Before the Strandline- Puppies
Page 3
A muscle in the kid’s jaw jumped. Speculation darkened his eyes. “What about you? You ever kill a dog that way?”
Parrish stepped to the wall, turned his back to it and leaned next to the boy; there was a new hurried fear in the random movements of the camp as the others moved through the motley assortment of tents and plastic draped over rope between trees. “We’re going. Darby and me. We’ve got somewhere else to be. We’re hoping, that is.”
Tallahassee stood taller, if it were possible; he was struggling not to look shocked. “You and Darby? Are you asking me?”
The dog whined and licked Tallahassee’s hand. She flopped to her belly in the dirt.
“Yeah. We won’t ask twice.”
Titus suddenly rounded the corner of the building. He stopped when he saw them, arching one black eyebrow.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said, staring at the dog at their feet, glancing over at the boy next to Parrish. “I thought you should know that I think you handled the gauntlet like a real pro. You’ve got the luck. I believe that some of us have the luck. I like the luck. You’re moving up—into management.” He turned to Parrish. “Good job. Both of you.”
He walked back toward the edge of the lake.
Parrish kept his eyes straight ahead when he added, “He’s lying. He kills people with what he calls ‘the luck.’ It mostly means ‘you’re dead.’ We’re going tonight. I know of a place, a good place, with good people. It’s real. I know it. Midnight. Bring the dog.”
Parrish waited where the lake’s retaining wall ended at the edge of the town. Mist drifted above the black water in a gauzy blanket. The soft slap, slap of water beat against the end of the concrete wall. Starlight winked through breaks in the fog.
Darby—she should have beaten him here. She’d better not be raiding the supply cabinet. They’d make do. Hadn’t he told her that?
A bullfrog raised a fuss from somewhere up ahead in the blackness, where the edge of the lake curved away into bog and cattails. It’d be hard going until they made it to the old highway, but the swamp would swallow their trail as surely as those bodies had disappeared into the gator-infested lake. Darby could do it, slog her way through the overgrown muck along this part of the lakefront. Sure, she could. She was a good soldier—even pregnant. The thought made his stomach heave. Please let there be someone at the S-Line Ranch who knew how to help her when the time came. Please.
Careful, he told himself, or you’re going to find yourself praying. Darby. No one could make him fall into hopeful, half-prayers like Darby.
Other frogs joined the lone bullfrog. The edge of the huge lake started to thump with frog song, but the rest of the night grew still. Where were they?
Like a cue, Parrish’s question was answered by the sound of someone moving fast and low toward him. Underbrush crackled as the body crashed through a field of scrub palmettos. Tallahassee came close to knocking Parrish over before he slowed down.
“Sir, I’m . . . here,” he said, gulping oxygen open mouthed. “I made it.”
A drift of fog parted long enough to let starlight stab down. The boy’s bony form stood like a dark scarecrow in front of him. One look at Tallahassee confirmed what Parrish had already smelled—the sharp, bright tang of copper—blood. The kid was bleeding. Star shine glistened on the wet blood smeared down his shirtfront and arms. Too much blood to be his, no one would still be standing with that much gore covering him.
Parrish panicked. He grabbed Tallahassee’s blood-wet shirt.
“Darby. Where is she? What did you do?”
“She’s not coming.”
Parrish pushed him away, reached for the knife at his belt. Tallahassee grunted and shoved him back.
“Before you gut me, listen. Darby’s not coming because they’re back. They made it back.”
The buzzing in Parrish’s ear turned the kid’s words to cotton. They? Back? The handle of his knife felt comforting in his hand: a gun, a blade, his fists, they were the things he counted on. And Darby . . .
A flash of light sparked off the edge of the knife in his hand.
“Parrish, it’s Ella and Brittany. That’s their names, isn’t it? Darby sent me to tell you.”
The kid’s big hands came up slow and careful. “They’re back. They escaped. And now they’re back with the unit. Darby’s with them. That’s why she’s not coming. Parrish, can you hear me? Ease on down, Sir. It’s good. It’s all good.”
Parrish lowered the knife, still watching the other man’s hands, his movements, waiting for an attack. When had he become a killing machine?
“The blood? The stuff’s all over you. Whose—”
“I killed him, Parrish.” The kid stepped back until the black mist swallowed even the hint of his outline. He became a voice hidden by misty night; it was a voice filled with the harsh grit of righteous anger.
“I killed Titus and now the girls can stay and be safe. Not Brevard. Titus. It was Titus hurting Darby.” The information came out of Tallahassee in breathy gasps. “I found out, and I ended him. He came after my dog too, you know, and now I’m going—me and my dog. I don’t have time to tell it all. Ask her. Ask Darby.”
The dog’s panting suddenly registered. It was Tallahassee and his best friend of a mutt.
“They’re going to need you, Parrish—the unit, the Puppies. They’re waiting. They’ll accept your leadership. Especially after Titus.”
“How are they not going to blame me for what you did?”
“You’re hunting. And I’m going,” Tallahassee said, snapping his fingers at the dog. “You should head back . . . Sir.”
“Since when did you start giving me orders?”
Silence thudded between them. Frog song slowed, drifted away. The night fell thick and heavy and solid across the water. Parrish thought he heard the soft scuff, scuff of feet shuffling in the dirt. If shoulder shrugs made a noise, Parrish was pretty sure he’d have heard one.
“I . . . Sir . . . I . . .”
Listening to the boy stammer unseen and unseeing made Parrish think of the days and nights he’d spent on guard duty after they’d come for him at the high school. Darkness. Voices in the darkness. Children crying in the blackness. When the starving dogs came at night to drag away the babies, sometimes out of their mother’s arms, there had been screams that didn’t fade. They just stopped. It was a hard world for women with babies—a hard, hard world.
“Forget it. You killed the right man. It’s never wrong to kill the right man.”
The dog sniffed at Parrish’s hand. Dogs. Puppies. “And you’re leaving, and I’m going hunting and then back to my family. Thank you. Find the S-Line, find the place Colonel Kennedy built for a world like this. I’m going to get my sisters there, if it’s the last . . .well . . . you get it. I’m going to get them someplace out of all of this damn darkness. Go!”
“Parrish?” The boy’s voice came softly. “My name is Jamie.”
The dog’s head slipped away from Parrish’s fingers, the feel of warm fur suddenly replaced with the cool of evening. The boy followed, without words or promises.
Parrish headed back toward the half-collapsed National Guard Armory that the Puppies called Camp Rock Steady, where his sisters waited.
***
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The Strandline Series
by Linda L. Zern
Before the Strandline: Puppies
Copyright 2016 Linda L. Zern
All Rights Reserved
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United State
s of America. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced, stored into or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (Electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.
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