DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn (21 page)

“Nope. The person who did whatever it is that happened b
etween your people and him is dead…and so are all who were with him.”

Now it was Sergeant Pitts’ time to be silent. Jody figured he had given a good enough answer, but as the silence drew on, he became uncomfortable.

“Listen,” finally Jody gave in, “we don’t want any trouble. We are not trying to make friends or enemies. We just want to live in peace and let others do the same. I don’t know about you, but we have actual families in our settlement. Whatever went wrong between you and your people and that prick Remar, that is done and over. Right now, we are trying to get our defensive fortifications reinforced in case of any of those big herds, and in between that and trying to get housing up and in place for everybody, we are trying to start a few gardens.

“That whole thing with Remar was his doing and his doing alone. We were actually only out with small teams searching for supplies on the outskirts of Jonesboro. I figure that is when he ran into you or your people…” Jody paused again. He was gi
ving away too much information without getting anything in return. Granted, he was not giving out much, but considering the fact that he was not getting anything in way of a response, he figured it was time to stop.

“He killed two of my best men,” Pitts finally said with a scowl. “Damn jarheads are hard to come by these days…worth their weight in gold, most of ‘em. Not to mention the two dozen other men who were with them. And it was all a set up. But things are starting to at least make more sense.”

“How so?” Jody prompted, hoping that Pitts would continue on with his narrative.

“You say you have actual families?” Pitts changed the su
bject and Jody sighed inwardly. This was going to be tiresome.

“A few…how about you?”

“Not any whole ones. Didn’t think any family could come out of this whole.”

“And how is…” he scanned his memory for a
name and came up blank.

“Reyna?” Pitts finally offered.

“Yeah…her.”

“She’s dead.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Jody said with as much feeling as he dared without trying to overdo it.

“Don’t be, she was a bitch
,” Pitts said with a wicked laugh that seemed a bit inappropriate to Jody considering that the man had gone AWOL from his unit to supposedly keep the CDC scalpels from turning her into their personal science project. “But the dog is still fine.” Again he laughed, and just the sound of it made the skin on Jody’s arms crawl with gooseflesh.

“So…where do we go from here?” Jody asked. He was not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.

Pitts grew serious again and leveled his gaze at Jody for a few eternal seconds before speaking. “Way I see it, we could probably come in and take your little town. Even pop over and hit that little fall back place you set up just to the south…”

Jody felt his
insides turn to water. He didn’t know why he did not figure that Pitts would do serious reconnaissance on any possible enemy. But then, if he was so smart, how had Remar gotten the drop on his boys? And just what exactly had led to them meeting up in the first place?

“…but then what would that really solve? I figure enough folks have died already. No sense in adding to the body count. The problem is the lack of trust that exists between your group and ours. And rest assured, after what happened with that Remar fella from your little community…trust is in short supply with my people.”

“But I don’t see why we would even matter,” Jody said with a sharp laugh that he was not able to suppress. “I got a good look at your little group. You guys are armed better than our unit was back in Bald Knob. You have enough firepower to take out a small country, much less our little community. Hell, the stuff we do have were in the windows of pickup trucks and in closets. And as for ammo…” Jody let his statement trail off.

Actually, their last foray for supplies had yielded a good supply of ammunition.
Regardless, they were vastly outgunned by Pitts’ crew. If he came across as sounding weak, his hopes were that he would also be considered not worth the trouble.

“I tell you wh
at…I have a proposition for you,” Sergeant Pitts finally said after yet another long and uncomfortable silence. As he laid out his “deal” in detail, Jody felt a sinking sensation. He was standing on the edge of an abyss and the ground was crumbling under his feet.

When it was all laid out, he could not come up with a reason to refuse and turn this into a fight that would certainly end up in most if not every single citizen of this community dead. Howe
ver, he still had some very deep misgivings about presenting it to the others. Hopefully he was not making a mistake that would cost everybody their lives.

11

Inside the Friends of the Geek

“We could attach trailers to all of our trailers and not be able to load
out all of this,” Catie said with a shake of her head.

“I still don’t understand why this stuff is just sitting here? How is it that nobody has found it…raided it and emptied this place?” Heather asked.

“Needle in a haystack,” Aleah said, although at first she had not realized she said it out loud. She looked up to see everybody staring at her with a question in their eyes as they waited for her to explain.

“We found this place by pure chance,” she finally spoke a
fter taking a drink from her bottle of water to get rid of the sudden dryness of her mouth that had hit. “We passed hundreds of buildings and did not go inside. We only chose this one because we were looking to make camp for the night. We could have just as easily gone to the end of the street and looked inside that church. Just because this place turned out to be a jackpot…well…that is strictly coincidence.”

There was a moment of silence as everybody considered her words. One by one, each began to nod.

“Like a needle in a haystack,” Rose said as she returned from Kevin’s cot where she had been making sure that he had not leaked through his bandages.

“More like a specific needle in a stack of needles,” Heather offered. “I mean, who knows what we have passed by. Look at all the stuff we were finding in those houses. And again, we had an entire neighborhood that had not been looted. Evacuated…but that was it. Nothing looked to have been touched in months.”

Deanna sat beside Sean. He had taken her hand and, for the first time (in public at least) since they had begun “showing an interest” in each other, she had not pulled away. She could not shake her discomfort. Maybe it was the life she had lived up to this point. Every single time anything good came along…it was either not what she had originally thought it to be, or it had simply been ripped away from her.

She reflected on the week before she had gone to jail. She had come home from school. Her mother was waiting for her in the living room with a nervous look on her face. A man that she had never seen before was sitting beside her. Her first thought was,
Great, mom has a new boyfriend
.

***

“Deanna, come in and sit down…please,” her mom greeted her.

Deanna took a seat at the kitchen table after turning a chair to face the couple sitting on the couch. The man was white! The only time a white person was ever in their home was when it was somebody from social services…or a cop. Her mind ticked through anything she might have done recently that would earn a visit by the police.

“Deanna…” the man spoke now, he gave her mom a quick look and…did he just wink at her mom? “My name is Anthony Collins.”

“So?” she blurted before she could check herself.

“I’m…I’m…” suddenly he seemed unable to speak, like somebody was choking him.

“This is your dad,” Deanna’s mom finished in a rush.

The next two days were the strangest and most wonderful of her life. It seemed that Deanna’s mom (he called her “Dish” which was his nickname for Deshonda…a name her mother hated) had dated this guy her senior year. He was from the Beverly Park neighborhood. They had money…lots of it. She had broken up with him after she found out she was pregnant with the child that would turn out to be Deanna. (Her name was a bit of a mash up of both her parents’ names which she had thought was very cool.) Deshonda had not wanted to ruin young Anthony’s life since he was all set to go to medical school.

The
week prior, Anthony had been volunteering at a free clinic for the “less fortunate”…and ran right into his old high school flame. While he gave her a checkup, he shared that he had just gone through a divorce. He asked her to dinner and would not take no for an answer.

When he discovered the real reason behind Deanna’s mom breaking up with him, he insisted on meeting her. And thus b
egan a whirlwind of events that seemed like one of those cheesy Hollywood movies. Plans were even being made for Deanna and her mom to come live with Anthony at his huge house in Beverly. The moving truck was supposed to come that weekend.

And then…Anthony was attacked at the gas station a
round the corner after an amazing day. With the help of some bystanders, he was able to fight them off. He was struck almost instantly with a terrible fever and barely made it back to Deanna and her mom’s house.

Th
at night, Deanna heard “the scream” for the first time in her life. She ran to her mom’s room to discover Anthony covered in blood…her mom’s blood. He had turned and looked at her, a chunk of meat fell from his mouth as he made some sort of strange cry that immediately reminded her of a newborn baby. Deanna turned and ran, scared to death and totally confused. It had looked to her like Anthony was eating her mother!

The first thing she grabbed was the aluminum baseball bat that they always kept behind the front door. When Anthony had stepped out into the living room, Deshonda’s blood dripping from his chin in large
, dark drops that hit the hardwood floor with a splat that sounded like a drum in Deanna’s ears, she had hit him with all her might right on the top of his head. He crumpled to the ground, but had not been knocked out. She hit him again and again until his head broke open.

And then the police kicked in the front door.

Deanna stood there splattered with blood. Anthony’s head was a shattered mess—any proof to support her wild claims that she had walked in to discover the man eating her mother was obliterated.

It did not help that Deanna was no stranger to the police. Of course up until now it had been shoplifting and a few “minor in possession” charges. She had spent the first night “under evalu
ation” after she had given her recount of events. However, they had moved her to juvenile detention the next day.

And then the world ended.

***

“You okay?” Sean whispered in her ear, snapping her out of her trip down memory lane.

“Fine,” Deanna lied. She looked up to see that the supposed adults were still at it.

“I think we need to look into some way of transporting as much of this as we can,” Aleah was saying.

“Great, maybe you can go find us a U-Haul truck,” Catie quipped.

“And maybe you can offer something helpful instead of b
eing a bitch,” Aleah shot back without missing a beat.

“Can we
perhaps act like grown-ups in front of the kids?” Heather asked, giving both Catie and Aleah a hard glare. “Look, the fact is, Kevin is just not able to run the show right now. First the cat, and now the bite…we need to stop coming apart every single time he is down. If, God forbid, we were to lose him for good, this group needs to be able to push on.”

Aleah and Catie did nothing more than glare. Heather stood up and faced first one, then the other. She briefly wished that they were sitting closer together because she felt like she lost some of her power having to turn back and forth.

“If you two can’t handle acting like part of the team, maybe both of you should take off on your own.”

“But—” Aleah started, only to have Heather cut her off.

“No, I don’t want to hear it. The two of you bickered the whole time that he was down and out. Catie, I have no idea what your deal is. You left your military group to join
us
. In case you forgot, we bailed on your camp.

“I have been with Kevin for the longest…and I trust him with everything. I would not be here if not for him. We picked up these kids, and almost from the start, they have acted more like adults than either of you.

“Aleah, Kevin loves you, but if you think I would not hesitate to send you packing, you are wrong. And that says a lot since you are almost like a sister to me. And Catie, you bring a certain skill to the group…if you would start acting like part of us instead of somebody just tagging along until she can find a better deal…life here would be much easier. Before you came, we talked things through and everybody got to say their bit. This is not the military, and whatever rank you might have had…that is nothing now. You are just part of the group.”

Heather felt she had said all she could on the subject and decided that her strongest move at this point was to just walk away. She left the room and made her way down the hall to where they had put Kevin. She wanted to take one more look in on him before going to bed.

Peeking in, she was only a little surprised to see Rose sitting at his bedside. She was holding his hand and whispering something in his ear. She decided to leave them be…he was in good hands.

***

“…and I think some of them kids didn’t maybe belong in there. They just got mixed up with something bad, but none of them that I ever talked with done nothing too bad. One girl put a knife in her daddy’s belly ‘cause he kept sneakin’ into her room at night and doin’ stuff.

“And another girl, she didn’t mean to catch the house on fire. Her whole family died that night…and she cried about it for the first bunch of weeks she was in lock up.

“But me…I meant to do what I did. And I didn’t even feel bad about it…still don’t. Where I lived, you either cliqued up, or you got beat up. My mama been in a gang, my daddy was in a gang ‘til he got wasted, and my brother is the one who brought me to the Southsiders and shoved me in the room with ‘em. Said, “Rosie…” he always called me that on ‘count he knowed how much I hated being called that, “Rosie, you gonna either live or die today. You see the sun come up in the morning, then you a Southsider…if not, you end up in the lot behind Old Man Fergusons’ store.” And I didn’t even cry. I knew it was gonna happen sooner or later, Nobody makes it to twelve in the hood without either joinin’ or runnin’ and I wasn’t gonna run.

“I fought three girls that night. I don’t think I kilt none of ‘em, but I never saw any of ‘em again. And then they give me this.”

Rose glanced up at the sleeping man and sighed. His closed eyes could not see the dark blue “S” done in calligraphy on her left forearm. She had been proud to get that letter…and even more proud because her brother had been the one to lay down her ink.

Rose Ortega had always been small for her age. Most folks would not believe it if they were told she was fourteen. Hell, most folks thought she was ten or eleven at the most. That had served her well in juvie. Some of the kids who targeted her never expected the ferocity in which she came back at them.

However, that was a lifetime ago. She still remembered that night after they had seen all that terrible stuff on the television. That night, she had a terrible nightmare, but she was convinced that it was more of a vision. Her brother had come, but he looked like those monsters on TV with his body all torn up and bloody.

“Rosie, it’s just you now. Everybody else is all gone…and I got bad news for you…Hell is real. Change while you can, girl…or I’ll be seeing you in Hell.”

She had woken up in a sweat. Her body was clammy and damp. She had been afraid to go back to sleep. And for the next few days, she had not been able to shut her eyes without that vision returning.

Then, they had brought that sick girl in. Rose still believed that the guard did it on purpose, that he was doing his best to make sure none of the “bad kids” survived. She had seen things
that night and many others since that made her believe very much in the idea of Hell.

When Fish and some of the other boys came, Rose was hi
ding under a bed…reading a bible. That was the day she decided that she needed to change. She could not know for sure if there really was such a place as Hell, but she decided it was not something she cared to risk if all it took was saying she was sorry (and actually meaning it) and promising to believe. After all, Jesus had hung out with hookers, thieves, and tax collectors. If they had a chance, there was definitely hope for her.

“So I just want you to k
now, Kevin, I got your back ‘til the end, but if you do something stupid like this ever again, you gonna have to explain to Aleah how you got that black eye. You feelin’ me?”

With that said, and feeling like she had finally gotten out a lot of what she had been carrying around inside, Rose laid her head down on Kevin’s chest and closed her eyes. She could hear his heart beating slow and steady.

“Oh yeah,” she added after a big yawn, “and you better damn well be immune…’cause if I wake up and you turned into a zombie…I’m gonna bash your brains in.”

***

Catie climbed up the ladder that was bolted to the wall and made her way up onto the roof of the school. It was starting to change seasons. The bitter cold of winter was almost gone, but there was still a nip in the air.

Pulling her jacket up around her neck and tugging her knit cap down tighter over her ears, she sulked over to the lip of the roof and looked out at the ruins of Chicago’s South Side. She had only ever heard about The Windy City, and all she had ever heard about this part of it was that it was not someplace you wanted to find yourself after dark.