Moriah (12 page)

Had they followed him?

“Bruce?”

The animals and insects in the trees were silent in the early evening. Fred felt like eyes were upon him. He looked down at the bible in his hand, at the cat under his arm, and he breathed in.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
…He banished the thought from his head.

Fred continued along the way he’d been going. He thought about running. He was old, but maybe, if he had to, he could sprint a short distance. He decided not to. Something in these woods might be watching him, but Fred knew something more powerful than anything he might encounter on this earth had charted his path and was guiding him now. The thought gave him some comfort.

“John,” Fred said, thinking of his dead son.

A club or something—Fred only caught a glance of it—came flying out of the air and cracked him in the leg, crippling the limb. He flopped down face first, dropping his bible and cat.

His eyes squeezed shut…the pain in his leg. As he lay there grimacing, Fred was vaguely aware of shadows detaching themselves from the trees about him, forms that moved in to surround him.

When he looked up, he was almost taken aback by the collection of visages gathered around. They were like creatures from some other planet, vaguely human, yet terribly deformed. Bodies outsized and misproportioned, hunchbacked and dysmorphic. Flesh marred with welts and scaly crusts. One with its head at a ninety degree angle to its upper torso.

All God’s children
, he hastened to remind himself.
All God’s children
.

“I was wondering when you’d show yourselves.” Fred pushed up onto his palms and one good foot, taking up his bible, leaving the cat stiff legged on its back where it was. They watched him as he struggled and finally managed to rise unsteadily, keeping the weight off his damaged leg.

“That…” Fred grimaced in pain and indicated his crippled leg. “That was unnecessary.”

These were unlike any beings he had ever seen. They towered over him, gargantuan and odiferous. Their eyes shone with malicious intent. It was true, Fred realized, that old saying that the Lord spoke in mysterious ways. But his god had spoken to him—with Riley’s appearance, with news of Mickey and the picture of Harris—and Fred had understood. His god was speaking to him now.

Fred Turner smiled at the fiends, his face mirroring the succor he found in his conviction.

“What are you smiling about?” one of them asked, its voice heavily impeded because its mouth was bent and twisted, teeth growing out of its gums in a seemingly random pattern, its lips curled up into a permanent snarl.

Fred merely nodded at it. He was convinced this would all be over soon.

“Who are you, mister?” The man who asked was the only conventional-looking one among the bunch. He was an older man, like Fred, and Fred assumed he was the patriarch of this tribe.

“I was a father…” Fred looked from disfigured face to disfigured face. “…who thought he had lost a son. But now, I’m a son, who realized he’s found his father.”

“Is that it?”

Fred glanced down at the cat. “Just don’t hurt the cat, please?”

“We won’t,” Cosmo vowed. “Bothar.”

A grunt, a swing and a body on the ground. Bothar lowered his club, Fred Turner’s blood dripping from the rusty, bent nails studding it.

“There’s more of ‘em up that way.” Cosmo indicated Fred’s path. “We gotta get goin’. Your brothers are gonna start the fires soon.”

One of his boys held the cat up. “Can I fuck it, paw?”

“No, Titus. You heard what I told that man. Give it here,” Cosmo snatched the stuffed animal from his son’s massive hand.

“Ain’t no pictures in this book, dad.” Having set the Hawk MM1 grenade launcher on the ground, Mergatroid was leafing through Fred’s bible. “Cans I keep it?”

“Nah. Give me that. I gotta take me a shit.”

* * *

Tommy was dreaming. He was a kid again. The smoke from the fire where his mother was cooking a hog wafted through the cabin. His father was outdoors chopping wood and Merv was playing with his homemade toys on the floor.

“Tommy, get up.”

“No, mah…” he protested groggily, until Little Red shook him violently.

“Wake up, Tommy—
Now
!”

“What? What’s going on?” He sat up among the trees. Red had come back to them in the middle of the night, minus Rodriguez. Rodriguez. He’d drawn on her and she’d taken him out. That was Red’s story and Tommy believed it.

He’d dreamed of smoke, and now, awake, he could still smell it. “What’s that?” he scrunched up his nose.

Red answered matter-of-factly. “They’re burning the forest.”

Around them the others were packing up, strapping on their weapons and packs, making ready to decamp. It was nearly dawn.

“They’re burning the forest?” he asked incredulously.

“They want to drive us out of the trees.”

“Shit.” Tommy stood and looked over to their captive, Victor, who sat quietly. The guy probably thought they were going to kill him now. And maybe they should, Tommy thought. Gammon, Frankie and Toby hadn’t come back. He didn’t kid himself about what that meant. They wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be taken alive. “Don’t you go getting any ideas,” he said to the man in the bandana.

Keith and David had struck off into the trees.

“Hurry up, Tommy,” Red called, slinging her Noveske Diplomat over her shoulder. “Chang. Grab him.”

“I got one functional arm here!” Chang protested but walked over to their captive.

Victor thought Red looked agitated and, more so, worried. When she’d come back, her hand had been tied up with a strip of cloth. Victor had heard her tell her friends she’d cut herself fighting the Rodriguez guy. She hadn’t let anyone look at her hand and Victor wondered if something more wasn’t going on there.

“Get up.” Chang reached down, a knife in the hand of his unbroken arm, cutting the ropes binding Victor’s legs. “On your feet. Time to walk again.”

* * *

Dawn had broken a half hour past.

Riley waited in the clearing, watching the smoke rise from the trees on three sides of the meadow. That worried her for a number of reasons. One, none of those with her had set it; neither did it make sense that the people holding Victor would burn their own cover. So, she wondered, if not us or them, then who?

Secondly, Riley reasoned, the fire would drive whatever zombies remained in these hills and mountains down into the clearing…where she was. And hadn’t Dee said these hills were full of the undead?

She sat against the bomb and waited. Its casing was cold and slick with morning dew. One of the men who pursued her had wired it, and the detonator rested on her leg. She didn’t know why they had primed it to explode, nor could she understand why they hadn’t detonated it already. All she would need to do, she’d been told, was push the red button on it and
boom
. Dee said it was a two thousand pound bomb, enough to destroy everything in this clearing and leave a crater a meter or more deep in this spot where she sat.

Riley did not like this situation. She hadn’t liked how Tris had taken out Gammon either, propelling her across the field with the sickle duct taped to her back. Gammon just waiting there, thinking they were going to talk, Tris planning to kill him the whole time. Not that she wanted Gammon to live, but she’d had some questions for him first. Questions she hadn’t been able to ask.

She sat there and felt uncomfortable, because she was the vulnerable one again. There was a good chance they would see her and just shoot her.

Thick plumes of black smoke were roiling off the mountainsides. Whoever had set that fire was going to burn the whole forest down.

She didn’t want to die here. Riley looked down at the riot shield resting in the knee-high grass. She looked down to her other side, at the CETME rifle. She wanted to kill that guy, Tommy, the son of that old man. The redhead, too. Riley wanted to end this family tree right here and now.

They’d be coming soon, she thought. She picked up the detonator and held it where anyone in the trees could see her holding it. She wouldn’t get a chance to kill Tommy if one of the men and or the woman with him killed her first. It was personal for Riley. And she knew it was personal for them too, which made her doubt any of them would want to snipe her from the trees. Little Red especially would want to get in close, the way she’d been coming for her on the rocks above the river, the better to see the look on Riley’s face.

Riley couldn’t wait to see the look on
her
face.

“She’s alone,” reported Chang.

“She ain’t alone.” David was still wearing Victor’s safety helmet.

“Don’t see no one else.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s alone.”

They crouched in the trees, looking out into the field where Riley sat a few hundred yards away, the river beyond her. Keith had the barrel of his pistol pressed to Victor’s head. “Don’t even think of saying anything,” he whispered to the captive.

“You think it’s a trap?” Tommy asked.

“Sure it’s a trap,” answered Little Red.

“She’s sitting on that bomb,” observed David. He had to smile at how crazy that was. “Maybe we shouldn’t have left it wired.”

“She wants to lure us out of these trees,” surmised Chang. “That’s why they set this fire.”

Smoke was rising above the treetops around them.

“She didn’t set this fire.” Little Red shook her head. “People with her didn’t set this fire.”

Tommy looked at Red. “Then who did?”

“She wants to lure us out of these trees,” Chang repeated.

“Of course she does,” Red ignored Tommy. “It’s a trap.”

“She’s gonna get us all out there in the open,” said Chang, “and then she’s going to detonate that bomb and kill all of us.”

“No, she won’t.”

“How do you know, Red?” Tommy asked.

“Because she doesn’t want to die.”

“See?” David remonstrated with Chang. “You overthink shit.”

Tommy did not take his eyes off Red. “And what makes you say that?”

Little Red ignored him again.

“I can take her from here.” David sighted down the barrel of his rifle.

“Don’t you dare.” Tommy turned his attention to the helmeted man. “She’s mine.”

“Come on, let’s think here,” Chang pled. “We
know
we’re walking into a trap, right? We’re giving them
exactly
what they want.”

“You got any other ideas?” asked Keith.

“Yeah, let David make the shot. Nail that little bitch. If she blows herself up, so what? All we lose is a bunch of grass. Then we wait for her friends to show themselves and we knock them off too.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Red. “Except in about five minutes this place is going to be swarming with zombies.”

White smoke billowed out of the forest, filling the air.

“Sounds like a plan,” echoed Tommy. “Except she’s
mine
.”

“Come on.” Little Red rose.

“What?”

“Let’s go. Give me him.” Red walked over to Keith and grabbed Victor by the arm. She looked him in the eye. “Listen to me good. I don’t give two shits about you, right? So whether you live or die—it’s all the same to me. You understand what that means?” Victor nodded. “You do what I say and maybe you’ll live.”

“You want to go out there?” David really looked like he’d rather take the shot.

“We’ve got to get out of these trees.” Chang had changed his tune. “Zombies are coming.”

“He’s right,” affirmed Keith.

“Okay, well then—”

“Shit, Red!” Tommy spat because Little Red had already left the cover of the trees, her bandaged hand around Victor’s arm, walking towards the woman on the bomb.

“The shooting starts,” she promised Victor, “and the first thing you’re going to feel is my steel.”

“What do we do, Tommy?” asked David.

“Let’s go. Spread out.”

* * *

“You know what this is?” Riley called out when Little Red and Victor were within earshot. She raised the detonator higher than she’d had it before, made sure they could see it.

Riley wondered what she would do if the woman pulled a Tris and didn’t stop walking. Little Red had a pistol with a wooden stock in the hand that wasn’t propelling Victor forward, but the barrel was aimed at the ground. She also had her assault rifle and all sorts of sharp edges strapped tight to her body.

Riley knew she wasn’t alone. She knew Bruce was on the ridge behind her, across the river, sighting through the scope of his M24 or one of the M40s they’d taken off the dead men. She hoped he was centering the redhead’s forehead, under the chopsticks. Riley knew where the others were too, but she dared not look less she unwittingly reveal their positions.

Still, she fretted. She wanted the guy, Tommy. Not this little red-haired psycho. The girl, however, seemed fixated on her.