by Lukens, Mark
Kate knew she should check Petra for a concussion, at least ask a few more questions. But what were they supposed to do if Petra had a concussion? She didn’t seem to be in excruciating pain, and she’d only been knocked out for a few minutes. She seemed to be able to move all of her limbs okay and her faculties seemed to be all there. Maybe her injury wasn’t too serious; maybe she’d just had her bell rung a little from the rock.
“I’m going to look in the back for some of the first-aid stuff,” Kate told Petra.
“Find me a bottle of tequila, would you?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Petra pulled the towel away and sat up a little straighter, looking around. “Why are we stopped? Where are we?”
“Something’s wrong with the truck,” Kate told her.
Petra looked out the windshield, the open hood blocking most of the view. “How far away from the rippers are we?”
Kate saw that Petra was already on the defensive, preparing for another attack. Kate couldn’t help looking at the woods all around them, looking for any rippers hiding in the brush. She opened the driver’s door and pushed the button to open the back hatch. She closed the driver’s door and then went to the back.
After a few minutes of moving boxes and bags around, reorganizing things as best she could, she realized that they’d not only forgotten the box with the medical supplies in it, and the map, but also their backpacks. None of them had any kind of pack to take with them if they needed to walk, which it looked like they would need to do eventually. They could take some of the food and a few drinks, but only what they could carry. She was already imagining them taking turns carrying a cardboard box of food and drinks. And Brooke wasn’t going to let them leave Tiger behind. Another box they would have to carry.
Kate was already trying to figure out how she was going to tell Brooke that they would have to let Tiger go and hope that the cat followed them when they left. She had a quick mental picture of Brooke screaming in the middle of the road, throwing a full-blown temper tantrum if they didn’t take Tiger with them, her screams like a siren drawing any nearby rippers toward them.
Damn, Max. Why did you have to find that damn cat?
Kate closed the hatch with Brooke staring at her over the back of the seat, almost like she was reading her mind about the cat. And who knew? Maybe she was. Would that be any stranger than all of the other things that had happened so far?
She went to the front of the truck, glancing at the woods all around them. Everything was still quiet, even the hissing sound from the engine had died down. The steam had dissipated quite a bit, enough for Max to inspect the engine more closely.
“Petra seems to be okay for now,” Kate told Max, starting off with the good news. “I think the rock just knocked her out for a few minutes. She’s got a gash on her head, but I don’t think it’s too serious. Except for the threat of infection. And that brings me to the bad news.”
Max just stared at her, letting out a long exhale. His expression said: Go ahead, lay it on me.
“In our haste to leave, we didn’t bring the box with the medical supplies in it.”
“Great.”
“And I think we left the maps behind.”
“Awesome.”
“And our backpacks.”
Max looked surprised. “Our packs?”
Kate nodded. “I don’t even remember where they were.”
Max seemed to be trying to remember. “God, this just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”
Kate could see that Max was having the same thoughts she’d had only minutes ago, trying to figure out how they were going to take food and drinks with them, how they were going to carry them. And Tiger.
“We should’ve been ready,” Max said in a low voice. “We should’ve listened to Petra.”
Kate nodded. No sense in beating themselves up about it now. “What about the truck? Please give me some good news in exchange for all of the bad news.”
“Might be good news,” Max said. “See this hose right here on top? See that tear?”
Kate saw it; the hose was practically severed.
“It ripped somehow. I don’t know how.”
“So we can fix it? Tape it up?”
“I don’t know. That’s a pretty big tear.” He hesitated for a moment.
But Kate could tell he wanted to say something else. “What is it? There’s more, isn’t there?”
He nodded and crouched down in front of the grill of the truck. “There’s a lot of damage to the front.”
“The rippers—”
“I think Lisey might have got the radiator with some of the buckshot when she shot at Petra.”
“Shit.”
“She didn’t hit Petra, did she?”
Kate wasn’t sure. She hadn’t checked anywhere else on Petra except for the wound on her head. “I don’t think so.” But Kate was going to go back and ask Petra, make sure she wasn’t hurt anywhere else.
“What are we going to do?” Kate asked.
“I can’t fix that hose. I could try to tape it, but it will only blow again.”
“Can we tape it enough to drive a few more miles?”
Max shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. We could drive a little down the road and look for another vehicle. But it doesn’t look like there’s much around here. But I’m not sure we’re going to make it very far before the engine seizes up. It already got pretty hot. Might not even start again.”
Kate glanced back down at the engine.
“I could walk,” Max said. “I could go alone and try to find a vehicle, or try to find a hose and some tools. You guys could stay here with the food.”
“No,” Kate said. “We need to stay together. If we’re going to walk, then we all need to go. We need to get ready, decide what we can carry. You know Brooke is going to want to bring Tiger with us in his box.” She stared at Max, hoping he could sense her displeasure about having Tiger with them.
“Is Petra okay to walk?” Max asked.
“I think so.”
“We could leave the windows rolled up and the doors locked in this truck,” Max said. “Maybe we’ll find a vehicle down the road. Maybe we’ll be able to come back here eventually and get the stuff out of the back.”
Before Kate could answer, a screech sounded from far down the road. Maybe less than a mile away. They hadn’t really driven that far. If some of those rippers from the horde were running, they could be here in a few more minutes. A spike of panic lodged in her chest.
“We need to go,” Max said.
Kate grabbed Max’s arm, turning him around to face the road in the direction they had been going before the hose blew. She’d heard a sound, the growling sound of trucks, powerful engines.
“Shit,” Max whispered as the trucks crested the hill down the road, speeding right at them.
CHAPTER 17
Kate
“Get the guns,” Max said as he slammed the hood shut.
Kate watched as the two vehicles, a van and a pickup truck jacked up on large tires, came to a stop in the middle of the road thirty feet away at an angle to each other, nearly nose-to-nose and creating a V in the road.
Max was behind the open driver’s door in a flash, using it as a shield, his gun in his hand.
Kate got to the passenger side and grabbed the shotgun from the floorboard. She glanced back at Petra who had her pistol in her hand, then she looked at the trucks again. The doors opened up and one man from each truck got out, using the open doors as shields. The men were dressed in sweatshirts, fatigue camo pants, boots, and gloves. The clothing looked fresh and new, not stained and ripped like everyone else’s that Kate had seen. The man who had gotten out of the passenger side of the van wore a knit cap and sunglasses. He had a thick mustache that reminded Kate of the cowboys in western movies she’d seen. The man who had gotten out of the driver’s side of the pickup wore a baseball cap pulled down low and what looked like some kind of plastic mask—either a mask for dirt bike
racing or for paintball; Kate wasn’t sure. Both men had rifles with scopes, and the man with the mustache had a pistol holstered to his hip.
“Shit,” Petra hissed, still aiming her pistol at the men.
Kate watched the two men. Neither one of them left from behind the open doors of their vehicles. She could see another person in the van and another one in the pickup truck, four of them altogether.
“We can’t outgun them,” Petra said in a low voice. She wasn’t giving up or lowering her gun, just stating a fact.
“What are they doing?” Kate whispered. “Why are they just standing there like that?”
“They’re waiting,” Max said.
“Waiting for what?”
Max didn’t answer.
A ripper from far down the street called out. And then another one.
“Those rippers are coming this way,” Petra said.
Brooke moaned in fear, still holding on to Tiger in the back seat.
“We don’t have time for this,” Max said. He stood all the way up from behind his driver’s door, raising his head above the top of it, but still keeping his gun aimed at the men. “What do you want?”
Neither man answered.
“We just want to get down this road,” Max yelled at the men. “We don’t want any trouble.”
The men still didn’t answer. They glanced at each other, just the flicker of movement from each of them. Obviously these men had worked together for a while.
Kate was sure the men were some kind of gang. Not Dark Angels; she didn’t see the symbols painted on the van or the pickup. But maybe the symbols were on their foreheads; she couldn’t tell because of the knit cap and the plastic mask.
“Just let us drive out of here,” Max yelled. “Nobody needs to get hurt.”
“Your vehicle isn’t working right now,” the man with the mustache yelled back. “You blew a hose or the radiator. We saw the steam.”
Were they watching them? For how long?
“Lower your weapons,” Mustache Man said. “Throw them out of the vehicle. Onto the road and the grass. All of the weapons you have.”
Kate thought of the food in the back of their SUV, the boxes of supplies they had managed to get out of her parents’ house before Lisey had brought the rippers to them. Maybe these guys just wanted to take their stuff, rob them and then move on.
“We’ve got food and drinks,” Kate called out. “You can take them. You can have it all. Just let us walk away with our guns.”
“Throw the guns down,” Mustache Man said. “We don’t want your food. We want to help you.”
“Help us?” Max asked. “How? You’re aiming your rifles at us.”
“And you’re aiming your weapons at us.”
The man had a point, but could they trust him? He might be saying anything to get them to put down their guns.
“We don’t know who you are,” Max said. “We don’t know if we can trust you.”
“You can trust us. But we don’t want any of you accidentally shooting at us. You’ll get your guns back. But first you need to throw them out of reach.”
“I don’t believe them,” Petra growled.
“How are you going to help us?” Max asked.
“We’ll talk about it when you throw your guns away.”
“See?” Petra said. “I told you.”
Kate’s stomach twisted. The rippers’ calls were getting louder.
“You hear them,” Mustache Man said. “The rippers are getting closer. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Tell us how you’ll help us and then we’ll throw our weapons down,” Max said.
The two men glanced at each other again, then Mustache Man looked back at them. “We have a place. A safe place we can take you.”
Again, Kate’s stomach clenched as she thought about getting into the back of that van. She couldn’t put Brooke into that kind of situation again. She stood up taller behind the open passenger door like Max was doing, but she still had the shotgun in her hands aimed at the men, perched between the door and the car. She wasn’t even sure if the blast from the shotgun would reach the men or cause much damage from this far away. She didn’t know if the recoil would knock her on her ass, or if it would jolt the weapon out of her hands. She had a feeling the two men could tell she wasn’t familiar with firearms.
“Where’s this safe place?” Max asked. “What is it?”
“It’s a big store,” Mustache Man said. “A Super Bea’s.”
“What the hell’s a Super Bea’s?” Petra grumbled.
“It’s a store around this area,” Kate said. “Kind of like a Target or a Wal-Mart.”
“We don’t have much time,” Mustache Man added. “We can’t wait for you much longer.” He glanced at the masked man again—they seemed to be communicating just by the expression in their eyes.
“Let me see your face,” Kate yelled at the masked man. “And you. Lift your hat up. Let me see your forehead.”
“We’re not Dark Angels,” the man said.
“Let me see!”
Mustache Man pushed up his knit cap and pulled off his sunglasses, revealing a clean, pale forehead and close-cropped hair. He looked at the masked man who lifted up his mask, revealing a boyish face—he couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen years old.
“Satisfied?” Mustache Man asked.
Kate heard the clattering sound of a gun hitting the road. She looked over the roof at Max; he still had his gun in his hand. Kate leaned down and looked through the open door at Petra; she had thrown her gun down and then walked a few steps away from the SUV with her hands raised up halfway.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked her.
“We don’t have a choice. We’re out of options.”
Once again Petra was right. She seemed able to make accurate predictions and assessments at lightning speed in this new world of horror they now lived in. Maybe she had been meant for this. She kept her hands raised up halfway, a relaxed gesture but definitely one of surrender. She stared at the men in the trucks. The wound in her hair was bleeding again, a line of blood trickling down the side of her face.
Kate sighed in defeat and tossed her shotgun to the side. It landed with a clatter in the strip of dry grass between the road and the beginning of the woods.
Max set his gun down on the street and then kicked it away from him, the gun sliding across the pavement.
“Stay where you are,” Mustache Man said as he came out from behind the door of the van. The other man had replaced his mask and kept his rifle aimed at them.
The rippers called out from down the street, the sound of an angry mob. They were almost within sight now.
“You have any other weapons in your vehicle?” the man asked as he approached cautiously.
“No,” Max answered.
“Who else is in the vehicle?”
“A little girl,” Kate said.
“And a cat,” Max added.
The man stopped when he was only fifteen feet away. He hadn’t lowered his rifle yet, still antsy and tense.
Kate was beginning to regret tossing their weapons away.
“I’m going to need all of you to get in the van,” the man said.
PART 3
CHAPTER 18
Ray
The woman Ray and Josh had dragged inside the cabin had slept nearly all day. It was late afternoon when she finally woke up. Ray, Josh, and Luke had been taking turns keeping watch. Mike had gotten bored and went down to the bunker to play his video games. Ray kept peeking out the front windows every so often, using the binoculars he kept on the floor in front of the window to study the woods at the other end of the clearing in front of the cabin. It hadn’t snowed any more, and the weather had gotten warm enough to melt the thin layer of snow that had coated the ground.
“I could check the woods,” Luke suggested.
“Might be a good idea,” Ray said. “But maybe we should all stick together right now.”
Jo
sh and Emma were in the kitchen making dinner. Emma managed to help him somehow. She got around so well it was easy to forget she was blind. Josh had carved a cane for her, and Ray had to admit he’d done a pretty good job. Emma used her cane every once in a while, but now that she was familiar enough with the cabin, she didn’t need it very much.
The aroma of food cooking drifted into the living room, some kind of spaghetti sauce and the smell of baking bread and butter.
Maybe it was the smell of the food cooking that had awakened the woman. She opened her eyes, blinking. She sat up quickly, the blanket falling off of her. She looked around, her eyes and hair wild.
Ray and Luke rushed over to her. Ray smiled at the woman, but he didn’t feel like he was comforting her much. He could imagine her waking up in a cabin with two men hovering over her, one with a gun in a shoulder holster and one with a gun on his hip.
“You’re safe,” Ray said before the woman could freak out. “You’re inside our cabin. I don’t know if you remember, but you came up onto the front porch early this morning and passed out.”
The woman sat motionless on the floor, propped up by her arms. She looked like she was ready to bolt into action, but she also looked like she was thinking things over, maybe remembering that she had walked from the woods to their cabin.
“Do you remember any of that?” Ray asked. He wondered if she might have some memory loss, or even some slight brain damage from the fall onto the front porch, or even malnutrition or some other injuries, whatever had caused the cut on her lips and the bruise around her left eye.
“The cans,” the woman whispered.
It took a second for Ray to understand what she meant, but then he got it. “Yeah, we set up some metal cans under the stairs out there. Like a kind of alarm system.”
She nodded. She seemed to be relaxing just a little.
“My name’s Ray Daniels. This is Luke. What’s your name?”
“Rose,” she whispered.
“Rose,” Ray repeated, trying the smiling-thing on his face again. “Rose, I’m pleased to meet you.”
“She’s finally awake,” Josh boomed as he entered the living room with Emma. He smiled at Rose, a beaming and welcoming smile that was natural for Josh, a smile that seemed to set her at ease a little more than Ray and Luke had been doing.
