Deadrise (Book 5): Blood Moon

by Siara Brandt

  But the thin column of smoke on the distant horizon was a pretty good indication that the Mulada soldiers were close and that they were headed straight for them.

  Logan had been staying one step ahead of them when he had been searching for his children and the men had marked their progress on the map. They were obviously heading in a straight line and Lacombe was right in their path.

  Looking at the smoke, Lindel said, “That must be Ledford.”

  There were no other towns between Ledford and Lacombe.

  The men looked at each other with sober expressions.

  “They’ll spend some time in Ledford,” Logan said. “That should give us plenty of time to vacate before they get here.”

  “We don’t have much choice,” Thayer agreed grimly. “We can’t fight off a force that big.”

  “You’re right,” Law said. “We have to make sure the women and the kids are safe. That’s the priority.”

  That was the priority for them all.

  “They probably have scouts out already,” Law went on. “If we act like we don’t know what’s coming and we leave under cover of darkness, we should be fine. They’ll be coming from the North, so we’ll head South. We’ll take turns keeping watch through the night so that there won’t be any surprises.”

  A single thought ran through Mogue Hobson’s mind. He wanted Lawton Quaid dead, once and for all. Even better, he’d like to see the bastard turn. He’d like to see him wandering around like a living corpse. Yeah, that would be much better. He could use him for target practice then.

  He hadn’t meant to run into the group of Mulada soldiers. But they had spotted him before he could hide. So here he was, forced into servitude again. But maybe he could use that to his advantage this time.

  Craning his neck forward like a curious turtle as he squinted through the pines, he looked at the yellow house with the brown shutters. Yeah, things just might work out for the best. Anything was better than having to face Lawton Quaid on his own.

  He thought of the look in Quaid’s eyes the last time he’d seen him. There was no doubt about it. He’d be a dead man if Quaid ever caught him again. But he had grown tired of hiding and looking over his shoulder all the time. There was only so much a man could take. With any luck at all, the men with him would kill Quaid for him. So he dropped down to his belly and wormed his way forward through the overgrown grass, too impatient for vengeance and the death of Lawton Quaid to wait any longer.

  Sidra looked down from her bedroom window, the one she now shared with Law. There was no sound and nothing moved out there in the darkness. Still, the uneasy feeling that had awakened her from a deep sleep persisted. She did her best to shake it off and pulled on her clothes.

  Law wasn’t in the house. He was taking the first watch. Maybe that’s why she couldn’t sleep. She wanted to be waiting for him when he got back to the house. She was impatient to see him. No she was beyond impatient. So she opened the door and went downstairs.

  She heard no one stirring anywhere in the house. There were deep shadows in the kitchen where the moonlight did not reach. And silence. A deep, impenetrable silence. She went to the back door to look outside. At first she thought she was alone, then after a startled gasp, she saw Webb standing on the back porch.

  “I’ve been waiting here for you,” he said in a low voice as he stepped closer to her, following her right into the kitchen.

  Sidra took another step backwards. “Why would you do that?”

  “You should have known I’d come back for you.” He stepped even closer to her. “I’m not leaving without you.”

  She looked around into the shadows behind him. ”Where’s Ayden?”

  “Ayden. The bastard abandoned me. All because of you.”

  “Me?”

  “He didn’t like my plan.”

  “What- plan?” she asked with a growing sense of unease. Even in the darkness, she could see the faint, chilling smile that appeared on Webb’s face.

  “The one where I take you back with me.”

  She had to pretend not to be afraid. “That won’t happen,” she told him. She turned to go back upstairs, but Webb blocked her path.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  She stared at him for a moment, not sure what to do.

  “You want to fight me?” he said in a low, suppressed voice as he leaned towards her. “You should know that I am deadly serious. You will go back with me and I won’t let anyone stop me. Who do you think will come through that door first? Your sister? Your mother? One of the kids?”

  Her startled gaze darted to the gun in his hand. “You mean you would hurt one of them?”

  “To have you back, yes, I would do anything it took. But it’s entirely up to you, Sidra, whether anyone gets hurt or not. All you have to do is come with me quietly and there won’t be any trouble.”

  “If I do what you say, no one gets hurt?” she asked, stalling.

  “No one gets hurt. I meant what I said,” he breathed as he leaned even closer to her face. “You can make this easy. Or you can make it very, very messy. Which one, Sidra?”

  “I- I’ll go with you.”

  She was still trying to come up with some kind of plan when Webb grabbed her arm. Turning her around, he gave her a shove between her shoulder blades and pushed her towards the back door. “Move.”

  It wasn’t until they were some distance away from the house, when Webb stopped her. He pulled something from his pocket. A cloth of some kind.

  She stared at the cloth. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to tie this around your mouth,” he said. “Can’t have you screaming and letting that bastard know where we are. I wouldn’t put it past you to try it.”

  But apparently that wasn’t all he was planning to do. He also pulled a length of rope from another pocket.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” he ordered her.

  Sidra almost panicked. Being helpless in the dark terrified her. “Don’t tie my hands, Webb. I won’t try to get away. I promise. Just don’t tie me up.”

  “Sorry. I don’t want it this way, but I have no choice. You promised me you wouldn’t try to escape once before. Remember? Put your hands behind you.”

  “I don’t want to go out there in the dark with my hands tied. I won’t be able to defend myself if something happens.”

  He gave an impatient sigh. “I’ve got him distracted for now. But if you keep this up, he’s going to eventually come back and hear us. And I will see him coming first. You realize that, don’t you?”

  Two minutes later, he was jerking the rope tightly around her wrists. She looked around fearfully at the darkness. Were they just going to walk off into the woods not knowing what was out there?

  Webb must have realized what she was thinking. “We’re just walking part of the way,” he told her. “There’s a car waiting for us.”

  The car was there, but two men stepped out from the shadows behind the car when they approached it. One of them was a hulking, giant of a man. The other one was the balding man who had attacked her in the farmhouse.

  “Looks like you have your own plan.” The big man chuckled under his breath as he looked at Webb and then at the ropes that bound Sidra. “Well, plans have a way of changing. We’ll take the girl. And the car. Hand ‘em both over and you get to walk away. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”

  But Webb had no intention of giving Sidra up so easily.

  By now, Sidra had worked the gag free from her mouth. “Law will come after you,” she said breathlessly. “He’ll come after all of you. He’ll track you down wherever you go.”

  “Shut her up,” the big man growled, jerking his head in Mogue’s direction. “Put the damned gag back in her mouth.”

  Mogue hesitated. She was right. Quaid would come after him. And there would be hell to pay. That hesitation was the advantage Webb had been waiting for. He had no choice but to shoot, no matter who heard them.

  The gun expl
oded like a cannon in the darkness.

  The big man roared out a string of profane oaths as he clutched his bloody shoulder. “What are you standing there for?” he growled at Mogue. “Shoot the bastard.”

  Mogue lifted his own gun and fired. There was no hesitation this time.

  Webb staggered backwards. His shirt had a growing dark spot where the bullet had hit him. He was looking down at his chest when the big man jumped forward and jammed the barrel of his gun against Webb’s head. Immediately the night exploded into fire and thunder again. Webb Courtland fell flat on his back without making a sound.

  “What’ll we do now?”

  “We take the girl for ourselves.”

  Mogue Hobson thought that over. He was quickly adjusting his plans. He didn’t have any choice. The thought of Lawton Quaid hunting him down was a frightening one. But Mogue hd always been weak-willed, and so he allowed himself to be persuaded. Anyway, it was always better to walk away with something rather than to end up empty handed. His plan of having Lawton Quaid killed was just going to have to wait.

  Sidra gritted her teeth against the rough treatment as the big man grabbed her. She stumbled and barely managed to keep herself from falling headlong to the ground. She tried to escape and run before they got her into the car. But it had been a desperate move on her part. She hadn’t gotten very far before she felt rough fingers closing around her arm and jerking her around to a standstill. Now she was being marched back to the car like a condemned prisoner being taken to the executioner.

  Law had always insisted she be well armed. “You never know,” he had told her repeatedly. “What kind of a mess you might find yourself in. Always be prepared. Hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst. Anything can be used as a weapon if you are desperate enough.”

  Was she prepared? Not remotely. She couldn’t even think straight because she was so scared. Fear, not preparation, was driving her at the moment. Stark, utter fear.

  But maybe that could work to her advantage. Let him think I’m too scared to fight back, she told herself. Let him think I’m going to be an easy conquest. Let him get close enough, and when he was not expecting resistance, then she would make her move. She just didn’t know what that would be yet.

  The man shoved her again. Harder this time. And this time she tripped and went down to her knees in the dirt.

  “Get up,” the big man snarled with a threat in his voice.

  She didn’t move fast enough to suit him, so he grabbed the back of her hair and dragged her to her feet. She yelped in pain, twisted and fought the brutal hold he kept on her hair. His reaction was to twist his fist even more tightly in her loosened curls. He brought her face close to his and hissed, “Bitch!” Without warning, he struck her. It was a vicious, back handed blow across the side of her face. Her head swam and tears sprang into her eyes, blurring her vision. She tasted blood.

  “Keep it quiet,” Mogue whined in a high-pitched, strained voice. “You’ll draw the damn things right down on top of us.”

  Or Lawton Quaid, he thought. There was no doubt in his mind which was the worst of the two dangers.

  Sidra fully expected the man to hit her again. He still maintained a tight grip on her hair. She could hear his slow, deep pants close beside her. He was wounded, and like any wounded animal, she knew he was even more dangerous. The balding man was standing there, too, watching, but he seemed preoccupied. He kept looking into the woods like he expected something to appear there.

  She heard more vile words from the man who held her. He promised to give her a lasting lesson about who was in control if she did not get in the car. He promised to punish her if she kept fighting him. But she had no intention of giving in that easily. Not while she had breath left in her body.

  The man pulled her closer and sneered down into her face. “Come on, Mogue, show her that we mean business.”

  After another quick glance around at the woods, Mogue stepped forward. He reached out and closed his hand around the T-shirt strap that had fallen down her shoulder. With a single, violent jerk, he tore the strap in two. The T-shirt slipped down, exposing her bare flesh to the cold night air.

  Sidra sucked in her breath and flinched away from the rough groping of calloused fingers on her naked flesh. Reacting instinctively, she planted her boot where it counted. Praying for accurate aim, she also kicked the shin of the man holding her and caught him unaware as well. The man released her so suddenly that she staggered forward. The ground was uneven and deeply rutted. She fell. But not all the way. By now she had loosened the rope tied around her hands. She was able to right herself by balancing on one hand. She quickly pushed herself back up to a standing position.

  For a moment, as she faced the men, she stood wavering, uncertain and terrified as both of them slowly recovered. Then she heard herself warning them in a voice that she barely recognized as her own. “Keep your hands off me.” Even though she was seething with raw emotion, she was amazed at how cold and deliberate her voice sounded. It was almost like Law’s.

  The big man’s voice was a broken whisper from between rotted, clenched teeth. “You’ll be sorry for that.”

  Mogue Hobson was still bent over. He was still holding his crotch with both hands. “Yeah. We’re . . . going to make you . . . pay for that. . . ” His voice faded to a strained, drawn out groan.

  But Sidra didn’t see herself as they did, as a helpless victim. She backed away from both of the men, ready for the fight of her life.

  “Don’t just stand there,” the big man snarled. “Give me a hand with her.”

  As the big man made his move, Sidra snatched up a thick piece of branch lying on the side of the road. It was the only weapon available to her. She spun back around. As the man closed in on her, she straightened and swung with all her might.

  The blow took the man completely by surprise. She heard the branch connect solidly with the side of his head. It was a sickening, thudding sound that immediately made her wonder if she had killed him outright. She soon saw that wasn't the case. He staggered to the side, reeling drunkenly and dropping down on one knee. Howling in rage and in pain, he clapped his hand to his head and stared at his fingers as they came away wet with blood. Then he looked up, fixed Sidra with a murderous glare and uttered a string of profanities and oaths that sent a new surge of terror through her.

  Part of her mind registered the growls and the snarls right away. She was already on high alert as something materialized out of the deeper shadows of the woods. She saw the greyish, rotting flesh of the thin arms that were swinging wildly as they reached for her. Deads. More than one of them coming out of the woods.

  She had smelled them before they even reached her. The rank odor of rotting flesh was stronger in the damp night air. Before she could do anything, a dead was already on her. She could feel its foul, cold breath as it panted above her. She screamed as its tongue shot out and its mouth opened wide. She saw the decayed teeth, what was left of them, in the mouth cavity. The black, clotted blood from various wounds. The colorless eyes . . .

  She fought desperately, even knowing that she was facing the end. She knew it was the end. She would not escape this. Another shadow was standing over her, blocking out the stars. Another dead she knew. It was only a matter of time . . . Only a moment now and those horrible teeth would sink into her flesh and begin to eat her alive.

  She prayed, praying against all hope. That she would not suffer too long. That her mother and sister would not mourn her too badly . . .

  But it wasn’t a dead.

  She heard a savage oath. And then, “Dammit, Sidra, open your eyes. How do you expect to survive with them closed?”

  Law’s voice.

  She didn’t hear his words so much as she heard the ragged edge behind them. She knew he was afraid. For her.

  She opened her eyes as the dead was dragged off of her. She saw another dead fall. And another. She heard the squelching impact of knife blades. She knew there were too many of them for Law to
fight off. She hadn’t forgotten the two men. But Reeve was there, too. And so was Thayer. And Logan.

  Epilogue

  Sidra shaded her eyes from the sun as she stepped outside. It was just a tiny speck against a sky the color of a robin’s egg, but, as she watched, the plane got bigger. Everyone else had heard it, too, and they stepped out into the yard behind her with their faces upturned to a sight they had not seen in a very long time.

  The world had been brought to its knees by a microscopic pathogen, something that couldn’t even be seen with the naked eye. But the human spirit is indomitable. It has been that way from the beginning. People found ways to survive. And to communicate again. Word reached them that a rogue group of soldiers had taken over several military installations and that they were getting information out to the people about how to stay alive and what to expect from the future. And now this. Something else to give them hope.

  They’d also gotten word that there was a safe haven halfway across the state, but they were more than willing to make the journey. The chance of finding a place where people were working together to re-build again, where it was even rumored that a cure had been found, was something they could not ignore. It promised them all what they had hoped for, a refuge from the violence and the uncertainty and the isolation that had surrounded them for so long.

  It was worth the risk of finding that it was not all that people said it was. It was even worth the risk of finding out the facility didn’t exist at all.

  Sidra kept staring up, even after the plane was gone. Soon she saw papers fluttering down from the sky. They were drifting like butterflies riding the air currents. She ran into the yard and caught one of the papers in her hands.

  “What is it,” Law asked over her shoulder.

  The sun was bright on her face as she looked up at him and smiled. “Hope,” she replied feelingly. “Hope.”

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