Nightfall (11 page)

Listening, Welsh paled. But his eyes lit with a curious fire at the news. “A dead one?”

“Yeah,” Ange said. “The thing turned into a
man
after it died. Jenna killed it.”

“She shoots, she scores.” Tru made a crowd-goes-wild noise from where he'd settled on the floor. He was cleaning his rifle. Good soldier.

Welsh seemed oddly focused. “So there's a body outside?”

Mason sat a little straighter. “What of it?”

The scientist seemed like a man who knew how to pick his battles. Apparently this was one he wanted to try, because his posture and expression gained a hard, intense edge. He met Mason's gaze directly, pure confrontation. “Because I'm going to autopsy it.”

Jenna snagged Chris before he went off on his fool's errand. “Where's the shower?”

“End of the hall,” he answered, oblivious to anything but retrieving his specimen.

“Hope you got an ax,” Mason said. “Don't even think of bringing that corpse in here whole.”

A good policy, chopping off the head. Just in case. As the men set off, Jenna still shivered uneasily. But she'd be damned if she died dirty.

She didn't glance his way. Couldn't. Just thinking about their kiss curled a wave of heat through her. For a mad moment, with his big body pressed flush against hers, she'd wanted to crawl inside his skin.

Stop it
. A quick shake of her head drew the eyes of the former nurse's aide. Ange regarded her with a silent question.

“I'll be quick,” Jenna promised. “I'm sure you and Penny would love a bath too.”

Her auburn hair a bird's nest of tangles, the other woman nodded. “You have
no
idea.”

Jenna snagged a change of clothes from her pack and walked out into the hall. The bunker was decidedly industrial, plain gray tile bounded by cement walls. She followed the corridor down to where, as promised, she found a utility room complete with shower. Chris had said it was meant for rinsing off chemicals after an industrial accident, so it didn't have a curtain or even a proper stall. A nozzle sprouted from the wall, and a six-inch concrete rim framed the drain.

To hell with niceties. While she stripped, she wondered what the cities would be like. Would skyscrapers be full of monsters now? All those dark rooms teeming with fanged and fearsome things? Terrifying to contemplate.

Naked, she hopped in. The water never got all the way hot, but even lukewarm felt better than good. She soaped her whole body twice, arching to expose her sore muscles to the water. Almost as nice as a massage.

Since the shampoo would need to last a long time, she used a tiny dot and nursed it into a high lather. Eventually they'd learn to make their own toiletries. All survivors, assuming there were other pockets out there, would be living in the Dark Ages. Sooner or later.

The cool air raised goose bumps as she toweled off and scrambled into her underwear. She slid on a pair of clean jeans, and with a little sigh, wrapped herself in a blue hooded sweatshirt. No way would she put those shoes back on until she scrubbed off the filth, so she pulled on a pair of thick socks, ready to turn the shower over.

Ange and Penny sat in the hall just outside.

“Wait, you don't have any clean clothes,” Jenna said.

“Penny has a change in my bag. I got in the habit of keeping a clean set when she was a baby. I just never stopped.”

“Helpful.”

Jenna tried a smile, though she couldn't relate. More to the point, she couldn't remember her own mother being so prepared. Clea Barclay didn't believe in planning; she'd preferred laughter and spontaneity. The contrast between Mitch and her mom had been almost painful at times, but their ability to make the best out of bad situations must have brought them together in the first place.

She turned her thoughts to the immediate problem. Ange was a few inches taller and carried a little more weight. “Let me check. I might have something that will fit you.”

She went back to the main room and knelt just inside the door, digging through her bag. Yep, gray yoga pants with a ton of give. She usually wore them as pajamas but doubted the other woman would complain. Then she dragged out an old T-shirt.

She returned to Ange, who'd stood up to stretch. Penny peered from around her thigh. God, that poor kid. The Dark Age would probably kill her.

Jenna handed over the clothes. “Do you think we'll make it?”

Through the week, let alone through the winter.
That part went unspoken.

The other woman squared her shoulders, like she'd turned a corner in her mind. “We can. We have to. Women are the strong ones, you know? Men go around being all badass, but we're the glue that keeps everything together.”

“I'm more like rubber cement,” she said with a sigh. “That stuff sticks, but it stretches and stretches until it's going two miles in either direction. And when it snaps, it isn't pretty.” She nodded toward the shower. “But enough of that. Get cleaned up before the guys jump line.”

Ange nodded her thanks.

Jenna moved off to give them privacy. From two rooms away, she heard the lighter pitch of Tru's voice, responding to something the doctor had said. Maybe they'd managed to drag the dead thing inside.

So what was Mason doing? She should check on his injuries, even if that meant revisiting that damn kiss. He might do it again, for all she knew, but she wasn't unwilling.

But her stomach rumbled, and she needed to check out the cooking facilities before she tried to go all Betty Crocker on everybody. She checked back down the hall, finding a big room with no exits to the left. That appeared to be a lab for various experiments. Nobody inside. Just equipment. She moved on.

Back out in the hall, she explored further and turned into a smaller room filled with lab tables, presumably for examining dead specimens; it was clean, white, and filled with sterile supplies, cabinets, and shelving. She found Tru arguing with their host.

“What do you mean, you can't find it?” Tru asked. “It was in front, like, a hundred yards out.”

“Well, it's gone now. Maybe the dogs you described dragged it back with them.”

“Or ate it. They're good at that.”

Chris rubbed the back of his neck. “There's nothing I can do without a specimen.”

“You could always head out there and bag one yourself.” Tru held his rifle between them like a peace offering, but his posture said,
Eat me
.

“No, thanks.”

“Aw, poor trigger-happy Harvard.”

That was enough for Jenna. At least bickering gave them something to do.

Two more rooms lined either side of the hall before she reached a utility area. On the left, she found a dormitory, one big space divided into three individual chambers containing two bunks each. She could tell where Chris had been sleeping because a neat stack of notes waited for him beside one mattress, along with an eyeglass case.

The last room on the right appeared to have been devoted to botanical research and contained a fully hydroponic Omega Garden, lavish with greenery. The air was lush and clean, welcoming in a way that she hadn't experienced since leaving home. She wasn't surprised to find Mason in there, sitting alone.

He still needed a shower, but they'd done the best they could using the lab sink.
So much blood.
Jenna inhaled sharply, controlling her reaction to his injury. If she never felt that sick and helpless again—well, that'd be a good thing.

Mason raised his head. Maybe he'd heard her breathing. His face was hard and remote. Newly etched lines attested to the pain of his wounds.

She hesitated, unsure of herself. “Should I go?”

His voice rasped like velvet over rusty metal. “Stay. Go. Do what you want.”

That didn't sound promising, but neither did she want to be by herself, jumping at shadows and noises. Ange was in the shower, and the others still bickered over lack of a corpse. Not much choice. She crossed the floor and sat down four feet away, more than an arm's length.

“It's nice in here,” she mumbled, finding herself tongue-tied.

How ridiculously banal.

Heat rose in her cheeks.
Damn it
. Were things going to be weird after that kiss? She didn't want it to be. It shouldn't be. Just a gut reaction, the whole affirmation-of-life thing.

Mason wouldn't look at her. “I thought you'd still be chatting with Dr. Shotgun. You owe him a kiss for putting me on my ass. That's what you've been after, right? Ever since I threw you in the trunk?”

“That's the
last
thing I want.”

He skewered her with a cold glare. “Really? I heard you, Jenna. I wasn't out the whole time. I'm remembering pieces.”

Frantically, she thought back. What the hell had she said during those crazy moments while they worked on his wounds? Nothing she could even remember, but it seemed to have made an impression on Mason.

“I feel like I know you,” he mimicked in a precious falsetto. “We've been listening to you for
days
, Dr. Welsh. We should start your fan club.”

Jenna blinked. She'd just thought the conversation silly and ironic. It wasn't like Chris Welsh had any other listeners. She didn't understand the leap from joking—a coping mechanism in the midst of a tense moment—to Mason imagining
this
.

“You think I want to see you hurt?”

“Doesn't matter,” he snapped. “Just do me one favor.
Listen
when I talk. I have reasons, and I've been doing this a hell of a lot longer than you.” He smiled, showing teeth. “We've just scratched the surface here. And I mean to keep you safe.”

“Because you promised Mitch,” she said, stung.

Black as obsidian, his gaze met hers. “Got that right.”

Good thing she hadn't come to him for comfort. Maybe, somewhere deep down, she'd hoped for a little softness, some solace after surviving another day fraught with long odds. If he'd pulled her close and let her listen to his heartbeat for a little while, she wouldn't have said no. Wouldn't have hesitated. But he looked about as welcoming as the cement wall. His chest, she remembered, was definitely as hard.

So, apparently, was his heart.

She nodded quietly. “Fine. I get it. I'm going to check on Ange and Penny.”

Mason felt her absence like the end of a rainstorm. One minute his mind was clouded over with the interference she always brought. The next ... nothing. A door slammed shut. That sound echoed through his brain, setting off a series of small inward explosions. The greenery of the Omega Garden spun him into another, more distant forest.

Morbid curiosity and visceral shock held him transfixed. He hadn't wanted to look at his teammates. Jeff was the youngest, blond and fair. He didn't need to shave more than once a week. Mason came next in relative youth. Thomas, weathered and in his forties, had worked with Mitch the longest. He didn't rattle easily, but now held his rifle with both hands as if to cover their shake. Axel was as good with his guns as he was with a hog, and he could be counted on. If they stayed cool, maybe they'd all walk away.

Mason stared at the corpses. The stench turned his insides to water. He'd noticed a scent like it—close but more tangy and cloying—when his thigh wound had gone putrid, before Mitch took him in. The unforgettable rot of infection.

Forget brimstone. Hell smelled like this.

Then he noticed the profound silence the monsters brought with them. Utter quiet. No living animals. Even the trees seemed to hold themselves unnaturally still. No insects buzzed their death sounds. The eastern states had become a battleground, where nothing sane or good survived.

Mitch leaned in. “Watch yourself, kid. This place ain't right. There's heavy magic here.”

The old man looked up at the trees draped in thick moss and crossed himself. That show of deference lodged fear like a piece of shrapnel in Mason's side. Mitch had always been devout in his way but to his own beliefs. Crossing himself made it seem as if he also needed God's personal intervention. Not that Mason believed, but he liked Mitch and the crew. They were family, pretty much the only one he'd ever known. When they told him where they were headed—and why—he'd thought they were crazy.

Now he knew he was too.

Howls wafted from the trees, slow and distant, and gathered strength.

Mitch circled two fingers in the air. “Fan out.”

The team moved, backs to the pit and their weapons up. Shotguns. Old bolt-loaders.

A dozen dogs burst through the underbrush and attacked.

“Incoming,” Mason shouted. “Jeff, watch your back!”

His brain couldn't take in that much detail. Not so quickly. Blood and teeth, screams and snarls, and the feeling that none of it was solid. Not real. Sure, he'd heard the stories and the news reports, but some things you couldn't believe in your gut until you
saw
them. Until they tried to kill you.

He fired anyway. His rifle kicked against his shoulder as he pulled the trigger again and again.

“Hold your positions!” Mitch shouted.

They might've stood a chance had they fought as a special forces unit, guarding each other. But they lacked the experience. All of them, even Mitch. His training couldn't prepare anyone for this. Not really. With shaking hands, Jeff popped off a few rounds, but fear screwed with his aim. A monster lunged, knocking him down, and tore out his throat in a bloody rush.

After the boy fell, the other two men scattered. Mason never would have believed it of Thomas or Axel, but when faced with death, they ran.