Jack inhaled deeply to quell her growing fear and anger. She turned off the flashlight so she could take her children’s hands in hers. “Stick close behind me.”
Oliver rose from a crouch and shook his head. “I’m too old to be running around climbing fences,” he said. “I’m going to have a chat with these fellows,” he said.
“That’s crazy!” Anna said. “Bently is with them. They’ll kill you.”
Before Oliver could answer, Jack flashed her light into his face, making him turn away squinting. “I don’t think they will,” she said. “They’re his friends.”
“Not friends!” Oliver said.
“But?”
“They work for me,” he said.
“Knew it,” Jack said.
Anna was stuck halfway over a fence and pushing through shrubbery. They couldn’t see her face but they could hear her voice tremble. “What’s going on, Mom?”
“Jaimie and I saw Oliver talking to that guy.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Anna said.
“It might,” Jack said.
“When were you going to tell me?” Anna asked her mother. The girl’s voice was an edged weapon.
“When I knew for sure what it might mean.” Jack kept her flashlight beam in the old man’s eyes. “What about it, Oliver?”
“In that hooligan David’s parlance, you might think I’m ‘playing’ you. I’m playing them. This isn’t a game. It’s about survival.”
“Ours or just yours?”
The old man paused a moment too long before answering.
“I think I have my answer,” Jack said. She took Jaimie’s hand and pulled him toward the fence. “We’ve got to go, kids.”
“I’ve got a deal with them,” Oliver said. “I’m using them. I’ve got this under control. Don’t be such a child! This is good news for you.”
“If it was good news for us,” Jack replied, “you would have told us before you had to.”
“They’re gathering stuff for me. I pay them from my jewelry stash. You think you’re going to survive the winter here without dealing with the black market? You think that little garden of yours is going to provide for all of us through the winter? The black market is the only market there is! Jacqueline, don’t be an idiot! I’m the ground floor. I’m Macy’s! I’m Sears! I’m the new WalMart. By spring, if you want to get anything, it’s going to be through me. The people who survive this are going to be the ones who adapt early. I am it!”
“You lied to us, Oliver.” Jack groped for the fence and moved to Anna’s dark outline, pushing her over the top. She didn’t want to risk the flashlight anymore.
“I was going to tell you once things settled down,” Oliver said. “I haven’t met all of Bently’s group yet, but they need a leader. I can organize things so it’s better for everybody.”
They couldn’t see his face but his voice sounded wounded, desperate.
“If Bently’s on your side, why get us to move into your house?”
“Because you’re my family. Everybody needs one and I needed — I need you on my side! Loners don’t make it in a disaster. No one who tries to get through this alone will survive. I’ve seen disasters before! Jacqueline, don’t do this!”
Anna was over the fence. She pulled back cedar branches so Jack and Jaimie could climb over easily. Jaimie paused to smell the sweet cedar and Jack nudged him forward. When he moved, she swung her leg over the wooden fence. A splinter dug into her palm as she tumbled after her son.
“You want a family, Oliver? There they are down the street, looting my house. You lied to me so I can’t trust you. Show me I can trust you, Oliver. Go prove we’re your tribe and not those screaming idiots.”
Jack pulled her children across the dark backyard toward the old man’s house. Theo would be worried. It occurred to her that her husband might even try to stop the looters, which wouldn’t be smart even if he weren’t so sick.
Oliver called after them. He was saying something to her, calling her name, but all she heard was the blood pounding in her ears as she ran blind, as fast as she dared.
A high fence marked the perimeter of the next yard but there was a gate and it was unlocked. Anna began to speak but Jack shushed her daughter. They were just three houses and across the street from the men rifling their house. A hundred miles would have been too close. Jack began to pant as her heart slammed against her breastbone. She hurried her children, holding hands, moving three abreast. As if we’re all kids, Jack thought, like we should be skipping.
It was Jaimie who jerked his mother back, narrowly avoiding a fall into the pool at their feet. They skirted the edge of a large piano-shaped pool and, as one, stopped to listen.
A man yelled at someone, though the words weren’t clear. The wind was stronger now, pushing away the words and swallowing them before the message could reach the trio.
“Is that Douglas?” Jack asked in a whisper.
“No,” said Anna.
The wind pushed clouds back from the moon. It emerged at their feet first, a white globe reflected in the pool. They looked up at the full moon, born from columns of smoke. Jack cursed under her breath. The moonless night had been to their advantage. Advantage: vampires.
Light from the full moon bathed them white. Advantage: werewolves.
Jack could see her children’s faces easily. Jaimie’s gaze was fixated, up and away, on the racing clouds, or perhaps, on the moonscape. With a stab of annoyance, Jack wished Anna’s boyfriend was here. Trent was a football player, and strong. Who was on her side but her girl, a very ill husband and the mostly mute son she loved but couldn’t reach? Maybe Douglas Oliver would be of help, but probably not. The old man might be selling them out, pointing to his house and saying to the wolfmen, “Take your prisoners and do what you want.”
Fresh moonlight made Anna’s face luminous, reminding Jack how much her daughter resembled her. Anna had Theo’s mouth but her eyes were her mother’s. In this light, it was easy to imagine she was looking at her younger self, shivering and terrified.
Maybe that was why she was so much closer to Anna than Jaimie. Her daughter was easier to read. She wasn’t thinking about their furniture and broken things. She remembered the lust and animal danger in Bently’s gaze when he’d ogled Anna. Jack was sure Anna contemplated that now, too.
Dark clouds obscured the moon again and Jack went cold. The man across the street yelled in short, unintelligible barks.
“Did you catch any of that?” Jack asked.
Anna shook her head. “But the tone — ”
“What?”
“Whoever it is, it sounds like he’s giving orders.”
“And it’s not Oliver,” Jack said.
Theo was just two houses away, but she forced her children to slow down, to move carefully and stay unseen. Jack had to know the way was clear. She had to make sure the marauders hadn’t gotten to Oliver’s house, and to Theo, first.
They were in the backyard next to Oliver’s house when another howl rose. It was close and it made them freeze again, searching for the source as if they could see in the dark by sheer force of will. It could have been a wolf, but Jack was almost sure it was a man. Or a crazed man who had become a wolf. The thought sucked the energy out of her. If she hadn’t been holding her children so close, she might have fallen down.
Until now, Jack hadn’t realized that Jaimie had Douglas Oliver’s walking stick. Jaimie pointed at the sky and the white moon emerged again from the roiling cloud cover as if called. It was as if her son held a magic wand.
The howl came again from the direction of their ravaged home. It was a man, but he sounded more animal with each gleeful bay.
“Advantage: maniacs,” Anna said.
“Sh!” Jack searched the dark, but she couldn’t see an enemy.
Jaimie looked into the darkness behind them. He watched creeping energies beyond a chain-link fence. The auras connoted hunger, but on a scale
he’d never seen.
Jack touched her son’s shoulder, wondering if he saw something behind them she did not.
Animals followed them, but Jaimie felt curiosity, not fear, and so the predators kept their distance. The animals were wary. They sensed he was different from the other humans and, since his kind was unknown, they took him for something dangerous.
Another long howl from the crazed man broke clear on the crisp air. Jaimie thought of the book in his backpack. The Latin for what he heard was: lupus est homo homini. Man is a wolf to man.
Jack shook Jaimie’s shoulder, urging him to move.
The boy turned his head toward his mother, but he did not search out her eyes. She followed his gaze to the moon again.“Lyconic,” he said dreamily.
Under different circumstances, Jack would praise her son for speaking. Instead, she said, “Oh, for God’s sake, shut up, Jaimie!”
Take your reward for the struggle of life
Oliver walked up to the Spencer house wishing the Mallrats hadn’t taken the bear spray from him. Jaimie had taken his walking stick and he missed the feel of that in his hand, too. Bently wasn’t supposed to show his hand yet, but the man was stupid. Oliver was confident he could talk the little rat man back under his thumb again and Bently would thank him for the privilege.
Though the old man didn’t know these new men with Bently, in a crisis, people need leadership. Oliver was sure he was the man to claim that leadership and keep it. He’d told lesser men what to do his whole life. Tonight would be no different. The key was to show them they were joining him, not the other way around. That was the way to stay in the driver’s seat.
This was a negotiation and the dynamics of civilization weren’t an ancient lost memory. He was dealing with people who had been shopping at a grocery store (instead of the houses of the dead) just a few, short weeks ago.
As the old man stepped closer, the headlights of two Jeeps, both military-issue, flared on. They were parked on the lawn, pointed at the Spencer house. A third vehicle sat idling in the driveway. Oliver’s vision was poor at long distances at night. He cursed his age. Still, he strode forward, looking jaunty and confident.
A young guy in a white T-shirt and Bermuda shorts sat on the half of the Spencer’s couch on the outside of the window casement. “Hey, Bently!” he called. “Your boyfriend’s here!”
As he got closer, Oliver slowed. A police car, with a box trailer attached to it, was backed up to Marjorie Bendham’s garage. The trailer was red and yellow and adorned with a fancy calligraphic font that read: Mere Entertainments.
Marjorie Bendham looked lost. Her vision must have been worse than his own because she hadn’t spotted him yet. A young man in a muscle shirt loaded the back of the trailer. They were stealing Douglas Oliver’s inventory from Mrs. Bendham’s garage.
“Hey!” Oliver yelled. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing with all my food?”
Bently walked up to him, a rifle in his hands. Oliver had dealt with the little man many times. He had no fear of him. The old man had even talked him into taking a shot in the jaw with a bag of canned soup to gain the Spencers’ trust. He was confident he could deal with the man right up until Bently slugged him in the gut with the butt of the rifle.
Oliver collapsed, gasping for breath. Something felt very wrong in his rib cage, like there was too much movement there. A burn spread around his back as he gasped for air.
Marjorie Bendham stepped closer, but did not cross her property line, as if an invisible fence kept her back.
His eyes wide, Oliver gaped up at Bently. Bently stared back as if the old man was an entirely new and particularly ugly species of bug.
He looked past Bently to Marjorie Bendham. The old woman smiled.
The anger Douglas Oliver felt at seeing his cache of negotiables stolen evaporated. He’d long thought of anger as a secret source of strength, but now all he felt was terror. He was afraid Bently might hit him again and kill him.
The man in the Bermuda shorts sat up straighter to get a good look and let out a hyena laugh.
“Sully! Get the lieutenant,” Bently called to the man on the couch.
The lieutenant? What was this?
The guy in Bermuda shorts, hauled himself up off the couch and jumped to the ground with a grunt. He shouldered his shotgun and disappeared into the Spencer’s front door.
In a moment, Sully returned with a fat man in green camouflage. The lieutenant didn’t look at all surprised to find Oliver lying at his feet. “Is this the man you’ve been telling me about, Mr. Bently?”
“Yes, sir,” Bently said.
The lieutenant sat on his heels and looked into the old man’s eyes. “Douglas Oliver. You are charged with black marketeering,” he said. “How do you plead?”
“How do I plead?”
“We’ll skip the formalities,” the lieutenant said, pulling out a cigarette pack from one of his many pockets. “Mr. Bently here has infiltrated your organization and has told me all about your activities. Looting each night, dealing in stolen jewelry, illegal drugs, etcetera.”
Through the pain, Oliver nodded toward the Bendham’s garage. “You mean the jewelry and supplies you’re stealing from my garage right now?”
“That isn’t even your garage. The old woman says all those spoils are your doing.” The lieutenant paused to light his cigarette. “Admit your looting and I won’t have the old woman shot alongside you.” The lieutenant smiled and puffed a cloud of smoke into the old man’s face.
It hurt Oliver very much to cough. He managed to say, “There is no ‘organization’. Bently works for me. And it’s not looting. It’s salvage and survival.”
“No, old man,” the military man replied. “He works for me. He works for the Provisional Militia. I am Lieutenant Francis Carron and you are my prisoner, soon to be executed for high crimes against the state under martial law.”
Oliver’s chest pounded with pain and his breath was short. He was sure at least one rib was broken. Or maybe the heart attack he’d feigned a short time ago had arrived for real. He winced and gasped and gripped his chest, his hand a claw.
Carron laughed at him and bent closer. “All this time, you thought Mr. Bently was working for you? Not so, old man. You have been working for me. Bently says you know gems. That’s good. Your stuff will be useful. I don’t want to try buying food from nearby municipalities and negotiate using costume jewelry. That’s the sort of thing that can lead to hard feelings. I don’t want my men to get shot. It’s important that, in negotiations, that everyone be made happy. That’s something you did not seem to understand when you used Mr. Bently so harshly.”
“I can negotiate for you. I’m still an expert on gems. Without me, you could get faux pearls made of glass or plastic and never know the difference. Keep me around and…everybody will be happy.”
“I already have another jeweller, Mr. Oliver. She’s a pretty thing. I have a position for her in the militia. I don’t need you.” He puffed a stream of cigarette smoke that hung in the cold air and turned to slow, yellow milk in the cast of the Jeeps’ headlights.
Before Oliver could say more, Bently stepped forward and kicked the old man in the ribs. Oliver began to cry and cursed himself for allowing himself to sob aloud.
Carron stood and gazed across the street at the dark outline of Oliver’s house. “Mr. Bently is not very happy with you, Douglas. Bently, did you really let this man hit you in the face with a bag of groceries?”
Bently scowled but said nothing.
“It was a play that got out of hand.”
“No. A ploy, I think,” Carron said. “I don’t see any of that family here so I guess you didn’t gain their trust, after all, huh? You underestimated poor Mr. Bently’s irritation and his loyalty to me, of course. Do you know we were just discussing you this morning? Mr. Bently reminded me that looters are to be shot.” The fat man smiled, baring long, yellow teeth.
Oliver wheeze
d, “You thieving scum — ”
“Said the thief.” The lieutenant’s laugh was a metallic bark. “It’s a new world, Mr. Oliver. There isn’t a place in it for those who fail to adapt quickly.”
Oh, God, Oliver thought. My own words!
“The end of the world is a tough situation for an old man, I imagine. I’m not old yet, but I am determined to get that way.”
Bently grabbed Oliver and hauled him up. The nerves running along his ribs screamed in protest.
Lieutenant Carron threw Bently a careless salute and headed toward the Bendham house. He yelled unnecessarily loud, so all his men could hear, “Finish searching the house and move on. Oh, and do what you want with the prisoner. Your reward for excellent undercover work is to use your own judgment.”
Carron almost strode past Marjorie Bendham as if she wasn’t even there, but he paused to ask her a single question. The old woman was too afraid not to answer. Unfortunately for the Spencers, she was so guileless, it didn’t occur to her to risk an easy lie.
Death by disease or salvation by the knife?
If Dr. Craig Sinjin-Smythe could have observed the infected objectively, he would have noted their excess production of saliva mimicked the familiar cardinal sign of rabies: foaming at the mouth. He would have noted their elevated skin temperature and their milky eyes.
He would have noted these things, but he was busy running for his life. Sinjin-Smythe preferred tennis, but he jogged around the Cambridge campus a few times a week to keep fit. No mere jog could keep these predators from bringing him down. Three of them were on his heels and gaining.
The monsters’ vision seemed dim. However, when the virologist knocked over some garbage cans in the street, the clatter got him more attention. Two more Sutr-Z casualties joined the chase. Perhaps sound attracted them to the hunt. Sinjin-Smythe was sure he’d never have a chance to share those findings. The predators were gaining.
This Plague of Days OMNIBUS EDITION: The Complete Three Seasons of the Zombie Apocalypse Series Page 28
