Ironheart (The Serenity Strain Book 2)

by Chris Pourteau

  Since leaving the washateria shortly after sunrise, Lauryn had done her best to bring up childhood memories of this part of town to help them navigate. It hadn’t changed much, she decided, except for the destruction and death everywhere. Come to think of it, Conroe had always looked a little weathered and run-down and small-town-dying-a-slow-death to her.

  She reprimanded herself for the perverse sarcasm. Her mother, Catherine, had been one of the victims of the storms. They’d only found Catherine’s arm, the fingers black and engorged by their own rot. The one-of-a-kind ring Lauryn’s father had given his wife on their golden wedding anniversary was how Lauryn had identified her mother’s remains. She recalled how seeing those bloated fingers that had once bandaged her bleeding knee after a bicycle accident had made her sick to her stomach.

  And she recalled Mark’s hesitant but determined hand resting on her shoulder, offering comfort she both needed and feared across the distance of their estrangement. His hand on the one side, Megan’s arm encircling her from the other. The connection of family and closeness and strength despite the emotional rift that had separated them all then. Mark had buried her mother’s arm so she wouldn’t have to.

  Oh, Mark, Lauryn thought. You beautiful shit. How did we ever…

  But that thinking led only to distraction and weakness, and now there was no time for that. She steeled herself as she walked, forced herself to stop looking inward and focused on recognizing the old Conroe in the ruins of the new, looking for landmarks among the flattened tin buildings along Frazier. Even the brick buildings stood like skeletons with their eye sockets staring.

  Lauryn saw feet sticking out of a culvert along the right of the street. She heard Jasper pulling at his rope again and Megan clucking sounds of disgust. How many more bodies had they seen since her mother’s remains? She’d lost count. They’d almost gotten used to the sight of swollen corpses. But not the smell.

  The sun had baked the town for the past few days, the last of the storm waters rising off the asphalt as steam, carrying with it the gaseous excretions of rotting flesh. They’d begun moving on instinct, giving the bodies a wide berth without commentary—talking about it only made it worse. The first to smell the fresh aroma of death would steer an upwind approach as they walked through the town, leading them past the ditches, those inadequate, makeshift graves of the victims full of standing water and buzzing mosquitoes. And the flies. The feasting flies, everywhere.

  “The guns and ammo store should be around here somewhere,” Lauryn said. Unless it closed up shop. Many of Conroe’s small businesses had failed since the century turned over, but SSI Guns & Ammo had always been a local fixture on Frazier Street. Guns were an evergreen gift idea in Texas. Gas stations would close long before gun shops ever did.

  Lauryn tried to focus as they walked down the middle of the street strewn with the refuse of storm damage. Finding recognizable landmarks was difficult. Not only had the storms decimated the area, just as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had promised they would, but much had changed since she’d grown up here. It was as if a bomb of wind and water had exploded, ripping apart the cheaply constructed tin buildings and flinging their walls in random directions.

  Power poles that once seemed like bare trees on an asphalt plain to her young imagination now lay scattered and broken. She remembered lying in the backseat of her mother’s car, watching the power lines dip and rise, dip and rise as they drove across town. But now the four refugees were forced to cross the street more than once to avoid the fallen cables, unsure which ones were dangerous. There were the old Baptist and Catholic churches, there was the Western Auto, and on the Hickerson Street corner opposite, the used car lot that seemed to change names as often as weekly specials.

  “You know where this place is, right?” asked Stavros. “The more the morning wears on, the less I like walking down the middle of the—”

  Lauryn held up a hand. Her daughter came to a halt behind her, Jasper choking once at the abrupt stop.

  “What?”

  Lauryn gave Stavros her do-you-ever-shut-up stare of exasperation, then aimed her ear at the sky.

  Then Stavros heard it, too. Jasper even turned his head.

  “What is that?” asked Megan.

  Whup-whup-whup, whup-whup-whup, whup-whup-whup.

  Stavros put the edge of his hand to his forehead and followed the sound. A helicopter flew high up, south to north. He smiled, chancing a glance at Lauryn, who was smiling, too.

  “Oh, no,” Megan said before they could identify the chopper. She was staring down Hickerson Street, beyond the used car lot. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Already?”

  With effort, Lauryn pulled her focus away from the chopper. “What?”

  “School starting up, I mean. With all these dead bodies everywhere?”

  Lauryn followed her daughter’s disbelieving stare.

  A seemingly endless line of yellow school buses was headed their way, their revving diesel engines competing with the drone of the more distant helicopter. Lauryn squinted at them as they approached. No way those buses were ferrying children to school. Not now. Maybe not for weeks. Maybe the authorities needed them to evacuate survivors.

  Or for mass transport of corpses, Lauryn thought, shuddering.

  Megan’s attitude suddenly changed from the card-carrying member of Teenage Angst, Inc., to the serious sage of Capstone Church. “We need to get out of here,” she said. Her voice carried the same inarguable tenor of command it possessed when Megan had insisted they get away from the windows in the church. That night Ilene had arrived with her otherworldly, yellow-orange mist. “Now.”

  Lauryn stared at her for half a moment, then back to the convoy of buses bearing down on them. Megan was already retreating back the way they’d come. Lauryn snagged Stavros’s arm as she moved past him.

  “Wait!” he said, dubious. “What about the helicopter?”

  “Run!” yelled Lauryn.

  Chapter 5: Tuesday, morning.

  “Stop your nattering and watch the road,” said Simpson.

  Cackler shut his mouth for once as he steered the short bus onto Gladstell Street. He was keenly aware he hadn’t found the intruder. Though to Simpson’s credit, he hadn’t harped on it, which made Cackler all the more mindful of the failure. These people, he noticed, had long memories. They had a way of bringing up things you thought were resolved and beating you over the head with them.

  So, like a child with an unstable, unpredictable parent, Cackler was making a conscious effort to do things right around Simpson. Do them in a way that wouldn’t come back to haunt him later. Like being quiet while he drove the general’s short bus at the head of their column.

  Simpson glanced in the side mirror at the line of yellow buses behind them. Each had a Weisshemden at the wheel. As they followed him onto Gladstell, Simpson’s chest swelled deeply with pride. The army was destined to conquer the Bayou City with the caustic touch of five-thousand former prisoners.

  The buses turned off Bus Barn Road like a monstrous, yellow snake rounding a corner, a long train of symmetrical segments slithering along the roadway. And he was the snake’s head.

  “Hey boss, who’s that?”

  Cackler’s piping voice cut into Simpson’s fantasy. Part of him wanted to ignore the interruption on principle. But he was a general, and a general had obligations. So Simpson followed Cackler’s thin finger pointing to an intersection strewn with debris. In the middle of the road ahead, he saw a woman pulling hard on a man’s arm. And the man standing there, pointing up.

  Simpson grunted. They were too far away to make out many details. And they were scattering, just like the townsfolk had scattered the night before as he and Maggie and the Weisshemden marched through the streets of Conroe. Just two more inconsequential citizens, Simpson decided. An unneeded distraction. They’d be late enough getting back as it was.

  Cackler squinted forward. Then his eyes went wide. “Hey, boss, I think I might—”


  “Keep driving. Run them over if you have to … never mind, they’re gone. Keep driving. We have bigger fish to fry.”

  “But boss—”

  Simpson cuffed the side of Cackler’s head. Not enough to hurt him, not enough to take the man’s focus off the road. Just enough to Marstenize him. Hey, I coined a new phrase, Simpson thought with satisfaction. I could get used to this.

  Cackler shrank away, gripping the steering wheel tightly. Shrugging, he said, “Whatever you say, boss. Whatever you say. You’re the general. I’m just the general’s driver.”

  At a look of impatience from Simpson, Cackler shut his mouth again. He recommitted to his course of shutting up and keeping Simpson happy, though a shrewd grin crept across his face as Simpson sat down in the seat behind him, his attention once again focused on the long line of buses following. Cackler sat warm and smug and silent in the driver’s seat. He knew something Simpson didn’t know, something Simpson should know.

  The bitch that killed Juggs was still alive.

  * * *

  “Get your head down!” Lauryn hissed. She grabbed the back of Stavros’s skull and shoved his face into the stinking water of the ditch.

  The scientist burbled a muffled, sickened sound. He closed his mouth just in time but the grimy, black water filled his nose. Lauryn’s grip lessened a bit, so he turned his head enough to breathe. She kept him pressed down into the ditch as the buses rolled past.

  Finally acknowledging the danger, Stavros lay still and quiet. He wondered if the greasy, brackish consistency of the water draining from his nose came from motor oil runoff from the street or something else. His mind began recounting the process for rendering human fat from flesh in a post-mortem environment.

  Lauryn knew that someone aboard one of the buses crawling slowly by along the street simply needed to look out to see them. But if they were still and quiet, maybe whoever those people were would take them for three more corpses. And just another dog carcass.

  She heard Megan say, “Shhh, boy, shhh.” Her daughter had one arm around Jasper and held him low in the culvert, as she was holding Stavros. Lauryn felt like a soldier taking refuge in the nearest foxhole, waiting for the bombs to fall.

  Megan could feel the dog shaking, so she stroked the top of his head with her free hand, trying to avoid pressure on his ribs with the other. She knew why Jasper was scared. He’d never liked the pounding of rainstorms, or the rolling thunder accompanying them.

  The buses must sound like that to him, the girl thought as they rumbled by. Their heavy engines waxed and waned as they sped up and slowed down, discharging the constant, thick stink of diesel.

  “It’s okay, boy,” she whispered, her calm voice caressing Jasper’s ears as her hand stroked his head. “It’s okay, they’re just passing by. They’re not…”

  But then someone downshifted and the labored gearing down of an engine followed. Megan turned to stare over Stavros’s angry eyes at her mother, who gave a quick shake of her head in return before whispering something to Stavros. The teen saw him nod curtly, then her mother took her hand off his neck. He shifted position in the ditch but stayed low.

  More gears grinding. Now other buses were stopping, too.

  The entire convoy came swiftly to a halt. Megan watched Lauryn remove the handgun tucked behind her back and inch her way up the side of the ditch to get a better view. She realized she’d caught Jasper’s shiver. When the dog whined again, Megan clamped her hand over the top of his muzzle and his eyes sought hers for comfort.

  Lauryn craned her neck for a quick glance and saw a flicker of white jumpsuits. A flash of fear shot up her back—the prisoners. Was Marsten with them? Had they come in force to find the fish that got away?

  One of the buses stopped immediately in front of her exposed hiding place. She could hear air brakes whoosh, one set after another, all the way down the line. Double doors began to open, and she jerked her head below the culvert’s crest. She carefully turned on to her back and felt her clothes drink in the dark water.

  “Hurry up, Maggie!” a voice yelled at the front of the column. It was hard to hear him over the idling engines. “You boys hurry up and help her. Get those guns loaded.”

  “You bet, boss, no lollygagging here! Hey, get out, you guys! Come gimme a hand!”

  Lauryn heard double doors open and the heavy tread as someone exited the bus directly in front of her. Guns? Shit! They must’ve found the gun store. Figures.

  She gripped the .40-caliber tightly in her right hand, careful to keep it out of the foul water in the ditch. If just one of the prisoners marching forward glanced down in the ditch, they’d notice the twitch of an abdomen as one of them breathed, or a dog’s eyes, furtive and fearful, staring up at them. Lauryn couldn’t remember how many shots she had left. Then she realized the actual number didn’t matter: Not enough.

  “What the hell is taking so long?” demanded a loud male voice. It sounded like he was on top of her. Lauryn held her breath in her chest, the pistol hard against it.

  The heavy boots walked away, crunching gravel toward the lead bus.

  “We got enough muscle, shouldn’t take much longer, boss.” The distant, skittery voice sounded familiar to Lauryn. She was tempted to chance a glance over the lip of the ditch again but didn’t dare. She heard more steps coming from the back of the column.

  At least they only stopped to pick up weapons. The thought was eerily comforting to her. They hadn’t stopped because they hadn’t seen people running across the road. Or because they’d been dispatched by Marsten to hunt them down.

  Stavros turned his head and found her eyes. They lay close enough to share breath. She could tell he wanted information, that he needed an update. Lauryn tried to soften her eyes, nod lightly as if sharing by telepathy that the buses stopping had nothing to do with them. He seemed to get the message and blinked acknowledgment.

  They both heard the reedy voice continue to give orders. The voice was like an annoying itch just out of reach. That’s when it clicked for Lauryn.

  God, it’s Cackler.

  The skin on her arms began to crawl. In her mind, Lauryn could see his bony fingers pointing, giving directions to the men loading the guns. She heard the grunting and cursing from the others as they did what they were told. Then she felt Stavros cringe at the loud thunk of a box someone dropped to the pavement.

  “Goddamnit, watch what you’re doing!”

  Lucky we didn’t try and hide in the shop, she thought with irony.

  “That’s it, boss,” Cackler proclaimed proudly.

  Lauryn shuddered at the sound. She couldn’t hear “boss” answer, but boots crunched gravel again, this time moving back along the road as they returned to their rides. One at a time, the buses gunned to life again and resumed their slow progress east along Gladstell. Their passing seemed to take forever, but finally the last of the wheezing engines faded east and all Lauryn and the others could hear was Jasper’s whining impatience with Megan’s hand clamped over his muzzle.

  Stavros was the first to raise himself from the fetid water in the ditch. All of them were dripping wet with its stench. “Think you can find that gun store now?”

  Lauryn gave him a look but said nothing as she led them forward.

  * * *

  A gun. That’s what he needed.

  Colt looked down in disgust at what little remained of his pile of stolen goods. Starburst fruit chews. He felt along the blanket and smiled as he pulled out the Swiss army knife he’d stuffed through a tear for safekeeping. He picked up a half-bottle of water one of the prisoners hadn’t finished. Even the warm beer was gone.

  He bent down and picked up the knife. It was better than nothing, but not by much. Not now. With the Exers that had come through—and maybe more that had crossed over since—into wherever this world was. With the prisoners, and how many of them were there? They took a shitload of buses. Could they fill them all? With a whole world unknown to him, he’d need something more than
a knife to keep him safe.

  He thought of Ellis and the Farm. Of Delores and her talks with him at night that made him feel safe. He hadn’t been there long, only a few weeks, but it had become the closest thing he’d known to a home since … well, since he’d lost his home at Murphy’s Harbor for Wayward Youths when the Blindness hit and the whole world went to shit. Even that place, with its rules and regulations and demands and restrictions… Making his bed every day. Doing chores around the home. Touchstones of his life before the Farm. Before the Blindness.

  But something had changed. Colt felt it. Something was different. The world was different. This world wasn’t his world.

  He wondered if he could ever go back. If he’d ever see Ellis and the other Lost Boys again. If he’d ever see Delores again.

  He shook his head to clear it.

  Keep your head, keep your life.

  At least the throbbing was a dull ache now. The fresh air had done him good.

  Colt pulled together what he could into his backpack, the blanket he’d used as a bedroll, the pack of Starburst. He shoved the Swiss army knife in his pocket and felt comforted by it being there.

  Better than nothing, but not by much.

  What he really needed was a gun.

  Chapter 6: Tuesday, morning.

  The gun store was picked over pretty good already.

  It’d taken a while, but Lauryn finally realized why she hadn’t been able to find the shop. The storm winds had thrown a large panel of tin siding over the front of the store, masking its name and profile from the street. But convinced she was in the right place, they’d searched the street again and a little investigation on Stavros’s part had finally proved her instincts right.

  They stepped over the broken glass into SSI Guns & Ammo. The boxes of .40-caliber ammo were more plentiful than she’d hoped they’d be when she first realized that Marsten’s people had looted the store. But .40-caliber bullets were more likely to be around, she reasoned, since that caliber of pistol wasn’t the most popular by far—that honor was reserved for Stavros’s 9-millimeter and .45s.