Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire (16 page)

“I promise,” said the young hero.

Rachael held her fist out for a bump, smiled, and turned to the group of kids. “Okay, troops, we need to wait for Miss Dez. She’s going to come back soon but until then you need to stay completely silent down here. I know all of you can do that! Wonder Woman, Black Widow and all the other heroes would be so proud of you. Whatever you hear upstairs, stay here and stay quiet.”

The kids nodded, their eyes huge and haunted. Rachael followed Lindsey back upstairs, praying to herself that this would work.

The Ranger and the Cop

It was a nightmare trip through the woods.

Ledger could feel it and he was a trained Special Operator. Dez Fox had been a combat soldier in Afghanistan and was an experienced cop, but he knew she was feeling it, too. The women and children who moved through the black forest with them were refugees of an ongoing horror. He hoped that their worst memories were behind them and not waiting to be experienced.

The moon was moving behind the far hills and it dragged its generous light with it, yielding the woods to armies of shadow. It would have been difficult enough if the only dangers waiting for them were rabbit holes, vines, and deadfalls.

If only.

Ledger had Dez’s Mag-lite and picked out their trail. The group of men had not been gentle with the forest, instead choosing to smash obstacles out of their way as often as possible. That, Ledger knew, had to have been noisy because the passage of those men had pulled behind it a wake of hungry dead. Drawn to noise, movement, lights, and the smell of human flesh, the zombies had come from all over the forest and were trying to catch those men—and the party of children that went through here first.

Ledger covered his light and stopped his party fifty feet back from a loose knot of shambling dead.

“We have to go around,” said Dez.

“We can’t. We’ll lose their trail and lose too damn much time.”

Dez pointed with her Glock. “We don’t know how many of them there are.”

“No, but the wind’s blowing this way. They won’t know we’re coming up on them and we can take them out one at a time. These things don’t learn from what happens from their buddies. Killing them is rinse and repeat.”

“It’s not that easy, Captain Macho.”

“Of course it isn’t.” He holstered his pistol, handed her back the flashlight, drew his rapid-release knife and a heavier Ka-Bar. “Here’s the plan. You keep the civilians together and keep them moving. I’m going to see if I can clean up our trail.”

“Why you and not me?”

He smiled. “You know the kids,” he said. “The women trust you. Lindsey trusts you. You’re thirty years younger than me and that makes me the most expendable of the two of us.”

“But—.”

“And, no offense meant, Dez, you’re a cop and I’m what I am.”

“Which is—?”

“A killer.” Ledger could hear the bleak sadness in his own voice, and he left her without another word, moving quickly along the path.

Dez Fox and the Refugees

Dez watched, squinting through the gloom, not risking the flashlight to see what Ledger was doing. All she could make out was a confusion of dark forms moving within the greater wall of shadows ahead. Soft sounds drifted back, but they were indistinct. The other women and kids crowded around her, asking hushed questions, seeking comfort. It made Dez feel weird. Back in Stebbins County, despite wearing a uniform and badge, she was hardly the pillar of the community. Known for her drinking, sleeping around, off-duty brawling, on-duty brutalizing of child molesters and wife beaters, and being generally regarded as a redneck hick cop. No one had ever held her out as a role model or a leader.

And then the world ended.

During the outbreak she’d stayed alive and on her feet while other people fell. Even her partner, JT Hammond, a seasoned cop and the closest thing to real family Dez had, was bitten. He’d died a hero’s death, but he’d still died. It left Dez in charge of the kids who had gone to Stebbins Little School because that was the town emergency shelter. The parents and teachers who’d taken them there, along with most of the county’s children, had died. Only a few hundred kids and a dozen or so adults were left. All of them deferred to Dez, drawn to her strength more powerfully than they were repelled by her pre-outbreak reputation.

For the last months she’d protected the kids at the bus. Now she had a bunch of women who had been brutalized by the living, by the kinds of men Dez had always despised. Instead of playing nursemaid or team leader or whatever the hell she was supposed to be, Dez wanted to be ranging ahead to find the NKK thugs and see how many of them she could dismantle. Maybe she’d go crazy and make a bandolier of nutsacks. That might be fun. Might be a good way to go all the way nuts.

Except…

Billy Trout was alive.
Alive.
The other kids she’d saved from Stebbins were alive. And the kids from her bus were still alive. They hadn’t found any small bodies along this path.

She forced her hands to stop shaking and hoisted a convincing smile of confidence onto her mouth as she calmed the women. She assured them that everyone was fine, it was all cool, and that Ledger was following
her
orders to clear the road. The women, desperate for something to believe, clung to her words as if they were gospel.

Then, much sooner than she expected, Ledger came back, moving quickly but without reckless haste. He waved Dez over for a quick private chat.

“I took out a few of the deadheads,” he said, “but there weren’t as many as I thought. Stragglers, mostly. I was going to keep going, but I spotted the hunting party.”

“Jesus. Did they have my kids?”

“No,” said Ledger, “and that means we caught a break. No, make that two breaks.”

“What do you mean? Since when was lady luck giving us anything but a bad handjob?”

He grinned. “Stealing that,” he said. “But, to answer the question, I think whoever’s with the kids is smart and it’s pretty obvious she knows she’s being followed. There were a couple of times along the way here that I thought she tried to hide her trail, and up ahead the NKK guys are trying to decide which of three separate trails to follow. The gal with the sword pulled a fast one.”

“I guess this is a ‘you go girl’ moment, but how’s that help us.
We
don’t know which trail she took, do we?”

“I think maybe we do. One trail heads off southwest and I think it’s supposed to look like the kids are circling back to the bus. The second trail heads due northeast towards the Appomattox rescue station.”

“That’s been overrun.”

“Sure, but I think sword gal wants whoever’s following to think she doesn’t know that. Right now that trail looks best and it follows the path of least resistance.”

“Oh. You said there was a third track, though.”

“Yup. And even though it’s not much of a trail to follow, I think it’s what the sword gal took.”

“Why are you so sure? Are you a Cherokee scout or something?”

“No, and not a boy scout either, toots,” said Ledger. “I guess I ‘get’ devious people, and the third track is devious.”

“Devious how?”

“It looks like one person went that way, and the prints are the same shoes as sword gal. But they’re too deep.”

“So…?”

“So, I think she had the kids walk that way in single file, making sure they each stepped in the other’s footprints. And then she walked over that so it looks like only one set of prints went that way. If you don’t know much about tracking, it just looks like a clear track left by a single person.”

Dez nodded, appreciating it. “That’s pretty badass. I want to meet this chick.”

“Me, too. I’d like to buy her a beer. Maybe a couple.”

“Keep it in your pants, Blondie.”

He laughed. “Seriously, just a beer. I have a wife.”

Dez avoided his eyes for a moment. Ledger had made the statement with total certainty, and as far as Dez reckoned that kind of statement was irrational. Maybe scary.
Don’t go getting weird on me now,
she thought.

Ledger did not notice her reaction. “Here’s the real prize in the Cracker-Jack box, Dez. The trail the sword gal took…? You go that way and you walk right up to the farm.”

“Which farm…?” she began, then stopped. “Shit. Those assholes are going straight to the kids and Lindsey.”

“Nope,” said Ledger. “They sent some scouts down the other trails. I’ll bet they’ll find something on one of them. If sword gal’s as smart as she seems there’ll be something
to
find.”

“Even so...”

“Even so,” said Ledger, “we need to split up. You can cut off this path and hit the fire access road that cuts across the farm road. If you leave now you might get to the farm before the kids. It’ll help if they see you.”

“Why split up? What are you going to do?”

“I’ll catch up.” Ledger glanced back the way he’d just come. “I want to have a little fun first.”

And with that he was gone again.

Dez Fox stared at the empty woods into which he’d just vanished. Who
was
this guy? She had always loved the tall, tanned, blonde types. Guys who looked like they might have a Viking gene lurking around in their DNA. Billy had that, even though he was the least physical guy she’d ever met. Some of the guys she’d bang when she was mad at Billy were like that. Most of them were roughhouse bikers who she turned into revenge fucks when Billy walked out on her. He did that a lot. Or used to when there was a world.

But Ledger, even though he was a lot older than her, was a classic example of the type. That he was powerful, experienced and confident was evident. That he was a good man was clear, too. Maybe a bit more of a boy scout than she usually liked. Dez preferred her men to be crazier than she was, and that was saying something.

He was a good guy, but he wasn’t necessarily a nice guy. And he was sexy. Like Chris Hemsworth if he was fifty-something and hadn’t been eaten by zombies.

Dez felt a strange and unwanted attraction to him, though wanting to bed him and wanting to hit him upside the head with a tire iron were running neck in neck.

Then, as if superimposed over the thought of Ledger was a smaller, thinner, less capable, less heroic, less crazy, more rational and normal man. Billy Trout. Dez seldom felt guilty for what her thoughts did and what her passions wanted, but at that moment the ache that pulsed in the broken places of her heart were not for Joe Ledger. They were for Billy Trout.

“Nothin’s ever easy,” she growled, echoing the words of the southern girl with the shotgun. She set her jaw and turned around to gather her refugees.

Rachael Elle and Lindsey

Rachael and Lindsey swapped shorthand versions of their stories as they hurried from room to room to make sure the house was buttoned up against what they both knew was coming.

“’Nu Klux Klan’?” asked Rachael, laughing despite the tension. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” said Lindsey, who wasn’t smiling.

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard and I used to watch
Real Wives of New Jersey.
”

“Stupid or not,” Lindsey said coldly, “they’re going to come in here and…and…”

Rachael crossed to her and took the young woman by the shoulders, shaking her slightly and then holding her steady. “If they try, we’ll kill them,” she said, and she was surprised by the vicious coldness in her own voice. “We have guns and blades, and we have a fortress.”

Baskerville
whuffed
loudly as if wanting to be included in her inventory.

“Right, and we have a furry four-legged tank.”

The dog wagged his tail. He seemed to understand and appreciate her description.

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” protested Lindsey.

“And they don’t know what kind of raw, unfiltered hell they’d be stepping into if they try to break in here.”

Lindsey looked at her. “You’re only a pretend hero, you know. That costume and all…it’s not real.”

Rachael shrugged. “What’s ‘real’ anyway? The world ended and there are zombies out there. Tell me what’s ‘real’.”

Lindsey said nothing.

“I’ve killed Orcs and I’ve killed bad guys. I used to work in a bank, for Christ’s sake. I used to be a nerd girl. Now I fight monsters, and here’s the funny part…I
win
. I’m still alive, and so are my people. So are those kids. You want to stand there and tell me that isn’t real?”

Lindsey began to say something, the stopped and shook her head.

Baskerville suddenly growled and an instant later they knew why. Outside, on the porch, there was a creak. The kind that only sounds like what it is. A heavy foot stepping onto an old board.

“Oh, god,” breathed Lindsey.

“Gun,” snapped Rachael. “Check the kitchen door. Keep quiet.”

The girl ran to grab the shotgun she’d left on the kitchen table. The dog trotted behind her, ears back, head low, nails clicking on the floorboards.

Rachael ran into the living room and crouched down next to the front door, her back pressed against the wall, sword and dagger in her gloved hand. Despite her brave words her heart pounded like thunder.

The Ranger

Ledger wished he had Baskerville with him. The dog could track a frigging white ghost in a snowstorm. And he was the best friend to have in any kind of fight.

“Stupid mutt,” he grumbled under his breath. “Why don’t you have the good sense not to stand in front of a bullet? Big dummy.”

He prayed that Baskerville’s wound wasn’t serious. Losing the dog would crush him.

Somewhere out in the world was Baskerville’s littermate, Boggart. When Ledger last saw him, the other dog was with Top and Bunny, the other two veteran special operators he’d served with for many years. Finding them was very important to him. With them, he could start building a real team of rangers who might make a serious difference in this world. Hell, if he had Top and Bunny with him—and a healthy Baskerville and Boggart—these NKK idiots would be dead meat already. Be nice if Sam Imura was with them, too. If Sam was still alive. Sure, the bad guys had the numbers, but Ledger and his team had faced steeper odds before. They’d walked through the Valley of the Shadow and stepped over the bones of their enemies. Time and time again.