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

by SD Tanner

  Waving widely, and knowing it was useless, he shouted anyway. “Go back. Stay outta the line of fire.”

  Being low to the ground and no more than twenty feet away from them, he caught the eye of a large, red headed and angry looking man with a wildly bushy beard. The man nodded to him, and then turning his beast towards the forest, he waved at his riders to retreat.

  “What now, Gears?”

  “Tear gas.”

  Philip stared at him in shock. “What?”

  “Nah, he’s right,” Hatch replied. “There’s people in the cages on the carts.”

  “Exactly. We’ve got a hostage situation here, so we’ve gotta disable everyone so the enemy don’t kill ‘em or use ‘em to escape.”

  While the gunners fired CS gas in and around the carts, the shooters checked their vests for ammo and lined up, preparing to leap from the bird.

  “We’ll start at the end cages and work our way down. Hopefully the forest guy’s will get the drift and join us. Gunners, stay at your posts.”

  Hatch and the other bird dropped to the ground about ten feet from the first cart with a cage. The gunners maintained fire, careful not to hit the cart, while the twelve shooters unloaded from the birds. Running down both sides of the cart, hugging the edges, they began firing at anyone with a weapon. Riders appeared to his left, sprinting out of the forest, with their shooters again standing high in their saddles, aiming at anyone not on one of the carts.

  He decided to copy their tactic. “Shoot anyone who ain’t on the carts.”

  Mud was spitting up as bullets thudded all around them, and the riders from the forest were heading to the middle of the convoy. They rode between the carts and joined his shooters on the other side. The enemy shooters on the ground were rapidly being cut down and left lying in the mud, but the gunfire was still thudding all around him.

  Staying close to the large rubber wheels on the carts with the cages, he ran forward trying to identify where so much gunfire was coming from. The carts with the cages were actually modified trailers that were usually attached to the back of trucks, and the tented platforms were originally some type of military transport vehicle used to move goods. Either the engines didn’t work or there was no gas to fuel them, and they were being used like old-fashioned carts with beasts pulling them. With their small front cabin, the military vehicles were mostly a canvas colored tent with a lot of floor space. There were large rips in the canvas cover, and he was now close enough to see each had the nose of a gun pushed through the thick fabric.

  Through his radio, he ordered, “Hatch, get the gunners to strafe the canvas covered vehicles. Extreme force. They’re enemy.”

  Shielding his face from the wind of the rotors, heavy gunfire erupted from the birds directly above him. The wind was blowing mud into the air, and he couldn’t see to monitor their progress. After only a few minutes, the air around him settled and he was able to look up. The canvas covering the trucks was torn and shredded, and bodies hung from the edges of the vehicles. There were only three canvas-covered trucks, and under the assault of two M240’s from the air, nothing was left moving.

  As the birds pulled away and resumed their positions next to the convoy, the sound of voices reached his ears. Some were distant, but others sounded as if they were right next to his head.

  “Help us.”

  “Let us out.”

  “Please.”

  Rising from his crouch, he found himself staring into the streaming red eyes of a drawn, pale faced woman. Around her were more faces, but he continued to only stare at her with a surprised expression. Despite her desperate state, she was smiling warmly at him.

  “Gears,” she croaked.

  “Do I know ya?”

  “Not personally, but I was with the people that went to the Isle of Wight.”

  “You’re one of ours?” Finally standing, he stared at the group of fifteen faces looking back at him. “Are you all from the U.S.?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, but a lot of us are. We were captured together.”

  Before he could continue to question the woman, the man with the red hair and bushy beard appeared at his side. “Och, you should let ‘em oot. You’se can talk later, once they’ve been fed and watered.”

  He could barely understand what the man was saying and gave him a bewildered look. By way of response, the man cackled. “I’m Blain. We’re the Scottish.”

  “What?”

  “Yer in Scotland, lad.” When he didn’t reply, Blain slapped him hard on the back. “Thanks for yer help. Where’d you get the helicopters?”

  He paused for a moment to translate the thick accent into a language he could understand. “I’m Gears and we’re from the U.S.. Some of the people in the cages were from my bases. I need to understand what’s going on here.”

  Leaving their combined troops to free the prisoners, he walked with Blain towards their now parked birds. Sitting side-by-side on the platform, they watched the people being helped from the cages. He handed Blain an MRE, while the shooters ferried supplies and the Water of Life to the eighty or so people who’d been held prisoner. Ip sat next to him, dangling and swinging her long legs over the edge of the platform.

  “What’s that funny water shite yer usin’?”

  “It heals people, but it can only be used on the living.”

  Blain gave him a surprised look. “Why did ya even try it on a corpse?”

  He returned his look with a disgusted expression of his own. “We didn’t. The dead don’t tend to stay down these days.”

  “Aye, well, that’s true.”

  Continuing to watch the prisoners, the Water of Life was doing its work, and they were already moving easily. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “About four months ago people were rounded up. They started in the south, sweeping ‘em up, and when they were done, they turned around and are bringing the people back south again.”

  “How did they catch them? Couldn’t they defend themselves?”

  “They’ve got guns. This country didn’t have a lot of weapons, and there’s not many people left, so it wasn’t easy to defend against.”

  “Why didn’t they catch your people?”

  “By the time they got to the north they had a lot of prisoners. We saw ‘em coming and hid in the mountains. I was with Black Watch in the army, so we killed their scouts that came looking for us, and they never found us.”

  “But they caught everyone else?”

  “Nay, there’s probably more people hiding.”

  “How many people have you got?”

  Blain’s face creased with a worried frown. “Only a few hundred. Not enough to mount an effective attack.”

  He nodded in agreement. “So, who were the guys with the guns?”

  Even under his bushy beard, it was obvious Blain was sneering. “Collaborators.”

  “Do they have funny eyes? Are they blue with no iris?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “Have you heard of a guy who calls himself Ruler?”

  Blain frowned and shook his head. “Nay. Who is he?”

  “The little shit who’s probably behind this.”

  “Never heard of him. People have been living peacefully here, mostly in the south where the big, fancy houses are. We dinna wanna leave Scotland, so some of us stayed here. Since we managed to avoid being captured, we’ve been trying to free as many of the prisoners as we can.”

  “There’s more of them?”

  “Oh, aye, they’ve got at least twenty thousand prisoners, quite probably more.”

  “What are they doin’ to ‘em?”

  “They’ve been keeping ‘em locked up and now they’re moving south with ‘em.”

  “When did this strip of dead land appear?”

  Blain paused as if he didn’t really have an answer. “It seems to be travelling with ‘em, but I dinna know how or why.”

  Nodding, he said dourly, “They’re headin’ towards Stonehenge.”<
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  “Why would they be doin’ that?”

  “I think they’re plannin’ to use the people to open the gates to hell.”

  Blain’s eyes widened in surprise. “The gates to what?”

  “That’s what’s in the middle of Stonehenge. It’s a burning pit, and the last time it was open the dead and demons walked the earth.”

  Scratching his wild and untidy red beard, Blain stared at him in disbelief. “We’ve always had ghosts here, but I’ve never seen any demons”

  “Did you notice it got a lot colder just before Eden turned up?”

  “It was always cold in Scotland.”

  He didn’t know for sure or even how, but he suspected Ruler planned to use the prisoners in some way to open the gates. Unlike his previous attempts to take control, this time Ruler only appeared to have a human army. “Have you seen any hunters?”

  “Nay,” Blain replied with a firm shake of his head. “Those things have been gone for years now. After they’d killed or infected most of the population they starved to death.”

  That was probably the only good news he’d heard so far, and it would explain why Ruler was needing to use a human army. His demon super hunters were useless without the hunters. He nodded confidently at Blain. “Then that's one less problem we need to deal with.”

  The foolish ones are back again. Not so dumb and my pet is to blame.

  He turned to face Ip and she met his stare with an expressionless look. “What do ya mean the hunters are back?”

  I told you before the stars are back. They do not agree and they have formed a new pack.

  “I dinna wanna be rude, but do yer always talk to yerself?”

  Flicking his hand dismissively in Blain’s direction, he continued to stare at Ip. “Honey, ya gotta make more sense. Are you sayin’ the hunters are back?”

  She huffed irritably at him. The foolish ones are seen by all, it is only you that missed the call.

  “Shit,” he muttered, as he dropped from the platform to the muddy ground. Turning to Blain, he said, “I gotta get back to the States, and I haven’t got enough troops and weapons with me to help ya anyway. Once I get back, I’ll send you what I can. If the enemy make it to Stonehenge, I’m guessin’ they’ll get the gates to hell open. When that happens, you need to be as far away from here as possible.”

  “What about the prisoners?”

  He sighed deeply. “You should head north and free as many as you can as you go, but get the hell away from Stonehenge as fast as you can.”

  “What happens if the gates open?”

  “You die.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Cain

  “Good trip?”

  Given he could have been killed in Alaska, he didn’t think so. “No, not really. It didn’t go the way I thought it would.”

  Troy was studying the untidy group of men and women, all were partially bald and many were virtually naked. “You’ve got the hunters.”

  “There should have been more, but apparently not all of them are vicious killers.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The hunters were milling around the perfectly mown prison lawn, grumbling at one another, and they appeared to be bored. Every so often one would become annoyed with the one next to it and a small fight would erupt. In sharp contrast to the dried and withered look of the hunters, there were well-groomed super hunters standing amongst them. The shuffling mob occasionally wandered across their path, only to pull away and lurch in another direction. Many of these new hunters were still wearing remnants of their clothes, but they were torn and ragged. None wore shoes, and most were bald with the occasional tuft of hair sticking out at an odd angle.

  “It seems this strain of the virus is slower to infect, leaving more of the brain intact. When they finally die and reanimate, they don’t all get along with one another. We lost over half of them in a fight that erupted between them.”

  “What?”

  “I know, it’s ridiculous, but they beat the hell out of one another. We estimate at least six hundred of them ran off, and another six hundred were killed in the battle.”

  “What the hell were they fighting about?”

  He shrugged and sighed. “I don’t really know, but only these ones chose to join us. The super hunters can communicate with them, but they don’t exactly control them anymore.”

  Troy spluttered in disbelief. “Are you telling me the hunters are sentient? That they won’t always follow orders?”

  “Oh, I think the ones that joined us will, but there’s a whole bunch of them that won’t.”

  “That changes everything. Can we even use them the way we planned?”

  Their intent was to plant super hunters in the towns with hunters hiding in the forest. Troy had already placed three pairs at three key bases. When the time was right, Ruler would order the super hunters to bring the hunters into the town and infect the living. In that way, they could take control of each town, its resources and the people. It should have been easy, but it wouldn’t be if they couldn’t guarantee how the hunters would behave, or who they would side with once they were infected.

  “I don’t know. Once a person is infected, they may not work for us. Worse still, they might kill the ones that do.”

  “Where did the other hunters go?”

  “I don’t know that either. Nowhere I suspect, I mean, where would they go? They’re probably living in the wilderness in Alaska eating the wildlife.”

  Hesitating, Troy then nodded decisively. “Okay, then it’s not a problem. We might not be able to control all of the hunters, but those we do are still a viable army.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “They’re on our side. We can call them together and manage them through the super hunters. As for the others, they’re just like any other animal roaming around. They’re not a threat once they disperse. The townspeople will still be terrified of being infected no matter which way they might turn.”

  He supposed that made some sense. They might not win all the hunters to their side, but if the conversion rate he’d witnessed was standard, then they’d get close to half of them. As Troy said, the townspeople would still be cowed by even the threat of being infected. The super hunters might not be in absolute control of the hunters, but eight hundred of them had followed him from Alaska, so they weren’t entirely feral. While he was driven south, the hunters had sprinted alongside and behind his convoy like obedient beasts. Even now, aside from the occasional skirmish, they were reasonably content to wander around the exercise yard waiting for their next set of instructions.

  Troy pointed to the hunters. “I take it the super hunters have them under control.”

  As if in answer to his question, a blue on blue-eyed super hunter broke away from the group and walked to where they were standing. The male looking creature didn’t speak, but stood in front of them, eyeing them without interest.

  Barely able to contain his sneer, he stared back at the creature contemptuously. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve been told to wait for your orders.”

  “I won’t be the one managing you.” He glanced at Troy. “This is Troy. He’s the boss of you.”

  Without a flicker of expression, the super hunter turned to face Troy. “What are your orders?”

  Appearing slightly taken aback, Troy turned to him. “Are we still going to do what we planned?”

  He didn’t really have an answer, but slightly raised his left eyebrow, which Troy took as a confirmation and said confidently, “I want to test the effectiveness of this tactic before I deploy you all to the towns. We currently have three super hunters and hunters in the refinery town, the air base and the Marine supply base. I’ll take super hunters and a hunter with me to the Ranch in Red River County. Once we get them to attack, we can work out how many super hunters and hunters we’ll need to take control of each town.”

  That was the thing he liked about Troy, the man was disciplined in a way he wouldn’t be. By testing t
he tactic, they could fine-tune the best use of the resources they had. Giving Troy an admiring glance, he nodded firmly. “That’s a good approach, but if only half of them join us, what do we do about the other half?”

  “They become our enemy, so we should hunt them down and kill them.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll use the super hunters and small teams of hunters. They might be able to win one-on-one against a hunter, but I don’t rate their chances against a squad of them. Also, we can create more hunters for our side by infecting people under controlled conditions. All we have to do is infect people we take prisoner, and keep them in a cell until they reanimate. If they’re not with us then we kill them. We don’t even have to let them out of their cell to do that, so there’s no risk to us.”

  He nodded. “That’ll work, but it does mean we’ll need to transport prisoners to the prisons.”

  “We do that anyway.”

  “What about the people we infect when we take over the towns? The ones who don’t join us won’t be under our control and they could infect more of the living.”

  Troy gave him a sly smile. “They won’t do that. I’m guessing the hunters that wouldn’t eat the Sinners we offered them in the prison are the same type that ran away in Alaska. That type of hunter doesn’t want to eat the living. They’re too sentient to do that.” Scratching his goatee thoughtfully, he added, “They’re going to be roaming around and unwilling to attack the living, so I’m pretty sure we can just hunt them down and execute them.” Looking at the super hunter, he asked, “How many hunters can each of you control?”

  “Less of this type than before. These ones need to be…persuaded and not ordered.”

  “Give me a number.”

  “Ten, maybe fifteen.”

  “And if you lose control of them? What do they do?”

  Still sounding bored, the super hunter sneered. “The ones on our side don’t wish anything good for the living. They’re angry at being infected and jealous of anyone who isn’t. If we don’t control them then they’ll attack the living.”

  That didn’t sound good to him. It meant without the super hunters managing them they were surrounded by vicious killers. “I don’t like that. Maybe this isn’t a good plan.” Surveying the prison lawn, he added, “We’re surrounded by vicious killers. If the super hunters lose control then we’re all dead.”