Rise Again Below Zero (8 page)

“Ernie’s sure about this?”

“Yeah.”

“Could be linked to those motorcycles I heard. Got to investigate that shit.”

Danny said something to Kelley that Topper couldn’t hear, and the gaunt undead girl walked away through a gap in the fence into the deep dark. She went straight out into the wild grass like there was nothing to fear. For her, of course, there wasn’t. Then Danny went around to the trunk of the interceptor and Topper heard the clink of bottles.

“Drink?” Danny asked.

“Why the fuck not?” Topper said, although he could think of a dozen good reasons why not. Like Danny’s temper got worse when she was drunk. But a couple of slugs wouldn’t hurt.

She threw him a full bottle of Jim Beam and took one for herself, then went back around and sat on the hood of the car. “It’s cold out,” she said.

“Winter’s almost here, I guess,” Topper said, and took a couple of burning
swallows of liquor. He let out his breath in a
hoo
as if he’d just eaten something spicy.

“Water?” Danny offered him her canteen. Topper wasn’t sure if the Leper drank from it or not, so he declined it, and took another blazing pull of bourbon.

“Hood’s still warm,” Danny added, after they’d been silent a while. “Sit over here and keep your ass from freezing.”

They sat on the hood of the Mustang with their feet propped up on the zero-catcher wire across the fender. Danny leaned back on the windshield and looked at the night sky; Topper rested his elbows on his knees and watched the distant campfires scattered around the truck stop plaza. He could see the outline of Wulf Gunnar atop the White Whale, a hunched shape with the barrel of a rifle sticking out of it. The old man spent most of his time up there. Somebody else must be guarding the prisoner.

Topper found himself wondering if he and Danny were friends. They were more like buddies in a military unit than friends, precisely. They’d each been in the Marines, if years apart, so maybe there wasn’t much difference. Topper’s tour happened before women had combat roles. He and Danny had gone through some heavy bonding experiences after everything went to hell. Their first meeting, she had damn near shot him for murder; since then she was usually mad at him for something or other, but she relied on him a lot, too. Topper kept the scouts organized and stepped in when there was trouble among the chooks. Now it seemed almost like she was reaching out to him, trying to be nice or something. Or maybe it was nothing more than she didn’t want to drink alone.

They were silent except for the occasional hard swallow to get the raw spirits down. Danny could drink like nobody else Topper knew, excepting Wolfman Gunnar. But she was just passing the time on this occasion. She wasn’t drinking for effect, as far as he could tell.

“So,” Topper began, and said nothing more.

“I got too much on my mind,” Danny said, once it became clear Topper was done speaking. “You guys deal with the Chevelle however you want. Keep him away from the convoy. I’m more worried about how we’re going to get around those zeroes up ahead.”

“It’s bad,” Topper said. “Where we turned around they were horizon to horizon out ahead, thousands of them. Like fuckin’ two-leg cockroaches.”

“They didn’t follow you, right?”

“We’d be knee-deep in ’em right now if that was the case.”

Danny spat in the grass. “There’s something on the other side of that swarm. That guy I captured, Mike? I don’t think he’s bullshitting about doing the kid a favor when he tried to grab him. He says it’s the real deal. Safe place for children, out east of here. The Dakotas, somewhere. We keep hearing about that from different sources on the road. I’d like to find it. See if it’s true. That’s why we have to punch through here.”

“This would be a shitload easier if we had a phone. I miss having a fuckin’ phone,” Topper muttered, and drank deeply.

“I miss McDonald’s,” Danny said.

“I don’t,” Topper said, taking the canteen because his esophagus was on fire. “All it did was make me fart. And my sweat smelled like mayonnaise.” It also made him fat and impotent, but he didn’t particularly want to get into those details.

“What the hell does mayonnaise smell like?”

He considered it. “I honestly can’t remember.”

“We’ll never have mayonnaise again. Think about that.”

“There’s about a hundred million unopened jars of it out there. Go nuts.”

Danny coughed out her rough laugh. “Are you kidding? Eat mayonnaise after the sell-by date? That’s
dangerous
.”

They were silent for a minute. Topper couldn’t relax around the sheriff. He felt like moving on. She was still lying back on the windshield when he stood up, like a cheerleader waiting for the quarterback, except not. She was looking at the firelight through her bottle. It cast a rippling amber glow on her face.

“I miss beer,” she said, sadly.

“Oh, fuck yeah.” Topper missed beer so much he even dreamed about it. He looked around at the gigantic darkness beyond the truck stop. “You sure you should be out this far from the convoy? Zeroes could come through that tall grass pretty sudden. It’s dark as hell. Even with your sister around, seems like a risk to me.”

He knew right away it was a mistake to mention it.

“Don’t you worry about us,” Danny said, after a silence. “She’s keeping all our asses safe. Don’t forget that.”

Topper knew it was time to get out before the anger built up, so he held the remainder of his bottle out to Danny.

“Keep it,” she said, and he did, and walked back toward the scouts’ fire to pass it around.

Kelley came back, her bound feet swishing in the grass. She must have been waiting for Topper to move on.

“Catch anything?” Danny asked.

Her sister’s slack lungs hissed in a long breath. “No,” Kelley said. “I saw a jackrabbit, but they’re too fast.”

She stood beside Danny, looking at the fires and the silhouettes of the Tribespeople. Danny assumed the conversation was over. But after a couple of minutes, Kelley spoke again, using the same breath.

“I smell hunters.”

“There’s a shitload of dead ones over there.”

“The ones I smell are not dead. They are like me.”

“Which direction?” Danny slid to her feet and popped the latch on her holster, placing the bottle on the hood of the interceptor.

“It’s faint, but everywhere. In the same way this convoy smells like living blood.”

“Is there a threat? I mean, are we in immediate danger?” She opened the driver’s side door and reached inside. If she lit up the roof lights, the entire Tribe would go to battle stations.

“You’re always in danger,” Kelley said. “You remember before, I talked to one of my kind? There’s another one around somewhere. I can smell it. Almost like when you feel a car coming before you hear it. Just the smallest hint.”

“A thinker? The fuck didn’t you tell me this before?” Danny had her fingers on the switch box. She might throw some siren in for good measure. Her heart was starting to race.

“I could not say before, until I crawled on the ground and smelled the grass,” Kelley said. “That’s what I was just doing when I saw the rabbit. I tasted the dirt. The smells are hidden.”

The living Kelley would never have tasted dirt.

“Fuck,” Danny said. “Fuck. Okay, you told me, that’s the main thing. Party time.”

Better to raise the alarm and be wrong than take a chance. She rocked the switches and the lights came on, blue, red, and white throbbing over the dark perimeter. Voices went up around the encampment. About two seconds later, headlights glared on in the middle distance beyond the interstate, an engine revved, and the mysterious Chevelle came roaring down the road past the truck stop.

Gunfire erupted from the passenger window. Bullets whined off the pavement and hissed through the air. There were shouts of fear—shots and
police lights so close together instantly plunged the camp into confusion. A scrap of light revealed a male profile behind the wheel.

Seconds later, Danny’s interceptor was howling after the Chevelle in a spray of dust and flying gravel, siren screaming. Topper saw the sheriff’s silhouette at the wheel, outlined by firelight for a moment, her face constricted in a snarl, the thin scarecrow of her sister in the seat beside her. The bottle was still rolling around on the hood of the car. As she reached the roadway it was flung clear, and shattered on the yellow line. Then they were gone in a red streak of taillights.

Topper ran for his bike. In under a minute, the scouts were on the chase. It was time to find out who was at the wheel of that Chevelle.

F
or several miles Danny fought to close the gap. The Chevelle was one of the muscle classics from before computers ran the engines. It must have been bored out and supercharged, because the interceptor couldn’t gain on it, although it had a technical power advantage. And the driver was nerveless, precise, making superb use of the road. He turned his headlights off for long stretches to make himself invisible, but couldn’t lose his pursuers because his brake lights still worked. That was all Danny knew about the driver, except he might have a confederate to do the shooting. But he might not. He hadn’t been aiming for effective fire.

Danny, however, planned to make her next shot count. There were sabot rounds in her tactical shotgun that would punch right through the Chevelle from end to end, if she could get a clean bead on it: Sabots were sharp steel projectiles with fall-away boots around them to increase velocity and accuracy—like a two-stage rocket out of a gun. A gift from a SWAT locker in Nebraska. Right now she was mostly struggling to keep the interceptor on the road. The pavement was in rough shape, and at 95 MPH the steering wheel needed two complete hands, not the seven digits she was working with. She realized the unknown driver must have been waiting all along, concealed near the truck stop, knowing they would come that way. This was all part of a plan, and it might be a diversion.

“Smokey to scouts, go back and seal up the defenses,” Danny barked into her radio handset. “I think this is a decoy, over.”

There was a broken reply; she couldn’t understand it. The damn radios were still clouded with choppy static. The scouts continued to follow after her on their motorcycles, so they hadn’t gotten the message. Maybe they
all
ought to turn around, but Danny wanted to know the driver’s motive. Then she wanted to crucify him on the roof of his own machine. It would be a public service message to others who came along, in case they thought her clemency toward Mike was some kind of standard behavior:
Hi, I’m Danny Adelman. Do not fuck with the Tribe.

“If they’re trying to lure you away,” Kelley said, “it’s working.”

“No shit,” Danny said, gripping the wheel like it was a venomous snake. “You worried about it?” Danny took her eyes off the road to look at the bandaged face, as if there was anything there to be learned.

“I’m already dead. Nothing to worry about.”

•   •   •

The Chevelle’s taillights were out of view between a couple of small, knobby hills. Danny thought she could make the curve between them faster than the Chevelle had, maybe get within firing range. Then she saw dust spiraling up in her headlights, and her foot went to the brake pedal. She battled to keep herself from flying off the road. The Chevelle must have left the pavement.

She lost some traction as the interceptor decelerated, slewing over the tar, and then she turned the wheel over so the nose of the vehicle was pointed up a dirt track that cut in a straight line far out into the rolling grass, well beyond the range of the lamps. A tail of dust boiled through the light, the Chevelle racing away down the track. Danny didn’t punch the gas again. She waited.

The bike scouts rumbled up and put a leg down beside the interceptor.

“You have any idea what they’re up to?” Topper called out, once Danny had her window down.

“Feels like a decoying action. You guys go back. I’ll check this out.”

“Alone?”

“I’m not alone,” Danny replied. Topper threw a glance at Kelley, but didn’t say anything.
Yeah, right,
the look meant. Danny was slow-burning now, but Topper waited.

“If you’re volunteering, get in,” she said. “The rest of you get the fuck going. Fast.”

Topper pulled his bike off the road and laid it down out of view, then climbed into the cramped rear seat of the interceptor. Danny switched off the light bar on the roof, doused the headlights, and eased down the farm road into the darkness. The rest of the scouts passed a look around between them, but the sheriff had spoken. They turned their cycles in a half-circle and hightailed it back toward the truck stop.

•   •   •

The moon was thin and low, but starlight meant they could see shapes in the darkness. Danny pulled the interceptor off the track and she and Topper got out.

Kelley followed them. Danny raised a hand.

“Stay here. He’ll back me up.”

Kelley filled her empty lungs in order to speak. “I smell blood,” she said.

Topper shifted on his feet. He was nervous, maybe thinking Kelley meant
his
blood.