Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands

by Meredith, Peter

  Hagy saw it as well. “I work only at the behest of my employer. I go where she tells me to go and I am here, now.”

  “Lie!” Campana literally spat the word into his dung fire, causing it to hiss and sizzle. “You don’t work for Behest, you work for Krupp. Or at least you used to.” His wormy lips parted in a wide smile. “But not no more. You got no pull no more. You just a skanky slag with a little baggy of goodies. Who gonna say shit if I take it and you?”

  “I will,” Cole said softly, his hand on the Riker Ten at his hip.

  Chapter 26

  “Hagy told me the Crag could be touchy,” Cole said, his fingers caressing the grip of the ancient semiautomatic. He had no idea what the trigger pull was like, if the sights were off, or if the spring in the magazine was rusty. For all he knew the bullets were older than the gun and wouldn’t fire at all.

  Cole willed away those thoughts. Campana couldn’t know how unfamiliar he was with his own weapon. He couldn’t know that Cole hated the men he was traveling with or that he would lay down his life for the child hiding behind his hip. All Campana could know about Cole Younger was that he was fearless. “She didn’t tell me they were also a bunch of mouthy whores.”

  Campana’s filmy eyes blazed, but only for a second. He took in Cole’s size, the ease at which he stood, the cool look in his eye, and saw that Cole would kill him before anyone could blink. Campana had two choices: get angry and die, or laugh it off and plot. He chose the latter.

  Slamming the rifle down once, he suddenly broke into a mad cackle. “That is funny,” he declared. From around them came a smattering of forced laughter. During which, Cole looked back at Hamilton and Sergeant Phillips, making a point to shift his eyes hard to the left and right. Hamilton nodded and casually turned outward, as did Phillips who also nudged Brunker.

  “You brung a joker with you, Hagy?” Campana asked. “You shoulda brung you an army. Malachi was here this morning. He told me a story. You know who be in that story? You know who played the big part? You, Miss I’m too good for the Crag. Oh yeah, Malachi been around lots. He been around since the hot days, tellin’ stories about who in charge now at Krupp, and it ain’t your ol’ boss lady. It’s some other boss lady and she hates that other one, which means I hate that other one, too.”

  “Does it mean that?” Hagy asked. “I’d be really careful how you answer that. There are big things going on across the water. My boss lady is back on top. That’s why Malachi came and that’s why I’m here now. She’s back, and now I’m back.”

  Campana considered this, his sneer slowly fading from his ugly face. He couldn’t afford to be wrong when it came to backing the bosses across the water. The Crag were always in need of medicine and ammo, and their desire for candy was like a hunger for Mule. Malachi Ewing’s visit had been quick. He had demanded more of the dead ones and promised to pay handsomely for each.

  “What is you wanting?” he asked.

  She replied, “The dead ones.” The answer was confusing to the king and he sat back to rub his chin which he thought made him look wise. They both wanted the dead? He had never understood why the bosses had suddenly wanted the dead. For years it had been metal, especially the red metal found in wires, but for the last ten months they’d been asking for zombies. Not many and not often, and yet the requests were baffling to the king.

  “We need them tonight,” she added. “I’ve brought twenty stones of ammo and some candy.”

  Twenty stone was a lot, much more than Malachi had brought. In fact, Campana thought it might be too much. Was she trying to make him do something stupid? Was it a trap? Then again, did it even matter? “I don’t have none of the dead. It’s what I tol’ Malachi. I tol’ him we don’t keep them as pets. I can get some. If you gots the fancy darts and the chains, I can get some. How many you need?”

  “As many as I can get, but I need them within a day.”

  Ah, there was the rub. Trapping the dead was terribly dangerous. Only the bravest and the strongest would even try and most of them had gone north to trade with the Night People to exchange pills for their little black children. Some of these would be eaten, some would be raped, and some would be raped then eaten.

  Campana gazed around at his people and saw only two who had ever gone after the dead before and both were doing their best to avoid eye contact.

  “I can’t,” Campana said. “Not in a day.”

  “Then let us pass through your lands,” Hagy countered, more brazen than ever. “We will bring back our own dead. You’ll get twenty stone for nothing.”

  It wasn’t nothing and she knew it. The Crag were fiercely jealous over their territory and allowed none but chosen people to enter and then only briefly. And yet, Twenty stone! The pack was right there almost within reach. If Campana had his other men with him, he would’ve taken the pack and killed the little group. But what if she was telling the truth and her boss lady was now in charge? What if she was lying? What if Malachi suddenly showed up and caught him treating with an enemy? He growled as his indecision mounted. His people were watching him and it didn’t help that they had begun to whisper.

  They wanted the candy and the ammo, and they wanted the people gone, but they couldn’t have both. Minutes passed as he strained the limits of his wisdom.

  As if there was a lot of noise to speak over, he snarled and thumped his rifle, crying, “Okay!” He stood and started pacing. With one leg two inches longer than the other, he did so with a limp. He spoke as he thought, “You could be an enemy, Hagy, and I can’t let enemies on my land. But you might not be. And either way no one crosses Crag lands, but…” He was sweating now, his eyes lingering on the pack.

  “She might be your enemy,” Cole said, “but we are not. We are like you, men just trying to find a way to live. She can stay here as your hostage.” Hagy shot Cole a hard look, her brows turned sharply down. “Just until we return,” he added quickly. “To prove that we are not after anything except the dead.”

  “And I get to keep the pack?” Campana asked, afraid that he was being tricked in some way.

  “Yes,” Cole answered.

  Campana ran the deal over in his mind, trying to find out what the catch was. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t one. “And if you don’t come back?” he asked. “I keep the pack and the girl?”

  Hagy crossed her arms over her chest. “Hell no! I will stay as a guest until they return or for one day, whichever comes first. And if you think you have any rights over me, think again. I will rip your dick off by the root if you try anything.” The Crag appreciated this sort of fiery banter and laughed at the image.

  “Is this acceptable?” Cole asked. “Not the dick ripping off part, but the rest?”

  Campana’s head was beginning to ache from having to process so many thoughts in so short of a time. He had done two days’ worth of thinking in just the one conversation. “Yes. You go. She stays and I get the pack.”

  The Crag did not shake hands on deals and of course they could not write to make it legally binding. Instead, the custom was for each party to look at the other suspiciously and nod once. Cole’s smile made Campana think he’d been screwed over in the deal, and angrily he pointed back the way they had come. “Go away now,” he ordered.

  “First I need to know where we can find the dead. Do you have a map or something? We don’t want to run into a horde of them. You know, thousands of them. We need just a small group. You know, ten or twenty.” Campana glared without answering. Cole didn’t understand the animosity and turned to Hagy. “Is it something I said?”

  Hagy pulled Cole back, whispering, “You’ve made your deal. You can’t add to it after the deal is done. You have to go. You have to go, now.” She gave him a shove, and then thought better of it and hurried up to him. “Take this,” she whispered, stripping off a battered tin watch. “We have to be across the river by nine. Be back here by eight at the latest. And Cole, don’t fuck this up.”

  “Why do people keep saying that to me?�
�� Cole muttered.

  “Because you always fuck shit up,” Hamilton said. “You should’ve demanded a map and a guide. How are we supposed to find zombies just wandering around out there?”

  Cole didn’t think that finding the zombies was going to be a problem. His big worry was finding a million of them at once. Ignoring Hamilton, he retraced his steps to the shaft with its dangling cable and stood looking up, wondering how they were going to get back up. The metal would rip their hands to pieces.

  “Ya don’t go out dat way, fucker,” a squeaky voice announced from behind the little group. At first Cole thought it was a misshapen, barrel-chested boy, but a closer look revealed that the “boy” had a thick beard. “Ya go out toward da night sun. It’s dis way.” He turned and went down a side tunnel, walking strangely in something of a rolling waddle. When he dipped to one side, the knuckles of one hand scraped the ground.

  “What’s the night sun?” Corrina whispered to Cole.

  The man heard this and said, “Fucker doesn’t even know where da night sun is.” He shook his head, something that didn’t look possible as it seemed to sit directly on his shoulders. “It where da sun go at night. Dumb-ass fucker.”

  Corrina, who was an inch taller than the man, shot back, “That’s called west. Even a dumb-ass fucker knows that, which makes you an even dumber-ass fucker. Ha!”

  Cole feared the man would retaliate for the insult and not show them the way out, however the small man only replied, “Your momma spreads her legs for da dead ones.”

  “Your momma shit out the dead and called it beard baby.”

  They went back and forth like this with each insult growing more wearisome to Cole. He didn’t interfere as it was something of a rite with the underclass. Their insults petered out just as they came to a heavy gate that barred the entrance to a larger tunnel. Taking a mirror that hung from the wall, the man stuck his arm through the bars and used the mirror to look back and forth.

  “Dunno fuckers. Could be clear. Dunno. Too dark ta tell.” The gate was held in place by a heavy metal chain. It had no lock and was only hooked in place. He lifted the hook and unwound the chain, his hands deft and quiet. “Go on, fuckers,” he whispered when the gate was pulled back.

  “Thank you very much,” Cole replied, stepping through and drawing one of his scatterguns in a fluid motion. The tunnel, once used for trains, was made of crumbling concrete. It was no longer structurally intact; not forty feet away, the ceiling had caved in, filling the tunnel.

  Cole turned away, only to have the little man to point him back. “Dat way, fucker.”

  There was a hard-packed trail that ran along the near wall of the tunnel. Cole had missed it in the dark and presently they were following it up along the face of the cave-in. With the jutting spears of rusting metal and the slabs that teetered precariously and sometimes dropped away altogether, the trail was dangerous enough when there was light. Without it, the hundred yards felt like a mile and they were bruised and torn up by the time they had passed it.

  Sergeant Phillips had his left thumb almost crushed by a falling rock, Brunker had a gash just below his left knee and McGuigan had grabbed ahold of a piece of rebar that had sliced his hand to ribbons. “I can practically feel the tetanus eating me alive,” he moaned as he wrapped his hand with one of the rags that had covered his head.

  None of them really knew what tetanus was; they just knew it was bad. Corrina was more concerned with the blood than any strange slag they were getting from the metal. “The Dead-eyes can smell blood. I seen it happen.” Everyone except Cole looked at Corrina in shock.

  “That ain’t right, is it?” Brunker asked.

  McGuigan, who couldn’t take his eyes off the blood seeping through the makeshift bandage, answered, “Yes. All the studies show their brain activity explodes when exposed to the scent of blood. The cleaner the better. In one test, trogs that had a high slag count, who were only 92% pure, were ignored by the Dead-eyes. It was believed that the Dead-eyes thought the trogs were simply other zombies and left them alone.”

  “What good does that do us?” Hamilton snapped. “We ain’t trogs. The question is about the blood. Is she right? Will they be able to smell us a mile off?”

  “It’s true,” McGuigan answered, glancing over at Cole who shook his head. McGuigan looked offended. “It is too true. That lady said it right to your face. Besides, I’ve seen more studies than you. I’ve seen all of them, in fact. You could say I have a doctorate in the dead!”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be yelling,” Cole replied, quietly. This had an interesting effect on the group: they hunched down with wide eyes and heads cocked to the side, straining to hear the onrushing Dead-eyes that had been created by their fear-driven imaginations.

  Cole sighed. “You’ve seen tests conducted in a sterile environment, not a radioactive one. And the Dead-eyes that were tested were ‘lab grown.’ They weren’t taken from out here in the Rad Lands. There’s no telling what these ones will be like. And yes, I know what Hagy said. But she’s never been out in the true wild. As far as I could tell, she’s only traversed those couple of miles back and forth from the tunnel to the Crag. Maybe she’s run into a few of the dead, and maybe not. Either way, she’s no expert.”

  “Yeah, she was more scared of the Crag than the dead,” Corrina added.

  McGuigan looked unconvinced and asked, “So you’re saying not to worry about blood?”

  “I’m saying we keep cool. We’ve barely made our way into the Rad Lands. They go for another three-thousand miles, so let’s not sweat the first few, okay? At the same time, if we get cut, we should wrap it first thing. Hagy gave me a salve which does a good job of crusting over a wound. It stings though.”

  He brought it out and everyone looked in dismay at how little was left. As he put it on the wounds, Hamilton kept watch, looking down one direction, and Corrina watched the other. When Cole was done, he said, “The first thing we should do is find some high ground. That way we can get a good…”

  “No,” Hamilton interrupted. “What we gotta do first is get that code for that big-ass door. It’s not fair or even smart for her to be the only one to have it. We should all know it.” The others agreed with bobbing heads.

  “No,” Cole said. “Don’t tell them, Corrina. It’s an insurance policy that’ll keep you alive.”

  Corrina didn’t like how the others were looking at her with hard angry faces; it made her glad to have the code. “I’m not giving it up and that’s final. Besides, Hagy is safe with The Crag.”

  “She didn’t look too safe to me,” Brunker said. “Those people are crazy.”

  “I don’t even think they count as real people,” McGuigan sniffed. “I say we vote on this. All in favor of sharing the door code?” He raised his hand. The others sneered at the hand and yet raised their own.

  Cole snorted and Corrina rolled her eyes up in her head. “Yeah, I’m still not gonna tell you guys.”

  “Then just tell Cole,” Hamilton suggested.

  It was a slick suggestion that sounded good on its surface but would leave Corrina vulnerable. “She’s not giving up the code,” Cole snarled. “We’re wasting valuable time. I got point. Ham on my left. Brunker on my right. Sergeant Phillips, take up the rear.”

  He didn’t wait for any argument and moved down the tunnel, his scattergun at the ready. For half a minute or so there were muttered curses behind him, but as he guessed would happen, they faded as the group went deeper into the gloom. Cole hoped that they would stumble across a few lone zombies, bag them up and be gone in a few hours. He didn’t count on it, however.

  Not far from the cave-in they encountered what looked, from their limited viewpoint, like an underground river. It was a stretch of flat black water that was maybe forty feet across, though it was hard to tell exactly in the dark and might have been further.

  “Can anyone swim?” Cole asked, squinting to see the other side. No one could and no one volunteered to go into the water
first. “Fuuuuuck,” he grumbled, easing a foot into the black river. It was freezing and the slope down was a slab covered in a film of slick mud. Two steps in and his feet slid out from under him. “Shit!” he cried, as his arms pinwheeled and his gun flew. Hamilton, who was right behind him, jumped back instead of helping him and down Cole plunged into the black water.

  The only help Cole received was from Corrina, crying, “Don’t get any in your mouth!”

  Right at that moment, Cole was more worried about drowning altogether. Like the rest of them, he couldn’t swim. In a pathetic display, he floundered and splashed spastically as the weight of his pack pulled him backwards, while at the same time his feet continued to slide forward out from under him. Had the water been any deeper, he would’ve drowned practically in reach of the edge. The water went right up to his chin before his foot caught on a hunk of asphalt only five feet below the surface. He lurched and before he knew it, he found his balance and stood with the water at the level of his chest.

  In an instant, the looks of horror on the faces of the others turned to hoots of derision, at least from the police officers. Corrina and McGuigan still looked ill at ease. “Does it get any deeper?” the girl asked. It was already too deep for her. Even standing on the tips of her toes, the water would reach almost to her eyes. Cole waded out further, going all the way to the other side; the water never got any deeper.

  “I’ll carry you,” he told her. There was no sense in both of them getting soaked. Pack and all, she was a tiny burden for him and he carried her across holding her as high up as he could. “Keep watch,” he told her and went back to search for his lost scattergun. It was at the bottom of the slope and as he couldn’t reach under, he hooked the strap with his foot. The others still hadn’t crossed. It had been funny watching Cole but now they were afraid they would slip even worse.