Down below, Billy said, “I don’t feel any furniture. I can see what looks like the kitchen ceiling and some cabinets and the edge of a door frame.”
“How’s your foot, son?” asked Dean.
“A little sore, but I’m okay. Let’s keep at it.”
In the cell next door, Eliza said, “There is definitely at least one puck up there. I can feel the pleasure it’s taking from whatever it’s doing — Ugh.” She paused and breathed across her tongue as if trying to rid a bad taste.
“What?” asked Silver.
“It’s eating.”
Billy gave several more kicks and another board popped up. With each successive board, the work became easier.
Teeth Broken On Bones set the piece of femur aside. Like a stalking praying mantis, he quietly rose up in anticipation. His tongue caressed his teeth as he watched a small hand reach up and push a board loose, tossing it aside. The blood that had pooled along that side of the wall finished pouring down the new drain, the rest congealing into a drying slickness. The kicking continued.
Dean wiped his face with his sleeve saying, “A couple more, son, and I think you might be able to squeeze through.”
Billy got another board to pop. “Set me down, set me down. I need to rest a sec.” Once he was sitting he massaged his right calf, then let his dad take a turn rubbing it.
Littlefield offered him a smile. He was looking slightly less diminished, perhaps even hopeful. “Good shoes you have there.”
Billy just smiled in return. “OK. Let’s finish this thing.”
Jon and Dean lifted him once again and Billy really put some effort into it, smashing out one board and then another. The gap still wasn’t big enough for a grown man to fit through, but Billy was slight enough to pull it off.
For a moment, light flooded the small room, then it became dark again as they hoisted the boy up and he sucked in his tummy to pull himself up through the hole. He faced the kitchen at first. It wasn’t until he was halfway through that he looked over his shoulder and saw the great hairy monster standing behind him, its hock-kneed legs spring-loaded for action. Billy screamed in terror and tried to turn away, to slide back down into the hole. The thing had him in a blink and Billy froze like a foal in a lion’s jaws.
Hello, morsel, was the gist of Teeth Broken On Bones’ thought.
Dean yelled up to his son, one hand still on a leg. “Billy!” Then the boy was yanked up and out. They could hear his body crash across the floor, knocking over chairs. The face of a demon smiled down into the hole and the three men became stricken. Unable to do more.
In the cell next door, Eliza said, “That was Billy! They’ve got Billy!”
“How many?” barked Nikki.
“How many what?”
“How many of them? The Chosen?”
“One. Right above us.”
Nikki turned to Frankel and grabbed his rifle. “Give me that.”
Teeth Broken On Bones stood upright and turned toward the boy. His heavy tread caused the floorboards beneath him to creak his location. Nikki cocked the gun, felt for the selector and fired a full auto burst through the ceiling. Bullets shot up through the beasts feet, its legs and groin, and finally directly into its surprised face as it looked down at the nest of bees it must have stepped on. With a loud thud, it landed on the bloody floor in a heap.
His head clear, Billy scrambled up and tried not to slip on the coagulating floor.
Dean was yelling up through the hole, “Son! Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” He observed the room, his eyes clocking across the horror. “It’s terrible up here, Dad. Horrible.” He got to the hole and looked down on his father’s stricken bloody face. “Someone shot the puck through the floor from down there.”
“Are there any more?”
Billy stood and glanced out the windows. “I don’t know. It seems quiet.”
Eliza’s muffled voice came up through the floor below him. “Billy, are you okay?”
Billy looked around again to be certain he was alone, then raised his voice toward the floor. “I’m okay. Thanks, whoever shot through the floor.”
Dean said, “Son, do you see a gun up there?”
Billy saw lots of guns. The Chosen hadn’t bothered with them. They simply lay where their stricken owners had dropped them. “Yeah.”
Dean continued, “We don’t know what happened to Hansel and Gretel and the key. You’ll need to shoot the locks down here.”
With the three men standing on the bunk inside, Billy aimed an M4A1 at the lock, the angle pointed down in the hopes that a penetration would hit the floor and at worst ricochet into the opposite wall. “Here goes!”
The shot demolished the key portal portion, but the door remained stubbornly closed, the deadbolt still fast. He fired again — the sound in the confined space deafening them all. Still the lock held.
While he was lining up a third shot toward where the deadbolt should be, a shadow cast itself down the adjacent staircase. Billy instinctively ducked and swung the gun toward the staircase, prematurely pulling the trigger, firing and splintering a middle step.
Hansel stood at the top of the stairs. “Billy! Friend!”
Billy nearly fell down, his heart was beating so hard. Both his dad and Eliza were yelling through their respective doors asking if he was all right.
“It’s Hansel and Gretel,” he finally blurted out as the two pucks descended and the three of them embraced.
With a powerful shoulder from Hansel to the damaged door, the men were released. Gretel unlocked the women’s with the key.
Upon seeing each other, Nikki and Jon immediately fell into a relieved embrace. Not to be outdone, Dean and Eliza did the same, pulling their odd family, including Billy and the two pucks, together.
Nikki whispered into Jon’s ear. “No more getting locked up without me. Prison just isn’t the same without you.”
Jon smiled. “That could be interpreted another way.”
“Yes it could.”
Though visibly diminished, it was Littlefield who kept his eye on the ball. “They arrived by boat. That means there are lots to choose from. The shore of the Chesapeake is not far from here.”
Armed to the teeth they quickly gathered food into backpacks. As they were heading out, Dean spotted the sentinel trailer and recalled the auto-rucks that the Shoremen used. A quick exploration of the trailer; stepping over the shredded remains of Colonel Olsen and Singletary, resulted in two of the devices. The machines acted like a robotic exoskeleton, giving the wearer the strength to hike great distances and carry large amounts of gear. Built for a man’s frame, it was agreed that Dean and Jon would wear them. Private Frankel offered no protest, remaining grateful that these people hadn’t shot him and his fellow Shorewoman on the spot — even allowing them to remain armed. Though Littlefield could’ve used the mechanical assistance, it was beyond his broken body’s ability to operate the device. He would ride on Jon’s back instead. For the first time in many years, he would travel on something other than his own feet.
As they set out, the sun was hidden behind a typical overcast that was threatening rain. What light there was, was diminishing fast.
As had been their habit since the beginning, the Chosen kept a significant space between their healthy human captives and their raving-mad parents. Any other approach meant certain death or infection among the slave labor. Despite having finished off their human captives in one final orgy of a meal before departing to cross the big water, the habit of leaving their beloved parents to wander as an unintentional rear-guard remained. Given the horror that the Shoremen had visited on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, it was perhaps divine retribution that the island of Delmarva was now awash in Fiends.
Though Hansel and Gretel were attuned to their fellow pucks and their possible whereabouts, they were as vulnerable as any human when it came to stalking madmen.
It and the Others It hunted with had anxiously observed a large group of furry
four-legged creatures running away from where they had spooked them in the forest. It had felt the thing that grew inside It kick with hunger as It watched the creatures flee. The thing inside’s hunger had driven It and the Others to chase the creatures — failing, yet continuing the chase long after hopelessness would have stopped the sane. Then It and the Others had heard the shots that had rung out from inside the shelter place where the Children had feasted.
It had long ago learned the right way and the wrong way to capture Fresh Ones. Fresh Ones had to be hunted carefully. Just charging at Fresh Ones often meant death by the fire sticks. The best part of hunting Fresh Ones was that they could never outrun It and the Others. It just meant being patient and keeping up the chase.
It listened to the voices of the Fresh Ones as they finally left the shelter place. The thing that grew inside It kicked with extra strength at the sound that traveled through Its belly, and It wished that it could tear the growing thing out of Its body and bite its head off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Back To The Woods
Dietrich walked with eyes cast downward, his shoulders slumped in a manner that looked unnatural on his normally ramrod straight frame. He spied a trail of ants that ended at the corpse of a fat dead spider; its battle lost, its legs curled inward in defeat. The smaller creatures worked in perfect harmony as they assembled to carry the prize off. Dietrich let out a sad chuckle.
Mason, who was walking in line behind him, said, “What’s funny? If I may ask, sir?”
The one time titan of New York smiled grimly. “And the insects shall inherit the Earth.”
“How’s that, sir?”
Dietrich attempted to stand straighter. “Something I heard once.” They continued apace for a bit more. Everywhere he looked, Dietrich saw evidence of nature’s resilience. Where a once mighty forest stood, whose trees were now dead and turned to gray limbs, a new undergrowth of ferns stood tall and proud beneath. He gently shook his head. “It was just a reprieve.”
“Reprieve, sir?”
“The Russian nuclear winter. A temporary berm.”
“Sir?”
“The long winter — an ice dam that was holding back an unstoppable flood. It melted.”
They walked on for a bit more. Mason mumbled a quote, more to himself than anyone else. Dietrich angled his head back toward his servant. “Say again?”
“It’s nothing, sir. Just a thought on extinction. Stephen Jay Gould, said it. A paleontologist.”
“Say it again. I couldn’t hear you.”
Mason cleared his throat. “Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction — There’s more but I don’t recall it exactly. Something about unpredictability. It’s the grim reaper part that sticks with me.” He took a few more paces, then, “One of sixteen we are, sir. Sixteen that we know of. Species of upright ape that is.” He glanced at Hansel and Gretel. “Well, one of seventeen now, I guess. The fifteen before us…all gone. Grim reaper indeed.”
Dietrich mulled this while absently observing the progress of his own feet. “I don’t particularly know you, do I, Walter?”
Mason shrugged. “Not particularly, sir. No. Then again, I don’t really know you either, sir.”
Ahead of them, Nikki reached out and held Jon’s hand. Though his pace was somewhat mechanical, due to the auto ruck (and that he carried another person on his back), the connection between them felt good. She’d had a lot of time to think about her relationship with this man. Yes, the present circumstances were a near repeat of the intense experience that brought them together in the first place. Yes, it completely skewed reality from the banal pace of normal life, but it also rammed home the virtues in the relationship. Jon was solid. Solid as they come. His ability to be present in grim circumstances, mixed with his clear devotion to her, left Nikki experiencing a complicated cocktail of emotions — above all, that she had been an ass.
It was her nature to always play her cards close. Revealing actual feelings just led to more feelings. Ignoring the doctor riding on Jon’s back, she chose to drop her guard. She took a deep breath and squeezed his hand. “I’m such a fool.”
Jon glanced back at the receding farm and said, “Why? What did we forget?”
“No. Like I was saying before — about us.”
“Oh. Yes.” He let it lay there. She had dropped it before. She needed to pick it back up and keep talking.
She glanced up at the doctor now. He smiled back weakly, saying, “Don’t mind me. You clearly have something to get off your chest.”
She looked back at Jon. He said, “Watch where you’re going or you’ll trip.”
Her eyes fell back on the frost heaved road, but she gripped his hand firmly. He gave a double squeeze back, reassuring but coaxing her on. She took another deep breath. Dean, Eliza and Billy were ten meters in front of them with the pucks. The long-legged creatures had to slow their gait so as not to overtake the shorter steps of the humans. Silver, Frankel, Dietrich and Mason were ten meters to the rear.
“I fucked up,” she quietly said.
Jon let that lay there as well. Part of him wanted to be reassuring, share some of the blame. It was in his nature to take some of the heat, even when it wasn’t his to take. This time he kept his mouth shut. He’d had lots of time to figure out what went wrong. He concluded long ago that though he was partially at fault, it was Nikki who had blown off the work it would have taken to fix it.
She glanced at him again and smiled her crooked grin. “This is good.”
Littlefield kept his head turned opposite them as though he was enjoying the scenery. Jon finally said, “What’s good?”
“You being strong enough not to ask for a bite of the shit sandwich I made for myself.”
He laughed. “She said with her typical Marine Corp eloquence.”
“You don’t have to wait until we get to whatever the end of this is. I want you to take me back. You’re the best man I have ever known, and the only one I’ve ever loved.”
Jon felt a lump in his throat, a flush on his neck. There was a buzzing in his mind. It took him a moment to realize that it was something beyond his own startled thoughts. He called out to the pucks up ahead. “You two, Hansel and Gretel, stay out of my head.”
The group in front stopped, the pucks looking at him with confused curiosity. Hansel said, “We are not in your head, Jon Washington.” Then he paused and looked around, his posture crouching as though bracing himself for something.
Gretel said, “I feel it too.”
“What?” whispered Dean and Eliza simultaneously.
The Shoremen in the rear stopped walking to maintain the correct distance between the groups.
Gretel said, “Chosen, but not Chosen. The thoughts aren’t thoughts, just feelings and faint sounds and darkness.”
The group looked hard into the dense woods around them. They were on a ruined road surrounded on all sides by a mostly dead gray forest. It was Littlefield who first locked eyes with her — a filthy human, the grime so thick as to almost perfectly camouflage her in the fading light. A bulging stomach displayed a late-term pregnancy. She didn’t move — standing stock still, but for the eyes subtly scanning the group. Then he saw another human figure, and another — naked, squalid, madness lighting up hungry eyes that bore into his. Nikki saw them next and she let go of Jon’s hand, bringing her M4 up but not pulling the trigger, her finger brushing the curve of it, her right eye looking through the sight. “I have multiple targets on our three. No firing ’til we know what we’re facing.”
The rest of the group followed suit, eyes searching for a target in the woods to their left.
Dietrich lifted his pistol in a police stance he’d seen in a hundred TV shows and noticed his hands shaking uncontrollably. He grasped the gun more firmly, fruitlessly trying to calm his nerves.
As one, the six visible Fiends took their cue from the pregnant one and stepped back further into the trees. With everyone on the
road focused intently on this action, Nikki had a sense memory of another such moment, a moment of intentional diversion. She swung her gun to the opposite side of the road just as six infected charged out of their hiding places. Dean turned almost in unison with her. They pulled their triggers, dropping two, leaving ten monsters charging from both sides — full speed.
Dietrich’s shots went wild. Mason winged one, but it didn’t even slow its momentum. Eliza and Frankel were slower on the draw and Jon found himself shooting at a drooling male, missing as Littlefield tried to climb off the back of his auto-ruck. Hansel stopped the creature instead, causing it to alter its course and ram its head fatally into the side of a tree.
As the smallest two, Billy and Eliza were the primary targets, the Fiends ignoring all self-preservation in their insane charge. Dean was able to drop another one, but only winged a young female. Snarling as though she hadn’t been touched, she was nearly on top of Billy before the boy’s own muzzle flashed, stitching bullets up the creature’s chest and tearing away the right side of her neck. Her momentum had her crashing into him anyway — his face turning away as infected blood splashed out of the spurting wound and across the back of his head. Eliza reached down to pull the creature off of Billy and was tackled from the side, her body sprawling onto the rough broken road top. The female was instantly on top of her, teeth gnashing at her face. Dean couldn’t get off a safe shot so he flipped his gun to use the stock as a club. Eliza’s arm came up, the sleeve of her jacket sliding up, exposing her white flesh as she fended off the bites. Then the thing had the soft meat of her forearm — a choice chunk of it torn away. The insane creature laughed with satisfaction through the meat in her mouth.
A House Divided: Book 3 of The Of Sudden Origin Saga Page 27
