“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.
~35~
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.
~36~
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.
As he moved to intercept the NKK hunters, he had to work on his emotional reaction. These men offended him on a level that ran all the way down to his soul. Years ago, when Ledger was a young teenager, he and his girlfriend, Helen, had been attacked by a group of older teens. Those boys had stomped Ledger nearly to death and while he lay there, broken and bleeding, he saw the things they did to Helen. It destroyed them both. They physically survived the assault, but healing tissue and knitting bones did not mean they, as people, had survived. Years later, after several failed suicide attempts, Helen took her own life and it was Ledger who found her. He had been studying martial arts since the attack and had grown up big, tough and vicious, but none of those skills could help him save the girl who had stepped off the edge of the world and let the big dark swallow her.
The NKK hunters were no different from those boys. They were users, takers, destroyers of hearts and souls. They believed that they had a right to anything they took by force. No law applied to them, and the world’s infrastructure had collapsed as if in homage to their dark desires. The world bared its throat to them.
That’s how they saw it, but Ledger saw it differently. If no laws applied to them, then no laws protected them either. No laws, no restrictions, no mercy. They were hunters of a certain kind, and he was a completely
different hunter.
He was glad Dez Fox, the women and those children were not here to see what was going to happen.
~37~
Dez Fox and the Refugees
The women and kids were scared but they were visibly changing from helpless victims to a group of armed survivors. What had begun when they first took the weapons from their dead captors was continuing as Dez led them through the woods. The simple fact of finding the fire access road where Dez promised it would be strengthened them further.
For her part, Dez wanted to kick herself for not exploring the area around the bus more thoroughly. The farm where Lindsey waited for them had been there all along. Sure, the family who owned it and the refugees who had holed up there all died, but maybe they wouldn’t have if Dez had been with them. Maybe, she knew, was a terrible word. It was thorn in the skin. Maybe if she’d found the farmhouse months ago Biel would be live and the kids would be better nourished and…well, saner. Maybe she’d have met Ledger sooner and maybe he would have been able to lead her to Billy.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
The moon was down now but there were no clouds and there were stars by the billion.
There were also zombies on the road.
Not many, but enough. Eight or nine of them, spaced out, looking lost but turning toward the sound and smell of the living coming toward them.
“If Ledger can do it,” Dez muttered, and then ran ahead of the group, attacking the zombies before they could attack her charges. She smashed aside their white hands with a carpet-coated left forearm and smashed skull bones with her blackjack.
Rinse and repeat.
That thought made her smile.
Then someone was beside her. It was the teenage girl with the shotgun. As Dez was clubbing a dead National Guardsman to the ground, the girl took a stance, tucked the stock of the shotgun into her shoulder, and fired.
“No!” yelled Dez, but her voice was blasted away as the twelve-gauge roared. Ten feet away a zombie crumbled to the ground, the top of its head blown away.
“Got ‘im,” said the girl with pride even as she fished for a fresh shell. Dez ripped the gun out of her hand and nearly hit the stupid kid with the blackjack.
“What’s wrong with you?” demanded the girl, trying to grab the gun back.
Before Dez could answer they heard something that froze them all to silence.
It wasn’t the moans of the dead still on the road, or even the ones now drawn to them from the surrounding woods.
It was a voice. Male. And close.
“It’s them. They’re over there,” he yelled.
It was not Ledger’s voice.
Dez drew her pistol as the refugees swirled around her.
“Run!” she roared.
~38~
Rachael Elle and Lindsey
Outside, the footsteps were muffled, and it was hard to tell exactly how many men were on the porch. Rachael didn’t like that, but she didn’t want to risk peering through the shutters or blinds. There could be two or there could be fifty. This wasn’t a fair fight, even with what they hoped would be an element of surprise.
The first footsteps stopped outside the door, and she held her breath. The doorknob shook a little, but the lock held, and Rachael braced herself for them to break down the door. The seconds dragged on, but the crash of the door never came. Confused, Rachael stood cautiously, back still against the wall, but listening for any sounds. The footsteps hadn’t started again, but she couldn’t tell where anyone was anymore.
Suddenly the window in the kitchen shattered, and Rachael heard Lindsey yell and her shotgun fire loudly. That seemed to be the invitation the men outside were waiting for. The slam of boot against door startled Rachael, but she reacted quickly as the door flew open, swinging her sword quickly and catching the first man through the door with surprise as her blade lodged in his neck. Pulling it back, she let his body fall to the floor as the man behind him yelled out with surprise, firing his gun uselessly, the bullet striking the wall on the other side of the room.
She waited for the next person to come through, but another crash from the kitchen distracted her. This time the door, she was sure of, and another shotgun blast.
In the moment she was distracted, several men had come into the room, and Rachael rushed them from behind, gashing one man across his shoulder, ducking as he swung around at her cursing, before swinging and slicing her sword into his leg. He collapsed, and then turned her attention to the next man, knocking his gun out of his hand with her dagger and slicing across his chest with the blade.
The third man had a knife, and she feigned an attack with her dagger, which he went to block, before swiping the other way with her sword, hitting him hard in the head, downing him with a scream and a shower of blood.
She heard Lindsey shout, and another crash in the kitchen, and what sounded like falling furniture.
Slamming the door shut, she pushed one of the chairs in front of it to barricade it, before running into the kitchen to see if Lindsey needed her help. There seemed to be more men in the kitchen, though most of them were on the floor bleeding thanks to Baskerville, whose muzzle was soaked in blood. The dog leapt at a man coming through the back door, and Rachael stabbed down hard into the neck of one who lunged at Lindsey on the floor.
Shoving his body to the side, Rachael held out her hand to help Lindsey up.
Before either of them could say anything, another crash came this time from the living room. Looking at each other, they both ran together to the room, Lindsey in the lead with the shotgun.
Glass and wooden shutter pieces littered the floor, and a number of the men were climbing in through the window. Lindsey didn’t hesitate, priming the shotgun and pulling the trigger. As she reloaded, Rachael rushed forward, dragging one of the men that was climbing through out of the window and stabbing her dagger into his chest before pushing him to the side to swing with her sword.
Would this ever end? There seemed to be a non-stop stream of men coming through, and Rachael knew they wouldn’t be able to take them all on themselves.
~39~
The Ranger
There are times and circumstances where a smaller force is more dangerous than a larger one. Skirmishers, snipers, and Special Operators have always known this. They use mobility and the absence of the time delays caused by chain-of-command decisions to act with autonomy and without hesitation. In the right conditions and with the right planning they can come out of nowhere, strike and vanish. Terrorists tried to use this tactic but while they were often effective, they had no escape plan. Joe Ledger was many things but suicidal was not one of them.
What he was, however, was vicious, cold and skillful.
He crept up on the hunting party and stalked them, counting their numbers, identifying the members of that group who seemed to understand what they were doing, and those whose presence could be exploited to become liabilities. He looked for the leaders and the fighters. Several of them appeared to understand something of woodcraft, which was not good. But they walked with the arrogance of power, expecting to be more dangerous than anything they encountered. That was very useful.
At one point the party split to follow another pair of trails, and again Ledger assumed they were both false trails set down by the woman with the sword. Whoever she was, the woman was really sneaky. Ledger liked sneaky. About half the men followed one trail and the other half kept following the same set of prints. There were thirty men in the party Ledger followed. A small army. They were all armed, but not every man had a gun. More than half had axes or improvised pole-weapons. One man carried a sledgehammer, which was dangerous but impractical.
Lacking any sound suppressors, Ledger holstered his gun and drew his knives instead. He kept the rapid release folding knife in his right because that required speed and dexterity and he was mostly right-handed. The heavier Ka-Bar was in his left, and though it was not his dominant hand, SpecOps fighters are trained to be lethal with every limb.
> He moved ahead of the pack and then flattened out beside the trunk of a big maple. Absolutely still. The blades he held were blackened to a matte finish. The group passed fifteen feet to his right, following the lead of a man who seemed to understand how to track. Three of the men held flashlights and everyone was staring at whatever was illuminated by the beams. Ledger did not look at the light, not wanting to spoil his night-vision. As the group moved down the trail, Ledger fell into step with the man bringing up the rear.
“We’ll get them,” he said to the man, and it took the guy a couple of seconds to realize that he didn’t know his new companion.
“I—,” began the man, but Ledger clamped a hand over his mouth and cut his throat. He pushed the dying man against a tree to keep him from crashing to the ground.
One down.
He took the man’s flashlight and moved to take his place, shining the light forward at the men in front. If they turned, all they’d see is a silhouette behind a bright light.
The men were not walking in formation, and occasionally one would lag back, or even deliberately stop to let the rearguard catch up.
Ledger liked that.
Two down.
Three.
Four.
Somewhere behind him the dead men would be undergoing a process of transformation as they bled out. The pathogens and parasites of Lucifer 113 would be staging a hostile takeover of the motor cortex, the cranial nerves, the respiration and other functions, discarding what wasn’t necessary, acquiring what was. In less than a minute each of those dead men would rise and then see the bobbing lights, hear the chatter of men talking, smell the meat.
Good.
One of the men loudly announced that he had to take a leak. He stopped, unzipped, and died without even knowing death was upon him.