Infected Planet

by Dennis Yates

  Iris laughed and walked away.

  ****

  We made several runs to the truck with food and supplies. Some rotters had made it back to the house and Ramos and I cut them down with machetes instead of wasting ammo.

  “Where’s Iris?” I asked when everyone was gathered outside, ready to leave.

  I ran back inside the house. Iris was sitting on the floor, digging her hand in a wooden box.

  “Come on,” I said. “More of those things will be here any minute.”

  I walked over to see what she was looking for. She was rifling through a box of old photos and had picked out more than she could hold. Crying now and seeming not to care or comprehend the danger we were in. I took her by the hand.

  She dropped several pictures on the ground as I led her outside to the truck. Before I climbed in I glanced back up at the ridge. The horsemen were gone. Or maybe I’d just imagined them in the first place. But why?

  Jade had the truck running, and after I got inside she hit the gas. Many rotters were heading down the road to greet us. Jade tried to avoid them until they began to piss her off. It wasn’t long before she was purposely hitting them with the truck and sending them flying off the road and down the steep canyon.

  When we reached the top of the mesa we were relieved to see there were no rotters waiting for us. We didn’t get far, however, before Jade slammed the breaks and threw us all forward.

  “What the hell?” Trevor shouted.

  “Someone needs to clear the road,” Jade said, pointing at the large rocks blocking our way.

  Trevor stared at the road in surprise. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Those rocks weren’t here before.”

  “Can they do that kind of thing?” I asked the boy. “I mean can rotters work together like that?”

  Trevor shook his head. “No way. Their only focus is eating people. It has to be someone else who’s done this, not anyone who’s turned.”

  Ramos stared at me. “It must be those horsemen. I don’t like this, Brand. Not at all.”

  I turned and faced Iris. She appeared to be still in shock but coming around slowly.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry about your family. I doubt we’d even be here now if it weren’t for them.”

  “They wouldn’t have done that for anyone”.”

  I nodded and took her hand. “They were braver than any other Dusters I’ve ever known, and that’s why I’m making a promise to them that I will keep you alive. But I need to ask you what you know about the horsemen.”

  “Grandpa said he saw them once,” the girl replied. “Or at least he thought he did.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “He used to make trips to Cranston to look for our parents and see if he could find more supplies. He wouldn’t let us go with him, said it was too dangerous. One night he didn’t come home and Aria and I got worried. We waited until the next day before we went to look for him.

  We’d headed down the road for Cranston and found him face down in the road. His motorbike lay a few feet away. He was delirious and badly dehydrated. We stayed with him the entire night until he eventually came around. Said he’d seen several horses with riders back in Cranston and had worried they were going to try and kill him so he got out of there as fast as he could. But he was going blind and he had sunstroke and sometimes he said all kinds of crazy things anyway.”

  “Did you ever see the horsemen yourself?”

  Iris shook her head. Her eyes were filled with tears.

  I thanked her and got out of the truck and started helping Ramos and Trevor move rocks off the road. Ramos pointed out fresh hoof prints in the sand, but the horsemen were nowhere to be seen. Had they'd somehow been responsible for the rotters attacking us?

  It was tiring work hauling the rocks out of the way, and by the time we were finished we were caked in dust. Jade stopped the truck and we grabbed some water and drank for a while. One of Lazarus's moons had disappeared, revealing a sprinkling of bright stars. What in the hell are we going to do? I thought. We’d used a lot of ammunition killing rotters and we only had enough food to maybe last us a week.

  “We should head back to Cranston,” I said. “See what we can find before we go anywhere else.”

  The others reluctantly agreed. We climbed back into the truck and Jade started driving back in the direction of a town I’d hoped to never see again.

  “How are you doing?” I asked her.

  “My head is killing me.”

  I remembered the aspirin I had in my pocket and dug out the bottle and handed it over the seat to her. She dumped some in her mouth and chewed them down dry. I gave her a bottle of water.

  “We shouldn’t have gone to Doc Remington’s,” she said. “If we hadn’t stopped there we would still have enough of everything to make a run at the McCarthy.”

  “Nonsense. You needed medical treatment. Medicine.”

  Jade glanced back at Iris who appeared to have nodded off next to me. “Her sister and her grandfather would still be alive if it weren’t for me.”

  “Maybe so, but you shouldn’t feel guilty. We were the ones who made the decision to go there. You were too feverish to know what was happening.”

  I could see Jade’s eyes burning in the rearview mirror. “You know how I feel when other people make decisions for me.”

  “How could I forget,” I said.

  Jade shoved the water bottle back at me and stared out the window as she drove. I knew better than to say anything, for the McCarthy rattler inside her could turn deadly if you didn’t give it enough space. Being crammed into an old truck was probably too much for her as it was. Jade was a loner by nature and sometimes at odds with herself for hanging with a group.

  As I watched the road pass beneath the truck, I fell into a drowsy state of half sleep. Ramos and Iris had beaten me to it and were snoring lightly. Up front Trevor and Jade were talking quietly.

  Despite everything, being back in Lazarus brought back the old feeling I remembered prior to hibernation. Only Dusters could love such a wretched planet. In the past Ramos and I both felt its vacancy whenever we were forced to blow away from our home planet and lie low for long stretches.

  Other Dusters who worked in the black market helped wanted fugitives like us disappear. Becoming invisible and staying alive went with the territory. Yet we’d never expected there’d come a time when we’d have to disappear with a fugitive named Jade.

  We were in Kirksville for a couple days, watching for Pilgrims who were not being careful enough with their money. Great pickings all around but there was one in particular we wanted, and he needed a truck to haul all his money around.

  The money wagon begged us to take it down. It had more holes in its security than we could count. We thought it could be our last job. For a while anyway. Until it was time to live wild again, which usually was the case within a few weeks of continual intoxication and scratching the underbelly of every major town in southern Lazarus.

  When we went to do the job, we were five minutes too late. Jade had already knocked out the driver and was waiting for the bag man to come back out with more money. She’d drawn on us first, a pistol in each hand aimed at our noses.

  “What are you doing here? This is my heist.”

  “Come on,” Ramos had said. “Dusters don’t kill Dusters.”

  The way Ramos tells the story you’d think he’d talked her into combining our talents for an even split. But Ramos underplays the role of the sheriff and his posse. How we spotted them just as the bag man left the bank. For the first time in her life Jade had seen some value in working with others. We’d been together ever since.

  Chapter 7

  “We’ve got trouble,” Jade said.

  I opened my eyes and glanced around. I had no idea how long I’d dozed off. At first, I didn’t see the dark forms of several horsemen gaining on us. Dust exploded around the pounding hooves, causing the seated figures to look like shadowy specters floating above the grou
nd.

  Jade shifted gears and the truck tore forward. We thought we’d lost them until Trevor stuck his head out and saw a horseman cutting in from the side. A muzzle flashed from the rider’s outstretched arm and the mirror next to Trevor was pulverized. He ducked back inside and started to bring up his window before half of it erupted into a spray of cubed glass.

  Our attackers didn’t seem interested in taking us alive. I peered over Jade’s shoulder and saw we had already used up way too much fuel. If we wanted to survive we’d have to stop making it easy on our pursuers.

  “Get off this road,” I shouted.

  “And go where?” Jade screamed. “If you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a whole lot of clearance. We’ll hit a rock and it’ll be all over.”

  “And if we stay on the road they’ll keep following until we run out of fuel and options.”

  A rider charged up next to us and I eased the gun barrel through my open window and searched for a target. The rider saw me and retreated behind the truck and out of my line of fire. I held my breath and waited. After a few moments, the rider dared to come back around the truck. But before the rider could retreat again, I pulled the trigger and watched its head explode into several wet chunks. The rider’s body slid from the saddle and was caught by the spiked limb of a cactus before it dropped to the ground.

  But it was far from over. To my amazement, the riderless horse kept coming, its lips pulled back to reveal a row of razor teeth dripping foam. When the rabid-acting animal found the busted-out window near Trevor, it stuck its head inside the cab and snapped at his face.

  “I could use some help over here!” Trevor shouted.

  Jade jerked the steering wheel and the truck connected with the side of the horse. The animal stumbled a moment but otherwise seemed unfazed. It dropped behind us again and came up the other side. Shoved its head through my window before I could line up a shot. Its jaws chopped at the back of Jade’s head until it connected.

  I watched in horror as the horse yanked her head backward and ripped away hair. Jade shrieked in agony. I punched at the horse’s head but it refused to let go. Fearing it would take away a bigger piece of Jade’s scalp, I stopped myself from trying to pull the vicious animal off.

  “Move back,” Ramos shouted. We did as he asked, Iris scrunched up next to me crying. Ramos flicked a knife blade at Jade’s head, cutting her hair and freeing her from the horse’s jaws.

  The horse pulled away, snorting as it ran beside us, proud of the grisly prize dangling from its mouth. I raised my rifle to shoot it in the head. It turned its glowing eyes toward me and stared into my soul with a burning hatred I’d never seen in a beast before. I lost my nerve and lowered the barrel. I’d never had to shoot a horse before and was in no hurry to start. When I glanced up its eyes were still staring at me. Shaking the prize between its teeth one last time, the horse disappeared into the darkness.

  “Have you ever seen an animal like that?” Ramos asked. “What in the hell is going on?”

  I reached up from the backseat and gently touched the back of Jade’s head, felt a sticky warmth on my fingertips. “You’re hurt. Someone else should be doing the driving now.”

  “Forget it,” Jade said, glancing in the rearview. “We’ve still got company to deal with. There’s no time to make any changes right now.”

  When I looked behind us the feeling of dread in my chest thudded like a lead-filled bag. I saw another horseman racing toward us from behind. He was almost upon us. I stared in horror as he raised a long-handled battle axe over his head and smashed it through the rear window.

  A cloud of glass exploded inside the truck, forcing us to cover our faces. I heard Iris screaming next to me before she was ripped from her seat. I looked up and saw another horse had sunk its jaws into her shoulder and was tugging her through the window.

  “I don’t want to die!” Iris cried.

  Her blood whipped into our faces as her hands groped blindly for something to hold onto. I snatched her by the wrist and tried to pull her back inside. The bleeding made her too weak and she slipped from my grip. When I was able to swing my rifle around the girl was already gone.

  We’ve killed them all, I thought. Jade was right. If we’d only left the old man and his granddaughters alone, they’d still be alive. For that I’ll never be able to forgive myself.

  Add another reason to an already long list. You bring nothing but death wherever you go. My mind started to tumble into a dark place until the sound of pounding hooves pulled me back. We were surrounded now by the horsemen, their faces hidden in shadow.

  I saw a white muzzle flash and the truck suddenly sank to the right, wounded and throwing sand. We hit rock and heard the squeal of metal being torn out from under us. Jade fought with the steering wheel to keep us from rolling. Another horseman moved up to the side and sank a spike into the left tire, causing the truck to flip over on its back and slide over the embankment of a dark arroyo.

  ****

  My head was throbbing and I wanted to vomit. I opened my eyes and saw the ground passing beneath me, realized I was strapped to the back of a horse. Every time the animal took a step forward, my face slammed against its stinking hide and the edge of its backbone dug a bit sharper into my stomach. I tried moving my hands, felt the rope burn deeper into my wrists. I took a break to calm my breathing and attempted to think. Somewhere in the surrounding darkness I could make out the hushed voices of other riders.

  “Where the hell are you taking me?” I called up to the horseman in the saddle above. His leather mask turned down at me but he didn’t respond to my question. Later, when he caught me struggling to free my wrists again, he kicked me in the head with the heel of his boot and knocked me unconscious.

  The morning sun had begun to fry my face when I was finally cut loose and thrown to the ground next to the others. I looked around and saw everyone had made it. Everyone except for Ramos. I had no idea if he was alive or dead. He was just gone.

  Too unsteady to stand, I crawled toward Jade and gripped her hand. She tried to smile despite the patch where her scalp had been torn off. Her wound appeared to have stopped bleeding. I was surprised she was still alive. I glanced over at the others. Jade and Trevor appeared in better shape than anyone. Their hands and feet were tied with thick cord.

  Leaning next to Jade was a man in a black top hat and tattered cape. He appeared to be asleep. Beside him lay a medical bag with the symbol of a cross branded into the leather. Jade’s hand, I noticed, was wrapped in fresh bandages. Not the best work I’d ever seen, but sufficient. I tried convincing myself this might be a good sign, until I heard the inhuman cries of Ramos being tortured not far away. The man snoring near Jade opened his eyes and grumbled before falling back to sleep again.

  When Ramos stopped screaming we all glanced nervously at one another, wondering if he still alive. Soon after a man rode past us and got off his horse and walked over to where Ramos lay beyond the thorny brush. When I heard the voice of my old friend again, I was relieved for only a few seconds before it became clear he was pleading for his life. The hair rose on the back of my neck. I couldn’t hear what the tall man was talking to him about because the conversation didn’t last for long. After a while the man walked back toward us. Behind him another figure dragged Ramos by the arms.

  As soon as they reached us, the unconscious Ramos was dumped at our feet. The tall horsemen walked over to the man who’d bandaged Jade and kicked him in the leg. The man awakened with a fright.

  “What the hell, Patch?” the tall man cursed.

  “I’m sorry,” Patch cried. He stared hopelessly at the bloody hole where Ramos once had an ear.

  “Do what you need to get him travel ready,” the man ordered.

  “Yes Mr. Sorenson.”

  Sorenson, I thought. Where have I heard that name before?

  The horseman set down a leather sack that clanked of metal inside. “I want them all fitted with bracelets before we go.”

  Patch n
odded.

  The horseman turned around to look at me. I glared directly at his masked face. “Got something you need to get off your chest?” the man asked.

  “I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done to him,” I said. “I swear I will.”

  The rider bent his head and a cruel laugh rolled from his mouth slit. “Let me know so I’ll be there to see it.”

  Still hurting bad from my injuries, I forced myself up on shaky legs and stumbled towards him. I had no weapon but I was determined to make a go at him anyway. A hot rage had surged inside me as I thought about what had happened to the old man and his granddaughters, and now to Ramos.

  When I got up close there was something about him that seemed familiar to me, like maybe we’d once crossed paths in the past. I threw a poor roundhouse at his grinning mouth but the tall man simply pushed me in the chest and I collapsed next to the others.

  “You’re damn lucky your friend talked,” the horsemen said. “Otherwise you’d be the next one in line to lose an ear.”

  “You’ll be missing more than that when I’m done with you,” I said evenly. “I remember now who you are Jake Sorenson. You’re a bastard and a traitor. Every Duster on this planet has dreamed of spitting on your grave.”

  Sorenson gave a heavy sigh. “Have you forgotten who was dumped in the badlands to die? All because a group of Dusters had made up lies so they could cut me out from what I was owed?”

  “That’s not what I heard,” I said. “After the terror you caused, you’re lucky they didn’t kill you outright when they had the chance. Letting the McCarthy settle your fate seemed the appropriate thing to do.”

  Sorenson chuckled deeply. “Well there’s going to be a lot people disappointed then, because I’ve been dealt a mighty strong hand as of late.”

  “What is it you want from us?” I asked.

  “I guess it all depends on what you decide. But between you and me, I’m willing to negotiate. Your one-eared companion has given me a ray of hope.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Before I had a chance to take his nose, he told me about the healthy finder’s fee for the President’s lost son.”