Deadrise (Book 5): Blood Moon

by Siara Brandt

  He hadn’t forgotten that whoever had been shooting was still out there in the darkness somewhere. It was a bad situation all the way around and he was going to have to be the one to put an end to the woman’s misguided attempts to run that knife through him. Without wasting any more time. Or they might both end up as dead as that thing lying on the ground near them.

  Sidra splashed feebly for a few agonizingly-long, helpless moments, like an oxygen-deprived fish floundering in shallow water. After a panicked gasp or two, she tried to roll away, but when she saw the undead corpse beside her, she realized that wasn’t going to be her way out. In fact, she was so grossed out and so terrified, that she was in a blind panic as she desperately tried to get away from it. It wasn’t moving that she could see, but she still couldn’t tell if it was still alive. Or unalive.

  That wasn’t the only thing she needed to worry about. There was the man with the gun. She hadn’t figured out yet if this was the same man. She didn’t see how it could be. He had come from a completely different direction. But he might have somehow managed to get ahead of her in the darkness. She didn’t know where she was going, but this might be familiar territory for him.

  She knew that the longer she lay there, the more that the man, whoever he was, would be able to gain an advantage over her. So as soon as she was able to roll over onto her hands and knees, she tried to crawl away and get into a more defendable position. Only she didn’t get very far. A heavy hand immediately grabbed the back of her coat. That same hand dragged her ruthlessly and unceremoniously along the mud and right up out of the shallow pool of water.

  Terror surged through her all over again at being manhandled so easily. And maybe a little indignation was mixed in with it. Parts of her clothing were dripping and soaking wet, but she didn’t even feel the cold anymore. Her blood was pounding hotly through her body. Who exactly had she run into? Whoever, or whatever, it was, was pulling her along the ground effortlessly, like she was a small child. Was it the man with the rifle? Was it someone different? Where they working together? Or was it one of the undead? It was very possible that the undead were everywhere, all around her and she was about to be-

  Imagining teeth about to rip into her flesh at any moment, especially the exposed back of her neck, she tried to right herself and tripped, or something tripped her. She landed hard on her belly. She groaned as the breath whooshed out of her lungs. She scrambled back onto her hands and knees. She was still trying to crawl, but, again, she didn’t get far. The hands holding her flipped her over onto her back. She hit the ground hard again and pain jolted throughout her entire body. That rough treatment jarred her into fighting mode again. But at least one leg tangled with hers as she struggled to free herself. And, despite her efforts to escape, the same ruthless hands kept holding her down.

  She couldn’t get away no matter how hard she tried, so after some desperate fumbling, she clumsily dragged out her knife and lashed out blindly. The knife got caught somewhere. She tried to free it. After some frantic wrestling, she got the knife free again. She drew her arm back for another strike and felt a hand clamp tightly around her wrist, immobilizing her like a steel shackle.

  She made a mad attempt to free herself, but no matter how hard she twisted and jerked, she couldn’t pry her arm loose from that iron grasp. But Sidra had no intention of giving up so easily.

  Law didn’t intend to let her swipe at him with that knife again. He had no doubt she’d do it in a heartbeat. If he gave her the chance. He shook the hand that was holding the knife, tightening his grip around her slender wrist until the weapon fell from her nerveless fingers and thudded down into the mud. Then he snagged her other wrist and held fast.

  With both his hands and his weight, Law held her down, hoping to eventually talk some sense into her. But even when the woman realized she was helpless, she still wouldn’t give up. In fact, she grew even more desperate. With panic-fueled strength she thrashed about like a trapped wildcat beneath him.

  Luckily, he managed to dodge the knee that tried to strike him where it would do the most damage. It was a purposely-aimed blow, he knew. No accident. And he could tell she wasn’t finished yet. She tried with her other knee. She didn’t have any more luck with that one than she’d had with the first try. But she did manage to catch him off-guard completely when she sank her teeth into the back of his wrist.

  He grunted, obviously taken by surprise. “Let . . . go . . . ” he hissed as she held on for dear life. “Dammit!” he swore again, but he finally managed to get free. Still, he was alert for anything else she might try.

  After straining and squirming madly, but ineffectually, for a while, she finally went still. She was a lot smaller than he was and he was trained in martial arts, so the outcome was inevitable. He would overpower her. No matter how hard she fought.

  A muted whimper deep in her throat was her final protest, except for some rapid, shallow, desperate breaths. He eased his weight off her slightly so she could get air into her lungs.

  By now, Sidra had realized that this wasn’t the man with the rifle. But she still didn’t know if the two men were working together. Before she could form any more questions in her racing mind, without warning, the man on top of her stood up. Leaning over her, he immediately dragged her to her feet. He spun her around with him and held her body against his much bigger one. After the intake of only half a gasp, Sidra felt the sudden contraction of his muscles. She saw with horror that the man with the rifle was standing right in front of them and that he was lifting the rifle again. This time there was no hesitation in his movements.

  Before the man could shoot, however, the man holding her shoved her to the side of his body like she was a half-empty sack of grain. She almost went to the ground again as a knife flew past her. Sidra heard the awful squelching, crunching sound as the blade impacted with flesh and bone. The man with the gun immediately stiffened with the knife blade embedded in the center of his throat. He made a gurgling sound for a moment or two as the rifle dropped from his hand. Right before his body pitched forward to the ground with a heavy thud. He didn’t move again.

  Sidra made an immediate attempt to jerk out of the man’s grasp. He was still holding her arm with one hand. She was surprised when he let her go. She whirled around right away, but as she stepped blindly backwards, she tripped over something once again and fell to her knees in the mud. Breathing heavily, she stared at the pair of black combat boots right before her eyes. She lifted her face and saw that the man before her was dressed in combat clothes and that he was armed with an assault rifle. A black cloth covered the lower part of his face. He was staring down at her like she was the accused in some macabre trial and he was her executioner. Or maybe like he was trying to figure out what her next move would be.

  Right away, when she saw his covered face, her brain registered a single thought: Mulada soldier.

  No matter who, or what, he was, however, she wasn’t about to let him have the chance to overpower her again. She wasn’t about to become a victim to all the crimes she had heard these men were capable of. Before he could make the move toward her that she imagined he was about to make, she grabbed the only weapon available to her. A broken piece of branch. It was a thick chunk of wood that proved to be much heavier than it looked. She got to her feet and raised the branch up over her head. Before the man could stop her, she swung with all her strength.

  Sidra saw the piece of wood strike the man dead center. She knew she had caught him off guard. As it bounced off his chest, she saw him clap one hand to his chest as if in astonishment. She heard the deep, groaning ‘oof’ as the air rushed out of his lungs. Right before she heard yet another hissed curse as he staggered backwards and stumbled. Or lost his footing. He dropped his weapon. Then he disappeared right before her eyes.

  The place had been creepy-looking even in the daylight. Every time the school bus had passed it, Thayer had expected to see something looking back at him from behind the vacant windows. Especially the two attic
windows. But he had been younger then. He didn’t believe in ghosts anymore. But then, once upon a time he hadn’t believed in zombies, either. Except in video games, of course.

  The moon, not quite so blood-red anymore as it climbed the sky, disappeared behind a bank of clouds. It threw the house into sudden darkness. When the moon came out again, the faded clapboard walls of the house, with their web of skeletal shadows from the trees, seemed to mock his fear and his hesitation. They seemed to dare him to come and enter the unknown realm that awaited inside and learn the house’s hidden secrets. Secrets that had been sealed away for untold decades. Secrets that Thayer’s active imagination had always built upon when he had heard stories whispered about the place. For, as far back as he could remember, people had claimed that the house was haunted.

  One corner of his mouth curled in a self-deprecating sneer as he continued to search the deep shadows surrounding the porch. There were dark patches of overgrown weeds and bushes that crept up to the very foundation of the house. There could be anything hidden there, but Thayer had already seen that the front door was partially open and he focused on that. His expression turned hard, almost grim. This was where Letha had left the kids? This was supposed to be a better life for them?

  Taking a deep breath, he started forward with grim purpose. Past the ravaged picket fence entangled with vines that cast their own straggling shadows. Past the old tire swing that was still hanging from a branch of the massive sycamore tree in the yard. Though the swing wasn’t moving, he half expected it to start moving as he passed.

  Hell, what was wrong with him? He wasn’t a scared kid anymore. So why did he feel like one? Because he didn’t know what they would find in the house. Because it was the dead of night in the zombie-infested bottoms. Because that blood-tinged moon looked just plain spooky hanging in the trees, like it was portentous somehow.

  In spite of all those things, however, his concern for Seth and Kesi urged him on. With the old man who had driven him here following close behind him, he stepped up onto the porch and listened. Hearing nothing, he pushed on the front door. With a loud groaning creak, the door swung slowly inward, opening wider. Of course it creaked. Doors on creepy old houses always creaked. Who would keep the hinges oiled?

  He stepped over the threshold and into the living room. There were no lights, but they were used to that. Even if there were, they wouldn’t chance it anyway. It was a sure way to draw the undead. Or anyone else.

  Moonlight was flooding in through the tall, bare front windows and though the place might look haunted, he told himself he would take ghosts over zombies any day. Unless they were zombie ghosts.

  He didn’t know what he might discover, but deep inside, he admitted to himself that he dreaded what he might find as much as he dreaded not finding the two children. He tried calling, but he heard only silence in reply. The place was almost devoid of furniture so his voice had a hollow ring in the empty space.

  Leaving the door open behind him, he stepped slowly across the living room. He peered down a darkened hallway that dissected the center of the house. There was a pile of what looked like old quilts against one wall and he wondered if Seth and Kesi had been using them. Of course, there was no way of knowing how long the quilts had been there. Anyone could have put them there.

  He tried calling again. “Seth. Kesi. Don’t be afraid. It’s Thayer.”

  There was still no reply.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Thayer said in a ghost of a voice, getting a bad feeling about the whole thing, in spite of himself. Maybe in part because there wasn’t even a guarantee that Letha had told him the truth about leaving them here in the first place. It wouldn’t be the first time she had lied to him.

  “Quiet’s not necessarily a good thing, either,” Lindel said beside him as he gazed into the shadows.

  “No, it’s not,” Thayer said half to himself.

  They walked through the rest of the house, stopping often to listen. They went upstairs and checked all the bedrooms. They even checked the cellar. But there were no signs of the missing children.

  Thayer was checking a downstairs bedroom. His slow boot steps sounded hollow on the wooden floor as he stepped across the room. He opened a door and looked inside a closet. In the dark interior, he saw a face as if someone was looking back at him. Although he realized almost immediately that he was looking at his own reflection in a mirror, he had been conditioned to meet unexpected threats on a daily basis with some kind of action. A jolt of adrenaline surged through him and his hand reached automatically for a weapon. But the closet was empty. Fighting down the instinctive reaction to danger, he backed out of the closet and closed the door again.

  In the kitchen, both men saw another closed door at the far end of the room. They paused to listen. Thayer tilted his head toward the door. At first there was nothing, and then he heard a slight noise again. It hadn’t been his imagination.

  The kids? he wondered. Or something else?

  The noise came again. When he realized what he was hearing, his heart immediately sank. He recognized the slight wheezing with each shallow intake of air, then the soft, rattling growl with each release of breath. There was no doubt what he was listening to. He had heard it too many times not to recognize the sound. There was the familiar pattern of grating inhalation and then the sibilant, groaning release that followed. Despite his reluctance, Thayer knew he had to open that door. No matter what he might find.

  There was a terrible dread in his heart as he pushed the door open a few inches. Nothing came rushing at them. He opened the door a little wider. Still, nothing lunged at the door as he’d half expected. But something was moving in the darkness of the room.

  Moonlight streamed wanly through the dust-coated, murky windows of the back porch. Except for the raspy breathing, and the feral growls that were added to it, a deep silence lay heavily all around him. Thayer saw that the back door leading to the yard was wide open. In one of the windows he found the last thing he expected to see. The head of one of the undead was stuck there. And one arm. It was glaring at them with a look of pure savagery. It growled like a cornered wolf. Or a rabid, aggressive one. The body was still outside. And the other arm apparently.

  Thayer saw that the heavy window was closed tightly on the dead’s neck. It was trapped there, unable to free itself. Maybe its neck was broken. It was hard to tell. Moonlight bathed the ashen-gray face in a sickly hue. Black, bulging veins were distended. Dark-rimmed, colorless eyes were focused on them in a ravenous glare of unbridled blood lust.

  It must have vomited at least once. Streaks of blood stained the wall right below it and darkened the floor. It struggled harder when it saw the two men, but it still could not get free. It could not seem to get a secure foothold outside the window. Had Seth and Kesi done this? Thayer wondered. Had they been able to trap it that way?

  He had experienced an immediate sense of relief when he saw that it wasn’t Seth or Kesi. This was definitely an adult. Thayer looked around the room. There weren’t any signs of feeding. There were no torn, bloody pieces of clothing. No body parts. No bones. No glistening piles of slime or blood smeared and splattered everywhere. There was no new blood on the face of the undead thing before them. Except for the black vomit.

  The two men put the thing out of its misery, then they closed the door of the back porch and stood in the kitchen, talking quietly about their options.

  They soon left the house. Realizing that the children weren’t there, they were relieved, yet disappointed at the same time. After searching the overgrown yard, they finally found a gym shoe. Only one. It was half buried in the mud and there were tracks leading from it. The tracks of three shoes and one small bare foot that led off into the woods.

  Chapter 4

  The woman had not only fought him like a cornered tiger, using every weapon at her disposal, she had drawn his blood, too. And then she’d swung a club at him dead center with no warning whatsoever. After he had saved her from the shooter. So m
uch for gratitude.

  Law hit hard, landing on his back in what felt like a nest of vipers. And they were all biting him at the same time. The searing pain had him sucking in his breath, which he abruptly released in another vicious, searing oath. A very colorful one. He couldn’t help it. The slightest movement made him feel like a pack of venomous demons was clawing at his flesh. So he went still in an effort to lessen the pain while he tried to figure out where he was and what he had landed on.

  It turned out that he was at the bottom of a leaf-littered wash, a narrow ditch that had been half concealed by a tangled matt of heavy brush and leaves. The mud had given way when he had taken a step backward. After she had swung that branch at him.

  One thing was certain. He couldn’t stay here.

  He made an attempt to sit up.

  He realized right away that that had been a mistake. He immediately sank back down again, closed his eyes and clenched his jaw tightly as he waited for the fire of innumerable wounds in various places of his body to subside.

  “What the hell- ” he rasped. That’s when he saw the tangled strands of barbed wire all around him. Half buried in the leaves, the coiled loops were holding him prisoner. Still, the wire looked loose in some places. If he could get a hold of it, if he could get one arm free . . .

  He quickly discovered that there was no way to move without the razor-sharp barbs digging even deeper into his skin where they had already found an anchor. With the slightest movement, the pain sprang to renewed, intensely-agonizing life. He was trapped, and trapped was never good. Not in this world. He knew what he had to do, and he couldn’t waste a lot of time thinking about it. There seemed to be no place to put a hand down without coming into contact with more wire, so finally he tightened his muscles and braced himself before he tried to rise up using only his leg muscles as leverage.