Hereafter

by C. K. Crigger

  Lily hunkered beside her well-laid fire and stared hopelessly into its center. Now what? One tiny match, that’s all she needed. One little spark to bring flame.

  She snorted. If the anger searing through her veins was any indication, she ought to have a conflagration going by now. Disgusted, she flipped her hand, meaning to tear down the sticks. Her heart almost stopped as a ball of white light no larger than a pea slid from her fingers to the pile of wood. A tendril of smoke rose from the cedar punk, followed in short order by flickering yellow flames.

  “Oh. My. God!” She stared at tiny blaze, her mouth hanging open although transformed into the village idiot. Her heart thumped and she pressed her hand against her chest as though to still the heavy pressure.

  That other thing. The thing her mom denied happened on that long ago day, and then told her never to tell anyone about. She’d done it again. But how?

  The man spoke from across the fire. “Not a Techno. Not the clan. A Cross-up woman.”

  She whirled, surprised he still had strength enough to speak. “A Cross-up woman? What do you mean?”

  “You know.” His eyes closed.

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.” Lily shook her head. But she saw the discussion was moot as he drifted back into La-la land.

  As the fire rose higher, she took the kettle and went to the stream, filling it with water. Within fifteen minutes, water steaming, she dropped the knife in to boil and sterilize. When the time came, she stripped off her t-shirt and tore several inches off the bottom into strips, some for bandages, some for washing cloths. She hadn’t realized she planned on going through with it until then. That she actually planned on operating on her new-found friend.

  She bet they wouldn’t remain friends long.

  ***

  An hour later, Lily emerged from the cave drooping with exhaustion, yet euphoric, too. So far, the man had survived her rudimentary surgery. Some kind of miracle, she was sure. Taking a deep breath to clear her lungs of campfire smoke, she saw, to her surprise, the twilight shadows already reaching into the trees. A definite chill was in the air. Hunger gnawed at her stomach, fiercer now, painful and urgent.

  Sliver, the dog, accompanied her, leaving his master immobile in the cave. The dog’s first action was to lift his leg against a weed. Smiling, Lily followed suit—not lifting her leg exactly, but performing a like function.

  “Where’s that bird?” she asked the dog. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to worry about food-borne illness. I don’t care if it’s teeming with salmonella. I’ll just cook it well done.”

  After a short argument with the animal over property rights, she spent the next few minutes moving in and out of the cave preparing the small meal. Wild onions, a little dried at this time of year, still grew along the banks of the creek. So did a fiddlehead fern, and a second crop of asparagus, both remarkably free of frost. Lily harvested them while there was still enough light to see, washed the curling fern sprouts free of brown crusties, then dumped everything together into the washed pot.

  Later, as she gathered more wood for the fire, Sliver’s behavior arrested her attention. She saw the dog, standing immobile at the edge of the woods where it was darkest. He was staring off to where the locked buildings lay just out of sight. A ridge of hair stood straight up along his spine and he looked, if she wanted to try and describe him, as though he were about to do battle.

  To tell the truth, her short hairs rose up and saluted, too, when an unearthly scream reached her sensitive eardrums.

  What the hell?

  “Sliver! Come here,” she whispered harshly. He looked toward her, then, ignoring the summons and with his attention riveted on something beyond her sight, he dropped to his belly, creeping forward with an awkward paddling motion. In seconds, the pattern of his black-and-white coat blended into the background and he disappeared. Shaken, she headed into the cave, seeking at least an illusion of safety.

  The eerie, ululating cry sounded again, from a different direction this time, the strangeness of it raising goose bumps on Lily’s arms. Instinct told her these sounds could only be coming from the throat of another of those “things.” Hands trembling, she set out her small store of defensive paraphernalia. The knife; the garrote from its storage cavity; the wounded man’s crossbow and three bolts—no leeway for missing there—and last, her Glock.

  Her Glock with its worthless bullets.

  Maybe if she willed hard enough, it would work. Yeah. Just like her equally worthless cell phone; like her watch, as dead as the cell. Panting with effort, she began stacking her collection of firewood in the cave’s opening, adding a few loose stones from the cave’s floor in a kind of barricade. Leave room for Sliver to get in, she reminded herself.

  “Mags…”

  The wounded man’s whisper caught her by surprise. “What?” She turned to find his eyes open, with him struggling to sit up. “Lie down.” Her command emerged sharper than intended. Voice softening, she said, “You’ll start the bleeding again.”

  Her own jacket, tucked around him against the chill, slipped from his shoulders. “Won’t matter if I’m already dead,” he said. “Can you manage the crossbow?”

  “I can manage.” She saw him staring at her Glock, and then he blinked up at her.

  “Is that a working unit?” he asked.

  “What? My gun?”

  He nodded.

  “Unfortunately, no. I tried… It misfired twice, but the ammunition is no good.”

  “I thought so.” His eyes fluttered shut. “That’s always the case.”

  “It is? What…?” She froze as another scream, sounding as if it were just outside, echoed against the walls of the cave. Brush crashed. She heard grunts nearby. “They’re here.”

  “Help me up,” he commanded in a weak whisper. “Cock the bow and give it to me.”

  “You...” she started, but why not? Depending on how many of those creatures were ranging the woods, they stood no chance at all unless he fought, too. Besides, the bow belonged to him. Hurrying, she cocked the weapon and put it in his hands.

  “Stay awake with that thing,” she told him with a faint smile. She took the knife in her right hand, and grasped a fist-sized stone in the left. “I’d just as soon not get an arrow in the back.”

  One of his bushy white eyebrows lifted. “A sense of humor. I didn’t know Cross-ups had any.”

  “Cro…” she started to say, but at that moment Sliver appeared in the mouth of the cave and with a rattle of loosely piled rocks, scrambled over the inadequate barricade. She caught sight of blood staining his muzzle before he whirled around to meet his pursuers.

  There was no more time. The lithe body of a boy—young man—dived into the cave, and Lily leapt to grapple with him, the knife alive in her hand.

  From behind her, the man cried out. “No!”

  Chapter 7

  Twisting in midair, Lily diverted the upward swoop of her knife from the newcomer’s midsection. Her blade missed by the narrowest of margins. Besides the frantic entreaty in the wounded man’s voice, two other things penetrated her concentration. First, shocking agony as her muscles strained to the breaking point and second, the kid’s ordinary brown eyes as he crouched staring at her.

  “Crap! Ouch!” She tripped over Sliver, spilled to the ground panting, and stared back at the boy.

  “Who’re you?” he asked.

  “I’m Lily Turnbow. Who’re you?”

  “Jacob Felix.”

  His name meant as little to her as her own must to him. He peered into the recesses of the cave where Lily’s patient lay and said, “Mr. Bell? Is that you?”

  “Me,” Bell replied.

  “We been lookin’ for you. You hurt bad?”

  “’Fraid so. Better now. This woman helped me.” Bell’s voice shook. “The family?”

  “Almost here. So are the Mags.” The kid, Jacob, scrambled over to Lily’s makeshift barricade, already crumbling from the way he flung himself over the top. He squ
inted into the darkening night. “I’m scout,” he told Bell. “A patrol is doggin’ my heels. They’ll be here soon.”

  “Praise be.” Bell’s eyelids fluttered shut and with a soft sigh he lapsed into unconsciousness again.

  Lily duck-walked over to him, laying her hand on his forehead. “He’s burning up with fever,” she said to the boy. “I hope your folks know a good doctor. They need to get this man to the nearest hospital.”

  Jacob, who was carrying what had to be a custom-made recurve bow strung and ready to shoot, reached behind him for an arrow and nocked it. His attention focused outside the cave, he didn’t turn around. “Hospital? I think they got one in the city.”

  Lily frowned. “Well, sure, but there’s a small one in Colville. I guess that’s closest. They could stabilize him there before sending him to town.”

  He made a phtting sound. “Shoot, there’s nothin’ much in Colville. Neila does our doctorin’. Keep him alive until she gets here and she’ll pull him through. She’s the clan healer.”

  Healer? Clan? And what else had he said? Something about him being a scout with the patrol right behind him. What did all that mean? What kind of war zone had she happened into, for God’s sake? Her mind couldn’t seem to focus on what was happening.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “He’s in bad shape. Can you give the hospital a call on your cell? Tell’em we need an air ambulance out here.”

  “What’s a cell?” His bowstring twanged as he released an arrow into a stand of bushes.

  She jerked around. “What are you shooting at? Who is out there?”

  “I’m shooting Mags.” Reaching into his quiver, he pulled out another arrow. It had a serrated hunting tip suitable for large game. “Wish I knew how many there are. I backtracked the one we found dead in the woods to the compound, then a bunch of them almost caught me. Sliver found me about then and I followed him here. I couldn’t remember where the cave was, coming at it from a different angle.”

  Lily’s head buzzed. Here were more allusions she didn’t understand. She chose one. “Mags being those weird looking guys.”

  “Well, yeah.” His intonation implied she was some kind of idiot.

  An arrow zoomed between them, the wooden shaft splintering against the rock wall above Bell’s head. Lily squeaked in surprise.

  Before she could blink, Jacob snapped off another shot and from outside, an unearthly scream raised the hairs on Lily’s arms.

  “Sounds like you got one.” She swallowed, her dry throat convulsing.

  Angry, unintelligible muttering rose outside.

  “Nicked him pretty good, anyway.” He glanced at her. “Better put out the fire. Don’t want it backlighting us.”

  Lily, already thinking along the same lines, had a moment of regret. She created that fire out of nothing. It went against the grain to smother it now.

  “I made soup,” she said. “For Mr. Bell and me. It’s been a while since either of us had had anything to eat.”

  Jacob grimaced. “Yeah. I smelled cooking. Probably what drew the Mags.”

  Accompanied by the rise of snarling voices, another missile, a hard-thrown rock the size of Lily’s fist, caromed into the cave where it ricocheted into her boot with surprising force.

  “Ow! Goddammit!” Snatching up the soup pot, she set it against the wall where it would hopefully be out of reach. Using a stick of wood, she scattered the fire and stamped out the flames. Afterward, it seemed very dark.

  “That’s better,” Jacob said after a couple minutes. “Got my night vision workin’. They won’t be takin’ us by surprise now.”

  As if somebody out there was disputing his confidence, the creepy, ululating cry heard earlier grated across her eardrums.

  “Ma’am,” the boy shifted lower behind his pile of rubble, “do you know how to use a crossbow? Looks like they’re plannin’ on rushin’ us. Don’t know if I can keep’em out by myself.”

  For all Jacob’s supposed calm and his air of seasoned combat veteran, Lily heard a quaver. He’s just a kid, she reminded herself. A boy.

  “I can shoot the bow,” she assured him. “But I’m not sure I can reload without seeing what I’m doing. Crossbows aren’t something I’m real familiar with. I’ve got my knife, though, if they get that close.” She remembered her Glock and felt around in the dark until she found it. “And this.

  He peered at the pistol, a rising moon lending enough ambient light to see. “That old thing,” he said, his disinterest clear. “Won’t do you any good.”

  Just like Bell, he somehow divined the pistol’s condition at a glance.

  “Huh. If they get close enough, I can bean them with it. At least it’s made of good quality steel.”

  Jacob’s teeth flashed white. “Guess that’ll work. Stab with your knife and jab with your gun. Give’em something to think about. Sliver and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Sliver will?”

  As if they’d risen from the earth itself, a dozen or so mostly naked beings came dashing toward the mouth of the cave. A frontal attack, Lily thought. Stupid. Or it would’ve been stupid if her pistol had worked and she could’ve mowed them down like rabbits. Or if there’d been more defenders in the cave. As it was, the two of them were in danger of being overwhelmed.

  She discovered the dog’s role when Sliver rushed out to meet the enemy, his sharp white teeth slashing at Achilles tendons, at thin calf muscles, at extraordinarily long arms. Lily saw him in action, a racing whirlwind in attack mode. For a smallish-sized dog, he did an extraordinary amount of damage. One of the attackers tripped over him and fell heavily. Sliver was on him in an instant, grabbing for the Mag’s throat. Wishing for a stout set of ear plugs about then, Lily heard a choked off scream and a gurgle.

  Another of the creatures went down with one of Jacob’s arrows high in her chest. That one lay on the ground writhing and sobbing. A second dropped out with a bolt from Bell’s crossbow stuck in his arm. Lily hadn’t even realized she’d pulled the trigger until she saw the damage done.

  But the rest reached the mouth of the cave. Spears and knives and rocks flew through the air like lethal rain. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jacob drop his bow and ward off a fellow with one of the spears a Mag had thrown.

  Another Mag, horribly scarred, shouted something unintelligible as he jumped over the loose barricade, only to stumble as a piece of firewood rolled beneath his feet. He thumped to the ground in front of her, slashing about wildly with a sword. Lily slammed her Glock down on his head, once, twice. In a sickening thud, the steel connected with his temple, at which he went into a wild sort of prone dance. Dodging his kicking legs, she brandished the big survival knife in every direction with as much vigor her tiring arm allowed. About the time the Mag’s legs went still, she became conscious of cutting nothing but air, her opponents gone, and the night quiet except for Jacob gasping for air.

  Or was that herself she heard?

  Both, she realized. But at least the awful gurgle echoing throughout the cave was coming from a Mag wearing his own spear as a belt buckle—Jacob’s work—and not from either of them.

  Abruptly, her legs gave out under her and she sat. Her butt met the earth with a spine jolting snap. “Holy crap,” she muttered, fighting an almost overwhelming urge to pee her pants. “Are they gone?”

  “For now.” Jacob frowned. “Ma’am, your face is white as bleached bone. That little skirmish scare you?”

  Lily pushed herself up on quivering knees. “Hell, yes, it scared me. What do you think? Weren’t you scared?”

  “Me, ma’am? No. Not much.” A stray moonbeam striking his face just then showed her he was lying.

  “You should’ve been.” Her tirade went on. “Anytime I got someone trying kill me, I’m scared. I’m a Border Patrol agent, not a marine, not a ninja, not a Wonder Woman.” Plus it had been her first experience of real hand-to-hand combat.

  Yet she realized that wasn’t quite true. There’d been the Arab. Ever
ything else had been practice. There wasn’t, she was discovering, much similarity between training and the real thing. “As for you,” her pointed finger demanded honesty, “you’re a kid. Where’d you learn to fight?”

  “Sergeant Deputy Zelnor. He’s our training officer,” he said, which only confused her further. He could’ve been talking about Genghis Khan for all she knew.

  Giving up for the moment and leaving him to drag the two Mags they’d killed outside, she edged over to Bell. She was afraid of finding him dead, if not succumbed to his older wound, then re-injured during the fight. He hadn’t, she found, although his fever still raged. It was as she pulled her jacket closer around his neck that the thin rustle of cellophane jogged a memory.

  Reaching into one of the shoulder pockets, she dug out a sample package of an extra-strength analgesic, one a grocery store clerk had palmed off on her when she went in to buy a candy bar to bring along on the stakeout.

  She positively salivated, longing for that Snickers right now; chocolate, peanuts, caramel. Energy. Her stomach grumbled. But the aspirin was a godsend, too.

  Tapping the man on his stubbled cheek, she called his name. “Mr. Bell, wake up. Can you hear me? I need you to wake up.”

  “Are you supposed to do that?” Jacob asked. Finished with his body-removal task, he shuffled over until he was facing her across Bell. “Neila always says people should rest if they’ve been hurt.”

  Lily tapped harder. “He’s not resting, he’s unconscious. If I can get this aspirin down him, he can rest afterward. But he’s got to wake up in order to swallow the pills.”

  “What did you say they’re for?”

  “They’ll help bring his temperature down.”

  “Neila’s got stuff for that,” he informed her. “Some stuff she makes from tree bark.”

  “And do you see Neila, whoever she may be, in this cave right now?” She caught herself as her voice shrilled. “Make yourself useful. Help me sit him up. And then keep watch in case more of those damn Maggots come back.”