by David Moody
Feral blood covered his hands and forearms, stained his duster and shirt, and there were smudges and sprays of droplets of the gunk across both cheeks. He looked a mess, but appeared unharmed. Warm relief flooded through Stace and she cried even harder.
Rob Tomlinson used the logs behind him for support and pulled himself up. He looked around as if seeing where he was for the first time, his eyes coming down to look at Stace.
‘Dad?’ she said, afraid that he was more injured than he looked. She raised her arms to him, partially longing for an embrace, partially to offer her bloody hands so he could help her up.
Her father shook his head as if clearing his thoughts and then looked up and down Shawnee Road. He ignored Stace’s upraised arms.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked. ‘Did you get bit?’
Stace shook her head, feeling a bit dazed. Her father turned, climbed the pyramid of logs and scanned the ground on the other side. He turned, dropping back to the pavement, and pulled her to her feet. She was dimly aware that she was still holding out her arms, expecting him to hug her, to help calm her down.
‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘Recover your gear. We’ve got to move fast.’
Confused by his cold abruptness, Stace lowered her still-trembling arms and shuffled over to where the big buck lay with her pigsticker in its eye socket.
‘Quickly now,’ her father said behind her. She glanced back and saw him bounding from body to body with his ka-bar knife out, the dagger’s usual shining edge black with feral blood. He lopped an ear of each one and dropped them into a pouch on his belt. Somehow, Stace didn’t think he was doing it for bragging rights.
She turned back to big buck and rolled it over with a strong push from her boot. The pigsticker was buried in its skull right up to the bottom of the handle, completely covered in dark feral blood. A distant part of her mind noticed for the first time that it wasn’t the pitch black goo of the feral in the clearing. This had a definite reddish tinge to it. She thought that fact might be important, worth mentioning to her father, but most of her concentration was being spent just making her extremities work properly.
Forcing her trembling fingers and painful hands to cooperate, she fished a cloth out of the cargo pocket on her pants and pulled at the weapon. The buck’s head came off the pavement before the steel started to slide out, then it fell back with a wet thud against the old concrete. Stace’s stomach lurched and she took several deep breaths to calm it down.
‘Stace!’ her father yelled, sharp anger in his voice. ‘Hurry the hell up!’
She wiped the handle of her pigsticker off, then gripped it, unworried about the feral’s blood getting in her cuts – everyone knew it was the bite, not the blood, that turned a person. She wiped the rest of the weapon off on the buck’s shirt, noticing for the first time that it was in fairly good condition, nothing like the weathered, tattered rags the feral back in the clearing had worn. This was a faded red teeshirt with big block letters on the front that read, “Keep Calm And...” the rest was tattered but there was a picture of a hat of some type at the very bottom. A shirt from Before then, or from a stash that had survived to be found long After. Something to mention to her father, Stace decided, and slid the pigsticker into its scabbard on her thigh.
She walked on still unsure legs toward her father who hovered over the bodies, patting them down and going through pockets. Stace had never heard of such a thing. What could ferals possibly have in the pockets that was of any interest?
Stace surveyed the small battlefield. Ten ferals lay strewn along the road from where she and her father had first seen Piper’s body. Four had arrows sticking from their heads. Her arrows. Three shots, three kills, and two more had been dispatched in hand-to-hand. She realized numbly she had just matched the legendary Robert Tomlinson in number of kills during what the Rangers called an “engagement”. A distant part of Stace’s mind wondered why the same word was used for both mortal combat and a promise to be wed.
Five ferals dead by my own hands, she thought, looking at her palms as she slowly made and relaxed fists. Just like before with the feral in the clearing, she knew she should have been feeling elated, thrilled, happy as a pig in fresh slop. Instead, nausea threatened to overwhelm her senses. More deep breaths. More opening and closing her hands. The pain in her ear seemed to help, keeping the bile in her gut right where it should be.
‘Daddy... the blood—’
‘Get your bow,’ he said, interrupting her and pointing to spot on the ground she had just trudged past. She turned and looked down, marvelling at how in the world she could have missed her most important piece of gear. She bent stiffly to retrieve it, feeling dull aches throughout her body and the sharp throbbing of the wound in her ear. Pushing the pain away, she gave the bow a quick once-over and determined it was in good shape. With a practiced flip she swung it behind her and slid it into the quick-release on her backpack.
When Stace looked back to her father, she saw all of his weapons – tomahawk, pigsticker, and Flatliner – had already been recovered and put back in their place, which implied that he had already checked and cleaned them because her father would never stow an unclean weapon. She couldn’t remember seeing him do any of that and a slight tremor of worry vibrated through her.
What the hell is wrong with me? she wondered.
He went through the group of bodies and rolled them over. At first it looked to Stace like he was just turning them all face-down for some reason, but then he stopped after rolling over the skinny feral she had shot. It was wearing what looked like faded tan pants and there was a squarish bulge on the back right pocket, outlined by worn fabric. Her father reached in and pulled something out that looked like a little book made of worn leather. He tried to open the sandwiched layers with his fingers, but the stubborn artefact resisted until he slid his knife in and pried it open. He turned it, frowning at something inside.
'Dammit,’ he muttered.
‘What is that?’ Stace asked, walking over to get a better look.
‘A wallet. A real, actual, wallet. And an ID card.’ There was a strange, distant quality to her father’s voice, as if he was seeing the both the thing in his hands and something else completely. Oldsters got that way sometimes when they talked about Before.
‘What’s a wallet?’
‘For money. And other things too. I’ll explain later,’ he said, the edge in his tone returning. He replaced the dagger in its sheath, pommel down on the left strap of his backpack. ‘Notice anything odd about these ferals?’
‘Yeah. They’re... the blood on that one, back there. It looked sorta red. And their skin is... I don’t know, different. They’re... new?’
‘Right. Look at the clothes.’
The ferals wore the usual tattered and weathered clothing, but as with the big buck, they were nowhere near as filthy and worn as she expected. Almost all of the shirts and pants were from Before, but a couple definitely wore the more rough-stitched work of clothing made-from-scratch After. This group had not been feral – had not been walking corpses – for very long and somewhere there was a big supply of old clothing that had somehow survived intact.
‘What does it mean?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ her father said, closing up the bag of ears and wiping off his blade before re-sheathing it. ‘Nothing good. Not with the green signal flare.’
He pointed at the two ferals she had shot. ‘Pull your arrows. We’ve got to get going and we’ve got one more thing to do.’
She frowned as he turned and walked away, still expecting praise, thanks, or something to acknowledge what had just happened and her part in it.
Her legs felt better, or at least a bit more steady, but her stomach was still doing flip-flops. She pulled the arrows, wiping them on the skinny feral’s pants before slotting them back in her quiver. Stace caught up with her father just as he rounded the last stack of logs to find the feral that had once been Mister Campbell sprawled over Piper’s body, Stace’s last arrow
sticking out of both sides of its skull. There was a clump of something impaled on the bodkin tip, pink and wrinkled. A new wave of nausea threatened to overcome her meagre self-control.
Her father put a boot on the feral’s shoulder and pushed, rolling it off Piper’s body. Free of the weight, the woman’s entire body spasmed and her eyes snapped open – milky, white eyes. She – no, it – opened its mouth wide and out came a dry, rasping moan. Stace gasped as it tried to push itself off the ground. Her father put his boot on its chest and slammed it back down. It moaned again and wriggled pitifully.
He lifted his boot and knelt down, putting his hand on its chest. Bloody hands reached up to paw at him weakly, its torso and legs still twitching. He pulled out his pigsticker and put the tip against its temple.
‘Dad, wait—’
‘For what, Stace?’ he said, the anger in his voice returning.
He closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath before thrusting sharpened steel into the thing’s skull, in and out in a smooth, practiced motion. The twitching stopped immediately and the body sagged. Stace groaned, dropping to a knee. The battle she had been fighting against her rising stomach ended with her on the loser’s side. Painful spasms racked her body and she heaved, vomiting over and over into grass at the side of the road.
Her father was up and bending over her in an instant.
‘Can’t take it?’ he yelled. ‘Too much for you, Stace?’
His face was inches from hers and his words rained down like punches.
‘This is the job, little girl! This is what we do out here! This is what you’ve been telling me for years that you want to do!’
She wanted to scream back at him, to point to the bodies and tell him exactly what she’d done when push came to shove, but she couldn’t move. The anger wasn’t strong enough to overcome her shame – when push came to shove, she couldn’t deal with the aftermath. The fear, the gore, and people she knew turning into monsters. All horrors that she obviously couldn’t hack. The stink from the puke on the ground in front of her proved it.
He straightened and walked toward the bodies in the road.
‘Ten years, Stace. Ten years since the last swarm almost ended Shawnee Lodge. But is the wall finished? No, “the Rangers can handle the forest”. Do we have any guns? No! “Arrows are easy to make and the Rangers are keeping the ferals at manageable levels”. Manageable levels! That’s what the council said to me. Do you think Tim Capbell or Sedin Midos thinks this is a “manageable level”? Well, let me tell you something. If this town somehow survives the next couple of days, these hills are going to be crawling with ferals. For years to come. And who are they going to blame every time someone dies? The fucking Rangers!’
Stace flinched. Her father never cussed like that. Not ever.
She sat up and leaned back on her heels. When she finally dared to look at her father, he was facing up the road away from her, staring back the way they had come. At some point, he had pulled his weapons out and now they were hanging at his sides. She couldn’t think of anything to say and she didn’t want his focus back on her, so she stood up as quietly as possible.
Her father put his forearms on each side of his head, crushing the floppy brim of his boonie cap. The tomahawk and pigsticker clinked together and he stood still that way for a long moment.
He took a deep breath, letting it out and letting his arms fall, letting his head sag. He sighed and returned his weapons to their places on his belt. She tensed as he walked slowly toward her and put one hand on her shoulder. Her ear throbbed but she ignored it, trying to hold his gaze.
‘Can you run?’
Before today, she never would have imagined him asking her the question. Running was simply a part of who Stace Tomlinson was.
She nodded, her eyes falling away from his, sure that he had lost all confidence in her. It crushed her to think so, but the anger that had driven her to action when the pack of ferals attacked was still there too, smouldering, demanding she defend herself.
‘About five hundred yards to the security wall. We need to get there fast, but I don’t want another fight. If anything comes out of those trees, we run and, by God, you will follow orders this time, do you understand me?’
‘Yes, Daddy,’ she said, barely a whisper.
‘Then let’s go.’
◆◆◆
It was nearly dark by the time the Tomlinsons reached the stockade that anchored the northernmost point of the security wall. Stace could see the ambient torchlight before she could actually see the wall and was grateful for it. On the last stretch of their run the forest had become like dark, imposing dams on both sides of the road, leaning over, ready to burst and disgorge an endless torrent of ferals at them.
The trees ended on their right, opening up into an area cleared of brush for fifty yards to the bluffs at the base of the hill where the wall terminated. Here the pavement of old Shawnee Road ended, broken apart years prior by the hammers and picks wielded by work-gangs of convicted criminals.
The modern gravel road intersected with the end of the cracked, uneven pavement and ran straight south along the base of the wall where evenly-spaced torches cast warm light. Opposite the wall, the ground sloped gently downward from the gravel road into a small stream, then climbed just as gently to the flat shelf where the old Shawnee Road had been; an elongated bowl that the militia kept clear of trees or bushes out to further than a heavy bow-shot. Stace had once heard the Commandant refer to it as a “clear field of fire”.
More light came from across the open ground on the other side of the stream where Stace could see people in militia uniforms lighting the giant torches at the end of long, hinged arms, pulling the opposite, non-burning end to the ground and lifting the big cages full of burning wood thirty feet in the air. The elevated fires pushed back a great deal of darkness, illuminating the area all the way back to the wall.
Her father hadn’t slowed down one bit when the wall pulled into sight and instead started sprinting, only looking back once to make sure she was keeping up. She was, barely, but it took everything she had and blood pounded in her injured hands and ear.
The militia had the gate at the end of the security wall open before they got there, closing it immediately after they got through.
‘Wall-captain!’ her father yelled, looking around. Stace gasped for breath, staying upright and her hands clasped behind her neck as she’d been taught. Her father’s shoulders moved with each breath, slightly, but the damned man looked like he could run another fifty miles. ‘Where’s the Wall-captain?’ he yelled again, angry that nobody was answering him.
A short, heavyset blond man Stace didn’t recognize came out of the little log cabin tucked away in the corner of the stockade.
‘Ranger,’ the man said, his brow furrowed, ‘why are you yelling at my people?’ When he got a good look at the Tomlinsons, he hesitated, actually taking a half step backward. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
Her father rounded on the man and strode toward him.
‘A runner to The Neck, captain,’ her father said. ‘Right now. I have news that needs to get to headquarters immediately.’
As the two men argued, Stace caught her breath and glanced around. She realized there were quite a few militia men and women moving about, the reddish torchlight glinted off their wide-brimmed steel helmets like setting sun off ripples in Turkey Creek Lake. All carried bows and quivers, but, unlike rangers, they also carried long spears, specifically designed to stab down from atop the wall into the heads of attacking ferals.
Someone yelled from overhead and Stace looked up to the stockade’s single tower, set right at end of the security wall, and saw a crew of three tending to their scorpion: a giant crossbow, strong enough to disable even armoured vehicles. The crew had a winch over the side and were pulling up a bundle of the four-foot-long bolts that the huge weapon fired. More militia men and women scaled the ladders to the wall-walk with bundles of normal-sized arrows on their bac
ks.
‘Stace?’
The boy’s soft voice had come from behind her, instantly recognizable. Despite her fatigue she spun around with a smile already on her face.
‘Matt!’
Matt Staley, one of her parents’ ranch hands, dropped a bundle of arrows and hurried over. At thirteen, the lanky, raven-haired boy was too young for the militia proper, but with a general alert in effect, everyone in Shawnee Lodge was a support troop.
The grin on his face fled when he got a good look at her.
‘You look horrible,’ he said, looking her up and down.
‘Thanks,’ she answered dryly. ‘Where’s mom?’
‘She and Milly were getting all the dociles into the corral when I had to leave and report in. They were heading up to the Citadel after. Everything’s okey-dokey back there, far’s I know.’
At the mention of her mother and little sister, Stace felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t thought about either one since leaving the hilltop clearing. Cuddling up with her mom and sister in her parents’ big feather bed had never sounded so good in all her life.
‘What happened to you ‘n your dad? Looks like y’all been in a tussle.’
‘A pack of ferals,’ she said, trying to sound nonchalant, ‘about halfway to the Midos’ homestead.’
‘I heard the sergeant say the Midos family and Tim Campbell hadn’t checked in yet,’ he said.
Stace grimaced at the mention of the old woodworker. She couldn’t decide if she felt guilty or—
A signal whistle sounded in the distance, somewhere on the other side of the wall. The shrill warbling was immediately joined by three or four more. They were exactly the same type that folks in town used for sports. The militia only used them for one reason. Ferals.
‘Contact front!’ someone above Stace yelled and the call echoed from person to person down the wall. ‘Contact front! Eyes to the treeline!’
