Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire

by Jonathan Maberry

  The blackjack whipped through the air and hit the zombie on the crown with enough force to send a shockwave up Dez’s arm. She knew from hard, bad experience that it wasn’t any trauma to the brain that stopped one of the dead. The blow had to do significant damage to the motor cortex or the brainstem. So, as the creature dropped to its knees, Dez used the Y-stick to set it for the killing blow. Another swing, another crunch, and then the zombie was a ragdoll. Dead for sure and forever.

  She stepped aside and let it fall.

  The creature had been a forest ranger once, she could see that from his pants and shoes and the few remaining tatters of shirt that clung to the destroyed body.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured as she stepped away.

  And she was sorry. Hard and brutal as she was—as she’d become—Dez Fox was not a monster. She mourned this nameless man, this victim of horror. As Billy Trout once told her, “There was a story in every single one of these poor sons of bitches.”

  A story. Sure, thought Dez as she moved off. A frigging tragedy.

  Forty minutes later she found a dirt road that was overgrown but showed signs of frequent passage. Some of the wandering steps of the dead, but mostly human footprints. She squatted down to study them. There were at least seventeen different and distinct sets of prints along a stretch where rainwater had softened the ground. Several from big shoes that had to be men’s, but there were smaller prints. Women’s sneakers, or maybe from one or more teenage girls. She followed the smaller prints and it was soon apparent that a group composed of one adult male, two adult females, and a mix of children. A family, she wondered, or a group of survivors. Dez touched the edge of one print and the ground yielded, showing that it was moderately fresh. The last rain was a week and a half ago, and these prints had been made since then.

  Dez’s heart leaped in her chest. She knew that the odds of this being Billy Trout or even anyone from the busses was astronomical. You could sell a coincidence like that in a Lifetime TV schmaltz-fest of a movie.

  But these were the prints of adults and kids. Living people.

  Dez kept moving, following the tracks until they suddenly stopped. The tracks went a mile down the road and then there was nothing but blank dirt before her.

  Except that wasn’t what it was. Not really.

  She dropped down onto hands and knees so she could study the dirt from a worm’s eye level. Then she grunted and straightened, wiping soil from her palms. The road was not blank. No road ever is. The dirt, however, had been swept smooth. Dez moved to the shoulder of the road and prowled forward through the weeds, her eyes clicking back and forth between the shoulder and the smoothed dirt. She found what she was looking for nearly a hundred feet farther. It was a leafy branch that had been cut from a roadside tree, lying five feet off the road where it had been thrown. Dez picked it up, saw the traces of dirt that still clung to the leaves, and let it fall.

  This was an old trick. Using those leaves like a broom to wipe out the signs of human passage. Old as time. But what concerned her was that it was poorly managed. Whoever had erased the footprints had only gone so far back and simply began at that point. They hadn’t thought it through. Anyone with half a brain would do what she had just done…kept looking for when the footprints started again. It would have been far smarter to have the family walk off the road so that their prints vanished into the weeds, fallen leaves, and debris in the forest, and then, even if they had to return to the easier passage of the road later on, a tracker might have been thrown by the deception. Instead it was clumsy.

  “Damn,” she said, immediately concerned for this little family.

  She quickened her pace, moving alongside the road until she found the point where the family had, indeed, come out of the forest.

  Stupid.

  It was stupid. No hunter or tracker would have been fooled long enough to simply give up. There was a logic to everything that happened in the woods. Everything made sense.

  It was only human choice that made senseless decisions.

  She followed the tracks all the way to the small side road that wound like a serpent’s tail through fields of tobacco that had run wild with weeds.

  The farmhouse was there.

  The sight of it froze Dez’s heart for a moment. It stood on a slight rise, its walls painted a smoky blue with shutters of a darker blue. A red barn, a tractor and harvester visible through the open doors. It looked at perfect and picturesque as something from a painting or a calendar. Or a dream.

  Dez began running.

  She did not intend to run. In was a rookie thing to do. Incautious and ill advised, but she did it anyway.

  Because there was a curl of smoke coming from the chimney.

  Because it looked like people were home.

  Because it looked like the living still owned this small patch of the world.

  And because the yard was full of zombies.

  ~13~

  The Ranger and the Dog

  The girl ran fast but not well. She was nimble enough but she wasn’t skilled at flight through the woods. Not an overgrown forest like this. Catching her was going to be easy. Frustrating, mused Ledger as he set off, and actually a pain in the ass…but easy.

  The hard part would be calming her down once he caught her again. That, and convincing her that he wasn’t a rapist, murderer or general lowlife. He knew his looks were against him. Once upon a time he’d been what he called ‘safe looking’. Blond hair, blue eyes, a winning smile, and a skin that took a surfer tan. But that was back when the world was the world. Now he was middle-aged, his skin was a roadmap of scars that marked battles on every continent and of every kind. He carried the marks of knife, bullet, fang and claw. No zombie bites, but that was probably the only type of physical harm he’d so far managed to dodge. He’d lived too much of his life out on the edge of darkness, out where bad things happen as a matter of course. Until this plague happened he’d been winning a lot of battles in the war of international politics and terrorism. In his moments of self-congratulation he’d taken some pride in the fact that he’d prevented madmen from burning it all down. He’d even stopped the release of a designer pathogen that might have done to the world what Lucifer 113 actually accomplished. It was no comfort at all that this outbreak had taken place while he was off the local clock. He’d been overseas preventing a different kind of catastrophe. He had, in fact, prevented that disaster…only to turn around and discovered that despite all of his actions, sacrifice and best intentions the devil had slipped his leash. By the time he’d reached America it was all gone. There was nothing left of the country to save.

  Hubris is a damned ugly thing, and perspective a terrible lesson to learn this late in life.

  Now his world was his dog and whomever he could save.

  Now his world was that poor damned girl.

  And so he ran into the woods to convince her that she needed to be saved, and that he was the one she should trust.

  Jesus wept, he thought as he followed Baskerville through the foliage.

  ~14~

  Dez Fox

  There were eight of them.

  If they had been in a bunch, she might have tried it another way. She might have circled to slip in through the back door. She might have made some noise and tried to lead them away in a pack. She might even have risked using her precious bullets and dared the loud bark of the gun.

  But they were spread out, facing the farmhouse from different points.

  There was something wrong about that, and Dez should have noticed it. That was her second rookie mistake. That was the second thing she did that afternoon which should have warned her that weariness, desperation, fear and hope had begun to strip away her necessary caution.

  Instead, she came running at the closest zombie, her Y-stick in one hand and blackjack in the other. It heard her too late and had only begun to turn when she slammed the weapon against the base of its skull. The blackjack shattered the bone and destroyed much of the brain stem. Th
e zombie fell forward and lay there, twitching and flopping.

  Dez jagged right, running toward the next, who had heard the commotion. It was forty feet from her and by the time she reached it, the creature was reaching for her. Dez used the Y-stick to stall it and the blackjack to kill it.

  Then she raced toward the third, who had been standing by a hand-crank well. This one was a farm worker—big, heavy in the shoulders and arms, with a bull neck. He towered over Dez and when she rammed its throat with the Y-stick the creature’s two-hundred and eighty pounds of mass did not simply jolt to a halt as the last one had done. One arm of the Y-stick cracked and folded back, too green to break off but too feeble to withstand that much mass in motion.

  Dez yelped in fear and dodged grabbing hands that were the size of baseball mitts. She kicked the thing in the knee, trying to cripple it, but her balance was as bad as his angle and it was like kicking a tree stump. She fell hard on the ground and the broken stick went flying. She almost lost the blackjack and might have if that hand and arm hadn’t been under her as she landed.

  The zombie bent and clawed at her, and out of the corner of her wild eyes Dez could see other creatures closing in. She cried out as she rolled sideways and scrambled awkwardly to her feet. The big zombie lunged at her, but this time Dez was able to stay on her feet as she dodged. She slapped the reaching hands away and brought the blackjack down hard on the creature’s forehead. Again and again, tearing dry skin, shattering bone, pulping the brain. She had to hit it six more times before she damaged the right part of the brain. Even then the thing tried to grab her as he fell. A limp left arm tripped her and she went down once more, panting, exhausted, her striking arm tingling with the shocks of each of her powerful blows.

  It was then that Dez Fox realized all of the things she had been doing wrong.

  Running in without thinking it through. Fighting badly, wasting energy and breath.

  Three of the zombies were down, but that left five of them.

  And something else occurred to Dez as the dead closed around her. The zombies had been standing in the field. They hadn’t been clustered by the front door or windows. They hadn’t been trying to get in. They hadn’t been doing anything at all. Only standing there.

  The way they do when there is no prey to draw them, to focus them.

  She flicked a despairing glance at the house. The smoke still curled from the chimney, though.

  Thin smoke. Faint. Fading. A dying fire in what she now realized was either a dead house, or one that had been abandoned.

  Everything was wrong. The whole day shifted without a clutch and as each gear stripped Dez felt it like a punch to the heart.

  She got to her feet one more time. The broken Y-stick was lost, but she had her blackjack and she had her gun. The five zombies were closing in, but they were not yet clutched like a fist around her.

  “Kiss my ass,” she told them.

  Moving with equal parts caution and fury, she went after each of the zombies, one at a time. Using hard sweeps of her arm to parry worm-white grabbing fingers, using better timed and aimed kicks to break knees, using the blackjack with precision.

  It took less than five minutes to kill them.

  When it was done Dez staggered over to the well and collapsed against it, spent, bathed in sweat, gasping for air. She worked the hand-crank as fast as she could to pull up a bucket of water, then held it up to the light to make sure it wasn’t polluted. It sparkled clear and sweet.

  Thirsty as she was, Dez used all of the water to wash black blood from her hands and clothes. Six buckets worth, until she was soaked to the skin and shivering. Only then did she take some water for herself, and she drank as much as she could.

  She stayed by the well until her heart, her breath and her tears all slowed.

  All the time she watched the house. The smoke from the chimney was thinner, almost gone.

  “Kiss my ass,” she said again.

  Dez pushed off from the stone well, snugged her blackjack into a back pocket, and drew her Glock.

  And with that held in two trembling hands, she approached the quiet farmhouse.

  ~15~

  Rachael Elle

  Rachael could barely see the eyes watching her through the disgustingly clouded windows of the bus, but she could sense them on her. Wiping some of the blood on of her hands on the ground, she straightened up slowly, her eyes looking around to make sure there were no other Orcs ready to strike.

  “I know you’re in there, I’m not going to hurt you,” she said softly, knowing they were listening as she sheathed her daggers and knives, holding her hands out peacefully.

  There was no answer, though Rachael could hear the movement inside, and she cautiously pushed the partially open door of the bus.

  What if this was a trap? The thought echoed through her mind, and part of her wanted to draw her dagger in case of an ambush.

  But she definitely heard a kid before; it was a different scream than the sounds of a dying man. She only hoped whoever had a kid with them was a good person.

  Taking a cautious breath, she stepped up into the bus, wondering who or what she’d find inside.

  There were a handful of children clustered at the back as far away from her as they could. None of them looked old enough to have reached their double digits, though she was awful at guessing ages so she could be mistaken.

  Their eyes peering over the tops of the worn seats of the bus were terrified, their dusty and dirty faces stained and damp with tears.

  They were the eyes of children who had seen too much. They were the eyes of children who had grown up too fast.

  Suddenly Rachael was incredibly conscious of what she must look like, with beat up leather and metal armor of her warrior costume, the splattered blood of monsters on her clothes, the blood of the man who had died protecting these children on her hands.

  What had this world come to? What had this world made her into?

  Say something.

  “Hello…” Well, that was something… though definitely not helpful.

  She tried again.

  “Hi… I’m Rachael, and I’m here to help you.”

  Nothing. Silence, only broken by the occasional sniffle of a child holding back tears. None of the kids moved a muscle, their eyes still fixed on her, some in wonder, some in confusion, but all of them distinctly registering fear.

  “I’m going to get you somewhere safe,” Rachael added.

  A few more sniffles, but no movement, no response.

  If the gravity of the situation wasn’t so serious, she might have laughed at how horribly this was going. It was like a scene from a bad horror parody. She needed to get them moving, she needed to get them somewhere safe. The gunshots would draw more Orcs, and she couldn’t fight off a horde while trying to keep a bunch of scared kids safe.

  Though of course they weren’t going to go with her. To them, the bus was their temporary home, their place of safety; she could only imagine how long they’d been hiding in here. Probably since the world ended. And now she was a stranger, covered in blood and armed with a sword, which they just watched kill the only adult that was keeping them safe, telling them they needed to come with her.

  She wasn’t sure she would even trust her right now in their place, so why would they?

  There needed to be a solution, she needed to get them somewhere safe. She wasn’t going to leave them behind, not without any protection. She would never be able to live with herself if she didn’t get them at least to a safe zone with adults and supplies.

  “Please, I know you’re scared, I know that you don’t know me, but I want to help you. If you stay here the monsters will come back, and I can’t stop them all.”

  A few of the kids glanced at the windows, the threats of monsters and nightmares enough to make them question what to do. But she was still a stranger, and the older kids eyed her with suspicion. They’d seen enough of this new world not to trust her.

  Time for plan B.


  “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked them quietly, and all of their eyes were on her. “Can I trust you?”

  There was a slight nod from a few of the kids, and Rachael gave the most sincere and trustworthy smile she could.

  “I’m actually from Themyscira. I’m an Amazon, just like Wonder Woman. Do you know who Wonder Woman is?” she asked the group, to a few more nods. “Well Wonder Woman is in New York trying to make sure everyone is safe, but she asked all of her Amazon sisters to come from Themyscira to help her. And she sent me to find all of you to bring you to safety. Why do you think I’m dressed like this? This is my magical armor, it protects me, just like her gauntlets do.”

  The children’s eyes were on her in wonder, and she really hoped they were buying this. She was trying to make it as convincing as possible, and putting all of her heart and soul into it.

  “Now I need to do my part, but I can’t do it without all of you. Was there another grown up with you?”

  “Miss Dez” one of the little ones in the back spoke up quietly. Okay, so there was another person, another adult. Maybe she could use that to get the kids to come with her.

  “When did Miss Dez leave?” she asked, sitting down on the edge of one of the bus seats, leaning against the back of the seat as casually as she could, trying to look as comforting as possible.

  “While ago, I dunno,” a little girl mumbled.

  “She said she’d be back by the time it got dark,” another kid piped up, one of the older boys in the back.

  So she had a decision to make. If this Dez was alive, if she was coming back, then Rachael didn’t want to move the kids, not if she was expecting to find them still here and safe. She could only imagine the panic that could cause, how she’d feel if she was supposed to be meeting her group somewhere and they weren’t there. How’d she feel if she went back to the hospital and they weren’t there anymore.