Hungry Independents (Book 2) (29 page)

“Yeah, Catherine took care of them with the
help of the new girl. I think your other saint just rode into town
with Hunter. They also brought a bunch of kids from Cozad. That’s
where this Famine dude got his start.”

“Everyone is gathering at Main Street,” Mark
said. “That’s what the bell is about. We need to get a head count
and set up defenses.”

“Where is the baseball team going?” Vanessa
asked.

“They’re on patrol. Either they find this guy
and take him down, or they help transport others safely to Main
Street.”

“They aren’t safe,” Margaret said. Everyone
turned eyes on her. “No one is. We need to find out what Hunter
knows. He’s obviously been able to fight this new threat.”

“Let’s go then,” Samuel said. “The sooner we
deal with this dude, the sooner I can figure out some way to feed
Independents and however many kids came here from Cozad.”

The walk was fast and uneventful, except for
the eerie ghost town feeling from the deserted streets. What made
it even worse was the constant tolling of the bell. Whoever was
ringing it was very enthusiastic. On and on it clanged, echoing
over the houses. Little David grew annoyed by the noise and started
squealing. Vanessa tried soothing the baby with distractions but he
wasn’t having it.

Margaret was worried about Hunter’s arrival.
What did it mean that he had found Barbara? What type of person
would she be? Reincarnation was a tricky thing as Margaret’s recent
discovery had proved. Did Barbara suffer from the same memory loss?
How old would she be? Considering Catherine was in the body of an
eight-year-old and Margaret was seventeen, Barbara could be any
age.

Why Hunter? He found Catherine and now
Barbara. In a weird way, he’d even found Margaret. Maybe that
wasn’t the way to think about it. Margaret couldn’t help feeling
like she was missing something, and that she was in trouble for
having a relationship with Hunter.

Oh
,
Molly
, Margaret thought,
what
did
you
do
to
me
?

As they drew nearer to the center of town,
others merged with them on the path. The bell finally stopped as
Margaret’s group reached the brick cobbles where a crowd had
gathered. The whole town, plus strangers from Cozad, milled about
in two separate groups. The newly arrived kids looked like refugees
away from their camp. Catherine and a couple others handed out
bread and apples to the emaciated kids.

Then Margaret spotted Hunter with a pretty
brunette girl draped over him, next to a couple of the Cozad kids.
Something very Molly-like stirred inside of her and she quickened
her pace across the street to where her boyfriend stood.

The girl caught sight of Margaret’s approach
and smiled in recognition. Margaret realized this was Saint Barbara
wrapped comfortably around her boyfriend. Margaret slowed in an
attempt to regain composure before charging in to challenge for the
right to be Hunter’s girlfriend, which she still was if anyone else
had any doubts.

“Hello, Molly,” Barbara said. “We were just
talking about you.”

Hunter stripped Barbara’s hands off him and
spun with a confused look in his eyes, like he didn’t know what was
going on. Margaret could share in that feeling.

“Molly,” Hunter said, rushing over to her and
enfolding her in a warm embrace that rivaled the August sunshine.
Margaret laid her head on his shoulder and sighed, happy to have
him back home. She breathed in his scent and contained her
unsaintly thoughts.

Margaret opened her eyes and saw the pain and
discomfort in the twists and turns of Barbara’s face. Wanting
confirmation, but afraid to ask such a delicate question, Margaret
leaned back and stared at her boyfriend’s face for answers. Her
body went limp. Her knees left her and she slipped to the ground
like a string of yarn cut from the ball. If Hunter hadn’t helped
her down she would have smacked her head on the cobbles.

“Molly, what’s wrong?” Hunter cradled
her.

Margaret looked at his face again. “You’re
Michael, the archangel.”

Hunter nodded. “That’s what they tell
me.”

“Hunter, we need a town council meeting,
now,” Billy said.

Margaret thought it sounded funny hearing
Billy speak with such authority. She turned her head and remembered
the strange thing about Billy when he came into Luis’s last night
and told her that Mark needed her help.

“Jimmy?” she said.

“Jimmy?” Ginger repeated, from where she
helped hand out food to Cozad kids. The new mom dropped the
basketful of green apples and they spilled across the cobbles,
rolling to a stop at Billy’s feet.

Jimmy pushed back his hat. Even if they
couldn’t see inside his soul, there was no mistaking Jimmy’s
mannerism in the small boy. His sad smile turned Billy’s lips.
“Hey, Ginger.”

Scout ran over when he heard the scream,
ready to fight for Independents. What he found was Billy on top of
Ginger, and that was pretty much all the justification he needed.
Scout ripped the little troublemaker off and punched him in the
face.

He didn’t understand why someone clobbered
him in the side of the head. Scout rolled to the ground and lay
there panting from adrenaline rushing inside his body and madness
burning through his mind. And he was even more surprised when that
someone turned out to be a very pissed off Hunter.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Scout?”

“Hunter!” Billy stood, wiping the blood from
his busted lip with the hem of his already red-stained shirt.
“Don’t ever use that language around all these kids!”

“I’ve been telling him that for two days
now,” Barbie said, where she knelt tending to Ginger.

Ginger’s eyes fluttered in unconsciousness.
Apples littered the street, bright green on the brick cobbles.
Billy walked back over to her side.

“Get away from her, Billy,” Scout said.

Billy straightened his hat. There was
something weird about the kid wearing a hat. Scout never saw him in
one before.

“Scout, you don’t know what’s going on, so
settle down until you do.” Hunter reached down and offered Scout a
hand up.

Scout slapped it away and regained his feet
on his own. “No, Hunter. You don’t know what’s been going on.
Billy’s been spreading lies all over town about how I got your
brother killed. He was telling people that Raven was a spy, and now
she’s left me and gone who knows where.” Scout balled his fist and
stepped up in Hunter’s face. “And now he’s just attacked Ginger and
you’re standing up for him?”

Hunter’s smile was so grim Scout couldn’t
tell if he was happy or was about to take a swing at him. Hunter
leaned slowly into Scout and whispered in his ear, “Jimmy is
Billy.”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?”

Billy stomped over and got in the middle of
both of them. His face twisted with rage. “The next person to use
the F word in my street is going to spend a month cleaning
outhouses.”

Samuel walked over and bent down to Billy’s
eye level. “Jimmy?”

Billy patted Samuel’s shoulder. “Hello,
Samuel. Will you please get everyone on the council together?” He
looked around. “We’ll meet in Luis’s for now. Have everyone else
wait in Brittany’s while we sort things out. Make sure everyone is
accounted for. I want eyes on the street, but I don’t want anyone
wandering off on their own.”

Samuel blinked. “Jimmy?”

Billy, Jimmy or whoever he was looked around
again. Scout couldn’t believe it. He shook his head as if that
would be enough to clear away the confusion.

Hunter smirked at him. “Don’t worry. It’s
going to get a lot more complicated in a minute. Jimmy coming back
from the dead is the easy part to swallow.”

“Hunter, please invite someone from Cozad to
attend our council.”

Hunter nodded and grabbed Scout’s arm,
dragging him over to where the Cozad kids waited for further
instructions. Most of them stood around with apple cores in their
hands. Hunter walked up to the scrawny boy and girl that had kept
Chef Brittany at bay against the windshield.

“Hey, where can we put these?” the boy asked,
dangling the well gnawed core by the stem.

“We’ll find a compost bin in a minute. Henry,
this is Scout. Scout, this is Henry and his sister Sophie. Henry
here is kind of the unofficial leader of Cozad.”

“I really didn’t have a choice,” Henry
said.

Scout shook his free hand. “What happened to
the other leader?”

Henry dropped his head and lowered his voice
when he answered. Scout didn’t think he heard him right. Sophie
covered her face and turned away.

“I’m sorry. Did you say she was eaten?”

“I told you it would get a lot more
complicated,” Hunter said. “Henry, will you come to the council
meeting with me? Sophie can come too.”

“All right,” Henry said.

“Carissa,” Hunter called to another scrawny
girl. She walked over with another boy in tow. “Can you and Wesley
get everyone from your town inside that building there? It’s our
cafeteria and we might be able to get you guys a little more to
eat.”

Hunter searched the crowd of Independents
kids. “Brady. Emma.”

The two parted from their respective huddles.
Brady limped over and Emma sashayed.

“This is Carissa and her brother, Wesley,”
Hunter said.

“Brother?” Emma said, smiling like a lioness
locking on her prey. Wesley looked like a deer in the
headlights.

“Not now, Emma,” Hunter said. “I want you
guys to help the group from Cozad over at Brittany’s. We need
everyone not on the council to wait inside while we meet.”

Hunter gave everyone their routes like a
seasoned quarterback, leaving Scout wondering when his friend had
become so responsible. Hunter never involved himself in council
business or meetings of any sort. Scout tucked his hands in his
pockets and reconsidered his friend’s new attitude as something
good. Now if Hunter could just lose his irritating, know it all
smirk.

The crowds moved off in two directions
towards Brittany’s and Luis’s, depending on their calling. Scout
stopped Hunter on the way to council.

“Why was Billy, uh Jimmy, on top of
Ginger?”

“She started fainting and he tripped on an
apple trying to reach her. It was a miracle he was able to keep her
from smashing her head on the ground.”

“Why did she scream?”

There was that smirk again. “Wouldn’t you if
you just discovered your dead boyfriend had returned in the body of
someone eight years younger?”

Scout nodded and followed Hunter up the
street to Luis’s.

* * *

“Is it okay to use the F word now,
Jimmy?”

“No, Samuel, it’s not. You of all people
should know how I feel about that.”

Scout’s head spun from everything he had
heard. Starting with Hunter and his fight with the demon sniper on
top of the grain elevator in Cozad, through the explanation of how
Jimmy had followed Samuel back from the dead, where he watched his
son being born as a ghost, to there being not one but two other
saints like Catherine. Saint Barbara, who preferred Barbie, was
locked inside the previously mentioned grain elevator, and the
other, Saint Margaret, locked inside the mind of Molly, who now
preferred to be called Margaret. Then there was the fact that Billy
had been possessed by a demon to serve the main bad dude, named
Famine, who just so happened to be one of the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse. Somehow Jimmy wound up possessing Billy and the demon
was exorcised.

And the capper, the absolute unbelievable
part, the last bit of information that probably had everyone in the
room wanting to say the F word, besides the shorter version of
Jimmy, was that inside Hunter rests the archangel, Michael—God’s
mightiest angel.

Yeah, the F word was the least of their
concerns at the moment. Somebody should’ve brought out the
straightjackets. Scout wanted his fitted with extra straps and
buckles.

“So how do we take this dude down?” Samuel
asked. “Does Hunter just grow wings and blow a horn or what?”

“I don’t think it works that way.” Hunter
glanced over to Barbie, who shook her head. “It just sort of
happened when the need came up.”

Samuel sat forward. “What kind of need?”

“I have no idea. I’d say life or death, but I
was pretty much fighting for my life all day yesterday and he only
came out once.”

“That’s not really true,” Barbie said.
Everyone stared at her and she returned it like the confident new
girl in school who’s destined to break a lot of hearts. “Michael
has regenerative capabilities now.”

“What?” Samuel asked.

“It means his body heals from injuries,
rather quickly.”

“Cool,” Samuel said. “You’re like Wolverine,
without the claws and metal skeleton.”

“Who?” Hunter asked.

“Come over someday and I’ll show you my comic
book collection.”

“All right, so now all we have to do is get
rid of this new threat and then we can start preparing our winter
food supply,” Jimmy said. “Anybody have a plan to do this?”

“What’s to plan?” Scout said. “We just wait
for him to make his move and then Hunter can take care of
everything. That sounds good to me.”

Hunter leaned back in his chair and folded
his arms across his chest. “I’ve already fought him once and the
angel didn’t come to my rescue then.”

“What happened?” Scout asked.

“I had a broomstick shoved through my
stomach.” Hunter pointed at Henry. “They came out and chased him
away.”

Henry shrugged. “I guess we just needed to be
inspired. We didn’t have much hope until you arrived. We couldn’t
just let him kill you.”