Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire (20 page)

But as she reached Lindsey to push her out of the way, a voice rang out behind her.

“
Move!
”

Rachael and Lindsey both turned to see Dez Fox come striding into the kitchen. A small group of women and children—all strangers to Rachael—crowded behind her. Dez pushed between Rachael and Lindsey, raised her pistol at the dead…and fired. There were other shots—the heavier bark of an assault rifle—from outside and more of the dead fell away. The guns roared and roared. And then stopped.

Everything seemed to stop.

The whole world juddered down to stillness.

Rachael listened to the night. She heard nothing. No new shots, no means, no cries of anger or pain.

Nothing.

Baskerville suddenly went running into the dining room, through the living room and outside, yelping and barking. Not in distress.

In joy.

A moment later the dog came back inside and with him was a tall man with graying blond hair, a tanned face lined with age and scars, carrying an assault rifle. Captain Ledger. The one Lindsey had told him about. The man looked down around at the carnage. Then he dropped the weapon onto the chest of the man Baskerville had just killed. He smiled, a faint and sad smile that showed his age.

“It’s over,” he said.

And Lindsey began to cry.

Dez Fox

Dez Fox went down into the cellar and her kids swarmed around her, pulling her down the last few steps, hugging her, kissing her, clinging to her despite the blood and dirt on her clothes. She dropped to her knees and wept with them. The last of the women survivors went with her and together they shared in the thing that exists when all of the violence and bloodshed and horror has passed.

Life.

The Farmhouse

It took days to bury all the dead.

It was grisly work. Backbreaking and heartbreaking. The bodies of the refugee women and children who’d been killed were given markers. It was the wrong time of year for flowers, but Ledger had no doubt there would be some in the spring.

The corpses of the NKK men were buried in a gulley and covered over with wheelbarrows filled with dirt. The only marker was when Baskerville raised a leg and pissed all over it. Dez saw that and laughed until she cried.

While the women were burying the dead, Ledger spent most of his time in the forests. Hunting. Twice Dez went with him. They’d worked in grim silence and never once talked about the things they did out there. All that mattered was that they could tell the refugees, without lying, that none of the NKK men would be coming back. Not one. Not as living attackers or dead biters.

It would have been nice to be able to say that all threats had been dealt with, but Ledger was tired of lies.

The nights at the farmhouse were long. There were tears and there were stories. One of the women died two days later. She was the one who’d taken some of the buckshot in the throat. Dez made sure she wouldn’t rise again and they all stood with her when the woman was buried alongside the others. No one had a prayer to say except Rachael, who recited something in Elvish. Ledger cut a look at Dez, and she raised her eyebrows as if to say ‘it’s better than anything I have’.

It was nearly a week before Rachael told them she had to leave. The whole group walked her out to the road and Lindsey handed her a sheet of paper with everyone’s name on it. Rachael looked at it and then turned away to hide the tears that sprang into her eyes.

She walked alone down the road and everyone stood and watched until she was out of sight.

Rachael Elle

Rachael couldn’t find the words in her head to express how grateful she was to see the hospital ahead as they left the woods, excited to be back with her friends, and nervous that something had happened to them, all at the same time.

As the approached the large gate, she saw Matt, one of her Avengers Tower survivors, guarding it, broadsword in hand, and her heart soared. He called out to her in excitement, and she heard the sound of the gate being unbolted.

She smiled at the women who traveled with her.

“This is home. At least, for now. It’s safe here. There’s a lot of us here. We’re going to build a future.”

She expected Matt to be the first one out to great them, but it wasn’t him that rushed out to her. Instead her eyes focused on blonde hair and red cloak, broad shoulders and big muscles, the image of a true superhero, and her heart rushed as a smile came to her face.

Brett ran towards her, his smile matching her own, but he stopped as he approached, his eyes taking in every inch of her, as if he didn’t believe she was real. It had been nearly a month since she’d been gone, and so much had happened

She had changed so much. She’d become nearly a different person. She had a mission now, a goal, something she needed to do. It wasn’t just about saving people and bringing them together. It was about making this world, and the hand they were dealt, worth living, for everyone.

She could only imagine what she looked like, but she knew now what she was. She didn’t need to pretend to be a superhero, she didn’t need to play make believe.

And she knew that Brett could see it too. She didn’t need to make believe she was a hero anymore.

Because she was one.

The Ranger and the Cop

Joe and Dez organized the survivors into work teams. They fortified the house, repairing damage from the attack and reinforcing every door and window. Stronger shutters were constructed with wood stripped from the barn. The women began digging a trench around the house and the kids spent their days sharpening sticks to line the bottom of the trench. Dez and two of the refugee women went hunting—for food this time. They brought back two deer and a half dozen rabbits. But the next day one of the girls went out and set snares to catch rabbits. She returned with six live ones. Two male and four females. Everyone approved. Maybe they’d be able to find some chickens and cows, too. Anything was possible. And that was something Ledger saw—the dawning of belief, of hope for survival and maybe even a future.

Seeing that chipped away some of the black ice that clung to his heart. And it rekindled some of his own optimism. The next morning—he was pretty sure it was a Saturday, not that such things really mattered anymore—he told Dez that he was leaving the next day. She protested, they argued, crockery was thrown. But in the end he played the best card he had. Billy Trout and the other busses. Dez couldn’t take all those kids and the women on a hunt for Billy. It was a better job for one person and a dog.

They ate a last meal, a big breakfast, and there were a lot of hugs and tearful goodbyes. As if Ledger had been part of this community, this
family
, for years. Lindsey gave him a list of names, too. Ledger folded it carefully and put it in his pocket. It was something he knew he would want to read again. Maybe often.

Then it was time to go. Ledger clicked his tongue for Baskerville and the dog sprang to his feet, but once they were on the porch, the big hound seemed to stall. The animal looked around at the faces of all the kids and at the women who had fought alongside him. His big tail swished back and forth.

He got a lot of hugs and even some kisses, too.

“Come on, you big goof,” growled Ledger. “You’re a shameless damn flirt.”

Joe got a lot of kisses and hugs, too. It made him happy and it broke his heart. That these powerful women and these beautiful kids should embrace him and kiss his cheeks as if he wasn’t a monster and a killer. It was proof the world was absolutely goddamn insane.

Lindsey stood by the door, kids all around her, and there were tears in her eyes. Ledger kissed her on the forehead. Then he and Dez and Baskerville walked out to the road and stood for a moment watching the clouds move across the sky.

Dez fished something out of her pocket. A note sealed in an envelope. She looked deeply embarrassed and then handed it to Ledger. The envelope was pink and the name ‘Billy’ was scrawled across it.

“Don’t say a goddamn word, Joe,” she warned. “It was the only stationary I could find.”

It was very, very pink. He laughed.

“I will kneecap you,” she said, “hand to God.”

But she laughed, too. It was a strange sound, rare in the world these days. They both seemed to realize it at the same time and their laughter faded. Still, they smiled at each other. Dez cleared her throat and nodded to the note. “You’ll give it to him?”

“If he’s still where I left him, yes I will.”

“What if he’s not there?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Guess I go looking for him.”

“You don’t have to,” she said.

Ledger looked around at the big, empty world. “What else have I got to do?” he asked. It was meant as a joke, but Dez looked as if it was the saddest thing she’d ever heard.

“I’ll find him,” Ledger said.

She studied him, then nodded. “Yeah, I know you will.”

He bent to kiss her cheek, and Dez Fox suddenly grabbed him and pulled him to her in a fierce embrace. She kissed him with a startling and intense heat, and then shoved him back.

“What…what…?” he said, unable to form a cohesive question.

Dez gave him a wicked grin. “That’s so you don’t walk away from this thinking you got nothing out of it.”

He shook his head. “You sure Billy Trout didn’t just seize the moment and run away
from
you?”

“Seriously, one round through the kneecap,” she said, laying her hand on the butt of her pistol. He mimed zipping his mouth shut.

They stood for one moment longer, two warriors who were now connected on a level they could not express in words but which each of them completely understood.

“Goodbye, Desdemona Fox,” he said.

“Goodbye, Captain Ledger,” she said.

Baskerville
whuffed
quietly, and then the big man clicked his tongue again and turned away. He never looked back at the old farmhouse.

Not once.

-The End-

Rachael Lavin is a Cosplayer, LARPer, and all around Nerd. An art degree stuck in a banking job, Rachael rejects this reality and replaces it with her own. When she’s not writing, she can be found hunched over her sewing machine, taking pictures, or running around the woods with foam swords. She is a graduate of the Experimental Writing for Teens program created by Jonathan Maberry. She currently lives in Doylestown, PA with her fluffy white demon dog and 200 pairs of shoes.

Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling novelist, five-time Bram Stoker Award winner, and comic book writer. He writes the Joe Ledger thrillers, the Rot & Ruin series, the Nightsiders series, the Dead of Night series, as well as standalone novels in multiple genres. His comic book works include, among others,
CAPTAIN AMERICA, BAD BLOOD, ROT & RUIN, V-WARS,
and others. He is the editor of many anthologies including THE X-FILES, SCARY OUT THERE, OUT OF TUNE, and V-WARS. His books EXTINCTION MACHINE and V-WARS are in development for TV, and ROT & RUIN is in development as a series of feature films. A board game version of V-WARS was released in early 2016. He is the founder of the Writers Coffeehouse, and the co-founder of The Liars Club. Prior to becoming a full-time novelist, Jonathan spent twenty-five years as a magazine feature writer, martial arts instructor and playwright. He was a featured expert on the History Channel documentary,
Zombies: A Living History
and a regular expert on the TV series,
True Monsters.
Jonathan lives in Del Mar, California with his wife, Sara Jo.
www.jonathanmaberry.com