by Lukens, Mark
Now that the rippers were wandering off to find food in other areas, there was so much to do, so much to fix, to inspect, to restock, to clean up.
It was still dark enough inside the store for Kate to use her flashlight to guide her back to their tent to check on Brooke.
Brooke was still in the tent. Kate thought she might be sleeping, but she was awake, lying on her stomach with a flashlight in front of her, drawing on her drawing pad. Tiger, the cat Max had found for her, was curled up right next to her. Brooke looked up when Kate entered the tent, her eyes wide with fear.
“Hey, you still up?” Kate said.
Brooke nodded. She talked much more now than when Kate had first met her down in the brick tunnels underneath her parents’ warehouse in the small town where the rippers had cornered her in an alley. But she still didn’t talk a lot.
“You didn’t get any sleep?”
Brooke just shrugged. Not really an answer.
“I guess Tiger didn’t have any problem sleeping.”
Almost a smile from Brooke.
“It’s over for now,” Kate told her. “The rippers are gone. So are the Dark Angels.”
Brooke looked relieved, but she still didn’t say anything.
“You can get some sleep now if you want to. Okay?”
“Where are you going?”
“I still need to help clean things up. Jo’s going to have a meeting. We’re going to check everything in the store, all the doors, make sure everything’s safe. Make sure the rippers or Dark Angels can’t get through anywhere.”
Brooke just stared at her.
“Hey, what are you drawing?”
Brooke didn’t answer.
“Can I see it?”
Brooke seemed hesitant, but then she slid the drawing tablet across the floor to Kate.
Kate stared at the sketches, caught off guard again by how talented Brooke was. Like many of her other sketches, these were of people she’d seen in her dreams. The sketches were only partially finished, parts of an arm or the rest of the legs disappearing with less and less detail, almost like Brooke couldn’t see those clearly enough in her mind. But the faces and torsos were done in great detail.
“I’ve seen these people, too,” Kate said. They were some of the same people Brooke had drawn before on the tablet they’d had to leave behind at the motel office when the two Dark Angels in the black van had tried to abduct them.
The first drawing was of the man and his son. They stood side by side in the drawing, the son only a few inches shorter than the father and much thinner, an expression of fear and nervousness on his face, his eyes wide like he was on a constant lookout for threats.
Kate knew that expression—she felt that way every day. Everyone here at the store did.
The father was sturdy and strong, his body tense, his eyes watchful. But Brooke had captured something else in the man’s eyes, just the hint of an anger he was holding on to, an anger that kept him going. And there was something else in those eyes.
Sadness?
Yes, sadness was there too. Exhaustion. Maybe even shock that the world had changed so suddenly and they had all lost so much. How had Brooke been able to capture all of those emotions on their faces in the pencil sketch? She was like a modern master artist.
Kate carefully turned the page to the next drawing. Two more people, a man and a woman. The man was slim, bordering on skinny with long scraggily hair and the hint of tattoos on his neck and wrists. He had on a hoodie and layers of clothes underneath, just like the others in the drawings.
The blond woman standing next to the man was the blind woman they’d all seen in their dreams, the only one (besides the Dragon) who had spoken to them in their dreams. She looked small and fragile even next to the thin man, but there was a determination to her, the set of her jaw, the way she held her head high. Brooke had managed to capture the woman’s expression even though her eyes were covered with a pair of dark glasses.
The third drawing was of a lone man, a muscular man with a crewcut and a gun in his hand with a silencer on it, the silencer barely drawn in, just the hint of it at the end of the gun barrel, just lines suggesting that it was there, with a little shading to make it look dark and metallic.
Kate flipped to the next drawing, the last one, and her breath caught in her throat. She looked at Brooke.
Brooke just stared back.
“This is Petra,” Kate said.
Brooke didn’t nod or say anything.
Kate looked back down at the drawing. Petra stood with her wrists handcuffed in front of her. And looming right behind her was the Dragon, his gloved hands on her shoulders. He was dressed in some kind of black robes with a cowl covering his head, his face mostly in shadows with just the hint of a sharp chin and a strong jaw. The glowing eyes allowed no more of the features of his face to be seen.
She looked at Brooke again. “Petra’s with the Dragon?”
Brooke shrugged then nodded slightly.
“Is she still alive?”
Brooke just shrugged again, not committing to an answer.
“Do you know where they are?”
Brooke shook her head no.
Kate handed the drawing pad back to Brooke. “Thank you for letting me see it.”
Tiger woke up from Brooke’s movements on the sleeping bag. He opened his sleepy eyes, watching Kate for just a moment before closing them again.
“I need to go help Jo and Max,” Kate told Brooke. “You’ll be okay here.”
“You’re sure the rippers are gone?”
“Yes. They’re gone for now. I promise. They couldn’t get inside the store, but we need to make sure they never get in here.”
Brooke understood.
“It’s almost morning now. The sun’s coming up. Try to get some sleep, okay?”
Brooke nodded. She set her sketch pad to the side and turned off her flashlight.
“I’ll be back in a few hours to get some sleep too.”
Brooke rolled over on her side under the blanket, disturbing Tiger a little more, and then they both closed their eyes.
Kate left the tent and closed the flap. It was still dark, but the early-morning light was beginning to filter down through the skylights. She could make out the other tents and stacks of supplies in the distance without her flashlight on.
She left the tents to find Jo. She needed to tell Jo about what she’d seen in Brooke’s drawing tablet.
CHAPTER 10
Jo
Jo had remained on the roof until the eastern sky began to lighten. She had remained on the roof until the rippers began to give up on the building, beginning to scatter, on the hunt for easier food or perhaps a place to sleep for a few hours—this seemed to be the time when a lot of them slept. It was almost like all of them had come to the decision together to leave without talking to each other. Who knew? Maybe they were able to communicate somehow through their grunts and screeches, just from their hand gestures and expressions. Maybe they had leaders down there, alphas, and the herd had followed them when they had decided to leave. Or maybe there was no order to their group; maybe some saw others leaving and eventually they all followed suit, like a school of fish or a flock of birds that all seemed to move together with no leader.
She didn’t know and she didn’t care, she was just glad they were leaving.
Now that it was a little lighter outside and most of the rippers had moved on (except for a few stragglers here and there), Jo could make out the damage to the parking lot. She used her binoculars to scan the parking areas, and then the shrubs and ditch that made up the perimeter, and then the grassy areas beyond the ditches and shrubs where the Dark Angels had lined up their vehicles last night with the headlights shining.
After the Dark Angels retreated and the rippers swarmed the building, Jo had used one of the rifles to shoot at the mass of rippers, but only when they tried to use each other’s bodies as human ladders or steps to get up to the roof of the building. But the roof was too
high and the gunshots were enough to deter them, a few dead rippers at the top of the human piles were enough to send the whole collection of bodies collapsing down to the sidewalks below.
The rippers hadn’t gotten in through the security mesh doors, and that was a relief. She’d kept in contact with Kate and others through the night on the walkie-talkie, getting constant updates. The rippers busted the glass of the windows and sliding doors, but they couldn’t get through the steel mesh no matter how much they rattled it and pushed against it.
At least Neal had saved them by jumping down from the roof to land on Jeff and his hand grenade. Neal had been dying anyway—he knew it by then, Jo knew it, everyone knew it. At least he’d gone out a hero; he’d gone out saving all of their lives.
The straggler rippers left behind by the horde picked at the bones that used to be Lance, Crystal, Dale, and the two Dark Angels who had murdered them. They also picked at the bones of other rippers who had died during the night. Now the dead were just bones, bits of flesh, bloodstains, and strips of torn cloth smeared along the blacktop. The Dark Angels’ weapons were still down there on the pavement—the M-16 they had used to shoot Lance, Crystal, and Dale—it laid on the pavement near the bones, untouched and unnoticed by the rippers.
One of the rippers had picked up the M-16 a few hours ago when the rippers were still swarming, many of them feasting on the dead. The ripper had fiddled with the weapon, eventually swinging it around, holding his finger on the trigger, spraying any rippers nearby with bullets, mowing them down. The rippers that had died were eaten quickly, their bones and torn clothing mingled in with Lance’s, Crystal’s, and Dale’s until Jo couldn’t tell whose bones were whose.
Now rats would come for the last little bits. And the birds when the sun was all the way up. There wasn’t anything Jo could do about that.
“We should go down there and get that weapon,” Fernando said. “Might be other weapons, too.”
Jo nodded. “In time. We’ll work something out. Let’s give those rippers a few more hours to get out of here.”
“What now?” Tina Yang asked.
“We’re all going to need to get some rest. Sleep in shifts. I want to have a quick meeting with everyone first. Discuss some things.”
The other two shooters, Wes and Lisa, who had remained on the roof with them last night, came over.
“Could you two stay up here for the next thirty minutes?” Jo asked them. “Keep watch while we see what needs to be done down there?”
Wes and Lisa nodded.
Jo handed Lisa her walkie-talkie. “Let me know if any Dark Angels come back. Or that herd of rippers.”
Lisa nodded. “I will.”
Jo let Fernando and Tina go down through the skylight first. On Jo’s way down into the store, she noticed that the ladder tied to the scissor lift shook quite a bit as she climbed down. They were going to need to retighten the ropes before the ladder came all the way loose and someone fell.
So much to do. So much to fix, to clean up, to inspect.
Fernando and Tina helped spread the word about the morning meeting to the others. Jo wanted to keep the meeting quick; she just wanted to let everyone know that the store hadn’t been breached, that for now they were safe. But they needed to make plans to defend this building and themselves. And that was going to be a hell of a lot harder now that their best shooters were gone. They’d lost Lance, Crystal, and Dale. Petra, Zak, Tamara, and Tyrone were gone too. Not only had they lost seven people, but they’d lost the weapons they’d had on them and the three vehicles they’d been driving. They’d lost so much, but they had no choice but to carry on.
Jo wished she never would have let them go on that last run. Jeff had been a mole, suggesting his own house (if the address he had given them had really been his house and not just a place to ambush them), and he’d tricked them into going there where the Dark Angels had been waiting.
But it was her fault—she should have put her foot down. She was the leader. This was her store. She should have told Lance no. Max and Kate had even come to her with bad premonitions about this last run, but she’d let them go anyway.
It was done and over, that’s what her rational mind told her. But she couldn’t suppress the guilt she felt. She’d gotten all three of them killed, watched the three of them die right down there in the parking lot.
It took fifteen minutes for almost everyone to meet Jo near the deli where they ate a lot of their meals. A few of them weren’t there: Wes and Lisa, who had stayed on the roof to keep watch; Brooke, who Kate said was sleeping in her tent; and the doc, who was still sleeping.
“I tried to get her up,” Tina said.
“No,” Jo answered. “Let the doctor sleep for now. I’ll talk to her later.”
Fernando, Tina, Kate, Max, and the others who were left, stood in a big semi-circle around Jo, waiting for her to talk.
“Okay,” Jo said. “I know everyone’s tired after the night we went through, and I want to thank all of you for everything you’ve done. I know we were all in different areas of the store over the last few hours, so I just want to catch everybody up to speed on what’s happened. Make sure everyone’s on the same page.”
Nods all around.
“Some of you may not know yet in all of the confusion, but the ones who went out on the last run to look for supplies—Lance, Crystal, Dale, Zak, Tyrone, Tamara, and Petra—they never returned. The Dark Angels came last night with three hostages: Lance, Crystal, and Dale. They killed all three of them in the parking lot. Shot all of them.”
Some concerned expressions, a few shocked faces.
“They were brave,” Jo continued. “They knew the risks they were taking by going out there on that last run.”
“But they were also set up,” Max said.
Heads turned toward Max.
“When you asked if anyone had suggestions on where to go, Jeff spoke up,” Max said. “He said they could go to his house. He knew the Dark Angels were going to be waiting there for them. He was a mole.”
A few more surprised looks.
“Thanks, Max,” Jo said. “I was getting to that. Yes, somehow the Dark Angels had gotten to Jeff. Probably before he even came to us. He might have waited days before he was ready to play his part.”
“He had a hand grenade hidden in his daughter’s music box,” Kate said. “He was waiting for the right time, probably when the Dark Angels had the store surrounded.”
“Yes, the explosion everyone heard,” Jo said. “That was Jeff blowing himself up. It seems he was supposed to blow the rollup door in the loading bay, make sure it couldn’t be repaired or closed again, so the Dark Angels could get inside with the fencing still intact. Kate figured it out and tried to talk Jeff out of pulling the pin. You remember Neal, the man with the bandages on his head. He had a bad infection from a wound. He was most likely dying. He dropped down from the rafters in the loading bay and covered Jeff and the grenade, saving the door but sacrificing himself. Saving all of us.”
A few murmurs from the small crowd.
“But I want to assure everyone that the door wasn’t damaged. Kate and Max checked it out. The security doors in the front entrances also held up, but we may want to fortify the barricades in front of those doors a little more this morning just in case. Also, anything we can do to shore up the metal roll down door in the loading bay would be a good idea. Any ideas would be appreciated.”
“The rippers are all gone?” Sophie asked.
“Most of them have moved on. There were a few stragglers in the parking lot last time I was up on the roof a few minutes ago.”
“But the rippers could come back,” Sophie said.
“And the Dark Angels,” Phil said.
“Yes, I’m sure the Dark Angels will be back. This store, this target, is too tempting for them.”
“They could fire a missile at us,” Sophie said. “Or set the store on fire.”
“Yes, those are possibilities,” Jo answered. “But I
don’t think they’re going to destroy the building because they don’t want to destroy the food and supplies in here. They may try to wait us out first.”
“Wait us out?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. All we can do is plan for the worst. We’ll sleep and work in shifts. Help each other out. Right now we need to check all the doors, locks, the security doors, make sure nothing was damaged, make sure nothing needs to be repaired and see if they can be fortified in any way. We also need to change the batteries outside that are hooked up to the fence. They saved our butts already and we’re going to need fresh batteries. The ropes holding the ladder to the lift need to be retied and tightened before it slips down and hurts someone. And the two bodies in the loading bay—Jeff and Neal—need to be cleaned up. I need volunteers for these jobs. With us losing so many already, we’re down to a skeleton crew and we all need to do our part to help us survive.”
Kate raised her hand. “I’ll volunteer to clean . . . to help with the bodies in the loading bay.”
“Thank you, Kate.” Jo was surprised. She thought that would be the job most difficult to find volunteers for.
“I’ll help her.”
Jo turned to Max. “Thank you.”
“What are you going to do with the bodies?” Sophie asked.
“We’ll put them outside.”
Sophie shook her head, like she wasn’t sure that was a good idea. She looked at the others. “Won’t the rippers come?”
“We can’t leave the bodies in here,” Jo said. “And yes, putting them out there will attract the rippers, but the rippers will keep the Dark Angels away. For a little while, at least.”
“Good idea,” Max said.
Jo looked at Max; she could tell he had more to say. She waited for him to continue.
“What about Petra?”
Jo didn’t answer.
“Petra could still be alive. She could still be out there somewhere. The Dark Angels didn’t use her as a hostage like they did with Lance, Crystal, and Dale.”
