Troop of Shadows

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  Sam’s eyes fluttered open the next moment. His drowsy eyes sought Dani’s face.

  “Only the good die as youngsters, right Dani?”

  Something between a laugh and a sob stuck in her throat. “Yes, Sam. And you’re as good as they get, which is why I was so worried.”

  Soon color began to return to his face and his breathing was less shallow. Fergus patted her shoulder. She reached for the small man’s hand and gave it a grateful squeeze.

  “I think we should put some more distance between us and them,” she said. “Why don’t you drive for a while so I can sit with Sam?”

  “Brilliant idea. Which reminds me, I’ll need to change my underwear at the earliest opportunity.”

  An hour later they took an exit ramp and pulled around to the backside of a Love’s Travel Stop. Sam was awake but Dani could see he was struggling with the pain of his injury.

  “How bad does it hurt?”

  “Not too much,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “I’ll bring you some ibuprofen. And we’ll get you started on antibiotics just in case.”

  “No, we need to save those. What happens if you need them later?”

  “No arguing. You need them now and you’re going to take them. It’s better to stave off the infection before it begins, rather than treating it once it gets a foothold. Right, Fergus?”

  “I tend to agree. However, Sam is an exceptionally healthy young man, and it might just be that his immune system is up to doing battle on its own.”

  She frowned.

  “Don’t give me that look, young lady. He has an excellent point. How many doses do you have? What if you need them later for a wound that has become infected? Or you get a wicked case of gonorrhea?”

  Sam nodded. “Yes, let’s save them, please. I will take that ibuprofen though.”

  She hopped out of the cab to fetch her pack from the bed of the truck.

  Fergus followed. “He needs to rest, and not while being jostled around on the back seat of Big Blue.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Let’s find a house somewhere in Podunk, Oklahoma, and hole up for a few days. Preferably a house with a stockpile of food and a scarcity of stinky corpses.”

  She nodded. “That way I can do some foraging while he’s resting. Maybe everything isn’t too picked over out here in the boonies.”

  “Let’s hope. I’ll see if there’s a map inside this establishment. You stay put with Sam.”

  “Be careful, little man. Take your GI Joe gun.”

  “Not a good option for close quarters. I’ll be fine with this.” He eased the machete-like knife from its sheath, glancing up at the sky, which had turned overcast. Lumpy, green-tinged thunderheads loomed on the eastern horizon.

  She did a slow twirl, scanning the perimeter of the parking lot and beyond, then said, “There are no automobiles here. There’s not one car, pickup, or motorcycle in view. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

  “Yes, very odd. Maybe I will retrieve my GI Joe gun,” he said returning to the pickup.

  “Everything okay?” Sam asked. Dani scurried back, handing him a bottle of water and the ibuprofen.

  “Everything’s fine. Just try to rest. If you won’t mind me about the antibiotics, you will at least do that.”

  She noticed moist beads dotting his face along his hairline. He was in an enormous amount of pain and all she had was a stinking bottle of generic Advil. Prescription-strength painkillers weren’t available online as the antibiotics had been, and she was kicking herself in the ass for not having faked some painful condition and wrangling a script from her GP before the end came.

  “It’s not so bad. Don’t worry about me.”

  She was, of course, but she was also concerned by whatever was causing the ghostly fingertips to dance across the back of her neck.

  Fergus lifted his nose like a bloodhound, scenting the sudden gust of wind.

  “That’s an outflow boundary,” he said.

  “What, you’re a meteorologist too?”

  “Not an expert. It was just a former interest.”

  He studied the thunderhead which boiled and rolled like the contents of a slow-bubbling cauldron. “See the greenish tint? That indicates hail.”

  “I’ve lived in Texas all my life. I know what green clouds mean.”

  “Oh, sorry, Honey Badger. I briefly forgot about your gigantic brain, which is almost as big as your ego.”

  She punched him in the arm.

  “When thunderstorms collide with the cooler air from outflow boundaries, we get rotation. I think I’m seeing some even as we speak.”

  She scrutinized the eastern sky. “Yes, I see it too. Let’s get moving. I bet some of these rural houses have a storm shelter. I mean, shit, we’re right in the fucking middle of Tornado Alley. If these hillbillies don’t have a basement, they deserve to get sucked up by a funnel cloud.”

  “You’re a hard woman. You driving?”

  “Yes, I’m driving. Just keep an eye on Sam.”

  “Will do. I’ll keep an eye on your control issues as well.”

  She showed him her middle finger for the second time that day.

  “This looks promising,” she said a few minutes later as they drove down a farm-to-market road somewhere in southern Oklahoma. A large house sat on a hill a hundred yards away. Wire fencing enclosed its surrounding acreage; the type that people used on horse ranches, but there were no horses now. Hopefully their human owners were also absent.

  The chained gate was no match for Big Blue. They were quickly through it and barreling up the gravel driveway toward the house, sliding to a stop in front of the porch.

  At close range, the house didn’t appear as tidy as it had from the road. Neglect was evident here just as it had been in her Colleyville neighborhood. Next to the steps, weeds choked the flower garden, which still bloomed in October, and the white paint on the wraparound porch railings was coated with a fine layer of red soil.

  “What’s the plan?” Fergus asked as they stepped out of the truck and readied their weapons.

  “I hate leaving Sam here alone,” she said. “Why don’t you stay with him and let me check out the house?”

  “You’re running this show, but my gut instinct is to put the shotgun in his hands and let him take care of himself until we make sure the house is safe.”

  “The key part of that phrase is ‘you’re running this show.’ Look, if anything happened to him, I couldn’t bear it. I almost lost him today, and I still might.”

  “And if anything happened to you, do you think he could bear it?”

  She stopped in her tracks.

  “It’s a bit of a conundrum, I know. You’re willing to put your own life in danger because you want to protect him, but to Sam, losing you would be much worse than whatever someone might do to him. He’s conscious. He’s hurting, but he’s lucid. He’ll be fine for the ten minutes it will take to secure this house. What do you say?”

  She gave him a grudging nod.

  Seconds later they stood in front of the door, peering through leaded glass at a foyer which narrowed down to a wood-floored corridor as it extended to the back of the house. She could see a living room to the left and a formal dining room to the right. She switched on her flashlight and cast the beam through the glass.

  Two things struck her: a coating of dust covered the floor, and a child’s doll abandoned in a corner had just totally creeped her out. It was one of those baby dolls from the forties or fifties, and which in Dani’s imagination, came to life at night.

  “The dust is a good sign,” she whispered.

  Fergus nodded and turned the doorknob. It wasn’t locked. They stepped inside.

  An explosive crash of thunder rattled the windows, ratcheting up her nerves another notch. She held her revolver and flashlight police-style as she surveyed the living and dining rooms. Cobwebs dangling from the light fixtures indicated a healthy spider population, but anything larger would hav
e disturbed all the dust on the furniture and floors. They crept down the hallway, opening a closet and bathroom door along the way, finding only storage boxes and cricket husks.

  By the time they reached the kitchen, Dani felt confident the house was empty...at least of people. If there were any hiding corpses, the smell of their decay had faded, leaving nothing more than musty-smelling air with bottom notes of mice urine. The upstairs still needed to be searched, but another crash of thunder followed by a lightning flash through the kitchen window cut the plan short.

  “We need to get Sam out of the truck. Now,” she said. “That storm is right on top of us.”

  They sprinted back to the front door. Within three minutes, they had him reclining on a sofa. The moment his head touched a rose-printed pillow, he lost consciousness.

  “Did you notice those green clouds have turned black? I’ll search for a safer place to hunker down than this living room with its glass windows.”

  “Hurry, Fergus.”

  Sam groaned while thunder boomed every few moments now. The storm’s ionized air, or perhaps the doll from the foyer, summoned the feathery ghost fingers again. She crouched next to him as the seconds ticked by...literally. A clock on the fireplace mantel contained still-functioning batteries and a noisy second hand.

  “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” She brushed sweat-darkened strands from his brow. His eyes fluttered open.

  “I’m sorry to be so much trouble. That was stupid of me to get shot.”

  “Hush. Save your energy for getting better. Don’t forget you’re a fucking ninja with supernatural healing powers.”

  He smiled and closed his eyes. She placed her hand on his chest; she needed to feel the lungs expand and contract. Needed to make sure he didn’t slip away from her.

  If Sam didn’t make it through this, she didn’t know what she would do. She had been discounting the newfound physical attraction and ignoring the romantic images that had been flashing through her mind these past two days. But now she embraced them. As she looked at his beautiful face, seeing all the kindness etched into every line, she knew she’d fallen in love with her best friend. At the same time, she realized her arrogance had kept it from fully blossoming until now. She’d always thought she could never be in love with a man who wasn’t on the same lofty cerebral level.

  Funny how fate had other plans. Sam wasn’t a rocket scientist, but his many wonderful qualities more than compensated for their disparate IQs. Besides, as Fergus had pointed out, he was smart...just not in the same way she was.

  When the rain began a few seconds later, it was with the sudden ferocity of a monsoon. Sheets of water poured from the heavens at a near-sideways angle, buffeting the windows. Golf ball-sized hail followed the next minute. The howling wind found ingress through every crevice, every loose window casing and door jamb of the house.

  Fergus appeared, his red hair dripping with rainwater and an alarmed expression on his face.

  “There’s no safe room, no storm shelter or cellar. Our best bet is the powder room in the hallway. It’s in the interior of the house and fortified by the stairway above it.”

  “He passed out, Fergus. From the pain.”

  “Let’s move him quickly. The sound you hear is not that of the Amtrak Heartland Flyer.”

  “Fuck! Is it on the ground?”

  “It’s rain-wrapped. Impossible to see.”

  The thrashing of rain and pounding of hail approached deafening levels. After they laid Sam on the floor of the small bathroom, Dani closed the door behind them, providing an instant respite from the clamor. She imagined the skeleton of the house: two-by-fours connected by tendons of sheetrock, and brick flesh draped on wooden bones.

  She hoped the structure would be sturdy enough to protect them.

  She clicked on the flashlight. There was no bathtub, just a toilet and sink. The beam distorted the landscape of Fergus’s face, creating a caricature of the man to whom she’d recently become rather more attached than she cared to admit. The lighting didn’t do him any favors; he looked as ghoulish now as the doll in the foyer.

  “I assume you’re not the praying type,” he said.

  “No, but if we survive this...if Sam lives through this, I just might convert.”

  “Ah. You’re one of those religious Sunshine Patriots then.”

  “No. The logic of your metaphor is flawed. I wouldn’t be fleeing a belief system when the going gets tough, but embracing one if it can be proved to my satisfaction that I have benefitted from it. See the difference?”

  Under the eerie conditions, his grin was more creepy than comforting.

  “So if you don’t believe in God or a higher power, how do you think we got here?”

  “Really? You want to debate the origins of humankind when we’re about to be sucked up by an F5?”

  He chuckled. “I’m just trying to distract you from worrying about Sam. It almost worked.”

  “Maybe for a second. Thanks, Fergus. I’m worried sick about him.”

  Debris crashed against the house now. Dani pictured uprooted trees and unlucky cows being flung against their refuge, like detritus in the dust cup of a colossal Dyson vacuum.

  “I’m fairly certain the bullet didn’t hit anything critical. If we let him rest for a few days, somewhere clean, comfortable, and stationary, I have a good feeling about his prognosis. I learned a bit of first aid during my military career, so I speak with some minor authority.”

  She nodded, failing to keep the tears between her eyelids where they belonged. She despised crying in front of people.

  “It has a heart! I’ll be damned!”

  She punched him again.

  “Damn, you’re freakishly strong for a girl. Has anyone ever told you that? I have a bumper crop of bruises on my bicep now, thanks to you.”

  The noise level outside the tiny room escalated. They locked eyes as the distinct sound of an approaching train pierced the pandemonium of destruction. An ear-splitting crack came from above, the vibration causing bits of ceiling texture to rain down on them. Dani covered Sam’s body with her own and waited for the end.

  Chapter 33

  Utah

  “Do you feel better, Logan? The medicine has been in your system for almost a day. It should be working its magic by now.”

  The word choice was unintentional, but Julia noted the young man’s sudden interest. He’d been listless and apathetic for more than twenty-four hours, a result of the infection battling white blood cells and Amoxicillin. The bullet wound in his shoulder hadn’t been cleaned properly before they’d met; otherwise, she might not have been forced to use her only round of antibiotics. It was a moot point now since she had done so, and besides, Steven would have stockpiled them...her brother was nothing if not prepared.

  “I think so. Thank you for sharing your magic pills.”

  She started to explain that the medicine wasn’t literally magic, then stopped herself. She remembered Logan’s short-lived but distressing behavior while driving through Yosemite, and decided it couldn’t hurt to perpetuate his belief that she wielded magical powers. They’d been traveling east on a two-lane state highway and passing through a whole lot of nothing for several hours. Once they hit I70 near Provo, they would ride it through the remainder of Utah, over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, detour from it briefly via the 470 bypass south of Denver (by doing so, she hoped to avoid the massive roadblock of automobiles one would expect near such a large city), back to I70 again once east of Denver, then on to Liberty. Thus far their route had been obstacle-free. When people had fled the wrath of Chicxulub, they hadn’t sought sanctuary in this part of Utah, which consisted of flat, unremarkable terrain dotted with an occasional desolate-looking house in the distance and a smattering of bleak, eighties-era filling stations.

  She glanced at the young man, who was starting to doze off again, then at the Rover’s gas gauge, which showed less than a quarter full. She quashed the panicky feeling this summoned and to
ld herself they had one more full, five-gallon can in the back. Still, it was time to load back up. They would stop at the next station or vehicle they found.

  As it turned out, the next opportunity came a few minutes later in the form of Bobby’s Fill-and-Go Shell. Road signs informed her they were almost to Delta, population 3,436, whose claim to fame was being near an attraction called U-Digg Fossils where one could find a rich supply of trilobites if one were willing to drive off the main highway for twenty-eight miles and excavate the quarry oneself.

  “Logan, wake up. There’s a gas station up ahead. We need to fill up if we can.”

  “Okay. What do I need to do?”

  She steered the Rover down the exit ramp and stopped next to the parking lot.

  “Get your gun ready for starters. We need to make sure there’s nobody around. See that car parked behind the building? Somebody was here at some point. They may have left on foot, or may still be inside, although probably dead. Best to be safe than sorry.”

  “You got it, Julia. I’m very good with my guns.”

  “I know you are. Just keep an eye out.”

  She drove onto the weed-choked concrete slab, surveying the structure for any evidence of recent activity, then continued around to the back.

  On her brother’s recommendation, she had purchased a hand pump, a Super Siphon, and a twenty-foot hose for the purpose of acquiring gasoline from underground tanks. But also per his advice, she would try to get it from automobiles first; thus the purchase of a second, shorter hose. It would be a lot easier, he’d said. The critical part was making sure it hadn’t oxidized, and of course Steven had an easy way to test it before loading up the SUV with what could be injector-clogging sludge. Dribble a bit onto the ground and ignite it, he’d said. If it burned, it was probably good. If it didn’t, it wasn’t.

  She explained all this to Logan, who was more interested in securing the perimeter with his rifle than in her tiresome speech on acquiring fossil fuel in a post-apocalyptic world.

  “I don’t see any movement in the windows, but they’re pretty dirty. Should I go inside? There might be Twinkies.”