Condemn (BUNKER 12 Book 2) (3 page)

The other time, it was because they
couldn't figure out how to jump start a car they found on the road.
Bix had half of the wires cut and short-circuited beneath the dash
before Finn thought to check to see if the battery had any juice
left in it. It hadn't, so it didn't matter.

They'd spent the next hour after that
arguing over who would've driven had they managed to get the damn
thing started.

"I'm older," Finn reasoned.

"Have you ever even driven anything
before?" Bix countered.

"Yes."

"Besides a golf cart."

"Then, no."

"Well, I learned how to drive when I
was twelve. Dad had me running errands for him when he was doing
his gigs. Cars, vans, trucks, motorcycles—"

"You know how to ride a
motorcycle?"

"Yup. It's easy."

"Bet your mom loved that."

That comment had brought the
conversation to an abrupt and uncomfortable end. Bix grew sullen,
which made Finn feel guilty for mentioning her. She'd left him and
his father shortly before the Flense hit, so she was almost
certainly dead. Or worse.

The next hour passed in
silence.

"How far upriver did that guy say
Bunker Two was?"

"I told you, about a hundred and
eighty miles," Finn replied. They were getting close to the top of
the canyon again, following the road as it wound through the trees.
It occasionally drew them away from the river so they lost their
view of the other side. He knew they were close to the top because
the other rim was nearly at eye level.

"And how far do you think we've gone?"
Bix asked.

"Since the bus? Maybe forty miles. But
we're probably only about twenty miles upriver from the
dam."

"Damn."

"Yeah, about twenty."

"No, damn. As in, 'Damn, that's all?'
I'm not sure these shoes'll last another hundred and sixty
miles."

"Soon as we find a store or something,
we'll stock up on food and water, get us both some good walking
shoes. There's bound to be something along the way."

The mention of water made Finn
thirsty, and he pulled out his canteen. Despite their thirst the
day before, Bix had expressed disgust at the idea of drinking water
drawn straight out of the river, at least until Finn pointed out
that they'd pretty much been doing that for the past three years
anyway. The tap water in the bunker was just the same river water,
only passed through metal filters which probably didn't do much
more than get rid of the silt. And they both agreed it tasted much
better than the stale bottled stuff they'd found in the dead
car.

"Some shoes and some decent camping
gear, too," Finn added. "Batteries, flashlights—"

"I'd rather just get some good driving
gloves for the next car we find, which will be a Maserati, I think.
Bright yellow. Oh, and a nice soft bed in a nice secure five-star
hotel would be awesome. A hotel with a valet."

"You figure out how to start that
Maserati and I'll personally get you the best damn driving gloves
money can buy and put you up in a five-star hotel
myself."

Bix snorted. "Post-apocalyptic Finn's
a big spender—"

"Shh! Quiet!"

They pulled up short and
listened.

"What'd you hear?"

Finn cocked his head into the breeze.
"I thought—"

"There!"

Finn grabbed Bix by the arm and they
made for the trees. The ground was covered in soft pine needles,
and yet their footsteps sounded insanely loud to their ears. Dry
twigs snapped beneath their feet as they hurried deeper into the
forest. They soon found themselves climbing the steep slope to get
out of sight of the road.

"Wait!"
Finn whispered.

They pulled up behind a wide tree and
crouched down.

"Wraiths?"
Bix asked.

Finn shook his head and held his
finger up to his lips. "We'd have never heard them," he said,
keeping his voice as low as possible.

The Wraiths, terrible creatures with
dead eyes, hunted their prey in complete silence. They moved with a
ghostly stealth and speed that seemed inhuman.

Except that they were human. Or, they
had once been.

Three years ago, the Flense had spread
with the same stealthy speed that characterized the creatures it
infected. Having never seen anything like it before, everyone was
caught unawares. The infected didn't appear dangerous to people,
they just seemed in a strange sort of daze. They walked right up to
their unsuspecting victims, and all it took was a single touch to
pass on the disease.

If it hadn't been for his father's
quick thinking, Finn would have become one of them.

A lot of the creatures took to walking
on all fours, using their hands for stability. It made their
movements seem awkward. But when they ran, they ran upright, still
jerkily, but with such reckless speed that it was terrifying to
behold.

The only time they broke their silence
was right before and after they became enraged, when their need to
pass on the infection was somehow overcome by their need to kill.
In that altered state, they became ravenous creatures, fearsome and
merciless. In such a state, they would not stop until they had
utterly destroyed their human prey with their teeth and nails. They
would devour flesh and bones and hair — sometimes, even,
clothing — until nothing was left but a few tattered remains,
a large puddle of blood, and fragments of tissue.

When confronted by a Wraith, a person
had two choices: submit and become one of them, or resist and be
torn to shreds.

"It sounds like—" Finn
began.

"Horses!"
Bix hissed and pointed through the trees. "It's
horses! And people!" He stood up and started running down the slope
before Finn could stop him.

He caught up to Bix in time to see the
lead horseback rider pull back on his reins. The man shouted at
them to stop, but their momentum carried them forward, tumbling
through the dead litter. The man moved quickly, raising his arm
into the air. Finn caught a glimpse of a gun pointed directly at
Bix's head.

"No!" he shouted and pushed his friend
away. It was all he managed to do before the world exploded. A hot
white fog overtook him, searing his skin and eyes with a flash so
brilliant that it blinded him.

Pain engulfed his mind, became fire.
Then ice.

Then came the darkness.

Danny was back behind the wheel again when they arrived on the
outskirts of a small town. The dozen or so former business
establishments seemed to huddle together along the main strip, as
if in mutual self-preservation. The road was one of two cutting
through the town, and where it met the other, a dead street light
hung, tugging heavily on fraying wires.

It was late. The sun had gone from
being a giant white spider's egg sac to a rotten pumpkin sagging
beneath its own weight on the porch of the horizon. Night would
soon follow, and they were in need of shelter and food.

Jonah's mood had been sour for two
days. It began after Danny bottomed the bus out. They'd had a hard
time getting it started again.

Jonah eventually found a blockage in
the air intake manifold and the engine started right up after it
was cleared. But by then it was nearing dark and they were forced
to make camp on top of the bus, as far off of the desert floor as
possible.

Thirteen miles. That's all they'd
managed to drive since discovering the old tire tracks before the
engine quit once more. The next day, they decided to do a thorough
systems check, as they didn't want to drain the battery with
multiple attempts to restart it. Before they knew it, night was
descending once again.

Their diligence had paid off, however,
as the bus roared convincingly to life the next day, but their
caution also came with a price. Both food and water were depleted,
and the oil level was dangerously low. Jonah fretted over the leak
like a mother hen.

To make matters worse, the poor baby,
Jorge, had come down with a terrible cough that kept them all awake
through the long night. They feared that the noise would draw
Wraiths to their location.

He had likely caught the bug from
Jonathan, one of the guards they had discovered hiding in the
tunnel by the dam. In the beginning, they'd simply dismissed
Jonathan's cough as a consequence of the horrible conditions under
which he had been forced to live. Maybe it was. And maybe the baby
suffered from the same condition. But the wet, drowning sound and
the ugly green phlegm evoked memories of the terrible flu pandemic
which had stricken the world two years before the
Flense.

Danny slowed to a stop at the edge of
the town and let the bus idle in the middle of the road. "What do
you think?" he asked the others.

It was the first real evidence of
civilization they'd encountered since leaving Finn and Bix behind
at that paltry highway pullout. But if the buildings raised their
chances of finding other survivors like themselves, it also raised
the threat level. Where there were houses, there had once been
people. And where there were once people, there might still be
Wraiths.

The closest building was a small
single-story home. Its yard had overgrown with weeds that had since
choked themselves into a thick brown scab. The white paneled sides
were rendered gray with dust and turned brittle from the heat and
sunlight. Several of the boards had slipped, exposing the rotting
wood underneath. During the rainy season, mold grew on the roof,
but it had long since dried, staining the shingles a dark
greenish-brown. Fingers of thistle and sage curled over the sides
of the rain gutters. Cataracts of dust and cobwebs filmed the
windows nearly opaque.

To Danny's alarm, he realized the
curtains were all drawn behind them. Recalling Susan's words, he
pictured the houses filled with dusty corpses.

Or worse.

They'd have died by now.
They're not immortal. They live and breathe and need to eat just
like us.

But hadn't that been the very same
reasoning Jonah used to convince them they were all gone? He
shuddered, as if trying to dispel from his mind the image of those
terrible things crawling about inside those decrepit homes,
patiently waiting week after week and month after month for someone
new to come along to infect or eat.

He turned in his seat and asked again
what to do.

Jonah rose. He carried an empty
backpack and a heavy metal rod for self-defense, should it be
necessary. "We need food, shelter, water," he said. "And motor oil.
And gasoline."

"What do I do with the
bus?"

"Just pull up next to the intersection
and park it there. Don't turn it off. We'll sit a bit and see if
anything comes out to welcome us."

"You know, there'll probably be cars
here," Kari Mueller said. "We could swap this monstrosity for
smaller vehicles, maybe a couple pickup trucks. Or a van or
two."

"Bus would still be better," Jonah
replied. "It's big enough to hold all of us. And it's higher up off
the ground. Easier to defend."

"But the windows are broken," Kari
countered. "And if it fails again like it did back there, we'll be
completely stranded."

"She's got a point," Harry Rollins
said.

Jonah made a face.

"We know you fixed the bus and all,
and we're grateful, but—"

"Fine. Kari, you and Harry see what
you can find. Cover the right side of the street; we'll cover the
left. Gather all the food and water you can. Also look for guns and
ammo, weapons. Danny, you'll be with me. We're looking for motor
oil. If we're lucky, we'll also find gasoline in sealed
tanks."

"What about us?" Nami Thuylan asked,
gesturing at the other two ex-guards, Jonathan Nash and Allison
Markle. He looked worried, like if they didn't participate, they'd
get tossed to the curb. "We said we'd pull our weight."

"Jonathan's in no condition to be out
there," Harry said.