Blood & Dust (Lonesome Ridge Book 2) (8 page)

The woman continued to stare, not really seeing him.

“’Kay, well, case Charity asks, that’s where I am, all right?”

More staring. Not a single glimmer of acknowledgment or intelligence.

“Yeah, well…” He glanced around at the others and wondered if he should bother trying to tell someone else. None of those left behind had an ounce of their former selves left in them. They were husks, sheep. Jeremiah snorted. Sheep were smarter, he thought. He let go of the woman’s arm and she turned away to continue her shuffling. He watched her and the others for another minute or two. The herd, as he had come to refer to them, seemed as happy being left behind as they were to be on the attack. Could they even feel happiness anymore? Did they even know what it was? Jeremiah shook his head and turned away.

“Don’t go down that path, Jeremiah, my boy,” he mumbled to himself. “That’s a dangerous place to be.” He scratched his chin as he walked toward the stream. It wasn’t deep, maybe up to his knees, but it was clean. The calming burbles of the little brook soothed him and pulled him in. He wanted a bath, he needed a bath, but he wasn’t sure why. He rarely took them before when he was alive, and now, why would he need one? Who would be offended if he didn’t? None of the undead had bathed recently that he had seen. Most of them didn’t care. Charity didn’t seem to notice any stink, and she would be the one to be forcing them all into cleanliness.

Jeremiah stripped down to nothing and glanced down at his body. Disgust settled itself heavily on his face as he examined the skin he hadn’t seen since he turned. It was a sickly gray, just like the others, patchy in some spots. He still had the hole in his arm from the crazy woman who had started this whole mess and he had acquired other wounds in the many attacks since that would never heal. He poked his finger into the hole on his arm. It had been a festering, oozing mess when he left town all those weeks ago, but now it was just a rotted pit of flesh and bone. He dug out some of the decayed skin and flicked his hand to get rid of it. He almost made himself gag.

“Blech.” He waded out into the water. Ice cold, it washed over his feet and legs. Dirt and blood drifted away in the fast-flowing stream. He squatted down and felt a chilly blast hit his nether regions. He grunted, but it wasn’t painful, just cold. Cold and strangely pleasant, like it had been during his last washing before he turned. He sank down into the water, letting himself lean back and stretch out so that the cool, clear liquid ran over most of his body. He kept his head above water, though. He didn’t know if the undead could survive a drowning, and he didn’t really want to be the first to try it out.

A flat rock hovered just beneath the surface of the water, so he turned himself until he could rest his head on it. Then he relaxed completely and let the cold cleanse him as well as it could. The water pulled the blood and death from his skin and carried it away downstream, freeing him of the burdens that had weighed him down for so long. He wished he could sleep, fall into the peaceful non-thinkingness of dreamland, but his kind didn’t really sleep. They dozed of a sort, their minds drifting out into a hazy fog, but they were always aware, always present in some way. He wanted to not be aware, to be out of it, to be gone. When he found the stream, when its icy water hit him, he hoped for what used to be. He hoped it would numb him, chill him to the bone, like it did when he was alive. But that wasn’t happening. As he lay there, as the grime flowed away, his body didn’t numb. Instead, he felt renewed, invigorated. His skin buzzed with energy and his mind was clearer, he felt more alive than he had since, well, since he was alive.

His eyes popped open and he stared at the deep blue above. Stars twinkled here and there, popping in and out of the clouds that skipped across the sky. “Why?” he mumbled to himself. “Why are you here?”

He shook his head. He had no idea. He’d attached himself to Charity because she was like him, undead, unwanted. But as he got to know her, he realized they weren’t all that alike. Sure, he enjoyed eating flesh. In the moment of the attack, he felt unstoppable, like there was nothing else in the world he could ever need. But afterward, with the blood dripping from his chin and the bits of skin stuck in his teeth, the guilt surged inside. It battered him and threatened to bring him down. And the longer it went on, the worse it got. The more deaths he caused, the harder it was to forget them, to push them aside.

Charity didn’t seem to have that problem. She longed for the thrill of the attack. Her mind was set on one thing and one thing only: creating her own army. She had decided that that was the way to go and she was going to get what she wanted. At first, Jeremiah thought it would be fun. He had his own visions of them riding across the West, side by side, commanding a group of undead who heeded their every command.

But it wasn’t so simple. He hadn’t thought about how, in order to have the army Charity envisioned, they would have to attack and kill people, real live people. People who had families and friends, children and loved ones. People who would scream and cry and fight back. People who didn’t want to die.

Jeremiah’s eyes stung. He wanted to cry, but no tears would come, so he dipped his head beneath the water and let the cool stream wash the pain away. He tried to think of something nice, something to take his mind off what he had become. A smile pulled at the corner of his lips.

“Jasper,” he whispered. The last time he had taken a bath, he had been with Jasper. It had been his little brother’s idea. They were heading into town and there was a good chance they’d see Cora Monroe, the dancing girl at the saloon, who just so happened to be the sheriff’s sister. Jeremiah had a crush on her, one that had lasted since they were kids. She didn’t much like him, though, so he did everything he could to try to get her attention, including take the rare bath.

Jeremiah’s smile twisted and his eyes started to burn again. The last time he had seen Jasper was at the attack. He was with Abby and Hannah, the young woman Jeremiah had hoped his little brother would end up with. Abby had been bitten by the same crazy Indian that bit Jeremiah. His frown turned to a pout. She was surely dead. Was Jasper? Did he survive? Did he and Hannah make it? What about Cora and Connor? Jeremiah could only hope. But he didn’t want to hope. He wanted to know.

“I could send him a letter,” he mumbled to himself. “Get it touch.” But how? The herd killed everything they ran across. That would include all post carriers. There would be no way to convince one of them to carry a letter back for him. And if he did, if he managed to get a letter to Jasper, and Jasper was alive enough to receive it, how would he write back? Address it to the undead guy who follows the self-proclaimed queen just like all the other sheep?

Jeremiah scoffed at himself, at his ridiculousness. No, he wouldn’t try to contact Jasper. The only thing that would accomplish is to likely get his little brother killed, if he wasn’t dead already.

“You could leave.”

Jeremiah contemplated that option. He
could
leave. He could go off on his own. But then what? What would he do? No one would take him in. He would truly be alone. And she would be free, without anyone to rein her in and keep her from getting into too much trouble. He shook his head. “No,” he answered himself. “Can’t do that. Can’t trust her. She needs someone to balance her. I gotta keep her in line, I gotta pull her back. She can’t go on like this. I gotta be the boss.”

Jeremiah sat up in the stream and bobbed his head hard. “Yup, that’s it. I gotta step up.”

He pushed himself to his feet and shook himself off. His natty hair hung in lumpy, wet strands around his face, but the rest of him was about as clean as it was going to get. He put his stiff, dirty clothes back on, heedless of the stench clinging to them, and threw his shoulders back. With his head held high, he walked back to the group, his purpose renewed.

CHAPTER 11

The moon was sinking low as Summer Rain crouched near some bushes close to the town of Lonesome Ridge, but but far enough away that she could remain hidden. She had returned to this place several times over the past weeks and as each day passed, her determination to find a way into the town grew. Since her last attack, since the day she was stabbed and shot, their defenses had been nearly impenetrable. She was a predator, bent on death and destruction, but she was not heedless of her own life. She had been reckless in the past, she knew that, but now she had a goal, a purpose: to destroy the town of Lonesome Ridge. She would not be foolish enough to lose her life in the process.

A light growl at her side pulled her out of her ever deepening spiral into hatred. Summer Rain reached down and brushed her fingers through the course fur of her only companion. “We will get them,” she whispered. “Somehow, some way, we will bring them down.”

The wolf huffed in response and closed his eyes once more. This wasn’t his war, but she had become his friend and he would be there for her.

As the sun’s light crept over the horizon, the gates cracked open to reveal a small crowd just inside the wall. Summer Rain rose to her feet and inched forward while still keeping to the cover of the trees. Far away, she could just make a handful of figures. Her head cocked to the side as she stared. A young woman with dark hair stood beside a horse. Her back was to Summer Rain as she hugged a blond girl of similar stature, but the undead woman was sure she had seen her before. Her eyes danced to the trio of men. She had never seen the sheriff, in his long black coat and dusty black hat, but he was unmistakable. The way the others reacted to him, respected him and gave him a send-off, it had to be him.

The anger smoldering in her chest grew into flames. Her nostrils flared and she twisted her fingers into the wolf’s fur to keep herself from sprinting the distance between them. The guards on the wall would have her brought down before she was close enough to touch them, much less bite them. She heard a growl and glanced down at the wolf. He was still sleeping. She was becoming more of a predator than she thought.

Summer Rain glared at the group. The sheriff and the dark-haired girl were leaving, bidding farewell to the rest. She needed to get closer, to see, to confirm her suspicions. She released the wolf’s fur and dropped to her stomach. It was still fairly dark and she was hidden by the grass. She snaked her way forward until she was close enough to really see the group.

Her teeth clenched on a scream that almost fought its way past her lips as the dark-haired girl turned to mount her horse. That hair, that face. Summer Rain knew it. It was the last woman she had bitten during that horrible battle, the last one before she received a knife in the back.

The anger boiled over and Summer Rain’s hands found her hair. She couldn’t scream and she couldn’t kill, so she settled for ripping chunks of hair out of her skull. It didn’t hurt as bad as she wanted it to. She wanted to feel the pain. But all she got were tiny sparks of heat dancing across her brain. Her vision turned red as she watched the girl reach her right arm for the horse and pull herself up. The sheriff and the girl waved one last time and kicked their horses into motion.

Summer Rain’s mind swam as they left the gates. “We will follow,” she whispered, but the wolf was out of earshot. “We will follow and kill them while they sleep.” Her lips twisted into a snarl and her head shook. “No. No, that will not work. They are too smart for that. They will not leave themselves unprotected.” Her hands unclenched and she watched bits of hair and rotted scalp fall to the ground. She glanced back up at the gates.

The young blond woman and a young blond man stood at the open road, waving goodbye to the sheriff and his companion. Summer Rain’s snarl turned to a sneer. She recognized the girl and the guy. The girl was the one who had thrown the knife. The guy was the one who shot her in the face. If his bullet had been an inch off, Summer Rain would be dead, burned along with the others.

Her eyes danced between the sheriff and the people at the gate. A plan began to form, accompanied by the most vicious of smiles. The sheriff was leaving the town. He was abandoning them at a time when they needed him most. Whether he was running away or off on some other duty, Summer Rain did not care. He was gone, and therefore the town was weaker. She feared him and would not attack him directly, and she wouldn’t attack the town itself, but she could hurt them all. She would find a way. Even if she didn’t get inside the walls herself, she would find a way. The young man had to leave at some point. Whether on patrol or for supplies, for some reason he would leave the protection of the gates. And she would be waiting, waiting to inflict as much damage as she could.

CHAPTER 12

“Let’s stop here and double-check, make sure we didn’t miss anyone the last time.” Abby pulled her horse up to the fence in front of the big house surrounded by the other small ones. The body of the woman still lay on the porch and the others were piled just inside the doorway. Flies fed on their flesh in the uncommon heat of an early autumn afternoon.

Connor draped his horse’s reins over a fence post. The beast had been trained well enough that it wouldn’t bolt unless it was in mortal danger, and if it came to that, Connor wanted him to be able to save himself. He realized how silly, and how lucky, he’d been before, tying the creature up so it couldn’t flee. The undead seemed to prefer human flesh, but he’d yet to see them turn down fresh meat, no matter the source.

Abby slid off her own horse and pulled her shotgun from its spot on the saddle. They both double-checked their weapons and walked slowly up to the house.