Rebirth Part 22

Only...it wasn't three.

Around Cass, the vague roar that she thought had been coming from the scene of the explosion grew louder, the rumbling sound taking shape and dissolving into discrete voices. Beaters growling and braying, and from every direction-was that possible? Was it-Cass prayed-a trick of the wind, of acoustics and her own galloping fear....

Her frantic gaze caught on Leslie and Cass saw that the girl had heard it too. As she hesitated, arm upraised with her gun pointed at the sky, the first wave of them crested the street from the direction they'd arrived.

Four of them. No-more. Lurching and pushing at those in front of the pack, a half a dozen, ten-and then she lost count, because others were coming across the lot on the corner, slamming through shrubs without bothering to go around, tripping and clawing and screaming. The screaming.

And there were others, from every direction. The neighborhood was lost to these things. They must have nested here because of its proximity to the Rebuilders, their quarry tantalizingly close and maddeningly unreachable, and for every citizen they managed to fell, a dozen, a hundred more Beaters arrived to join the hunt. You could hear the frustration and hunger in the chorus of their cries, and even as the full horror of the situation reached Cass, one of the three who had been stalking Sammi turned back and attacked Leslie.

And then it twisted and fell and the crack of the gunshot came a split second later and Cass realized that Leslie taken her shot from only a couple of feet away, had steeled herself not to flinch and not to run and had done everything her training told her to. The head or the neck-she must have nailed the base of the skull, the luckiest or most skillful shot. Not many people could make that shot, even that close, but Leslie fired twice more before darting backward, out of the range of the nearest beasts screaming with delight and hunger and reaching for her.

And then she stumbled. Her ankle caught on a rock, a branch, a doubt, nothing at all, and down she went, bouncing on her hip and rolling, the two Beaters crowing victoriously.

Cass burst out of her momentarily paralysis, fueled by her terror and her rage, cursing herself for hesitating. She fired and one of the creatures lurched and danced, but she'd hit the torso or the arm and it wasn't enough, they would keep going to the girl until their dying breath. It was down, it seemed paralyzed on one side, but it was already crawling toward Leslie, and the other one was only a few feet away. Cass fired again but the clip was spent, and she cursed her aim, cursed the waste of that last bullet.

Sammi came flying down the steps of the little brick house and Cass started to scream for her to go back, run the other way, damning Leslie to a hideous death to give Sammi a chance, but the words had not left her lips when Sammi was on the closest Beater, slashing and slamming with what Cass now saw was a length of lumber, what had once been a porch rail, bent nails forming one end. She made contact with the thing's skull and Cass imagined she felt the impact in the ground beneath her feet, who would have guessed a girl as small as Sammi could hit like that, and she was already winding up to do it again, screaming non-words as she fought, and Leslie was scrambling to her feet and then she fired one more time and the thing's head was half gone and still it stumbled, a monster with no heart and no brain, nothing but its hunger, its desperate hunger.

Leslie grabbed Sammi and they ran, ran from the Beater that Cass had shot that was on its knees now, shuffling toward them and moaning. They caught up with Cass and all three of them turned and ran together, hands clasping and hair flying, toward the truck that sat half a block away, half a block closer to their escape from this doomed and burning place.

But their path was blocked. Three Beaters had made it to the street already-from which direction, Cass had no idea-and the swarm approaching in front of them was only half a block away now, scrambling toward the truck. The girls were in the truck, exposed, unprotected. Dor was there, unconscious on the floor, unable to help, unable to protect himself. If the Beaters reached the truck before Cass did, they would push and climb and crawl to get inside the cargo area, stepping on each other's bodies if they had to, and once they were inside, they would not even have to drag their prey away to feast because the truck offered them exactly what they wanted: a shelter with only one way in, a dark box that would serve as their butcher's table and which would run with the blood of the fallen.

And how long after that before they attacked the cab, with Smoke and Ruthie inside?

Leslie broke away, dodging left and sprinting straight for the three Beaters, screaming one long powerful cry of determination, and Cass was moving too, because she would not let the girl go alone. Leslie had several yards on her and she did not slow down, she slammed into the closest Beater with her full momentum, leading with her shoulder, and the thing went down with Leslie on top of it but at the last moment she rolled away, came up in a crouch and fired.

All of it so fast and breathtaking Cass wasn't sure she even knew what had happened, and that was training like nothing she'd seen. Leslie might not have anything on Smoke or Dor, but in sheer bravery she was made fast and nimble and she was already advancing on the next Beater.

In Cass's hand was her blade and how it got there she wasn't exactly sure, and Sammi at her side went left so Cass went straight on, and in the seconds that it took to close the gap and slice the neck and oh God don't look don't look don't look at the gawping mouth hole the leaking eye sockets the putrid ragged hairless scalp, burst of blood and still not stopping, Sammi disappeared from her view and all that was left was to pray as she and Leslie ran for the truck.

The truck rocked on its wheels, slammed into by the bodies of the Beaters. How long until they figured out how to get inside? The floor was only waist-high, no challenge for a citizen, but the Beaters were clumsy, they flopped and thrashed.

Leslie ducked under a Beater's reaching arm and disappeared around back, and before Cass could protest Sammi went flying past too.

This time she didn't hesitate. Last time it had nearly cost Leslie's life. Now that life was almost certainly spent, and Sammi's too, but if Cass didn't get in the cab and go, it would all be for nothing. Her heart pounded with exertion and agony but she grabbed for the driver's-side door, and when it wouldn't budge she remembered she had locked it and fished the keys from her pocket and jammed them at the lock with shaking fingers. It was impossible to see inside, her eyes were stinging with sweat and it was dark but inside that cab were her daughter and her lover and she had to live for them, she had to survive for them, and after several scrambled tries the key went in and she turned the lock and was about to yank open the door when she heard Sammi scream- And she was halfway around the truck when she realized what a terrible mistake she had made but she couldn't let the girl be dragged off and eaten, one last terrible indignity in a life that had been much too short with far too much suffering and loss, and if she had to kill Sammi herself to save her those final moments of terror she would do it.

Around the back of the truck it was worse than she ever could have imagined, the piled crush of Beaters a hideous squirming mound of hands scrabbling for the metal truck floor and mouths making cutting bites at the air, only to be pushed away by others as they fought for purchase.

But one had made it almost all the way up onto the floor. Sammi's scream had been an attempt to deter it. She and Leslie fought the mob, Sammi with her nail-studded board and Leslie with a branch. Leslie was losing, a Beater grabbing and snatching at the weak weapon, and as Cass reached her it grasped the end and yanked and Leslie stumbled, but Cass was ready with her blade and the force of her fury slashed through the thing's neck along with the razor-sharp metal.

Cass seized Leslie's hand and pressed the keys into it. "Go!" she screamed, and Leslie didn't need to be told twice, she was gone in a flash and Cass saw the truck dip slightly a second later and knew that the girl had made it.

There was only one chance now, one single chance for her and Sammi. She grabbed the girl's hand and Sammi met her gaze and in her shining eyes Cass saw mirrored back a spark of the hope she'd barely kept alive, and all of the molten rage that had been forged in the past days.

Cass squeezed her hand, once, and then screamed, "Now!" even as the truck rumbled to life, and they ran for it.

This time she could not squeeze her eyes shut against the horror as they ran headlong into the writhing mass of bodies. Sammi, rounding the edge of the horde, propelled herself across the far edge of the opening, kicking at a skull and stepping on the Beater's shoulder, and then she was in. Cass caught a flash of the terrified girls backed up against the wall of the cargo area, the single Beater who had made it inside crawling toward them with its mouth wide and howling. For a moment she didn't see Dor and she thought he'd been dragged out, but then she saw that the girls had pushed him behind them, that he was lying against the wall, the girls' bodies forming the last barrier in front of him.

Only one of them still held a gun and she didn't have her finger anywhere near the trigger. As Cass watched in horror the girl used it to club at the Beater's face, and its head snapped back from the impact but then it grabbed her, grabbed the gun and her hand with it and that was when Cass threw herself onto the pile of squirming bodies, hands pulling on decayed shoulders to get her higher and she sprinted up the pile, feet landing on shoulders, heads, a shifting mass below her but then she was in, her knees slamming hard on the metal floor and she grabbed the Beater's feet with all her might and pulled, feeling the shifting bones and rotting flesh beneath its filthy trousers, and the Beater screamed louder but did not let go of the girl- -and Cass braced herself with her feet jammed against the wall and pulled with everything she had, every ounce of energy and shred of life left in her and the Beater slid a little further, but it wasn't until the truck shot forward that the force of momentum knocked the girl to her knees, and still the Beater would not let go, so that as it slid from the truck it dragged her with it and they fell as one to the road, and as Cass and the others watched the terrible scene fade from view, the truck picking up speed as it careened away from the doomed neighborhood, they could only pray that the girl had been knocked senseless by the impact before the Beaters fell upon her.

38.

THEY DID NOT RETURN TO THE BOX.

As Colima faded from view and the sky lightened with the dawn, Cass huddled with Sammi and the others in the back of the truck, all of them holding each other as they were jostled by every crack and rock and pothole in the road. Cass put her arms around Sammi and held on and let the girl cry, remembering the moment of their first meeting, all the things that had happened since then. She wished she could erase it all, give Sammi back everything she had lost. Instead she had only one gift for the girl-her wounded father, and as they held each other she whispered a version of the story of their journey to Colima, a gentler version, one in which truth was bent and shaded to take away its power and to let her know how much Dor had wanted his daughter back.

After a while Sammi pulled away from Cass and lay down on the cold metal floor next to her father, her lips moving with words that none of them could hear. Cass put a hand to Dor's face, checking the wound at his scalp. It was not deep. He would live.

The other girls were named Sage and Kyra. Sage sobbed and couldn't catch her breath, and Kyra crouched in the corner with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her eyes wide and staring. Cass had made little headway in comforting them when Leslie pulled off the road in a barren stretch of highway surrounded by kaysev-studded fields.

Everyone but Smoke and Ruthie and Dor got out of the truck and there was a reckoning in the golden dawn. The girl who'd been dragged out of the truck by the Beaters had been named Amber. None of them had known her well. They said a few nice things about her, from what they did know. Miraculously, neither Leslie nor Sammi had been bitten-Leslie insisted they strip and every inch of their skin be examined.

The guns were gone, except for one that had ended up lodged in the corner of the cargo bay. By unspoken agreement, Leslie took it before handing Cass the keys and getting in the cargo area with the others. "I'll talk to them," she said softly, indicating Kyra and Sage and Roan, who leaned together with their backs to the wall, their eyes puffy and swollen from crying.

Inside the cab, Smoke and Ruthie slept on, and Cass kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead. An hour out of Colima, Cass saw a sign for the Delta, and remembered a sand bar where she'd once spent a high school weekend at a friend's vacation trailer, jumping off a party barge into the cool waters of the farm canals, lying about their age and getting high with burnished construction workers from Sacramento. The network of waterways and redneck cul-de-sacs would provide ample cover from the Rebuilders, at least until they worked out a plan. Cass felt sure they could find shelter there; the sun was barely up, the tank was nearly full, they were decently armed.

In the back of the truck were five girls they had stolen from the Rebuilders, but they had traded fire and destruction for their plunder.

She hoped Evangeline and Mary had died in the explosion, but she hoped once again that they'd lived long enough to know what was coming, that as the beams fell on them and the flames licked their skin, they knew it was Cass Dollar who'd brought her gift of terrible rage.

She couldn't bear to return to the Box with Dor and Smoke, both injured, both vulnerable. Either could lead, either could own the place, but not like this. They would live or they would die, but she would not take them back like this, weakened and needful.

And she couldn't take a chance on leading the Rebuilders back to the Box. Those who survived the explosion would not know where she and Dor had come from, and she would not risk attracting their wrath if they were somehow followed. Not with her friends there. Not with Feo there.

Before the sun was high in the sky, Smoke had stirred next to her several times. She touched his face every few minutes, alternating with checking on Ruthie, who slept on the floor, curled in a ball. Cass drove as carefully as she could, mindful of every bump and crack in the road; in the back of the truck, she knew the girls were huddled over Dor.

She passed a marina, a motel that looked familiar. She cast about in her memories, trying to remember where the turnoff was. When the road wound along next to the canal and she looked down and saw thickets of cattails, a rowboat bobbing next to a dock on which a pair of bright red clogs still sat, it came back to her.

She had switched on her turn signal before she remembered there was no one to see it. She took a soft right and slowed to five miles per hour, remembering that long-ago day when a boy named Trace Pritcher had untied her bikini top and told her he'd loved her as she finished off her own spiked Big Gulp and then started working on his. She'd been pleasantly drunk when he'd clumsily pushed down his board shorts and lowered her to the dock, and she'd closed her eyes and imagined that he was the boy who would love her forever.

Cass knew that she would never see Trace again, that his body was moldering in a ditch or basement or parking lot somewhere, his bones baking in the sun and freezing in the night rains. So many good, beautiful people had died, but she had lived, and she did not know why. But she had her daughter, and the man who she loved and would never stop loving. She pressed her fingertips to his face for the hundredth time, found his pulse and prayed. And in the back of her truck she carried girls who teetered on the brink of womanhood, girls who she was now responsible for, who-God help all of them-needed her.

But that was not all. There was also the man she'd crashed up against, like the tide throws itself onto the shore. He had saved her and she had saved him; she had tasted the salt of his sweat and his blood on her lips, and she had known the shape of his grief and his longing and she had drunk it in and wanted more. She had seen him and she had not turned away, and he had known her and had not turned away.

Cass's vision darkened with her swirling thoughts, and so she gripped the steering wheel hard and focused on the blacktop ahead, until she was back in herself. There was the chicken stand and the parking lot and the waterslides. There was the bait shop and the liquor store. There was the freezer where she'd bought bags of ice for half-assed margaritas.

A pickup was parked across the road, and from the bed a man rose up, a shotgun loose in his hand and a bandanna tied around his tangled hair. He was late twenties, maybe a little older, deeply tanned with laugh lines bracketing his mouth. A second later a pretty young woman pulled herself up next to him and rested her arms on the side of the truck, staring at the approaching truck with curiosity.

These were not Beaters. And they were not Rebuilders.

Cass took a deep breath and tried to think of what she could say, how she could introduce her ragtag group, the people she carried with her. She tapped the brakes and coasted to a stop. She put her hand on the door handle, but before she opened the door she took a deep breath, and traced a cross over her heart and whispered a cautious prayer.

You got us this far, she whispered. Now take us home.

REBIRTH.

ISBN: 978-1-4592-0899-5.

Chapter end