Surviving the Dead (Book 7): The Killing Line (18 page)

Nice shot.

RPG was still on his horse, but disoriented. I let out half a breath, put the reticle center of mass, and fired. The rocket launcher fell from limp fingers as the man carrying it fell over sideways. His horse, spooked by the commotion, ran off to the north, its rider’s leg stuck in the stirrup, body bouncing limply along the bumpy highway.

The last two men must have been well trained. They recovered from their shock and began firing in the general direction of Eric and the house where I was hidden. Bullets pocked through the wall to my left, forcing me to drop down and take cover. Another shot rang out and I heard a scream. Hicks had gotten one of them.

I risked a peek over the window sill and peered through the scope. No one there.

“Hicks, you got eyes on the last guy?”

Static. “He’s riding away. I don’t have a shot. Repeat, I don’t have a shot.”

“I’m on it.”

I was up from the floor and bounding down the stairs in seconds, rifle slung over my back. Red was still tethered to the tree in the back yard, head high and tail twitching. He had been around enough gunfire to know something was amiss. Rather than waste time untying him, I cut the lead rope with my Bowie knife, climbed into the saddle, and kicked his haunches.

“Come on, Red. Let’s go.”

The big horse pushed off the ground with a tremendous snort and barreled full-tilt toward the highway. I kept my head low, hands loose on the reins, thinking how grateful I was I had trimmed Red’s mane before leaving Wichita. If I had not, it would have been whipping me in the face.

I caught sight of the rider as soon as Red cleared the last building in Wellsford and eased the big fella to the right. Now we were in line with the fleeing raider, directly behind him. Red caught the gist of what we were doing and picked up speed, his long legs stretching out to catch the pavement in front of him, iron-shod hooves knocking up loose bits of asphalt. The rider ahead of me glanced over his shoulder, drew a pistol, and started squeezing off shots in my general direction. I could tell by the way he was holding the weapon he would not hit us, but that did not make getting chopped away at any more fun. I drew my own pistol, stood up a bit in the stirrups, and fired one handed. I knew I was unlikely to hit him at this range, but returning fire is almost always a better option than not doing so.

The rider fired three more times, then pulled the trigger on an empty magazine. He showed his discipline by holstering the weapon, seizing the reins with both hands, and urging more speed from his horse.

A few seconds later, Red had noticeably cut the distance between us. I was not surprised. Not only is my trusty steed big, strong, and fast, he was also fresh. The other horse had been on the road a long time, probably running sprints around Spike’s caravan during the assault. I doubted the rider had let his mount take a drink or eat anything for a while. Red, on the other hand, had enjoyed a bucket of water and a few handfuls of oats while Caleb and Eric were helping me set up the ambush. With horses, such things greatly affect athletic performance. Humans too, for that matter.

The horse ahead of me ducked its head as it ran, froth flying from its mouth. I could tell by its body language it was exhausted. Red plowed steadily ahead, the two great bellows that were his lungs steadily pumping oxygen into his blood. When we were close to overtaking them, I aimed my pistol with one hand, breathed out slowly, held my shoulder loose like a gyroscope, and fired twice. The first round caught the edge of one of the raider’s shoulders and ripped away a chunk of blood and fabric. As he shouted in pain and surprise, the second shot took him center of mass in the back. He went instantly limp and fell bonelessly to the ground.

Red overshot him, his attention on pursuing the horse, not the rider. I hauled on the reins and turned him around and stopped beside the fallen raider. To my surprise, he was still alive. I climbed down and stood over him to get a closer look. He lay on his back, eyes open wide, face bright with confusion and fear, lungs laboring, blood spraying from pale lips as he coughed, a bleeding exit wound in his centerline just below the sternum.

“Can’t…can’t feel my legs.”

I fired a round into his thigh. He flinched, but his leg remained limp. His face registered no sign of pain.

“Must have got you through the spine. Can you feel your arms?”

“N…no.”

“Then you’ve got a choice to make. You can lie here and wait to die, or I can end it quick and clean. What’s it gonna be?”

“What…what do you want?”

“The raiders you’re with. How many are there?”

His face split into a grin and he began to laugh. “Too many…for you...dead man.”

I aimed the pistol at his head. “Quick or slow. Your choice. How many?”

“Doesn’t…matter. They’ll find you. Then you’ll…know…when they kill you.”

There was nothing more for me to do. I couldn’t hurt him. Literally. The spinal injury took care of that. And if I left him alive, he might get a chance to tell his friends something to help them find me. I centered my aim and looked the dying man in the eye.

“You first.”

We rode east along the highway for as long as we dared, while Caleb and Eric hung back and took turns keeping an eye on our six. They saw no more pursuers. We covered twelve miles by nightfall and pushed on a few miles farther past the town of Cullison.

The plain was crisscrossed every mile or so by narrow service roads, most of them still more or less paved. This worked in our favor. Not only would traveling over pavement make us harder to track, assuming we cleaned up after the animals, but since there were so many roads we could have chosen, the raiders behind us would have to split their forces to attempt an effective search.

The path we chose took us over gently sloping terrain that rose up for close to a mile before sweeping sharply back down. When I figured we were close to the bottom of the shallow valley, I switched on my IR scope and looked behind us. I could not see over the ridge, which meant the raiders would not be able to see us from the road even in daylight. Another point in our favor.

Just after midnight I spotted the unmistakable cylindrical shape of grain elevators pointing toward the sky. I had the group halt and wait off the path while I rode ahead and reconned the area. It was quickly obvious the place was abandoned. Nothing had been disturbed for a long time, possibly since the Outbreak.

The grain elevators were still structurally stable, as were the ladders and catwalks leading to their peaks. There was a long cinder-block storage building at the elevators’ base that was perfect for hiding the livestock and wagon. A little further down the road was a farmhouse and a barn. The roof of the house was half torn away, probably the victim of a high-plains twister, but the barn was intact. I thought about news reports of tornadoes back in the old days, of people describing how a funnel cloud would rip apart an entire town, and in the midst of it all, one house would be left standing unscathed. I had a feeling I was looking at the aftermath of just such an event. Then I had another thought and looked around the periphery of the house, and sure enough, I found the twin doors of a storm shelter.

The doors were padlocked, but a pair of bolt cutters has long been a staple of my survival kit. I cut the lock, activated the tactical light on my M-4, and opened one of the doors. The white beam cut deep into the darkness below, revealing a set of damp, green-tinted wooden stairs. A quick test with my foot determined the stairs were intact enough to hold my weight. I had a moment’s indecision about how to proceed and decided it was best not to take unnecessary risks. I radioed for Eric to join me.

Static. “On my way.”

When I heard the approach of hooves on soft grass I waved my tac-light in his direction. He saw it, dismounted, and tied his gelding to the same low maple branch I had tied Red.

“Whatcha got?”

I pointed down the stairs with my rifle. “Storm shelter. Stairs are in good shape.”

“Let’s clear it.”

Eric switched to his pistol. I stuck with my rifle. We both took a moment to make sure rounds were chambered, suppressors were secured, and safeties were off. I went down first, leading with my rifle. The beam swept left, right, up and down. I saw no movement. The room smelled like mildew and old motor oil. To my right was a set of metal shelves with a collection of assorted engine parts, cans of bolts and screws, cracked radiator hoses, and other lumps of plastic and metal junk I could not immediately identify. To my left the space opened out to a bare concrete floor, cinder-block walls, and a metal door. Eric followed me down.

“Clear so far,” I said.

“I’ll take point in the next room.”

“Yep.”

Eric stacked up right, I took left. I gripped the door handle and turned it slowly. It was unlocked. I looked at Eric. He nodded. I pulled the door open wide, let him through, and followed close behind.

Eric’s light tracked over one side of the room while mine shone on the other. On my side was a dust-covered couch, coffee table, and in the far corner of the room, a recliner with a table and lamp on one side. Next to me I heard Eric curse softly and I swiveled on my heels to see his side of the room. Where his light pointed, three ghouls were rising to their feet, still identifiable as the people they once were. One was a woman in a floral print dress, another a man in denim overalls and a blue pocket tee, and the last was a young boy in jeans and a short sleeved button-down shirt. Their skin was pale grey, eyes red in the glaring light.

Eric did not hesitate. He put two bullets in the head of the boy before he had even risen to his feet. It was a sound tactical decision, as ghoul children are significantly faster than their adult counterparts. As Eric fired, I canted my rifle, aimed through the back-up iron sights mounted forty-five degrees from my scope, and triggered two rounds. Both split the skull of the woman and painted the wall behind her with twin spots of crimson. Last was the man. He was lurching toward us by the time Eric drew down on him and fired. A single round took off most of the top of his skull. He collapsed, twitched twice, and was still. The entire incident took maybe five seconds.

We listened in silence, lights scanning the room. Other than the dead bodies, we were alone. I walked over and kicked the boy and the man over onto their backs. The boy had a small bite on his arm but no other injuries. The man and woman were covered in bites on their faces and arms, and much of their lower torsos had been ripped away. The boys mouth was a rictus of old, dried blood and black teeth. The other two showed no indication of ever having fed. From the corner of my eye, I saw a revolver lying on the coffee table. To my right, a small stairway led up to a heavy wooden door which I could tell was locked by the position of the deadbolt latch.

I lowered my rifle. “Not too hard to read this one.”

“The kid gets bit,” Eric said, “And the dad shoots the thing that bit him. I bet if you check that pistol there’s rounds missing.”

I did, and he was right. There were only three rounds in the cylinder. “And after he shoots the boy’s attacker, they hunker down here.” I pointed to the locked door. “Came in from inside the house, locked the door behind them.”

Eric nodded. “So then they settle in and eventually the boy turns and his parents can’t bring themselves to put him down and he kills them.”

“One first, then the other. The second one had to watch. Probably too horrified to run away.”

Eric wiped his face. When his hand came away, he looked a few years older. “Hell of a way to go. How long you think they been down here?”

“Clothes are still in okay shape. Maybe since the Outbreak.”

“Jesus.”

“You may notice they haven’t rotted very much.”

“Yep.”

“And I’m willing to bet if they had fed enough, they’d be grays by now.”

“Yep.”

We turned and went back out into the open air. There was no discussion necessary. A night in the safety of a storm shelter would have been nice, but there was no way we were sleeping down there.

*****

Hicks volunteered to take the first watch. No one argued. We were all too exhausted. I gave the young soldier my IR goggles, admonished him not to hurt them, and watched him melt away into the night.

The rest of us put down our bedrolls in the barn’s loft and lay down to rest. There was no conversation. No one had the energy.

The next thing I remember is a creak of wood and Hicks whispering to Eric the IR goggles still had three-quarters charge and to use them sparingly. It was full dark then. Another creak of wood came to me what felt like seconds later, but when I opened my eyes, the first gray shafts of dawn clutched the rim of the horizon.

“Last watch,” Eric said, handing me the goggles. I took them and checked the battery. Half charged. I handed them back to Eric.

“Put them on a panel.”

“Probably won’t charge all the way. Too early.”

“Do it anyway. Better than nothing.”

“Sure.”

I kissed Elizabeth on the cheek, smoothed Sabrina’s hair away from her elfin face, told them both I loved them in a low whisper, and climbed down from the loft.

The sky was cloudy to the east and clear to the west, which did not really tell me anything. Kansas in late winter is a volatile place. Warm one day and cold the next. I would have to watch the skies carefully going forward, as storms can be downright deadly in this part of the world.

I walked to the storage building to check on the horses and oxen and found Eric had already fed them and put water in their buckets. The room reeked of piss and shit and filthy animals. I greeted Red and said a few kind words to him and promised better treatment once we were all out of danger.

Back outside, I walked to the pump Eric had used to water the animals and splashed my face a few times. The cold water revived me somewhat and shook a few of the cobwebs loose. I gazed at the pump for a moment, reminded myself to fill the gerry cans before we left, and desperately hoped we would be able to find enough water in the days ahead to keep the animals, and ourselves, alive.

  A couple of hours later, when the sun was high over the horizon and I had walked and stretched and drank some water and was feeling something more like a human being, I headed back to the loft. The others were already awake and gathered in a circle on the dirt floor of the barn. They had collected chairs from inside the house and Hicks had scrounged a small charcoal grill from somewhere. He had a small fire going, a pot of dried potatoes, dried peas, and chicken jerky rehydrating in the hot water. The smell made my empty stomach groan.

“Got you a seat,” Elizabeth said, patting a low camping stool beside her. I sat down and kissed her on the side of her neck. Her mouth turned up in a small smile and it made me feel better to see it.

“So what’s the plan?” Eric said. His eyes, like mine, were fixed firmly on the cook pot. None of us had eaten since the previous morning.

“We’ll talk after breakfast.”

The food was done quickly but still took entirely too long. Hicks made plenty of it, and when we were done, there was nary a scrap left over. It was by far one of the better meals I have ever eaten. Cervantes was right. Hunger is the best sauce.

“For today,” I said finally, “we stay put. We need to rest and so do the animals. That said, we’ll make preparations to ride out of here on a moment’s notice.”

“I have a proposal,” Hicks said.

“What’s that?”

“How about I parallel our back trail and see if I can get a line on those raiders. Recon only. Be nice to know what we’re up against.”

I thought it over. The man had a point. “It’ll be dangerous.”

“What isn’t these days?”

I nodded at that. “I’ll go with you.”

Elizabeth turned to me. “Gabe…”

“I don’t want him going alone. It’s too dangerous. We’ll have our radios with us and we’ll bring the horses. We’ve done this kind of thing before, Elizabeth. We know how to stay out of sight.”

“I don’t think either of you should go. What if someone sees you and follows you back here?”

“That’s extremely damned unlikely. But regardless, it’s a risk we have to take. Right now, those raiders are between us and Colorado. We have to find a way past them. If we don’t, then sooner or later they’re going to catch up to us. If that happens, I’d rather have it on my terms, not theirs.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Hicks said.

“There’s also the matter of what happened to Spike’s caravan,” Eric said.

I scratched the side of my jaw, nails scraping the week-old beard. “Yeah. I’d like to know that too.”

“You haven’t said a word about your trade,” Sabrina said. I glanced at her and she held my gaze with steady, implacable determination. “That was our meal ticket. Won’t do us much good to reach Colorado flat-on-our-ass broke. I’ve heard about the refugee camps outside the Springs, and I gotta tell you, I’d rather take my chances in the mountains.”

“What I brought with us was only about a third of my net worth,” I said. “The rest is still back in Hollow Rock. I do business regularly with several merchants in the Springs, and at least a few of them will give me credit enough to get us set up. Not to mention I have a job offer from the largest mercenary outfit around. We’ll manage.”

“Except you don’t have a job
offer
. You have a letter of interest. I might just be a poor uneducated Traveler girl, but I know they’re not the same thing.”

“I’ll get the job, don’t worry about that. But at the moment, that’s of secondary concern. Right now we need to figure out how we’re going to get to Colorado alive.”

“And that’s looking like a tall order,” Eric said.

“Maybe not.” I reached into a pocket on my vest and produced my satellite phone.

“That thing charged?” Eric asked. 

“No. Can you take care of it while we’re out?”

“No problem.”

“Radios too. We’ll take the fresh batteries while the others charge.”

Eric nodded. “Hicks, did you throw out the deep-cycle battery?”

“No. ‘Bout the only heavy thing I didn’t throw out. Figured we’d need it.”