Resurrection (Eden Book 3) (32 page)

“How’s he doing?” Keith asked, lying flat on his back next to his brother, a hand pressed to his shoulder to staunch the blood.

Another shot exploded against MacKenzie’s tree.

“He’s gut shot.”

“She’s got Thomas’ rifle,” Chang called out.

“No shit!” someone yelled back.

“That means she’s almost out,” said the normally reticent Paulson. He was livid. “She’s almost out.”

“Merv! Here Merv! Look!” David called out to the boy. Merv was down on his side, breathing heavily—“Dah…Dah…Dah…”—and holding his stomach. “Merv, that’s a good boy. Look at me—it’s David!”

“And Keith!”

“And Keith! Merv, I want you to crawl over here to us,
okay
? Merv, crawl this way, now!”

The boy made to comply when a bullet struck his back and his body straightened out on the ground.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” David cried.

“She shot him again, didn’t she?” demanded Keith. “What kind of person shoots a harmless boy like that?”

“That’s it!” spat Paulson, stepping out into the open, approaching Merv. “She’s out.” He called out to the trees. “You’re out—” he yelled into the firs, “—aren’t you, aren’t you?”

Paulson’s head jerked back as the bullet entered between his eyes and exited the back of his skull.

“Oh fuck!” cried Frankie.

“Now she’s out,” guessed Chang.

“You want to go out there and find out?” said Tobias.

“Shit,” said David. “She’s a good shot.”

“She’s a
damned
good shot,” agreed his wounded brother.

“Merv! Merv?” Tommy called out from under Red.

“How’s he look?” Keith asked David.

“He ain’t moving.”

“He ain’t moving
how
? Is he dead?”

“Yeah, he looks kinda dead to me.”

“Damn it.”

“What do you want to do now, Ed?” Tommy called to Gammon. “Want to just let her go now,
huh
?”

Gammon didn’t say anything. Tommy was crazed with the loss of his father and his brother. Gammon couldn’t believe Thomas was gone. Just like that. His friend of how many decades?

“She’s done,” Red announced as she stood up.

“Red! Be careful!” MacKenzie came out from behind his tree and zig zagged over to her, placing his body in front of hers.

“Get away from me,” Red flared at him, but then added, “Its okay. She’s gone.”

“So’s Merv.” David looked up from where he stood beside the boy’s body. “She got him through the spine.” David thought about what those big .45-60 rounds Thomas kept in his 1876 were capable of. Merv had holes the size of a fist in his stomach and lower back.

Everyone stood, milling about the scene.

“She didn’t get his extra ammo.” Frankie was next to Gammon, looking down into the pit. “Red’s right. She is out.”

“Got Dalton’s weapon here,” Chang called.

“She’s on the run…” Red looked into the trees.

“About a mile to the river,” noted Tobias.

“You okay, brother?” David asked Keith.

“Yeah. She barely nicked me.”

“What do we do with Merv?” asked Rodriguez.

“And Thomas...” Gammon still stared down into the pit.

“Leave ‘em. Let’s go!” Tommy started off into the trees, reloading his shotgun. Red was at his side, scanning for evidence of Riley’s passage.

“Well, Ed,” Chang sidled up next to the man. “This hasn’t turned out the way any of us thought it would, has it?”

“No,” Gammon had to admit. “It surely hasn’t.”

“Gwen?”

“I wanted to say…” She stood in the doorway of the hospital room, blanched and skeletal, speaking to the uniformed man seated in the corridor. She couldn’t finish what she’d started to say.

“It’s time?” The young officer from the Committee of Public Security understood.

“It is.”

The officer exhaled. “Wow. Well…It’s been a pleasure getting to know you, Gwen Evers.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. I feel likewise. Goodbye then.”

“Goodbye.” The peace officer looked like he was going to cry.

Gwen stepped back into Mickey’s room. Her friend was silent. The only sounds in the room were the hum of a machine and the voices on the telescreen on the wall across from the bed. Mickey followed her with his rheumy eyes.

On the screen, William Holden said “Let’s go” to Ben Johnson and Warren Oates.

“Why not?” Oates’s Lyle Gorch replied.

“You and me, Mick.” Gwen’s voice sounded old and worn. “Here. Drink this.” She fit a plastic straw into Mickey’s lipless mouth. “Drink it all. That’s good.” Dr. Rheem had administered the antiemetic to both of them a half hour earlier. It was supposed to keep the barbiturates from making them nauseous.

“Good, Mickey, that’s good.”

Gwen drank from her own cup until it was empty, then closed the blinds and climbed into the bed next to her friend.

A group of Mexican peasants and soldiers were singing as the Wild Bunch marched towards the Battle of Bloody Porch.

Gwen took the remains of Mickey’s hand in her own. She felt comfortably warm next to him.

“We want Angel,” Pike said shortly before all hell broke loose.

The pentobarbital was binding to Gwen and Mickey’s GABA receptors, depressing their central nervous systems.

On screen, hundreds of squibs exploded as the Wild Bunch killed and died.

Mickey’s thumb twitched in her hands, and Gwen clasped his hand with hers.

She looked drowsily around the hospital room before she closed her eyes, drifting off to her final sleep.

The picture on the telescreen was blue. The film had ended.

Riley had stripped off her bra, which was bloodied from Anthony, and hung it on the low lying branch of a tree. She stood in the woods, watching. She wore the shirt and jacket she had taken from the man she’d killed. On her head, she wore Anthony’s beanie cap with the ear flaps. Riley was cold, she was scared, and she was angry.

She waited for them to come.

Her pursuers were armed. They had zombies. They were ruthless and cunning. Riley had an empty Winchester lever-action rifle. She had the satisfaction of knowing she had killed at least two more of them with it. She had the satisfaction of knowing that the son, Tommy, and the girl, Red, had seen the old man dead in the pit. Riley knew their anger would be getting the better of them now, as her own sorrow over the loss of Anthony threatened to get the better of her.

Anthony. Her little brother was gone. She knew it was true, but she couldn’t comprehend it. The finality. Anthony was lying back there…

The men and the woman who were coming for her, Riley understood, would show her no mercy. If they took her alive, they would most likely torture her and make her final moments as painful as possible.

Riley had trampled through the trees and brush. She’d almost pitched off the cliff to her death below. She had looked down on the river far beneath, briefly toying with the idea of throwing herself from the outcropping. Of ending it all.

But she hadn’t. Riley backtracked, following the path she had left. She found a spot where she thought she could be reasonably assured of a clear view of her hunters without them seeing her. The sun was behind her as it rose in the early morning sky.

As she waited, Riley thought of Anthony. She wanted to cry, but there were no more tears. She thought of their dad. She would probably never see him again. If she did, what would she tell him? Riley thought of Lim and Park, the men who had trained her. Neither would be proud of her now, not if they could hear what she was thinking.

Anthony had believed in her. Anthony had thought she could do this.

Riley cleared her head.

She was outnumbered and outgunned. She was on their terrain and, seemingly, at their mercy. But she could
do
this. Riley would kill them all. She would kill them all because they deserved to die. She would kill them all because she
could
, physically. Riley realized she had been training for this moment all her life. She had the motivation. She would not surrender. All she would need to do was get close enough to them.

The zombies were off their chains and reached the bra. One of them yanked it off the branch and immediately the three undead started a tug of war with the undergarment.

The humans showed up shortly thereafter.

First came the redhead with the two brothers and MacKenzie and Rodriguez. The zombies didn’t want to give up the bra. Red said something Riley could not hear and the brothers, Keith and David, fired shots from their assault rifles, dropping the undead. Rodriguez retrieved the bra and held it up for everyone to see. Riley watched as the man smelled her underwear and Red berated him.

Tommy appeared with the other old man, Gammon, and the remaining three. Two of these three had sniper rifles. The third man was Asian-looking. Riley couldn’t be certain. It was difficult to discern features from this distance.

After some discussion, the large group split into two. Riley slipped from her position, trailing Thomas’ son, who was with the Asian man and the two snipers. They were following the trail Riley had left, to the cliffs. She would take them out first.

Tommy and his men were nearly to the escarpment, the noise of the river below strong through the trees, when they were attacked.

Riley sprang out from behind a fir, roaring—“
kihap
!”—as she nearly decapitated Tommy with a crescent kick. As Thomas’ son dropped to the ground, Riley swung the old man’s rifle, cracking Tobias in the head. He folded over, unconscious.

“Get her!” Chang managed to scream before Riley was between himself and Frankie. Riley knocked Frankie’s M40A3 from his grasp with a palm-heel strike. She was light on her feet, stepping on her toes, not her heels. Riley turned on her foot, completely rotating her hips into the kick, the outside edge of her foot striking Chang in his chest, knocking him back several steps.

Frankie punched her in the shoulder and Riley turned with the blow, hands raised, blocking the follow-up hook he threw with her forearm. Riley’s snap kick took the breath out of Frankie. Before he could react, she had already rechambered her knee and taken him off his feet with a front push kick. She glanced over her shoulder and broke Chang’s arm with a back kick.

As the pain from his arm registered in Chang’s brain, Riley twisted and caught him in the side of his head with an elbow strike. Chang wobbled backwards, disoriented. Frankie came at Riley with his rifle raised in the air, looking to club her over the head. She spun, raising her hands, a high block preventing Frankie’s arms from descending. Riley’s right foot snaked out rapid-fire—three quick snaps—the ball of her foot buffeting Frankie’s abdomen.

“Bitch!” It was all the warning Riley got and all she would need. She hurled herself to the ground as Tommy’s short-barreled shotgun boomed, the buckshot shredding the branches of a tree. Riley rolled over her shoulder, was on her feet, and had disappeared into the foliage before Tommy could pump the shotgun and fire a second shell.

“Dammit!” Tommy sent another load of buckshot into the trees. Frankie was crumpled on his side, holding his stomach and gasping for breath. Chang had slumped down against a tree trunk, cradling his fractured arm. Tobias was either dead or unconscious. Tommy ignored them and stalked off into the trees, discharging the Mossberg, ratcheting the forestock, firing.

“Where are you?” he screamed at the trees, firing aimlessly. When he had emptied the shotgun’s magazine, he tossed the weapon away. “Come on bitch! Come on out! Where the fuck are you?”

Riley dropped out of a tree. Her hands were empty. She reached up and adjusted the beanie she wore on her head.

“You killed my father.” Tommy was infuriated.

“He killed my brother.”

“I’m going to
fuck
you up.”

“No.” Riley had shifted her feet a step apart, her knees slightly bent, most of her weight on her front leg. Her torso was turned towards the side and her hands were up, her left hand in front of her, her right hand close to her chin. She bounced, almost imperceptibly, on the balls of her feet. “I don’t think so.”

“
Oh
, I think so.”

Tommy started at her, and Riley stepped forward to meet him. The ground between them erupted in geysers of dirt and leaves, a blistering hail of lead from Little Red’s N4.

Tommy came up short and blinked, an arm raised to protect his eyes from the soil. Riley was gone.

“Red—
what
the fuck?”

“Don’t be stupid, Tommy.” Red raced past Thomas’ son. “She’s mine.”

“Bullshit!” Tommy snatched his shotgun up off the ground—MacKenzie, Rodriguez, David and Keith were jogging after Little Red—and reloaded it on the run.

Riley bolted through the woods. She could hear Gammon yelling behind her. Riley sped past the trunks and rocks, through the bushes and shrubs. She hadn’t gone far when she reached the precipice. She pressed her back to the crag and considered her options.

“There she is!”

The racket of half a dozen automatic weapons and a shotgun drove her behind the boulder. Riley winced as rock dust hazed the air, hundreds of rounds jolting the rock face.

Just as abruptly, there was silence.

“She’s trapped!” a voice cried.

From her position, Riley could make out part of the river. It ran past beneath her, swollen and violent from the rains. She could see rocks jutting out of the water.

Riley ducked her head, looking around the rock. Little Red walked towards her hiding place, drawing identical push daggers from each wrist, moving in for the kill.

Red saw Riley looking and smiled at her.

Riley pressed her back against the rock.
Anthony
…She could feel the stone’s coolness through the shirt and jacket she’d taken.
Dad
…She blocked the sounds of the men talking excitedly from her mind.
Anthony
…Riley ignored the approaching crunch of Little Red’s steps through the brushwood.

She looked straight out into empty space.

Riley dashed forward, oblivious to the shouts and protestations that accompanied her sudden move, flinging herself from the cliffs. She plunged for what seemed an eternity, and when she hit the water she was enveloped by the cold and dark.