by M. D. Massey
With a death grip on the tomahawk and Bowie knife, I crept down the stairs and moved in the direction I’d heard the noise. It’d sounded like it came from the kitchen, so I ninja-ed over to that area of the house, pausing around the corner to listen for anything moving. Not hearing a peep, I turned the corner with my blade forward and battle-axe high, only to see an old bulging can of dog food on the floor in front of the pantry. Letting out a sigh of relief, I walked forward to see if there might be any canned food I’d missed, and then realized that I had shut that door just minutes before. Senses on high alert, I pulled back the pantry door, took one peek, and then bolted toward the stairs just as fast as my moccasin-covered feet could carry me.
What I’d seen as I looked around the pantry door had chilled me to the bone; it was an open trap door, a miniature deathly maw that indicated someone or something else was in here with us. As I hauled ass to the attic, I mentally kicked myself for not being more thorough in my search of the house earlier. Just as I rounded the corner to the stairs, I heard the attic door close with a loud BANG! and knew I was going to be too late. I took the stairs two at a time and leapt off the top step to reach the pull cord for the attic door, yanking the ladder down and scrambling up it like a bat out of hell.
I cleared the top rung in a leap and dive rolled toward where I’d left Gabby. As I came up out of my roll, I saw an emaciated figure in a threadbare nightgown leaning over the kid’s still form, sniffing at the large amount of blood that’d soaked through Gabby’s dressing. The once-human thing before me was a ghastly caricature of its former existence. Its long brown hair was tangled and clumped with dirt, dried blood, and twigs; its face was sallow and pale, with sunken cheeks and horrid, leathery skin; and its bare feet and hands ended in claws that were as hard and poisonous as old rusted tenpenny nails.
As the details registered, one word echoed in my mind. Revenant.
I acted on instinct, launching my tomahawk at it with all the force I could muster as I came out of the roll. Almost in slow motion, I watched the ’hawk fly end over end though the air toward the creature’s head, but at the last instant it snapped out a hand and swatted the tomahawk from the air with preternatural reflexes. I watched my battle-axe clatter away into the darkness as the creature snapped its head around to look at me. The rev’s cold yellow eyes blinked at me with indifference, and then it turned back to sniff at Gabby’s wound again.
Well, this is going to suck. Going hand to hand with a rev was almost as scary as going toe-to-toe with a vamp. The problem with fighting a revenant was that they were highly unpredictable and hellaciously fast. They possessed a feral intelligence and were capable of low-level reasoning, so far as it served to achieve their drive to feed. Also, they were typically just as strong as a full-grown man, no matter their age or size. Yeah, this was really going to suck, I thought as I switched the Bowie knife to my right hand and launched myself at it.
No sooner did I get within arm’s than I felt myself flying across the attic, the result of an incredibly powerful backhanded blow from the rev. I landed in a heap, and in the blink of an eye the thing was on top of me, straddling me in an effort to pin me down so it could finish me off and feed. I bucked my hips to get it off me, driving it forward so that its claws raked the plywood floor above my head. Once I had it off balance, I drove my Bowie knife into the thing’s back, severing its spinal column just below its shoulder blades. The thing cut loose with an unearthly howl and began clawing at its back, trying to remove the blade that I’d just sunk up to the hilt in its spine. I left it in, worried that if I removed the blade it’d heal and I’d lose my momentary advantage. Shoving it off completely with both hands, I rolled in the direction of my pack and snatched my golok machete from the sheath I kept strapped to my pack.
As I turned to face the revenant, it was still clawing furiously at its back, howling and screeching loud enough to literally wake the dead, who, I was sure, would be clamoring around the silo house in minutes. Desperately wanting to shut it up, I took two long strides forward and hacked the girl’s head clean off with one lightning-fast stroke of the heavy blade. The only sound that pierced the silence after was the thump of the thing’s head hitting the plywood floor, followed by it rolling out the attic doorway and thumping down the stairs. Thump…thump-thump-thump…thunk!
Breathing heavily, I yanked my knife out of the body and threw it downstairs to keep company with the others. As I stood there panting with my hands on my knees, I heard a weak voice speak up from behind me. “Took you long enough.” I turned to see Gabby squinting at me from the other side of the room, her face barely illuminated by the weak light from my crank lamp.
I smiled and replied, “I had it under control.”
“If you say so.” She was pale, and it looked like the blood loss was taking its toll.
“Let me check that wound,” I replied. I pulled the blanket down and I lifted her shirt. The bandage was completely caked in blood, but it was mostly dark and clotting. I decided to leave it in place, worried that I’d cause it to start bleeding again if I messed with it. I got her to take another dose of antibiotics, and helped her get as comfortable as possible so she could rest.
After she fell asleep again I stayed up for a good long while, listening to the moaning of the deaders who were now milling around the outside of the silo house and banging on the walls. If the barricade fails to hold, it’s going to be a helluva morning tomorrow, I reflected silently. I listened a few minutes longer, and once I was satisfied that we were safe I pulled the cord up through the attic door and passed out, as dead to the world as the bodies in the house below.
3
Prayer
“Hello, the house!” I awoke from a deep sleep to the sound of a woman’s voice outside, and to daylight shining in from soffit vents lining the attic. Rousing myself from my slumber, I remembered Gabby and what I was supposed to be doing, and immediately felt tremendously guilty for allowing myself the luxury of sleep. I rose quickly and checked on her, noting that her breathing was becoming more labored and shallow. I was definitely concerned that if I didn’t get her some help soon, she might not make it. I needed to go look for the horse and mule, but right now my first order of business was to figure out who the hell was yelling outside.
Kitting up in record time, I headed downstairs, deftly avoiding the corpses I’d dumped the night before. The barricade seemed to be intact, although it had definitely been jostled a bit by the deaders the night previous. I snuck over to a window and peeked between two boards to see who was making all that noise outside. What I saw was rather shocking: a Latina woman, roughly forty-ish, dressed in modern US Army fatigues and combat boots. She was attractive in a Maria Conchita Alonzo sort of way, and I wondered what the hell she was doing wandering the Outlands by herself. From the way she carried the AR-15 she had in her hands, it looked like she could take care of herself. I immediately suspected a trap.
She called out again. “Hello, the house! I know you’re in there, because I just came by here yesterday, and that barricade wasn’t in place then. I’m alone, and nonhostile. Please show yourself.”
I yelled back from one of the windows. “Lady, you’re either crazy, stupid, or both. Or, you’re a punter who thinks I’m stupid. Now, get the hell out of here before I decide you’re worth killing. I gotta be out of here pronto, and if you’re standing out there armed when I come out the front door, I assure you, all bets are off.”
She nodded in my general direction and gestured with her rifle at the ground. “Alright, but hear me out. Based on the tracks I see out here, there were two of you. You came in mounted, and you carried someone else in the house once you got here. That tells me that your companion is either injured or sick.”
Surprised by her observation skills, nevertheless I remained silent. Even in the post-War era, it wasn’t common for people to have tracking skills of that caliber. She’d had to either have been watching us as we came in, or she was a better tracker than most hun
ters I knew. And that could mean she was more dangerous than she appeared.
“Look, I’m going to set my weapon down over here.” She held her rifle out at arm’s length, and set it down on the first step of the front porch. “Now, I’m going to back off a ways and wait for you to come out. If you don’t attack me, I’ll provide aid for your friend.” She paused, as if considering whether she was making the right choice, but something in her expression told me that it really wasn’t a choice at all for her. “I’m a doctor and I just want to help, that’s all.”
I was in a bind with Gabby, and to be honest I had no choice in the matter, either. Qualified medical personnel were about as rare in the post-War world as unicorns. And yes, I had secretly wondered if the government had some of those in a lab somewhere as well. But regardless of my stance on or belief in unicorns, or my wariness about accepting unsolicited offers of assistance in the Outlands, Gabby needed help and I wasn’t about to look a gift unicorn in the mouth.
I hollered out the window. “Alright, I’m going to pull down the barricade. But here’s the situation—I have a little girl in here with a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and she’s in bad shape. I’ll let you in to see to her, but I’m going to keep my weapon trained on you at all times. Please don’t try anything, because I ran out of patience for people in general about three days ago.”
She nodded, apparently expecting that sort of reply. “I’ll need to bring in my bag—it has my medical supplies.”
“Go on and get it, I’ll wait.” I set about moving the furniture out of the way, and once the door was clear I ushered the lady into the house, keeping the muzzle of my rifle pointed at the floor but in her general direction the entire time. “She’s up in the attic—we had to hole up in there last night.” I pointed the way to the stairs and motioned for her to proceed.
When we got to the stairs, she whistled. “Looks like you had a busy night.”
“Only two were moving when we got here. Deader and a revenant.”
She looked back over her shoulder at me. “A deader—you mean the slow ones, right?”
Now that was interesting. Either she was new to these parts, or she didn’t mingle with the locals. “Yeah, and revenants are the fast ones.”
“Walkers and wights. Got it.” She continued on up the stairs and headed up the ladder into the attic. I shouldered my rifle and followed her up. Once we entered the attic, she pulled out a chemlight and cracked it. Chemical radiance from the light stick flooded the room with a soft yellow-green glow. She looked over at the figure lying on the pallet across from us, and shook her head gently. “Aw, shit. Gabby, I told you to be careful.”
I nearly took a step back, which would have been a mistake considering that the attic opening was just behind me. “Wait a minute—you know her?”
The woman looked back at me with scorn, and more than a small touch of regret in her eyes. “Of course I know her—who do you think sent her to find you?”
Now I was really confused. “What do you mean, ‘sent her to find me’? I came across her not more than a few days ago running around the Outlands alone, stranded by a herd of deadheads on top of a trailer home.” Then, things started clicking and I realized that Gabby had been holding out on me. “Son of a bitch—you're the Spider.”
She nodded as she kneeled down next to Gabby. “The one and only.” She began a very expert and through rapid trauma assessment, and motioned me over. “You can either stand there pointing that rifle at me, or you can help me move her somewhere that I can treat her, and maybe even help save her life. I suggest that if you want her to live, you get your ass in gear, because she won’t last much longer in this condition.”
I shook off my confusion and surprise and did as the lady said, hauling Gabby down the ladder over my shoulder as gently as I could. My heart nearly broke as I heard her moan softly when I shouldered her body.
La Araña yelled angrily at me as I jostled Gabby getting her through the attic opening. “Careful, pendejo!”
“Lady, I’m not one to point fingers, because the world is messed up enough as it is without people being assholes to each other—but I’d like to point out that she wouldn’t be in this state if you hadn’t sent her out alone.”
She hissed at me—I mean literally hissed—and gave me one hell of an evil look to boot. “Pah! She was with you—you should have been looking out for her.” Then she cussed at me some more in Spanish, words that even I wouldn’t repeat in polite company. So much for female propriety. “Lay her down over here.” She pointed to the other sofa, which was relatively unmarred by filth and gore.
I set her down, and La Araña immediately began changing her dressing in an expert and economical fashion. She had a med kit in her bag that was pretty much a field trauma kit, definitely pre-War gear. I watched her start an IV on Gabby, and grabbed the IV bag to hold it up after she set it on the back of the couch. Then she pulled out a vial with a white powder inside, filled a syringe with clear liquid, and injected the liquid in the vial, mixing it and then drawing it back into the syringe. She injected it in Gabby’s thigh, then sat back and sighed.
“This is as much as I can do for her here. We need to get her to the other side of the lake—there’s a veterinary clinic over there that’s been relatively untouched. I should be able to find what I need there to remove the bullet and sew up anything that’s been damaged. The good news is that the internal damage probably isn’t too bad, or else she’d be dead by now from blood loss.”
She reached for the IV bag, and fiddled with the control below the drip chamber. “Hold it as high as you can—I’m going to force fluids on her so we can move her.” I did as she asked, and waited in silence as she opened up the IV line while monitoring Gabby’s vitals.
While we were watching the bag empty I decided to get some answers. “What’s your real name?”
She pursed her lips and remained silent as she checked Gabby’s pulse. “Captain Lorena Perez, United States Army Veterinary Corps.”
I took a moment to chew on that last bit of info. “So how did you get a nickname like La Araña?”
She frowned and creased her brow, not necessarily at my question, but because of the task at hand. “Lorena. La araña. I grew up around a bunch of boys who didn’t know how to handle their attraction to the sole female in their circle of friends. So, like most men, they compensated with aggression and ridicule. The nickname stuck.”
I nodded. “So, it’s a badge of honor to you now.”
She cocked her head slightly. “Perhaps not in the same way your nickname is to you, but I’ve grown fond of it over the years.”
“And how do you know who I am?”
“Word travels fast about hunters who are good at what they do, and not many fit your description.”
“That’s what Gabby said. Why’re you looking for me? You got a vamp problem or something?”
She sighed. “I can explain it to you later. Right now, let’s just focus on keeping Gabby alive.”
She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and checked Gabby’s pulse, and I noticed again that she was a very attractive woman. I laughed under my breath, and that seemed to garner her attention.
“What’s so funny?”
I shook my head and grinned. “Oh, it’s nothing.”
She shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Well, it’s just that Gabby said you reminded her of someone’s grandma.”
Her face cracked in a tight smile. “She would. Think about it—there aren’t that many older people left. To a kid growing up in the post-War era, everyone over thirty is old.”
I nodded in agreement. “Hell if I don’t feel old, especially after the last few days.”
She ignored my comment and stood up as her eyes searched the room. “Enough talk—we need to get her moved to the vet clinic. Help me rig a stretcher.” Despite being a bit nonplussed at being ordered around, I grabbed several curtain rods and some rope from the curtain pulls, and slapped a makeshift str
etcher together.
The captain looked it over and nodded. “Not much, but it’ll have to do. Out in the shed back behind the house, there’s an old ATV utility cart. We should be able to use it to get her to the clinic.”
Well, the good captain is just full of surprises. “So how long had you been casing the place before you woke me up?”
“Not long. I move through this area about twice a year, and when I travel I make note of structures and equipment in case I might need them later. I saw the cart on my last trip.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you through here on a regular basis?”
“Medical supplies, mostly. Vet clinics are full of them. This area was evacuated right after the bombs fell, and that means most of the vet clinics didn’t get picked over. I take what I can carry, and hide the rest in caches for future use.”
I had to hand it to her, she was a resourceful woman. Apparently, the Army trained its veterinarians well. Of course, I knew there was more to her story than she was letting on, but I could deal with that later. Right now I just wanted to get Gabby patched up.
The mule was out in the backyard grazing when I went to get the cart. I rigged up a harness to hitch it to the cart, and Captain Perez led the animal while I steered the cart to keep it from going off course. It was an awkward arrangement, but effective. About a half a mile down the road from the silo house, I cleared my throat. “If you don’t mind me saying so, it’ll be late afternoon by the time we get to the other side of the lake. Is that going to give you enough time to patch her up, and still allow us to hole up somewhere safe?”
Captain Perez nodded. “It won’t be pleasant, but we can lock ourselves up in the back of the clinic. The only windows are high on the wall, and the building is reinforced cinder block with metal exterior doors. I’ve stayed there a few times before—it’ll hold for the night.”
