Snareville (26 page)

The girls traded a glance. Ella quietly picked up her sorted buckets and escaped into the house. Danny kept his mouth shut as he moved on to a pumpkin plant. The girls' interrogation aggravated him. It aggravated him more that it aggravated him so much.

He just didn’t want to see Cindy go wandering around alone and get herself killed. She was kind of like a puppy that didn't know any better. Granted, a hyper-active puppy with rabies, but for whatever reason, she’d attached herself to him. He
did
feel responsible.

“
A little bird told me you’d gotten home, Dan.”

The man’s voice broke his train of thought. Danny stood up to see Rick Mueller, along with a half-dozen of the people from Princeton. He nodded to Hank, the football coach from Peoria who'd come in with Boss Connie's crew. Hank didn't nod back.

“
You must have more lives than a cat," Rick added, casting a speculative eye Danny's way.

“
So they tell me, Rick," Danny said, smiling easily. "How they hangin’?”

Rick's face tightened. “Funny. You’re a funny guy. Let’s cure that.”

His bunch reached for their pistols. The man on the far left brought his gun to bear on Danny as he dropped to a knee, gun up. The shooter got off one round. It sizzled through the air where Danny’s head had been an instant before. Danny’s hollow point went right through the man’s Adam’s apple and blew out the back of his neck.

Rick started shooting—at Jenny.

Before she could clear her holster, five slugs tore through her torso. A single shot from her pistol exploded into the dirt as she fell.

Danny didn't hear Pepper's screams or his own. He shifted aim. His bullet and one of Pepper’s crossed trajectories inside Rick’s skull. The bastard went down with jelly where his gray matter had been.

A shotgun roared behind them. Hank screamed as a red circle blossomed between his shoulders. He started to aim at Pepper, and a second blast dropped him face down. He screamed into the tall grass as Cindy rushed across the yard. With a howl, she flung herself on a woman in her fifties, swinging a pistol Danny's way. Cindy wrapped a hand around the woman’s face, jerked her head back, and took a bite out of the woman’s throat. The woman screamed as she went down with Cindy’s knees planted in her back. The two rolled in the grass. The woman raised her pistol to shoot the berserker in the process of eating her. The shotgun boomed again, and the woman's hand vaporized. Her pistol flew across the yard.

Another woman crouched and sidestepped as she took a shot at Danny. The bullet plowed a bloody furrow along his ribcage. He turned and put a round through her nose. The back of her skull exploded. Without batting an eye, Pepper dropped the last person on her side of the firing line. That was the end of it. Danny heard the shotgun clatter as Ella dropped it on the concrete drive and rushed across the yard.

“
No, no,
no
! Mommy Jenny!
No
!”

Lightning struck Danny in the heart as the girl's cry registered in his head. Ella beat him to where Jenny had fallen. His wife lay on her back, blinking up into the blue, summer sky. Her gray T-shirt had turned crimson.

With a sob, Danny dropped to his knees and pulled the knife from his belt. He slit the hem of her shirt and ripped the material wide open. He gasped.

Pepper hit the ground opposite him, eyes full of the sight of his bloody shirt. "You hit?"

“
I’m fine," he snapped, then managed, "Jen…”

“
Support her head,” Pepper said, peeling off her own shirt. She glanced around. “Bill, go get Leary! Tell him to bring everything in his jump box. Move now!”

Danny moved around to hold Jenny’s head still. Her eyes rolled up at him as she tried to focus. Bill sprinted across the yard. Cindy stood up and moved away from the fallen woman. Others lifted her victim and tied the assassin’s hands. Someone else cuffed Hank as blood ran down his back.

Jenny tried to say something, but she sounded like she was gargling. Her eyes found Danny. Pepper used her shirt to wipe some of the mess from Jenny’s chest. Milk from a mother's breast mixed with the bright, red blood bubbling from her lungs. Pepper slid a hand underneath to find the exit wounds. Jenny’s back was hamburger.

Jenny lifted a hand to Danny’s cheek. Clear-eyed, she smiled. She touched Pepper’s face, then took Ella’s hand. The smile never faded as the light left her eyes.

The funeral took place the next day. A grave had been dug in the new cemetery in the old football field. Older people who'd passed away since the outbreak, babies who didn’t make it back from infection, all ages who'd fallen to battle or suicide… all rested together, side by side, in this new plot.

Danny sat through the service, numb. His expression never changed, and the silent tears never stopped following one another down his cheeks.

Pepper leaned against him and sobbed quietly against his left shoulder while some of the other women took care of the babies. Cindy stood behind Danny, wearing dark sunglasses to hide her eyes. One hand rested on Danny’s shoulder and one on Pepper’s. Ella sat under Danny’s arm on his right and wailed as the preacher conducted the service.

As the simple, wooden coffin lowered into the ground, Danny stood. He laid a single brown-eyed Susan on the lid and rested his hand on top for a moment. He turned away as he broke down in tears. Pepper ducked under one of his arms, and Ella took the other. Together, they left the small plot with Cindy trailing along after them.

“
I—I saw—s-saw them
coming
!” Ella managed in between her sobs. She'd cried so much she was starting to hyperventilate. “I sd-should—should have
done
something!”

Danny crushed the girl against his side, throat constricting.

“
What could you do?” he choked out. “We knew them. We didn’t expect this.”

“
I could tell something was going on,” Cindy said. “I saw their heat exchange. I knew Rick didn’t like you. I could have stopped him.”

“
It happened too fast,” Danny whispered, eyes squeezed shut. "We did what we could.”

They walked back to the truck. The Mennonite church held a wake, but Danny didn’t remember much of it. He stood staring down at the tile floor. The girls left from time to time and came back; he didn’t think he went anywhere. Someone brought Rachel and Mikey to him. They both needed to be fed. They wanted their mother. As he cradled his daughter in his arms, Danny felt like screaming. She looked so much like her mother: Jenny's dark hair, Jenny's almond eyes. The pain was too raw for this reflection of his wife to offer much comfort.

The trial went quickly, with little need to present evidence. Those who witnessed the attack were sure of what they'd seen. Hank confessed he got involved with Mueller because he was tired of playing second string. He didn’t like having his ideas constantly questioned, then bypassed. He liked the idea of changing things up around town because he thought the wrong people were in power.

Then there was Judith, of whom Cindy'd taken a few bites. She claimed she was tired of living like some ragged Appalachian hillbilly. She'd left her home on the Gold Coast of Lake Michigan, and she wasn't happy living in a slum. This from the woman who'd laid claim to the finest house in the secured area of Princeton.

Three days after the killing, Judith was escorted to the pit where the people of Snareville had tossed the corpses of Mueller and his conspirators. The traitors went into the same pit as the dead Zeds. Judith walked with her arms tied in front of her, and she berated her captors the entire way. Some of the new Princeton people stood back and watched, including her husband.

“
You hicks cut me loose!” Judith screamed as Kenny stood her in front of the pit. Seven Raiders stood twenty yards away, rifles held at rest. “You can’t do this to me! I have five million dollars in the bank! You hillbillies don’t even know what you’re doing!”

Her eyes searched the crowd and seized her husband.

“
William, you’re a lawyer! You tell them they can't do this to me!"

“
You’ve always been a spoiled, self-centered bitch, Judith. Goodbye.” He turned and made his way from the crowd. A girl in her twenties, obviously pregnant, followed.

Judith hurled a string of oaths after them, paused for a moment, then vomited a river of blood onto the ground.

“
Oh, my God," she whispered.

“
Ready!” Kenny barked at the firing squad.

The group jerked to attention.

“
Aim!”

The rifles snapped up. Danny stood in the center of the line. His front sight settled on Judith’s forehead. He took the slack out of the trigger. Pepper stood poised to his right. She'd traded her MP5 for Jenny’s M4 rifle.

Judith looked up from the puddle of blood, eyes wide.

“
Fire!” Kenny shouted.

Together, seven rifle reports crashed the silence of the morning. Bullets slammed into Judith’s face and blew her brains into the pit. She toppled backward and landed on top of Mueller's twisted body. Troops poured lye over the corpses, and the crowd dispersed.

They drove Hank to the old trestle bridge across the canal. They walked him to the middle and tossed a rope over the highest beam. Hands tied behind him, he climbed a step ladder to stand on the rail. Around his neck, he wore a sign.
Convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason. Penalty: death.

He stood alone on the rail as Kenny took the ladder away.

“
Any last words?” Kenny asked.

“
Fuck you,” Hank said.

Jinks swung a baseball bat at his shins. Hank grunted as his feet left the rail. A five-foot drop. The crowd heard the pop as his neck broke. His feet danced on air for a few seconds, then stilled.

Slowly, the group turned and went home. Hank’s corpse could stay there until it rotted and fell into the canal. The catfish and turtles would do the rest.

Danny found his way home with Pepper and Ella. They pulled the shades in the bedroom. Together, they curled into bed. Danny held Pepper, and Pepper held Ella. Downstairs, Cindy talked with Heather, Sandy, and Bill. They took condolences from those who stopped by and stood guard to let the others be. As the sun slipped behind the hills, they locked down for the night, but there was little sleep to be had in Danny's house.

Jenny’s dead. I can still feel her hand on my face. I close my eyes, and I see her. Smiles in the garden. Eight months pregnant with Rachel, fighting her way out of her recliner. Standing beside me with Pepper as the three of us wed. Good visions. Then the movie reel changes in my head, and I see her ex-husband’s bullets tearing through her body. I see her fall. I watch myself place the flower on the lid of her coffin.

I woke. I still had my right arm around Pepper. She had her arm around Ella. Our oldest daughter, as we’d come to call the girl.

I didn’t know what time it was, but I was wide awake, so I figured I might as well get up. I eased out of bed, careful not to disturb anyone. It was September, I think. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I shined a flashlight on my watch. It told me it was two in the morning. I scrounged up some socks, slid them on my feet, and tiptoed from the room.

I kissed both babies on their soft, little foreheads, then made my way down the stairs. In the kitchen, I shoved my feet into a pair of boots and unlocked the door. I grabbed a shotgun off the rack and stepped outside. The crisp, fall air filled my lungs. It did nothing to clear my head. A full moon hung just off the horizon. Its clean, silver light filled our little valley. Nothing stirred until George wandered out with me, looking at me like I’d lost my mind. He might have been right. I scratched him behind the ears before he ambled off the porch to take a leak on the grass, then sat down and leaned against a pillar on the porch.

“
Hi,” a girl’s voice said from the darkened house.

I turned as Cindy stepped outside. “Hi.”

She settled against the pillar next to mine. “Can’t sleep?”

George climbed back on the porch and dropped his head in her lap.

“
No. I don’t sleep much these days.”

“
Me neither. It’s only been two weeks.”

“
I know. And it’s not like I haven’t lost others. I shot my own sister last winter.”

“
I heard. I’m sorry. It’s a lot to deal with.” She paused for a moment as she scratched George on his belly. In the moonlight, she didn’t look sick, until she turned her eyes to me and they glowed blue in the darkness. She'd told me that weird film over her eyes allowed her to see body heat. That’s how Zeds found us a lot of the time. They see thermal.