Resurrection (Eden Book 3) (17 page)

“Fighting the zombies. A lot of people said he was crazy.”

“What do you think?”

“How could he not be? But I didn’t think it mattered. He was the best at what he did, which was killing zombies. Killed a lot of men too, when he had to, but they had it coming.”

“Did he carry a doll?”

“I’ve heard that, but that was before I knew him. They spent eight or nine months fighting in New York City, and then when the power plant melted down, we all just assumed that was the end of Bear’s Army, the end of the man. But then he resurfaced down in New Orleans—what had been New Orleans. That’s where I knew him.”

“What about the Black Angel of Death? Was she real?”

“There was a black woman who fought at his side. From what I remembered, she was just as dangerous as he was. Not very approachable either. Not that he was.”

“Do you think we’re going to find him out here?”

“I think we’ll find his Army. What’s left of it. They shouldn’t be too far away from here, last I heard. But I don’t think we’ll find Bear.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He’s probably dead.”

“From the war?”

“The war. The radiation. The depravity. Take your pick.”

Troi looked glum, and Krieger saw the look on her face.

“But you never know. You might find him.”

She looked up, not as discouraged.

“Not that it’ll answer any of your questions—
your friend’s
questions.” Krieger tapped the side of his bottle with his finger. “Hell, Bear might not even want to speak to any of you.”

“I’m going to go inside to sleep. Thanks, Krieger.”

“I don’t know for what. But you’re welcome.”

They woke in the rain and resumed their journey shortly thereafter. They passed through urban street canyons whose asphalt and cement were long split apart by the freezing and thawing of water. Ruts and fissures gave to gaps and yawning cavities, dropping a dozen feet or more to rain-dappled waters. They avoided these, stepping carefully around them. Other streets had disappeared into chasms, the buildings on either side leaning into the abyss or disintegrated into piles of rubble and building materials. Travel along these paths was impossible and necessitated a detour.

Buildings groaned in protest as they expanded and contracted, and the four friends looked about themselves nervously with every tick and snap. They passed burnt buildings and entire blocks reduced to debris with scorched steel skeletons protruding into the air. It was a cold and wet morning.

Krieger walked ahead in his customary place, putting the Bo before him, the Hawk MM1 still on his back. He coughed and spat.

“Can you believe this place was full of people once?” Anthony asked his friends.

“It’s weird.” Troi looked from deserted building to deserted building. “Where’d they go? I mean, I know
where
they went, but…”

“Places like this,” said Riley, “were never meant to be this quiet.”

“It seems…” Anthony’s imagined streets full of human beings, their sounds, their lives.

“It’s a sacrilege,” Krieger called over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” agreed Troi.

“He can hear us?” Evan whispered to Anthony. “He’s that far ahead and he can still hear us.”

“I saw you talking to him last night,” Riley mentioned to Troi. “What about?”

“Nothing really. Bear mostly.”

“Oh.”

Sometime later, Evan asked, “What’s up with the Krieg?” He looked ahead to their guide. Krieger had stopped in the middle of the street and unslung his grenade launcher, which he held muzzle down. He stood over something. As they drew close to him, they saw what it was.

A charred torso lay in the middle of the street. It was blackened beyond recognition, the limbs burned away, the eye sockets empty.

“What happened to him?” Anthony asked the guide.

“It’s not the
what
that concerns me.” Krieger glanced from the body to the buildings around them. “It’s the when.”

“When what?” asked Troi.

“This body isn’t like the others we’ve seen,” Riley pointed out.

“All we’ve seen are skeletons.”

“Exactly, Ev.”

“But this isn’t fresh or anything, right Krieger?” Anthony sounded like he wanted to be assured. .

The guide did not speak for some time, and while he was silent the friends looked around anxiously.

“You feel that?” Krieger finally asked.

“Feel what?” Evan said.

“Keep your voice down. We’re being watched.”

Troi and Anthony turned and looked around, up and down the street they’d come from, into the empty windows of the buildings on either side of this block.

“Where are they?” Riley asked. She’d taken a protective step closer to her brother and raised her Model 7.

“Don’t know. They want to be seen, they’ll be seen.”

“He’s right.” Troi shuddered in her poncho, but not from the rain or chill. “There’s no animals.”

“What should we do?” Evan gripped the barrel of his assault rifle.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“They know we know they’re there.”

“What?” It wasn’t clear if Evan had understood what the guide had said or didn’t believe what the man had said.

“Do you think they’re going to attack us?” Anthony spoke quietly.

“I doubt it. I wouldn’t.”

“Great,” Evan said.

“If they’d meant us harm, they’d more than likely have done so by now.”

Troi breathed fast and looked around quickly. Riley took her arm and steadied her. “Relax.” She tried to sound calmer than she felt. “Relax.”

“Y-yeah, right.”

“So? What do we do then?” Evan stared into the gaping dark of a third-floor window.

“We keep going.” And just like that, their guide resumed his walk through the rainy morning.

“We keep going.” Evan didn’t sound happy with the answer but he followed, turning as he walked, staring down the buildings around them. He let Anthony, Riley, and Troi walk between himself and Krieger as he brought up the rear.

The city streets were remarkably clear of vehicles. There was an occasional car parked at the curb or stalled in the middle of the street, a door or doors open. The cars were sunken down on the remains of tires that had flattened and rotted long ago. The buildings they passed were still marked with the numbers of skeletons inside.

The day was dark from the clouds and rain, and thunder rumbled in the distance. After many hours of walking with a few, brief rests interspersed, the day began to end. Krieger led them through and past the last blocks of high rises and businesses. They started moving into residential blocks on the other side of the city. None of the four friends wished to stop for the night this close to the city, so they continued to follow the coughing man through the rain. Krieger did not call a halt until well after the sun had set and they were navigating in the muted violet of the early evening.

“Let’s stop here for tonight.” The guide indicated a two story brick house set back from the street. A strip of land in front of the home had been a lawn, but the onion grass and goldenrod had grown to ridiculous heights and disappeared into the house itself through the open front door. Wild grapevines snaked up the front of the house. Above the entranceway, the number
3
had been painted. “And let’s sleep indoors this evening.”

Krieger led the way into the house and the four friends followed. The first floor was coated with a fuzzy green mold and the windows were all broken out. As they walked up to the second floor, the stairs under their feet creaked, unmuffled by the rotted, molded remains of carpet.

There was a landscape painting in what had been the hallway of the second floor. The painting was covered with fungi and mold. The bathroom was unusually well-preserved compared to the other rooms and houses they’d passed and explored. The ceramic tiles were largely intact. Water had gotten into the house around the chimney flashing, working its way under the slate shingles, which had collapsed in on one of the bedrooms.

A second bedroom housed a terrible sight. Amid the stink of mold and dust, three skeletons lay entwined on a yellowed mattress. The skeletons on either side were full-sized—adults—while the skeleton between them was that of a toddler. The two adults were holding each other and the child. No one wanted to settle in this room.

Krieger set his Bo against the wall of what had been a third bedroom. He dumped his bodypack and the others followed suit, realizing there would be no fire this night and that it would be a cold one.

“We’ll sleep in shifts.” Krieger’s voice and face were the most expressive any of them—aside from Troi—had seen thus far on their trek. “We keep watch by this window.” The window looked out onto the street they’d come down. Its panes were still intact, but the wall underneath was discolored where water had gotten in around the glass. “I’ll keep first watch.”

Evan briefly considered saying something to Krieger about not falling asleep this time, but thought better of it.

They ate, largely in silence, listening to the house creak around them. The friends noticed that Krieger wasn’t drinking as often from his bottle. They noted the way he sat on his body pack, looking out onto the street as the night came upon them and blackened all. Anthony was closest to the door leading to the hallway and the staircase. He turned his back to the others and pulled his Model 7 in close to his body, looking out into the hallway, waiting and listening.

An hour later he was wide awake and having a hard time lying still. Someone snored lightly. Anthony peered out into the hallway through the night-vision scope. There was nothing to be seen in the hazy green glow.

He rolled over gently, not wishing to make any noise. Krieger kept silent vigil at the window. His sister, Evan, and Troi were all asleep. Evan had his mouth open and was the one snoring.

Anthony turned back to the dark and the doorway and fought to keep his eyes open. It was a battle he realized he was rapidly losing, so he drew the Model 7 in close again and let his eyes close. As he drifted off, he heard someone say his name. He knew it was no one in this room, just one of the voices or sounds he heard when he was exhausted and on the verge of slumber, and he did not fight it.

The creak of the stairs woke Troi. She had no idea what time it was, but knew, from the all-encompassing dark, that it was the middle of the night. She sat up, shivering because her sleeping bag had come off her. The Model 7 sat in her lap. The dark, huddled forms of her friends were on the floor near her.

The stairs creaked again.

Troi scooted around on her butt, looking to the window and the moonlight filtering through. Krieger was not there.
Oh boy
. She stood up, shouldering the stock of the Model 7, considering whether or not she should call out to Riley, to Anthony and Evan, deciding against it for the time being. She trained the barrel of her rifle on the doorway, above Anthony’s inert form. Was something out there? On the stairs? Where was Krieger?

She heard a feint cough somewhere and relaxed slightly.
Krieger
. Troi stepped over and around her sleeping friends, peering out the doorway into the hall and what she could see of the stairwell from there. There was no one, nothing. She crossed the room to the window and looked out onto the street below. In the moonlight she spotted Krieger standing in the middle of what had been the lawn. She knew him by his furs and the squat grenade launcher. Its barrel rested in the crook of one arm.

Troi pulled on her jacket over her hoodie, zippering it. She slung her Model 7, left the bedroom and took the stairs slowly, carefully, trying to avoid excessive noise. Though she stepped gently, the stairs still creaked in protest, though perhaps not as shrilly as they might have.

“Krieger.” She stepped out of the house and walked up behind the man. The rain had stopped but it was colder.

He turned at the waist, grunted in acknowledgement, and resumed his original position.

“What’s going on out here?” She stepped abreast of the guide.

“Saw one. About an hour ago.” He indicated the end of the block, along the route they had come. “Down there, that way. Had a torch.”

Troi knew if whatever the guide had seen had had a torch, it wasn’t a zombie. “Think he was alone…” Krieger’s voice trailed off.

“Do you think they want to hurt us?”

“No, I don’t think so. Whoever it is, they’re probably more worried about us than we are of them. I think maybe they’re curious is all.”

She digested this, shuddering from the cold, staring down the street into the dark.

“Where’d the guy with the torch go?”

“Don’t know. One minute he was there. The next minute he was gone.”

“Should I wake the others?”

“No need. Like I said, they’re not going to attack us. These people wouldn’t be seen, they didn’t want to be seen.”

“Who’s out here? In the Outlands?”

“All sorts.” He looked to Troi as though he were lost in thought as he spoke, lost in a past of things remembered. “Wild people. Outcasts. People who don’t want to be a part of society. Some others, like me, come and go. Not to mention your hostiles, your munts.”

“Zed?”

“Oh yeah, there’s still some of him left.”

“Around here?”

“We’re getting closer. Mostly you won’t run into Zed unless you’re up near a hot zone. That is, unless one of ‘em wanders out of a hot zone. That still happens you know.”

“How close are we to Bear?”

“We’re getting there. By tomorrow night we’re going to see one of the most spectacular sights there is to see on this earth. Few more days after that, you should find Bear and his people, if they’re still out here.”

Troi noticed how Krieger had switched between
we
and
you,
but thought nothing of it.

“You think Anthony’s crazy, don’t you? You probably think we’re all crazy.”

“Nah. I don’t think none of ya’ are crazy.”

“Why are you out here?” Troi meant in the Outlands.

“You mind if I ask you how old you are?”

She told him her age.

“My daughter would have been close to your age. A few years older.”