Devour: Death & Decay Book 1 (26 page)

Day 37
10:35 am

Liv lifted her face towards the sun. The last few days had been rainy and overcast. Despite the humidity, it was nice to feel its brilliant rays again.

Slag Stead had been bustling for hours already, but for her, the day was only just beginning. She and half a dozen others were preparing to leave the relative safety that the farm offered.

It was a necessity.

While they had quickly set to work planting crops, there were things they needed that they couldn’t make. Soap. Mechanical parts to replace worn-out pieces of farming machinery. First-aid supplies. Those were always a priority.

The only way they could find those things was by leaving the farm and scavenging the surrounding houses and shopping centers.

The farm had blossomed in the last month as survivors settled into new roles, which were often drastic changes from their old lives. Plowing. Planting. Pulling weeds. Caring for the horses, chickens, and cows. Pickling or drying what crops could be picked and setting them aside for the hard winter months to come. A multitude of tasks needed doing each day to keep the farm running and keep their small colony afloat.

Colony.

Their group wasn’t large, but it had certainly grown. Seventy-eight people called Slag Stead home. Ten elders ran the house. Cleaning, cooking, washing, and mending laundry and other tasks that allowed them to stay indoors while still contributing to the survival of the group. Six children, including Elli, now ran around the farm, filling the air with giggles and shrieking laughter. The other sixty-two residents were able-bodied adults and teenagers who did most of the hard labor.

They had mostly trickled onto the farm in small groups of three or four. The biggest group of arrivals had brought twelve newcomers. Many times they simply stumbled onto the farm. Tired, hungry, and frightened as they looked for a quiet place to rest away from the ferals. Most were surprised to find the place inhabited and welcoming. An oasis in a desert.

Sometimes they were trailed by ferals. Alarms were raised as they dashed for the house and the raiders responded.

The raiders.

This was Liv’s job class. They were comprised of a dozen of the strongest, most capable adults. Their name had arisen after their initial need to raid places outside of the farm for supplies. They never took anything by force, but simply scavenged what had been left behind in homes or abandoned stores and cars.

Eventually, the raiders along with Max decided to expand their job set. As ferals trickled through the woods towards the farm, they began making patrols. In pairs, the raiders would roam in an ever-widening circle radiating out from the farmhouse. Halfway through their twelve-hour shift, their circles would begin to grow smaller until they found themselves back at the house at the end of their shift.

On off days, they trained, strengthening not just their weapons skills but also their stamina for battle. Many of the ferals they came across were only in small packs of three to five, but they had to be prepared for the worst.

They were Slag Stead’s only line of defense.

Life wasn’t easy. Most days were exhausting. A constant struggle left the feeling that little progress was being made as Liv collapsed into bed. Despite the struggle, they were safe. They had food and water. They had beds covered by a roof. They had each other. They had their lives.

It was more than most had.

“Are you ready?” Jay hollered to her. He and his partner, Amil, were already waiting by the truck. Amil was a behemoth of a man. Taller than anyone on the farm, he made Liv feel like a child when she stood next to him.

But there was no one else she would rather have on a supply run. On a previous raid, she had seen the giant slam a feral into a wall and crack its skull open with one hand. He had made it look so easy.

The man was all business when he was on duty, another trustworthy point. Even now, from their relative safety, his nearly black eyes were narrowed as he scanned their surroundings. His skin was a warm golden bronze, which meant he never burned during the long days spent in the sun. His head, though now shaved, had held silky black locks the color of raven feathers.

Many of the men had chosen to shave their heads, including Jay. Hair had to be washed and good shampoo was often not high on their list of priorities.

Though Liv was curious, she had never asked Amil about his roots. Asking about one’s past, family, or heritage had become taboo. Everyone had lost family during the Midnight Days, as the first days had come to be called. They had lost their homes, their friends, their children, their pets. Though everyone seemed to have been able to hold onto one or two mementos, much of what connected them to their old lives was gone. Unless someone first volunteered the information or in some way opened the door to such a conversation, it was considered extremely ill-mannered to ask.

Almost no one volunteered such tidbits.

Almost no one asked.

Most, if any, of these tender questions came from the younger children. Those old enough to know what had happened but perhaps not old enough to grasp the gravity of it all. They only had three at such an age. But even they were learning that these questions, or at least personal ones directed at a specific person, were not welcome.

There were times when Liv thought this was better. The past was the past. For the most part, that was where it stayed. Everyone had been given a fresh start at the time of the outbreak. Many of the prejudices of the past had been erased. Human was human and they needed each other if they were going to survive.

The world was far from perfect. The colony was not necessarily diverse. But she had not heard a whisper of prejudice on the farm since she had arrived. Except where the ferals were concerned. Any hatred the survivors at the farm harbored was redirected to the threat that killed them all indiscriminately.

“I’m good to go.” Her partner wasn’t here yet, but he would be shortly. She zipped up her leather motorcycle jacket. It was made of smooth, soft, black leather with a thin red stripe that ran from the collar down each sleeve to the cuff. Thin metal plates had been sewn in between the liner in the sleeves, back and front, protecting her vulnerable flesh from the vicious maws of the ferals.

The layers were hot, almost suffocating. Liv had grown accustomed to them, but it didn’t make them comfortable. At the end of the day, though, she would rather be protected and uncomfortable than a feral.

“Let’s get going.” Jay bounced back and forth from foot to foot. He liked being off the farm too much. He seemed to feel the most at home out in the dangers of the world.

Liv rolled her eyes.

But before she could form a sarcastic response to his excitement, the sirens sounded. Goosebumps rippled across her skin as the long wailing call rose and fell and rose again. Instead, Jay was still, all excitement gone and replaced with a heavy seriousness.

Liv grasped for the radio clipped to her hip and flipped on the switch, turning the volume up high so the others could hear.

“Attention raiders! Attention raiders!” The greeting was typical. The radios weren’t just used by the raiders but by the entire colony to communicate throughout the day. The call cleared the airwaves so that the raiders could communicate in an emergency without interruptions. “Ferals approaching from the east side of the farm trailing survivors. Approximately fifty-five to sixty ferals and five or six survivors. They are approximately two miles from the clear zone. All hands ready and await Thor’s orders.”

Liv swore. Sixty ferals was more than the four raiders on duty could handle by themselves. The group was also close and probably closing fast if they were being followed by so many ferals. The scavenging party would have to wait. Their help would be needed here.

She raised the radio to her lips. “Thor here. Riders, split the herd. On-duty and standby, form up on me at the house. Weapons ready in sixty seconds.”

The riders were not technically part of the raiders. They were messengers and scouts. The colony only had four riders in total, and they rotated shift every other day, as their days tended to be less rigorous. But in an emergency, the riders had developed tactics to try to separate ferals from survivors by diverting their attention.

This would be the first implementation of those tactics, and while they had practiced on small packs of feral, Liv was nervous about whether it would actually work on a hoard under less controlled circumstances.

The other raiders began to appear quickly. Four on guard, two standby, and the scavenging party of four made the odds better. They would be able to manage. The survivors might be able to fight alongside the raiders, but there was no telling what condition they were in. They had to assume that they were incapable of helping.

The raiders looked nervous as they checked their weapons and pulled on their helmets. They all wore outfits similar to Liv’s. Plated motorcycle jackets. Helmets with visors that protected their heads and faces from attack. And black plate pants similar to the jackets.

Liv pulled her helmet over her head, flipping up the darkened visor. Large, red rubber spikes stood out of the helmet, resembling a Mohawk. Any of the raiders would be able to spot her easily in the fray. The ferals didn’t target leaders. They simply attacked everyone.

“Ready to roll?” Her voice boomed through the air over the low din that had risen across the farm. It wasn’t so much a question as a way to make sure everyone was on the same page. The raiders nodded, their faces hidden by the visors, weapons of various kinds in their hands.

When raider had been declared a job class in the colony, the raiders, along with Max and a few other elders who had a say in all the goings-on around Slag Stead, had voted on the leader. To Liv’s utter surprise, she had received a nearly unanimous vote.

There were others who were certainly capable, others who were certainly stronger than herself, but her protests had fallen on deaf ears. They wanted her as their leader. She still hadn’t figured out why. But if they functioned better with a leader whom they all agreed upon, then who was she to say no? Even if it did put her directly in charge of a dozen lives and would make her directly responsible for any of their deaths.

Liv nodded back to her force and spun on her heel, taking off at a jog. They were hardly a well-trained force, but they had drilled for just this situation. They knew where to fall in at her flanks.

The barn doors were open and a handful of people were bustling around as they jogged past. The riders should be nearly ready. The horde and the survivors they were pursuing should be close.

Beyond the barn was open field. Not the fields that they farmed. Those were set to the west of the house. The barn and the farmhouse were surrounded by a wide swath of open land. Some of it had been clear before. Some of it had been cleared since the Midnight Days as a form of protection. The clear borders allowed them to see any threat that approached before it actually reached the heart of the farm.

Liv stopped looking at the tree line. She couldn’t see movement yet and with her helmet on, she couldn’t hear the ferals’ cries.

The other raiders stood to her right and left roughly five feet apart, ready to move at the slightest sign, their weapons at the ready. They weren’t uniform. The raiders carried whatever weapon felt the most comfortable: a hatchet, a machete, a baseball bat, a shovel with its edges sharpened to a deadly point. Liv still carried her mallet. It was how she had received the call name Thor.

There.

A figure broke from the tree line. Liv tensed as the figure sprinted into the open. No more than a second behind the figure, others began to appear. First only a few. Then dozens.

Where are the riders?
Liv thought wildly, wondering if they needed to abandon their tactic and race to the survivors’ aid.

Almost as soon as she finished the thought, heavy footfalls pounded the ground as two horses, their riders leaning forward over the beasts’ necks, broke through their line and rocketed forward.

Liv sprang into motion. The riders would reach the group well ahead of them, hopefully separating the survivors from the ferals before the raiders ever reached the group.

She didn’t look back. She knew the others were at her side. Instead, Liv leveled her gaze ahead at the mass that had emerged from the trees.

She was an idiot. What was she doing racing headlong towards a horde? What sane person would do that? But she wasn’t alone in her insanity.

The group was closely clustered together. Liv had trouble distinguishing where the string of survivors ended and the ferals began. That wasn’t good.

The riders were making circles around the entire group. But they couldn’t get between the survivors and the ferals to cut them off. The survivors didn’t have a large enough lead, so the riders tried to grab the attention of the ferals at the edges of the horde and draw some away.

It wasn’t working. The horde mentality was too strong. And the riders couldn’t get close enough without risking the lives of their mounts, precious resources that they would struggle to replace if the beasts were killed.

Liv pushed herself hard, pushed her feet faster, as she closed the distance between herself and the survivors.

Though she could barely make them out, she could see that the survivors were dirty, barely distinguishable from the ferals. Their clothes were tattered and worn. They probably hadn’t showered in days or weeks.

They were bloody. Hopefully, it wasn’t their own blood. If they had been fighting the ferals, they might be hurt. It could also mean they were capable of helping once the odds had evened out more.

The distance closed quickly and as she neared, the first man slowed. The gap between the survivors and the ferals narrowed as the survivors tried to assess whether or not the raiders were a threat. Liv moved a bit to her left, giving the man a greater berth so he wouldn’t be tempted to swing at her.

And then he was behind her. She dodged through a handful of other people, and suddenly the ferals were right in front of her.