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Authors: Greg Shows,Zachary Womack

Crisis Event: Gray Dawn (2 page)

BOOK: Crisis Event: Gray Dawn
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Everything was deadly these days.

Sadie nibbled the Rice Krispie treat as she strapped on her pack. She looked through the scope, surveying the road ahead. Nothing moved. The road, as well the land surrounding it, was dead and quiet and abandoned.

Lightning danced in the distance, but other than that, everything looked exactly as it had the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that.

The new normal.

Sadie trudged away from the car, leaving the hell behind her for the hell ahead. She considered offering up a prayer that her muscles would warm and her joints would loosen enough to let her walk quickly and without pain, but she abandoned the idea.

“Miles to go before I sleep,” she mumbled instead, remembering her grandfather’s voice and kind face as he tucked her into bed in the cozy guest room of his cabin.

Her grandfather was who she should focus on if she needed inspiration, not any of the thousands of deities that had failed to answer the prayers of humanity as it went down to death during the Crisis.

She smiled grimly beneath the MIT shirt covering her face. Her grandfather’s words came to her again and she spoke them out loud, repeating his favorite butchery of a poem: “And a shit pile of promises to keep.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

 

Staying on the road was risky, but bushwhacking would be time consuming
and
risky. Besides that, she hadn’t seen another human in weeks—unless you counted the Sleeping Bag Maniac she’d seen right after finding the Rice Krispie treat treasure three.

It had been on the outskirts of Meadville, Pennsylvania, near dark. She’d been crouched behind a dumpster next to the store, nibbling on a treat and readying her pack for travel when she heard him coming.

He was singing.

And not just singing.

He was shouting.

“Slip inside my sleeping bag!” he bellowed.

Then he bellowed it again, over and over as he rolled along on a pink bicycle made for a nine-year-old girl.

The crazy man had a mop of blond hair and a scraggly blond beard with blood crusted on it. He was wearing a bloody white t-shirt with a black silkscreened Jesus fish on it. Baggy blue jeans covered his legs, but as he pedaled, his bony kneecaps jutted out of the holes in the knees of the pants like turtles poking their heads out of their shells.

The weirdest part was that he seemed to be immune to the cold.

Sadie was shivering in her parka, but this guy acted like it was a warm summer day.

“Slip inside my sleeping bag!” he bellowed again, his mouth grimacing. He gave a cough and more blood erupted, splattering over his chin and down his chest.

Suddenly he looped around the other direction.

The man, obviously insane, lifted his chin and sniffed the dusty air as he coasted along the street. After making a giant, looping figure eight, he circled back the way he’d been going when she first saw him.

As Sadie peered around the dumpster, the man stopped singing the “Sleeping Bag” refrain long enough to say with a rhythmic sing-song yell:

 

“I see you!

Peek-a-boo!

Rice Krispie treats

Go great with meat!”

 

Then he rode quickly down the street beyond the 7-Eleven, his voice fading.

“Slip inside my sleeping bag!” he bellowed again and again, pausing only long enough to cough. Sadie remained where she was until his voice was gone, swallowed up by the sound-muffling gray dust.

Sadie shivered, clutching her rifle and wondering if she was going to have to shoot the guy.

She didn’t have to shoot the guy, but she was glad he was heading the opposite direction.

If I’m lucky, I never see that nut again.  

As she’d continued her journey west, Sadie had slowly convinced herself the Sleeping Bag Maniac hadn’t really seen her. He might have caught a whiff of the Rice Krispie treats, but she’d been well hidden.

“I see you, peek-a-boo!” could have been something he said occasionally as he rode along like a crazy, post-apocalyptic circus clown.

Even though the Sleeping Bag Maniac had scared her, she still thought traveling the road was best. At least until she got to the outskirts of towns and cities.

She’d skirted several big towns so far, and the strategy had worked for her as she came west out of Boston, crossed the middle of New York state, and dipped along the upper edge of Pennsylvania.

The cities and towns might be abandoned or full of corpses like she’d heard before she started this journey, but then again they might be full of crazed, ravenous cannibals.

Her stomach rumbled again and she stopped walking long enough to turn and check the road behind her with the scope. It was still empty and quiet, and the car she’d slept in was now a blurred black speck on the horizon.

She wondered which would last longer, the kid’s decomposing body or the car. Rust worked fast compared to the decay of bones.

“Depends on the weather, I guess,” she said as lightning struck the land nearby. A rumble came rolling over her. So did a breeze that lasted for more than ten or fifteen seconds—long enough to actually tousle her hair.

Sadie was just about to turn back to the road ahead when she was hit with an urge to scan the forest to the east.

She swiveled the rifle to look out at the thick stand of dead trees.

It was sad how all the trees had thrown off their dust-covered leaves. But the bright spot—if you could call it that—was that she could see deep into what must have been a decent-sized forest sometime in the past.

Maybe it would be again.

And maybe there’d be a few humans alive to see it.

Or not.

Sadie sighted along the length of the forest, seeing nothing at first, then catching a movement among the dead gray tree trunks.

“Got to love intuition,” she said, and moved her rifle. Almost immediately she saw a quick flash of fur, and then another.

She heard a barely audible “yip,” which was answered by another “yip.”

After scanning toward the sounds, Sadie saw two more fur flashes that disappeared behind a tight knot of tree trunks.

Sadie moved her rifle to her right, continuing to scan south to where the tree line ended. A second later they broke free of the trees.

They were half a mile away, crouching low and running with long loping strides that carried them quickly across open ground to a stand of scrubby brush and an old farmhouse with a collapsed roof.

Next to the house were three collapsed barns. More dead trees stood beyond the barns, and beyond the barns lay an open field that had once grown crops. Now it was a dead gray dustfield.

Sadie counted six coyotes before they disappeared behind the barns and scrub. She waited, moving the rifle back and forth, scanning the area. More yips were followed by a howl and a bark. Four more coyotes came loping in from the south, joining the first six.

“Great,” Sadie said, and turned to face the road ahead. She was being hunted.

Again.

The last time she’d been hunted the hunters had been humans. Three men in ski masks and gray camo had followed her trail outside Ravena, New York. She didn’t know what they wanted with her.

She didn’t want to know.

She had them in her rifle scope and could have shot one of them down from two hundred yards out, but the other two would have returned fire before she could get them. So instead of engaging in a gun battle she wasn’t certain of winning, Sadie had used what her grandfather taught her about tracking and counter-tracking, taking the three men into the woods and stalling them with false footprints and dead-end trails that slowed them enough for her to escape.

Coyotes were different.

They could smell her. That meant all the visual tricks of counter tracking wouldn’t help one bit. It wouldn’t have mattered in the pre-Crisis days. Coyotes rarely stalked or killed humans.

But things were different now.

With their food sources disappearing, they’d be desperate, which meant they’d be dangerous. Especially with ten of them hunting her. They’d feel strong enough to come right at her. And if she got into a rundown with them, they’d pursue her in waves, trading off the lead with one another until they could tire her out.

Then they could take her down.

If she let them.

Trying not to worry too much, or show any fear, Sadie turned back to the road and started walking, looking for someplace to shelter.

She passed by the first two farmhouses she came to since both were back from the road and looked like people might be inside—people who’d likely shoot her down if she got too close.

You could tell that because of the rifles sticking out of upstairs windows.

She kept walking, counting to herself, routinely turning and sighting behind her every twenty seconds or so. Each time her count got above fifteen she felt a chill run up her back.

Another howl went up, this one a quarter mile ahead of her. It was followed by more yipping, and was answered by a howl from behind her.

Sadie’s stomach clenched and she snapped her rifle up to her shoulder. She saw another four coyotes coming from the south. A coyote army was forming, and if she didn’t put end to it, she might actually get killed here.

She turned and scanned the trees behind and to the east of her. Then she saw them, breaking out of the dead forest and running for the road, dipping down through the ditch, then angling up onto the dusty asphalt.

“Great,” she said. She reached for the bolt and pulled it down and back, slamming a shell into the chamber. A quick click of the safety and she was ready to fire.

The coyotes, less than a hundred yards away, were yipping at each other as they ran, taking turns at the head of the pack.

Sadie sighted on the coyote currently in the lead, a female with yellow eyes and a lolling tongue. Her face was cute and her eyes looked intelligent, even if she was skinny and her rib bones were sharp and distinct against her tawny hide.

Even as she fingered the trigger, Sadie felt regret.

She loved animals.

Always had.

But she didn’t love animals so much she was willing to feed herself to them. So after steadying herself and taking a few calming breaths like her grandfather had taught her, she sighted on the second coyote—a male whose jaws were snapping shut then opening again, spraying big globs of spittle as he went.

He did not look cute or intelligent. Instead, he looked like a dumb, vicious killing machine whose only mission in life was biting into prey animals’ throats.

When the coyotes were at seventy-five yards Sadie squeezed the trigger. The rifle boomed, and the .30-06 bullet tore into the right shoulder of the male. Almost instantly he went down, rolling over and over, yelping as he went.

Mayhem ensued as blood sprayed into the air and the other coyotes turned away, some streaking off the road and down through the ditch, others reversing direction and running back toward the Corolla. The lead coyote turned back to look at the male briefly. She gave a sniff then turned and shot straight toward the woods to the east.

In seconds, the wounded male was alone on the road, yelping as he tried to stand up. Sadie worked the bolt again, and fired, putting the second bullet into the male’s skull.

“Sorry, boy,” Sadie said as the male went still.

Quickly Sadie scanned the tree line, looking for the remaining coyotes and not seeing them. When she scanned the land ahead of her it looked quiet and dead.

What would probably happen now is the coyotes would wait until Sadie was gone, then return to the road and eat their fallen pack mate. They’d still be hungry when they’d finished cannibalizing him, but Sadie would have put enough distance between them to get away.

She hoped so, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

Sadie checked her map. Four hours had passed since she’d shot the coyote, and though she kept turning and checking her back trail, she saw no sign of the pack.

A few miles ahead the old farm-to-market she was on would cross I-80.

After tucking her map into her back pocket she picked up her pace, walking so fast that any further addition of speed would send her into a jog.

As she strode forward, Sadie tried to concentrate on not tripping and falling over any debris she might chance to step on. At the same time she remained aware and focused far ahead, scanning the gray horizon and the landscape out to her left or right.

BOOK: Crisis Event: Gray Dawn
10.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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