Dead Alive: Eden Lost Book Two (Hunter Wars 8)

by SD Tanner

  “It’s my last round,” she replied worriedly.

  “It’ll be fine. The town shooters know what they’re doin’, so we ain’t alone out here.”

  Nodding firmly, she set up the next round. Crouching so her head barely peeked over the hood of the old, sun-faded car, he peered over her shoulder to check her aim. Using the car to steady her arm, she’d managed to target the vehicle well.

  “Fire.”

  The round slammed into the windshield and exploded inside the cab of the modified pickup truck. With a grunt of satisfaction, she muttered, “Gotcha.” Her hardcore attitude impressed him, and he made a mental note to talk to her about becoming a combat leader.

  Being further away from them, his shooters weren’t in the easiest position to fire on the enemy vacating the damaged truck. Before he could order them to move, a barrage of gunfire unleashed from the buildings lining the street. It seemed the town shooters had cottoned onto their tactic and were doing their job for them. Staring up at the second floor windows, he gave a thumbs up gesture. A head briefly appeared from the corner of a window and a woman returned his signal.

  With only three enemy trucks remaining, it was fast becoming a less than fair fight. The town shooters were continuing to fire on the vehicles, and he was confident they owned the day. Knowing the Crusaders would have men on horseback, he wondered where they were. Still suspecting they’d attacked the outlying areas of the town, he was preparing to pull his squad back to the side street to investigate, when screaming erupted from a building to the right of him.

  “Benny, gimme a sitrep.”

  “Haven’t got one.”

  “Who’s screaming?”

  “Dunno. It’s coming from a building near the side street.”

  Batting the shooters to get their attention, he said, “Gotta head back to the side street. There’s something going on in one of the buildings.”

  They hugged the shop fronts while they made their way towards the building, relying on the town shooters to give them cover. The building had been used as a small food market with a wide-open front. There were crushed vegetables scattered across the floor, and tables and stands were lying haphazardly all over the room. At the back of the shop, there was an open door and a fierce gun battle was taking place behind it. No glass remained in the wide front and tracer fire was lighting up the gloomy interior at the rear of the shop. It seemed to be a one sided fight and he couldn't work out what they were shooting at.

  “Benny, where are ya?” His earpiece only growled back at him. “Benny!” He called more sharply.

  Grabbing the shooter next to him, he said, “We gotta go in, but stay low and hug the walls.” Pointing to the other two shooters, he added, “Take the opposite wall and shoot anyone dressed like a Crusader.”

  Running fast, he and his shooter cleared the wide empty window to the other side. Hugging the outside wall, he quickly peeked into the shop again. The gunfire was continuous, and he still couldn’t understand who they were fighting. If the enemy were so well defended inside the shop then there was no point wasting the ammo, and they didn't seem to be firing back anyway.

  Seeing the other two shooters hugging their own wall on the other side of the shop, he was about to order them inside, when a person ran down the middle of the store to the front of the shop. Wearing jeans and a shirt, they weren’t a Crusader and they weren’t carrying a gun.

  “Hold ya fire.”

  At the sound of his voice, the man stopped his frantic sprint, and turned his head to face him. It was only then the blood down the left side of his shirt was visible. Raising his hands like claws, the man’s eyes seemed to darken, then he snarled and his head began to vibrate manically. Knowing he had to kill the hunter, he didn’t want his shooters to get caught in their own crossfire.

  Taking aim while moving quickly towards the hunter, he shouted, “Hold ya fire.”

  As he and the newly turned hunter ran towards one another, he opened fire directly into its chest. It didn’t kill the hunter, but pushed it back long enough for him to crash into its body. The force of the impact knocked the hunter to the ground, and he slammed his boot into its chest, shooting it repeatedly in the face. The rapid shots disintegrated its eyes and most of the top of its head. Blood that was still a bright red, splayed out from the top of its skull, leaving a pattern of streaks around its head like a gruesome halo. The hunter might still be able to move, but it was blinded. It was good enough for now, and he tried to work out what was happening at the rear of the shop.

  Catching movement in his peripheral vision, he looked up to see three more people running towards him from the door at the rear of the shop. It was impossible to know if they were hunter or human, and he immediately took aim. Two people continued to run past him, but the third ran directly at him and he opened fire. The woman’s head disintegrated, and she fell backwards under the force of the fire.

  “Benny, gimme a sitrep.”

  “Hunters.”

  “Yeah, I know that, but where’s your squad?”

  “Coming out now.”

  Through his radio, he called, “Hold ya fire. Friendlies exiting.”

  The gunfire at the back of the shop had stopped, and Benny appeared with three of their shooters. One was being held up with an arm around each shooter’s shoulder.

  “What happened?”

  “He was bitten.”

  “Then why ain’t he a hunter?”

  “Dunno.”

  The shooters laid the man at the entrance of the shop, and he checked him for injuries. The wound was small, just a small, round patch of blood on his bicep. Cutting his ACU shirt open, he found three purplish puncture wounds.

  “He was barely bit.”

  Benny gave him a baleful look. “I was never bitten and I’m infected.”

  “Yeah, but you ain’t a real hunter.”

  Shrugging, Benny replied, “I am, I’m just not a stupid one.”

  One of Benny’s shooters thrust a vial into his hand. “Give him the Water of Life. It heals everything.”

  The man lying on the ground growled. Quickly popping the lid on the bottle, he poured the sparkling liquid directly into his open, snarling mouth. The effect was immediate and not the one he expected. Usually the Water of Life brought instant relief, but not this time. He might as well have poured hydrochloric acid onto the man. His skin was blistering and dissolving, and white bone appeared under the bubbling surface. The man’s growls changed to high-pitched whine, while the water ate through his jaw and into the back of his throat and neck. When the water finally found the base of his skull, the noise stopped and the man became still.

  “It killed him,” a shooter said in awe. “Why’d it do that?”

  “I guess the Water of Life ain’t for hunters,” he replied dourly. Looking up at Benny, he asked, “Did ya get ‘em all?”

  “I think so.”

  “Did ya find a super hunter?”

  “Nope.”

  He stood up and was turning to leave, when a woman ran through the door at the back of the shop and he raised his gun to fire. The woman was dressed in a light colored dress, and there was blood streaking down one of her legs.

  “Don't shoot! I'm hurt.”

  Without lowering his weapon, he called, “Stop. How were you hurt?”

  Coming to standstill in the middle of the shop, she look nonplussed. “I…I don't know, but I'm bleeding and it hurts.”

  Lifting the hem of her frock, she raised it so he could see her thigh. On the bleeding leg was a small wound that didn't look like it was made by a bullet. He slowly circled the woman with his gun aimed at her head.

  “Who are you?” The woman asked plaintively. “Why won't you help me?”

  “Benny, throw her a rag.” When Benny tossed a cloth at her, he said, “Wipe the blood away.”

  She did as he asked and several small cuts appeared. They weren't made by a bullet or knife, and he sighed inwardly. “You've been bit.”

  “No,
no, I haven't. I'm human,” the woman wailed desperately.

  “The virus has changed. It doesn't seem to infect as fast.” Moving behind the woman, he ordered, “Stay facing forward.”

  “Wh..why? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m gonna take you back to our base, maybe someone can help you there. We had a lab and we still have doctors.”

  “B..but I'm still human.”

  “I'm sorry, but it's this or I'll have to kill you.”

  The woman began to cry, but he hardened his head to the sound and double zip tied her. Hunters in Eden were a new development and a change in the dynamic. Slow turning hunters was even worse news, and he knew Gears would want to understand how the virus had evolved. Terry was still on the islands with his doctors, and he hoped they’d be able to analyze the woman.

  CHAPTER NINE: TL

  “Why is Gears going to the UK?”

  He didn’t want to answer Faith and he didn’t know why. She’d barely left his side since they’d found her living in the frozen wasteland of Alaska with about two thousand people. While he travelled from town to town, trying to persuade them to join the Council of Eden, Faith had followed him as if they were married. It bothered him, but he couldn’t work out why.

  She was fair enough company, largely compliant and she asked for nothing. Their sex life was frequent, and although his needs were simple that way, she’d never complained or seemed to expect more or less than he asked for. Maybe that was the problem. He was far from an expert in women, but he’d come to expect a certain level of dissatisfaction, mostly from their side. Usually he’d be scolded for not being around enough, or spending too much time with his brothers. He was so used to being considered a little bit disappointing, Faith’s contentment with him was confusing. She wasn’t demanding enough, and without a woman telling him how he was failing her, he really didn’t know what she wanted.

  Lydia had been a lot smarter than him and he’d known it. She’d never complained exactly, but he’d quickly learned when it came to anything intellectual, she was well ahead of him. Being opinionated and not one to hold back, their conversations had been filled with a passion that extended into the bedroom. Initially he’d just wanted to win her attention, and then he’d wanted Ted to get the hell away from her, but once she committed to him she was fiercely loyal. He became the other half of a relationship with a woman who could hold her own, and she didn’t put up with any shit from him. They wouldn’t fight exactly, but he couldn’t sleep walk his way through his time with her either. Despite finding her challenging, he’d enjoyed her sparky temperament.

  She might have appeared cold on the surface, but Lydia was a deeply emotional woman. He’d loved the way she never did or felt anything by halves. Maybe that was the problem, he didn’t love Faith, and a part of him didn’t want to either. To form a connection with another woman felt like a betrayal, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that to Lydia even though she was dead. It was too soon and he wasn't ready to move on.

  Finally replying to Faith’s question, he said, “Philip thinks something’s wrong in the UK, and we sent twenty thousand people there. Gears is just doing a recon.”

  She was lying on the soft bed, naked and exposed, but for some reason he’d pulled the greying sheet over the lower half his body, and it wasn’t like him to be so modest. The crisscross of white scars across her body weren’t visible in the gloomy candlelight in their bedroom at Axe’s base. In the flickering light, she cast a voluptuous outline, with a swathe of dark, tumbling hair lying loosely beneath her in sharp contrast to the sheet. He couldn’t deny she was a beautiful woman any man would be lucky to have.

  Even with such a stunning, sexually charged woman next to him, he wasn’t happy in the way he thought he should be. Pax was on a long-range scouting mission in Oklahoma, Gears and Ip were probably already at sea, and he was still working with the Council of Eden to get them to put together a manifest of their skills and resources. It was a boring and tedious task, and he almost wished he hadn’t set himself the mission of setting up a government.

  Stroking the hair on his chest, Faith asked, “Why did you send them away? Didn’t you want them?”

  “People were going hungry and the Isle of Wight was cleared of hunters. It meant they could grow food there. The land here was dying.”

  “Why do you want them back?”

  “We don’t necessarily, we just want to see if they’re okay, and we’ll bring back anyone who wants to come home.”

  “Why do you care?”

  He didn’t want to explain that he’d been the one to tell the survivors about their bases and ask them to join, and that he still felt they were his responsibility. Although he and his brothers had been buried for five years, in their minds it had only been a matter of months since the bases were operational, and they’d moved the survivors to the UK. It was impossible to explain how they felt about the people who helped them defeat Ruler, and he didn’t even try.

  More sharply than he meant to, he replied, “We just do.”

  Faith seemed to flinch at his tone, and he took her hand that was still resting on his chest. “It’s complicated,” he added in a softer voice.

  Leaning on one elbow, she smiled at him. “Help me understand.”

  Sighing, he replied, “They came to us needing sanctuary and we needed them to defeat Ruler. Pax trained them to fight and Gears led them into battle. It was my job to make sure they had what they needed.”

  “What did Ip do?”

  “Ip is Death. She doesn’t live in the same world as we do, but she protected them as much as we did.”

  “What do you mean she’s Death?”

  “She’s the Horseman of Death. She seems to live in the bridge between life and death.”

  “But what can she do?”

  “She can kill hunters with a touch and she woke us up, but other than that I don’t know.”

  “If you’re all the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, what can you do?”

  “Well, Gears can summon the Immortal Army, but I dunno about the rest of us. I’m not sure we can do anything special. It kinda annoys Pax.”

  “You’re immortal though, right?”

  “Given we were buried for five years, I guess so,” he replied with a sigh.

  He had no idea what it meant to be a Horseman, if anything at all. Even Gears was surprised when the Immortal Army had shown up at the final battle. None of them were sure, but they appeared to be all of his previous selves, somehow born from the earth and ready to fight on his orders. It was quite a special talent, but neither he nor Pax seemed to be blessed with anything.

  His life, immortal or otherwise, was getting on his nerves. All of their previous work had disappeared over the past five years, and everyone was either dead or scattered across the country. Their bases were effectively closed. Ip had woken them up to protect the young Horsemen, but they didn’t appear to need them. Gears didn’t seem to know what he was doing or why. Pax was running around keeping himself busy building an army, they might not need. His job was boring. The town leaders were divided and there was nothing he could do about it. It all seemed a bit ‘make busy’ to him, and he never did like doing pointless tasks in the army, and he wasn’t happy doing it now either.

  Giving her hand a final squeeze, he pushed it aside and rolled over onto his side. “I need to get some sleep.”

  He wasn’t really tired, but he didn’t want to keep answering her questions. If he was being honest with himself, he’d admit he was missing Lydia. She’d been pregnant most of the time they were a couple, and he began running their time together in his mind like a mini slideshow. He missed her smile, her mind and her body. Feeling Faith nestle into his back, he resisted the urge to pull away.

  I don’t want to be here, he thought unhappily. Gears had said they couldn’t sit around waiting for the problem to come to them, and they needed to actively look for it. Talking to the town leaders wasn’t uncovering the real problem, and wasting h
is time with Faith was only making him realize how much he’d lost when Lydia had died.

  From behind him, Faith asked softly, “Are you okay?”

  Rolling over to face her, he replied, “I guess so.”

  “Did you have a woman before you were buried?”

  “Yeah, but she died.” Thinking of Lydia reminded him of Izzie. “There was another woman, but she was murdered.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Her name was Izzie and she ran the Navy submarine base.”

  “Oh, you mean Axe’s girlfriend.”

  “How do you know she was with Axe?”

  “He told me about her. He said she was with the Horsemen and then she joined his town. They were a couple.”

  “Axe said he found her body in Dexter, Missouri. She was strapped to a table and someone had removed all her organs.” In a disgusted tone, he added, “She was alive when they did it.”

  “You mean when Cain did it,” she replied knowingly.

  “How do you know it was Cain?” He asked sharply.

  Sitting up abruptly, she replied firmly, “Oh, I don’t know. I just assume it was him, but maybe it wasn’t.”

  Also sitting, he twisted his body to face her. “Are you telling me Cain kills people by removing their organs while they're still alive?”

  Pulling away from him, she replied, “I suppose so. I thought you knew.”

  “How do you know that's what he does?”

  Faith’s eyes darted anxiously around the room, as if she was looking for a way out. “I…I heard from someone…I…I don't remember who.”

  He and Izzie had dated for a month or so before he’d finally got together with Lydia. Even though they hadn’t consummated their relationship, in that short time they’d grown close. If Lydia had turned him down, he probably would have ended up with Izzie. It frustrated him to learn she’d been killed by the man they were struggling to defeat now. He could usually keep his emotions in check, but there was cold rage in his chest that made him need to move. If he stayed, he would only interrogate Faith about who told her Cain had killed Izzie, and he didn't think that would be fair. She'd only told him what others were saying and he shouldn't shoot the messenger. Sleep was no longer an option and swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he began to pull on his pants.