Harden

by D. J. Molles

  Julia exited the door, swinging her big medical bag onto her back. “I think they’re tryna batten down the hatches, Lee.”

  Lee jabbed a finger towards the main door, through which heavily breathing figures in makeshift ghillie were already stumbling through. “Yeah, and we got a window to get the fuck out. We’re gonna use it,”

  “You have no idea how close they are,” Abe argued.

  “At the very least, I’m not leaving Tomlin’s body out there for them.”

  Paolo and two of his spotters met them halfway down the long chicken house. “You hear me? Big’uns comin’. You don’t wanna be outside.”

  “How close were they?”

  One of the spotters spoke up. “’Bout a half mile back. Moving fast. No calls. They got our scent.”

  “It was the fuckin’ truck,” Paolo mumbled to himself. “Knew I shouldn’t have driven that shit up here.”

  Lee was moving, and he realized in that instant that there wasn’t shit that anybody could say to turn him back. “We’re taking the truck and heading to Butler. Maybe we’ll draw them off.”

  “Lee…” Julia had a warning tone in her voice.

  Lee ignored it. The decision was made.

  He glanced at Paolo. “I want you to come with us.”

  “What?” Paolo’s face screwed up. “I can’t fuckin’ leave…”

  “Your people know how to take care of themselves, Paolo. Isn’t that right?”

  Paolo didn’t answer.

  “I know it’s short notice, but we’re going to meet some people that can help us. And I need someone who knows the lay of the land down here. That’s you.” They reached the door, which had yet to be closed and barred. Lee put his shoulder to the doorframe and peered out. There was one spotter still coming in, straggling.

  Eileen.

  “Pack of ‘em!” she called between gasping breaths. “They’re close! Get inside!”

  It was now or never.

  Lee turned and seized Paolo by the shoulder. Looked the man in the eyes. “Paolo, if you want our help, if you want the help of the UES, then you need to come with me. This is bigger than you realize.”

  “You’re tellin’ me!” Paolo snapped back. “You have any idea what you’re up against?”

  “Yeah. I got a dead friend and a cartel that killed him. I know what I’m up against. Do they?”

  Paolo touched his forehead, his eyes wide and sick-looking. “Shit. Fuck.”

  Eileen burst through the door. Two big bellows of air. She put her hands on her knees. “About two hundred yards back!” Gasp. “Close the fuckin’ doors!”

  Deuce had slipped outside the door while they were talking, and he halted about two yards outside. He started to growl, and it immediately built up to a bark. He was staring out into the woods, like he was seeing something the rest of them couldn’t.

  Lee couldn’t wait any longer. He simply nodded to Paolo, said “Let’s go,” and then exited the hideout.

  Lee’s team followed without hesitation—if one was going, they were all going.

  The second they hit daylight, their rifles came up.

  Carl—unarmed—simply made a beeline for the truck.

  Paolo’s feet danced in indecision. “Wait!” he shouted at Lee’s back, but Lee wasn’t into talking anymore, and it was the fact that Lee had said “Let’s go,” like everything had already been decided, that Paolo finally caved.

  “Shitfuckdammit!” He spun on Eileen, who was now standing up straight. “Eileen, I’m goin’ with ‘em.”

  “WHAT?” Eileen barked like she’d been bit.

  “You’re in charge while I’m gone.” Paolo ripped the silver six-shooter out of his holster. “Now bar the goddamn doors and keep everyone alive.”

  At the truck, Lee hit the bed and vaulted up, swinging his leg up into it. He’d fixated on the concept that whatever was coming through those woods was going to try to feed on the body of his dead friend, and Lee was fully prepared to die to keep that from happening.

  Maybe that didn’t make sense to someone on the outside.

  But to Lee, in that moment, it made all the sense in the world.

  Carl hauled himself into the backseat, Deuce squeezing in between his legs. Abe went to the driver’s seat, and Julia crossed to the front passenger’s side.

  Lee planted his feet over Tomlin’s body, and hunched over the roof of the cab, bringing his optic up to his eyes.

  Are you really doing this?

  He scanned the woods around them.

  Yeah, I’m fucking doing this.

  He heard Paolo’s voice behind him. “What are you doing in the bed? You can’t—”

  “Get in the fucking truck!” Carl shouted at him from the backseat.

  “Alright! Alright!”

  Out of the corner of Lee’s eye, he saw Paolo jump into the back of the truck, and the engine roared to life.

  Behind him, the doors to the chicken house were shut. The heavy metal sound of bars being drawn across them.

  And that was it.

  They weren’t getting back in there.

  The only way out was by going forward.

  Do or die time.

  “Hold on!” Abe shouted, and that was all the warning Lee got.

  The tires spun in the dirt, then found purchase. The truck lurched forward.

  Lee flattened himself down on the roof of the cab to keep himself steady.

  An unpleasant moment of clarity struck him and he realized what a godawful idea it was to be exposed in the truck bed like this. Especially when he wasn’t at full strength.

  Too late now.

  The dirt road cut through the trees, heading to the main farm road, and the mouth of that opening gaped ahead of them, the truck already hauling at thirty-five.

  But Lee had seen the primals latch onto some pretty fast moving cars.

  He scanned.

  When they hit, they hit fast.

  The first one came out of the woods, right in the bend of a blind curve, and it hit the side of the pickup before Lee even realized it was there.

  He had time to yell “Contact!” and then the thing was in the truck bed with him.

  It was a massive male, with not a strip of clothing left on its body. Not a bit of fat to cover the coils and bunches of unnaturally-evolved muscles. Wild, dreadlocked hair spun around its head, eyes locked onto Lee, wide and inhuman, and the mouth gaping unnaturally wide. Disproportionately long arms reaching towards Lee.

  Lee recoiled from it, trying to get a reactionary gap. He yanked his rifle so the buttstock was over his shoulder—the only way to keep himself from feeding the muzzle of his rifle right into the primal’s grasp.

  It made a swipe at the rifle.

  Lee kicked hard, separating them momentarily. It tottered on the edge of the bed—so did Lee. He felt his balance going and did the only thing he could. Let his legs go out from under him, slammed his butt right down into the truck bed.

  Fired reflexively—pop-pop-pop.

  The primal’s face ripped away, head snapped back, tilted over the edge.

  Lee felt iron claws grab his shoulder, his neck. He tried to twist out of it.

  A burp of automatic rifle fire, not from his weapon.

  The grip loosened.

  Lee ripped his arm up, swam out of the grip, pivoted like a turtle on its back.

  Saw the long, corded arms go tumbling off the side of the truck.

  Julia, leaning half out of her window on the passenger’s side, rifle stuck out in an almost blind-firing position. Her eyes locked to the rear of the vehicle. “Behind you! Behind you!”

  From the position that Julia was in, she couldn’t sight through her rifle. She couldn’t risk firing over Lee’s head.

  Lee rolled from his back to his stomach.

  Was halted by the speed bump of Tomlin’s body.

  But he could see enough.

  A third primal, swinging itself over the tailgate.

  Two more on the road behind i
t, chasing after the truck with inhuman speed, but Abe had the truck hauling now, must’ve been going close to fifty.

  Lee fired from his awkward prone position, watched his rounds lance through the tailgate. The primal danced to the left, clutched the side of the bed, sprung itself off the tailgate. Lee had time to get his rifle up between his face and the primal’s.

  The thing tried to bite him over the rifle.

  Lee struck out hard and close with the buttstock, cracked the thing across the face. He was twisted onto his back again, everything topsy-turvy, pinned between the sidewall of the bed and Tomlin’s body. The buttstroke bought him a bare second, the primal stunned, its grip on the rifle loose.

  Lee ripped again, jerked the rifle back into his full possession. Thrust the body of it straight up under the primal’s chin while he still had the chance and managed to create enough of a gap between the bodies that he got his leg up, and then he kicked out as hard as he could manage.

  The thing growled with the sound of animal effort, getting its feet on the sidewall and pushing back. Stronger than Lee.

  Shit

  Lee took a gamble.

  He released one hand from his grip on the rifle. His fingers crabbed across his chest. Found the handle of the fixed blade knife that sat behind his magazines. He yanked it out, knowing that the primal was getting ahold of itself, reasserting its physical dominance.

  There was nothing fancy about working someone’s body with a knife. When it was close in like this, it was more like a shanking in a prison yard. He held the thing in his right hand and plunged the blade into the chest of the primal, then tattooed it as fast as his arm could work, pistoning back and forth.

  As many holes as possible.

  He got five or six good holes before the primal yipped and pulled back, and that was all Lee needed.

  He dropped the knife. Grabbed the grip of his rifle. Pulled it in close to his body and fired from his hip. He pulled that trigger, and he tracked the rounds in by watching their impacts, guiding them in until they found flesh, found bone, punched the life out of the creature in front of him.

  The thing reeled. Tottered on the sidewall, close to the cab. Looked like it might rally.

  Lee brought his rifle up to his shoulder to get himself a finishing shot.

  A silver revolver protruded out of nowhere and fired a single shot that clove the primal’s head from temple to temple.

  It went limp. Fell like a bag of bones.

  Nothing moved but the mouth. Like a dog in a seizure. Jaw snapping.

  Lee considered putting an additional round into the thing’s head but its head was right in front of the hump of the tire-well, and Lee didn’t want to give them a flat.

  Lee’s chest ached for more oxygen, then burned violently when he gave it. What was that that Julia had told him? Try not to work too hard?

  He brought his rifle up to his shoulder, which took surprising effort. He scanned. Watched the little red dot of his optic dance with his breathing, with his heartbeat, with the exhausted shaking of his limbs.

  “Clear!” he shouted, his voice cracking.

  Only then did he pull his face away from his sights and look at Paolo, whose torso was out of his window, the silver six-shooter still held straight out in his grip. Only when Lee nodded to him did the pistol begin to lower.

  “Thanks,” Lee shouted to him over the buffeting of the wind.

  “Lee!” he heard Julia’s voice. “You good?”

  “I’m good!” he shouted back. “Keep going!”

  Lee slid down onto his ass, his back against the cab, his dead friend’s body to his right.

  His heart and lungs still going wild. He took a few big gulps of air, the stretch of them painful like they might pop his chest, and then he forced himself into combat breathing.

  In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

  In for a two count. Out for a four count.

  He felt the electricity in his fingers and toes.

  The shockwave after a nuclear blast of adrenaline.

  It wasn’t the nearness of death that set him off so much as the thoughts after the danger had passed. The thoughts about what could have happened. The thoughts of how you might’ve died. How close you had come. Those were like little secondary disasters in his brain, causing his adrenaline to surge again with each thought. Like how fallout can claim more lives than the actual blast itself.

  As imminent death began to fade like a signpost in the distance, Lee felt it all coming out of him. He felt like a scarecrow, like a straw man who’s suddenly been emptied of everything that kept him upright.

  The shakes came on. Bad.

  Not just the after-effects of fear this time: he’d taken what little reserves his body had and thrown them to the wind. Every muscle in his body felt like over-stretched elastic. Threadbare and loose.

  If he had to fight again, he didn’t know if he could.

  You would have to, he told himself. Because…

  Because what?

  Because you fucking have to!

  A wash of sickness came over him. Made him feel for a moment that he was going to vomit, but then it travelled up his body, through his chest, and landed in his head as a dull, throbbing ache.

  He closed his eyes. Felt vertigo, and opened them again.

  “Fuck me,” he mumbled to himself. Then spat a gob of saliva between his feet.

  He sat there, legs splayed out in front of him, body in a near state of collapse. Mouth open. Trying to regulate himself again.

  They made it to the main road and went another two miles before Abe finally let up on the accelerator. He heard Abe’s voice, floating back to him from the cab: “We’re gonna stop so you can get in here with us!”

  Lee lifted a thumbs-up. Feared his voice would be too shaky to respond.

  You’re good, he told himself. You’re good now.

  Abe found a spot in the road that wasn’t surrounded by trees. Fallow fields on either side. They had a good, 360-degree line of sight here. The truck slowed, and then stopped. A wash of churned dust from the shoulder billowed over Lee. He smelled dirt and exhaust.

  His heartrate felt like it was back down into a normal zone. But his lungs still hurt.

  He pulled himself upright, feeling sludgy. He was weak. He hated it, but it also frightened him. This was not a world that showed mercy to the weak.

  He climbed stiffly out of the pickup bed and hit the ground on shaky legs. He tried to move with urgency, but his body wasn’t cooperating. He pulled the rear driver’s side door open and Carl made room for him in the backseat.

  Lee clambered in, trying not to put his weakness on display. And when he was seated, he tried not to gasp for air for the effort it had taken him. He kept his hands locked in his lap, where the others wouldn’t see them shaking.

  Funny how they all felt the need to hide that from each other.

  Everyone got the shakes. But no one wanted to admit it.

  They could guard each other’s backs while they took shits, but couldn’t let each other see their hands shaking. No, that was much too personal.

  Abe looked into the back at Lee. “You good, man?”

  “Yeah. I’m good.” He glanced around the cab. “Everyone else good? Carl, how you feeling?”

  “Useless,” Carl growled. “I need a fuckin’ gun.”

  “We’re moving,” Abe said, and started accelerating again.

  They drove in a strange pall of silence for several minutes.

  Lee let his head fall back onto the headrest. Closed his eyes.

  Green fields. Rolling hills. A tree in the distance.

  Why could he not picture anything else?

  He opened his eyes and stared at the gray fabric of the ceiling, preferring that over thinking about that dream. The dream that made him feel like he would never be free…

  “So,” Paolo shattered the silence. “Y’all just gonna relax and take naps now? You not gonna talk about that shit?”

  Ther
e was a long pause.

  Lee turned his head to the man sitting in the back seat.

  Paolo’s eyes were jagging back and forth between the other occupants of the truck.

  Abe was largely ignoring him. Carl issued a facial shrug and continued looking straight forward.

  “What’s there to talk about?” Julia responded from the front, not bothering to turn. “We made a decision and we rolled with it. All’s well that ends well. Right?”

  Lee felt that this was directed at him. In Julia’s mind, he’d made a poor decision by getting in that truck bed. And maybe he had. But he was still alive, wasn’t he?

  “Well,” Paolo shifted in his seat and finally slid his pistol back into his holster. “I guess…thank you. For drawing those fuckers off. Guess that’s all I gotta say.”

  No one replied to his thanks.

  NINETEEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  OUTSIDERS

  She was waiting for Sam in the same spot that she’d left him.

  It was nearly dark and Sam didn’t see her until she stepped out from behind a tree.

  “You come alone?” Charlie asked.

  “Of course.”

  A slat of moonlight caught her face as she stepped toward him. He could just make out her eyes taking him in, up and down, and then looking behind him, as though she couldn’t take his word for it.

  That stung.

  “Alright then,” she said. “Come on.”

  She started away from him, but he caught her wrist.

  “Wait.” He looked around. “Where are we going?”

  She took his hand. The insistence of his thoughtless grab turning to something tender. She moved in close to him. Electrically close. He could smell her. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes?”

  “Because I trust you.”

  He shuffled his feet. “Yes, Charlie. I trust you.”

  Then she leaned forward, and up, and their lips touched.

  Firecrackers in his mind.

  It was a brief kiss, not much more than a peck, but her lips were soft and warm and they filled his mind with pink. He felt a stir all through his body. A rush of wanting.

  Then she was pulling him along with her. “Then come on.”

  He allowed himself to be led for a time, and when she became sure that he would follow without her towing him, she released his hand.