Nightfall (5 page)

Animals went for the weakest prey first. Mason was only running—not turning to fight—because she was there. He was trying to protect her, like he said he'd promised Mitch.

Her breath came in shallow gasps as they entered the clearing. Golden slivers of light edged the cabin's blacked-out windows, offering a hot rush of relief. They'd made it. Jenna scrambled up to the front door. Her hands trembled as she tried to work the knob. Terror and the cold made her clumsy.

Two creatures broke from the shadow of the trees. They'd been dogs at some point. Now they were something else entirely. Something ...
other
. What she'd imagined of their appearance was entirely accurate.
How?

Only she'd missed the awful way the air shimmered around their gaunt bodies, cloudy like the haze off a sun-scorched pavement. Her blood congealed as they turned their ghoulish muzzles toward her, cloudy eyes gleaming garnet red in the dark. So unreal, so eerie, that ghastly shimmer urged her to look away. But if she did, she'd be their dinner. Although the demon dogs weren't like anything from nature, the law of predator and prey remained.

Mason planted both feet to face them. “Get inside!”

Jenna didn't know what world she'd stepped into, but she felt trapped on the other side of the looking glass. No old rules, if there were any rules at all. She stumbled into the cabin and slammed the door. She leaned against it, her heart pounding and her senses muddled.

A gunshot shattered the silence. Several more shots rang out. How long before he ran out of ammo? Mason was her only link to normalcy, and he was out in the cold, fighting those things—no matter what they were. He'd intended to prove a point, but what the hell would happen to her if he died?

Fear warred with self-preservation. When her breathing stabilized, she crept to the window and peeled back the blacking. With his ammo gone, Mason fought the creatures bare-handed, except for his jumbo Maglite. He was big and strong, but there were two demon dogs. Not good odds.

She didn't like the look of the foul, viscous slobber running from their jaws as they lunged. If they bit him ... well, she didn't know enough about this crazy new world to predict what might happen. But animal bites were never good.

Jenna cast a desperate look around the cabin. She couldn't leave him alone out there, not when she was the reason they'd ventured out in the first place.

“You're not Mitch's daughter for nothing,” she said aloud. “
Do
something.”

Her gaze settled on the dead fireplace. A good-sized log sat on top of the woodpile. It would make a killer club. Before she could rethink, Jenna snagged it. She soaked the end in lighter fluid and lit it with embers from the stove. She took a deep breath and flung open the door in time to see Mason stagger to his knees. He had latched both hands on a monster's shoulders, holding it away from his throat with pure brute strength. The second dog was poised to spring. The air around them popped and sizzled, raising the hairs on her forearms as if she'd just caught the scent of an electrical fire.

Jenna launched herself off the porch and clobbered the second beast with a home-run swing. Something snapped and gave with a sickening lurch. Its back legs collapsed.

Mason twisted the other one's head off. Clean. Off.

Jenna's dog still twitched, snarling, trying to crawl. She leaped back, away from the slimy, jagged fangs. Cemetery stench pervaded the clearing. The wavering air around its body stilled as it died.

“I told you to stay inside,” Mason bit out. He came to his feet with a subtle unsteadiness, telling her the contest had been closer than he would likely admit.

“You're welcome,” she muttered. “What do we do with
them
?”

“Leave them. Don't touch.” He scented the air. “We should take cover before more show up.”

“Yeah ... okay.” She followed him back into the cabin, overcome with trembling.

Maybe she'd risked her life for nothing. Maybe he could dispatch twelve of those rotting monsters all by himself. Jenna sank down against the wall without stripping out of her coat. It seemed beyond cold in the cabin. Her teeth chattered, so she clenched her jaw.

What the hell
were
those things?

For the first time, she dared to think the worst. What if Mason was right? Maybe the troubles had finally reached the West Coast. What if people and cities and civilization were all toast? No more girls' night at the Louie. No more midnight phone calls when Mara's latest loser left her disappointed. No more libraries, or days at the family-owned financial firm where she'd worked since breast cancer took her mom.

Could it
all
be gone?
Really?

She wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her face on her knees.
No crying
. Tears never solved anything. She'd learned that lesson at the first father-daughter day at school. When Mitch had been off in the woods somewhere, the other kids ran sack races with their dads. But maybe being Mad Mitch Barclay's daughter would finally pay off in terms of survival, if not inheritance or good memories.

Beyond the ringing in her head, she heard Mason moving around, probably washing the demon dog stink off him. Then she smelled a coppery tang. Blood. They'd hurt him. Worry rushed through her, completely disproportionate to their acquaintance. But she might need him to live through this nightmare. Only natural.

She brought her head up, and her breath caught. He'd taken off his shirt, revealing a scarred back—not the result of a whipping or other abuse. Mason looked more like a gladiator, each wound telling the story of some battle he'd survived. Had she handpicked someone to kick ass and take names on her behalf, she couldn't have done a better job.

Muscles played beneath his coffee-with-cream skin as he ran a damp rag across his shoulder. Slow and measured movements. She saw iron control in the way he dealt with the aftermath of the attack.

As if feeling her gaze on him, he turned.

Blood spilled down from his chest, but the wound looked like claw marks, not a bite. Jenna didn't know why she feared that possibility, but bad things were transmitted in
regular
saliva, let alone that of unnatural monsters. She wondered if the sickness she'd smelled in the night wind was contagious.

“Aren't you going to yell at me some more?” she asked, pushing to her feet. “Tell me how dumb I was for not listening to you?”

He paused, one hand on a first-aid kit. “I guess you know that already. It's why you're almost green and pretty close to tossing up your tuna casserole.”

No censure in his tone. She liked that.

“Things are ... really messed up out there.” She had to smile at her understatement.

“Yeah,” he said. “Look, I'm sorry about this. I really am. I didn't mean to scare you, but we didn't have time to talk it out. Towns will be worse than the woods—more people, better hunting. Predators stay where the food is until it's gone, then come looking for stragglers like us.”

She couldn't imagine. Having people referred to as food sent cold shivers down to her toes.

He went on with a faint smile, “But I could do worse than to have somebody at my back who'll take on one of those with a flaming block of wood.”

“I must have more nerve than sense.” Jenna took a step toward him. “Let me help you.”

He hesitated, as if considering her motives. She noticed that when he relinquished the med kit, his fingers trembled slightly. So, he wasn't Superman.

Although the gouge was deep and would scar, Jenna knew she couldn't sew up a human being. Mason hissed with the first touch of peroxide, but didn't make another sound. He might as well have been a pillar of scarred brown marble, his gaze fixed over her shoulder. His bare skin felt incredibly warm beneath her fingers, or maybe that was just in contrast to the lingering chill.

“It's been a long time since anybody did anything for me,” he said quietly.

“Not even Mitch?”

It bothered her more than she wanted to let on, knowing he'd spent time with her father—time that should have been hers. Maybe if she'd been born a boy, she would have been allowed to join his private army. Mitch had been dead for years, but she couldn't shake her bitterness.

“
Especially
Mitch,” he said.

Jenna frowned. “I don't get it.”

“He wasn't my dad, and he didn't want to be. He was trying to get me ready for a cataclysm nobody else believed in. He wanted to make me tough enough to stand against what was coming.”

In the firelight, she saw in his tired face traces of hardship she'd never known. “Did he succeed?”

His eyes went distant. “I don't know.”

Five days passed like a dream. Mason could never believe the science behind dreams, that even the most elaborate ones lasted mere minutes. Apparently time slowed in the subconscious, but it ground to a goddamn halt in the cabin. Five days of sharing space with Jenna. Five days of silences and meals and a crude little bathroom. Five days of lying awake on the sofa while she slept in the loft.

What would kill them first, the creatures or the boredom?

Mason sat at the kitchen table and threaded a worn piece of cheesecloth through the barrel of his AR-15, cleaning the rifle for the first time—the first time that day.

Tomorrow, if he still breathed, he'd clean the damn thing again.

Jenna, meanwhile, sat in the wing-backed chair, her legs curled beneath her and an open paperback propped on her knees. The moldy little library on the built-in shelves next to the fireplace had found its first and only patron.

He wanted to hate her for seeming so content, but he needed her. At least, Mitch had said he did. Everything else the old man predicted had come true over the course of long years, so he held his patience. And Mason liked not having to fight with her—at least not since she discovered how he'd raided her closet back home, packing for the trek into the woods. No, that hadn't been pretty. But ever since, they'd reached a sort of armistice.

Not bad. Just more waiting. The whole damn winter would be that way.

Until the silence yielded to something he hadn't expected to hear again. Other people.

“What was that?” Jenna pulled her head up from the book. A faraway expression changed her face, green eyes looking inward.

“Stay here,” he said, leaving the assault rifle but grabbing his nine-millimeter.

“Where am I going to go?”

But did she listen? No. She followed him to the front door, where the calls and shouts had grown louder, more distinct. He heard the name Robert and the unmistakable crack of an adolescent male voice.

Mason gripped the butt of the gun and kicked off the safety. “Who's there?”

“Help us! Hello? Someone let us in!”

A cacophony followed, each pleading for the same favor. He'd known this might happen, but hadn't expected it to be so gut wrenching. The reality of facing such a choice pressed against his sternum. Throat tight, the tendons of his fingers aching, he flipped the safety back on and returned to his disassembled rifle.

Jenna stayed at the door, staring at him.
Here we go.

“What are you—” She swiveled between him and the wooden barrier separating them from the evil in the new world and from the people in the old one. “What're you doing?”

“Cleaning my gun.”

“What about them?”

“They're on their own,” he said, speaking deliberately. “They'll find shelter in the woods. Or not. Either way, they're not our problem.”

“I can't believe this.” Her blond ponytail swished as she shook her head. “What if Mitch had done this to you? Said, ‘Get lost, kid'?”

“He didn't, which is why I owe him.”

All of his arguments lined up in a row, nice and neat. He'd practiced them for years. She didn't stand a chance.
Neither do those people.

“Look.” His temper made him sharper than he meant to be. “I'm obligated only to you and myself.”

“Yeah, because of some promise you made. Right.” She frowned, her bottom lip tucked under a row of straight, white teeth—more the look of a bashful child than a woman in warrior mode.

“We're not opening the door,” he said flatly.

“Yes, we are! Those are people. You remember people? There's a kid out there. I can hear him cussing.”

“All I hear is a liability.”

She stalked to the kitchen and slammed her fist on the table, rattling the rifle parts against each other. “I don't care. I'm here too. I get a say.”

Dark circles sat heavily beneath her eyes. Mason figured she was tired, restless, and scared. Emotion clouded her judgment, and he wanted to make renewed use of the duct tape. “This isn't a democracy, Jenna.”

“Are you really going to leave them out there?”

“Yep. Now shut up about it. Please.”

“Well, it's good you still have your manners,” she said, crossing her arms across a faded gray T-shirt. “Please and thank you. Fat lot of good that'll do if there aren't any people left.”

“We're not letting them in.”

“Forget it.” She crossed to the door and retrieved her coat from a hook. “I'll throw in with them instead. You're not making it hard to choose.”

“Is this what I get for saving your life?”

“I'm not condemning them on your word. No way.”

Mason raked blunt fingernails across his scalp, avoiding her eyes. This
really
wasn't going the way he'd intended. “Jenna, wait—”