by Vohs, J. W.
Luke waved for Maddy and Zach to come closer, and they quietly paddled toward Gracie’s outstretched hand until she was able to grab their gunwale and pull the two craft together. As soon as she was certain that her hold on the second canoe was firm, she turned to Luke and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“There’s a pack of hunters all riled up about a half mile northwest of here,” he carefully whispered to everyone. “Zach, what’s the map show up ahead?”
Zach kept the waterproofed navigational maps in a pack strapped to the back of his seat, but the chart they were using today was already in hand. “Well, we just finished a big loop, and it looks like we’re on a fairly straight stretch for at least the next mile or so. Oh, and there’s a large oxbow lake west of the river up there too; I remember looking at the map yesterday and thinking that we’d have to check for a settlement there.”
“All right,” Luke briefly chewed his lip in thought. “Let’s get up there as fast as we can. Me and Gracie will stay in the lead, and I’ll hold up a fist when I want us to shut down the trollers and paddle to shore.”
Zach nodded his agreement and told Maddy to turn on the motor again. Luke took a perch at the front of the sixteen-foot canoe Gracie was piloting, keeping a sharp eye out for any sign of the creatures he could still hear howling in the distance. Five minutes later, through the trees lining the riverbank ahead, he saw a flash of metal in the frigid morning light. Another appeared a few seconds after the first. Focusing on a point up in the trees, his hunter-eyes picked out a dark mass in a large oak about fifteen feet from the ground. When the mass moved, Luke briefly thought that he might be looking at a bear. But it was winter, and a cold one at that; the bears were all hibernating. So he quickly took out his field glasses and did his best to stabilize them as the boat hurtled over the gentle waves pushed up by the current of the river.
Finally, he was able to see that the dark blob in the tree was an adult-sized human wearing hunting camouflage. The man had a compound bow in hand, and another flash of light revealed that arrows were being fired in the direction of the noisy hunters on the ground. Luke quickly counted eleven of the beasts, and they appeared to be in excellent condition—extremely excellent condition. They all looked like big alpha males; Luke had never seen so many huge monsters congregated in one small group. As he watched them, Luke realized that he had rarely seen any hunters of this caliber. The man in the tree was going to run out of arrows; he wouldn’t be able to outlast the hungry predators. Luke knew what he had to do. He signaled for Gracie to guide their craft under the steep bank running along the western shore of the river. He trusted that Zach and Maddy would follow.
As soon as the boats were secured, Luke described everything he’d seen. He then explained in a quiet voice, “I can’t leave the guy to be devoured and figured you guys wouldn’t want me fighting on my own.”
Zach grinned devilishly. “I’m just glad you’re sharing the fun; things have been pretty boring lately.”
Once the four experienced young warriors had strapped their helmets tight and secured their favorite weapons, they set off single-file to save the trapped human.
CHAPTER 2
Moving stealthily from tree to tree, Luke and his companions managed to approach to within thirty meters of the agitated hunters before one of the monsters spotted the advancing humans.
The creatures were even more impressive up close than they’d been at a distance. “Sweet Jesus,” Zach muttered, “did these guys used to be an NFL team?”
“My guess was WWF,” Maddy cracked nervously.
Now that he was within spitting distance of the enormous flesh-eaters, Luke felt a familiar wave of adrenaline rush through his body; he almost trembled in anticipation of the impending clash. These hunters did not elicit his sympathy; in fact, Luke was surprised at how eager he was to kill them all. He swiftly raised his bow and released a shaft tipped with a broad-head designed to drop moose. The unlucky creature that had been in the act of howling after sighting the fresh prey received an arrow between the eyes, a deadly reward for being the most observant member of the pack. One down, ten to go. “You’ll be moving in slowly—give me about a twenty-foot lead. I want the girls behind me with pistols. Zach, you bring up the rear; use your hammer to finish off whatever we drop.” He didn’t give them time to question his orders.
Luke was mentally “in the zone” as he sprinted ahead, drawing the attention of a handful of hunters away from the man in the tree. He flipped the bow over his back, where it slipped in to a harness he’d designed while waiting out the first months of the outbreak in his grandparents’ home near Cleveland. It took several seconds for the creatures to react, and when the first hunter charged, Luke grinned as he smoothly unsheathed and raised his prized trench-axe.
The encounter didn’t unfold as the young warrior was anticipating. Luke didn’t even have the opportunity to swing his weapon, watching instead with shock and dismay as the snarling beast zig-zagged around him and leapt toward Gracie. Luckily, she was an excellent shot, even under extreme pressure.
Luke turned back to face two additional creatures who were only a few feet away from him, but they too ignored him and focused on consuming his friends. “Hey,” Luke shouted in frustration as he buried the blade of his axe into the skull of one of the monsters trying to maneuver around him, “what about me?”
Maddy’s pistol dropped the other attacker before she shot Zach a “what the hell?” look.
Three more huge hunters followed the same path as their fallen comrades. Luke managed to nearly decapitate one and trip another as they thundered past him, then four shots and a few hammer-blows from his friends finished the job. Luke froze for a second when he realized that only one creature was visible, howling in frustration at the man in the tree—the other three hunters had disappeared. Luke decided to deal with the flesh-eater in sight before concerning himself with the location of the final three pack members. He expertly flipped the axe through the crisp morning air, the blade whistling sweetly before sinking into the face of the defiant monster with a satisfying crunch. He instantly rearmed himself with his bow before shouting, “Form up with me, back-to-back, NOW!”
The group immediately coalesced into a diamond-shaped formation and followed Luke’s lead as they navigated closer to the gigantic, and very dead, hunter under the tree. “Can you see where the others went?” Luke called up to the stranger as he wrenched his axe free from the corpse.
A young man’s voice responded, “Not all of ‘em; I’m pretty sure there’s one on the ground behind the bodies of the eaters you guys smashed.”
“On the ground?” Gracie shouted her questions. “Why would it be on the ground? You sure you’re not looking at one of our kills?”
“I can count, ma’am. I think he’s tryin’ to hide in plain sight where he can keep an eye on ya.”
Maddy snorted and rolled her eyes. She kept her voice low enough so that only her friends could hear her. “They don’t hide and wait for the opportunity to ambush—”
Luke shushed her and violently shoved the small group sideways.
The man in the tree screamed, “LOOK OUT!” as two massive hunters bolted in from opposite directions. Zach rammed his sledge hammer into the jaw of the flesh-eater who was suddenly only a few feet from the group. He reflexively used a short, two-handed, upper cut thrust he’d perfected in the early days of the outbreak. The heavy head of the hammer crushed through the teeth and palate of the creature. This typically fatal blow only momentarily stunned the immense hunter, but after several shots from Maddy’s suppressed .22, the enormous body crumpled to the frozen earth. With no time to reload, she pulled out her modified halberd and plunged its razor-sharp tip into the eye socket of the fallen monster. The beast was finally a corpse.
Several feet away from Maddy and Zach, an unusual dance was taking place. Luke had positioned himself between his diminutive wife and a broad, six-and-a-half-foot tall flesh-eater. “Stay behind me,” he commanded, �
�as close to my back as you can get.” Luke took a few steps to the right, with Gracie half a second behind him. The monster snarled and lunged when it saw Gracie, but Luke continued to block its access to her. When he heard Maddy’s gunshots he shouted, “Gracie, put your arms around my waist and just hang on!”
Luke hopped sideways, away from Zach and Maddy, and the hunter mirrored his movement. Out of the corner of his eye, Luke could see his friends finishing off the other creature that had rushed them. A wave of pure anger washed over Luke. Enough of this! he thought. In an instant, he lunged ahead and used a lightning-fast swing of his trench axe to halve the skull of the enraged beast determined to savage Gracie. Black blood and brain matter sprayed in all directions as Gracie peeked around her husband’s shoulder.
Luke took off his gore-splattered helmet and handed it to Gracie. “Would you mind cleaning that up for me? I can’t see a thing.”
“Hey, there’s still one left . . .” Gracie began, but Luke wasn’t listening. He was walking toward the corpses of the first creatures they’d dispatched when they were heading in to save the trapped archer. She noticed that several of the bodies had arrows protruding from their arms and mid-sections, wondering if the young man knew that only brain-destroying head shots could stop a flesh-eater. Preparing to call out to the kid still huddled on his perch, Gracie’s words caught in her throat when one of the “dead” hunters leapt silently, but menacingly, to its feet.
Luke stopped about two feet in front of the upright beast. The creature was tall and lean, with chiseled muscles and a roadmap of dark pink scar tissue covering most of its body. Black eyes gazed questioningly into black eyes. Everyone seemed frozen in place, afraid to make a move that might trigger an attack. Luke was vulnerable without his helmet, but neither Luke nor the creature took an aggressive stance. They just stared at one another, searching for answers in the blackness. Then, in an instant, the hunter turned and sprinted away, rapidly disappearing into the surrounding woods.
“Don’t let that eater get away!” the young man yelled from his position in the tree. He made no move to join the others on the ground.
Luke reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. He slid them on before turning to walk back to the rest of the group. “I think we took care of your hunter problem. How many did you manage to take out?”
“Hunter problem? Oh, you mean the eaters.” The young man still made no move to come down from the tree. “You guys were frickin’ amazing. I’ve never seen anythin’ like it. I shot a couple of ‘em, but it didn’t even slow ‘em down.”
“Uh, Luke?” Zach sounded nervous. “Shouldn’t we be watching out for that last one to attack us? What if there are others moving in?”
“He’s not coming back, and there aren’t any others around,” Luke replied. “This group was a fluke.”
Luke’s answer completely satisfied his friends, but the stranger was understandably skeptical. “How do you know it ain’t coming back?”
Luke was going to answer, but Gracie stepped in. She smiled beneath her raised visor. “He’s probably killed more eaters than anyone else on the planet. He can track them when they’re days ahead of us. He always knows where they are.” She paused and pulled off her helmet and gloves, still smiling. “I must be a real mess.” She fluffed her hair with her fingers; the instantly smitten archer didn’t take his eyes off her. “I’m Gracie, from Cleveland. What’s your name?”
“Terry. I grew up about forty miles from here.” He still tightly gripped a branch, but he visibly relaxed a bit. “You’re a long way from Ohio. We don’t see many strangers around here these days. Why’re you here?”
“We’re taking canoes west, eventually heading to Utah. We noticed you from the river, and none of us wanted to see any more people get eaten if we could help it.” Gracie tipped her head toward her friends. “This is Zach and Maddy. They’re my best friends in the world.” She put her hand on Luke’s shoulder. “And this is my husband, Luke.”
Terry’s eyebrows shot up. “Your husband? You don’t look old enough to have a husband.”
Gracie laughed. “Well, last December I would have agreed with you, but the world’s changed a lot since then. I’m seventeen, how old are you?”
“Just turned eighteen.” He eyed the group below him. “So y’all are just a bunch of teenagers? You fight like frickin’ superheroes.” He quickly added, “But that don’t mean I trust you.”
Gracie shrugged. “If you don’t want to talk to us, we’ll move along.” She picked up her helmet.
“Wait,” Terry almost shouted. “I never said I wouldn’t talk to you.”
Gracie extended her hand. “Are you ready to come down from that tree?”
“You sure there ain’t no eaters nearby?” Terry anxiously scanned the area.
“If Luke says it’s safe, it’s safe.”
Terry disagreed. “Nothing is safe around here.”
Half an hour later, the entire group was heading to the oxbow lake that Zach had pointed out on the map earlier that morning. Once Terry started talking, he had a disturbing story to tell. He’d just escaped from a settlement on the oxbow that was controlled by an ex-con named Jesse and his small group of armed thugs. Terry’s twelve-year-old little sister, Courtney, was still there. Terry said he wouldn’t have left her behind but he was running for his life. All males ages eighteen to thirty were expected to join Jesse’s “security team.” These guys mostly bullied the civilians and acted like they owned everything and everyone. When Terry refused to join the security team, Jesse had laughed at him and said he’d be having a change of heart real soon. Then one of the goons shot Terry’s dog, and they all laughed some more. Terry was carrying his bow and arrows, and, without really thinking, he’d sent an arrow through the throat of the guy who’d shot his dog. Then he ran away as fast as he could and didn’t look back.
Riding in the canoe with Luke and Gracie, Terry felt tremendously lucky. He’d just survived an attack by the largest, scariest eaters he’d ever seen, and now his newfound deadly friends were going to help him rescue his sister.
“How’d you end up at the settlement?” Gracie asked Terry while offering him a canteen of water.
He took a long drink and shrugged. “We left town as soon as the infection showed up there. Dad brought us to our grandpa’s farm to wait out the crisis. Mom was workin’ as a police dispatcher and was supposed to join us at the end of her shift, but we never heard another word from her.” He paused to regain his composure. “Grandpa and Dad got bitten in a fight at the farm; my sister and I ran off with some neighbors who’d heard about a safe area. It was pretty safe, for a while.”
Luke looked at Terry sympathetically. “Tell me about Jesse.”
“Well, I suppose he’s around thirty, but I can’t be sure. He’s got lots of tattoos—skulls, a spider web, some numbers. They’re all just black except for a green shamrock on his arm. He likes to drink and makes his own moonshine. He also likes teenaged girls, young ones.” Terry’s voice cracked. “I never should have left Courtney.”
“Why hasn’t anyone stopped him?” Luke asked quietly.
Terry released a long sigh before he began to explain. “When we first got there, everybody had guns and plenty of ammo. But the more fightin’ we did against the eaters, the more they came on. We finally figured out that the noise of all that shootin’ was bringin’ ‘em in, but people kept usin’ their guns anyway. Pretty soon, nobody had any ammo but Jesse. He started collecting everybody’s guns, and he’d loan out loaded weapons to folks who wanted to go out huntin’ sayin’ he was doin’ us a favor, makin’ sure we didn’t waste our resources. I think he still has crates full of all sorts of guns and ammo. That’s the main reason he’s in charge now. That, and the helicopters.”
Gracie’s stomach did a flip-flop. “Did you say helicopters?”
“Yup, a bunch of ‘em were flyin’ around a while back, and Jesse said they were his buddies, lookin’ for the eaters. Said they ha
d some spray to kill ‘em. We didn’t believe him at first, but nobody’s seen an eater since the choppers left.” He shivered. “Well, not until today.”
Luke thought that Jesse was just making up stories to lead people to believe he had powerful friends, but he needed to be certain. “Did a helicopter ever land nearby?”
Terry blinked. “Not that I ever saw.”
“Did any strangers in uniforms visit your settlement?”
“No, you guys are the first strangers to come around.”
“Are you absolutely sure that Jesse hasn’t had contact with any sort of military group?”
Terry laughed out loud. “You need to see Jesse; he’s not the kind of guy who’d trust a man in uniform. And he never leaves the settlement; he’s too busy drinkin’ and screwin’ girls—” he turned to Gracie and lowered his eyes, “pardon me, Miss.”
It was Gracie’s turn to laugh. “Don’t worry about it. So Jesse never leaves, what about the guys who work for him? Could they be in contact with outsiders, maybe the guys who were flying the helicopters?”
“I don’t know, why?” Terry started to sound worried again. “Who flies those choppers? Do you guys know ‘em?”
“Not personally,” Luke explained, “but we know what they do and what they don’t do. I doubt Jesse has any idea what their real purpose is, but I’m still going to ask him about it.”
“Wait—you’re going to talk to Jesse? I thought we were just going to go in and get my sister.”
