Rise of the Huskers (The Raven Falconer Chronicles) (10 page)

A young, blond-haired boy called out, “I’ve got it . . . I’ve got it!”  He raced across the playground, his new ball glove outstretched and reaching to make the catch.  The coach had sharply hit the baseball off the bat’s sweet spot, sending it sailing skyward into a deep blue sky.  The hand-laced ball arced high over the diamond, hesitated for a split second at its azimuth before pitching downward, gravity accelerating its descent.  Eye-hand coordination was the key and it was something the gifted child had been blessed with.  The mad dash across the newly cut lawn was successful.  The velocity and mass of the spinning sphere jerked the mitt down as he continued to look skyward, miraculously making the catch.  The effort drew a loud
‘whoop’
from his friends, which suddenly ended when speed and momentum caught up to the fielder, sending him crashing into a high, chain link fence.  As if rehearsed, he turned his face flush to the obstacle, which gave slightly, before rebounding and launching him onto his back.  Dazed but knowing what was truly important, he lifted his glove to see the ball still tucked deep into the leather pocket, and he laughed.  The happy scene flashed from view, leaving the same boy standing quietly alone.  The friends were gone and his expression was no longer joyful.  Blood slowly dripped from four small lacerations cut roughly into his face, creating a diamond around his nose, which had slipped unscathed through a hole in the wired fencing.  Although no mirror was present, it appeared as if the child were glued to his own image, lost in his thoughts and unable to speak.

Nathan tossed and rolled on the king sized bed, the childhood memory surfacing as a dream, pleasant, and then menacing.  Suddenly the injured child began to c
ry, spilling tears like a waterfall, clear and cleansing but quickly changing to a torrent of red.  The facial lesions opened, exposing raw, meaty flesh below the surface of his face, adding to the cascade of blood.  The Husker fought to pull himself from the horrific nightmare but could not . . . not until the distressed young boy opened his mouth to scream, and the memory was gone.

Nathan Edwards opened his eyes but remembered nothing of the dream or his former life.  The images were swept away as quickly as they came, but only at night, when the deep recesses of his brain gave way to flashes of hidden secrets.  However, even these gems were less common now than they had been the week before.  As his midbrain worked to recover from the traumatic onslaught, more and more of the precious memories were moved to areas of the brain that no longer functioned, dropping them into an abyss of sensory nothingness.

A woman dozed quietly near the edge of the bed, a quilt pulled snuggly around her neck.  She shuddered; the temperature in the room having dropped significantly overnight, as the hotel’s backup generators ran out of fuel.  The half dozen gas-driven devices had kept the fans going and lights beaming much longer than the engineers had estimated, but none of them were still around to care.  Sunlight illuminated portions of the old hotel, but many areas were cast into near blackness.  Huskers tripped and fell over furniture and each other in an attempt to find warmth and light: both were difficult to acquire.

Sitting up with his back against an elaborate headboard, the leader surveyed his surroundings, turning his head to utilize the central, less affected portion of his vision.  Adjacent to the windows, a dark-haired boy slept with a smaller girl pulled close to his chest.  Nathan
recognized them as members of his pack, but then his attention was pulled to something that brought forth no immediate recognition, a head.  Not just a head, but the back of someone’s scalp, rolled at an impossible angle over the top of an elegant chair.  From his vantage point, Nathan could see arms hanging limply, nearly reaching the floor.  Cocking his head well to the right, he saw a pair of shoes resting on the floor, and legs extending from them.

The big man crawled from the bed a
nd edged closer to the armchair.  His stomach suddenly convulsed, sending a rush of acrid bile to the back of his throat.  He swallowed, and then spit a remnant of the nasty tasting liquid onto the floor.  The slumbering Huskers slept on, unaware that Nathan was awake and on the prowl.  Again he stepped, advancing on the stranger, but the mere motion of his foot touching the ground was enough to propel another, more forceful, surge of bile up his esophagus and out his nose and mouth.  The yellow discharge was heavily laced with a red swirl of plasma.  He grumbled, doubled over and emptied the contents of his stomach in four gut-wrenching spasms, spewing small bits of undigested meat over the bed and floor.

Moans, louder than they needed to be, ‘shook’ the room and woke the Husker children.  Wide-eyed and fearful, they watched Nathan storm the chair in the center of the room, swinging his axe wildly at the motionless form.  Connecting with the skull, the blade crushed bone and shifted the head’s location.  In that instant, a faint recoll
ection of yesterday’s meals was confirmed with the inspection of a badly mutilated corpse, stripped of its tender parts.  Thirty-six hours prior, the man, a Husker, had first been a victim of an armed assault and then the casualty of his own infirmities.

Nathan had returned after slaying the assailants to find the wounded Husker tied to the chair, a gift from a ‘grateful’ troop.  The leader and his closest allies had slowly consumed the martyr, while he yet lived, savoring both the cruelty of the task and the flavor of the juicy portions.  Wounded and dying,
the victim had lived long enough to see his intestines slowly pulled from his abdomen and sliced into sections with Nathan’s hatchet.  A lasting death had finally come but his revenge waited until today, as maggots crawled over his mangled remains and the cannibals vomited his putrid flesh.

The morning hours passed slowly, a malignant food poisoning turning the Huskers inside out.  A quick demise would have been gladly welcomed but by the time they heard a loudspeaker reverberating against the windows, the regurgitation had stopped and their strength was returning.  The confused dialogue pulled Nathan and a dozen other Huskers to the hotel’s win
dows, where they watched a squad car cruise down the lane in front of the lavish stone structure and pause in the rounded drive.  For a minute or two the unit remained stationary as a female voice rang out, calling upon Banff’s survivors to rally together at a local hotel.  The car’s proximity and request, falling on those who only managed to understand the odd word, stirred instincts and heightened desires.

Looking from the third floor, Nathan,
Shlomo and Elina watched a large, uniformed man open the driver’s door and step out.  A blue, baseball-styled hat covered his head and a mask shielded most of his face.  He leaned in through the rear door’s open window and retrieved an assault rifle, checking the chamber for a live round.  The officer skirted the front of the vehicle and walked towards the entrance until he disappeared from the observer’s view.  Seconds later the Husker leader responded to the thumping vibrations of people running and stepped into the hallway, snatching a scantily clad female and thrusting her into his room.  He continued with those he could snare, roughly communicating that he wanted them to remain while he sought the balance of their band.

On the ground a wary Nowicki held the carbine tight to his shoulder while he walked to the majestic entryway.  He swung the rifle right and left, keeping his shooting angles clear and peripheral awareness keen.  Behind him he could hear
Bobi’s steady voice reiterating the appeal, as he reconnoitered the city’s landmark hotel.  Husker signs were everywhere: rotting tissue and blood creating a path that a blind man could have followed.  Decay filled his nostrils and turned his stomach, slowing his progress but not halting him entirely.  Somewhat unhinged by the smells and lurid scene, an aspect of the officer’s psyche was screaming for him to return to the car and race away.  The military-trained portion of his subconscious nudged him along, bristling his senses and tightening his finger on the trigger.

He climbed the steps, trying without success to avoid the splotches of dried blood, some streaked, as if a body had been dragged over the jagged stairs.  Peering through the etched glass on the nearest door, he squinted, hoping to confirm his suspicions without having to actually enter the structure.  It was dark, not black, but certainly bleak enough to prevent an examination of the foyer’s interior.  Ziggy released the
forend of the rifle and reached for the door’s handle, stopping cold when his name was shrieked over the car’s speaker.  “Ziggy!”

He turned, a smug grin on his face, and lifted his hand, palm up while raising his eyebrows.  “What?” he mouthed, with only the faintest decibel leaving his lips.

“Let’s go.  I don’t have a good feeling about this place.  It stinks,” she blasted over the system.

Why didn’t I have Raven come with me
?
he thought, ignoring her pleadings.  His attention returned to the door and what possibly lay beyond.  Slowly he pried the door open, having to ply his weight against the cumbersome obstacle to gain entrance.  Once inside, he immediately had second thoughts.  Gloom and stench overpowered the officer, dropping him to a knee where his instincts whipped a flashlight from his belt and illuminated the vast, carpeted lobby.  Again, he heard the panicked cries from the cruiser, belting his name out in repeated calls to return and depart.  Distracted momentarily, the drumming of footfalls scrambling down stairwells and churning over aging floors, grimly reminded him where he was.  Obviously outnumbered and suspecting a tidal wave of Huskers headed his way, he fumbled at his waist for an equalizer.

As the grenade snapped free from the utility belt, a dozen men and women, plunged from an opening, not 50 meters away.  Throaty cries overshadowed the stink and filth as they charged forward, legs pumping and hands clawing the stagnant air.  A distinct
‘ting’
sounded, arming the concussion grenade an instant before he lobbed it, rolling into the clutch of Huskers.  The detonation was deafening: light, sound and an explosive shockwave tossed unwitting men and women into jumbled heaps.  Zygmunt swung to exit when the howling of three unfazed Huskers split the cloud of smoke.  They emerged at a full run, blitzing his position.  The Canadian Veteran twisted, assumed a firing position he’d done more times than he could remember, and squeezed the trigger, sending three-round bursts at the assailants.  One by one they staggered and fell, each a meter closer to their killer, the last spilling blood on Ziggy’s boots.

Seconds later he rushed from the lobby, being greeted with the hysterical outcries of his little friend.  Though rattled, he grinned when he climbed back into the driver’s seat, taking a thorough tongue lashing from Bobi, who continued to hold the
mic open, broadcasting the berating to the neighborhood.

“You bastard,” she yelled.  “You about gave me a heart attack back there.”  Her voice trembled as tires spun and squealed on the brick-lined drive, but he had no trouble hearing what she had said.

Ziggy fishtailed the cruiser away from the altercation, then righted the car’s course and looked at the rearview mirror.  A broad, lone figure, holding a small axe, was rapidly shrinking from view.  Nowicki slammed his foot down on the brake, broad-sliding the car to a stop and jumped out.  His 9mm flashed from the holster and swung up but the figure was gone.  He rushed forward to no avail.  The opportunity had vanished.

Sliding back behind the wheel, he gripped it firmly with both hands.  “Damn Bobi, I could’ve had him but that’s it,” he shouted.

“That’s what?”

“Their nest.  We could end this nightmare.  We could finish them – today!”

Twenty-four hours had passed since Eli’s epiphany, and fortitude had trumped agony in his bid to find Raven.  Beyond the ever-present, ruthless pain, Eli’s first realization of his surroundings was the smell: revolting and permeating, the noxious stink of death’s decay was intensely unique.  The crawl from bedroom to adjoining bathroom had exhausted his reserves and left him lying on the floor, curled up and crying.  Hours had passed, the time building a bit of strength, enough that he could stand.  Supporting his weight on an old ceramic sink, Eli scanned the tiny room with his right eye.  A silver rimmed mirror, cracked near the top edge, extended a few centimeters from a lime colored wall.  While still holding on, he reached to feel the circumference, jerking
, and then pulling the hidden medicine cabinet open.

Small bottles and white-capped, orange vials lined three glass shelves.  He squinted and rubbed moisture from his good eye. 
Where in the world are my glasses? 
Reaching for anything that might give him relief, he knocked a handful of plastic containers into the sink.  They spun and bounced, two finding their way to the floor.  Normally an expletive would have followed but he could not spare the energy.  Eli fumbled with a few of the larger bottles, lifting and reading them one at a time until he found what he was looking for . . . 325mg aspirin.

Gripping the clear plastic pill bottle, as he was able, he fought with the childproof cap
, the swollen joints hindering his progress.  “Argh, bloody . . . the one time I need . . . you rotten . . . ”  Suddenly the cap popped free and ricocheted off the rusted faucet.  “Finally,” he said, dumping a dozen of the caplets directly into his ‘cotton’ mouth, chewing them down. 
Chalky
.  He spun a handle, bringing the faucet to life, sputtering and belching out forced air and brownish sludge.  He stared at the display, having lived long enough to know what was going on and expecting the liquid to clear, but it never did.  “Well water,” he sighed, cupping his hand in the tainted wash, before lifting it to his lips.

Using the wall
, as he would have a drinking buddy leaving a pub, he scooted from the bathroom to the narrow hallway where the homeowner lay, rotting.  “Holy . . . ”  The actual taste of fetid atmosphere shut his mouth and made him sneeze, twice.  It always seemed to take two good sneezes, something he’d experienced from his youth.  Eli returned to the bedroom, shucked a pillow from its linen case and tied the fabric around his face.  It helped but did not solve the problem.  Compromised and weak, he managed to drag the corpse from the home, leaving it to further rot in a mud puddle.

In the kitchen
, Tommy Cat zigzagged between Falconer’s feet, purring loudly and rubbing his sides against the man’s legs.  The ailing father made the mistake of opening the refrigerator, liberating rancid odors.  Those, combined with the fester already present, created a truly, lethal funk.  He pressed on, scouring cupboards and pantry for anything that would dull the ache.  In the recess of a corner cabinet he struck gold . . . gold fish snack crackers, that is.  Sitting on the floor he greedily wolfed down the first cheese-flavored handful.  He shook the box, freeing another school of fish, two of which fell to the floor and were quickly snatched up by Tommy Cat.  Eli looked at the scroungy looking pet and considered rescuing the fallen morsels, but instead pulled the Tabby to his lap and stroked him behind the ears.

He’d survived.  By what means or miraculous biological or biochemical reaction he could not say, but he was glad to be alive.  He rested his head against the countertop’s edge, closed his eyes and savored the taste of the stale crackers.  The Tabby sat at attention, licking its chops in anticipation of another quick snack.

Noise . . . no, muffled lines being amplified over a speaker system wafted on the wind, quickening his breath and flushing his skin.  He strained, unconsciously cocking his head to better hear the oft-repeated message. 
Survivors . . . inn . . . gather. 
Somewhat confused but determined to appreciate the call in full, he slowly limped to the door and swung it wide.  The directive was much louder but receding as the speaker moved further down the street.  At last, Eli heard and comprehended the text.  However, the volume was all but gone before Raven’s father recognized her fading voice.

“Rave . . . Rave,” he cried, through swollen, sticky lips.  He pushed away from the door’s frame, lurching himself forward to find his little girl.  Legs and feet, not fully adapted to carrying a man’s weight, tangled with the faceless carcass.  He went down; spread-eagle over the cadaverous remains and into the mud.  This time he did not hold back the stream of vulgar profanity he’d learned as a child from his blue-collar father.  Once controlled, the newly acquired information brought a silly, tilted grin to his face.

She’s alive.

“Lilith . . . our Rave’s alive,” he said, scrambling to squirm free of the mud’s grasp.  Wobbly, but on his feet
, he returned to the kitchen, rifled through the drawers, coming up empty handed.  He tried to think where he’d put keys if this were his home.  Moving from one doorframe to the next, he stood at the openings, looking for likely resting places, and then it suddenly struck him . . . the body.  Eli frantically stumbled to the fallen homeowner and began the search, retrieving a set of truck keys in seconds.

Exhilarated by the prospect of being reunited with his daughter, he pushed through the snow to the cab of a red Ford F-150, where he inserted the key and cranked the motor.  Black smoke billowed from the single exhaust on the third
, labored attempt.  “Yes!” he said triumphantly.  He waited for the engine’s idle to smooth out before shifting into reverse and looking into the mirror.

“I can’t,” he said, defeat crushing his euphoria.

Thoughts, not welcome, but likely true, nearly stopped his heart.

I’m probably still infectious.