by Ben Tripp
• • •
The wind shrieked through the bullet holes in the police car’s glass. Danny wasn’t dressed for this. Her jacket was in tatters where it had been scored by the chain. She could feel the blood drying all over her, thick as old paint. She cranked up the heater and wondered how the bikers could take the cold. Topper and his fellow scouts opened up the throttles, and her thoughts narrowed to the chase. They were headed back the way they’d come, toward the interstate. There were more zeroes alongside the road than before; the human activity had attracted them. It wouldn’t be long before the scene of the fight was overrun.
A Vandal wounded in the combat had ditched; he was lying on the shoulder of the road, almost bled out, his machine dumped against the crash rail. The pursuers didn’t slow down for him. They could destroy him on the way back. He’d probably have turned by then; there was more blood on the outside of him than the inside.
Then the gang was jettisoning cargo: saddlebags and tools, anything that might slow down the pursuit. The scouts swerved and twisted; nothing went under the wheels. Danny just slammed over it. She hooked her bad hand through the wheel and began rummaging in the backpack for a suitable weapon. Moving at high speed, dizzy on adrenaline and starting to feel the pain of the fight, she wasn’t sure she could do any damage when they caught up with the Vandals, but the Silent Kid wasn’t going with them, whether they took him to the safe place or ate him or whatever the hell the plan was. She had to try. Her head was starting to hurt.
They reached the on-ramp to the interstate half a kilometer behind the Vandals; Danny couldn’t tell which bike had the Silent Kid on it, but she could see there were several with children aboard, thrown across saddles or held under arms by the riders on the backs of the bikes. So they couldn’t shoot their way through. She didn’t know what they could do instead.
“Back off!” she shouted into the radio. “Scouts, back off!”
Several of the scouts did fall back, and the others soon saw the pattern and eased off as well. Not everyone had a radio, as they were riding commandeered machines. The Vandals gained ground, circulating up the inclined cloverleaf ramp onto the eastbound side of the highway. They were headed straight for the swarm. And Danny didn’t think they’d have long to wait before it met them—there was a mass of the things all around the roadway, drifting westward with their heads tipped back, smelling the recently-departed Tribe’s spoor. Topper dropped alongside Danny as they approached the foot of the ramp.
“What do we do?!” he shouted over the wind and engine noise.
“They fucked themselves!” Danny hollered back. “Keep back and when they hit the swarm we go in for the kids! Don’t fight, you hear?! Don’t fight! Just grab and run!”
• • •
They crested the on-ramp. The Vandal Reapers were opening up a good distance, but the road ahead was cloudy with dark figures. The swarm seemed to have turned around, attracted by human activity. Danny saw taillights flash on, chrome winking, engine smoke as they downshifted. There was gunfire. She and the scouts were moving at parking lot speed. Give the Vandals room to fuck up. One by one, the scouts rolled to a stop. They couldn’t go any farther without tangling with the enemy gang.
Danny let the interceptor idle. There was a skirmish happening up ahead. The Vandals were going to have to come back at them; there was nowhere else to go.
“Do we get out of their way?” It was Charity, who was covered in blood like the rest. She was taking the opportunity to feed shells into a pump-action shotgun. Several of the others were arming themselves; the Vandals’ bikes had weapons tucked away all over them.
Danny dragged her weary body out of the interceptor. She was armed with a pistol and a hand grenade. The latter was for zeroes. If they stayed where they were for five minutes, they’d be overrun. “When they come back this way, we gotta stop the ones with the kids,” she said. “No guns. Knock the bikes down if you have to, but we got to get those kids back.”
As it transpired, that wasn’t the issue. In the distance, they saw the Vandals had stopped completely and were turning around. Then there were bundles being thrown off the machines. Bundles that got up and ran. Jesus Christ, the kids.
The bikes rumbled back into action and came racing straight toward Danny and the scouts. They’d left the kids at the leading edge of the swarm. Something to slow the zeroes down while they got away. And it was a damn good idea, because it meant Danny and the others didn’t have time to fight the Vandals—not if they wanted to save the children. The fight wouldn’t be much use anyway—the Vandals had scattered in several directions when the attack broke up, but even so, this group was some twenty strong, and Danny’s side totaled eight.
Everything happened fast. Danny jumped back into her vehicle and hit the gas. The scouts were already moving. They aligned themselves in a flying vee straight down the center of the lanes, the Vandals heading straight for them like knights at a jousting tourney.
The distance closed between the sides. Danny was hindmost among the Tribespeople. Conn was up front. Then the racing bikes were flashing past each other—there was a chatter of gunfire, and Charity went down, along with two Vandals, their bikes scraping fat sparks down the pavement; a machete flashed and Ernie’s machine wobbled, but didn’t go over. Then the two sides had passed each other, the Vandals receding in Danny’s rearview mirror. That would have been the end of it, except Danny had tossed the grenade out of her window a few seconds before. Two of the Vandals had the bad luck to be alongside it when it detonated. They were flung to the ground like dolls, and Danny had just enough time to hope they survived for the swarm’s pleasure when she reached the first of the zeroes.
She rammed as many as she could. The Silent Kid was leading the other children over the concrete barrier alongside the road. A cluster of zeroes tearing at something on the ground told Danny that not all of the kids had made it. The scouts, Topper now in the lead, surrounded the young; they were terrified, but the familiar faces brought them back to sanity. All except the Silent Kid, who kept on going, pumping his thin legs across the gravel margin of the interstate, then dropped down into the drainage channel that ran alongside it.
As the scouts rolled out, each with a screaming child on his bike, Danny pulled a U-turn and stopped the interceptor, dodging a couple of emaciated zeroes. One of them had rootlike veins growing all over its skin, like a statue in some ancient Cambodian temple. Then she made her way on foot down the embankment, shouting after the Kid.
“You get over here now! I’m alone! Get over here!” He heard that—which part made him stop running, Danny didn’t know. But he stopped. Danny reached down into the ditch and pulled him up with her good hand.
They raced for the interceptor, which already had a crowd of moaners nearby; they must have been able to smell Kelley on the vehicle, because they didn’t come near. Danny threw the Kid in the back and drove away after the scouts. She hadn’t gone far when she reached the place Charity had gone down. The scout was dead, a bullet through the neck. Conn must not have seen, or he’d probably be making a stand where she lay. Danny hated to leave her remains to the swarm, but she could at least send her off properly. She retrieved the dead woman’s massive handgun and fired an arm-numbing round into her head, then drove onward.
• • •
The Tribe was scattered along the road where the fight had taken place; vehicles that had been abandoned in the early part of the fight stood with doors open and there were chooks wandering around alone, probably in shock. Discipline had completely broken down. Danny was still a minute’s drive away when Wulf Gunnar stepped into the road and flagged her down. The scouts had already reached the parking lot in front of the church, so the return of the children was handled.
Danny stopped alongside the old man. Wulf leaned on his rifle like a cane, suddenly looking very old.
“What’s up?” Danny asked. She didn’t have any energy left, if he wanted to complain about something. Her head was thumping.
“Back where?”
“Just stay back. Give me fifteen minutes, okay?”
Danny had never seen Wulf look like he did now. There was defeat in his eyes. He appeared to have been hollowed out.
Then, through her fatigue-clouded mind, a terrible thought occurred to her. Her heart accelerated and her foot fell onto the gas pedal.
“Sheriff!” Wulf shouted, and slapped the roof of the interceptor. But it was too late.
Danny steered up to the church parking lot, rolling through puddles of blood and broken glass. Nobody looked directly at her. There were a lot of backs. The only ones who weren’t ignoring her with great effort were the reunited families of the stolen kids, who were huddled in a ring, sobbing and hugging. Something told Danny that wasn’t what was in store for her.
She saw Topper. He tried to wave her off, which told her where she needed to go. She stopped the interceptor, threw the door wide, and hurried on foot to the place Topper stood. His bike was parked in front of something. The other scouts stood nearby, hanging their heads. Danny was reminded of when she was young and her father’s hunting dogs had torn up their new plaid sofa. Everybody looked like the dogs.
Conn reached out, tried to grab her sleeve.
“Sheriff, you seen Charity?”
Danny shook his hand off.
Ernie was next. Bleeding from the cheek, hands outstretched. Danny stepped around him.
Amy stepped in front of her.
“Danny, not now.”
Danny pushed her aside.
She saw the muumuu first, the filthy fabric spread out on the asphalt. Then the narrow gray legs poking out from beneath it, and then the sprawling figure of her sister. There was a black halo around her head, and as Danny reached her side, she saw why. Someone had shot her. She was soaked in her own inky blood, except around the mouth where the gore of the living still shone red.
“She came back,” Amy said in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere far distant. “She came back to wait for you.”
Danny’s body lost its coordinates; it had no weight or mass. The fear and anger that had earlier caused her to refuse to take Kelley was gone. She fell to her knees and scooped up the one hand still attached to the body, that skeletal claw with its tattered glove.
A crowd was gathering. She didn’t give a damn. She pulled Kelley’s corpse to her and cradled it in her arms, rocking, her mind broken into a million dull pieces. Amy was reaching for her, and Patrick held her back.
Danny knew nothing, but felt herself going over a cliff, falling forever into nothingness where the terrible world went sweeping past and there was only the cold sorrow of loss.
Voices were murmuring. Danny heard them now, and looked up into the faces. There was disgust in some, fear in others. The Tribe was looking at her and judging her: Her sister, the undead, had gone feral—and somebody had put the monster down. They all knew this day would come. She felt the fire rising in her face, and wanted more than anything to smash them all, these dull, complacent, lucky people who were still alive when Kelley was twice dead. What did they have? Why were they alive? They were a burden, stupid and selfish and helpless. They were nothing but sacks of meat to feed the legion of the undead, and Danny had never allowed Kelley to eat one of them when she was worth more than most of them even as a goddamn zombie.
She saw Wulf letting the Silent Kid out of the back of the interceptor. His little dog limped up to him and tried to hop into his arms, but the Kid didn’t take his eyes off Danny. She wondered what he thought of her. He was alive. That was enough.
She couldn’t endure another second. If the boy’s confusion turned to horror, it would be more than she could bear. Then Amy Cutter was scooping the boy up and Danny couldn’t see him anymore.
Danny lifted up her sister’s corpse in aching arms and was shocked at how little it weighed. She stumbled to the interceptor, the back door of which still stood open, and tried to arrange the body on the seat, but the limp shape collapsed as if it hadn’t any bones.
Hands were pulling at her, trying to stop her. She felt the time had come to be the dictator. It was time to kill somebody, make the Tribe pay for this.
“We had to do it,” a man said. Crawford. Danny reached for her sidearm but the holster was empty.
“She turned savage,” somebody else said. “You saw it.”
Danny reached in through the driver’s side window to retrieve Charity’s gun. She was definitely going to kill somebody. There was a roaring sound in her ears and the world was dyed red with the blood pounding behind her eyes.
Then a shadow fell across them and Wulf was there, stinking, red-eyed, his voice raised. He had his rifle and there was spittle in his beard; he was shouting. Danny thought he was going to shoot her.
“Get in the fuckin’ car,” he said.
Maybe it was him Danny needed to kill. Maybe he was the one who shot Kelley. Her fingers touched the butt of the pistol. Kill him. Get some vengeance. Who cared if it was him who pulled the trigger? He’d do.
But Danny couldn’t see herself doing it. Her rage was melting into sorrow. She looked at Kelley’s remains in the back of the car. There was the only person Danny wanted to be with.
She climbed into the back of the vehicle with Kelley.
Wulf shut the door behind her, sealing them in. Then he turned to the crowd of Tribespeople standing around them.
“You fuckers were glad to have this here gal lead you, as long as you thought there wasn’t any place safe. The minute you heard we were near the safe place, you all threw her overboard. Every last one of you chicken-shit fuckers let her down. And then you blown her sister’s head off. So on behalf of the Danielle Adelman Welcoming Committee, fuck you. And you, and you, and you. Fuck every one of you fuckers!”
Then, unexpectedly, he slid into the driver’s seat of the interceptor and started the engine. When the crowd didn’t make way, he stomped on the gas and they scattered like ninepins, and after a few seconds there was only road ahead, no people.
Wulf drove Danny away. The last thing she saw when she looked back over her shoulder was the Silent Kid, his arms full of the little dog. They were both bug-eyed, staring after her.
18
Danny’s mind began functioning again after they had traveled for fifteen minutes in the wrong direction.
“The kidnappers went east,” she said. “We need to get to that train station.”
“Right,” Wulf said.
“We got to go after them.”
“They’re gone, Adelman. Hey! They’re gone. What the fuck kind of heroic bullshit you think you’re gonna achieve, I don’t know. You always think you can just ride out and save the day, and for the fuckin’ life of me I cannot figger out why. It’s retarded.”
“You can’t just give up,” Danny said. She felt like a prisoner in the back of the vehicle. She couldn’t get out.
“I gave up years ago. And I’m still here.” He spoke almost gently, with perfect knowledge, as if this was the essence of his entire philosophy. Which it may have been.
Danny forced herself to calm down. “I found Kelley, didn’t I? We can still find those kids.”
Wulf glanced over his shoulder at Danny to see if she was kidding. “That’s your argument?”
“Fuck you.”
“You wish. Okay: Listen up, Sheriff, because this is my party now. Them scouts we just left behind are perfectly capable of going after these here kidnappers. If any of them chooks want to join in, they can go, too. Hell, where are the parents? Why didn’t they drive off after these shitheads themselves? Because they’re scared pussies. They’re more afraid of zeroes than they love their own fuckin’ kids. So that leaves you, because you ain’t scared of zeroes. So you want to go off and save those kids. Bra-fuckin’-vo. But here’s the thing. Ain’t gonna happen. They already got away, and them poor little ones gonna get ate alive, screaming for their mommies and daddies while some w
alking skeleton spoons out their guts. That’s the way it is. The sooner you figure that shit out, the sooner you can give up. It’ll be a lot easier after that.”
Wulf drove in silence for a long time. Danny sat with Kelley’s spider-light corpse in her lap, the broken head lolling against Danny’s chest. The smell of decay was amplifying, a sick, gassy stink; whatever principle kept the animated corpse from putrefying as fast as simple dead matter, it had failed. Wulf rolled down his window, but still said nothing more. Danny did not weep. She sat in silence with the dead kindling limbs gathered close to her, and brooded about giving up.
• • •
She hadn’t known Wulf could drive. It had never occurred to her. But of course he could. He had been an ordinary person once, too, with a job, car, wife, kids. Living indoors. He’d been a vagrant since before Danny was born. His filthy, tangled hair batted like half-deflated balloons in the wind that whistled through the bullet holes in the glass, and the stench of his armpits cut through the bilious reek of Kelley’s remains. Danny only knew him as a big, stinking drunk who stumbled through the woods. Discovering he could drive was like seeing a bear picking up a guitar to play “Smoke on the Water.”
They drove nowhere and nowhere again until the sun went down, and in the twilight Danny saw small fields from some family farm, a rare thing in the industrial-scaled crop monoculture of that region, deep in the unbeating heartland. Although the place was clearly abandoned and the coming winter had put the fields to sleep, they were matted with past growth. The headlights revealed a half-collapsed farm stand beside the road with a sign that read ORGANIC PRODUCE. So these were old-style plants that grew from healthy seed, while millions of acres of corn and wheat all around the little farm were sterile and could never reproduce, but only rot.
“Stop here,” Danny said, and Wulf pulled over. It was the first time either of them had spoken in two hours. The old clapboard farmhouse was far distant, flanked by a couple of trees. He got out and opened the back door for Danny, then cleared his throat, and said:
