Behind the Ruins (Stories of the Fall) (27 page)

Clay
looked right, and another of the things crouched an arm’s length away, mouth
hanging open, eyes on the fallen one as it twitched. Clay could smell the sweet
rot stink of it. It, too, wore the tanned remains of someone. This one clutched
an aluminum baseball bat crusted with dark matter.

“Bugs,”
it said, sounding surprised. “You killed Bugs?” It shook its head, hair
flopping. “That’s wrong.”

The
talking creature’s head exploded and it fell back in a heap. Clay blinked and
saw the revolver smoking in his hand.

“Mother
f-,” he began in a stunned voice. He was cut off by the sudden rapid hammering
of a handgun.

Rat
ran in a crouch, dropping to all fours at times and propelling himself with his
hands as he ducked beneath snarls of timber and subsiding walls. His blind eye
bulged in a white dome of excitement and he ground his teeth, his narrow jaw
rocking from side to side.

Uncle
was ahead, sneaking up on one of the strangers, and Rat wanted to get there
quick. He was hungry, so hungry. Uncle was strong and a good hunter.

Despite
his speed, Rat moved quietly. He slowed as he spotted Uncle’s broad back,
ahead. Uncle held a hatchet and was peering around the fender of a rotted sedan
at something Rat couldn’t see.

Rat
crouched, waiting, listening for whatever Uncle was watching. He could hear
Uncle’s breathing, and the distant crunch as someone shifted on the gravel, but
beyond that he could hear something else. More horses were coming. Many more
horses were coming. Rat began to creep forward as quietly as he could.

“Uncle,”
he hissed, jaw still sliding back and forth in sharp jerks. “Someone is coming.
Lots of them.”

He
would have said more, made Uncle leave with him, but a gunshot boomed from the
hillside, and Uncle darted out of sight with a growl. Rat started forward, took
Uncle’s place and peered as he had. A second shot boomed, this one from Rat’s
left and much closer than the first. Rat didn’t look around; he was too busy
watching Uncle as he leaped at a man in a dark leather coat. The man sat at the
end of a cul-de-sac with walls formed of rusted vehicles, peering through a
crack toward the bridge. The man shifted at the sound of the second shot, just
as Uncle swung the hatchet, and the looping strike missed his head by inches.
The hatchet buried itself in the door panel of the car with a resonant thump;
paint chips and rust showered from the door as Uncle heaved on the weapon,
trying to free it.

Rat
watched as the man in the jacket shot Uncle three times, fast. Blood bloomed
across Uncle’s back in a triangle as bullets exited his body, one low in the
gut, two high in the chest. Uncle grunted and tried once more to free the
hatchet, this time pulling the door free of its hinges. The weight of it
twisted the hatchet from his hand as it fell, and Uncle crouched and snarled at
the man in the jacket.

“Merde,”
Rat heard the man say, just before he shot Uncle in the face.

The
rifle boomed again, and Rat heard a high wail that sounded like Little Fingers.
He began to run back through the maze of cars and wreckage, weeping from his
good eye for his family, and for himself. Mama would be angry.

Georgia
started when Grey fired. She raised her head and glanced at him, saw that he
had turned and was firing down into the ruins where Mal and Clay were hidden,
and turned her attention back to the bridge, snuggling into the rifle’s stock
and peering through the scope, both eyes open.

The
Castle men milled and unslung weapons, some dismounting and seeking cover
behind the stranded wrecks. The nearest were barely a hundred yards away, the
furthest perhaps four hundred.

She
started with the nearest.

Creedy
pulled up hard enough that his horse half-reared, the bit tearing into its
mouth, as the first report echoed across the river.

Hollis
stood in her stirrups, then sat again as more shots came.

“Orders,
Mister Creedy?” Gregor asked, digging an aerosol air-horn from his saddlebag.

Creedy
sidestepped his horse behind a wheel-less panel truck that hunkered in the left
lane and peered down its side, watching as his men scrambled for cover.

“Wait,”
he said. He listened to the sporadic fire. “One rifle, one or two handguns.” He
scanned the bridge. “Do you see anyone down?”

Hollis
was about to answer when a heavier, throatier report rolled across the water.
One of the men in the forefront fell back from where he had been crouched
against a burnt-out car. Before he had come to rest a second, running tucked
over, went down in a tangle of limbs, screaming.

Creedy
gestured to Gregor, who held the air horn high and triggered a series of three
blasts. The men began falling back, firing sporadically at the far shore.
Behind them the snipers on the south bank opened fire.

“God
only knows what they’re shooting at,” Creedy said. He kicked his horse into a
gallop, lips set in a thin line. Behind him the reports continued, smooth and
regular, a handful of seconds between each. One bullet cut the air, near enough
that he heard the harsh hiss of it. He felt the skin on his back crawl, waiting
for the slam of the next slug, but reached the bridge’s south end unharmed. The
teamsters turned the trailers around on the cracked and weedy concrete of an
old gas station’s apron and the column moved out.

Georgia
came out of the chill place she went when she worked, sliding a fresh magazine
into her rifle and pocketing the first, which was still half-full. Creedy’s men
were too far now for accurate fire. She switched her attention to Grey, who had
fired twice more. Beyond him in the rubble the gunfire had ceased, after three
or four brief fusillades. Staying low, she moved to his position by the tree
and set her rifle up on its bipod.

“What
was it? Scouts?” she asked.

“No,
not scouts,” Grey said, his voice strange. “Something else. I think they’ve run
off now.”

Georgia
looked down the long line of the bridge. Half a dozen bodies lay scattered near
its northern terminus, and figures made tiny by the distance were just exiting
its south end.

“Everybody’s
run off,” she sighed, shifting to scan the ruins. She could see Clay and Mal
moving cautiously toward the overgrown park where they had tethered their
horses. She saw no one else.

“Get
ready to move, we need to follow them,” Grey said.

“I
have never seen anything like that in my damn life,” Clay said for the third
time as they rode out after moonrise. They crossed the bridge slowly, stopping
to loot the corpses of ammunition and weapons. There were six in all, each shot
through the center of the chest. One of the dead men had a small canister with
an attached ring.

“Anyone
feel like carrying a thirty-year-old grenade?” Mal asked, waggling it. There
were no takers, so he pitched it over the railing and into the river.

“You
didn’t pull the pin before you threw it?” Grey asked after listening for a
minute.

“Why
would I do that to the innocent little fish?”

“Point,”
Grey conceded. “You’re quiet, Georgia. You all right?”

Georgia
shrugged. Wrapped in her black poncho against the night chill, she was nearly
invisible.

“I’m
fine,” she said. “I’m just feeling old.”

“Not
too old to shoot,” Clay said, and whistled. “That was amazing. Thank you.”

“Thanks
for what?” Georgia asked.

“For
keeping my saddle-shaped ass alive. With those whatever-they-weres trying to
eat me, these boys would have killed us for sure if they’d crossed over.”

Mal
nodded in agreement.

“Yes,
my dear. You have the undying gratitude of Malcolm Barnes, esquire. If you
weren’t already the apple of our man Clay’s eye, I would woo you with fine
liquor and questionable dancing.”

“One
wonders what ‘questionable dancing’ is,” Grey said, clicking his horse into a
walk.

“It’s
dancing with lewd contact and clothes composed largely of velour,” Mal offered.
“More important, though, what the
fuck
were those things in the
mansuits?”

Grey
shook his head. “I haven’t a clue. I’ve heard bullshit campfires stories about
cannibals and zombies and God knows what else, but I’d always figured that was
pure fantasy.” They rode in silence for a minute.

“Well,
we can leave zombies in the realm of rumor, but I’m going to have to add
‘inbred cannibal attack’ to my list of things best avoided,” Mal said.

“Do
you think we killed them all?” Clay asked, glancing over his shoulder at the
ruins.

“You
want to go see?” Mal asked, arching his eyebrows.

“No,”
Clay said, shuddering.

Rat
waited until the four Bad People left. Then he waited extra just to be sure.
Then he got Spider to help him drag the bodies in under the school. Little
Fingers was hurt. She’d been shot in the leg, and she just snarled and wouldn’t
come help. Rat didn’t know if she would die.

Spider
and Rat spent the next three days cutting strip-meat for jerky. Any parts they
couldn’t jerk they ate right away. All the soft parts went to the babies.
They’d have plenty of food for a long time. But Mama cried, and that made Rat
sad.

Still,
he thought, not everything was bad. Now maybe she wouldn’t look at him so
hungry.

Rastowich
stared through the binoculars at the drab gray block of the Larson Facility.

“What
the hell is going on in there?” He asked. Five fresh corpses swung on ropes
across the building’s facade and black smoke billowed up from the courtyard
concealed within the complex. In the upper floors several windows had been
knocked out. The Colonel assumed there would be snipers in place in those. He’d
already issued orders and sharpshooters were in position to deal with them.

Captain
Nakamura whistled through his teeth. “I think they’re waiting on us to make a
first move. They probably assume they’re safe inside that pile of concrete.
They can’t have missed us riding up and making camp.”

Rastowich
rubbed at his moustache and grunted.

“The
engineers packed the recoilless?”

“Yes
sir.”

“Break
it out. We’ll make a breach after dark and go in. That’ll keep their
sharpshooters off us, and our men are the better trained and armed. Make sure
the vests are issued and that everyone is wearing them.”

“Yes
sir.”

“We
have to get those books. That’s our legacy,” the Colonel muttered.

And
it won’t hurt your chances for a promotion
, Nakamura thought,
not unkindly. He saluted, and went to find the engineers.

Maybe
he could get a promotion, too.

Sam
had disappeared before Creedy left. Marcia had cultivated enough contacts
throughout the Castle that she often knew more than Sam, who existed in the
bubble surrounding Creedy. The old cook had managed to slip her a note when she
helped deliver dinner to Creedy and Hollis. It was short and to the point; word
was that when Creedy left he was taking nothing except guns and two wagon loads
of loot.

It
wasn’t a surprise. Creedy had been eyeing her strangely for days, with a
mixture of suspicion and mild regret. Sam had already decided that he would
want to dispose of her before leaving. She’d heard as much or more of his plans
as anyone, and he wouldn’t let that sort of information remain behind.

Creedy
never went anywhere alone, now. He hadn’t called Sam to his bed since the last
bruising bout of abuse, and though she fantasized about it, she could see no
way to kill him that wouldn’t result in her own immediate death. It was time to
get out.

The
labyrinthine subbasement was locked, with chains and padlocks securing the two
sets of steel doors that accessed its stairwells. The gates saw a lot of foot
traffic, and while not all of it was screened as carefully as it had been, they
would notice Sam trying to leave. Nervousness just short of panic ran through
most of the more imaginative members of the garrison. Creedy’s banquet lies had
done their job and kept things together long enough to bring in a last few
weeks of tribute, but even the dullest gunhand had heard the rumors: Creedy was
leaving the Castle and the CDF was coming. Anyone with dreams of leadership
began to maneuver to take advantage of the vacuum, and bodies were discovered
every morning; some with knife wounds, some strangled. Creedy, his monstrous
aide Gregor and Hollis lurked on his floor of the west wing, with several
squads of soldiers that now bunked there, and seemed to watch it all with
disinterest.

The
upper floors were a better option, despite leaving her few routes of escape.
Sam didn’t imagine Creedy would believe she would stay in the Castle. Taking a
knapsack of food and several jugs of water, she disappeared into the upper
floors. She had remained there for the six days leading to Creedy’s departure,
and only once heard anyone in the hall outside the room she occupied. They
tried the door, found it locked, and went on.