It was only Greerson’s sickening protection that’d spared her, thus far.
The urge to vomit was nearly overwhelming, but Lilianna had nothing left. Instead, she dropped to a knee, taking cover at the far corner of the tree-shadowed restaurant.
Further north, the access road curved away into Tolkienesque forest like some eldritch, primeval force. Ambient moonlight fell into the yard behind them, but beyond was only thickening gloom.
And somewhere off in the middle distance, a man howled like a wolf.
*
THEY LIT OUT from the old restaurant, jogging hands-together down the road and turning north-east. For all her complaints, Aurora’s fitness was good, and half-a-mile down the road they both had reason for shortness of breath.
Out in the open, they made easy targets, but the undergrowth transforming the semi-rural outskirts was so dense it cut into their pace, and left obvious trace of their passage for Greerson and his hunters to follow.
Fallen street signs at the intersection were no help.
Every view offered a confounding vista of head-high bracken, woods, growth, and nothing else in the near-to-black conditions. A single SUV sat rusting on blown tires parked across the dogleg, and Lilianna led them to it while casting eyes into the forest of ruin, and then, like Aurora, back up the street behind them.
The dog howl sounded faintly again.
“It could be a distraction,” Lilianna whispered.
She opened one of the car doors, moving quietly, but brisk as she scanned the picked-clean interior and then back to the open door, smashing the glass in the window on the second try and resting the Star model B handgun on the roof.
“Get these ties off,” Lila whispered. “Hurry.”
She made haste by example, cutting herself on the jagged window before the job was done sawing through the electrician’s tape. She then retrieved the pistol and checked the magazine while Aurora did a much more dainty job of freeing herself.
Lila’s gun only held three more bullets.
She cursed softly. Free, Aurora threw a worried look, but Lila shook her head.
“Come on.”
She led them along the street out of view of the immediate intersection and then into the dense scenery, threading carefully and motioning, hands blessedly free, to Aurora on her tail to go gently so they minimized the disruption. She also remembered Greerson’s night vision goggles, and a deeper level of chill went through her. Sour at herself then, Lilianna huffed like a psychopath, half-muttering to herself as she refastened the grip on her pistol and resumed her double-handed grip as she advanced, stalking sideways into the darkness nearly totally blind.
She only stumbled twice. The quality of the nightfallen soundscape changed as they went deeper, a hyperventilation of minutes tumbling past. Lila sniffed, almost able to taste the nearby running water, lost somewhere in the dark. Then she stumbled out onto another road.
A huge wooden sign announced a recreation area and the Scioto River for tourists never to return. The landscape had erupted with just as much violence down along the banks of the Scioto. A stand of already well-established trees framed a view further into the gloom against which they could pick out the steel-framed details of a road bridge in the night.
“We should get across the river,” Lila said.
“The bridge?” Aurora whispered.
“No, it’s a chokepoint.”
Lila craned her neck for any audible trace of pursuit. The night was frustratingly, deceptively calm.
She motioned ‘Rora to follow rather than risk speech again. Enough times hiding out in the woods in days of yore, she knew how far even a little misguided talk carried. As a younger kid, Lucas nearly got them killed or robbed several times. But the thought of her little brother now was as sharp as any blade. His big sister winced, and willed the images away, leading them towards the river and scurrying into the shadowy embrace of the big trees swaying in the wind.
Among those boles, the grass grew to conceal an old playground. Lilianna led them straight into collision with a submerged picnic table and chairs, all bolted together and completely hidden, trap-like, beneath the confusing grass. The two women circled the site, feeling the way with their hands. The metal handholds of an old merry-go-round rose out of the rampant grass like ghosts. Beyond them, a crushed gravel path let the pair continue, crouched and concealed, along to the next road headed for the river crossing.
As they advanced, the huge gray metal struts came into stark definition.
The wolf call now came from behind them. And the moment the fugitives hurried forward into deeper cover, a doglike call of a different character sounded off to their right.
Lilianna bit back a cuss word, her furrowed intent alone communicating their danger to Aurora as the hunters narrowed in on their location – cutting them off at the bridge exactly as Lilianna’d feared.
So she stopped. Aurora joined her, crouched. The gun was heavy in Lila’s hand and she sniffled as if that was enough to keep herself focused. Stiff and alert, she traced the wind, a scattering of leaves and light debris flitting along the riverside track. She clutched Aurora’s wrist and led them into the cover of the road’s edge. The howl came again, perhaps back along the road they’d left, and the answering howl echoed back from the direction of the bridge distorted by the rising breeze.
“COME ON OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!”
The bullhorn sounded shockingly close.
Lila froze, her instinct to burrow into the earth.
Instead, she stood and whirled the gun around towards Greerson’s amplified voice and squeezed off all three remaining bullets.
Men’s shouts rang out, and Lila tucked the spent pistol into the back of her jeans and grabbed Aurora’s hand to lead them running back the other way along the track before plunging down into the foliage at the river’s edge and not letting up until they stumbled over the moss-congealed bank and the water took them at once up to their chins.
“Lila! No!”
Lilianna slapped her hand across Aurora’s mouth.
“We swim,” she said.
Aurora got it. Nodded – terrified in the soaking black, but far less afraid of a river crossing at night than the prospect of staying behind.
Without another word, Lila let herself sink into the water’s embrace, unwilling and unable to remove her sneakers anyway as she tried to quietly swim away from the river’s edge.
Holding her breath, she angled further from the direction of Greerson’s bullhorn, the useless pistol digging into the small of her back. Aurora’s hand clutched her leg as if she might catch a ride, and before she instinctively fought her off, Lila gave another tired, not very friendly look at her companion and saw something in Aurora’s gaze wither another notch under such stern regard.
Aurora sank deeper into the water, and then also started to paddle. Lilianna turned to put some effort into it, for now not even daring gauge the distance ahead.
*
LILIANNA DRAGGED HERSELF up onto the overgrown brick pedestrian walkway and tiredly offered Aurora a hand to do the same. Then it was enough to roll free, crawling into the hoped-for shelter of a pair of bench tables sitting unaffected in the old paved picnic spot, a weed-riddled ridgeline and a carpark barely glimpsed higher up the embankment.
Water soaked their clothes and their spirits too. For a long time, breathing, recovering their strength, it seemed impossible to believe swimming the river might be their savior. One side of Lilianna’s face ached from an earlier punch to the head. Her ribs were the same. She sat up with a mighty effort, staring down blankly at the wet girl spent beside her.
“We have to keep moving,” she said quietly.
Aurora rolled onto her back.
“But we made it.”
Lilianna scoffed a laugh without any humor.
“No,” she said. “I doubt it. It doesn’t matter. I have to get to the sanctuary zone.”
Aurora groaned and turned about until she could get to her k
nees and stand. Glad for it, Lila stood too.
“If we can get in among suburban houses, they’ll never find us,” Aurora said.
“I don’t think they’d trust it to that.”
Lila wondered if she was too paranoid to think they might have electronic trackers. Greerson was a coward and unlikely to take risks without precautions. But maybe such technology no longer existed. She found herself scouring eyes over Aurora’s bedraggled clothes. They’d had their jackets and outer layer taken from them, and now, clad in jeans, Lila in her torn polo shirt and Aurora in just a singlet, the cold really bit into their wet flesh.
“We have to keep moving,” Lila hissed and her breath plumed. She motioned to herself. “Check me over. Look for anything that might be a bug.”
“A bug?”
“Yeah?”
“From the river?”
“No,” Lila scowled. “Like a tracking device.”
Aurora blinked, but did as asked. Lila felt numb fingers tracking over her, and never felt more remote and alone and despondent, wet-haired and freezing cold and on the edge of failure. She bit her lip and fought off a cough, clear blue eyes furrowed to pierce the scenery and the darkness beyond the slope that defied her control.
Brick steps ascended to the parking lot for the riverside reserve. A band shell slumped amid more grass laying claim to the road and other unsurfaced areas. A pair of information booths, a line of rusting Winnebagos, a brick-and-concrete bathroom block, and more asphalt studded with rusty seedlings mounted towards a major roadway, the inert neon sign of a motel across the way, and beyond that, the dark tunnel of a smaller road cutting off into an arcade of heavy trees.
It seemed best to avoid the major roads – and the moment Lila had that thought, the sound of a motor carried distantly back from the direction of the bridge beyond their line of sight. No electric lights appeared, but panic arose in their stead, and Lila motioned her intent, clutching Aurora’s hand as they ran towards the shadowy, tree-choked avenue.
Forest smells filled the air at once as they plunged into the arboreal gloom. Moving was better than sitting still, but the cold had a firm grip on both of them. Aurora lagged by her side, and Lilianna wasn’t sure they could keep moving even if their lives depended on it.
She just couldn’t stop shivering. They were a good distance from the motel before the reality sank in on her.
“We’ve got to get warm,” she said.
A quarter-mile from the back of the motel, it was open fields to the east and more forest to the west, left and right of the tree-lined arcade they traveled. Just ahead, the turn of a driveway appeared with a letterbox and jaunty yellow sign, HENDERSON, indicating sanctuary.
“House up here,” Lila said.
“This is farmland,” Aurora said. “Could be a ways.”
“We need blankets,” Lila said. “Warmer clothes.”
“Yes.”
Aurora nodded, shivering and defeated and yet moving ahead with her arms wrapped around herself in misery. Lila could only acknowledge the other girl’s efforts as she faced off against her own near-fatal inertia, thoughts numb, and she reoriented her exhausted focus on the task at hand. She had the gun again – for threat value, if nothing else. Now they were north of the river, Greerson’s men weren’t the only threats.
The chance for Furies, for instance.
Lila shivered bodily, and threw that off too. Advancing at a tactical pace, Aurora followed her down the curving drive, more trees either side, dark firs with their limbs broken and laid before them like some kind of old-fashioned welcome.
Moonlight caught on glass from the slatted mechanical windows along the back of a metal shed. Several big pieces of farm machinery manifested out of the gray details. The women veered towards the building, leaving the driveway to approach the shed, then across from it another concrete-walled structure, and beyond it all a big open blackened patch from the burned remains of the old house. Only a knee-high maze of brick walls remained, the interior little more than the occasional burnt strut reaching out of the ashes.
The yard was thick with grass, yellowed by day, turned by night into a gently undulating carpet more like something from the ocean floor as they navigated through the swaying mass, the wind driving it conspiring against Lilianna’s hopes for the night.
A steel door darkened the back wall of the concrete shed. The latch rattled, but the bolt was soldered shut against the join, effectively sealing it. Lilianna traced her hand along the door as they circled the building. Two vehicle hulks swam into view. The gravel around the sheds suspended the sea life. Their wet shoes crunched on the tiny stones.
“There’s no house,” Lila said. “Fuck.”
The metal work shed occupied her view. Lila kept her hand against the solidity of the bigger, concrete-walled building as if it might desert her and leave her to fall. It was Aurora whose urgent curiosity drove them along the front of the building.
The concrete shelter’s face had a simple office door. The opposite shed’s front door hung agape, the lock broken by efforts past. There wasn’t much of a moon, but ambient light filled the open gravel yard, daunting Lilianna as she led them in a quick dash to the smaller shed and inside.
“We need blankets, anything,” she said. “Keep an eye out for weapons.”
“They have guns, Lila.”
“Yeah,” Lilianna agreed. “I had one too.”
Further conversation was stilled by the reality of the shed. It was more than picked clean, containing nothing except a huge wooden bench. Lila retrieved a length of oil-stained bedsheet stuffed into the corner near the door and handed it to her friend.
“Here.”
The moonlight showed the extent of Lila’s bruises, reflected in Aurora’s concerned eyes. The whole side of her face had swollen and turned blue, intruding on her sight from that eye. But Lilianna fended off her friend’s hand, and Aurora bound the filthy sheet around herself. Lilianna then also rejected her friend’s offer of shelter within the meager fabric.
“Looks cleared out,” Lila said instead.
“Yeah.”
Lila cast eyes back to the concrete building and saw the now familiar graffiti across and over the buckled wooden door.
“Hastur,” she said.
“I saw that before.”
“Someone’s marked their territory,” Lila said.
Each stared at it wordlessly. Finally, Lilianna nudged her friend.
“Looks like a work shed or garage,” she said. “We’ll check that, then we clear out of here too. We’re still . . . in their territory, you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go.”
*
THE OFFICE DOOR opened into a small rest area and two framed doorways without doors. Left went into the main work space. It was impenetrably dark. The faintest of discoloration in the congealed black tones marked a huge tarpaulin over the carcass of some unrestored wreck.
Lilianna checked over the walls and furnishings, everything frighteningly bare, then ventured through the other door, a compact passage with more doors ahead.
“Lila.”
Aurora stopped her with a hand. When Lilianna turned, Aurora again offered the oily sheet she only half-wore.
“Here,” she said.
It was too late to dry their hair, but Aurora started rubbing Lila down as vigorously as she could. The numbness burnt. Her friend’s efforts seemed pointless until Lilianna felt life throb back into her arms. It was hard to resist the shivering, which she solved by taking the sheet and doing the same for Aurora.
“We’re in a tough spot,” she said almost silently.
“I’m so sorry.”
Lila gave the other woman a startled look.
“What the hell do you have to be sorry for?”
“I was such a bitch to you.”
Lila stared at her unmoving for a long second, not quite parsing the reference to a lifetime ago.
“In the Enclave?”
“The Bastion,” Aurora said. “Yes. I was threatened, when you turned up. I always . . . always had a thing for Montana. And now she’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“And you saved my life,” Aurora said.
“If you want to put it that way. . . .”
“You and your father,” the girl said. “I knew it, that, compared to you, I wasn’t good enough, and now here we are . . . and now we know that’s true.”
Lilianna jerked her head back in surprise a second time.
Then she slapped her friend across the face.
“Don’t you dare talk about yourself that way.”
Aurora stared back at her in shock. Lilianna instantly tumbled back into the memory of a near-identical scene, but it was her father, Tom, delivering the slap – and her the recipient. It’d angered her for so long, that now it was equally shocking to her to feel that fury dissipate completely as she at last understood her father’s desperation.
“There’s no time for you to be anything but what you need to be to survive,” Lilianna hissed and did it louder than she wished. “Do you understand?”
Aurora sniffled once, then nodded stiffly.
“We have to survive,” Lila said. “We have to live.”
A soft scraping noise sounded through the thin passageway wall.
Lilianna held her tongue, life lesson aborted to stare unfocused and horrified as the noise ceased, as if daring them to believe it never was.
The women’s met eyes. Aurora mouthed, “What the fuck was that?”
Something thumped into the wall on the other side beside her and Lila jumped.
It was her turn for silent whispering.
“Fury,” she barely breathed.
They backed out of the corridor as the danger on the other side of the wall sounded again. Aurora and Lilianna retreated to the small foyer room as the creature came again – and the fibers of thin wall sheeting gave a sharp crackle.
After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution Page 12
