Crisped + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 2) (8 page)

They came to a small hill outside of Grangeville. The two men and the dog crawled on their stomachs to crest the hill. Cavalo pushed the snow out of the way, laying his pack and bow against a small tree with black and peeling bark. He pulled his own old pair of binoculars out of the pack. “Stay down,” he muttered to Lucas and Bad Dog.

Bad smell
, Bad Dog whispered to him.
Hurts my nose. All smoky and bad.
He flattened his ears against his skull and whined.

“I know.” Cavalo scanned the wall. He saw no movement. The column of smoke seemed to be rising from what Cavalo thought to be the town square. Whatever was burning seemed to be contained. The main gate into Grangeville was closed and secured, but there was a ragged hole farther down, the wall torn and blackened, as if something had exploded.

“Shit,” Cavalo muttered. He handed the binoculars to Lucas and pointed toward the hole in the wall. “Is it them? Your people?”

Lucas frowned as he looked down at the wall. He shook his head.

“It’s not them? The Dead Rabbits?”

He glared at Cavalo. Then nodded.
Yes, but they are not my people.

“They were. And I think most people would disagree with you.”

I still want to stab you.

“Feeling is mutual,” Cavalo said, taking the binoculars back and pointing them toward Grangeville. “What’d they use? Grenade? Dynamite?”

Lucas hesitated. Shook his head. Made his hands into half circles, one in front of the other, inches apart. Put them near his right shoulder. Jerked them back.
Boom
, he said.

“Boom,” Cavalo said. “Rocket launchers.”

Lucas nodded.

“We’re fucked.”

Lucas shrugged.

We’re fucked?
Bad Dog asked.
Big boomstick?

“Yeah. Big boomstick.”

I hate boomsticks
, Bad Dog growled.
I hate big ones even more.

“They still here?” he asked Lucas.

Lucas hesitated again. Shook his head. Shrugged.
No. Maybe.
He sighed.
Probably.

“We have to go down there.”

Lucas shook his head again.
No.
He pointed back down the hill.
We have to go back.

“We have to see if there’s anyone left.”

There won’t be
, Lucas snarled.
You know this. You know what’s happened.

Still no movement aside from the smoke. He could see tracks in the snow through the hole in the wall, but he couldn’t tell if they were coming or going. “I know. But this is on me. And you.” And it was. Every death in the town below was on Cavalo’s head. Patrick had been one step ahead of him. He’d known that Cavalo would reach out to Grangeville. He’d known how to strike them down. Cavalo tried not to think about the last time he’d been in Grangeville, walking through the town. All those children who had been in the streets. Laughing. Playing.

I’m not going down there
, Lucas said. Cavalo wondered what he was scared of.

“Then stay here.” He glanced over at Bad Dog. “You know what I’m going to say.”

Bad Dog rolled his eyes.
Stay here, Bad Dog. It’s safer. I am a big bad human, and I make decisions that are dumb when I should be listening to my Bad Dog.
He huffed.
Stupid MasterBossLord. I go where you go.

Cavalo reached over and grabbed Bad Dog’s snout and pulled his head toward his own until their eyes met.

“You follow my lead,” he said.

I follow you, for you are my MasterBossLord
, Bad Dog said.

“You listen for my commands.”

I listen to you, for you are my MasterBossLord.

“I will have your back.”

And I will have yours.

“Together.”

Together.

He let go of Bad Dog’s snout. Lucas was watching him again, a strange look on his face. “What?” he asked, putting the binoculars in his pack before shouldering it again.

Lucas pointed at Bad Dog, then back at Cavalo.
He trusts you. You trust him.

“He’s my friend.”

Lucas pointed at himself and shook his head.
You don’t trust me.

“No,” Cavalo said. “I don’t. Stay here. If you’re not here when we get back, you’re getting left behind.” He pulled himself up and over the top of the hill. He slid down the other side on his stomach, the heavy coat protecting his skin from the ground underneath. He heard Bad Dog following down behind him. They reached the bottom and crouched low. Cavalo scanned the wall as they moved toward Grangeville. He did not hear voices. He did not hear screams. He thought maybe the time for screaming had already passed. He could hear the creak of the wooden walls. Somewhere, a winter bird called out. His own breath sounded like shotgun blasts in his ears.

He debated the rifle. He debated the pistol. He thought of the knife. He decided on the bow. Nocked an arrow.

The hole in the wall was bigger than it seemed on the hill. The black scorch marks radiated down the wall. They reminded Cavalo of a black mask. Chunks of blackened wood littered the ground.

He pressed up against the wall. Bad Dog crowded his legs, sniffing the air.

“Anything?” he asked quietly.

Smoke
, he said.
Fire. Death.
His ears twitched.
Maybe. Inside. Blood. MasterBossLord, there’s blood.

Cavalo looked down at the ground. The snow here was dirty and flattened. Footsteps going in and out. Looked like more going out. He hoped. “Hold,” he said to Bad Dog.

Bad Dog froze.

Cavalo waited. The wall groaned. Water dripped. Wind cooled his heated skin.

The bees told him to run. Run until he could run no more.

He took a deep breath. Pulled on the bowstring. Let out his breath. Peered around the wall.

Houses. Shops. A weathervane squeaked as it spun. He pulled back. Took another breath. Let it out again. Swung his body around, keeping low. He pulled the arrow back. It scraped his cheek. Swept left. Clear. Right. Clear. Up. Clear.

It was almost normal except for the lack of activity and the quiet. It was almost normal except for the footsteps fanning out in the snow from the wall. It was almost normal except for the splashes of maroon over the snow. The walls of the houses. The boarded walkways.

Blood
, Bad Dog whispered from behind him.
Blood
.

And it was. Trails of it in the snow, as if someone had been dragged away. Scrapes in the wooden posts that Cavalo thought had been made from fingernails. The blood on the walls looked to be almost dry. The blood on the snow looked frozen. It’d been there for some time.

They came at night
, Cavalo thought.

Run
, the bees said.
Run. Run.

He leaned back against the wall. Released the tension in the bowstring. “Stay low,” he said. “Follow me. Move until I say. Stop when I say. Don’t leave my side.”

I will follow you
, Bad Dog said. He bumped his head against Cavalo’s knee.
Forever.

Cavalo knew he would. He wished he could tell his friend that it would lead only to death, that it was inevitable for Cavalo, but he knew it would fall on deaf ears. The dog was blind to any other way except following his MasterBossLord. Cavalo wondered how much longer they would last. Perhaps today would finally be the day. If it was, he hoped the bees did not follow them to whatever happened next.

Until then, though.

Pivoting on his heel, he brought the bow and arrow up. Pulled on the string. His line of sight followed down the arrow’s shaft. Four steps and he was in Grangeville. Four more and he was pressed against the side of a house. Took a breath. Stepped out.

He followed the footprints. The trails of frozen blood. He could see the story in them. Of doors barricaded to keep the monsters out. Of doors smashed in as the monsters swarmed. Pieces of clothing caught in the wood as people were dragged from their homes. Bullet holes. Windows shattered. An axe in the middle of a dried blood splatter, the handle splintered in half.

No bodies. No people. No voices. No screams.

That sickly sweet smell in the air.

The black smoke rising over the rooftops.

No one walked the planks atop the walls.

No one moved inside the houses.

No one called out to him as he moved quietly through the town.

No one tried to kill him as the sun disappeared behind the clouds.

He stopped, blocks away from the center of Grangeville where the smoke rose to the sky. The snow at his feet was all red now, a mixture of slush and gristle. Cavalo was sure he saw a tongue mixed in with the dirt. A finger. A clump of hair.

Blood
, Bad Dog muttered.
Blood, blood, blood, blood.
His whiskers dripped with it, his legs a rusty red.

Cavalo knew what burned ahead. Knew what he’d find.

Run, run, run
, the bees chanted.

The air was so thick. So sticky sweet. Like meat cooking on a fire.

He picked a house at random. One close to the center of Grangeville. The door had been torn off its hinges. The furniture on the lower level had been overturned. Bad Dog’s toenails clicked on the wooden floors. They passed the kitchen. Dishes broken on the floor. Blood on the cabinets. He found the stairs and went up. Passed a child’s room with drawings on the walls, the bedsheets strewn about the room.

The hallway toward the back of the house was covered in debris. On the wall to the left, red words dripping in obscene streaks:
I LIKE IT WHEN THEY RUN
and
THESE ARE SOME GOOD EATS.

There was a photograph hanging on the wall at the end of the bloody graffito. A man and woman. A child. Cavalo couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a recent photo. Cameras were rare. A nail had been hammered into the man’s head. The glass had cracked. A human eye hung from the edge of the nail. It was small. The iris was blue, fading to gray. Cavalo wondered which of the people it’d come from.

Blood
, Bad Dog whispered.
There’s only blood here. MasterBossLord, there is so much blood.

“I know,” Cavalo croaked out.

They reached the far room. It was mostly undisturbed. The covers on the bed had been thrown to the side, as if someone or someones had been awoken in the middle of the night to the sounds of the crashes from below or screams from the child’s room down the hall. How many of them had there been? How many other houses looked this same way? He wondered if he’d known the people who lived here. He wondered what it meant when someone such as him couldn’t stop shaking.

He approached a broken window that overlooked the town center, shards of glass on the floor below. He told himself he knew what was out that window. What he’d see. What to expect. What it would mean.

But when he saw the hundreds of bodies piled up in the snow, the hundreds of bodies of men and woman and children thrown atop each other as if they were garbage, he found he wasn’t prepared for it. Their faces. Their open mouths. Their silent screams. Their arms and fingers. Feet that stuck out into the air. Little faces that had seen things no little face should ever have seen.

And they were all on fire.

The dead had been piled high into the air and lit on fire. The sweet smell of burning flesh clung to the air. The smoke from the blackened skin rose toward the gray sky.

Dead. The town was dead.

Grangeville had never stood a chance. Not in the middle of the night. Not if they didn’t know what was coming. Not if they—

Movement, near the burning mountain of the dead.

He raised the bow and aimed the arrow.

Held.

Cordelia, the de facto leader of Grangeville, on her knees in the snow, disheveled hair around her face. Her head bowed. Little drops of blood dripped from her nose. Her hands were bound behind her back. She was only ten yards away. Cavalo could see the lines on her face. The tense set of her jaw.

Next to her was a man Cavalo recognized as her grandson. Mac? Was that his name? Once he’d been drunk in the bar where Cavalo had gone for a drink. Young, foolish thing that he was had tried to get Cavalo into his bed. Cavalo looked at his youthful, innocent face with faint disdain and had turned him down. Repeatedly. That face was now swollen with bruises. Split lips. Blood oozed down his chin as he stared up at the sky with bruised eyes.

Another man on Cordelia’s other side…. Cavalo didn’t recognize him. He looked no older than Mac. His arm was obviously broken, resting at an odd angle, what looked like bone poking through the skin of his forearm.

There were others, yes. A small group standing in front of the three people on their knees. Four men. One woman. All but one of them laughed at their prisoners. They spat on them. Kicked them. Rubbed the flat side of knives against their cheeks. The woman slapped Cordelia viciously, her head rocking back, blood spraying into the snow.

“Leave her alone!” Mac cried.

The woman laughed. “Leave her alone! Leave her alone!” She struck Cordelia again with a closed fist.

Her first
, Cavalo thought.
Arrow through her eye. Another arrow. The farthest man. In his heart. Another arrow. The smallest man through his throat. Another arrow. The laughing man. In his mouth. Another arrow. Last man. Last man. Last—

The last man turned his head. Cavalo saw him in profile.

Patrick.

Bad guys
, Bad Dog whispered.
Bad guys and blood. Scary man and blood
.

Sweat trickled down Cavalo’s neck.

Kill him. Do it now. Do it—

And he would have. He would have let the arrow fly then, straight into that smiling monstrous face. It would have been the end of this, at least this part.

But he didn’t. He didn’t fire the arrow because more Dead Rabbits began to come out of the shadows. From behind the houses on the other side of Grangeville. From storefronts. From behind the burning mountain. Dozens of them. Men and women. Black armbands on around their biceps. Some carried shovels. Bats with nails jutting out. Guns. Knives. Machetes. Swords. Grenades. RPGs. Blood on their clothes. Hands. Blood in their teeth. Sores on their faces and arms. Some had growths on their bodies. They moved quietly, like shadows.