28
Homeward
Dal leaned low across his horse. The transmitter bounced painfully against his back.
Luckily, the nezhit virus didn’t give their pursuers super speed. His horse thundered through the field with the others, quickly outpacing the zombies. Dal lost sight of them in the darkness.
The west side of Rossi was a patchwork of farms. Apples, plums, and cattle were the most common, though at the moment the horses ran through a popular local strawberry patch. When they reached the far side of the field, they slowed to a canter and remained in a group.
“I guess they believe in safety in numbers, too,” Lena said.
“I think we lost them.” Dal twisted around, staring back into the dark.
“Maybe.” Lena looked doubtful. “They could still be following.”
“Do you think the Soviets just attacked the west coast?” Dal asked. “Or do you think they attacked other parts of America?”
Lena shook her head. “I don’t know. That would take a lot of resources, but …” She heaved a sigh. “If they’re aiming to claim America, or at least a big part of it, my guess would be that what’s happening here is happening everywhere. Look, there’s Bastopol.”
A mile away sat their quaint hometown. It was a tiny bedroom community with a few sub-divisions and a lot of farmland. There were no towering city blocks like there were in Rossi.
The fastest way home was to go straight through Bastopol. But if there were Russians there—and Dal had no reason to assume it was safe—that would be a bad idea.
They’d been experimenting with their mounts for the last few miles. Lena discovered if she leaned back, the horse stopped. Dal did this now so he could get a good look at Bastopol.
Lena stopped beside him. The rest of the horses also stopped, all of them munching on the weeds that grew in the apple orchard where they currently stood.
Dal felt that familiar sense of foreboding, like he had as kid before his father flew into a rage. It was the tug in his stomach that had saved his life in Rossi.
He turned to Lena. “I don’t think we should go through Bastopol.”
“It would be faster than going around.”
It would be a lot faster. Dal heaved a breath. “I don’t think it’s safe.”
“What makes you think that?”
He hitched his shoulders, not wanting to tell her about his innate barometer for trouble. “It’s just a feeling.”
“Can we go a little closer before we decide?”
Dal shifted. He didn’t want to argue with Lena, but he really, really didn’t want to get any closer to Bastopol.
“Another half mile,” he said at last. “Then you’ll go around with me?”
“Okay.”
They nudged the horses forward. As soon as Dal and Lena’s horses moved, the other three joined them.
A cozy subdivision bordered this part of Bastopol. They were craftsman bungalows built in the early fifties. Dal wished he had a pair of binoculars. Shit, he just wished there were a little more light to see. Bastopol was nothing more than a black silhouette.
When he gauged them to be about a half mile away, he shifted his weight backwards to stop the horse. He patted the animal.
“It looks so … quiet,” Lena said at last. “Are you sure we shouldn’t risk it?”
At the question, the weight in his stomach intensified. He decided to be honest with Lena. It’s not like his childhood was a secret to her.
“I used to know when my father would beat me.” His throat went dry and scratchy. This was a subject he didn’t like thinking about, let along talking about. “It was like … I could feel it, you know? Like the static and humidity in the air before a thunderstorm. It was like that.” He shifted, not looking at her.
“Is that what you feel now?”
“Pretty much.” He wanted to tell her about the attack at Rossi junior college, about how that sense of foreboding had saved his life. But his throat was too dry. The words lodged in his aching stomach.
She reached across the distance and squeezed his hand. “Okay. We’ll go around.”
The air whooshed out of his lungs. Partly because he was relieved she’d agreed to go around Bastopol, but also because she held his hand. Her touch sent a ripple through him, which he did his best to ignore.
Over the years, he’d become adept at shutting off the way she made him feel. It was practically habit by now, though there were times like this when she still got to him.
They turned north, cutting through the orchard with their small pack of horses. Dal kept his eyes and ears peeled for signs of danger.
“What should I name him?” Lena patted the flank of her horse affectionately.
“I don’t know. Blackie?”
“That’s so boring.”
“Licorice?”
“Not regal enough. This fellow is majestic, don’t you think?
He was a majestic horse. There was a race track in Rossi where they held horse races a few times a year. The junior college sometimes got track cast-offs, animals that were either injured or had aged out of their prime and were no longer racing candidates. He guessed Lena’s tall animal was one of those.
“Stealth,” Lena said.
“What?”
“How about Stealth for a name?”
“I like it. What about mine?”
“Let’s see.” She looked the horse up and down in the darkness. “How about Thunderhoof?”
“Thunderhoof? That’s a little long.”
“How about Thunder?”
“Thunder. Yeah. That suits him.” Dal patted his horse. “Do you like it, boy?”
Thunder nickered softly.
Lena’s eyes found his in the dark. His throat closed. He should not be noticing how beautiful she looked in the dark. With just the two of them in the apple orchard with the horses, it was almost possible to forget they’d just escaped hell on earth.
“Dal?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re with me.”
He broke eye contact. “Me, too.”
The subdivision fell away and gave way to the high school. The apple orchard transitioned to an undeveloped field of yellow grass.
Dal breathed in the smell of the summer. He loved this smell. He loved Bastopol High. There were a lot of good memories for him in that place. Sometimes he felt like his real life had begun freshmen year when the Cecchinos took him in.
Thinking of freshmen year inevitably brought thoughts of Mr. Cecchino.
Lena must have been thinking of him, too, because she said, “How are we going to tell them?”
He knew what she meant. How were they going to tell Anton, Leo, and Nonna that Mr. Cecchino was gone? There was no easy way. “I guess we just have to say it.” There wouldn’t be a way to soften the blow.
“I miss him already.”
“Me, too.” Hell yeah, he did. Dal would miss Mr. Cecchino for the rest of his life.
The football field came into view. Dal had often volunteered to work in the concessions stand so he could watch the games for free. He’d loved watching Leo and his friends kick ass on that field. They’d been division champions their senior year with Leo as team captain.
“Dal.” Lena’s hand shot out to grip his arm. Her horse halted.
Dal saw them. The football players. The kids Anton and Lena had gone to school with.
There were at least a dozen of them wandering around the field in their jerseys. They were in a tight cluster near the fifty yard line.
There were also bodies. Dal could pick out the lumps in the darkness. Unmoving lumps that were undoubtedly bodies. Either they hadn’t zombified yet, or they were really dead.
“I guess that answers our question about Bastopol,” Lena murmured.
Dal had known. Between his sixth sense and the eerie quiet that sat over the town, he had known.
One of the horses wuffed. Another nickered in response.
The nezhit on the fiel
d jerked, every last one of them turning to look in their direction.
Dal felt the breath leave his lungs. “We gotta go,” he whispered.
Lena dug her heels into Stealth. Her big black gelding leaped forward, breaking into a gallop. Thunder was right behind him. Dal gripped the animal’s mane with white knuckles, the transmitter thumping against his back. The other horses fell in around them, hooves rumbling against the ground.
To his horror, several students began to howl. The undead football players streamed in their direction. To make matters worse, their howling alerted other nezhit on the campus. Infected students began to pour from around the buildings, all of them running.
He and Lena exchanged looks of alarm. The horses, either cognizant of the danger bearing down on them or picking up on the panic of their riders, whinnied in alarm. Their hooves threw up chunks of dirt.
In less than two minutes, they had a pack of at least fifty nezhit on their heels, many of them howling and barking as they pursued them.
Dal leaned low over the neck of Thunder. “Come on, boy. You can outrun them.”
Gravenstein Highway—named after the most popular apple of West County—appeared before them. It was the main road through Bastopol.
In the middle of the road were two Russian soldiers. They stood beside a bright yellow Corvette convertible, which they’d no doubt stolen from someone. They were armed with dart guns—which were aimed right at Dal and Lena.
Zombies behind them. Soviets in front of them. What the fuck were they supposed to do?
“They don’t know we’re armed,” Lena called to him over the drum of the horses’s hoofbeats. “We have surprise on our side.”
She was right. It was their best chance. Turning around wasn’t an option. All they could do was charge the Russians and hope to get lucky.
Hanging onto the mane with one hand, Dal fumbled the machine gun into his other hand. Lena did the same.
He was a damn good shot in the forest, even when he had a moving target. But he’d never fired a weapon from the back of a galloping horse.
He didn’t even bother to aim. He propped the machine gun against his shoulder so that it would fire over the top of Thunder’s head. Then he pulled the trigger, spraying the barrel back and forth in the general direction of the Russians.
He caught one of them across the torso. The invader collapsed in a spray of blood. The second one dove for cover on the other side of the car.
Lena’s horse spooked at gunfire. The big animal reared. Lena screamed as she was thrown from his back.
“Lena!” Dal instinctively turned toward her, but bullets thudded into the ground right in front of Thunder. The animal reared. Dal grabbed the mane with both hands, the machine gun swinging from around his neck.
The weight of the transmitter unbalanced him. As Thunder crashed back down to his forelegs, Dal felt himself slipping.
He decided not to fight it. If he got thrown, the transmitter could be wrecked. He released the mane, simultaneously swinging his left leg around.
He hit the ground and dropped low. He shrugged out of the backpack and flattened himself to ground as the Russian fired again. He shouted at Dal and Lena, the rough Russian language mixing with the gunfire. The horses scattered.
One of them, a stocky female bay, was hit as she bolted too close to the yellow convertible. She cried out as she was hit.
Dal looked wildly around for Lena. She was okay, crawling in his direction. She flattened herself to the ground as more bullets came in their direction. The Russian continued screaming and firing in their direction. Lena cried out, covering her head with her arms.
Rage exploded through Dal’s chest. It came all at once, tunneling his vision and gripping his throat so hard he could barely breathe.
No fucking way was this fucker going to hurt Lena. He crawled forward, closing the distance between him and the invader. He wanted to strangle the fucker, but he’d have to settle for shooting him.
The Russian hid behind the front driver’s side tire. His gun was on the hood and he fired indiscriminately in their direction. Dal was able to move beneath the bullets as they zinged by over his head.
Fury made him reckless. When the gun clicked empty, the Russian dropped back to reload.
Dal seized the opening. He popped up and sprinted at the car. He leaped on top of the Corvette’s hood and opened fire.
He caught the Russian just as he snapped in a replacement clip. Screaming, Dal emptied his own clip into the head of the invader.
But he didn’t stop there. Even as the body tipped over, Dal jumped to the ground on the other side. He flipped the gun around and swung the butt at the body. He brutally smashed the side of the man’s face, still yelling. The gun butt came down a second time, smashing down so hard across the chest he heard the sternum snap.
“Dal!” Lena grabbed his arm just as he hauled his arm back to hit the body a third time. “He’s dead, Dal. He’s gone.”
Her voice stabbed through the fog of rage. Hands suddenly shaking, he dropped his gun, horrified by the violence that had gripped him.
He felt sick. How much had Lena seen?
Did she know he was like his father?
“Are—are you okay?” he gasped, trying to get his breathing under control.
“I’m okay.” She looked him up and down, assuring herself that he was in one piece. “That was some crazy kamikaze shit you just pulled.” She threw her arms around him and squeezed. “You scared the hell out of me. I thought for sure you were going to die when you jumped on top of the hood.” She smacked him in the shoulder. Hard. “Don’t do that again.”
He sagged, all the adrenaline rushing out of his body. He gave himself to the count of ten, resting his cheek against Lena’s head and inhaling the scent of her. Then he broke away.
“We have to keep moving.” The nezhit students had covered a lot of ground during their short battle with the Russians. “Grab any weapons you see. I’ll get the car.”
“We’re not taking the car.”
“We’re not?”
“No.” Lena shook her head. “We need to stay off the roads and stick to the fields. It will take longer, but it’s the safest way home.”
She was right. They had to avoid the roads. If nothing else, this latest confrontation had shown them that.
“I’ll get the horses,” Dal said. “You grab their weapons.”
29
Dance
It took them several hours to make their way through the farmland of Bastopol. They not only had to dodge other Russian patrols, but they also had to evade roaming clumps of zombies.
When the Cecchino farmhouse at last came into the view, with the weathered barn and the brimming orchard, Dal could hardly believe it. They rode the horses down the gravel road and drew to a halt before their home. It was sometime in the middle of the night, the partial moon sitting low in the sky.
Everything looked just like it had when he’d left. Except for the missing Cecchino vehicles, nothing looked out of place. If Mr. Cecchino hadn’t told them the family had evacuated to the cabin, Dal would have thought everyone was asleep inside.
“Whose car is that?” Lena drew up short, eyeing the white Crown Victoria parked in front of the house.
Dal shifted uncomfortably atop Thunder. He recognized that car. More specifically, he recognized the University of Riverside bumper sticker and license plate frame.
“That’s Jennifer’s car.”
“Who?” Lena frowned at him.
“Jennifer.”
“What?” Lena’s frown deepened into a scowl. “You mean, Jennifer Miola?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know that’s her car?”
“She was in a summer school class with me in Rossi last year. I saw her driving it.”
“You had a class with Jennifer and never thought to mention it?”
“She’s not worth mentioning.” Dal didn’t have much regard for the girl who had broken Leo’s hear
t. His best friend had always been too good for her. Besides, Jennifer was a taboo subject in the Cecchino household.
“You have a point.” Lena’s shoulders relaxed, though her scowl remained in place. “What the hell is her car doing here?”
Dal could imagine several scenarios that might bring Jennifer to the Cecchino farmhouse in current circumstances. He didn’t list any of them out loud.
They dismounted, leaving the horses to graze near the barn. Leo turned on a hose and filled up several five-gallon buckets so the horses could drink. They only had three of them now. They’d lost one to gunfire. Another had bolted and disappeared in the commotion.
They should go straight to the cabin. Dal knew this. But he couldn’t help stepping onto the beloved wooden porch of the farmhouse. He pressed his forehead against the front door and inhaled.
“Dal.” Lena nudged him. He shifted to one side as she opened the front door.
Dal felt like he was stepping through a time machine. Outside the Cecchino farmhouse was a world turned upside down. Inside, it was like nothing had ever changed. Like if he walked into the kitchen, he might see Mr. Cecchino at the table sipping coffee and reading the paper.
Except Mr. Cecchino would never sip coffee again.
He stepped into the house he loved with all his heart and closed the door behind them, turning the dead bolt. He couldn’t ever remember locking the front door. Not ever.
So much had changed in less than a day.
Lena went past him. “I’m going to take a shower. Keep an eye out for Russians and zombies.”
He dropped the transmitter onto the sofa and wandered through the house in a daze. Everywhere he looked were signs of Mr. Cecchino. His coffee cup was still in the sink. His hat had fallen off the coat rack and sat on the floor of the entryway. Dal picked it up and reverently returned it to the coat rack.
He showered when Lena was finished, relieved to wash away the blood and the grime of the day. After changing into fresh jeans and T-shirt, he walked through the house in search of Lena.
Zommunist Invasion Box Set | Books 1-3 Page 17