The Survivors: Book One (21 page)

Warren scowled at the confirmation of their relationship, raising his gun as he moved out of the dark corner where he had been lurking. His daughter and his leadership were long gone because of the Witch, but maybe he had another chance at her. If he could just wound her lover!

Warren's face was alive with hatred. “Will she come back for you?"

Brady’s stormy eyes darkened. “She’s not the one you should worry about."

They moved at the same time, but only one shot lit up the darkness as the Colt barked loudly in a flash of justice and death.

Warren’s weapon dropped to the carpeted floor, blood blooming on his chest. A second later, the broken preacher dropped to his knees, eyes almost relieved as scarlet ran in small streams from one corner of his mouth.

Marc stared down at the shuddering man death was fast approaching. When Warren’s mouth opened, but no sound came out, he seemed to understand anyway.

“She’s not here to serve any man. She’s special.”

“A Demon!” Warren choked out.

Marc’s eyes went colder, but he only frowned, watching the man take his last breath while either thunder or gunfire cracked violently in the distance.

“Look at yourself. You have no right to judge.”

2

After pulling Warren’s cooling corpse out into the wet, morning light and around the corner of the building, Marc put the letters back together on the glass door where he was sure they had originally been, and left yet another ghost to haunt the world.

Brady returned to his warm vehicle, giving the anxious wolf a quick rub of comfort as he turned on the wipers to clear the heavy layer of rain now thumping down on them. He wiped the stinking liquid from his hands and face as he drove away, then lit a smoke and tried to relax.

Concentrating the way she had taught him so long ago, Marc called out as the riot-ravaged streets of Cincinnati began to roll by. He had to know she was okay. “Angie!"

He hit the brakes as a child’s weather-faded ball rolled across the street, its color that of the dirty pavement he was driving on, and slowly rolled on as the wet wind gusted against the muddy 4x4.

"Angie!"

“I’m here, Brady." Her tone was cool, unreadable.

“Where? I just left Queen City hill."

Angela hesitated, knowing by his tone that he had read the letter that was meant for their son. How long had he known where she lived?

“About ten miles north of Greensburg, Indiana," she sent as she got up and started packing her small camp neatly back into the Blazer, trying not to let her teeth chatter in the early morning chill.

If he was in Cincinnati now, then he was still a week behind her and Angela wanted to keep that space for a bit longer. She had to be able to look back after this was all over and know
she
had gotten the journey started. She also had no idea how to ask him for what she needed yet, hadn’t worked out the words in her head.

“I understand why you didn’t tell me, but I wish you had. I’m thrilled. I never thought to have a child."

His words made her heart pound. Hadn’t she longed to hear that so many times? Nevertheless, she ignored it as she pulled thick gloves on to muffle the bite in the air.

Moving quicker, she sent a clear warning, “He’s mine. Parentage doesn’t matter."

Brady didn’t respond, though he wanted to. If she sensed the things floating through his mind, she would disappear. The idea hit him again and he felt himself grinning. He had a son! It was a reason to have hope, a goal, and his heart was suddenly lighter than it had been since the War. He would now serve a child…and maybe his mother.

“I ran into a friend of yours here. Had some burns.”

Marc could feel her scowling at the words, aware of Dog watching with golden eyes.

“Warren. He’s dead?”

Now, Marc was the one frowning. Something else she should have mentioned…though, she hadn’t known he would go there. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry. Killing wasn’t what I wanted. I had hoped he was no longer a threat.”

“It was his choice.”

There was silence between them for a moment, broken by the drumming rain and the squeak of his wipers, but the connection, the bond between them, was strong. It allowed him to hear stray noises - a clink, a snap, a grunt of effort. She was breaking camp, didn’t want him around yet.

“Where are you holed up at?"

He could feel her wondering how he knew she wasn’t on the road, and though suspicion laced her answer, she didn’t ask. That meant she didn’t know how much he was picking up. Good. More time to recon, without being evaluated in return.

“I’m in a cornfield, off highway 3."

“You could probably stay there if you wanted, take a break for the holiday. It wouldn’t take me long to catch up," he sent the option carefully this time, knowing instinctively not to mention Valentine's Day by name.

“No."

He was glad when she didn’t sound mad, but he frowned at how set her tone was. “You okay?” he asked, still feeling that old need to protect her.

“I’m fine.”

“Okay…can’t wait to see you…."

The words were perfectly normal for the situation, but there was no mistaking his eagerness, and Marc felt another cold warning rush out to slap at him.

“Nothing’s changed for us, Brady. Don’t think it has."

“I don’t, but I had reasons, Angie."

“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Only my son does."

Marc wished he could see her eyes, so he would know if it was true.
He
couldn’t say that and mean it.

She let go of the connection and he didn’t bother saying anything else as he steered around bodies of people, dogs, and other corpses he couldn’t identify through the rain. She wasn’t ready to deal with him yet - probably hated him, despite what she had written to soothe her child. He would have to force himself to back off and let her have the lead when it came to settling the past. If he pushed, she would slip away, and if he wanted to see his child, he definitely needed her along.

 If? A big grin filled Marc’s face. There was no
if.
He would track her down if he had to, but as long as he made it clear that he wouldn’t interfere with her personally, things should be okay. She would have her missing child back, and he would only ask for time with the son he hadn’t known existed.

The Sergeant was a little surprised by how much he wanted the boy, by how much his heart liked it that their love had created a new life. He was grateful for this chance to be close to someone again. He ignored the heart quietly hoping to find peace at last, sure now that she still had no welcome for him. Not that it really mattered. Angie had called and he would go to her as fast as he could.

Chapter Twelve

February 11
^th
, 2013

Rawlings, Wyoming

1

“You don’t know who to call even if you fix it.”

Jonathan Harmon, M.D. flinched at the sound of his wife’s voice echoing loudly across the dim, carpetless living room. He put a hand to his chest, trying to get his breath back.

“Sorry.”

John smiled at her, thinking she had finally gained a little weight in the month they’d spent hiding in their home together. Anne was probably half of his 240 lbs, with hair still mostly brown instead of his salt and pepper. She looked good for 58. He hadn’t been as lucky.

“You did that a’purpose,” he accused with a grin in his voice.

Anne nodded, brown eyes twinkling above fine age lines, as she set the large afghan she was knitting on the recliner’s matching brown end table. “I had to. You look so sad.”

John turned back to the only window in their large, two-story farm house that they hadn’t covered in layers of thick plastic. Stalling, he took off his glasses and laid them on the cord he really didn’t know how to repair, aged blue eyes frowning at the Discovery Channel special going on in their muddy front yard.

Their neighbor’s dog had collapsed and died near the barn yesterday. The Collie’s beautiful coat was bloody from what was probably a gunshot, the carcass now a carpet of swarming, mutated ants, with bloated bodies twitching in effort and obvious communication as they struggled to move the food.

Backdropped by a view of the Rocky Mountains that was now hazy from the layer of grit in the darkening sky, the foraging ants were each the size of a quarter. The biggest he had seen around here yet, their bodies were constantly changing from all the radiation and chemicals they were ingesting from the carrion. All nests were getting regular doses of contaminated miracle-grow now and John hated to think about what it was doing to the snakes and spiders. Once Nature finished cleaning up, leaving only bones, these predators would move on to other food sources - like people - and though only time would tell, he was sure their bites would be poisonous.

The final waves of radiation sickness would be the next in a long line of dangerous viruses to mutate, but it would make smallpox and bird flu seem minor in comparison. The death toll from this man-made hell wouldn’t end for a century or more.

His eyes looked over rangeland covered in prairie grass that was permanently bent from the wind’s onslaught, fields ready for a planting season that would never come. Everything had changed. It had been 38 years since he and Anne were in the army, medics at the same MASH unit in Vietnam, but he had to remember what had kept him alive back then, so they could use it now.

“We need to pack up and go. The weather’s not as bad now that almost two months have passed. We’ve cleaned out the reserves we had.”

John didn’t look over, but was sure he had caught her off guard with his words. He didn’t know yet where they would end up, or if they would even be able to make the trip. It definitely wouldn’t be a blow off. He only knew that their hometown of Rawlins - the place they had both been born - was no longer safe, and even if it was, the temperatures were still falling, were below freezing right now. They couldn’t stay here much longer or they’d stay forever.

The lonely echo of his wife’s shoes on the bare wood floor as she moved toward him, had John wondering what it sounded like as it floated down to the dark, flooded tunnels of their barricaded basement. Was it a dinner bell to those open dark ways and everything that might now be calling that nasty area home? They heard noises sometimes, never sure if it was the moment they would have to defend themselves, but never went down there. They also didn’t remove the boards he had sealed it up with, only hammered the nails back in regularly, but they did occasionally tense and look that way, and he was glad she knew how to use both the shotgun and the rifle he kept by her chair. Not that a firearm would be very effective against sewer rats.

“But why should we, Johnnie? We get along here.”

“We’ve seen no signs of anyone coming to save us…and because of the basement.”

Scratch... sniff… sniff.

As if to prove his point, they heard the curious, hungry rodents clearly. The grates at the other end of their treeless grazing land kept out the bigger problems, but the rat populations had come in by the hundreds after the War and they’d had to seal off the unused parts of their home. The rodents were big, much too wide to get under the floors, but their pups wouldn’t be, and John expected to start seeing them in great numbers soon, considering they could have a litter a month.

“Where would we go? Other than those men with the guns, we ain’t seen a healthy person in nigh on two weeks.”

John forced his hand away from his aching stomach, eyes still on the yard. He wished that ugly green twilight sun would finish setting and hide the view so she wouldn’t see it and get upset.

“Johnnie?”

The thought of leaving their home hadn’t occurred to her, was terrifying, and though he felt it too, the fear wasn’t strong enough to get John to change his mind. She had to see things his way this time. Her life depended on it.

“To NORAD, for starters. We’ll surrender to the Draft.” The graying sawbones said it firmly, almost sure they would find little at the Colorado complex. That world had moved on.

“What if it’s all like here, or worse?”

She was referring to the dead pets, dead police, dead crops, and of course, dead friends and neighbors they had known all their lives. The horrors were still fresh for Anne, especially the memory of passing the neighbor's wrecked truck on the two-lane dirt road to their farm. Both doors were open, and they’d seen the bullet holes in the windshield as they returned from their burning office to avoid the panic gripping their town, their country. She had wanted to stop, but there hadn’t been a reason to. The elderly couple was dead, their brains all over the road.

“We’ll have to do some searching. Other healthy survivors are out there. I know it doesn’t seem that way when you look out the window, but there are. We just have to find them.” He winced at his reference to the window.

“But we’re old, they won’t want us. Shouldn’t we just stay here?”

It broke John’s heart to tell her no, but he did, had to. “That, my dear Anne, is exactly what most people will do, and they’ll die. What the weather and disease don’t take, the gangs and starvation will. All these threats are lessened when humanity comes together. Despite its flaws, humankind is not better off without society.”