Shadows (5 page)

In the life she’d had before Rule, Lena often thought of blowing Crusher Karl’s head off. Her stepfather had been an avid hunter; most Amish were. The problem was that Crusher Karl hadn’t owned a handgun, and his shotgun and rifles were just too big. Worse, her stepfather kept them all in a padlocked cupboard to which he had the only key. (So when she saw her chance a year ago, she’d used the knife. Whatever worked.)

Now, in Jess’s bedroom, she stared as her mind tried to make sense of what she saw, because what lay on that floor didn’t belong and yet there it was, as round and fat and real as a dog turd.

A shotgun shell.

The shell was capped with shiny brass, and words and numbers were stenciled on the sides of the black cartridge:
hd ultimate home defense 1 2 5 0 – 1 1 / 4 2 ×4
. And in fancier letters, r
emington
.

Jess had a
shotgun
? News to her. She threw a glance over the closet floor. Shoes—and a step stool.

Something on the closet shelf, she bet. She looked up, her gaze ticking over two neat stacks of boxes before snagging on a black tongue of quilted fabric that dangled just over the lip of the shelf.

The step stool made it easy, and she saw at once that the shotgun case was empty. An open cardboard box of cartridges squatted nearby. There were slots for the shells, and she counted ten slots in all. Only three shells remained. Add in the one on the floor, and that meant the shotgun held six rounds. That tallied. Crusher Karl always made a big show of loading: five in the magazine and one in the breech. Jess must’ve been in a hurry, too, because she’d fumbled then dropped the shell and never bothered to pick it up.

There was something else on the shelf, too, at the very back: a square, black, soft-sided case.

Lena stared at that for a long moment. She knew, instantly, what it was, and where it belonged. The pack was Alex’s and
belonged
in Alex’s room, on her desk where she always kept it. Lena had no idea what was inside, but she did know that the pack had no business being in Jess’s room. Like, none.

So. What. The. He—

A loud, high scream ripped the air. Gasping, Lena nearly slipped off the step stool as Tori—and yes, it was Tori—screamed again, and then Lena was scrambling down, stuffing the shotgun shell into a sweatshirt pocket, and dashing into Jess’s bathroom.

This is crazy.
She snatched up an armful of towels and the brightorange first-aid kit and pounded out of Jess’s room.
First Chris and now Jess—and where’s Alex? Why is her case in Jess’s room? Why would Jess
need
a shotgun?
Heart thumping, she burst into the kitchen, then pulled up fast, her jaw dropping as she got a really good look.

Jess lolled in Nathan’s arms, her hair flowing in a gray river that brushed the floor. Blood streamed over the old woman’s face and splashed her chest in a broad red bib. She looked terrible. Hell, she looked dead.

“Oh my God, what
happened
?” Lena asked, aghast. “Who
did
this?”

Nathan’s face was granite. “Alex.”

“Alex?”
Lena said. “Why?”

“I don’t have time for this,” Nathan said, and then jerked his head at John. “Give me a hand here. You, Sarah, bring me a propane heater, and let’s get this front room warmed up, fast.”

“What about
Kincaid
?” Lena shouted, but Nathan didn’t slow.

As Sarah darted past, Lena snagged her arm. “This is nuts. I’m going for the doctor.”

“No.” Sarah shook free. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“Why not?” She pushed her way past Ghost and Nathan’s dog.

Growling, lips curling to reveal teeth, both animals lowered their heads, then danced aside as she flung her armful of supplies onto the kitchen table.

“Does this make sense? Do you think Alex would do something like
that
to an old lady?”

“Maybe,” Sarah huffed, backing out of a kitchen closet with a propane heater.

“Jess is tough, and you did plenty when you ran.”

Lena’s face flamed. “That was different. It was a guard, an old
guy.
”

“I can see it, though. I think Alex has the guts to do whatever it takes. Remember, she’s killed Changed.”

“Those are just stories.”

Sarah gave Lena a smug little grin. “Not according to Peter.”

Oh, Sarah
would
bring up Peter just to rub it in. She wasn’t at all surprised that the idea of Peter with Sarah hurt just as much now as before. She had used Peter, yes. But not everything with him had been a lie, then—or since.

“Tori, give me a hand here.” Sarah jerked her head at Lena.

“You, finish the woodstove. I’ll do Jess’s after we set up the heater.”

Lena opened her mouth to argue, then said, instead, “We’ll need more wood.” Without waiting for a reply, she shrugged into her coat, grabbed up the now-filled ash pail, and hurried out of the house. But instead of heading around back, she set the pail down, ducked her head, and motored over the icy walk for the street. To hell with this. She was going for Kin—

“Hey!”

Gasping, Lena tore her gaze from her feet too late and smacked face-first into the boy’s chest so hard that she thumped back onto her tailbone.

“Whoa! Hey, Lena, you okay?” Greg dropped to one knee as his golden retriever bristled and tried muscling past. “Daisy, back up,
sit
!”

“Ow.” Her butt killed. Still, if she could get Greg into the house, she might have a chance. Grabbing his hand, she let him haul her up. “Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry. What are you doing here?”

“I brought the flatbed . . . Daisy,
stop
!” Turning, the boy grabbed his dog’s collar and wrestled the growling animal to a sit. “What’s the matter with you? Sheesh.” To Lena: “I had to hitch up down a ways, what with all the horses out front. Ah . . . is Chris inside? I saw Night.”

“Yeah, he’s—”

“Oh crap.” Greg looked unhappy. “He’s going to be pissed I left Alex at the hospice.”

“Wait, what? When?”

“Last night. I was supposed to stay until she was done and then take her home, only I was just so beat and she told me to go on. Wouldn’t you know it that the one time I go is when Chris comes back early.”

“Greg, Alex is gone.”

“What?” His eyebrows drew together beneath a froth of muddybrown curls. “She can’t be. She’s with Doc.”

“Not anymore.” Then something else registered. “Greg, how long have you been back? Why were you at the hospice?”

“Chris and us guys, we split off from Peter at the Wisconsin border a couple days ago and went north. Brought back this kid.”

So they
had
found a Spared. It was all Lena could do not to grab Greg by the lapels. “Where?”

“Some old barn northwest of Oren. He was pretty bad off. His heart stopped while we were still a couple miles outside Rule.”

She hoped the despair didn’t show on her face. “Is he . . . ?”

“Dunno. But he’s real sick. Doc and Alex worked, like, six, seven hours and then Doc was so wiped, she stayed. You’re sure she’s not here?”

“Positive. They’re saying she ran. Nathan said she beat up Jess, too.”

“What?
Alex?
No way. She’d never do something like that.”

Privately, Lena thought there was just no telling. Ask her a couple years before her stepfather entered the picture if
she’d
have the courage to slip a butcher knife up her sleeve, and she’d have wondered what you’d been drinking. “Greg, how can you not know any of this? Don’t they radio or send a runner when something like this happens?”

She watched Greg think about that. “Yeah.” His frown deepened. “Weird, that I haven’t heard anything. I don’t think anyone else has either. How’d Chris get hurt?”

“Nathan said Night shied and kicked him.”

“Night?” Greg was incredulous. “You’re kidding. I’ve seen Chris shot at. Even then, he never loses his saddle. Night’s real steady.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Look, we need Kincaid. Do you have a radio?”

“No, but . . .”

Waving for her to follow, Greg jogged to the horses. “Chris does. Ho there, Night.” The horse was shivering and snorting, and a fine frill of ice had formed on the animal’s mane. At Greg’s touch, the horse’s muscles quivered, and then Night was stamping hard enough that Lena danced out of the way before one of those hooves could come down and break a foot.

The other three horses began to toss their heads in sympathy. “Whoa, what’s got into you?” Greg put a calming hand on Night’s neck. “You’re all lathered up, boy. Calm down. Lena, grab his bridle while I check out the saddlebags.”

“Sure.” She didn’t love animals, but there’d been plenty on Crusher Karl’s farm and she knew what she was doing. Lena hooked a hand over the horse’s bridle and murmured nonsense: “Good boy, there’s a boy, good boy.” But she was thinking:
Tori was
right. They found a Spared by Oren. They brought back a
boy. There was a squawk, followed by a fizz and then a series of mechanical clicks. At the sudden noise, Night suddenly swung his rump and Daisy, already jumpy, started barking again.

“Daisy, shut
up
!” She wrestled with the big blood bay as the golden pranced around her legs, still yapping.

“What’s that sound?”

“Message on the handset,” Greg said, unbuckling a saddlebag.

“You guys don’t talk?” She swatted at the growling dog. “
Quit
it.”

“No, we use Morse. Saves the batteries and we still got a good eighty-, ninety-mile range. A hundred at night.” Greg staggered as Night and a small sorrel gelding backed into one another. “Grab that sorrel, would you? I’m gonna get kicked.”

“Easy, boy,” she said, hooking the sorrel’s halter. Bobbing, the gelding snorted and stamped. “Guys, just take it—” The words died on her tongue.

“Lena?” Greg looked at her over Night’s saddle. “You okay?”

“Fine,” she said. The word came out a bit flat, almost unreal, which was how she felt, too, because what she now spied on Nathan’s saddle didn’t quite compute. She knew John rode the dapple gray, and the chestnut was Jess’s. John’s rifle was still in its red saddle scabbard. Chris’s gun was seated in a scabbard on Night’s off-side, barrel down and butt at horn height. Jess’s chestnut mare had no scabbard. The sorrel gelding, Nathan’s horse, did: a short leather tube with big brass buckles. The scabbard held a pump shotgun—and there was blood, a fair amount, smeared on the stock. Hair, too. Some was long and gray, which would tally if Alex had smashed Jess hard enough to break her face. But there was also a gluey clump of shorter, very dark hair.

Chris’s hair was black. Chris had a head wound.

But John said Night kicked him.
Her eyes dropped to Night’s hooves. Clean as a whistle. Of course, the snow might’ve scrubbed away blood and hair. But nothing explained the shotgun, and she’d found that shell. So was this gun Jess’s? It might be, and that meant Nathan and the guards were lying about Chris. But why?

“Got it,” Greg said. The olive-green walkie-talkie was rectangular and bulky, with a whippy antenna. Head cocked, Greg listened to the clicks a moment, and then his mouth sagged in shock. “Oh
shit
.”

“What?” A door slammed and she saw Nathan and John spill down the stairs, coming for their horses at a dead run. John had his handset out, too. Dread knotted her stomach. “Greg,
what
?”

“Peter.” Greg’s face was white as chalk. “It’s
Peter.
”

“So now what? We, like, totally
bombed
,” Tyler said as his horse minced over rutted ice. The kid said he was fourteen, but Peter thought Tyler was lying. Still, the boy had stamina, and that was lucky. The majority of Peter’s men were wheezy geezers who hunted and knew their guns, but that was it. Only two, Lang and Weller, who’d found their way to Rule a week after the world died, had combat experience. A lucky break, too. Both were grizzled Vietnam vets who’d served in the same unit. After hearing
that
, Peter had given them sanctuary on the spot. Although Lang was from Wisconsin, Weller was from Michigan and had worked the old iron mine south of Rule once upon a time. Of course, the mine was way before Peter’s time, and Weller was his grandfather’s age, which translated to older than dirt. But Lang and Weller were good men who not only knew weapons but understood battle tactics. These days, men like that were gold.

The old Yeager mine was ancient history, too: closed for decades, blockaded to keep out the curious. So, of course, the place was a complete kid-magnet. It was only after he was a deputy that Peter recognized the mine for the freaking death trap that it was. But when
he
was a kid, the mine possessed an irresistible draw: a fabulous and forbidden warren of decaying, labyrinthine tunnels that were as dark and mysterious as a Roman catacomb. That he might actually
die
in a tunnel collapse; that one misstep might send him hurtling down a hidden escape shaft or forgotten blasthole to bust on the rocks like a blood balloon or, even worse, only break his legs so that he died from thirst slowly and in great pain; that given the right conditions, a tunnel could flood in a few minutes and much faster than any kid could run; that a person could keel over from swamp gas and suffocate before he knew what hit him—all that danger added to the thrill. Peter and his friends—and later, their girlfriends—had spent a lot of time there, exploring, partying, smoking, drinking. Making out. There were all sorts of interesting things you could do in the dark. Every kid in the area knew the mine, which, he now thought, explained an awful lot.

“We did okay,” Peter said to Tyler now, but he was worried.
Okay
translated to
not enough to keep people in line
. Out of four wagons, only two were loaded. One swayed under several hundred pounds of gasoline-splashed hay—probably a loss, but Peter hoped to salvage feed from deeper in each bale—and four baaing sheep. The other wagon was chockablock with a motley assortment of propane tanks, a couple roadside flares, canned vegetables, sacks of flour and dried beans, bottles of cooking oil. They’d salvaged some puke-awful crap from a dinky Hmong place outside Clam Lake in Wisconsin: cans and jars with labels of nasty things he didn’t even know
were
food.