Selah rushed to Gordon's side. The sound of the fight continued from just beyond the edge of her peripheral vision. He was on all fours, teeth gritted, trying to rise to his feet. Wanting to help, to talk to him, Selah forced herself instead to search his belt, his pockets for a weapon, a gun. Hadn't he had a gun before? Nothing. He grunted out a question, but she didn't listen. Instead, she rose to her feet, feeling impotent, useless.
Lee lay on his back. He'd been knocked onto the road and was struggling to gather his wits, shaking his head slowly as he forced himself up onto his elbows. Theo was reeling past him toward her. He was in horrific condition. His left foot was dragging sideways across the asphalt and his right shoulder was a good inch and a half lower than his left. His ribs looked stoved in and his face was gruesomely flayed and savaged. Both hands were mangled and yet, still he came on, lips pulled back from his fangs, fighting through his agony to reach her.
No time left to think, Selah ran to where Lee's pistol lay on the road, gleaming mercurially in the moonlight. She snatched it up and aimed it at Theo. He kept coming. She hesitated and then pressed the gun's muzzle to her temple.
Theo paused.
"There's one bullet left," said Selah. "I'll kill myself before I let you eat my heart. And something tells me you want me alive." She fought to keep her voice steady. "You're too slow to get to me in time. Too slow. I'll be dead. My heart will have stopped. Everything will be ruined." Theo stood still, shivering. Not with cold. With hunger. But he was too badly hurt.
Carefully, she steadied the gun. "I don't want to die. Not yet. So I'll give you this chance. Run, heal, and then find me when I'm not ready for you. Take my heart while it still beats. But not now, not tonight." She wished there was a way to cock the hammer, but the revolver didn't have one. "Go."
With a grunt, Gordon rose to his feet. It took him a moment to orient himself, but then he swung around to face Theo. Behind the vampire, Selah heard the low growl of Jojo coming from the bushes. Lee spat, rolled onto his side, and began to rise as well.
Theo pulled back, and for a moment, it looked like he would fall. Then he staggered forward, passing three yards to her left, and almost fell into the darkness beyond the road, past the bushes and into the trees that rapidly dropped away down the steep slope to the small valley below.
Selah watched for ten seconds, counting slowly, expecting at any time for the vampire to emerge once more, miraculously healed, but he didn't. A hand touched her shoulder and she jumped and spun around, but Lee caught the pistol by the barrel. She let out a cry of relief and sagged, all the tension and energy draining from her.
Lee turned to the others. "Gordon. You all right?"
"Fine." The other man was breathing in tight, pained wheezes. He hobbled past them and painfully lowered himself next to McKnight. "She's out cold. Pulse okay."
Lee went over to Dominique, and as he crouched down next to her, hissing in pain, a low growl emerged from the bushes beyond the road's edge. He paused, straightened. Selah forced herself up, and together they crossed the road and looked at the flattened area between the bushes were Jojo lay.
He was near death. He should have been dead. His gray fur was matted with blood. Both arms looked broken and his skull was distended and pulpy looking. His small black eyes gleamed up at them, clouded with pain, and his head lolled to one side. With effort, he turned it back and stared at them.
Selah gripped Lee's sleeve. "We can't leave him like this."
"No." Lee studied the fallen chimp. "We can't." He raised his gun. Jojo looked up and his lips peeled back in one final snarl, but Lee's hand was shaking too hard. He gritted his teeth with frustration, but finally dropped his hand. He was trembling all over now and sweat was beading across his skin.
"What's wrong?" asked Selah.
"Serum. Overdose. Working its way through my system. Here." He held the gun out to her and staggered back a step. Breathing in sharp, rapid pants, he placed both hands on his knees and let his head hang.
Selah took the gun. Raised it. Jojo ceased growling and a calm seemed to descend upon him. He simply lay there, looking up at her, eyes saturated with pain and loss. Selah gripped the gun with both hands. She couldn't afford to miss. One bullet. She wanted to close her eyes, fire the shot without looking, but she forced herself to meet Jojo's gaze. Even as she felt a sob well up within her, she pulled the trigger. The gun bucked and she turned away, a spasm of remorse shaking her. Closing her eyes, she gritted her teeth, hating the world, hating herself. She turned and forced herself to stare down at Jojo's body. She felt numb, sick to her stomach. That gleam in his eyes. He looked strangely small now without his fierce vitality and she felt compelled to say something, but nothing suitable came to mind. She thought of the Congo, of his adoptive parents, of the years he had spent trapped in an iron cage, alone and scared. She fought down her sorrow and whispered, "Thank you."
Chapter 16
They hit McCance four hours later. The road leveled out and the mountains pulled back as if grown diffident in the early dawn light. Several times, the approaching roar of engines and intimations of headlights had caused them to stumble off the road into the bushes, where they lay low, watching with slitted eyes as Humvees or civilian cars roared past. Traffic was sparse though. A concerted effort to find them had not been launched.
McCance was a small town. When the road crested the last ridge, they had a good view of its few intersecting streets before they descended to its level and approached. They walked like an errant pack of zombies, stumbling and leaning on each other, eyes bleary with exhaustion and pain. McKnight and Dominique had come to about a half hour after Theo had fled and they each insisted on walking, though they staggered as if on severed stumps and not feet. The sky gradually lightened, and with it their hope of surviving the interminable night grew, until, shivering and numb, they reached the outskirts of town.
Selah stared down the street past the gas station and a lone Starbucks. Single-story buildings lined both sides of the street as it extended into the heart of the town, but there was no movement, no lights, no sign of life. Silence. Somewhere, crows were croaking, their caws surreal and echoing in the frozen dawn air.
Some instinct held them still. Made them wait, hold back. Listen. Nothing--no sound of car engines or distant industry. Even the Starbucks was dark, its front door yawning wide open.
"Looks deserted," said Gordon. Selah nodded. McCance exuded a stillness and silence that spoke of abandonment. A ghost town.
"I'd heard people had been leaving these last few weeks," said Dominique from the back. Nobody had told her yet about Jojo. "Not enough security."
"Looks like they done left," said Gordon. He placed his hands on his hips and leaned back, grimacing as his spine popped. He lifted his bum leg tentatively, winced, and set it down.
"Let's find shelter," said Lee. "Maybe there are still people in the town center."
They moved forward. The road underfoot was old enough to have degenerated into islands of asphalt separated by gravel. It crunched as they stepped on it. Selah turned and looked back, past McKnight who walked with her head down, driven by sheer bloody determination, and at the heavy mountain slopes thick with pine trees and darkness. The last six hours were an extended and blurred nightmare. The hours spent walking had seemed to last forever, but now it was all receding into a haze of fatigue.
The Starbucks was abandoned, as was the gas station. Lee and Selah entered the small food mart behind the pumps and salvaged a number of PowerBars and sports drinks. They came back out and handed them around. Everybody stood chewing and drinking in silence, eyeing the streets and wilderness behind them, unable to completely relax. Nobody sat down.
Selah finished her second PowerBar and shoved the wrapper in her pocket with the first. Holding her half empty bottle, she took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders painfully, and started walking. The others watched and then one by one fell in. Down the street, past empty cars. A diner. A CVS. An auto shop. A handful of residences, and then they hit their first intersection. Selah hugged herself as she looked both ways, searching for a sign of life. Nothing. She pressed on across the street and further into the heart of town.
There were a couple of restaurants on this block, a boutique, arts and craft store. Coffee shops. Another gas station, a McDonalds. Town library on the next corner, facing a strip mall. All dark, all still. The morning light was delicate, crystalline, and the shadows were slowly lightening as if the darkness were evaporating puddles.
One more block and they hit the town square. A church, an old three-story hotel called the Pine Rest Inn, a small city hall, and a garishly ornate Chinese restaurant. There were lights on in the hotel, and from where Selah stood, she could make out a couple of figures with rifles on the hotel's rooftop. They had been spotted. A man stared at them through a pair of binoculars. Selah raised her hand and waved. The two men conferred and one of them waved back.
"Looks like we found somebody," she said, turning to the others. "Ready to go and act friendly?"
"What about our eyes?" Lee gazed skeptically at the hotel. "They won't take kindly to their being black, now will they?"
"Hold on," said Selah. She took off jogging, forcing herself to run despite the pain in her feet and her hips. Back down the street and into the strip mall. There were only six stores, but she had spotted one called Ernie's Wilderness Gear. She tried the front door. It opened and she breathed a sigh of relief. Silence. Soft shadows of a different nature than those outside. Aisles extending into darkness, a counter up front with a column of sunglasses. Selah glanced into the depths of the shop, resisted the urge to grab jackets and scarves, and instead snatched up two different sets of shades and left.
The others were waiting for her, too exhausted to do more than stand morosely and stare at the hotel. She handed Gordon one set, and Lee a pair of bronze rimmed Aviators. They tore off the tags with clumsy fingers and slipped them on.
"All right," said Selah, looking at Dominique who had her eyes closed and was swaying. "Come on." She wrapped her arm around Dominique's waist and led her across the street.
The hotel was an old building with ornate window frames and a heavy front door. The windows on all three stories had been boarded up. The men up on the roof watched her approach with rifles by their sides.
One of them, a bearded man with a baseball cap and a heavy red fleece, looked down at her and called out, "Where you coming in from?"
"The army base," called back Selah, stopping and craning her head back.
"It been overrun?"
"No. We just got out and left. It's been a long night and we're hurt pretty bad. Can we come in?"
"Sure. Sun's coming up. We're in the clear now." He raised an old-fashioned walkie and spoke into it. The front door cracked open and two people stepped out, glancing around cautiously like foxes emerging from their den. Selah hobbled over and they reached out to help with Dominique. One was a woman in her late thirties, her caramel-colored hair shoulder length, face broad and strong, while the other was a man in his early forties, hair already mostly iron-gray, face smooth, and eyes like two metallic ball bearings.
"Here, you're all right, you're all right," said the woman as Dominique stumbled.
"Any of you really hurt? Need a doctor?" The man spoke with a strong Irish accent, and it took Selah a moment to process his words.
"No. I mean, we're pretty banged up. But no, like, wounds or anything. I don't think." She looked back at the other three who came in behind. The Irish man scanned their group and stepped aside.
"Come on then, get inside. No sense in standing out here. We can make introductions where it's warm."
They filed into the lobby. It was warm, deliciously warm. Somewhere, food was cooking, the smell of bread and maybe soup, hearty and delicious. Selah's mouth flooded with saliva. They all shuffled in and the woman helped Dominique to a seat. The Irish man closed the door and a handful of other people came forward. The lobby was of good size, but even so it was hard to see everybody.
"All right, don't crowd them, give them room." A powerful woman in her sixties came forward, her gray hair pulled back in a bun, her face craggy and strong featured. "My name's Helen." She scanned their faces and settled on Gordon. "Are any of you seriously hurt?"
"She said not," said the Irish man.
"No, ma'am, " said Gordon. He raised a hand as if to remove his shades, then dropped it. "Just cold, sore, and in need of rest."
"You come down from the mountains?" Helen looked sharply from one of them to the other. McKnight was still in her army fatigues, and both Lee and Gordon gave off a subtle military vibe. "Never mind. Fenton, help the men to empty rooms. Susan, Jane, help me get these ladies to rooms of their own. First, they need hot baths, then some food, then sleep. We can talk later."
Selah felt a wave of relief flood over her. She didn't feel up to introductions, explanations, interrogations. People stirred, voices murmuring about them as the Irish man – Fenton – led Gordon and Lee out of the lobby. Helen stepped up to Dominique and crouched before her with surprising agility, and placed both hands on her thighs. "Look at me," she said, her voice gentle. Dominique raised her face. Helen touched her chin, wide lips pursed, and shook her head. "Concussion, maybe. Exhaustion and cold, most likely. Come on. There's no doctor in town, but we'll do what we can." She pushed herself to her feet, and Susan, the lady who had met them at the door, helped Dominique rise.
Helen moved to McKnight, who stood with clenched jaw and was blinking back exhaustion, swaying subtly in place. The older woman examined the Sergeant's face, the rash of mottled bruises and bloodshot left eye where Theo had struck her, and simply nodded. "Come on, then."
They made their way through the lobby, into a large reception hall, and then up a flight of stairs covered in thread-worn red carpeting. Down a narrow hall that smelled of dust and old leather, and to the first door on the right. The room was large, two king-sized beds set against one wall, with two large windows to their side, both of which were heavily boarded up so that only faint chinks of light entered. Helen took control. She and Susan undressed Dominique, who kept fading in and out of consciousness, and after discussing the situation, simply tucked her into bed. The third woman--Jane, a slender girl in her late teens with multiple piercings in her nose and eyebrow--went into the bathroom and began to run a hot shower.