Not a grown person. A little hand appeared when the zipper stuck, and seven-year-old Margaret wiggled halfway out of the bag before she saw the Uzi and stopped to stare at it with a puzzled frown. Her pigtails had come free, perhaps while she was asleep in the bag, and her blonde hair hung in a tangled mess, framing her pale face. She rubbed her eyes and squinted at Kayla. “Are we there yet?” she said. “I have to pee.”
Kayla tried to think. How could she keep Joyce’s daughter a secret from Tevy when the little girl was a stowaway on the bus? How could he ever believe she was really Alison’s daughter when she’d runaway from the Keep to go with Joyce? This was a disaster, but maybe it could be saved if she could rush the little girl to a different bus, keep her away from Tevy’s inquiring mind, the one that liked to know secrets.
She lowered her Uzi and reached for the little girl’s hand, putting a finger to her lips to indicate quiet. “We mustn’t let anyone know you’re here.”
But it was too late. A shadow joined Kayla’s shadow on the luggage, and Tevy said, “Hey, who’s kid?”
Kayla panicked. How could she keep this girl a secret as she’d promised?
Suddenly, inspiration.
“She’s mine.”
Nine - Monster in the Night
Tevy struggled to remember his mother, but the diesel fumes weren’t quite right. It had been gasoline that last night, and thus that rare scent was what he sought when his memory failed. Sometimes he’d find a rusting car and pull off the gas cap to sniff, not just to scavenge, but to aid memory.
Radu stood high in the back of the pickup truck beside a forty-five-gallon drum, sweat dripping from his forehead as his arm worked the pump handle up and down. Tevy kept the hose, which barely reached, from slipping out of the bus’s fuel supply pipe.
Did she have black hair? Tevy took a deep breath of fumes and closed his eyes, searching for that last moment when his mother blew him a kiss before continuing to load her revolver. He focused. He could sense her close, teasing at the edge of his memory, but her face would not conjure, and he had to settle for the memory of her presence rather than her visage. He savored it until Radu interrupted.
“It’s not full yet?”
Tevy tried to see down the tube into the bus’s fuel tank, but that was impossible. “I think you have to pump the whole barrel in.”
But Radu had stopped to wipe his forehead. “But we only drove about six hours. How could it be empty? Is it leaking?”
Tevy let go of the hose and got down on hands and knees on the asphalt to look under the bus. Dark fluid did drip from under the engine, but it was a slow black drip, which Tevy decided must be oil. He stood up and climbed into the back of the truck, pulling his shirt over his head so that he could use it to swat at black flies with his free hand. “My turn.” He took over on the pump.
It turned out Radu had almost finished, for after just a few minutes, he called out, “Stop, stop! It’s full.”
Joyce and Kayla approached, both looking grim and serious, both carrying slung Uzis.
Tevy had tried to get Kayla to talk about herself and the Keep while they were on the bus, but she had been a closed book, and he recognized the signs of painful memories. Some kids in the Brat Pack were okay talking about how their parents died, and Elliot made up endless stories of heroism and adventure, all with bloody endings in which his parents died while killing hundreds of rippers at once. His stories were a favorite on Friday nights. But other Brat Pack kids didn’t want to go there, didn’t even want to talk about how their lives were before the end. For them conversation was reserved for the present and for important things: food, weapons, and killing rippers. If they were post-pubescent like Tevy and Elliot, they might talk about sex.
So Tevy filled the empty air on the bus with chatter about Chicago while Kayla sat there looking grimmer and angrier with him by the mile. He would have stopped talking altogether, but he was sizing up the young men who stood in the bus aisle and in the row ahead to eagerly listen. Who would be useful and who would run at the first gunshot? Only Radu had Tevy’s cautious vote of confidence so far, for he had seemed totally unimpressed with the stories, and he had expressed disbelief at the right places.
Kayla looked up at him now and turned her head away to look at the sunset over the forest, her cheeks blushing as if she’d caught him naked. While Helen and Bishop Alvarez had made it clear that men and women, and boys and girls, should not be unclothed in front of one another, casual glimpses of nudity were common in the basement of the church and often a source of amusement. Tevy wasn’t used to feeling immodest or self-conscious about going topless, especially in summer, but suddenly he wanted to put on his shirt. He knew he was painfully underfed.
Joyce was already speaking before he got the shirt over his head. “You stick with Kayla tonight. Her daughter will be on my bus.”
Tevy noticed a catch in her voice and sensed a lie. Where was Margaret really going to be? Why didn’t they want him to know? He filed that away for future consideration.
Joyce was already walking away when Kayla spoke. “I’m in the shit house, okay, because of Margaret stowing away and all.”
Tevy nodded but didn’t think it was fair. Kids in the Brat Pack were always getting into trouble, but Bishop Alvarez didn’t blame Helen or Emile, essentially the parents.
“Kids just do stuff.” He jumped down from the truck. “Where you going to be, Rad?”
Radu looked up from capping the fuel tank on the bus. “I don’t know. I have no assignment.”
“Great.” Tevy retrieved his multi-pocketed vest out of the cab of the pickup and slipped it on. “Why don’t you hang with us? Where are we going to be anyway?” He looked to Kayla while he slung on the holster for his shotgun.
“Joyce’s Raiders are going to patrol the perimeter. We won’t hold fixed positions like everyone else.”
“Joyce’s Raiders.” Radu raised his eyes, and his accent, that Vladian lilt, became more pronounced. “So I am to be trusted for a change. I fight beside the best.”
“No.” But Kayla looked uncertain. “I don’t know actually. I just do what I’m told and I was told to patrol the forest with Tevy.”
“Great,” Tevy said. “And I think Rad should be with us.”
Tevy knew that he was looking for a substitute for Elliot, his dependable comrade-in-arms when it came down to a fight with the rippers. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Kayla, but something was missing. There should be three of them. Elliot had talked about that a lot, and they tried several different kids from the Brat Pack, but they never found one that could work with them very well, that was in sync with them.
Kayla gave a short nod and a suspicious glance at Radu before she turned away. “Whatever.”
Radu looked to Tevy for guidance and he waved him along. “Come on, three’s better than two.”
*
The moon was over a quarter on the wane, but it was high by 11:00 p.m., and nearly three quarters was still bright enough for the trees to cast dark shadows. Tevy had a sense of why Barry St John had chosen a location so far north: this late in June, the sun didn’t set until nearly 10:00 p.m., and then it was a lingering sunset, giving lots of warning and lots of time to prepare. The winter nights must be long, but did rippers feel the cold? Tevy didn’t know.
He did know that he didn’t particularly like the woods. The undergrowth crawled near the edges of the highway, and the mosquitoes buzzed incessantly, worse than Chicago, but at least the black flies vanished as the chill settled. Those evil little creatures were new to Tevy, and he was amazed how much blood could be drawn so quickly by something so small. Already his ears and neck were inflamed with bites and smeared with the blood of those that didn’t get away.
Tevy also didn’t like the woods because of the sounds, not the crickets or hoots, but the snap of twigs and the mysterious distant rustles. Sometimes it must just be wind through the trees, but other times he wondered. Was that the sound of a ripper approaching
in stealth?
Joyce had pulled the twelve buses up into four tight rows of three, a square fortification of sorts. Most of the troops now sat in a perimeter around the buses, but her raiders, like Tevy and Kayla and Radu, patrolled in small groups through the woods to ensure no surprises. Basil, a man Kayla knew, had a couple of generators ready and big lights standing on tripods on the tops of the buses, but for now they were dark and the generators were off. If by some chance the rippers weren’t anywhere near them, there was no need to advertise their location. When Tevy looked back at the highway through the trees, all was dark and silent. He might have been alone in an empty world.
He stepped on a dead twig and it snapped.
“Sh-h-h,” Kayla hissed from just a body length away. “God, you’re noisy.”
Tevy wanted to say that this wasn’t the city, that he wasn’t used to forest, and he didn’t understand how she and Radu could step so quietly, but this was no time for excuses or instruction. He probed the ground with his foot before his next step, ensuring he wasn’t stepping on another branch before he gave his foot his weight.
A distant gun fired and others joined, the forest and the buses muting the shots. Tevy turned to run toward the sound of fighting, but Kayla caught him as he turned, her hand pressed flat to his chest to stop him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Her whisper was strangled with anger. “They’ve got that. We’re here.”
Tevy took a breath to calm his heart, his desire to attack and find relief from the tension. She was right, of course. They were patrolling south and west of the buses. The gunfire was from the north and east. They could be attacking there as a feint, drawing fighters over that way so that other rippers cold raid quietly from this direction, taking unwary people from the buses. Joyce had warned them that the rippers might think this was a convoy of refugees, not fighters, and so they might think they’d find lots of helpless children and seniors hiding on the buses. But there was only one child—Kayla’s.
They continued their quiet patrol despite the growing ferocity of the gunfire echoing though the night. The muted roar of gas generators starting up gave warning that the big lights were coming online, but they pointed north away from them, their glow above the trees providing little light for Tevy’s eyes. He craved to go to the fight, but Kayla kept him there, and once, when she caught him looking over his shoulder, she pointed to her own eyes with two fingers and pointed into the trees to the southwest. The command was clear: eyes front. Worry about our zone and trust Joyce’s plan.
A dry branch snapped ahead. Kayla held her fist in the air, and Radu and Tevy froze. They all sank slowly, Tevy placing one knee in the dry pine needles on the ground, suddenly hyper-alert. The scent of mold and fungus were unfamiliar to him, the wind in the trees disturbing and distracting. A small cloud swept over the moon, for a moment plunging them into serious darkness, before it continued past and the moonlight again lit the forest.
Something moved toward them. A different crack sounded from over on the left, a rustle from the right. The woods had come alive with stealthy creatures—man-sized creatures. Many.
Kayla’s hand signs were not unlike the ones they used in Chicago. Tevy shoot right. Radu left. Three shots, pull back ten yards, and then take up the same configuration. On her command.
She let the rippers approach. Tevy picked out three figures closest to him. The moon and the glow of the lights back at the convoy were enough to illuminate their pale faces, and, in one case, an entirely white figure—a ripper with little or no clothing. The rippers’ cautious steps made it obvious they intended to attack the buses, but weren’t so stupid as to ignore the possibility of human patrols, like Kayla’s. The fact that they continued to move forward showed they didn’t know a small ambush waited.
More and more pale shapes materialized in the brush, and it was soon obvious that Kayla’s little patrol could be in very big trouble. Tevy feared she would change her mind, that they’d slink away to get help rather than engage, and he was desperate to pull the trigger, to attack. He sensed her arm rise and glanced over, praying it wasn’t a command to retreat. He may not have been able to obey.
Her fingers were raised, counting down: three, two, one.
Tevy’s first shot hit the naked ripper. He was certain because of the way it dropped, an uncontrolled slump to the ground, indicating that maybe Tevy had hit the spinal column. The parasites could fix that, but it would take days. The recoil had shoved the barrel of the shotgun up, which made it easy for Tevy to pump the slide while bringing the gun back to level. The next target ran right, using a clearing for speed, but the lack of trees also gave Tevy moonlight to follow, and he fired again, bringing that one down too.
He never got a chance for his third target.
Shouts and screams erupted all through the woods, and even a few muzzle flashes exploded, throwing the forest into dazzling freeze frames of light.
Kayla was up and running, Tevy and Radu close behind. Bullets zipped through the branches, some thudding to a stop in tree trunks. They made use of those trees now. Tevy stopped ten yards back, putting his shoulder into the trunk of a pine, the scent of sap in his nostrils as he aimed at the nearest shadow bounding through some underbrush.
He fired and it dove, and Tevy had no time to guess whether he had hit the ripper.
They were everywhere, easily a hundred, all charging recklessly at them, trusting the parasites to repair them if hit by bullets or perhaps just so hungry that they were near madness. Tevy fired at one and another, counting his way down to the end of his shotgun shells and death.
“Covering!” shouted Kayla. “Go!”
Tevy and Radu ran another ten yards. Tevy hit the brakes, wondering if he’d judged correctly about Radu. A lot of people would just keep running for the buses now, would leave Kayla to die. Radu stopped.
It was brighter here because they were closer to the buses, but they were still desperately far away. Had anyone heard their gunfire over all the shooting at the north end? Tevy fired again, shot number six. Kayla ran back under their covering fire, a ripper practically catching her ponytail before a shot from Radu brought it down.
There was no time to be afraid, no time to think, although there was a panicked boy in his soul begging Tevy to fight, to save him. Tevy fired again, seven, and last, eight. He dropped the shotgun and drew his Glock barely on time to shoot a ripper, a muddy creature barely recognizable as human, at point blank through the skull.
A scream erupted from behind the charging rippers to mark the location of a struggle, that and thrashing vegetation.
“A bear?” Tevy shouted the question.
The rippers were close enough that one of them answered. “Bears don’t attack us,” came the voice out of the dark. Tevy shot at that voice and was rewarded with a curse. “Fucking bastard!” Tevy fired again and this time was met with silence.
“We’re coming!” shouted a man’s voice from behind them. Dozens of people crashed through the trees from the direction of the buses.”
“It’s Kayla! Over here. We’re way outnumbered.”
But not outgunned. Whether the rippers had few firearms or simply were so hungry they didn’t want to risk wasting human blood with bullets, there were not many bullets flying in their direction.
Friendly gunfire from behind might be fatal though, and Tevy crouched low, debating which side of the tree he should be on. A shadow ran through the same clearing on Tevy’s right as before, rushing up a hillock of bare granite, but not toward him. It was running to the side, pursued by another ripper. Tevy sighted, debating which one he had a better chance of bringing down. The first shot from the Glock missed both, but before he could aim again a hand closed over his gun and pushed it down, causing a discharge that sent the bullet into the rock.
“No!” Kayla had leapt across the space between them. “That’s one of ours.”
The second ripper tackled the first, the two shadows going down and now hidden by undergrowth
at the edge of the clearing. More screams and more thrashing.
Tevy didn’t have time to wonder who would chase and tackle a ripper barehanded in the woods. The fighters from the bus were arriving and might shoot him if he weren’t careful, and for a moment he knew true terror.
“Human, human!” he called as gunfire discharged all around him with dazzling and disorienting muzzle flashes.
“Not Vlad’s Blood. St. John’s!” shouted Kayla and Radu together.
Tevy joined them. “St. John’s, St. John’s!”
By this time the rippers were crashing away through the forest as men and women Tevy recognized arrived, taking cover behind trees and shooting at the retreating forms. He didn’t know their individual names, but he knew that Joyce’s Raiders had come to their rescue. He knelt close to Kayla, her hand still holding his Glock down, the scent of her sweat in his nostrils, their breath mixing.
Her face was so close to his that when he turned his head his lips were inches from her cheek. She turned to look at him and they both breathed deeply, Tevy was suddenly drawn to her, curious to lean in just that little bit until their lips touched. It wasn’t so much that he was trying to kiss her as just to commune with her on their success, celebrate that they were still alive. The spell, less than a second old, broke.
Someone had caught Kayla’s attention, and she looked up sharply, her lips missing Tevy’s—perhaps even unaware. “Joyce, over here!” she called.
Tevy stood with Kayla as Joyce ran up through the forest like a deer, effortlessly identifying and jumping obstructions in the dark. Tevy was impressed that a woman so old, over thirty at least, could be so fit and energetic.
“How many?” she asked, her Uzi pointed to the sky, her eyes searching the forest.
“Over a hundred,” Kayla said between deep breaths.
The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse Page 11
