The fear remains in their eyes.
Rachel follows their upside-down gazes, the trajectory of their wide-open, dilated pupils.
They’re watching the boy.
They’re scared of this boy. Or awed by him.
Mayhem reigns behind her, toward the Hummer—guns cracking, survivors yelling, a motor gunning—and yet she has a group of infected bodies in fearful thrall simply because she’s carrying a three-year-old boy.
“Rachel!” Joel yells, too far away.
Impulsively, Rachel jerks a few steps toward the bodies, and as one, they gasp from their throats, recoiling.
“Rachel! Now or never!”
And now she can hear Kayla calling her name, and Rachel emits a small cry. She turns heel and begins sprinting again, and the group of bodies hurls forward, galloping in pursuit. She whimpers in fear but keeps sprinting, and now they’re so close, they’re so close, too close, and without warning a head explodes behind and to her right, spraying her and throwing her against the side of a Toyota van, and she ricochets off, not breaking stride, remarkably not dropping the boy. Her right ear feels completely gone, numb, and she shakes her head, gasping.
“Kayla!” she screams. “I’m coming! I’m sorry!”
BOOM!
She’s knocked off her feet and goes to one knee, nearly flailing across the asphalt but catching herself with one hand on the side mirror of a crooked Jeep. She experiences a nightmare flash image of the boy rolling away from her across the asphalt, leaving her fatally vulnerable to these things. She clutches him tightly as she spins against the vehicle, her back to its front tire, and stares at her pursuers.
They’ve scrambled to a stop once more, meeting her gaze.
“No!” she shouts.
She sees the combination of anxiety and malevolence in their eyes, hears the throaty growls emanating from dysfunctional throats. She risks a glance toward the Hummer and truck and sees Joel there now, backlit, arriving and dumping Felicia into the truck bed. The commotion there has stopped.
Everything is centered right here.
Rachel finds her feet, lifting the boy reverently in her arms. The monstrous gazes are still watching the boy as if curious, and then shifting to her as if to size her up. Rachel looks into the eyes, one by one, wary, wincing, expecting the next explosion. There are five of them, and another approaching from thirty feet away—she catches the movement peripherally. Their movements are poised and fluid, their eyes black and unreflective, dead, dolls’ eyes.
“C’mon, Rachel …” Joel calls from behind her. “You’re almost there.”
Rachel pushes off the Jeep, walking backwards, and the monsters inch forward with her, dark and creaky with their bent-back limbs, bone scraping bone. Rachel registers the sound with more horror than disgust. Then one of them emits an involuntary dry belch, and it’s enough to make Rachel bolt. She turns tail and sprints for Joel, seeing him ahead of her, holding a tactical shotgun now, and she sees him as some towering savior. She rushes directly toward the headlights. At the last moment, she angles left toward the passenger side and as she clears the bumper, Joel sprays lead into the alien assault, and the gasps turn into throaty shrieks, and there are the muffled thumps of ruined bodies rolling on asphalt.
Rachel twists to watch the bodies fall. Joel is there, but Chloe, too, with her tranq rifle. Most of the bodies fall dead at Joel’s hands, but Chloe hits the final one, and it slides across the ground, coming to a rest at her feet. It convulses silently for a horrid moment, then finds its lungs and coughs wretchedly, expelling sap and splinters and blood, like a drowning man saved from a lake of mulch. Its scream is ragged and unending.
It takes a moment for Rachel to realize that she’s screaming, too.
The back door is already open, and a sniffling Kayla is already there, reaching down for her. Zoe is there out of nowhere, taking the boy, and Rachel, sobbing, jumps up into the Hummer, thighs burning like acid, and takes Kayla into her arms, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry …”
The vehicle jolts into motion, and Rachel hunkers down with Kayla, her beautiful brave girl, expecting a blast to finally bring an end to everything, but it doesn’t come.
“It’s okay,” Joel says, his voice clipped. “They’re staying away. They’re not coming any closer.”
Rachel can’t stop the helpless tears. She can’t stop. She convulses on the seat.
CHAPTER 22
The Hummer creeps south on Taft, approaching the dark and empty intersection at Drake. The Safeway looms on the right, barely visible. Before Prospect, Rachel had thought of Safeway as yet another possible stop for food and water, but now she can’t imagine stopping this vehicle again. Ever.
“Christ, I thought we were going to be smarter than that,” Joel murmurs, his hands shaking as he moves them from the wheel to the stock of his rifle, which he has placed next to him against the center console, smoking and spent. “Why aren’t we getting smarter?”
“It’s done,” Rachel whispers. “We’re still here.”
Kayla is curled tightly against her, her body tense but her eyes closed. Her pretty, innocent mouth is open and slack. Rachel thinks the girl is actually sleeping again—increasingly desperately to be unconscious.
Joel glances at her in the rear-view, his eyes hollowed-out with stress. From this angle, she can see a vibration at his chest, his dirty shirt stiff with blood and sweat.
“All that for a kid?” he says.
At first, Rachel thinks he’s referring to Kayla, but then she realizes he means the boy.
Philip.
Rachel closes her eyes and bends forward onto her knees, letting Kayla’s head fall softly against the seatback. Rachel is warding off the shakes herself, and now spots are appearing before her eyes, shooting off like sparks in all directions. She feels as if Joel’s trembling fear is fueling her own. He can’t exhibit that kind of fear. He’s the leader of this crew. He’s a policeman, for God’s sake.
“Shhh …” she whispers. “Yes, all that for a kid.”
Rachel composes herself and glances out at the black night, then searches the dash for a clock. There isn’t one, or it’s broken.
“What time is it?”
Joel brings his shaking wrist close to his face, then returns it to the wheel.
“Jesus, it’s after midnight.”
“That’s it? It feels like three or four in the morning.”
Since leaving the library, Rachel has felt unmoored in time, drifting through a nightmare reality in which darkness and light shift and contradict. She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the grittiness from her eyes.
Joel shakes his watch again. “Maybe it is,” he mutters.
Rachel watches his profile—haggard and drawn, mouth open, a few days’ worth of beard, residue of blood and sweat. In the rearview mirror, his eyes are wide and red-rimmed, moving back and forth from the road ahead of him to the view behind him.
“Something’s wrong back there,” he murmurs.
In all the commotion, she had practically forgotten about the truck behind them, following closely. Now she registers the shift of the headlights.
“What is it?” She twists to peer back at the truck. “What now?”
Her insides roll over with dread. She can’t handle something else right now.
“He’s swerving.”
The truck is indeed moving jerkily. She can’t see into the cab from this vantage point, but as she’s searching, someone leans on the horn—two long blasts.
“Shit.” Joel pulls over to the curb, glancing all around. “Here we go again.”
He waves an arm out his window for the truck to pull up alongside the Hummer, and immediately the truck barrels over there. Rachel watches for a threat out her window, squinting at the almost total darkness—rendered even darker by the absence of the truck’s headlights behind her. She sees only vague shapes, nothing moving. She tries to listen for any sound out there in the blackness, but she can hear nothing over the t
hrum of two motors—
—until the twins begin yelling into Joel’s open window, talking over each other loudly.
“Slow down, slow down, one at a time,” Joel says.
“It’s Felicia, she’s going crazy,” Zoe says.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s screaming.”
Rachel scoots over and searches the dark truck bed, but she can hardly see anything. The only illumination comes from the soft glow of the truck’s cab. She can barely see a gray roil of bodies.
“I’m going,” she tells Joel, still gripping Kayla’s limp hand. “We’re going.”
“Rachel…” Joel says, exasperation in his voice.
“Kayla and I will trade places with the twins.” She pats his thigh. “Behave yourself.”
Rachel nudges Kayla gently. “Come on, kid, we’re switching to the truck.”
Kayla stirs from a surprisingly deep sleep. “Huh?”
“Come with me, Kayla.”
The girl moves up, barely alert, instantly and groggily worried, makes a small sound in her throat.
“Are we clear?” Rachel asks Joel.
Joel sighs, scanning. “As far as I can see, yeah. Careful. No more than a minute, then we’re rolling again.” He calls down to the twins. “You two are riding with me, come on around.”
“Scott’s hurt,” Chloe calls from behind Zoe as they step warily out of the truck.
“What?”
Chloe raises a finger—hold on!—then races around the front of the Hummer, climbs up into the passenger seat.
As Rachel shuts the rear door, she hears Zoe say, “He got hurt at Prospect, I don’t know how, he won’t say. He doesn’t want to let on, but he’s hurt.”
“Did one of those things…?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel takes Kayla’s hand. “Come on, honey.”
As she takes the two or three steps to the truck, she watches the open surroundings, her heart thudding. She doesn’t see or hear anything. Yet. Just a darkened suburban corridor.
The truck’s passenger door is already open, and she scoots Kayla into the middle. “Buckle up.” Beyond the girl is Scott, looking pale and ghostly.
“Are you all right?”
Scott looks over at her, doesn’t answer. He moves his hand minutely, and she can see that he is injured along his side. There’s dark blood there.
“Jesus, Scott, what happened? We have bandages, we have to fix you up.”
“Not yet.”
“Then when?”
“When we’re safe.”
“We wait that long, you’ll be dead.”
“Bonnie didn’t stop for a Band-Aid.” Seemingly against his will, his voice quakes with an emotional perseverance, then he shakes his head as if embarrassed. The mention of Bonnie instantly gives his words a mortal weight.
Rachel swallows, watching him.
“I’ll drive,” she says. “Kayla will help you get bandaged up. Right, Kayla?”
“Okay.”
For a moment, it appears that Scott’s pride won’t allow him to move, but then Joel cuts in authoritatively, calling out from the Hummer.
“We’ve got company—ten o’clock!”
Sure enough, there are two bodies in the far distance, their bodies bent, their limbs crooked. They’re hanging back, though. Their position suggests that they’re gauging the human threat.
Scott maneuvers himself into the center of the cab with what appears to be great determination. He winces but doesn’t complain.
“Rachel…” Kayla whispers, one hand clutched to the aged dash. “Are they going to hurt us?”
“No.” Rachel watches the bodies for a moment. “We’re all right.”
Then she swings her magnum to the north, through the broken back window, beyond the truck, adding her flashlight’s cone of illumination to the muted crimson of the brake lights. There’s a body back there, much closer, and it’s watching her.
Oh shit.
Rachel freezes.
It’s the body of a man, skinny and bony, naked. The upside-down head swivels like that of a huge praying mantis. The image is reinforced by the green stains all over its body. It seems to have crawled through a pool of fresh, masticated mulch. The limbs twitch, scraped up and knocked out of joint. Its mouth is wide open around a silent gasp, and the teeth appear broken and battered.
From the truck bed, a hand touches Rachel’s arm, and a spike of fear hammers her spine like a sledge.
It’s Felicia, in shadow. Rachel can see the whites of her eyes. Felicia is staring at the man, too. It’s at that moment that Rachel understands that the man isn’t staring at her, but rather at Felicia. Her hand is warm on top of hers—calming.
“What is it?” Joel calls from the Hummer. “Let’s go!”
“Shhh! Wait! It’s okay.”
Rachel can see the bodies in the truck bed more clearly, the two other women and the boy. They are serene—even the boy. The women are watching over the tailgate, observing the naked corpse as it judders and sways. Is it watching them, too? The boy is nestled in the corner, against the left side of the truck bed. The tracks of tears glisten down his face in meandering paths. His eyes are flooded with moisture, but they are watching Rachel, recognizing her. Through his mouth, he inhales and exhales in a shaky rhythm.
Felicia’s eyes, also moist, are locked on the body behind them.
“What happened?” Rachel whispers, but Felicia doesn’t hear her. “Are you all right?”
“I can really feel it now,” Felicia whispers.
“Feel what?”
“Their fear.” She isn’t moving, still watching the boy.
“What do you mean?”
“They know what we’re up to.”
“We don’t even know what we’re up to.”
“Oh …” Felicia whispers. “… yes we do.”
The body behind the truck is whining. The sound comes raw from the ragged throat, but it’s an uncertain, warbling whine. The body takes two shambling steps closer—a great, wounded insect—and then it begins to cough-sneeze through its gaping mouth, as if it’s choking on something wet. A raspy gargle.
And then …
Even in the red glow of the brake lights, Rachel sees the spark of the light. It extinguishes itself with a pop, and the body crumples to the ground, lifeless. Felicia’s body relaxes suddenly, too, but she remains upright. Barely. She braces herself against the gate, the muscles of her arm straining.
“Holy—” Rachel says. “Did you see that?” She searches for someone, another witness, to what she beheld, but Kayla is buried against her side, shaking her head minutely, and Scott is dealing with his own issues.
Felicia did that—she’s sure. She did it from a distance. She noticed Felicia visibly crumple at the precise moment it happened. How? How did she do that? A tingle of amazement raises goosebumps on her flesh.
In the truck bed, Felicia drops to the floorboards, almost in slow motion.
Joel is still barking. “Let’s go, goddammit!”
Rachel pulls at some of the cardboard in the rear window, tearing it away. She pushes herself up, angling her face into the gap. “Are you all right?”
Felicia looks up at her with drowsy eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
And Rachel sees something in those eyes, there in the deep dark. There’s a red glow that remains in Felicia, and it causes Rachel’s breath to catch. She looks deeper into Felicia’s eyes and can’t help but see the barely-there glow as crimson residue of the poor woman’s ordeal. Whatever has happened is because of that inner glow—the remains of the alien infestation of her skull. If she wasn’t sure before that Felicia is the key to their continued survival, she is now.
Rachel drops back into her seat, stunned.
“We’re okay,” she says, mashing the clutch and grinding into first gear.
She can’t see Joel in the Hummer’s driver’s seat, ahead and to her right, but she senses his glare. He pulls out in front of
her, and she follows haltingly, Kayla jerking on the bench. In her peripheral vision, Scott is still and almost contemplative. Kayla watches him with concern.
In front of her, Joel swerves carefully around a small wreck directly in front of the darkened Safeway, and Rachel follows his path precisely, sticking close to his bumper.
“Kayla, I want you to do something for me. For Scott.”
Kayla turns to her and shows Rachel her hands, which are slick with blood. “He’s hurt.”
“I know, so I want you to talk to Felicia through this window and ask her for bandages.” She reaches back and tears more of the cardboard away. “Felicia?” she calls hopefully, knowing that if the young woman is mobile again so quickly after what happened with the old man, then that can only be good news for the survivors.
Kayla scrambles to her knees on the bench, facing backward into the night. Her small right hand takes hold of Rachel’s shoulder, and Rachel can feel a tremble there.
“Felicia?” Kayla repeats out the window, softer.
“Hold on, girl,” Rachel says, taking a slow arc around an abandoned minivan.
At that moment, Felicia’s face appears ghostly in the rearview mirror. Rachel can no longer see the redness inside her eyes, but the exhaustion is clear. Something has been taken from her again—but not as much. She’s not devastated, as she was when she turned the earlier bodies back to humanity.
Kayla is energized now by her task. She speaks loudly and clearly.
“We need bandages for Scott. He got hurt. Medicine, too.”
As Felicia’s face fades from view, Rachel bends briefly to Scott’s side to investigate the extent of his wound. He nods at her, ghostly pale, and she lifts his shirt. Blood is slippery and glistening against his flesh, and after a few seconds she spots a ravaged entrance hole—enough to make her stifle a gasp. Whatever pierced his flesh, bone fragment or other shrapnel, it left a significant injury. Blood squirts over her knuckles.
Blood Dawn (Blood Trilogy Book 3) Page 24
