Wolfen (34 page)

 By three hundred thousand twenty-seven, boredom made
him lose count.

At five thousand two hundred and eight, the second time
through, a curious sound reached his ears. Small, light footsteps. He tilted
his head, listening to the soft, rapid heartbeat of a child approaching. What,
she hadn’t had enough the first time? He held still as those little feet came
closer and closer. She stopped in front of his cell.

Aiden readied his vocal cords for a nice, loud bellow, sure
to satisfy, and terrify.

But just as he prepared to let it loose, something slipped
through the gap under his door, and then the girl ran as if the hounds of hell
were nipping at her heels. A frown creasing his brow, Aiden felt along the
floor for the tribute. Couldn’t be what his nose was telling him. That made no
sense at all.

Apparently, however, sense was not something human children
subscribed to. The moment his fingers touched the offering and his brain
accepted what it was, Aiden decided that when the time came to start killing,
one little human girl might live to grow into adulthood. She’d earned her life
with the greatest act of kindness anyone not of his kind had ever shown him
before.

Aiden had said he was hungry.

So the little girl had brought him bread.

We are potentially less than two hours from our goal. Two
hours, and we’ll have the means for getting Aiden back—or so we hope. This
should be the time to put my game face on, buckle down and punch it all the
way.

I don’t.

I want to. I know I should. We couldn’t be in a better
position with bags full of tools and supplies for trading. We’ve got weapons,
we’ve got the mule; it’s a sweet setup.

But there’s this thing going ‘round and ‘round in my head
like an earworm I can’t shake.

The more you have, the more you have to lose.

And I’m not talking about rolls of duct tape.

~

They made pretty good time on the freeway, until a mile-long
crater forced them to detour.

“What happened here?” Sinna craned her neck to see the
graveyard of charred cars.

“Napalm bomb.” Bryce had seen it before. “Back when the
first converts showed up, people panicked, packed up their fancy soccer-mom
cars, and took the fastest way out of town; crashed, piled up, choked off an
escape route, and converts had themselves a feast. The president took advantage
of it and ordered a ‘tactical counteroffensive strike.’ ‘Cause why waste an
opportunity, right? Drop a half-ton of napalm in the middle of the biggest
jammed freeway, and you can take out an entire horde of converts. Who gives a
shit about casualties?”

Bryce steered the mule away from the zone of destruction
toward the much clearer smaller roadways—the safer route, even though their
path weaved and zigzagged, costing them some time.

At first, it was all bone-dry hills with a tree or two here
and there. Then a massive rusted tower appeared—the remains of a wind turbine.
A little farther on, farmland stretched for miles, abandoned fields overgrown
with grasses and weeds. They passed a copse of cherry trees and grape bushes,
but they were all dried out and barren. The strawberry field was somewhat
better, so Bryce stopped the truck and they got out to eat. They harvested a
handful each, happy to have found that much, and after a short break, they
returned to the mule to keep going.

At the very end of what seemed to be the beating heart of
Californian agriculture, Bryce saw something he never thought he’d see this far
south: a forest of evergreens with a faded, broken sign that read SANTA’S
CHRISTMAS TREE LOT. Almost involuntarily, he eased off the gas and coasted to a
stop.

It was too ridiculous to comprehend. Christmas. In the land
of endless, post-apocalyptic summer. The trees were carefully spaced to grow to
eight, maybe ten feet in height. But after decades of neglect, they’d grown to
twice that size and had turned into a real forest. It was a wall of dark green
on every side, but it would be clearer in the middle where sunlight couldn’t
reach. There was enough distance between the individual rows that passing through
them with the mule might be doable.

“We should stop here,” he said. If they managed to get the
truck inside, the forest would provide a snug little hiding spot. “We’ll leave
the mule, take what we need, and walk the rest of the way.”
The more you have,
the more you have to lose.
Bryce would not hand all of their supplies to
humans again.

Sinna didn’t say anything.

When he raised an eyebrow at her, she shrugged. “What? I
don’t know what to do in this situation. I mean, I can guess what you’re thinking,
and I don’t disagree, necessarily. But we don’t know how much farther this
place is—if it’s even there.”

She had a point. For all they knew, Klaus could have been
lying. Or he could have been mistaken. And even if his information had been
correct sixteen years ago, there was no guarantee it still held true to this
day. Too many unknowns to make any sort of educated guess.

“How about a compromise?”

Sinna gave him a guarded look. “What sort of compromise?”

“We take what we can carry and follow this road on foot. If
we don’t find anything by nightfall, I’ll double back to get the mule and we
keep driving.”

She chewed her lip, considering the choices. “The mule won’t
charge in the shade.”

“Nope. But we could cut a few branches to make a sun roof.”

“What if we run into trouble?”

“You’ll have your bow, I’ll have my swords, and we’ll know
exactly where to go for a getaway car.”

Sinna tapped her teeth together. “All right, I suppose we
can give it a try.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

Maneuvering the mule between the trees was tricky, like
trying to thread a needle blindfolded with nothing but the sound and feel of
branches scraping at the sides guiding him. Some bent to accommodate the
intrusion, but many broke, leaving a visible hole in the green wall, one they’d
have to camouflage before they left.

It was a tight fit inside the glen, but Bryce had guessed
right: where the sun couldn’t reach, the lower branches had withered away,
leaving the ground covered in dried needles. Bryce took out his swords and
sheared off the branches around the mule, effectively cutting a rectangular
garage, until the whole roof, hood, and half the truck bed was bathed in the
noontime sun. Not ideal, but it would do in a pinch.

By the time he’d finished, Sinna was sitting with three full
packs lined up in a row before her. She stared at them without seeing them at
all.

“Sinna?” Bryce laid a hand on her shoulder.

Sinna jumped, startled out of her daze. Sheepish, she ducked
her head. “Sorry, guess I’m a little jumpy lately.”

He frowned, lowering to his haunches beside her. “What’s
wrong?”

The sad, lost look in her eyes stabbed him clean through his
chest. “What are we doing here?” she asked. “I mean, I know what we’re doing,
but…what is it for? We’re going to kidnap a girl and hand her over to the mad
Nazi scientist, and maybe we’ll get Aiden back, maybe not—maybe we’ll all die.
And even if we make it, then what? Look around. There’s no one left.”

Bryce tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “There’s us.”

She huffed a dry chuckle. “A handful of Wolfen. What does
that amount to?” She shook her head. “People spent so much time and energy
preparing for every possible way the world could end. How could they have not
seen this coming?”

Her rose-colored glasses were permanently off, then. Bryce
was relieved. He’d been operating in a constant state of alert ever since
they’d driven away from Haven, not because he couldn’t handle this on his own,
but because he didn’t want to be the one to destroy Sinna’s ideals. If there
was such a thing as a typical Wolfen female, Sinna was it. She was a caretaker
down to her core. Didn’t matter what the situation was. Her first thought was
always, “How can I help?” rather than, “How do we get out of here?” Bryce loved
that about her, but it had the potential to put them both in danger. Case in
point, the whole Randy situation.

Still, seeing her unhappy tore at him. “Listen,” he said.

Sinna looked up, expecting some words of wisdom, but he was
the wrong guy for those. Instead, he tilted his chin skyward and closed his
eyes to focus his other senses. Insects hissed and chirped. Not too far away, a
woodpecker hammered at a tree, irritating the resident squirrel couple. High in
the sky, a hawk screamed his presence. Worms burrowed in the ground below,
rabbits dug in their dens.

Feeling Sinna’s gaze on him, Bryce opened his eyes and
attempted a smile. It felt awkward, but she didn’t seem to mind. “The world
isn’t dead,” he told her. “It’s too big to succumb to a single species. The
only thing humans destroyed was their own ability to survive in it. That’s all.
The rest of us go on. We adapt. We live.”

“I take it that works for you. Some kind of poetic justice,
right? People were monsters, anyway, so the world is better off without them.”
Sinna pushed to her feet, and shrugged on a pack. “Can’t say I blame you. But I
just can’t see it the same way. It’s not all black and white. Not all people
are bad. I can’t believe that.”

He helped her strap on the quiver and shoulder the bow.
“You’re right,” he said. “There are good people still out there; I’ve met some.
Trouble is, being
good
puts you at a disadvantage out here. It makes you
prey.”

Past the fields and orchards, they were back to weaving
between massive dry hills, only this time on foot, without cover or the peace
of mind of a fast getaway. Little life showed itself in these parts, making it
difficult to tell whether or not it was a natural phenomenon. Hills obstructed
the view, valleys left them far too exposed.

After a while, they started seeing signboards for Gilroy,
Watsonville, and Hollister. They were approaching city limits.

“What do you want to do?” Sinna asked.

Bryce looked at the sky. “We still have hours of sunlight
left.” If the convoy had been military like Klaus’, they wouldn’t have settled
in a city. They’d have found a defensible location with natural resources for
building a community, which meant they could be anywhere around these valleys,
or miles and miles away. Bryce couldn’t see any immediate signs of life, but
that didn’t necessarily mean anything. “We’ll circle around the city,” he said.
If anything within ten miles was worth investigating, Bryce would find it. If
not, the roundabout would bring them right back here. Then they could call the
mission a bust and head back north.

“All right,” Sinna said, readjusting the straps of her pack.

When they came in sight of the first building, Bryce drew a
knife, just in case. Following his lead, Sinna nocked an arrow.

Together, they proceeded with caution, giving the city a
wide berth so Bryce could spot a potential threat coming from a distance. It
was slow going over dry ground and grass, but that was how he found the first
track. Almost halfway around Gilroy with a few hours of sunlight left, there it
was, nestled in the dust and protected from the wind by grass: a hoofprint.

Bryce crouched and traced the grooves with a careful
fingertip.

“Is that significant?” Sinna asked.

Oh, yeah.
He pushed to his feet and looked for the
next one. They were evenly spaced in an easy trot, headed out east. “A horse
came through here.”

“So what? We saw those fences back there, it could be wild.”

“Wild horses aren’t shod.” Not only that, Bryce scented
saddle leather, too.

“Then…that means…”

“That the son of a bitch German prick was right.”

They walked the path marked out for them away from Gilroy
toward Hollister. Bryce lost the tracks on the road, but he could still scent
horseflesh on the breeze, which he followed to a dirt road, past more empty
horse enclosures, to a eucalyptus grove.

Then things got complicated.

Two hundred yards ahead, the survivors had erected an
old-fashioned wooden wall—massive trunks buried in the ground, tops carved into
merciless points. Live trees stood as watchtowers at regular intervals,
man-made platforms like tree houses creating perches for the watchmen. It was
like a scene from a medieval fairy tale. From this distance, Bryce couldn’t
tell what the watchmen were armed with, but they were definitely armed. Two sat
in each perch, and movement between the spikes indicated walking patrols over
the wall itself. A deep moat with a flimsy-looking wooden bridge connected the
outside world to the spiked, cast iron gate.

“Holy shit,” Sinna whispered, wide-eyed.

“Yeah,” Bryce agreed. “You ready for this?”

“I don’t know.”

Bryce removed the arrow from her bow, and put it back into
the quiver. “We come in peace,” he said, “until that’s no longer an option.”

Sinna nodded, and put her hand into his. Bryce squeezed her
fingers in reassurance, and then they walked out into the open, approaching the
gate slowly so as not to seem a threat.

“Halt!” a watchman called from the left perch. “Identify
yourselves!”

Bryce held his hands up. “We’re just travelers looking to
trade. Maybe rest a night or two. We mean you no harm.” Which was more than he
could say for these people. Six feet from the moat, Bryce leaned over to see it
went down deep enough to break a man’s spine, and just to be extra sure, they’d
planted spears in there. One wrong step, and a guy might find a hunk of wood
protruding through his chest.

“Put your weapons down!”

Sinna looked askance at Bryce, and he nodded. She set down
her bow, and he laid his swords on the ground before him. The smaller knives
weren’t easily visible; he wouldn’t relinquish them unless he had no choice.

“What are you trading?” the second watchman on the left
demanded.

“What do you need?” Bryce returned.

“Nothing from the likes of you! Now get lost!”

“I don’t think you want to turn us away,” Bryce said. He
unzipped the main compartment of their supply pack, and held it open wide for
the watchman to see. Most of its contents were wrapped in white packaging. A
good contrast to the black bag, and the bright red crosses didn’t hurt, either.
“We have medicine, bandages, things everyone could use.”

The watchman leaned over the wall to take a closer look, but
the face he made wasn’t promising. He eased back, and conferred with his friend
before he returned with, “What do you want for it?”

“Food. Water. A place to sleep for the night.”

“This isn’t a hotel, friend. You should move along.”

“Please!” Sinna cried. “We’ve been walking for so long.
You’re the first people we’ve seen in days and days—”

“Sinna?” a man said from the right perch.

Sinna frowned and squinted, but the sun was against them,
making it impossible to see the speaker’s face.

“Sinna? Is that you?”

“Dave?”

The right perch burst into a flurry of uncoordinated
movement as the watchman shoved past his flailing comrade to get down. “Open
the gate!”