DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn (9 page)

Jody stopped walking with a suddenness that almost caused Selina to trip. He brought one hand up to shield his eyes against the setting sun. Selina watched him as he almost looked to slip into some sort of trance. His steps were slow and
practically seemed like an afterthought.

He spun around so quick that it actually startled Selina. “Get back and tell everybody to meet in the gymnasium. And I mean everybody!”

“Jody what—” she started, but he cut her off.

“Now…and hurry!”

Selina wanted to ask questions, but she turned and ran. She glanced over her shoulder once and saw Jody climbing up on one of the watch towers. Whatever it was, he was obviously the only person who saw anything, because the person on duty up in the tower was visibly shrugging and throwing up his arms in the universal “I don’t know” gesture.

The first person she ran into was George Rosamilia. “We need to get everybody gathered up, and I would suggest that we have them grab their gear. I didn’t see anything, but Jody was visibly concerned.”

“Where was he?” George asked with genuine worry.

“West perimeter…I think tower five.”

“That’s strange…” George muttered, his voice trailing off.

Selina waited patiently, but when it looked like the big man was going to stay lost in his thoughts, she gave him a nudge. “Why is that so strange?”

“Danny left with a team about two hours ago. He didn’t say why…but they headed west.”

“So
maybe we should stop standing here talking and get everybody gathered up,” Selina prompted.

George snapped out of it. “I will take the houses, you get over to the apartments, and then whoever gets done first hit the dorms. Make sure you tell Joe to get his old butt over to the a
rmory.”

Selina took off at a run. She was developing a really bad feeling in her gut. The last time she’d had one like this was just before the Army had shown up in Bald Knob.

Twen
ty minutes later, she was filing in with the last of the current residents of what was once known as Cash, Arkansas…but had recently been renamed “Hope” after a public vote.

The sounds of nervous conversation rippled through the room and echoed off the walls seeming much louder than it a
ctually was in reality. Selina made her way to George who was standing on the small stage that they used every time there was a need to address the general public.

Looking out over the people who were gathered, she was reminded of a scene from the movie
The Stand
when all the citizens of Boulder had come together. She had never been much of a Molly Ringwald fan, but seeing her as Fran managed to change her opinion. She briefly wondered who would play her if she were just a character in a book that got made into a movie. She had been told that she looked like a young Kirstie Alley from her days on
Cheers
.

“Folks, can I get everybody to have a seat,” George a
nnounced, bringing the impromptu meeting to order.

A hush fell over the room and Selina came up to be next to George after he motioned insistently for her to do so. She had never actually been up in front of the group. Usually it was George or one of the men like Joe who had been around for de
cades in this little one-stoplight town.

“Okay, I am going to make this short and sweet…earlier t
oday, Danny and a few of the guys went to investigate what looked like a puff of smoke to our west…”

Selina gave a sideways glance. She had not heard of any such thing. At least she now had the mystery solved as to why Jody had taken her on that walk. He had tried to make it seem random, but she’d known the whole time that something was up. That made her wonder why he had felt the need to keep a secret from her; as far as she knew, they were a team. That meant no secrets.

“…and it seems that we may be in for a bit of a fight. The problem is, this is not just a zombie horde or something like that. This is a group of people that we believe mean us harm.”

That sent a new murmur though the room. To his credit, George wasted
absolutely no time regaining the attention and focus of everybody.

“People, we don’t have time to talk this over. This is not some community meeting where we are going to take a vote. If you stay, you have to be willing to kill a living person. For those of you who doubt your ability to do such a thing, nobody will think less of you, and we hope that, provided we prevail, none of you who do opt to leave will think less of us who stay when you return.”

“Where the hell would we go?” a woman’s voice shouted from somewhere in the back of the room. This received more than just a little bit of voiced assent.

“Danny and a team have set up a bunker out at the old pr
ocessor on Roy Weaver Road,” George announced. “There is a supply of food and water there. If nobody from here comes for you in a few days, I suggest setting out for someplace else.”

“Like where?” more than one voice quipped.

“That would be up to you, but like I said, we don’t have a lot of time to talk. If you are leaving, grab your stuff and get moving. Everybody else meet up at the armory. We need to be in place within the hour.” George stepped down and headed for the rear exit from the gym. He grabbed Selina by the hand as he did so leaving a room that was abuzz with a hundred conversations.

She followed him, but she was almost as lost as everybody else. Once they got outside, the big man turned to face her. “Jody knows you will stay, but he asked me to convince you othe
rwise.”

“Tell him you failed,” Selina snapped, jerking her hand away from his.

“Just hear me out.” George held up his hands like he expected her to take a swing at him. “He wants you to take Kat and go. He said that if it is bad, he promises to fall back and come for you. But he wants you to grab your packs—that includes his
and
Danny’s—and go.”

“So you guys have known about this for how long?”

“Last night, actually,” George said with a shrug. “Danny had the tower watch on the west side and thought he saw a glow. He left at first light to see what was going on. He promised to signal Jody if there was a problem. And before you ask, the reason we didn’t come out and just tell everybody is because both Jody and Danny wanted it that way. They said that if people spent all their time worrying about something that may or may not happen, it would have us so fatigued that we would be easy pickings.”

“What a bunch of crap!” Selina snapped.

“Really?” George asked with a raised eyebrow. “So the six other times we have sent somebody to investigate something in the past three weeks…are you saying we should have told everybody and got the community all worked up over what proved to be nothing?”

“Six?”

“See what I mean?” George pointed at her and her visible emotional outburst. “Now imagine everybody here in town waiting around all day while we sent teams to investigate. How much work do you imagine would have gotten done?”

Selina opened her mouth to argue, but she found that she could not think of a single rebuttal. With a sigh, she dropped her head and muttered that she would do as she had been asked.

George turned to walk away, but Selina grabbed his arm. “One thing before you go. When you see Jody? Tell him we will discuss this decision of his, so he better not die or I am really gonna be pissed.”

“I’ll
be sure to pass that on,” George said with the straightest face he could muster.

5

Geek Warrior

“That can’t be good,” Catie hissed as she and Kevin moved through the front yards in a double back to the church.

As they came within about five or six houses from the co
nflagration, they saw a flurry of activity. The gang that had only moments before been engaged in all manner of carnal recreation were now scrambling for weapons. Kevin only took a moment to appreciate that each of the women were pulling an array of guns from backpacks and scrambling for cover.

“This is not going to end well,” Kevin sighed as he and Ca
tie wriggled into a thick hedge.

They did so just in time as several of the gang members came their way on the run. Both of them unconsciously held their breath despite the fact that all of the yelling, not to mention the sounds of the raging blaze, easily drowned out any sound the two of them might make.

“…not sure exactly, but it came from this direction!” a voice huffed as they ran past.

Kevin looked over at Catie who shrugged. They had not seen any of their people, and surel
y if this was one of theirs, then it would be unlikely that they could have passed them and not been flagged down.

Kevin rolled onto his back so he could look
behind them and follow the progress of the people who had just run past. They were about three houses down and almost out of the range of the glow put off by the burning church when a series of shots rang out. He saw three of the dark figures stumble and fall. Seconds later, a cluster of at least five dark forms scurried out behind the confused gang members; another quick round of shots were fired, dropping the last couple.

The new arrivals swooped in and, from what it looked like to Kevin, finished off their downed victims. Bodies were scooped up and carried away.

“What in the hell?” Catie breathed.

“You have seen no sign of any living people this entire time…nothing at all while you guys were scavenging?” Kevin asked.

“Nothing. And I have been on the lookout because I honestly was having a hard time believing that an area this vast could be so relatively untouched. I mean, we have gone into houses where it is clear that the residents just took off with whatever they could carry. People in a hurry leave a lot of very good things. It is weird what people try to save when the world is ending.”

“That was the problem…nobody was taking this seriously for what it was until it was too late. The denials were being pushed all the way up until everything went off the air.”

“We went into one house where the cabinets were full, most of the clothes in the dressers, but the walls had obviously been stripped of pictures.”

Kevin rolled back onto his belly to get a look at what was going on in the parking lot. He saw a couple of figures dash from one dark pool of shadows to another. For the most part, it looked like the first gang had bugged out. The problem with that was that now there were people everywhere. It would be hard to tell
friend from foe.

“I wonder where the rest of our people are hiding,” Catie put Kevin’s concerns out loud.

The sounds of a woman screaming cut through the night. It sounded like it was close. Kevin started to pop up, but Catie grabbed his arm. She shook her head and pointed with her free hand. A dark figure was moving down along the side of the house that they were hiding in the front yard of. Subconsciously, Kevin pulled his feet in a bit and curled up in a tight ball to make sure that he was all the way in the thick of the shrubbery.

“I know
you are around here someplace,” a voice hissed in the darkness. “I saw you come this way. And if I catch you…you better just give your soul to God, because your ass is mine.”

How original
, Kevin thought.

He and Catie watched the figure as it stepped out into the front yard. The light from the fire danced on the man’s face. He looked to be about average height, and were it not for the big Crocodile Dundee-sized knife in each hand, he could have been somebody you passed on the street and did not give a second thought.

“I know you’re here, you little freak,” the man sing-songed. “We have been following your little group of diseased fucks for days. When we find you…you will wish that you would have turned into one of those walking sacks of rot.”

Kevin was trying his best to make sense of what was being said. He knew there was something he was missing and it bot
hered him.

In a flash
, another figure came flying off the roof and tackled the man. There was a meaty sound and something wet mixed in for good measure. Kevin had to tilt his head up to get a better look. The man was on the ground and the figure astride him was plunging a knife into his body again and again.

Catie moved
, and this time it was Kevin’s turn to grab her arm and shake his head. There was something else here, and without knowing what it was, he felt it best if they just stay out of it if at all possible.

Not more than a few heartbeats later, three more figures jumped down and joined the first. All of them were savaging the now obviously dead body in a way that seemed very personal. A few of the hoods came back on the new arrivals and Kevin was only a little surprised to see all of the attackers were women.

“I saw a couple more a street over,” a voice that sounded like it belonged on a phone sex operator said in a breathy whisper.

“But I also thought I saw two others around here som
eplace,” another woman said, she sounded both frantic and angry. “They were not wearing the colors of the Guardians, and one of them had a nasty limp.”

“We aren’t worried about a couple of locals, Darla,” Ph
one Sex purred. “I want the Guardians. And I want all of them dead…no prisoners. Are we all clear on that?”

There was a mumbled chorus of agreement. The group melted back into the darkness and vanished into the back yard of the house where this odd little gathering had taken place.

“What the hell?” Kevin turned to Catie. She simply shrugged. “And you are sure that you have not seen any signs of the living?”

“I think this is just a random encounter,” Catie said. “Sounds to me like these two groups have some sort of war g
oing on.”

“Yeah…the Guardians?” Kevin scoffed. “And just what would they be the guardians of I wonder.”

“You sound like you are already deciding who the supposed good guys and bad guys are in this,” Catie said with a hint of amusement in her voice. “I wouldn’t simply assume that just because one group seems to be all women that you just instantly consider them the victims. Did you see the way they tore that guy up? I have never seen anything so brutal in my life…and with what I have seen in this past year, that is saying something.”

Kevin considered her words. He had done exactly what she was suggesting. He had automatically just assumed that the women were the victims and that this crazy gang was the evil m
otorcycle gang from the movies.

“
Well I think we need to head back,” Catie finally said. “If our people are nowhere to be seen, then it might be good to assume they already saw enough to know better than to get involved.”

Kevin agreed and they slipped out from the cover of the shrub that they had been hiding under. Staying low and to the shadows, they made it back down the street and away from the burning church.

They continued to move away from the church, cutting through more yards first before turning back towards their little camp. More than once they had to freeze as people from the two factions ran past; sometimes in pursuit; but more often, just on seemingly random missions of futility. For all of the activity, there seemed to be a rather surprising lack of actual fighting taking place.

Kevin was following Catie over a fence when he was su
ddenly grabbed from behind. Without thinking, he spun and slashed with the blade he was carrying at the time. There was a strangled cry; his blade had struck with near perfection in a slice across the throat of his would be assailant.

He was transfixed as he stared into the eyes of a young woman who was clutching at the gushing wound like she could stop the flow of her life blood. Something warm sprayed Kevin’s face as her hands fell away and the young woman collapsed to her knees.

“Jesus,” he sobbed as he swiped at his face, smearing the crimson fluid more than actually wiping it away.

“Kevin!” Catie hissed.

He looked up just in time to see three more figures in hooded coats sprinting his direction. Two of them had pistols drawn. Instead of trying to climb, Kevin threw himself at the fence and allowed the momentum to hurl his body over.

Catie did not hesitate and pulled her own pistol
, having decided that preservation now trumped the idea of stealth. There was an exchange of gunfire. Her advantage was that she was stationary. She only briefly mused how it might look good in the movies, but running and shooting were usually a bad mix. She also chastised herself just as quickly for the thought.
I have been hanging around Kevin too long…I am starting to compare everything to the damn movies like he does
, she thought as she leaned down and helped pull the man to his feet.

Once more the pair moved out, but now they had turned up and were trying to make it back to their current base. Catie was in the lead and stopped suddenly, signaling for Kevin to get down. He did so just as five individuals rushed past chasing two others. It happened so quick that Kevin had no idea who was chasing who.

“Get in the house,” Catie whispered.

They were in front of one of the small, simple brick
residences that had no windows remaining intact. Catie went first and quickly shoved her blade into the face of a creeper that was missing everything from the pelvis on down and was nothing much more than one arm, the head, and most of the rib cage.

Kevin moved past her and came up short when a small fi
gure peeked out from what looked like the kitchen. The zombie regarded him in that way that he had seen in previous encounters with younger zombie children. He wished he had the time to test a theory or two, but that was not a luxury at his current disposal. Before it could react further, he lunged forward and drove his blade into its face; although he could have sworn that it was about to try and turn and flee.

“This one had an attic or something,” Catie whispered as she moved into the hallway.

Sure enough they discovered one of those pull-down ladders that led to a dark attic. They both scurried up and pulled the ladder, sealing themselves in near perfect darkness. A single sliver of light shown at the far end where a small, portal-style window looked out to the street. For some reason, it was curtained.

Catie reached the curtain and pulled it aside just enough to look out. At the moment, the street was clear, but that was not why she was looking out so intently.

“The sun is coming up,” she announced.

Kevin knew what that meant. They either made a break for it now, or they would be trapped for at least the rest of the day. He weighed it out very quickly and decided on the former versus the latter.

“Okay, let me get my wind for just a second and then we have to run for it,” he announced.

“I think that is a terrible idea,” Catie countered.

“Yeah, well we have no idea what might be going on with the others…also, the kids are alone and have no doubt heard all of the shooting. We go now.”

Catie did not say a word, but he could feel her stare in the relative darkness. After just a few minutes, he turned the latch and let the ladder slide down. He went first and Catie was right on his heels…or shoulders such as it was at the moment.

They snuck to the front of the house and spied out the busted picture window. The street seemed empty. They could hear a few skirmishes from different directions.

“It doesn’t look like one way is better than the other,” Catie whispered. “I say we just get up to a hundred and twelfth as fast as we can. If nothing else, we can at least duck into the woods.”

Kevin did not have a better suggestion and gave her a nod. Together they climbed out the open window frame and were dropping to the ground…just as two figures burst forth from the back yard gate of the house directly across from them.

For the briefest of moments, everybody simply stared at each other; nobody expecting an encounter just then. It was Ca
tie who acted first. She did not care from which group these individuals belonged and simply designated them as a threat. Her pistol was in her hand in a flash and she fired. Her first two rounds caught the person on the left in the center of the chest. Her second two shots went wide as the other person dove behind the car in the adjacent driveway.

Shoving Kevin down, Catie moved across the yard and b
ehind the waist high porch to their right. Kevin realized that he was in grass high enough to conceal his position and decided to stay still for the moment. Meanwhile, Catie allowed the pack on her shoulders to drop to the ground beside her feet. She quickly pulled the first Molotov from her pack, ripping away the protective bubble wrap that some of the younger children had been tasked to encase the volatile bombs in.