on the front of her dress than there was on the ground. The shape of the stain, the way it spread in a semicircle across her lap, reminded Jimmy of an apron. That was funny, he thought, his Gabi wearing an apron. Their marriage, especially these last eight years, had been as much about guns and keeping the Sugar Jane afloat as it was about love. This woman, who had meant so much to him, was anything but a domestic goddess. She didn’t mouse about the boat, begging him to make their decisions for their survival. She didn’t make the bed and cook his meals and cluck over him like an old mother hen. Instead, she killed zombies and river pirates alike, and she did it standing right by his side. There wasn’t a trace of squeamishness in her. She didn’t fear guns or engine grease or even the zombies that roamed this blighted land. Gabi Hinton was a battle-axe, and he loved her for it. He stifled a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
She was still trying to shake the mud from her hands.
“Nothing,” he said.
She gave him a look like she didn’t believe him, but let it pass. “Well, let’s get moving. We aren’t gonna find a ride standing here.”
“Nope, I guess you’re right about that.”
They were following a path of loose gravel that ran between the tall weeds that grew along the verge of the river and the muddy bank upon which Gabi had just fallen. It wasn’t a true path. It was overgrown in spots, the gravel not even visible, but it offered the only cover they had this close to the river. The land that stretched out between the top of the muddy bank and the hotel was flat and empty of trees. There were a few rusted pickups and a boat trailer on the drive that led down to the pier, but nothing that could conceal them from the patrols wandering the grounds. They were stuck down here next to the river.
Jimmy’s goal was a small wooden shed about thirty yards ahead of them. He envisioned this hotel in its prime, with little boats rented out to guests puttering up and down the slow-moving majesty of the mighty Mississippi and a dull-headed boy on his su
mmer vacation working the shack, taking room keys and handing out pamphlets on the sights. Beyond the shack were a few of those small motorboats, and one or two looked like they might actually be sturdy enough to get them away from this place. Probably not very far, but far enough.
“Can you make it to that shed?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Okay, then,” he said. He held up his palms in mock surrender as though to say he was sorry he asked. “Onward we go.”
When they reached it Jimmy saw something he hadn’t expected. On the other side of the shed was a concrete drive that sank into the river. Debris floating on the water seemed to be moving slowly, and it occurred to him that the combination of deep water and slow moving currents made this a logical ferry crossing point. He looked across the river for a matching point on the other side, but the fog was still thick enough in places to obscure his view. He had a strong feeling it was there, though, and he kicked himself for his stupidity. The shack wasn’t some kind of checkout line for hotel guests. It was the weather shack for the ferry boat drivers. That meant the Red Man would be bringing his boats in here. Especially if he was going to be offloading zombies, which he almost certainly would be.
“This is no good,” Jimmy said. “We need to get back to the pier.”
“The pier? What for?”
“As soon as that fog clears, I think we’re gonna—”
Jimmy stopped mid-sentence. Gabi didn’t speak. The two of them had been partners long enough to recognize each other’s cues, and she hunkered down, looking at him and waiting.
He motioned to her that he heard something coming from the direction of the hotel. She fell back against the bank and pressed herself into the mud. Jimmy nodded in approval and crawled forward, peering over the lip of the bank.
A guard was standing less than ten feet away, his back to them.
Jimmy gasped silently. If the man had been looking at them just then . . .
“Give me a fuckin’ break,” the guard said. “I gotta piss.”
Jimmy quickly ducked down again, his eyes wide with panic. He motioned to Gabi in the sign language they’d developed over the years.