Badlands Trilogy (Book 3): Out of the Badlands (4 page)

She’d been expecting something like this ever since she first arrived, though she had thought it more likely the camp would be raided and destroyed by the uninfected monsters of the world. The same type of people who’d killed her mother two years ago. The kind of men (and they were always men) that laws had been made for, the kind of monsters already roaming the world before the virus. At least then they’d been kept on short leashes. Before the virus there were consequences. Now, nothing stopped them from doing whatever they wanted to whomever they pleased.

Sam wasn’t like most men. Sam was good. Kind. Thoughtful. Sam had loved his mother and he had watched her die in front of him, same as Chloe had with her own mom. They’d already been seeing each other in the camp for a couple of weeks, but now…now it was more than that. Now they were bonded, bound by shared experience that only they could understand.

Although she was almost fourteen, she felt she’d seen more death and destruction in her short life than many war vets triple her age. Sam had seen his fair share as well. But the death of a parent affected everyone differently and watching it happen made something terrible into something even worse. He hadn’t spoken a word all night or morning. Going back to the place where it all happened could be a terrible idea. It might cause Sam to shut down for good. He might lose his shit altogether and simply go bonkers.

But they needed supplies and weapons if they were going to survive more than a week back out in the wild. Jonathan had had food and guns; according to him a small stockpile to feed and arm the survivors of the virus. It was worth the risk going back, provided they didn’t linger. Definitely out before nightfall. Those pale and hideous creatures might come back to finish the job and Chloe didn’t want to be there when they did. She only had to look around at the blood-smeared walls as a reminder.

She turned to Sam. “You all right?”

Sam looked at her, his eyes still red from crying throughout the night. “They won’t be back, not in the day,” he replied, the first words he’d spoken since the prior night.

“How do you know?”

“Too bright.”

Remembering how effective the camera flash had been at blinding the creatures, Chloe nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Jonathan kept the guns in the library,” Sam added.

“How do you know?”

“He told my mom.”

Chloe almost asked how she knew, but stopped short. Of course Jonathan had told her. They were basically boyfriend and girlfriend.

An early morning breeze blew through the hallway, bringing with it the smell of spoiling blood and rotting meat. The air would only get warmer throughout the day and by tomorrow the entire place would smell like a rendering plant.

“The food’s in the teachers’ lounge,” Chloe said.

Sam nodded. “I know.”

A pause followed. “You don’t have to go back in, you know,” Chloe offered. “I can do it by myself if I need to.”

Sam’s lip quivered slightly, but he forced himself to keep his composure. “It’s okay.”

“No, really.”

“Really. I’m okay.”

More silence followed, deep and profound. Chloe shivered; the entire building had begun to feel like a giant tomb.

“My mom was killed two years ago,” Chloe said, beginning slowly. She kept her focus on the wall in from of her, avoiding Sam’s eyes. “They killed her in front of me. I was eleven.”

“I didn’t know,” Sam said.

“I never told you. She hid me away before they found us. They did awful things to her before they killed her. I saw it all.” She paused. “I can still hear her screaming when I close my eyes at night.”

This time it was Sam’s turn to sit in silence. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Chloe said. “But I appreciate it.”

“My mom died because of me,” he said.

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

Chloe placed a finger on Sam’s chin and turned his face toward hers. “Listen to me very closely. It’s not your fault. Just like it’s not my fault that my mom died. I blamed myself for a long time, but it never got me anywhere. Those creatures…whatever they are; that’s what killed your mom. Not you.”

Sam looked into Chloe’s eyes for several very long seconds before a single tear streamed down his cheek. He wiped it away quickly before turning away from her. “We’d better get going before night comes,” he said, heading deeper into the dimly-lit hallway. “Those things might come back.”

Chloe sighed. Getting through to him was proving more difficult than she’d expected. She headed after him down the hall, trying not to look at the carnage that surrounded them.

* * *

They took all they could carry from the teachers’ lounge, stuffing Chloe’s pack with smaller items like Slim Jims, pretzels, stale potato chips and cans of Vienna Sausage two years past the recommended consumption date. The meat was fine, but they left the canned fruits behind. Experience had taught them that much of the canned fruit’s high acid content compromised the integrity of the packaging, causing the contents to spoil. When her pack had been filled, they found four pillow cases and stuffed those full of canned and other packaged food, like boxed Mac and Cheese, various pastas and some MREs that Jonathan had stashed in a corner.

They sawed the straw end off of two brooms from the supply closet then tied a pillow case to each end of the staff with some short lengths of rope they found with the rest of the supplies. The broom stick could then be balanced behind their heads with their shoulders bearing the weight. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was tolerable and worth the effort. Finding food in the wild had become increasingly more difficult with so many years passed since the virus broke out.

With their provisions on their backs, they made one more stop. Sam needed his pack. It contained too many specialty items to leave behind: fishing line and hooks, plastic bags, tablets for making the water potable (and coffee filters for getting rid of the grit), a saucepan, a multi-tool, a hunting knife, flints and more.

Chloe volunteered to retrieve his pack from the room. Sam didn’t argue. While he waited further down the hallway by the library door, Chloe entered the room that had once housed Denise Treiber and her only son. All Chloe found of Denise was a wad of bloody, shredded clothing and a congealed pool of rust-red blood. Could have been worse, but still something she didn’t want Sam to have to witness. Better that he stayed away.

“How bad was she?” Sam asked after Chloe had retrieved the backpack. He stood in the door frame, the pillow cases of food piled up around him.

“It wasn’t bad,” she replied. He didn’t ask for details.

They entered the library, the musty-smelling interior illuminated by the mid-day sun shining through hazy windows. Aside from some stained ceiling tiles and a thick layer of dust, the contents of the room remained pristine. Jonathan had arranged the few weapons they had in neat rows. Two Glock .380 pistols and two more pistols she didn’t recognize. Several boxes of ammunition sat alongside each gun, neat and orderly, just the way Jonathan liked things. She didn’t see her hand gun—the one Jonathan had taken from her upon her arrival—anywhere. After searching the entire room, they found no more guns, pistols or otherwise.

“I thought he had an arsenal in here,” Sam said, eyeing the pistols. “Four guns? That ain’t much.”

“I know.”

“He lied,” Sam said, his voice taking on a harsh tone.

“He wanted us to feel safe,” Chloe said. “A white lie.”

“I suppose,” Sam shrugged. “Well, so much for that.”

Chloe didn’t disagree. She packed the ammunition and the two unidentified pistols into Sam’s backpack. She loaded both of the .380s’ magazines with six rounds before handing it to Sam. “Be careful with this,” she said.

Sam took the pistol. “Kinda small, isn’t it?”

“We could be stuck with nothing.”

“Good point.” He stuffed the pistol into his waistband. “We ready?”

“Almost,” Chloe replied. Placing the .380 into her own waistband, she made her way to the fiction section of the library. A few moments of searching turned up what she’d been looking for:
Swan Song
, by Robert R. McCammon. She placed the book into her backpack.

“What’s the book for?” Sam asked.

“Reading, dummy.”

“You’re funny.”

“You never read?” Chloe asked.

“My mom read. Lots of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.”

Chloe gave a weak smile. “
Swan Song
is my favorite book.”

“What’s it about?”

“The end of the world.”

“Seems like a weird choice. I mean, have you looked around lately? We’re living it.”

“Different apocalypse. Nuclear war. I guess it makes me feel better. At least we didn’t get bombed.”

“Was the virus really any better?”

“It’s still my favorite book,” Chloe said. “I’ll tell you something my mom always said: never argue matters of taste.”

“She sounded smart.”

Chloe smiled. “She was.”

They lifted the bags of food onto their shoulders, the broomsticks bending under the weight, and exited the library. The bloody walls stared back at them, reminding Chloe of her dead companions. She’d become friendly with Jonathan’s group over the past few months. It hurt to know they didn’t survive.

“The creatures that did this, what do you think they are?” she asked, looking away from a bloody handprint on the wall.

“I’m not sure.”

“They’re not human, are they? Not even carrier. They can’t be. That thing that I saw, it was a whole new type of monster.”

“Not human, no,” Sam said. “Carrier? Maybe.”

“They don’t look like it.”

“What else could they be? They’re definitely not people and they’re not wild animals. I mean, they’re human-like. So if you rule out people and carriers, then they’re something else.”

“But something like that can’t just suddenly exist,” Chloe said.

“The virus turned people into carriers in a couple of days,” Sam said. “Who’s to say it’s not doing it again?”

Chloe turned to Sam. “You might be on to something.”

“Maybe.”

“You’re pretty smart too, you know,” Chloe said, grinning.

Sam shrugged.

They exited the school and stepped into the parking lot. They stopped. Sam turned back and looked at the school for a long time. Chloe waited for him.

He turned to her. “I read, you know,” he said. “Edgar Allen Poe, stuff like that.”

Chloe grinned. “You’re twelve and you read Poe?”

“Almost thirteen,” he said, grinning.

They left the school behind them. It occurred to Chloe just how alone they were in a world that seemed preoccupied with killing them. But now they had each other and that was better than being alone.

Much better, actually.

Lester Delaney had been called genius many times. He’d never once been called murderer.

In reality, he was both.

It started with animals, a common genesis amongst sociopathic serial killers. Lester would know, because before the virus he’d been known as Dr. Lester Delaney, practicing psychiatrist. At seven he was pulling the wings off of flies trapped on fly paper he would hang from the ceiling of his parents’ garage. At nine he was breaking the legs of field mice he’d catch in homemade traps.

By thirteen, so many neighborhood dogs had gone missing that the local news showed up. To avoid detection, Lester resorted to capturing squirrels, muskrats and other vermin after that. When he was seventeen his father found the carcass of a fox Lester had trapped and tortured over three days. By the end it had looked like Jack the Ripper’s final victim, a stinking mess of blood and guts. Lester made up a bullshit story about trapping the thing for fur. His father only nodded, his face ghostly white.

Things were never the same with his parents after that.

They knew what Lester was and he really didn’t do much to hide it. They were afraid of him and he was just fine with that. He liked it, actually. Eventually they sent him off to college. No tears were shed and they never called. By the time he graduated he’d killed three people. By age thirty he’d taken the lives of fourteen people and gaslighted three patients to suicide. Vicarious murder was almost as much fun as the real thing. Almost.

As much as he enjoyed the killing itself, he enjoyed the manipulation and the control equally. Like foreplay before sex with a beautiful woman, Lester would woo his victims into a state of trust. His extremely high intelligence and refined good looks made him instantly dateable. Add money into the mix and he became irresistible. With so many women looking for Mr. Right, they were practically falling over themselves to get to him.

Women were stupid, so that also helped. So fickle and predictable. He’d talk them up at bars, at the grocery store, in waiting rooms. His training and intellect allowed him to see inside their tiny little minds and find all their buttons. Then he’d push them all, one by one, like a master pianist making beautiful music. He’d take them to dinner, feigning interest in their vapid babble while he took notes in his head of their favorite movies, their friends’ names, their favorite flavors of ice cream. The kinds of flowers they preferred. The kinds of character traits they searched for in a mate.

Then he’d take them out for their favorite food and bring them yellow roses. He remembered birthdays and their mother’s middle name. He shed tears at their sappy movies, right on cue. After so many years spent psychoanalyzing people, he learned to wear their emotions like a mask, all the while allowing the anticipation to build, foreplay of his own making.

But he was also careful. He never actually met their friends or family. He never used his real name. He rented an apartment that he fully furnished, used only to fuck these women, both physically and mentally. Like a lure on a fishing line, he enticed them, brought them in closer.

Then he’d set the hook.

Lester liked knives. They were personal, like extensions of his hands. Like surgical instruments. In medical school his professors always wondered why he didn’t become a surgeon. While Lester had enjoyed the cutting, he preferred the mind fucking even more, professionally at least.