It wasn’t plausible. Staring at the inflamed gash on her arm, she knew better than to think she’d ended up with a simple, infected wound. I was exposed to the Feral virus. Now, it’s setting up shop.
Hard realizations required hard questions. With a deep breath to steel herself, she looked up at herself in the mirror. Dark circles shadowed beneath her eyes, but less than they had the day before. She’d slept better last night, despite the odd dreams, and she looked less like a paid shill for eyesocket luggage than yesterday. Her gums remained pink, her skin the usual “please sunburn me” pale, and her teeth hadn’t sharpened themselves overnight.
When she looked into her eyes, she saw only concern. No bloodlust. No hunger to destroy, or to eat flesh. None of the pack seemed to think she was acting odd. “So, what does that mean?” she asked her reflection. “Does this mean that, if you just get a little bit in a cut, you might be able to fight it off? If I did that, could they use me for a vaccine? Is that how it works? Why didn’t I pay more attention in high school biology? Oh, right. Mike Holland. Who was a complete jerk, so good job, Erin.”
High school boyfriend mistakes aside, what did this mean? She dug through Shane’s medicine cabinet as she turned it over in her mind. The degradation of her cognitive abilities hadn’t started, and neither had any physical changes. Her infection seemed to be advancing, at least by the redness on her arm, but slowly. By contrast to usual cases of the Feral infection, very slowly, with none of the usual markers that said she’d end up a mutated furry mess.
“And what about the dreams?” she asked the glob of antibiotic ointment she squeezed onto her arm. “Once is happenstance. That was the night before last, when I dreamed about the truck stop. Twice is coincidence. That was last night, dreaming about that grocery store. But that’s a hell of a coincidence. Especially with Tyler’s body.”
That bothered her. The looks on the pack’s faces as they contemplated their dead friend nailed to a door bothered her. Shane’s guilt and rage bothered her most of all. Hasn’t he had enough pain in his life? Greg. Nicole. Tyler’s death was bad enough without all the rest.
She looked down at her arm again, wound shiny from the antibiotic ointment. He said he wanted to keep you. You said you wanted to be kept. That was a damn fool thing to do, when you might be the next one who hurts him.
Angry at herself, she mashed another bandage over the wound. “So I won’t hurt him. I’ve beaten this so far. You hear me, germs? You don’t get to win. Great. I’m yelling at germs, now. We sure I don’t have cognition problems?”
Cognition problems, no. Strange dreams, yes. She mulled it over as she left the bathroom to find her own pants in the living room. Meghan’s picture stared at her from the mantel. “Yeah, yeah, walk of shame,” Erin told her sister. “Though really, the shame is that I’m wearing his bitch of an ex-girlfriend’s clothes. You know, Meg, they said they were looking for the leader of the Ferals. He was at that store I dreamed about. The ‘Leader of All Packs’. And they’re definitely up to something. At least, if that dream was more than a dream.”
There was the rub. None of the information packages about the Beast Plague mentioned an odd connection with Ferals, or precognitive dreams. Her mind wouldn’t have needed much of a leap to get from a stolen truck and dead trucker to a truck stop with Ferals at it. One dream didn’t prove she knew what the beasts did when the sun dropped below the horizon.
“Maybe I should have told Shane,” she said to the picture, pants dangling from her hand. “Except Shane has enough going on without listening to me sound all spooky at him. Or me explaining that I might have a problem with a nasty infection. It’s not like saying you have crabs, Meg. I’d rather tell him I had herpes than what I think I have. Besides, if he’d checked it out, and it was just a weird dream, he would have wasted time he doesn’t have.”
She would also have looked like an idiot. Not what she wanted him to think of her right now. Confidant. Sexy hot mechanic. That’s how I want him to think of me right now. Friend. Partner in crime. Lover. …mate?
Her gaze strayed from the picture of her sister to the one of Shane and Greg in front of the Grand Canyon. “Maybe I won’t run very fast, if you chase me,” she murmured. “But I’ll be damned if I let you do this alone. Your pack are my people. And you’re my— You’re the person I won’t run very fast from. If I’m going to have weird-ass dreams and Feral crabs, I’m bloody well going to try to use them for good. I’ve got this.”
A whisper of Meghan’s voice echoed in the back of Erin’s memories. “My God, you cleaned up where I— There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for someone you love, is there?”
“No, nothing,” Erin whispered, though she looked at Shane’s picture instead of Meghan’s when she did.
10
All are Lambs Within the Abattoir’s Walls
Levalle seemed subdued to Erin, but she didn’t have much to compare it to. Not even Coyote Trail, which she’d driven through and topped up the bike’s tank in before she set out. The clerk at the gas station had recognized Tyler’s ride and given it a sad smile, then waved off her attempts to pay for fuel. “For Tyler, and the Bullies,” the clerk said, when Erin brandished the few dollars in change she’d borrowed from a jar in Shane’s bedroom.
Maybe the searing summer heat accounted for the empty parking lots and deserted sidewalks. Erin broiled under her leather riding jacket, and she knew she had to have the world’s most tragic case of sweaty helmet hair. Even given her discomfort, she didn’t think the sun had driven people back to their homes. Desert rats like the people who lived out this far grew used to the ridiculous temperatures.
The people here had become prey. Like prey, they hid in their burrows, out of the view of predators. Even nocturnal predators could punish prey foolish enough to believe the sun might protect them. Especially when the ones to keep the predators in check are gone. The Feral in the dream said the wolves here had died or fled. These folks have no one to protect them.
Levalle was smaller even than Coyote Trail. A tiny bedroom town without much business of its own, it didn’t have much to see. Houses, double-wides, and small RV communities surrounded the few shops that offered work in the community, possibly bought from the single, massive dealership that squatted on the town’s outskirts. The place didn’t even seem to warrant the big box stores and chain warehouses that became ubiquitous fixtures in larger communities. A prefabricated building housed the singular elementary school in town, and the high school lived in an old, brick affair up the street from it.
The grocery store squatted at the far edge of town. No cars waited for shoppers in the lot. A herd of carts had scattered through the yellow-marked parking places, pushed there by the winds and forgotten by employees who no longer cared to corral them. Chains held the double doors at the front closed. Off to the side, where the Feral had entered, another chain looped to prevent entry. All locked up for the daytime, and with no air conditioning. That place has to be miserable.
Her arm itched beneath the bandage, intense and insistent. From the back of her mind, a haunting, howled melody sang, an earworm she wondered if she could ever banish with catchy eighties tunes or Broadway songs from that historical show that had sold out for the next six years. Ah, shit, Andy. I hear the singing. They’re here, aren’t they.
Sleeping the day off, hidden here among the humans in a den that couldn’t help but remind the prey who controlled the food source. Why bother to keep the prey alive at all? Why aren’t the people here dead or infected? Maybe because the sheep’s clothing only works to camouflage the wolf when there are sheep to hide among. If this place were full of Ferals, the other packs would know. Shane would know. As it is, they don’t know anything is wrong at all.
Erin clenched her jaw. This place wasn’t even an hour from Coyote Trail if she drove fast. They’d already made one threat today, and if her dream were right, they intended to do more than threaten very soon. She should backtrack to a store with a landline and try to
call Shane. And tell him what? A grocery store scared me? He needs information. I can get that for him.
She revved the bike into motion again. Nothing said obvious like parking in an empty parking lot. Instead, she found a nearby ice cream shop with a couple cars in front of it and left her ride there. This is officially the stupidest thing I have done this week.
Ten minutes and a full quota of regret for hiking about in the heat saw her at the back side of the small store. Both the rear metal door and the loading bay lacked chains to lock them closed. Further, a large, battered refrigeration truck waited in a convenient place for backing to the bay. The store is closed. Bet they aren’t bringing in fresh loads of healthy, delicious kale.
It would make too much noise to check the contents of the truck, but she doubted they had loaded it yet. Instead, she steeled herself and cracked open the building’s back door.
Darkness. Seconds later, a wave of stench hit her. She covered her mouth to silence the involuntary retching noise. Heat had accelerated the decay of the store’s meat and produce, and the Ferals hadn’t bothered to throw them out. Maybe they stock lighter fluid and matches. The only way to save this place is to burn it to the ground.
She didn’t want to go inside. The people she knew the Ferals had trapped inside probably didn’t want to stay, either. They didn’t have a choice, and thus, neither did she. Shadows closed in as she shut the door behind her.
The itch in her arm intensified with every step she took into the darkness of the back rooms. Her night vision adjusted slowly, and she didn’t know if she blessed that or not. She needed to see to accomplish her task, but she knew she didn’t want a look at what lurked unseen.
Perhaps she didn’t need to see it. The singing in her mind, soft and eerie like a sleepy lullabye, had grown louder. It reminded her of the continuous drone of tinnitus she’d suffered after a too-loud concert for Meg’s birthday, but far more sinister.
In the faint glow from the walk-in cooler’s generator warning light, she saw the first of them. Big lumps of fur and muscle, muzzles tucked under hairy arms or buried beneath clawed hands. Adrenaline jolted through her as the shapes resolved in her mind. Worse than knowing a dozen or more Ferals slept right there was the slow realization that she recognized them. That those by the far wall were no better than cannon fodder, the idiot front line in any battle, but that these nearest the cooler door were smarter. Clever. Connected beyond their intelligence.
Pack. Family. The ones who sing.
Erin’s arm ached hard. Her hand clenched in an involuntary spasm. She’d intended to slip into the cooler to verify the existence of the mysterious barrels, but the Ferals blocked the door and she couldn’t bring herself to approach any closer. The presence of the mutated beasts was enough. She fled out the back door as though all Hell were on her heels.
Time to call Shane. Past time to call Shane. Come on, phone, work. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket as she jogged back to her bike, but the signal bars had fled the vicinity, too. Of course. They wouldn’t want anyone here to be able to call for help so easily. I’d bet my boots the landlines don’t even work.
The engine had barely turned over before she kicked the motorcycle into gear and tore down the street. A nearby police station had bolted the doors and didn’t answer when she knocked. Wonder how many of the cops have family members trapped in that store with the Ferals. Nearby, the fire station had rolled down the massive garage doors over the trucks and appeared abandoned.
She parked her motorcycle off to one side. Emergency personnel don’t just abandon ship. The police were there, even if they weren’t answering the door. There has to be at least one person here to take calls. I can’t believe firemen would bail without putting up a fight.
They hadn’t. Erin found the front door locked, but one of the side doors stood askew on the hinges. When she approached, odor that wafted through the gap turned her stomach. Oh, no. God, please don’t let me find what I think I’m going to find. By now, however, it was beyond a higher power to prevent. Dead men, or worse, pieces of dead men, littered the rooms in the firehouse. Obvious signs of an attempted defense spoke of a last stand worthy of remembering, yet no one lived to pass the story on. Only the gouges and spatters on the walls remained.
Erin picked her way through the abattoir to find an extension of their phone system. The one in their kitchen had been smashed, but a small office off to one side had escaped the worst of the destruction. A black, corded phone, probably a relic from the firehouse’s earlier days, sat on the desk. She held her breath as she picked it up.
Dial tone.
That held breath gusted out of her. She pulled her wallet out of her pocket to get at the slip of paper with the garage’s landline number on it. Not getting caught out with a dead battery again. The line rang several times. Come on, answer it. I know the garage is closed today, but answer it anyway. Small town people answer phones if they’re there, don’t they? Come on, Anita.
A click. “Calderon Auto, this is Anita. I’m sorry, but we’re closed today.”
“Thank heavens. Anita, this is Erin.”
“Erin? Are you all right?”
“Yes, but there’s a cubic crapton of trouble where I am. Is Shane still there?”
Quiet on the line, then, “Yes. He’s here. You want me to get him?”
“Please.”
“Hold on a sec.”
Erin could hear the phone clatter against the desk, then footsteps and the sound of a door closing. A distant shout of, “Shaaaaaaane! Erin’s on the phone and needs you!” Not long after, a thunder of heavy footsteps that sounded like Shane stormed in at a jog.
His hand impacted with the receiver hard enough to thump over the line. “Erin? Are you all right?”
“Yes. And no. There’s a lot I need to explain, but later. Right now, I need you to listen to me, because Levalle is under Feral control and something big is about to happen here.”
“What are you doing in— Later. Tell me what’s going on.”
“A pack of Ferals has taken children, elders, whoever couldn’t fight back, and are holding them hostage against good behavior on the part of everyone else. They’re keeping them in a grocery store on the edge of town. That place is now their den. Right now, they’re sleeping in there.”
“Levalle has a local pack. Where are they?”
“Dead or fled. Police have locked themselves up in their station, and the firefighters didn’t make it.” She swallowed heavily. “Right now, I’m in the firehouse with a lot of dead people.”
“Son of a bitch. You said something big is about to happen. Though it sounds like it already did.”
“No, I think it’s going to get worse. The Ferals are storing a bunch of weird barrels in the store’s walk-in refrigerator. They’ve got a refrigerator truck parked out back. I’m almost positive they’re going to do something with it tonight, but I don’t know what.”
“Do I want to know how you know what they have in that store?”
“No. You really don’t.”
“Thought so. Stay where you are. The pack and I will be on the way in five minutes.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Drive safe.”
“I will. Don’t worry. I’m coming for you.” He hung up.
Erin cradled the receiver against her chest for a moment before she hung it up. He’s coming. To save the town, of course. That’s what the Bully Boys do. Save people. He’s coming to help the people here. Even though she knew that must be so, she couldn’t help but replay his final words in her mind.
Don’t worry. I’m coming for you.
Standing in a building full of dead heroes, holding an old phone like a talisman against the dark, Erin realized she’d gone and fallen in love with an alpha wolf.
“Bullies! Load up! Get your rides and let’s go!” Shane bellowed out the window.
He heard his order barked and repeated among those who stood outside and blessed his foresight in calling them all in earlier.
With the cellular service on the blink and half the pack without landlines, he’d considered it wiser to summon them here so they all knew what had happened the night before. They needed to discuss, plan, and execute whatever strategy they decided on for the imminent death of the Ferals who’d killed Tyler.
They’d shown up to plan. Today had delivered them a chance to strike instead, and every one of them was hungry for blood.
Anita trailed him as he strode out of the office. “Is Erin all right? She said she was, but I think she always says that.”
“Mostly. She’s not hurt and she’s safe enough for now.” Shane had repeated that in his mind since he’d hung up the phone, though Erin’s answer still lingered in his mind. Yes. And no. There’s a lot I need to explain. He didn’t care for the uncertainty in that statement. Neither did the knot at the pit of his gut.
“For now? What’s happening?”
“I don’t have all the details, but I don’t need them.” But he wanted them. Wanted every bit of reassurance that Erin was safe and whole and would be back in his arms that night. “I trust what Erin says. Ferals have taken Levalle, the local pack is down or out, and there’s shit happening we need to stop.”
“Oh, God,” Anita said. “That’s not far away.”
“It’s not, but it will be all right. We’re going to solve the problem right now.” Shane shoved open the door to the parking lot. Solve the problem and bring Erin home.
The sounds of closing gun chambers and rattling ammunition boxes surrounded him as he stepped into the Arizona sun. All around the front lot of the garage, werewolves mounted their motorcycles and checked their weapons for ammunition. Rigo circulated among them to ensure they were ready for whatever they’d find in Levalle.
Shane did a mental headcount and flagged Rigo down. “Kerri isn’t back yet?”
Brave the Night: A Bully Boys Novel Page 12
