Undeniable (2 page)

But she'd never asked him personal questions. Never tried to let him know her interest. She wasn't very good with men. That part of her life had been stunted by The Apocalypse as everyone had started to call the last set of wars which colored the skies black and turned the weather cold.

Sam had been the only man around to hold her when she'd cried over her daddy's death. He'd also been her first and only lover, although a reluctant one. Older than her by more than ten years, he'd always felt guilty about taking her innocence, but she'd pretty much insisted.

Now they occasionally came together out of need. While Sam held out hope that eventually she'd lean on him a little more, she wasn't in love with him and he knew it. But she thought she might be falling in love with Ty—or maybe, the idea of him. Although they'd never met, her heart soared at just the sound of his brusque voice.

As always happened when the shadows outside lengthened and the long night stretched like an endless road, she wondered how different her life might have been.

The ignition of a dirty bomb in D.C. started the last war. The enemy hadn't needed airplanes or to break into congress while it was in session. They'd sipped coffee in a Starbucks a block away from the capital when they'd detonated the explosive loaded with enough Russian plutonium to blow up a couple city blocks. U.S. retribution had been swift and thousand times more deadly.

Winter hadn't come to them overnight. And at first, other than the devastation in D.C., the rest of the country went back to business as usual, occasionally glancing at the ever-darkening sky—not admitting the changes to the patterns of the winds or lack of rainfall. Crops failed. Potable water supplies dried up. Global warming became a non-issue as temperatures around the world cooled.

But if the initial fallout hadn't been enough to contend with, creatures that had lived millenniums in the shadows were freed to roam at will by a permanently overcast sky.

Sam knocked against the open door, pulling her from her memories. He strode inside and sat down in the chair beside her desk, raking a hand through his short blond hair. “Any news?”

She shook her head. “Same ole.”

“He still tryin' to talk you into leaving?”

She kept no secrets from Sam. He knew about her obsession with the voice that waited in the darkness for her call. “Yeah.”

“Maybe you ought to think about it,” he said quietly.

Surprised, she gave him a sharp glance. It was the first time she'd heard that from Sam. Sanctuary was as much his home as hers.

“Want company tonight?” His brown eyes betrayed not a hint of hunger. But she knew he ached.

She was tempted. Sam was an attractive man with a lean, strong body, but Ty's voice still reverberated around her mind, so she shook her head and glanced away.

His lips thinned, but he nodded his understanding, no trace of disappointment in his expression.

Feeling tense and little sick to her stomach, she almost wished he'd give her some hint of what he really thought. Sometimes, she even wished he'd insist on having sex, because she needed a momentary reprieve from her unending stress. But even if he did, afterward he'd leave her bed with a haunted look in his gaze and she'd cry into her pillow.

They were both unhappy and holding onto something that didn't really exist. Loneliness was dealing their lifelong friendship a slow death.

Kate cleared her throat. “Who's on watch tonight?” she asked.

“Danny and Mr. Bates.”

She lifted an eyebrow at the name of one of the refugees who'd arrived at the gates in recent weeks. “Does he know which end of a gun to aim?”

Sam's lips curled at one corner. “He wants to pull his own weight. He's been practicing.”

“Don't give him any silver shot—can't afford to waste it in the dirt.”

“We've got one more problem.”

She drew in a deep breath, not liking the dread she saw in Sam's expression. “What now?”

“We need to make a gas run.”

Kate felt her jaw tense and her spine stiffen hard as steel. “We can't wait for sunshine?”

He shook his head. “We have enough fuel left to run the generator for maybe a day. I'll take a posse into town in the morning.”

Kate shook her head. “I'm going. I need you here, checking fences.”

“Kate, now's not the time—”

“I'm going. Get a list from Cass of everything she needs. We'll make a run on the grocery store while we're at it. I'll be back by nighttime.”

“Kate, dammit, you don't have to be the one to do this. You can't keep everyone safe.”

Kate pushed out her lower lip and gave him a glare. “I'm a better shot than you. But the men, especially the new ones, listen to you. I need you here. I'll take Danny and Shep.”

He gave a ragged sigh then stood and unbuckled his gun belt. “Take my pistol and leave that old antique with me in the morning.”

Not wanting another argument, she held out her hand for the gun belt.

He dropped it onto her palm and dipped his head. “I'll see you on the morning.”

Kate didn't watch him leave. She was already reaching for the kit in the bottom drawer of her desk. As everyone else hunkered down for a restless night of sleep, she pulled apart the pistol to clean the bolt, the chamber, and all its mechanisms.

The greatest gift John McKinnon had given his little girl was teaching her how to kill.

Chapter Two

Kate mashed her foot against the gas pedal, sending gravel spraying as she rounded the corner.

Danny, who stood behind the cab in the truck bed, pounded on the roof.

Beside her on the bench seat, Shep, her oldest hand and her dad's best friend, hadn't loosened his grip on the door handle since they'd entered the city limits. “Tryin' to lose that boy, Kate?” he asked, his voice deadpanned and his expression wry.

Kate grinned. “You know damn well street corners are dangerous places. We don't want to get ourselves a hitchhiker.” She didn't worry too much about Danny or Shep. They all enjoyed the rough and raucous ride—a chance to shake the dust off their boots after weeks of confinement to the ranch.

It kept their minds off the sights they passed—the empty, windowless houses with their gaping front doors, the gutted shop fronts with their contents emptied onto the streets. What had once been a thriving little west Texas community had become a ghost town. No one but the criminals and the monsters lived in Tierney any more.

The grocery store loomed ahead. “Get ready to roll,” she yelled out the window to Danny. “Got the grocery list?” she asked Shep.

The old man patted his shirt pocket. “Think Cass'd let me through the door without it?”

“Good. Danny gets the cart—he's fastest. I'll guard the door.” She pulled up next to the front doors of the grocery store, slid from the seat to the pavement, and pocketed the keys.

Danny leapt from the truck bed and ran for the door with Shep on his heels.

While the men shouted to each other from deep inside the store, Kate glanced at the sky. Once again, God hadn't relented. The cloud cover was deep—angry, gray clouds slid quickly across the sky with the wind pushing them clear to the Gulf before they could drop rain. Worse, the cover permitted no sunlight to scare the nighttime critters into going to ground.

Kate pushed back the edge of her duster and tucked it behind the holster hanging from Sam's gun belt. She walked into the store and straight up to the cashier's desk, doing her best to ignore the overpowering stench of rotting food coming from the produce section. She reached into the shelf above the station, rooting for a pack of cigarettes, but found none and cursed.

So she returned her attention to the front doors and kept track of the men's progress which she could judge because Shep stood at the end of each row as Danny ran down the aisles to fill one squeaking cart after another according to Shep's shouted instructions.

She glanced at her watch—fifteen minutes. Too long. “Time to wrap it up. We have to go, guys,” she shouted. It really shouldn't take this long. There wasn't much left on the shelves. She glanced down, kicked a cockroach off her boot and squashed it with her heel.

When the men moved into the storage area at the back of the building, she tensed, listening for any signs of trouble in the back, any signs of ambush. Not until she heard the whirring of the cart wheels coming down the aisle again did she let out a relieved breath.

She ran through the entrance to stand guard over the truck while Shep and Danny emptied the contents of the carts into the truck bed—mostly canned goods and paper products. Everything else had been eaten by bugs and mice or was too rotten for human consumption.

“Any place else we need to stop?” Shep asked.

“Just need to get the gas.”

The stacked five-gallon cans in the truck bed represented their hope they'd find enough fuel to run the generator and give them precious light for a few more weeks.

“We'll head to the Exxon station,” she said. “It's more open.”

At the gas station, she pulled out the key to the underground storage tank Mr. Jeffers had left her when he migrated east, and while Shep lowered a garden hose into the well to siphon gas into the canisters, she again kept watch.

When he was filling the last of the cans, she heard the sounds she'd dreaded—vehicles coming down the road at a fast clip. “Load up, guys. We're done.”

Shep pulled up the hose and quickly locked the cap to the well, then bounded into the cab of the truck with the energy of a man much younger than his sixty years. Adrenaline could do that to a man.

Kate peeled out of the parking lot, heading back the way to Sanctuary, but as she'd feared, vehicles turned sideways in the road blocked their exit. She spun the steering wheel, running up over the curb to double back the way they'd come. “Don't you dare fire on them,” she shouted to Danny. “If they shoot back they could hit that gas. Let's find us a place where we can stand off.”

The First Baptist Church was just around the corner and not a likely place for monsters to hide.

She ran up over the curb, all the way up to the front steps of the church, and everyone piled out of the truck and dove for the front doors as vehicles careened into the parking lot behind them.

“Shep, you check the back entrance,” she shouted as she broke out a stained-glass window with her pistol grip. “Danny, you get up into the choir loft and keep watch from the upstairs windows.”

They waited while vehicles circled the parking lot, effectively encircling the building. Whooping shouts rang in the air.

“How much ammo you got on you, girl?” Shep shouted from the opposite end of the church.

She patted her duster pockets. “Enough. I don't miss much.”

“Don't look like we need silver load.”

He was right. What surrounded them weren't werebeasts—it was the lowest form of human life—those who preyed on the survivors.

“Well, this will be easy pickin's,” she murmured, and steeled herself for the coming confrontation.

Kate didn't wait to hear what they might say. The only thing they wanted was her—women were a scarce commodity on the frontier. She took a bead down the barrel of her pistol and squeezed off a shot through the windshield of a pickup, pleased at the splash of red that exploded against the glass. She spared a thought for the fact she felt less remorse murdering this scum than she did vicious werebeasts. But the renegades had chosen their course. The wolves were victims acting on instinct. One of the women she sheltered had fallen into their clutches for a short time before she'd managed an escape. Kate could only guess at what she'd suffered because to this day she barely spoke and couldn't look a man in the eyes.

Cool as ice, she chose another target, unwilling to let even a tremor of fear or regret ruin her shot—doing like her daddy taught her, pretending the men ducking behind their vehicles were just the paper targets she'd practiced on.

One. Two. Three down. Then Shep's shotgun exploded with a roar, catching a cry closer than she'd expected. Were they sneaking up on them?

“What do you see, Danny?” she shouted as she flattened her back against the wall next to the window.

“We've got maybe twenty of the bastards out there,” Danny's excited voice echoed from above. “But they seem to be holding back now.”

“Hello in there,” a tinny voice said over a loudspeaker. “We don't mean you any harm. You had no call to fire on us. We were just…seeing if you needed help.”

Kate gave Shep a skeptical glance. She edged closer to the window to shout outside. “Well, we don't. Why don't you move along?”

“Thought I saw a woman in there,” the man said, the tone of his voice sly. “Honey, we can offer you better protection than an old man and a boy.”

Kate curled her upper lip in a snarl. “Thanks for the offer, but we won't be stayin' in town long.”

Laughter sounded outside, low and not especially amused. It had a dirty edge to it and made her skin crawl.

With the lull, she ejected her magazine and inserted a full clip into her pistol.

“It's gonna be nighttime soon,” the voice outside said. “You really should find shelter. We have a nice place. Plenty to eat.”

A sick knot formed in the pit of her stomach knowing what the trade would be. However, she'd run up against their sort before and prevailed. The trick was to keep her wits about her.

If she could just get a shot at the guy behind the mike…

A long silence followed. She darted a glance around the window sill and realized the attention of the men around surrounding the building was on something in the distance. Then she heard it—engines, big ones, roaring their way.

Being the cowards they were, the gang bolted into their vehicles as quickly as they could and departed. Right behind them appeared a convoy of green camouflaged military vehicles. Hummers and large, canvas-topped transport vehicles with machine-gun turrets mounted on top.