Resurrection (Eden Book 3) (7 page)

“I know.”

His feet were bare, but his boots were placed neatly next to the blanket upon which he lay, a pair of fresh socks on top of them. He remembered the mass of zombies that had been clawing at his bare toes. MacKenzie looked around. He and Red were still out in the woods, but this wasn’t where his punishment had been meted out.

“Zed?”

“You don’t have to worry about them.” She dismissed his concern.

“Where are we?”

“I carried you, after I cut you down. How are you feeling?”

“Pretty bad. But better…”

“We’ll start walking in a little while.”

“Yeah.”

Little Red was rarely caught off guard, and therefore she had to give the two women who emerged from the trees mental points for having come up on her unawares. Red knew them for what they were as soon as they appeared: road agents, bandits. The pair was scruffy, their clothes disheveled, hair grown out, not groomed.

“Well,” said the first one, and Red noticed the woman was bereft of any teeth. “We could commence with the pleasantries.”

“Or we could just skip all that,” contended the second one, the taller of the two, “and you could just give us all your shit.”

“What we’ve got is what you see.” Little Red was calm. She knew exactly where her Noveske N4 was, leaning against a tree a few yards away. There was a round chambered and the safety was on. “Take what you will.”

“Oh, we will take, little cunny.” The first flashed a toothless grin.

“Hey, he bit?” The second one leveled the barrel of her shotgun at MacKenzie. He stirred uneasily.

“No, he wasn’t bit. I found him like this.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Little Red rested a comforting hand on MacKenzie’s bandaged shoulder. He could feel the warmth in that small hand. He could feel the danger. He could also see the four inch push dagger sheathed in its wrist holster on the underside of her forearm.

“Been awhile since we had a man,” the one mentioned to the other, “hasn’t it Connie?”

“Has been, Shazz.”

Little Red had dealt with their type before. She believed she knew something of how they thought, of what life in the wilds and abandoned cities did to a person. They weren’t going to let her and MacKenzie live if they had their way. They’d kill her and Mac. Maybe eat them both if that was their thing. Maybe rape them both too before or after they’d killed them. Maybe before
and
after. The only thing that surprised Red was that these two were women. They were usually men.

“I know I’m not in a position to ask…” Little Red started to say.

“I can think of a few positions I’d like to see you in, little cunny,” leered the toothless one.

“…but I’m wondering how you found us?”

“Heard the shot,” said Connie.

“Uh-huh.” When Little Red had freed an unconscious MacKenzie from his net, she’d taken out all the zombies with her knives. She was cutting him down when a late comer staggered out of the woods. Red had been extricating Mac from the net, and as good as she was close up with a sharp edge, she hadn’t wanted to go that route with the thing when she was supporting Mac. Instead she’d drawn her Stechkin and put a 9mm in its forehead. That would have been the shot these women had heard.

Little Red was pretty sure they hadn’t seen the two dozen dead zombies. They’d have been reluctant to confront her if they’d seen that. Or maybe they had seen them, but they were just crazy like that.

“What happened to you, asshole?”

Connie meant the question for Mac. Little Red noticed the way the two women dismissed her. She was small and young. People who didn’t know her tended to dismiss her as little more than a child, to disregard her, almost always to their detriment. Though the N4 was propped up against a tree out of reach, Red had blades on her forearms and ankles, across her chest and in each boot.

“Who fucking cares?” the one without teeth asked rhetorically. “So long as his dick still works. Hey, asshole, does it? Your dick still work?”

Little Red tried to put herself in their shoes. If she eked out an existence in the wilds, would she have walked out into the open with Mac or whomever she was with, just revealing the both of them like that? Or would she have had a third party somewhere nearby, on the down low?

“Please don’t hurt us…” MacKenzie’s fear was genuine. Red gripped his shoulder tighter.

As if to confirm her hunch, Red heard the snap of a twig somewhere behind her in the trees. She noticed the way the woman Connie looked that way, the look she gave to the person in the woods.

So there were three then…

“Oh, we’re going to hurt you alright,” the one without teeth promised Mac. “But you at least will get to feel some pleasure before you meet your end. This one,” she stepped close to Little Red, reached out and touched her short hair, noting the chop sticks embedded there, “you a
real
redhead, cunny?”

Too close.

“All over, huh?”

“Mac,” Little Red said calmly. “Down.”

MacKenzie threw himself backwards and rolled over, burying his face in his hands and his arms in the dirt and leaves and pine needles. There was a grunt and a gun shot followed by five more in rapid succession.

When he looked up, Little Red had retrieved her N4 and had it up to her shoulder. She was sighting down the barrel into the trees, waiting for something to show itself.

The woman who had touched Red’s hair was on her knees, hissing past the tongue that jutted out of her toothless mouth, staring down at her entrails, her stomach opened up by the hooked karambit Red kept on her ankle. One of the chop sticks from Red’s head was buried in her chest. The second woman was dead, arms and legs splayed, a bullet from Red’s Stechkin between her eyes.

“There.” Red breathed and triggered a burst from the N4. MacKenzie jerked involuntarily and whipped his head around in time to see a third woman off in the distance collapse between the trunks.

“Shit, Red. You move faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Little Red accepted the compliment without a word. She retrieved her karambit from where it lay near the disemboweled woman. The woman was still alive, slumped on her knees. She’d ceased trying to stuff her intestines back inside her stomach.

The woman stared up at Little Red, and there was a glaze stealing over her eyes.

“P-please…”

Red reached down and pulled her chop stick out of the woman’s torso.

“What do we do about her?” MacKenzie asked.

“Leave her.” Little Red slung her pack over her shoulder. “Zed will be here soon. Keep her company.”

The woman should have been dead by now, but she wasn’t, and Little Red’s words filled her with terror.

“Get your boots on, Mac.” Little Red stood looking into the trees around them, satisfied they were alone, that there had only been these three. “We gotta get moving.”

“Sure thing.” MacKenzie ignored the protests his body threw at him as he rose to his feet, reaching for his socks and boots. Whatever he was feeling, it wasn’t anything compared to what the woman kneeling there was experiencing. She kept mouthing the word
please
over and over but nothing was coming out.

“Sure thing.”

Riley slid her left foot sideways, off the ground, opening up into a left front stance, that leg bent, her right leg nearly straightened behind her. As she transitioned to the stance, her right hand-balled and chambered at her side—snapped forward, the sleeve of her
dobuk
snapping the air. Riley lifted her right knee up, holding it in place momentarily, then her right leg shot forward in a snap kick, her hands going up to her face to protect her head.

She moved through the
poomse
, blindfolded.

Troi watched her friend from the sidelines, off the Dojang’s mats. Riley had practiced taekwondo all the years Troi had known her. Watching her now, as she had watched her friend on many other occasions, Troi was struck by the seemingly effortless power Riley put into each position of the form she practiced. Troi had studied with Riley on and off, but never developed the passion for the martial form her friend possessed. Troi knew enough to recognize this
poomse
as one of the higher level varieties.
Taeguk pal jang
or something it was called.

Riley was a study in concentration, discipline, and focus. Her movements were fluid and choreographed from years of practice and single-mindedness.
Absent
-
mindedness
was more like it, Troi thought. Riley had explained it to her before. After awhile, the strikes and kicks became instinctual. The action became something that required little to no premeditation in the moment. The taekwondo-ist became so absorbed in the moment and the movements, it was an effortless action. Of course, it took years of dedication, if ever, to reach that point.

Riley’s uniform, her dobuk, was white with black trim that matched the belt around her waist. Riley’s students called her
Sabum
-
nim
, or teacher. Riley was somewhere on the road to her sixth dan.
Sahyun
, or Master status, was conferred with the seventh and eighth-degrees.

Taekwondo was an arcane martial art. It had little practicability against the undead, and Troi couldn’t imagine it had seen much use in the zombie wars.

Where Riley’s hair was short and brown, Troi’s was long, straight and black. When she’d practiced taekwondo, Troi had to tie her hair up or it got all in her face and she couldn’t see.

Riley’s right leg snapped up over her head before returning to the mat, behind her left foot. She shifted to a cat stance: her left foot slid back as she raised herself to the ball of her right foot; her left fist—palm-up—was drawn back and cocked at her side, ready to strike; her right hand was open—fingers extended together and rigid in a knife hand—and across her abdomen.

Troi envied Riley her flexibility. Troi knew the
poomse
were more than just impressive looking floor exercises. They were the embodiment of the
Hwarang-do
, the code that governed taekwondo and its practitioners. Troi remembered there were five aspects of the code, but she could never recall more than two or three of them.

Trustworthiness figured prominently. Troi considered Riley the living embodiment of that one. Riley was a loyal friend and always had been. She never got caught up in the petty bullshit that derailed other women’s friendships. Troi liked to think she didn’t herself either.

Troi could tell, by the look of Rye’s hair, that the
Sabum-nim
had taught several classes today, and had probably sparred with the students of her advanced class. As the
poomse
unfolded, Riley engaged in an elaborate dance. It was a dance with a legion of invisible opponents, all of whom attacked her at once from every conceivable angle.

Valor was another part of the code. The idea being that you never retreated in battle, even when the odds against you were overwhelming, even when they were coming at you from everywhere. Riley transitioned smoothly from stance to kick, from block to punch.

Justice was the fifth part of the
Hwarang-do
that Troi could recall. Justice meant something about the taekwondo-ist being selective in the taking of life.

Riley snap kicked with her left leg, but did not place her foot back on the mats. She rechambered the kick, her knee raised, her foot drawn back. Riley jumped up and kicked with her right foot, crying out
Kihap
as she did so, the energy exploding from her lungs and body into her invisible opponents. She landed in a right front stance, right arm held out in front of her, fisted palm steadied in a front block, protecting her trunk and face.

Riley’s right fist and arm moved from a single knife-hand block to a reverse elbow strike. She delivered a reverse backfist with her left hand, followed by a front middle punch with her right. Riley finished in
ba ro
position, facing forward, fists at her waist. She bowed at the waist.

“Nice, Rye.”

Riley pulled the blindfold from her eyes and breathed, sweat beading her brow. “How long have you been there?”

“A minute or two.” Troi tossed Riley a towel that had been set on a folding chair. “I don’t know how you do it blindfolded. I’d be afraid I’d crash into a wall.”

“You get used to it.” Riley mopped sweat from her brow. Today had been a good day. Because these were her last classes for several weeks, she hadn’t held back. She’d gotten in some good sparring with her black belts, had the pleasure of conferring a black belt to a hard-working pupil, and challenged herself by running through a series of forms. “I didn’t think I’d see you until tonight. Something up?”

“No, we’re still on for tonight. But yeah, something…I was at work today—at the hospital? These guys came in from the Outlands and—hey, you know what? Are you done here?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you come with me to the hospital?”

Riley looked at her friend, concerned. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just… It’ll be easier to explain to you on the way. Can you call Anthony and ask him to meet us there?”

“What’s up? Is my dad…”

“No!” Troi shook her head emphatically. “I swear, this whole thing is bizarre, but it has nothing to do with your dad. I was at work and Evan came in with this. Look, take a shower and get dressed and I’ll explain everything on the way, I promise. And I promise—it’s nothing to worry about.”

“If you say so…Give me five minutes.”

“Again,” Evan said quietly to his friends in the hospital hallway, outside the door to the room, “Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, sure, Ev.” Anthony acknowledged his friend’s gratefulness. “But what’s this about?”

Anthony and Riley were a little concerned, because Evan had described the horrid state of the man in the next room so vividly.

“You’re going to see.” Evan then turned to Riley and Troi. “You don’t need to be here if you don’t want to be.”

“I want to be,” Riley said.

“I don’t,” said Troi. “I’ve been in there already…” a look of revulsion crossed her face as she considered the door to the patient’s room. “So if nobody minds…”