After spotting Adam by the front gate, she pushed the conflicting thoughts aside and quickened her pace, jogging over next to him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a strong voice demanded from behind her.
She stopped so abruptly that she almost tripped over her own feet. She spun around to face the man who had spoken.
It was Ryan. She suddenly wanted to lay into him. But Noah was there too.
Noah patted Ryan on the shoulder and came over to stand inches from her face. He was dressed in a cream-colored shirt and the tan pants he had worn the night before. His breath was fresh and minty. He looked her up and down. She readied herself for the slap that would surely come. But instead, he raised a hand and touched her lightly on the cheek with his fingertips. “I expect you will return soon,” he said. “Alive, my child. Alive, do you understand? And with what we spoke about.”
He kept his hand on her face, patting it lightly and then progressively harder until it began to sting. His gaze bored straight through her and deep into her mind. She trembled, and her legs wanted to melt, much like a candle left out in the hot, noonday sun. His mouth cracked open, and he displayed his near-perfect white teeth, stained ever so slightly by cigar smoke. After a few moments, he patted her cheek one last time.
She bobbed her head up and down.
“Good,” he said. With a wave, he signaled for the gates to be opened.
Eve gave Adam one of the two spears and then turned to look at the impromptu crowd that had gathered behind them. She could read in their sour expressions that they did not expect her to return. Jenny, who stood near the front, wiggled her fingers in the air in a mocking good-bye. Eve pictured Jenny naked and tied to the same pole that Tim had been tied to, and surrounded by raptors.
Glancing at Adam, she readjusted the straps on her tote. “Shall we,” she said, mustering her courage.
He nodded.
Side by side, Adam and Eve stepped out through the gate and left Eden behind.
-25-
ON THE ROAD
ONCE THEY HAD traveled about a mile from Eden, Eve’s mood began to improve. With Adam following closely behind, she made her way across an empty field that intersected with the main highway. Noah had assured her that Cory would take I-25 South to reach the city. Given his head start, she would need to hurry and not stop for any reason if she expected to catch up with him before sunset.
On the road, they passed scores of cars and trucks, all resting on flat tires, rusting on the highway. Weeds had grown in the cracks along the gray road and were reaching up and around the vehicles in an effort to find the sun. A slight breeze made it difficult to determine the safety of the way ahead as the rippling weeds added too much visual noise to be sure something was not hiding in the shadows. Nevertheless, she pushed onward, moving at a brisk pace.
After a few hours of travel, the afternoon sun began raising beads of sweat on her forehead. She’d already stripped down to a tank top and tied her flannel shirt around her waist. So far there had been no signs of Cory’s passage, let alone anyone else’s. She was beginning to wonder if they should turn back now or try to go faster. If they decided to return, they might be able to make it back to Eden before dark. However, if they did that, she would have to explain her complete failure to Noah. The thought of doing so made her shiver. Adam, she wasn’t as sure about. Noah would probably punish her by having him killed first. She hated the man but loved him too.
Escaping from her tiny town of Hazelton, Iowa had been rough. She and her boyfriend Josh, along with twenty-two other survivors, had banded together to travel west and seek safety. When they encountered a group of young raptors, instead of running away, Josh thought it would be funny to taunt them. He threw rocks and laughed. She pleaded with him to knock it off, but he didn’t. The real attack came from behind, from out of the trees. In a wild frenzy of blood and death, Josh and six others in their group were driven to the ground, ripped open, and disemboweled, all while she watched in horror.
If it weren’t for Randy, Adam’s partner, they’d all be dead now. He had pulled her away from the gruesome scene, gathered the others, and led them into a barn. When the barn door did not fully close, he forced everyone to climb to the hayloft and then went back to lead the raptors inside. After waiting for the last person to jump out the hayloft door, he lit fire to a hay bale, kicked it against the barn door, and left the raptors inside to burn.
Randy had been her friend, too. He listened, just as Adam did. Maybe Noah would too, this time. Maybe if she returned he would listen to reason. But with the way he had looked at her before she left, he might consider using her just as he had done with Tim. Poor Tim had only stolen some food. Even if he had lived through the raptor attack, Noah would have found another way to get rid of him. She suspected it was about something more than stealing food, but she had no proof, and there was no way she was going to confront him over it.
At first, she was upset that Cory had so easily cut Tim’s head off. She hated the way he had killed him so callously. She knew it was wrong. But at the same time … strangely attractive.
When Noah had come and told her that she would probably need to seduce Cory, she was annoyed at first, but found herself agreeing to do so without putting up too much of an argument. So, no, there would be no returning to Eden without success, not without finding Cory first. She was absolutely sure of that.
“Eve, you sure he’s gone south?” Adam said, breaking the silence.
“That’s what Noah said. Headed to Denver. This is the fastest way there, too. So, let’s go a little further.”
They continued for another few hours before she came to an abrupt halt and put her hand up to stop Adam. She had spotted a figure moving a couple hundred yards ahead of them. It wasn’t moving very fast.
She almost shouted his name but didn’t. She wasn’t quite sure, so she started walking again, then quickening her pace and breaking into a slow jog. She continued moving that way for a few minutes, rising up on her toes occasionally, trying to see over the junked wrecks blocking the roadway while debating if she should yell out or not. What if it wasn't him? What if what she saw was coming towards her?
“Stop,” Adam said from behind. “Need. Rest.”
She turned. She was fully alert and filled with the heightened energy that came from fear. Adam caught up with her and stopped with his hands held against his sides, panting.
Something darted out from the back of an old travel trailer behind him and disappeared into the shadow of a truck. The hairs on her neck prickled and she felt the sudden urge to flee. Whatever it was, it had moved too fast to be a person. It could only be a raptor. She looked to the sky. She saw birds. They were circling high above, but there weren’t many. Given what she had spotted ahead, even if it were Cory, he was probably being followed, too.
Resisting the urge to turn and flee somewhere, anywhere, she knew if they stayed in the direct sun, they would be safe from attack. She pointed to where she had seen movement near the trailer behind them.
Adam turned to look where she was pointing. He backpedaled and moved next to her, pulling up his spear, letting it scrape against the ground. Then, defiantly, he rapped the butt hard against the asphalt and leaned heavily against the spear.
“Raptors?” he asked.
She nodded, confirming the obvious. Only a few hours of daylight remained, and there was no going back now. Even if they found Cory within the next hour, it would be impossible to return to Eden before dark.
A breeze blew her hair into her eyes. A brief gust suddenly whipped debris lying in front of her into the air and formed a dust devil that went spinning across the highway. With the new wind, came a drop in temperature. She combed her hair over her ears and out of her eyes, and then pointed down the road with her spear.
From across the mountaintops, she could see dark clouds gathering over the peaks. If the clouds blocked out the sun for even a few minutes, the raptors would rush them, gut them, and eat th
em.
“I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
“Not much we can do about it now,” Adam said. “I was the one dumb enough to come along.”
He widened his stance and rapped his spear on the pavement again. “You. Shall. Not. Pass!” he bellowed.
“What?” Eve asked.
Adam shook his head. “Lord of the Rings? Gandalf?”
“Oh,” she said as if she knew what he meant. She’d never seen the movie, but his attempted humor helped. The real Adam was coming out. This was why she had brought him along in the first place. His calm, fatalistic reassurance allowed her to settle down enough to think.
She spotted a group of buildings in the distance, not far away. She indicated toward them with the tip of her spear. The entire way there was still in sunlight, at least for as long as it lasted.
-26-
GAS STATION
EVE RAN TOWARD the distant cluster of buildings. When she looked back, she saw Adam trying to keep up, but he was quickly falling behind. The cluster of buildings resolved into what was once a strip-mall shopping center, containing a nail salon, a dry cleaner, a pizza shop, and, of course, a Starbucks. Most of the storefront windows were boarded up with decomposing sheets of plywood. A number of them hung limply from the window frames, having already rotted through after years of exposure.
When she reached the buildings, she slowed to a jog, allowing Adam to catch up to her.
“Keep going. I’ll catch you,” he said, gasping for breath. “Keep. Going. My. Asthma. Don’t worry.”
Having not run so hard in months, she also had trouble with her breathing, so she figured it must have been nearly killing him.
She stopped in front of what used to be a drugstore. The red pharmacy symbol with its mortar and pestle and store name hung above her on the sign. The plywood seemed weakest here. It was already bowing inward and had holes rotted through it. She kicked at a spot where the wood was blackest until an entire sheet broke inward. Pushing the section out of her way, she peered into the darkness inside the store while Adam came up alongside her.
She smelled the garbage dump-like odor of abandoned raptor nests inside, a thick, organic smell, similar to a mixture of ammonia and rotting onions. Fortunately, though, nothing smelled especially sharp or fresh, which meant the nests were old and had been abandoned.
Glancing down, she noticed her knuckles had turned white from the tight grip she held on the metal spear. She loosened her fingers and inhaled deeply. “In here,” she said.
“Here? You sure?” he asked.
Eve nodded in affirmation. Swallowing heavily, she turned to the hole she’d made in the plywood. With the spear-tip held out front of her, she climbed over the shards of broken glass that remained in the windowsill and stumbled forward into the darkness of the store. A short time later, she heard Adam’s labored breathing coming from behind, providing quiet reassurance he was close.
She stepped lightly over a fallen wall and moved with a light touch across decaying shelves and broken pieces of glass. The room had a different smell, a fetid odor of wet mold and years of decay, but it wasn’t as related to the raptors as she had first thought. She did sense something new and unfamiliar, something she’d encountered during her childhood. She had a sudden memory of her bedroom during her eighth birthday party. It caused her to stop briefly to listen for sounds while considering why that particular memory had surfaced, but she couldn’t quite place it.
Adam’s labored breathing filled the empty space.
“You going to be all right?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he wheezed in response. “It usually. Goes away. After a few minutes. Keep going.”
Feelings of guilt for having dragged him along bothered her anew. They should never have come here. She sniffed the air again. Then she suddenly remembered why the smell was so familiar. It was from her eighth birthday party. One of the boys her mother had invited had taken her hamster, Butterball, and tossed it to another boy. She yelled at them both while they laughed at her feeble attempts to retrieve her poor pet. Then, Bobby Dillman missed catching her hamster. It crashed against a dresser and fell twitching to the carpet before it ultimately went still. The smell in the room was familiar like that. It smelled like hamster.
Without warning, a loud crash filled the cavernous room. Stumbling over her own feet, she glanced down, and realized she had just collided with the side of an overturned shopping cart.
“Oww,” she growled as she moved away from it.
Directly ahead, she saw a hole in the darkness. That hole soon resolved into a swirling, black mass. It grew larger. Larger still. Then it came speeding at her. Fluttering chaos filled the air until the whole room teamed with hundreds of flying shadows.
Bats!
Covering her head, she dove for the floor. She felt something heavy land on her legs, pinning her down.
“Sorry,” Adam said over the squeaking noises.
The bats spiraled above her. Their tiny forms bumped into each other, throwing off dull thumps every time they collided. She covered her head against the spastic cloud. The bats went streaming out through the hole she had opened in the storefront and outside into the setting sun.
After they all had all passed, she lifted herself up and turned a complete circle, scanning for additional threats with her spear thrust out front and wobbling in little circles. Dust raised by the bats left behind eddies that sparkled in the shafts of light streaming through the opening she had made in the storefront.
She gazed across the room. On the floor between the empty shelves were many nests filled with green, slime-covered bones, moldy cardboard, and gray-white cobwebs. The raptor nests appeared abandoned. They were now covered with a thick coating of lumpy, black nodules, presumably the droppings from the bats.
She backed up until she bumped into something and let out a squeak.
“Hey!” Adam said.
She reached out and touched his arm, feeding on the comforting warmth of the contact. “You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. Better now. What the hell was that?”
“Bats.”
“I know that. I mean, how did you manage to lead me into a room full of bats? I hate those damn things.”
“Sorry. I guess bats are better than raptors.”
“Not by much,” he said.
She stepped over a nest to move deeper into the building. Broken fluorescent light fixtures draped lifelessly from the ceiling, trailing wires below. Shattered glass fragments on the floor caught the light like a million tiny diamonds. The drooping wires combined with the beam of light coming in through gaps in the plywood and cast narrow shadows that made the space in front them look like a web spun by a giant spider. Bats, she could take. Spiders, no. She considered leaving and taking her chances outside, but Adam seized the initiative and shifted to the front, so she followed behind, somewhat reluctantly. His breathing continued to be erratic but seemed to be getting more stable.
They passed by the restrooms and entered the back office area through a chipped doorway. She kept a hand on his shoulder in case she saw something else and needed to warn him about it.
After making their way to the rear of the building, they entered an open space, which appeared to be the stockroom where bigger merchandise was once stored. The shelves were stripped bare, and only the metal skeletons of the storage racks remained. The floor held even more nests filled with fragments of bones and bits of rotten clothing. She cautiously stepped through the clutter as if she were stepping through a minefield, where at any moment one might go off and kill them both. Ahead, she spotted a door marked ROOF ACCESS in red letters stenciled on a black door. Tapping Adam’s shoulder, she pointed. He went to open it while she backed away. She tightened her grip on her spear, anticipating that a raptor might come bursting through from the other side.
“One. Two Three,” he whispered and pushed open the door.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
They passed through and Eve
shut the door behind them, making sure it latched. Stairs led up to a landing about twenty feet higher.
“You first,” Adam said.
“Should I get the flashlight?”
“Not yet. I can see well enough, can’t you?”
“No. Not really.”
“Just go. We’ll figure it out. I don’t smell anything. You?”
She shook her head and added, “No.”
They climbed the stairs, slowly, tread by tread. Their footsteps caused the metal to squeak with each step. Adam’s occasional wheeze resounded loudly in the tight space. She stopped briefly to look back at the door at the bottom, hoping that nothing had followed them inside the building. With the bats let loose, and all the noise they had made, she assumed any raptors in the area would be on their way to investigate.
They made it to the top and stopped on the small landing. Above them was a metal hatch leading to the roof. A ladder led up to it. Light filtered down through a ventilation mesh affixed to the sides of the hatch. Those rays landed on Adam’s face and gave him a dappled appearance.
“I think I know how to do this,” he said. He reached for a lever located on a metal box to his right. It was attached to a set of iron rods, which then connected to the hatch. The lever creaked when he pulled on it. He tensed, pulled harder. The hatch moved slightly, protesting and dropping off flakes of rust. It had moved just enough to let more light in, but not enough for either of them to squeeze through.
Eve wrapped her hands over his on the lever. Together, they combined their efforts and pulled.
It didn’t move.
“Harder,” she said.
She gathered her strength. On three, she and Adam jerked back on the lever as hard as they could. With a jolt, the lever broke off in his hand. She let go of him and fell, landing hard on her backside, almost rolling off the landing and down the stairs. A little embarrassed, she braced herself against the wall and climbed to her feet. Now what? she thought. As if to answer, Adam scaled the ladder, put his palms on the metal hatch, and shoved upward.
Raptor Apocalypse Page 18
