Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Get inside,” Dez said. “I’ll keep this dickhead entertained.”

  She emphasized the comment with another shot, but then her slide locked back. While Dez swapped it out for a fresh one—her last—the girl gave her a two-second up and down appraisal, looked over her shoulder once more and then ran up the steps and in through the open door.

  Dez smiled and slapped the magazine into place and released the slide. The bastard out there in the weeds wouldn’t know it was her last magazine. Besides, if one guy could get past her while she had a full magazine, a blackjack, a knife and a lot of female indignation, then she wasn’t trying her best. Dez liked a good fight, especially when the payoff was kicking some guy’s nuts up between his shoulder blades. That always felt good.

  There was some movement out in the field near where the dog went down, but Dez had no clear shot. Nevertheless she knelt there, finger laid along the trigger guard, eyes moving slowly over the field.

  Was the guy down, too? Had one of her rounds popped him?

  Maybe. She hoped so, but she wasn’t sure.

  He hadn’t returned fire, which probably meant he didn’t have a gun or was low on bullets. She had a slightly elevated shooting position and had already proved that she was a good shot. Most people don’t want to play that kind of game, especially these days.

  A small scared voice spoke through the slats of the living room shutters.

  “Is he gone?”

  “No,” said Dez.

  A pause. “Is he dead?”

  “We can hope.”

  Several long minutes passed and there was no movement at all in the field. Dez thought she heard the dog whining, but the wind was blowing past the house toward the field and she couldn’t be sure. She straightened very slowly and carefully, weapon still trained on the field.

  There was no movement and no shots fired in her direction.

  “You have to go make sure,” insisted the girl.

  “No I damn well do not,” Dez growled. “That’s a great way to get a bullet in the brainpan. No thanks, honey. If that guy out there is setting a trap it’s going to be for someone stupider than me.”

  “His name is Joe.”

  Dez cut a look at the shadowy form behind the shutters. “You know him? He one of your group?”

  “Huh? Oh…no…I just met him. He was in a fight with some guys who…who tried to…”

  She didn’t finish, but Dez got the point.

  The afternoon sun moved steadily toward the west and the shadows flowed out from the distant trees, seeming to flood the fields like black water. Dez moved to sit with her back to the living room wall so she could talk to the girl more easily while still watching the field. She was more than half convinced that the guy was dead. Her other half was less sure, because if she’d killed him then he should have reanimated by now. The fact that he hadn’t left it all in a gray area. He could be dead with a bullet in the brain. He could be wounded and bleeding out. He could be hurt and waiting for nightfall, or for reinforcements. Or he could be unhurt and really pissed and simply waiting for his moment.

  Once the sun was down it would be too risky to stay here on the porch, though. And defending a house was tough. Easy enough to do against the mindless dead; much tougher against a thinking person who really wants to get in.

  As the shadows lengthened Dez thought about the food in there, and the other guns. Plus, she really needed to pee.

  Twilight turned the fields to a featureless purple-black. There was no way Dez was going to get back to Biel and the kids tonight. The forests at night were a death trap in more ways than she could count.

  So, Dez shimmied over to the door and pushed it open. It was dark inside, which was good. She’d warned Lindsey about lighting a fresh fire, and the one in the fireplace had long since burned out. Good.

  She rose to a crouch and hurried inside, closed and bolted the door, and before she even stopped to go to the bathroom, Dez hurried through the house, floor by floor, to make sure all of the windows and doors were shut and shuttered. Then she found a bucket and relieved herself. A downstairs broom closet had been turned into an outhouse. Any port in a storm.

  Then she called for Lindsey to join her in the kitchen. There was a mountain of trash in one corner, including many empty food and drink cans that were swarming with ants, roaches and other opportunistic insects. That kind of vermin no longer bothered Dez. The vermin outside were more important.

  “Kid,” she said, “we need to rig an alarm. Take some of these cans and stack a few in front of every window. If you can find silverware, then put a piece or two in the top can. If anyone comes in it’ll make noise. Got it?”

  Lindsey nodded and after only a moment’s uncertain hesitation, began gathering cans. The girl impressed Dez by working fast and being smart in how and where she stacked the cans. When all of the cans had been used, Dez went around and inspected the work, using a candle for light. Whoever lived her was into big, chunky scented candles.

  “Nice job,” she told the girl.

  “He can still get in,” said Lindsey.

  “Not without us knowing,” said Dez. She patted the Glock on her hip and hefted a small-bore shotgun she’d found upstairs. The shells were filled with birdshot, but even a .20 gauge with a birding rounds would blow the junk off a rapist, and in the confines of a house there was no way for her to miss.

  By the light of the scented candle, Dez and Lindsey opened two cans—Vienna sausage and kidney beans—and ate while they exchanged stories. Dez told her about the outbreak in Stebbins County, and how the massive super storm had slowed down the government’s response. By the time the main cell of the storm had passed the plague had jumped the quarantine zone. The military tried to control the spread with the use of fuel-air bombs and a take-no-prisoners live fire response, but by then it was like trying to destroy an anthill with a pistol. The bombs did damage, but it only takes a couple of infected outside of the Q-zone to spread the infection again, and again, and again.

  “So you have a whole bunch of school busses filled with kids?” asked Lindsey, eyes wide. “And they’re okay?”

  “I hope so,” Dez told her. “One of the teachers is back there with them, and we reinforced the bus pretty well. They can hold out for now and I’ll head back there at first light.”

  Lindsey looked immediately terrified.

  “Hey,” said Dez quickly, “don’t sweat it. You can come with me. We’ll put some supplies in a wheelbarrow and take it back to the kids. Or…maybe go grab the kids and bring them back here. That might be a better plan, come to think of it.”

  “He’s out there,” said Lindsey. “That guy Joe and his dog.”

  “Yeah, about that,” said Dez, “you want to bring me up to speed here? What happened to your group and who’s this Joe dickhead?”

  Lindsey studied her plate for a while and fresh tears fell through the grime on her cheeks. “This wasn’t my family,” she began, and then told a story that had become familiar to anyone who had survived these last six months. Lindsey’s family had been killed during the outbreak and she’d fled from one group to another, escaping as each new group was torn apart or died from diseases. These days even a simple infection could rage out of control. The group that settled in the farmhouse were a disparate band of refugees from all over the south and lower northern states. A fireman from Philadelphia, a West Virginian CPA, a mechanic and his wife from Kentucky. People running in every direction in hopes of finding a safe zone, and then dying because they made mistakes, got sick, got bit, got too weary to run, or gave up.

  “We found this place, and it looked like the people who lived here had caught a break, you know? There was a National Guard rescue station not too far from here and the soldiers were keeping the forests clear. Or at least that’s what we were told. We bunked down here and did our best to, you know, secure the place. But Mrs. Gillespie, the wife of the mechanic guy…she was pretty fat and had this heart thing. Angi-something.”

 
; “Angina?”

  “Yeah. I guess she died last night.” Lindsey shivered. “I can’t believe it was only last night.”

  “Yeah. She died and woke up again?”

  The girl nodded then got up, lit a small sterno fire in the sink where the light would show through the windows. She poured water into a pan and placed it on the flame. She explained how the rest of them woke up because of the screaming. Mrs. Gillespie had already bitten her husband and two others. They’d made the mistake of huddling together for warmth because the night was so cold. By the time everyone realized their mistakes it was too late.

  Lindsey poured the hot water into cups, found teabags and handed one to Dez. It was some kind of sissy green tea crap that Dez wouldn’t use to wash her books, but the tea ritual seemed to calm the kid, so she accepted it. They went into the living room and after Dez checked the windows and peered through the blinds into the field, then sat on a pair of overstuffed chairs set near the cold fireplace. Lindsey had her cup cradled in her palms and leaned over it, shaking her head. The bloody debris of the sleeping bags was all around them, evidence of horrors.

  “What happened?” asked Dez. “After all this, I mean?”

  “I ran,” said Lindsey, and that tore a sob from her. Not from shame, because the girl, young as she was, already understood the necessary logic of survival. No, she wept from the weariness of having to survive when everyone else died and she had to start all over again. “I was trying to make it to the rescue station when I saw a bunch of guys cutting down some of the dead. I…I…was stupid. I didn’t wait to see who they were. I was just so happy to see living people who seemed to be strong, you know? They were fighting the dead and winning. They were even laughing as they cut the zombies down. Like it was nothing to them. Like they weren’t afraid of them, you know?”

  “Yeah, honey,” said Dez, stroking the girl’s long hair, “I know.”

  “But they weren’t what I thought,” said Lindsey, and now there were ghosts moving behind her eyes. A different kind of fear. A kind that was older and crueler than the living dead. “A bunch of them took me to their camp and said that I’d be safe there. They said there were a lot of women and other kids there. They said…”

  “Doesn’t matter what they said,” Dez told her. “They’re assholes. You’ll be smarter next time. And if I see them, I’ll blow their dicks off and wear ‘em as trophies.”

  It was meant as a joke, but Lindsey flinched back from those words. After a moment she said, “They’re already dead.”

  “What?”

  “Most of them.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Dez. “Did you kill them?”

  “No,” said a voice behind her, “I killed them.”

  Dez started to whirl, to grab her gun, to rise, but instantly froze as the cold barrel of a pistol was pressed against the nape of her neck. Lindsey screamed and backed away.

  Joe Ledger pressed his Sig Sauer harder, forcing Dez to bend forward.

  “You shot my dog,” he said in a voice that was colder than anything Dez Fox had ever heard.

  ~20~

  Rachael Elle

  The kids were panicked again. They’d watched the man try to attack her, watched her kill him. She wished they didn’t have to see that. They’d seen too much blood and violence already.

  But so was the way of this world.

  “But where’s Miss Dez?” was the question of the hour, the question that the kids kept trying to ask. Rachael didn’t have an answer.

  Rachael didn’t have a lot of answers anymore.

  So instead she sat with all of the children, telling them fairytales she’d been told as a child, silly nothings that take the mind away from reality. The world needed a lot of distractions now, people needed something to take their mind off of what they were living.

  This was what she needed to do. Save people, yes, but keep their minds off reality. She would reject this reality and replace it with her own.

  Sounds like something she was used to doing, she mused to herself with a smile, and it would be worth it to see people smile again.

  But she wasn’t going to be able to do anything if she didn’t make it out of here alive.

  And right now there was no guarantee.

  ~21~

  The Ranger and the Cop

  “No!” screamed Lindsey and threw her cup of hot tea at Ledger.

  He saw it coming half a second too late and roared in pain as the scalding liquid splashed his hand and neck and face. Dez exploded into movement, spinning, chopping up and back with her elbow, catching Ledger’s wrist and knocking the pistol from his hand. The weapon went flying. Lindsey snatched up a heavy book and hurled it at Ledger, who ducked just as Dez came up off the chair, drove her shoulder into him and ran him backward. They crashed into the wall, knocking framed photographs off their nails. Dez tried to knee Ledger in the crotch and simultaneously head butt him.

  He twisted and her head missed, but her knee caught his upper thigh. Not a full hit, but enough to send a wave of sick pain up through his groin and gut.

  “Stop it!” he snarled, but Dez punched him in the face.

  The damn woman knew how to hit. Ledger slammed back into the wall, but he rebounded with a two-handed shove that sent her staggering back. Lindsey grabbed Dez’s teacup and hurled it at the ranger’s face, but he ducked under it.

  Just as Dez tried to kick him in the groin again. Her foot missed the intended target and instead hit Ledger in the chest as he ducked. She wore the steel-tipped shoes she’d worn as a cop, and it was felt like being shot. Ledger fell hard on his ass, then flung himself sideways to miss the vicious stamp that Dez launched to try and crush his kneecap.

  “Get him!” screamed Lindsey, and she began plucking objects off the end tables to hurl. Empty coffee mugs, empty cans, a paperback, a box of shotgun shells. They rained down on Ledger as he rolled like a log away from Dez’s next stamp, and the next.

  Ledger rolled onto his back and kicked up to intercept Dez’s next kick, jolted it to a stop in the air, then pivoted and swept her standing leg. She crashed to the floor. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed the corners of one of the overstuffed chairs and shoved it at Lindsey with all of his strength. It chunked into her and the girl went down with a yelp of pain. But Dez, on the floor, pulled out her blackjack and whipped it at Ledger. He danced backward but the heavy lead and leather caught him on the left heel hard enough to detonate white-hot pain through his foot and ankle. He staggered, and dropped, catching himself on his palms as Dez threw herself at him, trying for his head this time.

  She almost had him.

  He rolled sideways again, parrying her swing with one forearm and swinging a tight, hard palm-heel strike at her as she dropped onto him. His hand caught her right behind the ear and it rocked her. Hard. She crashed down onto the floorboards beside him, gasping and blinking and wincing.

  Ledger got to his knees, grabbed her hair and pulled her head back as far as it would go, then whipped a rapid-release folding knife from its sheath inside his right front pants pocket, snapped the three-point-seven-five inch blade out, laid it against her windpipe and snarled at Lindsey, who was in the process of raising a heavy vase.

  “Stop! Right goddamn now!”

  She stopped.

  Right goddamned then.

  “Put the fucking vase down,” he roared. “Do it.”

  Lindsey took a step back and let the vase fall. It shattered at her feet. She looked absolutely terrified. At that moment, Ledger didn’t care.

  “Put your hands in your front pockets. Deep as they’ll go. Good. Now, go sit down,” he told her. “No, not on the couch. On the floor over there, with your back to the wall and your legs straight out in front of you. Good. Stay there, kid. You move and this gets messy.”

  Lindsey sat exactly as ordered, her face white with terror.

  Ledger bent close to Dez. “Listen to me,” he said in a quieter but no less threatening tone. “Listen to me and understand. I
f I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. I could have killed you when I came in. Here’s a news flash—I don’t want you dead. I am Captain Joe Ledger. I was with the Department of Military Sciences before everything went to shit. I am one of the actual good guys. You, however, are a psycho bitch who shot my dog. The fact that you are still breathing is because you didn’t kill my dog. He’s hurt and he needs help. Tell me you understand?”

  He had the woman’s head pulled back too far for her to talk, so he eased the pressure by one half an inch. His knife didn’t move.

  “Yes…,” she hissed.

  “You’re wearing a police uniform,” said Ledger. “Or part of one. Are you a cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Stebbins County.”

  Ledger grunted. “That’s where all this shit started.”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He couldn’t see her face very well, just her eyes as she looked up and back at him. Those eyes were filled with incredible hatred and fury. And shame, too, because she’d tried and failed to protect the girl. Ledger could sympathize, but he wasn’t yet ready to let her go.

  “Fox,” she snapped. “Desdemona Fox.”

  Ledger said, “Wait…what? You’re Dez Fox?”

  He felt her stiffen, but it was Lindsey who spoke. “You know her?”

  Ledger removed the knife, let go of her hair and stepped quickly back. Dez turned, fast as a snake, but he was well out of range.

  “Everyone knows her,” he said. “Everyone who watched the news when this shit started. The standoff at Stebbins Little School will have its own chapter in the history books…if anyone survives this, I mean. Dez Fox, JT Hammond, and Billy Trout holding off the National Guard who wanted to wipe the town off the map to try and stop the infection. Not that it would have worked because it was already outside the Q-zone, but…damn, you’re really her. You’re Dez Fox.”