He’d already shown he didn’t want Lila dead. That knowledge wasn’t much comfort.
She had no plan, but she couldn’t keep running for much longer. Her only option lay with the nearest buildings.
She ran through an entrance of timber poles, sobbing in pain only to stop herself shrieking, propelling herself along on the wooden supports and catching sight of a well-tended stand of fruit trees, old ticket booths repurposed into earthen beds, and beyond them a series of service buildings fronted with roller doors – one of which stood open.
Lila headed for it, the grainy details resolving as she went. A mud-splattered SUV with a handmade wooden roof rack hunkered down in the shadows beyond the roller door. Wicker baskets were mounted on its rear door.
By the time Lila reached it, she saw the children’s bicycles and low work benches covered in dirt and garden tools sharing space with the dingy-colored four-wheel drive.
“I said to stop!”
Lilianna gave another a cursory look over one shoulder as she entered the shed. There was nothing to stop Hardy following, impotent pistol in hand, and for Lila it became a foot race she couldn’t win as she slid and thumped along the side of the parked truck, saw another door at the back of the shed, then slipped and fell on all the spilled soil.
Hardy bustled in, making the mistake of holstering his gun to reach free hands out to grab her. But Lilianna twisted about, kicking in the front of Hardy’s knee so that the kneecap gave way with a sickening snap.
Hardy screamed in panic and rage, and then he finally went for the gun as Lila expected. The hunter fell on his ass, one leg bent at a wrong angle, and fresh rain pelted the metal roof overhead with a roar. Lilianna threw herself atop Hardy with both hands going for his gun. Hardy drew the weapon, only for her to slap it away.
The dull metal thud of the pistol on dirty concrete was echoed by the rear door cracking open.
A fair-featured woman in an orange headscarf stared at the pair of them as Lila and Hardy floundered like mud wrestlers on the filthy floor.
Hardy sensed Lila going for his knife, and he abandoned defense to instead twist away from her to crawl across the wet potting mix to his discarded gun. And Lilianna clawed after him, grabbing hold of his belt and knocking over one of the wooden benches which tipped more soil and scattered tools around them.
Despite his broken knee, Hardy backhanded Lila across her aching jaw. She saw stars for a moment, and came back from the darkness to find the stranger in the doorway still watching as Hardy leapfrogged the final distance to grab his gun’s handle.
Lilianna clutched the trowel without really thinking about it.
She dived after Hardy in desperation and stabbed him in the middle of the back.
Hardy screamed, and then screamed some more – with Lilianna pinning Hardy’s broken leg beneath her – and then she stabbed the gardening spade into the back of her abductor’s head as hard as she could.
It was good quality steel and didn’t bend.
The first blow drove Hardy’s face into sharp contact with the floor, but he had little time to register it. Second and subsequent strikes cleaved through his skull and directly into his brainstem, and Lilianna was a thorough young woman. Before that tenuous strength finally deserted her, Lila made sure he would never threaten anyone again.
*
LILIANNA LAY DISORIENTED on the muddy floor and barely registered people emerging through the warehouse door. The woman in the head wrap lead the way, followed by a cautious, skinny teenager in a black cap, a younger black boy, and two even younger children. The youngest – a little dark-haired girl – carried a tattered blue Carebear, holding it against her chest and peering down at Lilianna between its frayed ears. Standing back a safe distance, the teenage girl whispered to herself, words lost to the storm assault. Her eyes flicked back and away from where Hardy lay dead.
It felt like forever before Lila could move, and even then, she did so in agony. The tall woman – aged in her late 20s, and clearly not all of the children’s mother if she was mother to any of them at all – bent to help Lilianna stand, and found herself instead brushed off.
“I could’ve done with your help earlier,” Lila said.
The woman said nothing. She and the children swapped apprehensive looks.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said helplessly. “I’m . . . You can call me Sophie.”
“Sophie.”
Lila repeated it, dulled. She still hadn’t made it fully upright, and she took stock for a long moment, listening to the wind shriek. Finally, Lilianna stood on shaky legs, her feet slippery in their muddy shoes. Hail started hitting the shed. Lilianna eyed the SUV and the baskets and the spilled gardening equipment and then around to the young woman again.
Sophie concealed her sun-ripened features with the scarf she wore like a disguise, protecting her against the grit whipping in at them through the open roller door. The woman glanced out at the hurricane winds, then gestured to gather the youngest three children.
“I’m sorry,” the woman shouted. “I have to think about the children first.”
The older boy tugged her sleeve, and for the first time, Lilianna noticed the child was armed with a small tomahawk. He pointed out towards the roller doors, the enemy outside not so easily defeated. Uncontrolled tremors coursing through Lila as she fought off the cold and the shock.
“Mama!” the girl with the teddy bear cried.
Lila turned tired eyes back to the shed entrance to see where the girl pointed.
A skeletal figure stood at the front of the SUV caked in mud and grime.
And it held a gun.
Denny Greerson lifted the AR15 on Lilianna and stared at her with barely-suppressed rage.
*
DISORIENTATION NOW COMPLETE, Lilianna stared back at Greerson as if expecting him to lurch forward with a Fury’s madness to tear and bite. Resurrection was the only thing that made any sense to her, except then Greerson flicked the safety off his rifle and took a single step, blue eyes the only flash of color on his mud-masked face.
The Chief’s hair was plastered to his skull, and he’d abandoned the heavier gear and body armor as well as one sleeve sometime since Lilianna saw him last, vanished into the sand mine and presumed dead. The wind tore at his wet clothes, plastering them to a skeletal frame and nearly plucking him backwards as the scenery behind them slowly tore itself apart under the storm’s assault.
“You!” Greerson bawled at Lilianna.
Sophie and the children froze, headed for the door. The frail teenage girl was closest to him, and Greerson turned the gunsight her way.
“Don’t you fuckin’ move!”
Just as fast, Greerson put his focus back on Lilianna, the young woman drunk with fatigue, off-balance, unable to find Hardy’s forgotten gun until too late – long enough for the Safety Chief to bark a harsh tutting noise. He switched the assault rifle back on her.
“You!”
Greerson’s wrath focused on the teenage girl with a frightening intensity for such a battered man. His scrawny-strong frame caked in mud and grime and blood somehow only made him look more dangerous, and he had the attitude to back it. He flicked the gun barrel between the girl and Lilianna.
“Bring her here,” he ordered.
“Siri! No!” Sophie yelled.
The teenager stood rooted to the spot as if in the middle of a seizure. Greerson’s hot flashing eyes lit upon the older woman.
“You, then!” he called. “Do it now!”
Sophie looked to Lilianna in terror. The girl Siri remained frozen, while the youngest of the two little boys buried his face into Sophie’s thick skirt. Such aberrant trauma rent Lilianna’s heart, driving her to take a step towards the gunman, lifting her hand to halt Sophie.
“No!” Greerson bawled.
The tip of his tongue appeared, shockingly bright against his dark face. The storm had shredded all humanity from his visage. He turned the gun on the other woman again and Lilianna stopped
. She looked back and across at the children as Greerson spoke again.
“You, I said,” he ordered Sophie. “Bring her! Slow!”
The single look showed he still feared Tom Vanicek’s unpredictable daughter, and in that moment, Lila knew it was for good reason. Her low growl was too weak to escape her chest, but the spirit that drove it burnt brighter.
She took another step toward Greerson as an enormous rending, crushing, tearing noise outside deafened them all, sending the children running in panic despite where Sophie stood, hands frozen as if still holding the little boy in her arms.
Greerson tracked the children with his rifle. But while the others fled, the little boy with the tomahawk gave a fierce yell and charged him.
The gunman didn’t hesitate. A single burst cut the boy to bits and the child slapped down hard upon the shed floor with his feet flying out from beneath him.
Lilianna roared and rushed at Greerson.
The Chief turned the rifle back too late, and hesitated anyway, desire and anger and everything creating a split second’s hesitation and letting her grab the hot barrel of the gun. Lilianna’s yell turned into a piercing shriek and she snagged her fingers into Greerson’s t-shirt and pushed into him with all of her might.
And it wasn’t enough.
Greerson and Lilianna wrestled upright, the gun no immediate use, and Lila without the strength to do much more than twist and curse trying to force him out of the shed. The shrieking winds hit some kind of crescendo and a wave of pressure rendered everything silent, capturing their fatal combat as Lilianna sought to drive the Safety Chief back past the shelter of the steel shed’s frame and Denny Greerson fighting her every inch of the way.
Images of the slaughtered little boy added to the camera roll of all her recent tragedies and Lila couldn’t help the noiseless tears which followed her empty lungs. Greerson snarled soundlessly, his face pressed up against hers, the rifle between them, his knee driving into her thighs. The wind tore at them both.
Lilianna closed her eyes in one final effort to hurl he and her together into the sucking vortex as it smashed through the old zoo and aquarium and took everything with it. Greerson’s eyes widened in panic as Lila elbowed him in the face, grabbed him again and pushed.
Sophie charged into her from behind, her own feral scream unheard as she lent her rage to Lilianna’s efforts, pulling them both down and into the side of the open roller door as the tornado sucked the air from Greerson’s lungs and his eyes rolled around and his sneaker-clad feet lifted into the air – and just like that, the Chief went spinning and flying up and away as the pressure passed and Lila perhaps imagined rather than heard Greerson yell as he disappeared.
Sophie clutched Lilianna from behind and dragged them deeper into sanctuary behind the lee of the shed wall as shrapnel rained down across from them and the SUV bucked and leaped as if taking gunfire and then the storm smashed through beyond and outside from them in the one incoherent roar.
***
Cont’d in
After the Apocalypse: Revolution
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After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution Page 24
