by Lukens, Mark
“Looks clear to me out there,” Luke said.
Ray glanced at Luke, who handed his binoculars to Josh as he got his 30.06 with the scope ready. Ray hoped Luke was as good of a shot with the rifle as he was with his handgun. Luke said he was, and Ray was sure it was true.
Josh had volunteered again to go out and pull the girl inside. Ray felt like obliging Josh, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to let Josh go out there alone. The quicker they got this woman inside the cabin, the quicker this was over. And he couldn’t let Josh pull the woman by himself, even if she was pretty light. There was always the chance of Josh reopening the wound in his arm.
After one last look at the woods, Ray set his binoculars on the table and went over to Luke.
“We’ll all three go out there,” Ray said.
Josh looked surprised, but for once he didn’t have anything sarcastic to say.
“You go out there first,” Ray told Luke. “Then Josh and I will be right behind you.” He looked at Josh. “We’ll each grab one of her hands. We’ll need to be careful. She could have a weapon on her, maybe even a hand grenade.”
Josh’s eyes grew wide—he hadn’t thought of that. Yeah, Ray thought, leave it to me to think of the worst possibilities.
“Luke will have his handgun on him as well as the rifle,” Ray continued. “We’ll each have a gun on us, too. If she’s able to wake up, we’ll let her know right away that we’re trying to help her. Maybe even get her up on her feet. If she’s not conscious, we’ll drag her inside. We’ll each take a hand and pull her at the same time, keeping her head up above the threshold so she doesn’t bump it on anything. Once we’re all inside, Luke will come in behind us and close and lock the door.”
“Sounds like you’ve got everything worked out to the second,” Josh said.
“It’s better to go over it now than to waste time out there trying to figure out what to do.”
“Okay,” Luke said, cutting off Josh before he could say anything else. “Let’s get this over with. I’ll go out there first.”
Luke didn’t waste any more time. He unlocked the front door, opened it, and then stepped out onto the front porch with his rifle in his hands.
Ray and Josh glanced at each other. Josh nodded at him, and then he went out through the door. Ray was right behind him.
The cold bit into Ray immediately. It wasn’t quite the shock it could have been because they kept the cabin pretty cool inside, but it certainly seemed cold enough to freeze to death out here.
He couldn’t help glancing around once he was on the front porch. Someone could be in the trees right now, maybe even up in the branches, aiming a rifle at him, sighting him through the scope. It made his skin tingle, his nerves jumping just thinking about it, like running through a thunderstorm knowing at any moment you could see a flash of light, feel a blast of pain for just a millisecond, and then it was all over, lights out, dead.
But he needed to focus on their task. If someone took a shot at him, then they took a shot. It was too late to worry about it now—they were already out here.
Luke was at the railing of the front porch, only a few feet away from the steps, behind one of the thick logs, the poles holding up the porch roof. He stared through the scope, slowly scanning the woods, his index finger caressing the trigger, his muscular body tense.
“Hey,” Josh said to the woman on the floor.
She was still in the same position on her side, curled up nearly into a ball, her knees drawn up tight. Her light brown hair poked out of her hoodie, the hair and the hood partially covering her pale face.
“Hey, lady,” Josh said. He bent down and nudged her shoulder.
Ray wanted to warn Josh to be careful, but he waited, ready to pull his gun out if he needed to. He knew Josh didn’t believe this woman could be a ripper or a suicide assassin, a way to get the rest of her people into the cabin, but Ray wasn’t ruling out the possibility.
No response from the woman.
Josh pushed on her shoulder again, harder this time. “Hey, lady. You need to wake up.”
Still no response. She didn’t make a noise, open her eyes, or move. It looked like she was barely breathing.
They were wasting time, the seconds ticking by, exposed out here on the front porch.
“Come on,” Ray told Josh. “Let’s get her inside where it’s warm, where we can help her.” He said these things in case the woman was awake and scared, playing possum. He wanted her to know that they didn’t mean her any harm.
Josh picked up one of the woman’s arms, grabbing her gently by the hand. Ray grabbed her other arm, holding her by the wrist. He didn’t want to grab her hand because her cloth glove might slip off while they were dragging her inside the cabin. She was pliable. If she was playing dead, she was doing a hell of a job.
He and Josh pulled the woman across the front porch, walking backwards to the front door, which they had left ajar. Ray kicked back gently with one foot, pushing the door open all the way. They pulled the woman in through the doorway, making sure to keep her head up off of the threshold, even though her head was flopped down, her hoodie still covering most of her head, her long hair dragging across the floorboards.
Ray was alarmed at how cold the woman’s clothes felt. He wasn’t wearing gloves and he could feel the iciness of her sweatshirt sleeve, and even her flesh underneath, drifting up into his fingers. He wondered if he had waited too long to bring her inside the cabin, if he had, in his cautiousness and wariness, let her slip away out on the front porch, curled up in a fetal position.
After they were inside, Luke darted in behind them, shutting the front door and locking it.
“Who’s that?”
Ray looked over at the bottom of the stairs where Mike stood, watching them.
“She passed out on the front porch, buddy,” Josh told Mike.
“Let’s get her over to the rug,” Ray said.
The woman moaned as they gently dragged her to the area rug in front of the couches.
“Get a heater for her,” Ray said.
“I’ll get the one out of the bedroom,” Luke said.
“Wait,” Ray told Luke. “She’s waking up. We might need you here.” He looked at Josh. “You get the heater.”
Josh seemed like he was going to say something sarcastic, but he didn’t; he was off and running to the bedroom he used to sleep in.
“Maybe a blanket,” Emma suggested.
Ray looked at Mike who had wandered over closer to them. “Would you help Josh? Get a blanket, a pillow, a bottle of water.”
Mike nodded, his expression serious now.
Ray knew Mike wanted to do something to help in some way, but Ray had an ulterior motive for getting Mike out of the living room—he still couldn’t be one hundred percent sure this woman wasn’t playing possum, ready to brandish a gun or other type of weapon now that she was inside. He couldn’t be entirely sure she wasn’t some kind of Trojan horse.
Luke seemed to be having the same thoughts Ray was.
They looked at each other.
Luke sighed. “I’ll do it,” he said.
“You probably have more experience at that kind of thing than any of us,” Ray said.
Luke didn’t argue. He crouched down next to the woman on the floor and nudged her shoulder, much like Josh had done outside on the front porch. He pushed her hood back, revealing her face and mop of long brown hair. She couldn’t be much older than a teenager, mid-twenties at the oldest.
“No DA mark,” Luke said.
That was one good sign.
“Look at her eye,” Luke said, pushing her hair back a little. “Her lips.”
Ray saw it. The woman had a deep cut at the corner of her lips and her left eye was bruised. The bruise could have come from the fall she’d taken on the front porch a little earlier, but the bruise looked like it had been there for a while, fading now, an older injury.
Luke patted the woman down quickly. He stood up and backed up toward Ray, standi
ng beside him a moment later. “No weapons on her.”
Emma stood behind the couch. She turned to Ray. “Sounds like her breathing’s a little labored.”
“Like she might have an infection?” he asked her. “Pneumonia?”
“Maybe some fluid in her lungs,” Emma said, nodding.
Once again Ray felt a little guilty for making the woman stay out on the porch so long, but he had to be sure there wasn’t anyone else in the woods; he had his son to think about, and Emma, Luke, and Josh. They were all his responsibility. They were each other’s responsibility now.
Josh and Mike were back. Josh carried the small heater that looked almost like a small radiator from an apartment wall. He also had a length of electrical cord looped over his shoulder. Mike carried a blanket, a pillow, and a bottle of water.
A few minutes later they had the heater set up near the woman, a blanket draped over her, a pillow under her head, the bottle of water on the coffee table. She had moaned a little when they had lifted her head to slide the pillow underneath, her eyelids fluttering. She coughed, a rough and phlegmy cough.
“Can you hear me?” Ray asked her.
The woman didn’t say anything, but she scrunched her eyebrows.
“You’re inside our cabin. You were on the front porch this morning. I think you might have passed out.”
No response. Another cough.
“We’re friendly,” Ray told her. “You don’t have to worry about us. But we need to know who you are. Who you’re with.”
The woman kept her eyes closed, but she scrunched her eyebrows again, breathing heavier.
“My name’s Ray Daniels. What’s your name?”
She didn’t answer.
“My son’s name is Mike. Emma’s over there. And Luke and Josh. That’s all of us in the cabin. What’s your name?”
The woman whispered something.
Ray leaned in a little closer. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t understand you.” He looked at Mike. “The water.”
Mike handed Ray the bottle of water. Ray opened it and held it down close to the woman’s hand. “Here’s a bottle of water. Are you thirsty?”
The woman opened her eyes a little and looked down at her hands. She wrapped her fingers around the bottle and raised it up to her lips, her body trembling. She drank from the bottle, spilling some of it down the side of her face.
“Be careful,” Ray said. “Drink it slow. We have plenty more water.”
The woman slowed down, taking a few more sips, then she set the bottle of water down beside her, her body going limp again.
Ray took the bottle from her before she knocked it over.
The woman looked like she was going back to sleep again, but she whispered something again.
“I’m sorry,” Ray said. “I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
But the woman was out, breathing heavily.
Ray turned to Emma who still stood behind the couch. “Did any of you hear what she just said?”
The others shook their heads, but Emma nodded. “I think she said, ‘all gone.’”
PART 2
CHAPTER 11
Kate
Kate Crawford collected the six eggs from the chicken coops on her parents’ property. Her parents were gone now, her brother and sister, too. Only the house was left . . . and these chickens.
She’d left the city over a week ago, but it felt more like months since Ted, the old man on top of the building, had helped her escape from the horde of rippers. And then he’d helped her get a truck and get out of there. And then when her truck had run out of gas, and she was sure she was dead, nine-year-old Brooke had saved her, leading her down into the tunnels under the building where her parents used to run a business. She had convinced Brooke to leave with her, getting attacked in an abandoned motel office by two Dark Angels, and then they had met Petra and Max at a clubhouse in a trailer park. They had agreed to travel together to the town she’d grown up in, to her parents’ home, because she believed—or wanted so badly to believe—that they were still alive.
But they weren’t. They were gone, most likely euthanized by Lisey Foster and the other crazy townspeople here in Astorville, somehow believing all of this was the will of God.
And now no one was left in this town, no one except the rippers that roamed the streets and Crazy Lisey a few miles down the road.
They had stayed a few nights in her parents’ house, resting up, eating some of the food and drinking the drinks they had taken from Lisey, who had hoarded the town’s supply after they were killed one by one, burned and used to attract rippers so they could be killed. Kate felt a little better after the few days of rest; she felt a little stronger, a little safer.
Even though they had plenty of food for at least a month, Kate was able to lure the chickens back to their coops with the feed she had taken from Lisey’s home. Six eggs wasn’t a lot, but it was going to be a feast for them.
She stood there for a moment with the basket on her arm. The chickens clucked inside the coop, flapping their wings, flustered by her presence. She felt bad taking their eggs, but she was a carnivore now, a scavenger, and she and the other survivors would be those things for a long time now; she might as well get used to the idea if she wanted to keep on surviving. Collecting eggs had been a chore of hers when she had lived with her overly-religious parents. She’d never liked this chore when she’d been a child, and she still didn’t like it.
The morning was cold, the sky overcast. It had rained a little yesterday and they had collected some water in the plastic buckets to filter and boil later on the charcoal grill. Kate wasn’t looking forward to drinking the rainwater, but they needed to collect the water while they had the chance. Petra wanted to go back to Lisey’s house and take more food and drinks. Petra was also antsy to get back on the road, to start traveling south before the winter really set in.
The rippers had stayed away from the town for the last few days, maybe because Lisey and the townspeople had poisoned themselves as they turned into rippers, burning some of the bodies and attracting more rippers. Maybe the rippers were smart enough to stay away for a while, but they wouldn’t stay away forever. Eventually they’d get hungry and desperate enough to raid this town.
Lisey and the other townspeople (including her parents, Kate was sure) believed this was the Tribulation mentioned in the Bible, and that the Dragon, who Lisey admitted she’d seen in her dreams just like Kate and the others had, was the Antichrist that the Bible had prophesized.
Maybe the religious teachings that had been pounded into her went deeper and were more entrenched than she had ever realized because Kate felt the lure of that story, of God controlling all of this, that all of this was the Final Test and the Tribulation for those left behind, a struggle and a last chance at salvation, a battle between the scattered good and the increasingly overwhelming forces of darkness.
The idea of the Rapture and the End Times were nothing new to Kate. She’d heard the warnings many times as a child. The pastor of their church had preached about the signs of the End Times, warning that we were all living in the End Times now. Her family had believed in that whole-heartedly.
But not Kate. She couldn’t wait to get out of this town. She had studied her ass off in school to get a scholarship for college and her goal was to become a professor of anthropology. And she’d accomplished her goals, teaching at Duke University. She’d been happy not so long ago, before the Collapse, before the End Times. She’d seen the signs: the economy nosediving, social unrest, persecution, the erosion of laws and kindness, wars, droughts, famines, disease.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Didn’t they have something to do with the Tribulation? Didn’t one of them bring a plague?
She couldn’t be sure, and she needed to stop thinking about it.
A chill ran through her and she shivered, her breath misting up in front of her face. She had refused to believe in the scary bedtime stories of the End Times, but deep down inside those
stories had always frightened her.
This wasn’t the Rapture; it was just a plague, like so many other plagues in human history. She knew about human history. She had studied it. She was a scientist and she knew there were rational answers for things.
What was the rational answer for the dreams she shared with the others, the people they all saw in their dreams, the blind woman who glowed like an angel and talked to them in their dreams? What was the rational explanation for the Dragon and his group of Dark Angels who obviously followed him to the extreme point of carving the letters D and A into their foreheads?
Nothing about this felt rational.
She looked at the chicken coop again. She would let the chickens go when they decided to get back on the road and head down to Florida. Petra was pushing to get going, but Max was resisting. She knew Max had grown comfortable here because they hadn’t seen any signs of rippers, Dark Angels, or any other survivors for a few days. The town was remote, nestled up in the mountains of western North Carolina. But eventually the rippers would come. And eventually the Dark Angels would find them. The Dragon would eventually be able to tell where they were from their dreams, and then he would send his legion of soldiers and followers after them.
“Stop it,” she whispered to herself, startling herself by speaking out loud.
She looked around again, jumpy and jittery. The field where her father had planted crops was bare now, most of the corps already harvested well over a month ago before the Collapse, fruits and vegetables sold and/or traded. At least the townspeople would have had a lot of fresh food while they waited for each other to turn into rippers. Maybe that’s why Lisey had so much food in her house. They had taken so much from Lisey, but they had also left so much behind.
The day was brightening, but the sun hadn’t made it up over the mountains on the horizon just yet. It didn’t feel like the sun was bringing much warmth with it today. There seemed to be just the faint smell of smoke in the air, like something might be burning. Kate guessed that fires were going to happen, and there would be no one to put them out.
