Eye of the Storm (6 page)

I pick up my backpack from where it's wedged between my seat and Mira's. "Everybody back there, start getting rid of whatever you have with you that's not an absolute necessity. Keep food, water, weapons." I look at Evis, whose fingers tighten on the album as if he's saying I'll have to pry it from his rigor mortised fingers. "Keep that album," I tell him.
 

The warning on the radio repeats. It adds cities. Atlanta, Jacksonville, Savannah.
 

He nods.
 

I hear the rustle behind me of Mason and Jax digging through luggage. They don't need clothing, but the cooler full of meat is kind of a necessity.
 

"See if you can bag some of that in smaller packages," I say. "If we have to leave quickly, at least you can grab some of it without having to haul the entire thing."

The van makes slow progress through the empty vehicles. I hate myself a little for the relief I feel not to hear any voices or see any people. I don't know how much we could help anyone, and it's a purely selfish relief to not have to worry about random strangers right now. It scares me that I don't know what choice I'll make when we do come across someone. We have to get to the Summit.
 

Minutes slip by us.

"When are you due, Asher?" I ask. It's another small selfishness — I want to know the odds of her water breaking while we're trying to flee a hellkin horde.

"Two weeks," she says.
 

Fuckles.

The abandoned cars remain forgiving for another hour of creeping along I-65. Then we come across an overturned semi with the door on the cab ripped right off.

"Golgoth demon," Mira says. She's right. The slime and pus from its feet leave marks that glisten in the headlights.
 

"Not too long ago, either. It's still wet." I pull out my phone, which thankfully has a full charge. "We're still about twenty-five miles from Nashville."

"Well, we've done enough sitting on our asses this morning. Might as well get some exercise." Mira gives me a toothy smile, but it's stretched too tightly and I know she's as nervous about hoofing it twenty-five miles through hells-knows-what with a pregnant witch beside us and a bunny in a cage.

"Mason, are you up to scouting for us?" I ask. I don't like the idea of splitting up, but if hell's about to hit us in the face, I'd like a warning.

"I can do that," he says.
 

"Thank you." I meet his eyes, and he nods once before looking away.
 

The sky's beginning to lighten, which means at least we won't have to use our phone batteries to light our way — or light a beacon for the hellkin that could come swarming onto the freeway from anywhere. It's cold outside, thirty-seven degrees according to my phone. I just hope it doesn't decide to snow.

"Let's move," says Mira. "We've got about ten hours of moderate daylight to work with."

I know as well as she does that there's almost no way we're going to make Nashville tonight. Two and a half miles an hour with the aforementioned bunny and pregnant witch? No way.
 

Mason ranges out ahead, never going more than about a quarter mile out from where the rest of us walk. The interstate looks like we landed in a disaster film. After a couple hours of walking, Mason returns to us with a six-pack of Coke and a gallon water bottle. He also pulls some jerky and protein bars out of his backpack.
 

"I've been looking in cars to see if there's anything useful." He tosses me a packet of jerky, and I catch it.

"Thank you," I say again.

He smiles, a tight smile that I can tell stretches his new scars. Again I feel that pang of guilt for letting him get captured by Gregor. Mira'd probably swear at me and tell me it's not my gods damned fault, but since I'm not voicing my guilt right now, I get to feel it as much as I damn well please.

Mason makes his way back out in front of us. Behind me, I can hear the rattle of Nana's cage. Jax is carrying her, which makes me feel marginally better.
 

The first attack comes from behind, not from ahead of us, because of course it does.

I hear the hellkin before I see them, and from the snarling, they're on our scent.
 

I give up on stealth. "Mason!" I bellow it in his direction.
 

Mira shoves Asher inside an empty SUV. The keys are in it, but the battery's got to be dead. Nana goes in after her. To her credit, Asher doesn't look scared.

Or maybe that makes her stupid, I don't know.

"Guard that bunny," I tell her.

She nods solemnly.

"How many?" Evis asks. He's been so quiet that the sound of his voice startles me.

"Can't tell," I say.

"At least four," says Mira. She points, gesturing in four directions. "Unless that's the biggest damn demon we've ever seen."

From the snarls, I think they're slummoths. Sure enough, the hunched, slimy beasts come tearing around the askew vehicles just as I feel Mason's presence rush by me. My swords snick out of their scabbards. Mira draws hers as well.
 

Four slummoths shouldn't make me nervous these days, but they do anyway. It only takes one.
 

Jax and Evis leap up on the cars and dart around the sides of the slummoths to flank them. The hellkin let out grating growls that fill the air and seem to ricochet off the cars. Evis takes one of the slummoths down, sending its right arm flying. Mira sweeps in with movement as quick as a flash going off. The slummoth's head joins its arm on the asphalt.
 

I can smell them now. Heat and sulfur and that reeking slime stench that smells like hell's taint. I leap at one of the demons, my sword point jabbing through its breastbone. I hear ribs crack as I jerk my sword upward and slice my other sword across its neck. Mason's already decapitating a third slummoth, and Jax has broken both kneecaps of the fourth. Its head comes off a moment later.
 

"Got off cheap on that one," says Mira.

"No shit."

We clean our swords on a t-shirt fluttering from an open car door and resheathe them.
 

"We need to keep moving," says Asher when she gets out of the SUV. She winces, probably because she was sort of smushed with Nana's cage in the backseat, but she lifts Nana and hands the cage back to Jax.
 

"How far have we gone?" Mira asks.

"Less than two miles so far." We've been walking for an hour and a half, but having to meander around cars and allow Asher time to catch her breath every fifteen minutes or so is making this slow going.
 

We don't see any more hellkin for the rest of the day. As the dull brightness of the sun behind the now-perpetual cloud cover fades into twilight, a fog rolls in from the surrounding forests. There's an RV up ahead. I feel like it's a death trap on wheels, but it's the best chance we have for half-decent shelter for the night.
 

I ignore the blood smeared on the ivory-paneled side of it.

Mira and Jax make up the beds inside. Whoever's blood is outside, they waited till they got out to spill it. The inside of the camper is clean and only a little cluttered from the owners' hasty vacating. Asher insists on taking the smaller bed.

"You should take the bigger one," she tells me.
 

"I'm taking first watch. Someone else can sleep."

"I'll go with you," Jax says, surprising me. "Nobody should take watch alone."

I feel a pang at the thought of not lying down beside Mira and quickly squelch it. No time for that now.
 

Evis looks at her. "Mira and I can take second watch."

"I'll wake you up in four hours," I tell them.
 

Jax and I head outside and climb up onto the roof of the RV. Even though there are a few scattered light posts on I-65, it makes no difference in the fog.
 

The fog is so thick I think I could climb it. It's cold and damp when I breathe in. Using the word
watch
may have been optimistic.
 

Jax and I don't speak, and slowly the rustling thuds and shuffling beneath us fade into the quiet rhythms of sleeping breaths. I pull out my phone. We've barely gone ten miles today. We'll be lucky to make that tomorrow.
 

I put my phone away again to conserve the battery.
 

I want to know why I haven't heard from Carrick or Alamea.
 

CHAPTER FIVE

The night passes in deceptive peace.
 

The world feels too quiet, and as we each down a Coke and a few pieces of jerky with baked beans from a can the next morning — the shades, of course, eat their meat — I can't help feeling like we've somehow been Twilight Zoned into another dimension where we are the only people in existence.
 

Fog still coats the land around us like mold on a tomato. It clings to every curve in the road. Mason doesn't bother to scout ahead today; we can barely see a hundred yards in any direction. Even the sunrise doesn't do anything to dispel the heavy mist.
 

If we moved slowly yesterday, today we're reduced to the pace of a tortoise in a bog. By midday, we've gone barely three miles with only a few short hours of daylight left. There's no convenient RV for us today, either. The best we can manage is a pickup with a canopy top. It's full of tools and smells like sawdust and axle grease, but it's some semblance of shelter. We scavenge towels and blankets from nearby cars — a meager amount of both — and spread them in the bed of the truck.
 

"I can take a watch," says Asher when we start divvying up timeslots.
 

"You can take third with me," I say without thinking. Mason and Jax are taking first, and Mira and Evis have opted for second again. I suspect Mira pounced on second watch with Evis for the second night in a row simply to force me to try and sleep, but she'd never admit it.

Asher nods. "I can help."

"We've seen," I say, thinking of the way the demons flew backward when we fled the cabin.
 

It feels like that was months ago already.
 

I curl up in a ball at the back of the truck bed. Asher does the same across from me. Sort of. She's not really at a stage of pregnancy where she can curl anything besides her toes, and after two days of walking, I bet her feet are too swollen for even that. I don't expect to be able to sleep, but somehow as soon as my eyes close, I do.

Mira wakes me with a soft touch of my face. Even though my nose is full of grease smell and sawdust and both of us stink like B.O., she still smells ever so slightly of vanilla.
 

"You're up," she murmurs.
 

I don't intend to wake Asher, but she's awake anyway. She clambers out of the truck bed, rolling over a half-asleep Jax who doesn't even seem to notice or care.
 

As I climb out of the truck bed, I wonder what it would be like to kiss Mira goodnight. I suppose I should wonder that regarding a proper night in a proper bed when we're both clean, what that might be like. Instead all I can wonder is what it'd be like now, in this truck bed that smells of sawdust and grease and shade farts.
 

I walk a short ways away with Asher, who bundles a found beach towel around her shoulders like a shawl. The early morning is hushed with that three AM blanket of sleep. The darkness and mist make it seem as though we've slid through the cracks of our world into a ghost world, an un-world, somewhere life is unwelcome.

I check my phone. Still nothing from Carrick or Alamea. Nothing from anyone. My battery is at eight percent. I know Mira's is already dead. Good thing we don't need directions to go straight. Or, as Mira would say, "gaily forward."

Asher sees me looking. "Maybe today we'll find a car that still has enough battery to try the radio. Or a semi with a CB."

"I doubt it." It's possible, but unlikely. The last cars we found with auxiliary power just gave us static. No more emergency broadcast, even. Evis swore he heard voices through the crackle as we searched through stations, but nothing ever came through clear.