They thought they had no need for Kat to lead them anywhere. They considered her dispensable. They believed she was prey. They were wrong.
A tingle at the back of her brain made her start to turn to the left, but there was no time to avoid the projectile. Her training held as she relaxed, folding in when the rock hit her upper arm. A flash of pain and her arm went numb. She knew it wasn’t broken but it might be cracked—that rock had definitely hit a nerve.
A vast web of lightning spread across the night sky for one glorious moment—and Kat spun around to take everything in. More than a dozen men surrounded her. While they might not have her training, they were tough-looking specimens, not weedy like Bart. And they likely weren’t stupid enough to hand her the chance to take them one at a time. So she’d have to make that opportunity for herself.
She reviewed her memory of what she’d seen in that one brief flash of light. A few had held stones in their hands, and a few more had knives at the ready and she’d seen at least one handgun. She’d have to be careful of those two wielding rifles on the truck, but they’d have to be careful not to hit their own. If they cared.
Then the boom of thunder hit—and this time it was so close it reverberated through her bones and rattled her teeth. In the silence which followed, she realized there were too many of them, and she was too tired. There was no way she would survive this fight. She was going to die.
An incredible sense of peace washed over her. Her spirit was calm and still, unafraid—no matter how hard she fought, it wouldn’t be enough. But if this was to be her last fight, they’d see what she was made of. She would take out so many of these animals that they’d never be a threat to anyone else.
Soaked and muddy, weak and hurting—none of that mattered anymore.
Hopefully MacTierney and the others had made it to safety and her mission had been successful. If they hadn’t arrived yet, the longer she drew this out the better. And if the enemy planned to attack the FURC, Chief Cameron would appreciate what damage she was about to inflict on them.
Kat felt something to her right and turned. Her eyes were still readjusting to the dark, but she could make out the tensing of the muscles in the arm of a man with a rock in his hands. So she kept turning, presenting a broader target—and he threw the rock just as she dropped to the ground.
Diving at an angle, she rolled through a patch of mud and came to her feet flying off in the other direction. A moving target was harder to hit—and got her closer to her goal, who just stood there in place, pulling his knife from its sheath as she zigzagged toward him. He slashed out as she sprang at him from the side. Using her numb arm as a shield, she drove into him to try and knock him off balance. The man was too heavy, though, and she didn’t have any leverage. She slipped in the mud.
His boot came crashing toward her, but she instinctively relaxed and let her body fold around the blow—and around his foot. The slick mud helped as his kick pushed her across the ground. She turned inward and rolled her shoulder up to just below his knee.
He was already slipping and falling backward, and her little push slammed him down—she rolled on, tumbling over him until she was driving the heel of her boot through the bottom of his chin.
Kat groped in the dark until she found the knife the man had dropped in the mud, then struggled to her feet. Her arm was bleeding, but she didn’t care. She noticed she didn’t have her flashlight anymore, but she couldn’t remember what had happened to it—and she didn’t care. Now she had a knife.
She tried to recall where the closest enemy with a gun had been, and when she remembered his last location, she grinned. She was about to take a knife to a gun fight. She only hoped he had plenty of bullets.
Chapter 17
Path of Destruction
8:20 p.m. Monday, March 3rd
ANTHONY glided across the muddy ground as if skating on ice, scanning in every direction for some sign, anything at all. Somehow he had to find Kat, and soon.
He’d had to leave Ken behind by the main gate. The man would be a great help getting them back in again, but Cameron couldn’t move this fast. Anthony wasn’t a man running, he was a fleeting shadow, a trick of the light—not a target, except perhaps for an untrained, nervous shooter. Who’d not be likely to hit anything anyway. Anthony had trained long and hard to do this—a long time ago. He hoped he was still good enough to save Kat.
Her warning would be helpful—especially now they’d dealt with the handful of saboteurs inside the compound. The guards at either gate should be sufficient to repel any attack, with some security officers to help and the reserve soldiers Ken had called up. The problem now was to bring everyone back in safe.
Anthony had sent Lisa and Susan to take care of things at the north gate—so he didn’t have any worries about MacTierney and Ken’s family. But he did worry about Kat. He’d collected enough of the pieces of this puzzle to see the bigger picture, or at least its outline. Enough to know that Kat had taken on a tougher challenge than she could possibly be aware of, and all on her own.
Another good reason for leaving Ken back near the gate. Kat had only described her plan in vague terms—she might be going straight for the gate. If she were, Ken could help her get inside without letting anyone else in. Though Anthony doubted that Kat would go that way. She was more apt to try to lead these Aryans she’d mentioned in her message away from the FURC.
If only he had a more specific idea of where to look for her.
Not far from the compound, Anthony had seen a convoy of state troopers and black SUVs crawling through the woods, at an angle to the road, headed for the main gate. That would be the attack he had started to suspect was coming—the governor trying to take advantage of the FURC’s reduced defenses. Only not as reduced as the man must’ve hoped.
However, those forces had been moving with an orderly calm, proving to Anthony that Kat could not be anywhere near. And he needed to focus on finding her.
Weaving through the dark forest from one tree to another, he stopped in his tracks as he heard the sound of sporadic gunfire. Not from behind, where he’d expected fighting to break out at the gates, but from up ahead. He listened for a minute, and when he had an idea where those shooters were, he began to circle closer to get a good look.
The first thing he saw, in the brief illumination of a lightning strike, was a few sheriff’s cars parked between some trees. The lawmen were out of their vehicles and using the doors for cover, aiming their rifles through the open windows. And occasionally firing. But at who? Hopefully not Kat—if she was engaging in target practice, he wouldn’t expect her to be the target. But then he noticed someone was firing back.
He had to find out who. So he circled back toward the road and whatever the sheriff’s men were firing at. He half-expected to find that Kat was the one holding off all those deputies.
However, what he found by the road was a ragtag bunch spread out among the trees in a variety of vehicles. Those had to be the white supremacists.
In a flash, Anthony knew this had to have been Kat’s handiwork. Somehow she’d led these Aryans into clashing with the sheriff’s men—she must have discovered the waiting forces and improvised. But where is she now?
Anthony didn’t know if he was more concerned that she might already be dead, or that she might be lying somewhere hurt or dying and needing help—and that he wouldn’t find her in time. But his concern wouldn’t help, he needed to hope. Which was difficult under the circumstances.
The dilemma he faced right now was which way to move—he’d have to go wide around this little war zone, since he didn’t think Kat had headed toward the gates. He tried to place himself in her position. He had trained her, and he ought to know her well enough by now to figure out what she’d do.
Having created this little distraction, she’d still not want to endanger the compound by heading for the gate—because she wouldn’t be sure whether or not Anthony had received her message and alerted the guards in time. So she’d head the opp
osite way, toward the town. Where she’d be able to hide from anyone still following her and find shelter from the storm.
Of course. But what Anthony didn’t know was whether or not she’d already made it to that safety, or if she was somewhere between here and there—perhaps fighting for her life at this very moment.
He’d have to try and trace her path. He didn’t waste any time, but began to flit through the forest, circling back and around, far behind the deputies’ position. Where he was surprised to come across a stationary pair of high-beams piercing the dark.
It was unusual. And anything out of the ordinary might be a clue pointing the way to Kat. With caution he slowly approached the solitary vehicle—until he was close enough to see it was an armored personnel carrier that had had an unfortunate encounter with a tree. Which he would suspect to be Kat’s work, even if he hadn’t recognized one of the Cameron family cars. Surely I taught her to drive better than that.
He trotted up to the open driver’s side door and gave the interior a quick inspection. The keys were still in the ignition and a broken pair of night vision goggles lay on the seat, and the airbag had been the victim of a violent assault. Grinning, Anthony saw all too clearly what must’ve happened.
His grin faded, though, when he imagined Kat out here—in a dark forest, in the middle of a thunderstorm and trying to travel several miles to town. On foot. With enemies all around.
Anthony visualized a direct line from the wreck in front of him to the town and set off in that direction, crisscrossing back and forth across that imaginary path and looking for evidence Kat had passed that way. It wasn’t long before he began to find the crumbs she’d left behind.
First he found two corpses lying in the mud—then a few more dead bodies, all of them gunshot. The rain had started to beat down by now, but Anthony still heard the loud moaning of someone Kat had left alive. He followed the sound and found a man lying in the dark, shot in the leg and dying.
Anthony couldn’t blame her for getting sloppy. He could only imagine what condition she’d be in, but he didn’t have time to clean up after her. Neither did he dare draw attention to himself by firing his weapon unnecessarily—so he knelt down by the man and knocked him unconscious. Which was all the mercy he could give.
At least he knew he was on the right track—she was leaving a trail of debris in her wake for him to follow. And he found himself zigzagging across the same imaginary line he’d started from. He wished he knew how far behind her he was, and how much catching up he had to do.
Moving as fast as he could through the increasing downpour and across ground growing more and more muddy, he wasn’t sure how long it took him to reach the end of the forest because he never paused to check the time. But he knew he had yet to reach Kat when he darted through the tree line and into the clearing between the woods and the road dividing FURC lands from the town. And saw the scene awaiting him there.
The first thing he noticed was the empty truck idling on the shoulder with its headlights glaring—which lit up a swath of the falling rain and provided enough illumination for Anthony to make out a dozen or more heaps on the ground. He had to wait for the next flash of lightning to reveal what he suspected—those heaps were people littering the landscape with their unconscious forms, or corpses as the case might be. He just prayed none of them were Kat.
In the ensuing darkness he ran from person to person, checking. All of them were men. Aryans, he supposed. Which didn’t tell him where to find Kat, only that she had been here. He had to believe she was still alive. Somewhere.
After wreaking all this destruction, she must’ve made it across the road to the town beyond. He’d be hard-pressed to find her there, but he’d have to try. Of course, she’d probably left more crumbs for him to follow.
First, though, he ran up to the empty truck beside the road and looked inside. He grabbed a rifle he saw hanging on a rack in the back and a box of ammunition from the floorboard. While he was no sharpshooter like Ken or Kat, it still might come in handy. And he hoped he’d have the chance to give the gun to Kat—and that she would still be in good enough shape to use it.
Standing in the shadows behind the truck, Anthony gazed across the road. The dark outline of a dead city only hinted at the hundreds of abandoned homes he might have to search. Not to mention the mall or other business buildings where she could’ve taken refuge. If she hadn’t marked her way with a few convenient corpses, it might take a long time to find her.
Where would she go? He tried to imagine himself in her position again but came up empty. She might’ve gone anywhere—the one thing he could be sure of was that the survival training he’d given her would drive her into the shelter of that ghost town.
Resigned to combing through the entire city, at least until he found some sign of her passage, Anthony started across the road. He managed to take one step before he realized something was holding him back. His feet refused take that second step. A strange inertia seemed to fix him where he stood—rooting him to the spot.
Almost twitching from the desire to go running after Kat, he forced himself to close his eyes and listen to his heart. And then he knew.
Although it made no sense to him, somehow he knew she hadn’t continued to head toward town. It pulled him back toward the forest, this strange sensation. She hadn’t doubled back the way she came here, or he’d have run into her. So which way?
He didn’t concern himself with wondering why she hadn’t made the obvious choice to seek shelter. The only question his mind had room for was how he was going to find her now.
Kat was on foot. And she had to know that even more of the enemy stood between her and the gate. Which left only one direction she could’ve taken—through the woods on the far side of the path he’d followed here and further away from the FURC.
Of course. She had no way of knowing that the east and west gates had been sealed. He’d updated her in the message his pad had sent automatically to hers—only she hadn’t had her pad on her to get that message.
Taking a few deep breaths to gather his energy, Anthony ran back toward the line of trees, diagonally in the direction he supposed Kat must have gone. And since he could move freely, without hesitation in his heart, he knew he was going the right way.
Once he was in the woods again, he opened his ears for noises that might lead him to Kat. Not that she’d make much more sound than he did, but the same couldn’t be said of anyone she ran into.
Farther into the forest, he did hear faint sounds of a struggle and he flew on his feet toward them—then he saw the dancing of flashlight beams ahead. He ran right at one of the torch-wielding figures.
As soon as he saw that dark shape wasn’t Kat, Anthony threw himself at the man, driving the rifle he held straight through the back of his knees, and rolled right over him. Crouching with a knee resting on the back of the man’s head, Anthony studied the scene.
Two other Aryans had now trained their flashlights on Kat, while another came up from behind. Anthony was almost to one of the guys with a flashlight when the one behind Kat grabbed her around the waist and lifted her into the air.
The back of her head smashed into that man’s nose with a wet crunch and she was free. But then she sank to her knees and didn’t get right back up.
Anthony swung the stock of his rifle across the side of the head of the one he’d closed with. While the man dropped to the ground, Anthony turned to see Kat was still struggling to stand. But the Aryan whose nose she’d broken wasn’t.
Not caring that he was drawing their attention, Anthony yelled as he tossed the rifle through the air. “Kat! Catch!”
She did manage to snatch the rifle as if flew toward her. But she didn’t do anything with it at first. Then as the man behind her came again, she turned and side-stepped just in time, bringing the rifle up to clothesline her attacker. Knocking him out cold and leaving him flat on the ground.
She just stood there. Anthony could guess how worn out Kat had to be from al
l that fighting. He was probably tiring himself, but he didn’t have the chance to notice if that were the case. He was focusing on her.
Dropping and rolling to keep himself a moving target, and get closer to Kat, he came up into a half crouch and drew his Glock. He aimed and fired at the other Aryan who was waving a flashlight around and making himself a good target.
How many more are there? Between the trees and the dark he felt he could take them all out, one by one if it came to that. But Kat was failing fast—what he needed more than anything was to get her safely back into the compound.
He was trying to think of the quickest way to do that when he sensed an attack coming at him from behind. He dropped and rolled again, and a blade whistled through the air where his head had been. He turned as he came to his feet and fired straight into the center of a dark shape descending on him. And a machete-wielding maniac dropped his blade and fell to the ground. Anthony had already turned and started once more toward Kat.
It was too dark to see now, but he could feel her presence and he proceeded with caution. He didn’t want her to mistake him for one of her attackers—not and whack him with that rifle he’d given her.
“Kat,” he called in a low voice, hoping it would not carry too far through the downpour.
“Tony.” And he could see her shadow stepping toward him. He saw her drop the rifle at her side—and then she was falling into his arms.
Not knowing how many of the enemy remained or where they were, Anthony quickly carried her a few yards away before he set her down and checked her pulse. Weak and thready—but at least she was still alive. And unconscious.
Slipping his gun back into his shoulder holster, he knelt and shifted Kat in his arms until he could throw her across his shoulders. That was the only way he could carry her all the way back to the main gate. And he needed to move as fast as he could.
Starting the Slowpocalypse (Books 1-3 Omnibus) Page 41
