Without any other explanation, he left. When she was sure he was gone, Jenn leaned toward the others and whispered, “What do we do? If the Black Captain finds out about me…” She swallowed loudly, unable to go on.
“We don’t do anything,” Stu said. “I don’t know what his game is, but I get the feeling he’s looking for a reason to turn us over to the Corsairs. We should just go with the flow, act nice and hope for the best.”
“Maybe Jenn should look for a sign,” Mike suggested. “I’d prefer to put my hope in her rather than in him.”
Stu’s initial gut-reaction was to wave away the idea, until he realized Mike was right: it was foolish to trust Gunner. “Okay,” he said, giving his permission. He looked over at Jenn; she seemed so small and young—and taken back at the suggestion.
“You guys know I can’t just make the future come to me,” she said, defensively. She hated being put on the spot like this. The pressure to “see” something made her worry that she was just throwing out guesses or seeing false signs. Signs had to come to her. And in this case, they didn’t. She stared into the fire and got nothing. She went outside into the cold night to gaze up at the stars and got nothing. She even studied the shadows of the nearby trees to see if they spoke to her. She got nothing.
“Maybe I’ll see something in a dream,” she told the two when she got back inside. Unfortunately, she slept uneasily and her dreams were so fragmented that she could only remember snatches of them: trees, the dark pipe closing on her, light rimming the end of the pipe in gold, and leaves falling. Five minutes after waking up, she could only remember the gold circle at the end of the pipe. It made her wonder how anyone could pour cement with such circular perfection.
She was still picturing the pipe when Gunner stomped inside bringing with him delicate fingers of chilled air which crept around them, making Jenn shiver. He also brought with him six small eggs and four partridges. Without asking, he shoved Mike away from the fire and began stripping the birds.
Even with only one hand, he made quick work of the carcasses. As he worked, he tossed a few of the small bones Jenn’s way. “Bones for rolling,” he said, with a wink. “You’re a witch, aren’t you? You see signs, right?”
He’d been eavesdropping on them the night before. None of them felt the least bit of surprise. “When they present themselves,” she replied, shortly.
As always, he scoffed at her answer. “If you’re going to put your trust in signs, you might as well go all in.” He tossed another bone in front of her. She didn’t touch it. She was not nearly so averse to touching his cooking. He made thin omelets that were deliciously gamey but small, and Mike’s stomach growled after he had finished his.
“I’m with you there,” Gunner told him. “I know where there are some apple trees. It’s not meat but it’s better than nothing.”
They stepped out into a bright cold morning. Jenn felt the chill of it seep deep. Mike held out his hand, a gentle plume of winter breath coming out of his open mouth. It hung in front of him for just a second before dissipating. It hadn’t blown away, which was strange since the branches overhead were swaying as if there were ghosts dancing in the trees. It had to be ghosts because there was no wind.
“What is it?” Mike asked.
Her only answer was to shush him. There was a sign in her presence and she was missing it. She spun in a circle and the high branches danced. They were barren of leaves and looked like spindly bones. Like thin finger bones. “Or chicken bones,” she whispered to herself. “I’ll be right back.” She spun and ran back inside the little house to the fireplace where she found a neat little stack of bones. They had been stripped.
Feeling embarrassed, she grabbed them, stuffed them in her coat pocket and hurried out of the house, only to run smack into Gunner. She could see partially under his mask; the flesh of his throat looked like dripping melted cheese.
“Gonna roll them bones, aren’t you?” he asked, wheezing and laughing. “Go ahead. I can wait.”
“No. Not with you watching. Or anyone. I’ll do it later.”
This earned her another laugh and a shrug. Just like the day before, he began hiking at an exhausting pace. By ten, Mike was dizzy from the pain. Gunner sneered, calling him a “delicate boy.”
Furious, Jenn called a halt and helped Mike remove his shirt, so she could inspect the injury. There was a wide purple and blue band across the left side of his chest. She gasped when she saw it, while Stu said, “Hmmm.”
“Hold on,” Gunner said. “Supposedly, the Girl Doctor was training you. What did she tell you to do in this situation?”
He was testing her. “We never talked about it,” Jenn admitted.
A shrug told her she had passed. “If you had, she would’ve told you there’s not much you can do except pop some pills.” He reached under his cloak and produced a bottle of large white pills. He shook out three into the crook of his left arm, and when Mike hesitated, he swallowed them himself. “Come on, doctor’s orders,” he said, and shook out three more.
Mike swallowed them and then stood there waiting to see if he would start frothing at the mouth.
“They aren’t poison, boy.” With that he turned and marched on. They ate a bellyful of apples an hour later and while Stu and Gunner were filling a pack with more of them, Jenn went off by herself and rolled the bones. She had no idea what she was doing. She didn’t know how many to use or if she was supposed to roll them like dice or put them in a teacup and plop it down.
And she definitely didn’t know how to read them. Was there an art to it? A science? A code that could be looked up in a book?
Feeling a little silly, she picked out five bones at random and dropped them in the dirt. Next, she turned her head this way and that like an inquisitive dog, trying to see a pattern or a shape or a secret message. They were just bones: two tiny neck bones, what might have been a wing bone, and two very small “drumsticks.”
They had fallen into what could only be described as a soft pentagon shape. “More of a circle, really.”
“Do you see something?” Mike asked in a soft whisper.
Perhaps because she hadn’t, she was suddenly embarrassed. She grabbed the bones and stuck them back in her pocket. Even though he was pale, with scratches on his forehead and a whopping big bruise on one cheek, he was still so handsome that Jenn felt inadequate and wished she could be something more for him. Something special. But the bones weren’t showing her their secrets.
“No, nothing. I probably did it wrong.”
“Then try again. I bet this sort of thing takes practice. I’ll keep guard over you.” The only thing he had to guard anyone with was a sturdy branch. “Go on. I trust you.”
She thought those simple words were one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to her and she couldn’t help the smile she wore when she spilled the bones back into the dirt. Again, she couldn’t read them. They spilled into almost the same shape as before, except one of the bones was a few inches away from the rest, pointing at Mike.
“No,” she whispered, “That’s a stick.” She plucked it out and looked again. “Does that look like a circle to you?” she asked Mike.
“I think so. What’s it mean?”
By itself it meant nothing, but with the shards of her dream and the wind cavorting around her, high in the trees, she knew there was something trying to speak to her. “I think it means we’re on the right track. We’re going back to Bainbridge. We’re going full circle.”
Chapter 34
Mark Leney simply could not understand how he came to be fighting for his enemies against the very same zombie army he had helped to create, while straddling the broken remnants of a wall he had helped to destroy. It was something of a cosmic joke and he was the punchline.
What was more insane, was that he had maneuvered himself into the role of protector of a man who clearly did not need protecting.
Knights Sergeant Troy Holt was a scary man when wielding one of the Guardian’s long sp
ears. Sometimes he spun it as if he were leading a parade. Sometimes he waved it around as if it were as light as a conductor’s baton. When he wished, it was as supple as a willow reed and at other times, it seemed as rigid and as hard as rock.
Leney, on the other hand, never quite got the hang of spear fighting. First off, he thought it was stupid to fight like a caveman when there were perfectly good guns available. And secondly, the damned things were heavy and ungainly. Yes, he could jab the spear with some efficiency, but unlike the others, he couldn’t swing it with any hope the blade at the end would do anything beyond causing useless gashes in the zombies that lumbered out of the night.
When he tried to hack open a neck or cut through the vertebrae from behind, he always missed. There’d be an embarrassing DONK! sound, and then painful vibrations would run down the length of metal and into his hands. When that happened, Leney always felt as though he were part of a cartoon and if it had been quiet enough he was sure he would’ve heard a whimsical bonnnng.
But it was not quiet. The night had grown steadily louder. At first, the zombies came in dribs and drabs, and the killing was shockingly quick. As Knights distracted the charging beasts with their flashing spears and what looked like little flags, others would close in from the sides and back, striking savagely, cutting arteries and hacking tendons. A dozen Knights could bring down the average zombie in seconds.
That was all well and good; however, the Queen was not content to send her army forth in dribs and drabs. She sent them in waves that tested the mettle of the Knights as it had never been tested before. When the first wave broke along the line, the noise, the screams, and the inhuman roars were enough to cause even a hard man like Leney to waver. He had not heard anything like it since the early days of the apocalypse when the zombies swarmed in the millions and the army had thrown every ounce of ordinance they possessed into the hordes. The entire world had trembled from the fury of the fighting.
As more of the beasts staggered into the line of warriors, some men began to back away. Leney was among these. “Steady,” Troy ordered, in a soft voice that carried through the violence of the battle. Somehow he could sense when his men were losing their nerve. “God will prevail.” God was always his answer and because of that, he was utterly without fear.
Leney did not have any faith in a god he didn’t even believe in—and he was scared out of his mind.
The very idea of fighting eight-foot tall, seven-hundred pound, enraged demons using only pointy sticks was ludicrous. They felt no pain, no matter how many spears were driven into them. Their strength was out of all proportion to their size; at one point, a single smallish female had driven back five fully grown men, whose combined mass doubled hers. Each of the men had driven their spears into her chest up to what they called the “Boar Guard.” The guard was comprised of two jutting wings of metal at the end of the spear blade, designed to keep the zombie from working its way down the shaft of the spear and attacking the Knights.
The female beast ignored the spears and kept coming, bulling the men back until one had set the butt of his weapon into the ground. The steel spear bent into a silver arc and even though the boar guard tore a gaping hole straight through the brute, it kept coming.
And it had been a small one! The largest males weighed over nine-hundred pounds and could bend spears in half with a swat of their huge hands. These juggernauts were unstoppable, and it was best not to try. Leney was not far from one when it hit the line, throwing men aside like rag-dolls. To protect the injured, an entire squad closed in with weapons leveled. In seconds, only four of the eleven men remained standing.
“Idiots!” Leney hissed.
Troy heard and snatched the spear from his hand. “Shut up and fight, or go hide with the children, Corsair!” He spat the word, his chest heaving, his armor and spear splashed with blood. To the Guardians, being called a Corsair was the ultimate insult.
Leney was not above hiding and would have if he thought it would have done any good. No, he needed to fight and be seen fighting. If he had any faith, it was in the Queen. She knew what she was doing, even if no one else did. She had said she would see Troy in the morning which meant she didn’t intend for the town to be overrun. If this was true, Leney couldn’t hide or shirk his duty. He would fight, he just wasn’t going to be stupidly heroic about it.
He picked his spots, always coming in from behind the beasts, or always making sure that there were Knights in front of him when there was a headlong rush. Sometimes he would “accidentally” stumble when everyone else was attacking, and at other times he would let out a bellowing way cry as he got in the last strike that would fell a beast already in the process of dying.
This worked for him for the first few hours and he was still relatively fresh when the night was just starting to fail and the lowest edge of the sky to the east was beginning to glow. It was then that the waves of zombies reached their peak. Hundreds came at once and no longer were the Knights able to use their swarming tactics. It became a bloody hand-to-hand battle where the dead piled up in mounds. Leney kept as close to Troy as he could. The Knights Sergeant attracted so much attention, exhorting his men, whirling his spear, and calling on God, that the dead barely saw the lurking Corsair until he would flash in and jab.
The Knights Commander threw everything he had into the fight, but his men and women were exhausted. They were hurled back to the moat. While they leapt across the seven-foot wide ditch, the zombies fell right in. This allowed the Knights to rally. They turned on their foes and butchered the beasts as they struggled in the muddy water.
There were so many of them that it wasn’t long before the moat was filled with the hacked-apart remains of the dead. The water overflowed and the undead were able to tread over their unmoving brothers.
Now the fight became desperate. The Knights gave ground when they had to, falling back when the ferocity or the numbers of undead was too much. They would fight and slay, and then come roaring back to the line, but always with fewer men or with bent spears, or with weary lines etching their faces.
Leney knew they weren’t going to last much longer. So far, their armor, their bravery and their unmatched fighting prowess had kept their casualties lighter than he would have believed. He had seen men trampled, men thrown twenty-feet or more, men raked and bitten—and he saw them get back up and keep on fighting.
But they weren’t going to last. Exhaustion was setting in and slowing them down. Worse for the defenders, was that when the light of the new day swept over the battlefield, the nearly night-blind zombies would be able to see the Knights perfectly. Even worse, in Leney’s view, he would no longer be able to lurk.
What the light would bring wasn’t lost on Commander Walker. “Weapons free!” he bellowed. “Rifles at the ready! Every fourth man!” The depleted squads knew their business and the best shooters pulled their rifles from their backs. The firing began seconds later. Three spearmen would engage a zombie, while the fourth man would try to put a bullet into its brain. It was not an easy task and on average it took slightly more than two bullets to kill the beasts.
Leney, who was an excellent shot, snatched an M16A3 from a wounded Knight. “Sorry, kid. I’ll give it back. Corsair’s honor.” It wasn’t a kid, it was Knights Reserve Commander Jennifer Edgerton. She’d had her left arm yanked from its socket. “I mean, sorry, ma’am,” Leney said, when he saw she wasn’t a boy under all her armor. “You Knights can’t shoot worth a lick.”
He brought the rifle to his shoulder and didn’t need to “scan” for a target, there were zombies everywhere. Some far too close for his liking. Had it still been dark, he would have slunk away to fire from further back. He couldn’t do that now. Besides, Edgerton had fallen and, perhaps because he’d been fighting alongside actual Knights, Leney felt the tiniest spark of chivalry. He stood his ground and fired.
Seven kills in ten shots.
“Nice shooting,” Edgerton said. She had managed to sit up, though it looked as if it had
taken everything out of her.
Leney didn’t notice; he was staring uncomprehendingly at the rifle. The bolt was back and the chamber was empty. At first, he had thought it had jammed, but now he saw it was out of bullets. “What the hell? You only had ten bullets in this thing. Gimme the rest of your ammo.” He had his dirty paw out.
“That’s all I have. Unlike you Corsairs, we don’t have unlimited bullets.” Grunting with pain, she turned on her side, struggled to a knee and pushed herself up. The world spun and she teetered. Leney didn’t help her. He stood there, sneering, not really at her, but at the entire notion of not having enough ammo. It was repellent to him.
“So, that’s why you guys use spears. I thought it was because you were stupid when really it’s because you’re weak.”
Edgerton’s eyes narrowed into angry slits. “We aren’t weak. Now give me my gun, please.”
He could have kept it if he wished; she was in no position to take it from him. “Then I guess that leaves only being stupid.” He gave her the weapon and promptly turned his back on her, thinking to himself that the Queen hadn’t completely wasted her time sending him with Troy.
Standing back, he began making a quick count. There were about four-hundred men with rifles. “So about four-thousand rounds between them all. And that number is going fast.”
The dead were being brought down by the score. They came in herds, like stampeding buffalo, making the earth shake. The shooting picked up in tempo and the Guardians’ reserve of bullets dwindled with every shot.
From the Knight’s limited view, for every dead zombie, two seemed to rush up to replace it.
This was, in fact, not the case. The Queen had been waiting for the Knights to resort to using rifles and the moment they had she stopped shooting her flares; in essence calling off her attack. Of course, even she couldn’t control zombies so easily and they kept filtering in for the next hour until the rifles were once more set aside and spears were taken up by weary Knights.
Generation Z (Book 4): The Queen Unthroned Page 33
