Southlands

by D. J. Molles

  SOUTHLANDS

  LEE HARDEN SERIES

  BOOK 2

  ─

  D. J. MOLLES

  To the gentlemen of P.D.,

  Who keep me sharp.

  SPECIAL THANKS

  The more I do this, the more I find myself leaning on a lot of special people. I’ve thanked you all in person, but I’ve been a bit remiss about publicly acknowledging what you’ve done for me. Hell, I might’ve given the impression that I do all this myself! Nothing could be further from the truth.

  To my beta readers, Coty Bradburn, Jarrod Pierce, Maggie Johnson, James Hornback, Jon Carricker, Julie Jane, Ron Paige, and of course my father, Brad Molles, who reads everything I write: I want to thank you all for taking the time to read unfinished drafts and give me your honest opinion on things. You don’t know how much it helps for me to have a sounding board.

  To Josh White and Randy VanScoten: Thanks for all the medical knowledge from two badass trauma nurses.

  To Steve Sellers: Thanks for making Lee look so good, and for my female readership.

  To my agent, Dave Fugate: Thanks for always going above and beyond for me.

  To my lovely wife, Tara, whose artistic and graphic design skills grace the covers of almost all my books: Thanks for making me look like I know what I’m doing!

  And of course, to you, the reader: Thanks for holding this book in your hands right now. If it weren’t for you, I’d just be a guy clacking away on a keyboard, with no one to read my crazy ideas.

  PROLOGUE

  ─▬▬▬─

  It was the last night that they would all be alive and in one place together.

  None of them knew that. But maybe they felt it. A tremor in the strings of the universe. A faint vibration through the chord of their lives that they perceived fleetingly, with a swallow and a shudder of foreboding. And then they ignored it for the impossible superstition that it was.

  Lee, Julia, Abe, Nate, and Tomlin, in a circle.

  Carl, being his usual curmudgeonly self, had knocked off early.

  The rest of them stood around a steel barrel, burning some brush that had been cleared away from one of the fence lines here in the Butler Safe Zone.

  It was their one-night stopover in Butler before heading into Alabama.

  Their route planned, their mission briefed, and their equipment packed, save for the few items they would need to sleep and rise and set out again, there was nothing left for any of them to do. As the sun set in the west and darkness overtook them, the pile of brush began to dwindle.

  Their surroundings went from navy, to black. A damp springtime chill crept up on them. But the fire kept it at their backs. Bathed their faces in yellow, their clothes in warm woodsmoke. Embers meandered up into the sky, and then winked out. Firelight glinted off smiling teeth and eyes as they laughed and talked to one another.

  “Didn’t mean for y’all to do my brush burnin’ for me,” a voice drawled.

  Lee Harden took his eyes from the pleasant flames and looked to his right. Ghost-lights danced in his eyes for a moment, but he saw the basics of the figure striding out of the gloom. The tucked-in County Brownie shirt. The bowlegged walk, like he’d been on a horse all day. The bright white mustache that seemed to precede the face out of the darkness.

  “Sheriff Ed,” Lee smiled. “We’re just enjoying the fire. Don’t let us hold up your work.”

  Ed’s mustache moved, and Lee thought he might be smiling underneath it, by the way his eyes crinkled in the corners. He sidled up to the fire. He had a mason jar full of clear liquid in his hand, but kept it down at his side, as though trying to be inconspicuous.

  With his free hand, he waved Lee off. “You just enjoy yourselves. Y’all sound like you got plenty of nasty work ahead of you, headin’ out into The Wilds. Might as well take some time to relax a bit.”

  Lee nodded. He looked into the fire, and then up from the flames, to Julia, who stood directly across from him. He saw the small smirk on her face. She knew how much Lee enjoyed Ed’s cowboy ways.

  Ed shuffled about, and then made his gift known, holding it up and swishing it around, and then shoving it into Abe’s chest, like a football to a running back.

  Abe accepted it, then held it up and gazed at it with eager eyes. “Hell yes.”

  “Well, now,” Ed held out a cautionary hand. “I never claimed it was good. But it won’t rot your guts out neither. I ‘stilled it up myself.”

  “Shit, sheriff,” Abe said, making to hide the jar. “Lawman can’t be seen handing out hard liquor like that. It’ll scandalize the townsfolk!”

  Ed gruffed. “I wouldn’t worry ‘bout that. All the townsfolk are already drunk on the same stuff.”

  Abe laughed, then clapped Ed on the shoulder. “Well, thank you for this.”

  Ed waved it away, once again. As though thanks and appreciation were flies to swat at. “Y’all just have a nice relaxin’ evening on me, awright now?”

  “Awright now!” Abe proclaimed.

  Across the fire, Brian Tomlin turned it into a whoop: “Awright now!”

  Ed departed, his eyes crinkled in merriment.

  Tomlin clapped his hands together and then made a “gimme” gesture. “You gonna stand there and ogle that shit or sip and pass?”

  Abe pulled the jar away. “Whoa. Settle your scrotum there, happy hands. It’ll make its way around. Clockwise, as tradition dictates.”

  A round of banter ensued between Tomlin and Nate. Lee and Abe passed the jar back and forth a few times, with appreciative nods. It tasted like yeast and rubbing alcohol, with a hint of ammonia. It was fantastic.

  Time went by to the tick-tock of sip-and-pass. The laughter sometimes grew raucous, as though to defy the darkness, and other times it was almost demur, as though afraid to draw hostile attention.

  The pile of brush dwindled some more.

  The flames leapt up when they put more branches in, then gradually died down.

  Lee looked across the fire at Julia and saw the firelight flickering across her eyes. Her face bore a slight smile. She was content where she was at. And so was Lee. She looked across the fire at him, and something good passed between them in that look.

  But it reminded Lee of a time before.

  A time several long years ago, when he’d sat around a similar fire in Camp Ryder, and joked with a man named LaRouche. Julia had been there too.

  Was Julia remembering that same thing?

  The memory was bittersweet. It was another memory in a long list of ones that were attached to a person they would never see again.

  Lee found the light smile on his lips grow heavy.

  He held onto it only by remembering that this was his last mission. When he finished with this, he was going to start training new soldiers to take the place of the people around this very fire. And then they would all be part of Lee’s training cadre. And they could take a much-needed break from the corrosive wear of near-constant combat operations.

  Tomlin and Abe were now hurling arguments across the fire at each other about a comic book character. Tomlin believed the character was a pussy. Abe asserted that Tomlin was not only a much bigger pussy, but that he was misogynist to use such terms, and then began trying to enlist Julia in his argument.

  Nate, a traditional lightweight, stared into the flames, occasionally laughing at Tomlin and Abe, and swaying on his feet. The jar had been around about five times by then.

  Julia sipped, and passed it to Abe.

  Abe held onto it for a while, too involved in laying out a five-point syllogism for why Tomlin didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Eventually Lee gave him a nudge, and Abe took a perfunctory sip and passed it.

  When it reached Nate again, he held it, staring at it for a moment, and then seemed
to come to a sudden decision. He shook his head, and passed the jar without sipping.

  “I’m goin’ to bed,” he announced. “Y’all’re too much.”

  Everyone agreed with the wisdom of heading off to bed, and not finishing the entire jar of moonshine, as much as they would like to pretend that they didn’t have to do important and dangerous things the very next day.

  And that was it.

  Nate left the fire, his back retreating into the darkness, and the orange light chased him, but then gave up as he slipped through its grasp and was gone in black.

  Tomlin followed shortly after, with parting shots at Abe, who was off in the shadows taking a piss. Abe yelled something inscrutable over his shoulder so that Tomlin wouldn’t have the last word.

  That’s how it ended.

  They all left the fire.

  They all left that warm glow, and they walked like ghosts into the night, who’ve only momentarily slipped into our world, and don’t plan to stay. Some of them would be lost forever. Others would go on. But they would never again be in that spot together, to share that moment, or that bond.

  They would never again be whole.

  one

  ─▬▬▬─

  INFECTION

  Two women meet.

  It is obvious they hate each other.

  But there is no one around to witness it. They are alone, in a shaded section of a quiet path between two rows of houses. Those houses belong to a neighborhood that exists in a tiny bastion of human survivors called Fort Bragg. Beyond the high voltage perimeter of Fort Bragg, a hostile world waits. Lurks. Hunts.

  One of these women wants to destroy Fort Bragg.

  The other is there because her son is a rapist, and if anyone ever found out, she and her son would have to go out into that hostile world. And she knows that they would not last long.

  “You better be here to tell me that she’s infected,” Elsie Foster says. She is the one that wants to see Fort Bragg burn.

  “It’s not that simple.” Taylor Sullivan squirms. She is the mother of the rapist.

  “I feel like we’ve had this conversation,” Elsie sighs. “For you and your son’s sake, tell me that you did it.”

  “Yes. For God’s sake. I did it already.”

  “How?”

  An audible swallow from Sullivan. “Doc Trent has a primal. He’s been…autopsying it or something. I snuck in there. Stuck it with a needle. Then I used that needle to give…” another swallow. Poor Nurse Sullivan is really struggling with this. “…I used the infected needle to give Abby an injection. Into her IV.”

  Elsie nods along, appearing to picture it. “I wanted results.”

  Sullivan is so frustrated she stamps her foot. “Those are results! What do you want from me? I introduced infected material to her bloodstream! She’s almost guaranteed to get it now.”

  “‘Almost’ and ‘guarantee’ don’t go together.”

  “I did what you asked.”

  “Let’s get something straight.” Elsie pokes the shorter woman in the chest. “I asked for Abby to be infected by now. Not ‘on her way out’ or ‘in the process of being infected.’ Fucking infected. Shitting the bed. Biting her mother. Howling at the moon. Infected. It’s been two days, Taylor. And your time’s up.”

  Sullivan is angry. But more than that, she is scared.

  They’d found the body of the woman that had been attacked by the primals two nights ago. Her carcass had been stripped of meat. Just a patch of scattered, bloody bones, still held together by tendons and whatever else the primals hadn’t fed on.

  They’d even eaten her face off.

  And Sullivan keeps thinking, That’s going to be you. That’s going to be you and Benjamin, if you’re not careful.

  She holds up a shaking hand. “It’s done, Elsie. She’s infected.”

  “How long? And don’t bullshit me. I’ll fact-check what you tell me.”

  “She’ll be symptomatic in twenty-four hours. Completely insane by forty-eight.”

  Elsie sniffs. “I get proof that you did your job, and the proof against little Benji-Boy goes away. That’s the deal. You get me what I want, and you get what you want. Twenty-four hours.”

  Sullivan’s nostrils flare. Her jaw muscles bunch. “You’ll get it.”

  Two women depart.

  It is obvious that they hate each other even more.

  TWO

  ─▬▬▬─

  WILDLIFE

  Allen, the wildlife officer, was sweating bullets, despite being in the air-conditioned cab of the SUV.

  Surrounding him, four soldiers laughed and joked amongst themselves, as the driver rolled them through a dilapidated neighborhood outside the Fort Bragg Safe Zone.

  Allen thought they were probably as nervous as he was, but they had a better outlet: They knew each other and could laugh to relieve the tension. Allen could only sit in silence, clutching the air rifle in his hands, his sweat glands betraying him.

  Allen was in the back passenger seat. There were four soldiers in the vehicle with him. Two up front, one to his left, and one in the far back. The interior of the vehicle was gray. Old. Stained and cigarette-burned. It smelled musty, and also like soldiers, which was a distinct scent. Like old camping equipment—leather and canvas and metal, a layer of body oils and dirt on all of it, with fresh sweat underneath.

  Outside was a bright, warm, spring morning. A few wispy clouds. A light breeze that smelled like pollen.

  They kept the SUV—an old Ford Expedition—moving at about ten miles an hour. And every once in a while, the driver would lay on the horn, and it would blast out into the ghastly silence of the dead neighborhood.

  All around them, the houses stared on, their dark, broken windows like empty eye sockets, and their doors hanging open like gaping mouths. Some of them were fire-blackened. Some burned straight to the ground. Others stood in more or less the same condition they’d been left in, except for mold creeping on the siding and brush growing up so high in the lawns sometimes you could barely see the front porch.

  “She was a dependapotomus,” one of the soldiers was saying. “You can tell just by looking at her.”

  The driver, whose girlfriend was in question, laughed, but he was getting defensive. “Nah, man. She looks good.”

  “Pff. She looks good now. That’s just the rationing done slimmed her down.”

  “Five years ago,” the one in the far back put in. “She was three hundred pounds—guaranteed. You’da gained five pounds by eating her out.”

  This brought on gales of laughter.

  The driver shifted about, getting more irritated. He honked the horn a few more times.

  Allen flinched at the noise.

  “Y’all’re fucked up,” the driver mumbled.

  The soldier behind the driver nudged the seat in front of him. “Bro, she probably never even left Bragg. She’s been here the whole time. Her last Joe probably went to Greeley, and she’s been lurkin’ down in the sewers ever since, like the clown from ‘It’, just waitin’ for her next victim.”

  The corporal, who was in the passenger seat, seemed to detect that they had reached the boiling point with their friend, and he reached across and gave the driver a slap on the shoulder. “Alright. We’re all just jealous because Chris is gettin’ head on the reg. Good on ya, bro.”

  There were boos and hisses from the back, but they quieted down.

  The corporal twisted in his seat and looked at Allen. “Hey, buddy. You okay back there?”

  Allen forced a smile and nodded. “Yeah. Fine.”

  The soldier behind the driver eyed him, and spoke in a southern plantation accent: “He doth appear to perspire a great deal.”

  Allen flushed. Which only made it worse. “It’s hot, okay?”

  The soldier frowned. Went back to his regular voice. “I mean…didn’t you say you, like, hunted bears and shit with that thing?”

  Allen turned to look out his open window. “I never said I hunted
bears. Said I shot one. It was up in a tree in a neighborhood.”

  “Oh damn. Okay.” A sly smile. “So what if one of these things is runnin’ at you?”

  Allen was getting about as irritated as the driver. He was preparing a retort when something flitted between two houses.

  Low to the ground. Almost hidden by the tall weeds.

  “Shut up,” Allen whispered.

  “Hey, easy. I’m just askin’ about your proficiency level with that thing—”

  “No, I mean shut up!” Allen snapped, and then jerked the air rifle through the open window. “Three o’clock!”

  “Oh shit.”

  There was a scramble of bodies and a clatter of gear as the soldiers refocused themselves out their windows.

  The corporal tapped the driver’s shoulder again. “Stop here.”

  The Expedition rolled to a stop in the middle of the neighborhood street.

  “What’d you see?” the corporal demanded.

  “I dunno,” Allen replied. “Between those two houses there.”

  “Alright, everyone look frosty. Chris, hit that horn again. Allen, you got one shot, brother. Make it count.”

  Allen was well aware that he only had one shot. It didn’t help to be reminded of it.

  He double- and then triple-checked the rifle’s load, the bolt, the air pressure, and the safety. Every second his eyes were not fixed on the weeds out there was torture. He refocused himself, with his heart hammering in his chest and his breathing coming on fast.

  “Remember,” the corporal said, putting his own rifle out his window. “When they come, it’s probably gonna be from all sides. So watch your lane.”

  The air rifle was fixed with a three-power scope. It wasn’t much, but the effective range on it was only fifty yards.

  An animal could cross a lot of that ground in a very short amount of time. It’d probably eat up half of it before Allen could get a shot off. And then how long before the tranquilizer knocked it down?