The second feral recognized which way the shots were coming from and tried to slip around the far side of his rock shelter, but Shoes’ sub chattered and dust kicked up from that side of the stone. The feral had no idea what to do and just sort of slumped his shoulders. I put a round just under his neck, center chest.
It was quiet. I should have waited longer to assess, but I didn’t. I moved forward quick, still scanning through the scope. There was a whole bunch of the big rocks at the foot of the craggy hill – a whole field of them – and there could have been another hundred ferals and I wouldn’t have seen them. But I went in anyway, passing the two I’d killed. There was a third, female, crumpled up in front of their rocks, shot at least a half-dozen times in the chest and head. I took a knee by the body and called out “Four-two-three!”
“Here,” a wheezing voice said from behind another big rock about twenty steps away. When I looked along the ground I could see a blood trail heading to it.
“There were three, Meats,” Shoes called, voice clear like her respirator was off. “You get two?”
“Yeah,” I said as I lumbered over there, and stepped around the tall stone.
Shoes had torn flaps off a pack and bound them around her midsection, but they were already soaked through along with her camo fatigues. Ropy things were hanging out around the bindings and I thought for a moment Shoes’ entrails were hanging out. But it was only squished nush, soaked in her blood. Shoes did have her respirator off and she was spitting up blood, which had already covered her chin and neck. She turned her goggs up to mine, and strange to say, looked sort of embarrassed.
“I never heard the bitch coming,” Shoes said. “She gutted me good, Meats.”
I put down the Remi and started getting my pack off, but Shoes reached out and put a hand on my arm.
“Save the bandages,” she said. “I’m done.”
“If I can stop you bleeding…”
“No,” Shoes shook her head. “Everything came out and I shoved it back in, but I’m done. You’d never get me back to the Hill.”
Shoes sighed, and with one bloody hand she pushed off her camo hat with the netting and dropped it to the ground, then tugged off her goggs. It was strange, but I think it was probably the only time I saw her with nothing on her face out-of-doors. That made me realize I’d never been outside without cover and goggs myself. She leaned back her head against the stone and turned her face up to the sky, closing her eyes against the yellow sun. Shoes took a deep breath through her nose though it made her shoulders shake.
“There has to be something I can do,” I said, feeling worthless.
Shoes opened her big blue eyes and looked at me.
“There is,” she said, and reached out one trembling hand to point at the rocky hill before us. “You can carry me up there.”
***
The hill looked worse that it was. It was made mainly out of what looked like loose rocks; the kind that would skitter out from under your feet when stepped on. But they were solid, fused together, and I made my way up them with Shoes telling me where to step, curled up in my arms and with hers wrapped around me.
There was a slim defile about halfway up the slope behind a boulder. It didn’t look like much but Shoes told me to squeeze in so I did. I had to step real careful as the ground sloped sharp, making a short tunnel into the hill. Just a little ways down and in, I could see sunlight again from ahead.
Part of the hill was hollow, leaving a space almost like the inside of a bottle. Sunlight came in through a narrow gap up at the top, but it wasn’t harsh. Diffuse and indirect. It gently lit the tall chamber, and there on the floor atop dark, dark soil there were bushy, green plants. They were nothing like the squat, ugly, poison scrub brush that still grew outside.
I laid Shoes down in front of the bushes, hunched on my knees and just stared. Dotting them on top were the most delicate, soft red things I’ve ever seen.
“They’re called roses,” Shoes said almost in a whisper, looking up at them. “They are flowers.”
“Flowers.”
Shoes touched me lightly on the side. “Take off your respirator. Just for a little while.”
I did it, unsnapping the face mask so it hung beside my mouth and nose. My next breath drew something amazing in with it. Something I didn’t really have any words for, except for those that had always been used for things nobody really remembered anymore.
“They smell so sweet,” I said.
“They do.” Shoes agreed, drawing in her last breaths with that beautiful scent.
“What, what are they for?” I asked, not really knowing how to phrase the question.
“They aren’t for anything, not anymore.” Shoes said. “They are only beautiful. But that’s enough.”
I looked from the roses down at Shoes, who had tears in her eyes though for some reason the rest of her face didn’t really look sad.
“Did Shotty order you to do this?” I asked, and Shoes shook her head.
“No. I ordered him.”
After she died, I buried Shoes there, surrounded by her roses.
#
M. Edward McNally has put his money on super-intelligent dolphins causing the Apocalypse with the intent of wiping out mankind. Yes, the odds are long, but imagine the payoff if he’s right.
Find him at his blog sablecity.wordpress.com or follow him on Facebook and Twitter
The Sable City
While the preceding story occurs at a different time and place, it is set within the world of The Norothian Cycle; an Epic, Muskets & Magic Fantasy series beginning with Book I — The Sable City.
Cleavers
Heather Marie Adkins
The wheels of the Jeep rumbled beneath us. The motion would have felt comforting—steady—if it weren’t interrupted by unnatural jolts. The road was bad where we were; the Cleavers had spent too much time on this stretch of pavement, leaving a wake of broken asphalt and blood behind their cloven hooves.
Jessie’s wrist was casually draped over the steering wheel, but I could see the tension in her other hand resting on her holster. She kept the fragile snap-button unlocked as there was no way to know what we might come up against, and the past three weeks had taught us it was better to be safe than dead.
“How much longer?” I asked. My voice broke the silence so abruptly that my girlfriend’s hand tightened on the grip of her gun, her instincts off the charts.
Jessie’s square jaw tightened, but her emerald eyes didn’t leave the road. “I don’t know.”
“Hey.” I took her hand from the gun and pressed her fingertips to my lips one by one until a smile crossed her face.
She glanced at me, and as usual, I was struck by her beauty. It was understated—chestnut hair tossed in a lazy ponytail, smooth, fair skin dotted with ginger freckles, and a dimple in one cheek. But, there was an underlying sensuality that tugged at my insides in just the right way.
I was a lucky woman.
“No more sad face,” I warned her playfully, and leaned over to steal a quick kiss.
We lapsed into silence, and Jessie put her hand back on her gun. We were driving through one of the many areas “cleansed” by the Cleavers. Burnt trees still smoldered on the side of the road, the ground beneath them reduced to blackened ash. The sky was low, pregnant with cloud cover that cast a pall over the decimated landscape. The air smelled like smoke, but not the charcoal meat odor of the dead.
Always a plus.
“Tora. Close your window.” Jessie’s voice was hushed. She reached for her own window crank as I did the same.
It was a Cleaver.
He appeared in the lingering smoke, a lump on the side of the road. His body lay mangled, furred legs twisted unimaginably behind his toned, shirtless torso. As we rolled past his presumably dead body, wheels crackling over debris, I could just make out the curved black horns in his curly brown hair, and the blood on his snout.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a Cleaver, but that never
made a sighting any easier. The Colonels had done a number on him; the bullet holes in his chest looked like bird shot, holes disfiguring his skin and exposing his insides. How many men and women had died in the process of taking him down was beyond thought.
“Dead.” It needed to be said. To calm both of us.
Jessie’s hand, pale in the growing twilight, crossed the center console and alighted on mine. She squeezed briefly and nodded. “Dead.”
Behind the cloud cover, the sun was disappearing beyond the remnants of the forest. Jessie switched on the headlights: twin, pale beams that melted into the gloom.
“What if there are more?” I murmured. The endless procession of charred trunks was driving me mad. I wanted leaves and green. I almost didn’t remember the proper blue of the sky—it had danced heavy with thick, white smoke since the invasion.
“There aren’t any more.” Jessie’s voice was confident—for me, I knew. But, we’d been together five years. You can’t love someone that long and be unable to read between the lines.
I didn’t answer.
The Jeep jolted on, and darkness fell.
I dozed. Three weeks on the run, hiding from creatures one never dreamed existed taught a girl how to catch a nap when possible. It was never a heavy sleep, even with a door and a lock between us and the world. There was a saying: I can sleep when I’m dead.
Not so much. I’d rather go without sleep in order to live.
The Cleavers were too crafty by half. They could scent us within a mile, and catch us faster than we could run. The immortal blood that ran through them put us at a disadvantage.
I was jarred to full consciousness by Jessie’s sharp curse, and an abrupt jerk of the car. I shot up, immediately awake, and looked out the windshield to find trees coming towards us in the headlights as we bounced off-road. My breath caught in my throat, and I braced myself on the “oh-shit” bar, doing a little bit of internal “oh shitting.”
The impact wasn’t as bad as I expected. The sound of metal crunching was loud, and I flew forward against my seatbelt then slammed back into the seat. My head bounced off the headrest and my vision exploded in colors.
Stunned, I hissed into the silence following the crash. “What the fuck, Jess?”
“A woman!” Jessie’s cry was frantic. She fumbled for her door handle in the dark—the headlights were crushed, the drive panel black. “There was a woman!”
She managed to grasp the handle and push the door open, and then spilled into the night. I could barely see her, a ghost beneath the reflective clouds, disappearing towards the road.
“Damn it!” I jerked off my seatbelt and tried my door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Terrified for Jessie out there by herself, I scrambled over the center console, grabbing a flashlight from the floorboard in the process, and followed my girlfriend.
It was chilly, and I was in jeans and a tank top. I wrapped my free arm around myself, clicking on the flashlight and aiming it at the dead grass. We’d left behind our home after the initial invasion, certain that it would all be over soon. But now autumn was gaining on us. Too much longer and we would need to find civilization for some winter wear.
A steep embankment led to the road, and I stepped carefully over the burned ground—I wouldn’t be any use to my lover if I had a broken ankle.
“Tora!” Her cry was close.
I hurried up the hill, my feet slipping in the refuse, and the weak yellow of my flashlight dancing on the ground. My heartbeat was a steady thrum in my ears.
Jessie was crouched in the middle of the road, leaning over a fair, still form. “I need light,” she said, hysteria in her voice.
I aimed the beam at the woman on the ground and sucked in a breath.
She wore nothing but a thin, white slip, one strap torn so that a fragile breast was exposed to the air, bite marks congealing around her pink nipple. Eyes were swollen shut in a heart-shaped face, and a dark trail of blood marked a straight line from her nostril to her collarbone. Her breathing was labored, stilted.
I dropped to my knees on the other side of the poor girl, gently pulling up the bodice of her dress to preserve her modesty, as stupid as it was. She didn’t respond to my touch.
“Did we hit her?” I asked, moving the light further down her body to check for more injuries.
“No, she just walked right out in the middle of the road and then collapsed!” Jessie said, swiping at the tears on her face. She sniffled. “I didn’t hit her. I swerved to miss her.”
I paused the light’s beam at the woman’s hips—the front of her slip was soaked in blood. “Jessie,” I murmured.
She followed my gaze and gasped. “Oh, no. Oh, no, no...”
I reached out, my hand shaking. The air was cool, but inside, I was colder. I lifted the slip just enough to see that there was blood all over the girl’s thighs. I knew what I would see if I looked higher, but I didn’t want to. I wasn’t going to.
“She’s been raped.” The statement fell like lead into the space between us.
“Cleavers,” Jessie whispered, glancing around. The sun was gone; we were surrounded by inkiness so thick, so complete, that if anyone—or anything—tried to sneak up on us, it would win.
“We have to get out of here,” I hissed. “She was on foot, Jess. That means they’re near.”
“What do we do with her?” Jessie asked, the hysteria returning to her voice.
I shushed her. “Keep your voice down. We’ll carry her to the car. Grab her feet.” I moved to the girl’s shoulders and slipped my hands under her arms. She moaned.
“What if we hurt her even more? We don’t know if she has any broken bones...”
“Jess, if we don’t get her to the car and get the hell out of here, she—and we—could get dead. Now, come on.”
My girlfriend gathered the woman’s fragile ankles in her hands and together, we lifted. The girl moaned, a low, terrified sound.
“Shh, we’ve got you,” I told her. I don’t know if she heard me, but she didn’t make another sound.
It was an awkward duckwalk to the car as I supported the brunt of the woman’s weight, and Jessie tried to not injure the woman’s lower extremities more than they already were. My ears were trained on the night, listening for anything that didn’t belong.
In a world burned to the ground, even a lone wolf’s cry would be out of place.
The Jeep’s engine still ticked, which I took as a good sign. Jessie reached out and pulled open the back door, and we heaved the woman inside as carefully as possible.
Back in our seats, I held tightly to the flashlight as Jessie tried to turn over the engine. Once. Twice.
“Shit, shit,” I muttered, swiping a hand over my neck. As cold as it was, I was sweating, and my short brown hair was sticking to my neck.
“Work, damn you!” Jessie shrieked, banging on the steering wheel. She rotated the key one more time, and the engine roared to life.
Tears pricked my eyes, and I fell back against the seat. “Oh, thank you. Thank you.” I didn’t know who I was thanking, but I would have thanked the Flying Spaghetti Monster at that moment. A dead car meant dead people.
Jessie jerked the Jeep into reverse and peeled away from the tree, tires spinning in the mud. She flipped around in her seat, staring behind us as she navigated the vehicle back onto the road.
“We have one working headlight,” I declared needlessly. I was sure Jessie was as ready as I was to kiss the dashboard.
“Small miracles,” she responded, voice tight.
I slipped a hand to her thigh. “Breathe, baby.”
She complied.
We drove in silence, aware of the ragged breathing from the backseat, but powerless to do anything for our passenger.
“I heard it before, that the Cleavers did that,” Jessie said into the quiet. “But, I didn’t want to believe it.”
“They’re descendants of Pan.” I shrugged, tightening my fingers on her leg. “God of the forest and fertility. Lustful.
Lecherous.”
“I know.” She shot me an irritated look. “I’ve read the pamphlets.”
“I’m just saying.” The thought alone sent me into a spiral—gods and goddesses were myth, relegated to textbooks and parchments, or inscribed to temple walls. Until less than a month ago, when the Cleavers came, and we couldn’t pretend they weren’t real.
I went on gently. “That’s what they are, Jess. Pan’s dirty children.”
“That doesn’t make it right!” She all but screamed the words, her tone hysterical.
I let silence settle like a friend in the car. Jessie was terrified—shit, I was too. But arguing wouldn’t get us to the Colonels any faster than it would help the battered woman in our backseat.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie said after a while.
“I know.”
The trees were beginning to open up and farmland stretched on either side of us. The Jeep jetted past dark, silent houses, doors wide open, cars abandoned. On the horizon, I could finally see the glow of the Colonel’s base—Fort Knox.
I heard stirring in the backseat, and twisted around to check on the girl. Her eyes were open. She met my gaze.
“My name is Tora,” I told her gently. I touched my girlfriend’s shoulder. “This is Jessie. You’re safe now.”
The abused woman opened her mouth, her lips moving like a fish’s. Blood appeared at the corners where they were cracked. A single word finally rasped from deep within her. “Marci.”
“I’m glad we found you, Marci,” I murmured. I reached for her, smoothing her dark hair from her face. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
Her pale blue eyes fluttered shut, and her breathing evened. She slept.
“We have to get to that base,” I told Jessie. “She’s lost so much blood.”
“I’m trying.”
“Then why are we slowing down?” I shot back, irritated.
“I don’t know!” Jessie slammed a foot down on the gas, and the Jeep sputtered forward a few feet before the engine cut off.
Smoke billowed from beneath the hood, and my heart fell into my stomach.
“What happened?”
Jessie just shook her head.
“Well, let’s look.” I grabbed the flashlight and went to open my door, but Jessie reached out and caught me by the arm.
“Neither of us know shit about cars, Tora. What the hell do you think you’re going to accomplish?”