You and Me against the World: The Creepers Saga Book 1 (32 page)

The plan went to hell when Adam charged down the street. From his vantage point on the far side of the Tahoe, he saw his friends’ expressions. The sight scared him more than anything had ever scared him. He had seen the expression before. The summer of his junior year, he had signed up to complete his required charity hours. He selected an animal rescue group because he liked animals and thought it would be a cool way to fulfill the requirement. It was horrific.

In a few short months, he learned much about human cruelty. In time, he learned that the rescuers could tell which animals would live and which would die. Although the physical abuse played its part, it was more about the psychological state of the animal. One rescuer told him that you could look in a dog’s eyes and know whether that animal wanted to live or die. At first, Nick hadn’t believed, but in time, he came to recognize it too. There was an expression and something in the demeanor of the animal. It wasn’t defeat, but almost a peaceful resolve to be finished. No amount of love, food, or medical treatment had the power to alter that resolve. It was the absence of hope. When the bullet took Adam, he saw that same tired resolve in his friends.

He was never certain if his vision was real or just a desperate illusion meant to provide some small measure of hope. His world tilted, and everything became blurry. He saw Golden for a brief second, and then he heard her rage-filled scream. It was distant and muffled. He had no idea why he filled with such sudden and certain conviction. He had no idea as to why in that single second, the vision seemed to make perfect sense. Later, although he was sure that it had been his voice, a part of him remained uncertain that he himself had actually yelled those three words. He knew his friends misunderstood the three words. The three words that he screamed with all his breath. The three words that came out impossibly loud. The three words that saved them for one more day.

His friends heard, “Golden is alive.”

Nick knew what he saw in the strange vision, and he knew what he had actually screamed.

“Golden’s gonna slide!”

Annie rides, Thorn drives, Goldie finally slides, and
Bart’s big surprise

Annie watched the man turn and the gun rise. The rain had left the cement wet and slippery. Her running shoes did not have enough traction to allow her to stop or even dodge for that matter. She had no choice but to ride out her speeding trajectory. She realized that the distance was against her. The man would shoot her before she was in range to deliver her knife’s deathblow. She considered throwing herself to the ground, but the thought of being shot to death while she rolled pathetically along the wet road pissed her off. She didn’t bail out for the pavement; instead, she did what she always did when faced with trouble. She ran at it faster.

She raised her blades as the man raised the rifle the last few inches that he needed to take a clean shot. Annie refused to close her eyes. She would not give the fucker even a moment of satisfaction in her death. She would show no fear. She prepared for the bullet. The sound of Nick’s voice startled her. It was louder than it should have been from this distance. It felt like it resonated along the walls of the alley and shook the pavement. It startled the gunman even more, and he must have imagined that Nick stood directly behind him because he turned around as if he intended to shoot. Annie smiled. She sprinted the final distance, and the knives whirled. The gunman’s head came off in her first sweep. The bomb carrier caught the second blade as she twirled.

Nick’s voice, as loud as thunder, woke Thorn from his shocked stupor. It woke them all, and they began to fall back behind the Tahoe. Thorn looked from his friends to the pile of out-of-reach weapons in the street and then to the open Tahoe door. Bart was never letting them leave, he realized. The Creeper threat against the children was just a ruse. He never intended to kill the children. It had just been meant to draw them out and to disarm them. A way for Bart to coax the lambs to the slaughter. Thorn’s anger brought out his wolf. He saw the other wolves waking around him.

Thorn ran toward the Tahoe. Someone fired a gun, and he felt a bullet pass by his ear. He ran harder and then dove into the driver’s seat. He started the Tahoe and without hesitation dropped it into gear and sped forward. It was a short trip. He turned abruptly in front of the weapons pile. His friends now had a very large barricade to protect them while they retrieved their guns. He jumped from the vehicle and ran to Adam. He picked Adam up and carried him in a sprint. His friends grabbed weapons and prepared to defend themselves.

“Susan, Caroline, come on! There’s still a chance, but I need your help,” he yelled as he ran up the stairs to the dining hall with his injured friend in his arms. Thorn had seen the shot. It was a gut shot for certain, and Adam was unconscious, but it didn’t have to mean the end for the boy. Not if Thorn could stop the bleeding or at least slow it.

“Sir, they’re getting their weapons. Should we open fire?” the man with the crew cut asked Bart.

Bart smiled and remained calm.

“Not yet,” he answered.

“But if they get dug in over there, it’s gonna be difficult to … ah … remove them.”

“Have faith, my friend,” Bart assured the man. “The goal was to have them in a tight little group, and well, look: they’re all clustered around the vehicle.”

“I think the doctor and his girlfriend went into the dining hall,” the man pointed out.

“The doctor is of no concern or consequence. We will deal with him later,” Bart said, dismissing Crew Cut’s concerns.

Bart looked at his congregation. He marked the ones who were with him, but more importantly, he marked the ones who looked down or had moved away. Those not with him would be eliminated the moment he had finished with the pain in the asses behind the Tahoe. He knew he should have killed Devin the moment he met him that night in his office. He knew better than to let that kind live. The ones who had some sense of justice and morality and the balls to back it up always turned out to be a problem. He had foolishly held out hope that the kid could become a convert. Dani had failed him, though. She was supposed to seduce Devin, and instead she fell in love with the useless idiot that they had just shot.

Bart shook his head. Too many mistakes had been made this time. He needed to clean this up quickly and get back to business. The one certainty he held was that Kyle would not fail him. Kyle had the bomb, and any moment now, he would rush the kids, press the button, and send them all to heaven in a fiery inferno. Kyle was loyal even if he had initially resisted the idea. Seemed his loyalty wavered under the prospect of his own death. Josh was with Kyle to provide the proper motivation. Kyle could die for the cause, or he could die when Josh put a bullet in his head. Josh would not hesitate. The guy was an absolute psycho. He’d enjoyed removing Dani’s eyes. He had begged to be the bomb runner. Bart had refused only because men like Josh were a precious commodity in Bart’s world. If Kyle failed, however, Josh would not waver in the mission’s completion.

“Any moment now,” Bart said aloud.

Golden fell to her knees in the slick fluids that had leaked from Brother Paul’s corpse. Her guns were almost empty, but she continued to pump the remaining bullets into the Creepers. When her knees hit the floor, her momentum sent her sliding across the slippery cement. Her high-speed slide took her directly at the SUV’s open back door. At the last second, she raised her arms to prevent a face-first plunge into it. Her arms caught the door, and her body slammed it closed. The impact shook her teeth, but she stood quickly.

The Creepers saw her direction change and turned to follow. Golden scrambled through the driver’s open door and into the Escalade’s front seat. The Creepers were fast but uncoordinated. They clawed at one another in a frenzied attempt to reach her. In the intertwined and awkward shuffle, they fell against the door and unintentionally closed it. They banged furiously at the glass.

For a slight fraction of time, Golden sat with perfect clarity of mind. Then her thoughts turned to her friends and family, to the fact that her survival might still be all for nothing. The mist that had disappeared while she had slid returned. It did not consume her, but instead settled about her and whispered and waited. The closet door, which had opened just a crack, again slipped closed.

She turned the ignition key, dropped the shifter into drive, and sped out of the garage. Her departure crushed several Creepers beneath the SUV. A few hung on until she made the wild, high-velocity turn back toward the fort. Outside the garage had been an even larger group of Creepers. In the horde, she recognized a familiar face. It was impossible, but for the moment, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was her return to her family and friends. She pushed the accelerator to the floorboards. The clock ticked.

“Sir?” Crew Cut’s apprehension-filled face turned to look at Bart.

“I told you to have faith, my friend.”

“Yes, sir, but what exactly are we waiting for?”

“You’ll see,” Bart said and smiled.

“Sir, if they start shooting, though?” Crew Cut asked.

“They won’t. They can’t risk hitting the children.”

Crew cut looked over at Bart’s position in front of the van. He looked over his own shoulder and realized the van position provided him no such insurance.

“But, sir, we’re not all in front of the van.”

“You’re trying my patience,” Bart yelled. His anger was evident. “Stand your fuckin’ post.”

Crew Cut looked at his friend. He and Jack had been coworkers in a bottling plant. They had drunk a lot of beer, hit on a lot of women, and occasionally kidnapped a drunken coed from the local bars and did things—well, things they shouldn’t have done. At the end of the world, Bart had seemed like their kind of guy. In private, he talked about the stuff this new world could offer. Things they would be allowed to do that the old world would never have tolerated.