The Killin' Fields (Alexa's Travels Book 2) (34 page)

Paul heard the boots and felt his heart pound. She and her brutes were here. He’d heard the vicious battle and seen the fire, but it hadn’t reached his shack. He’d hidden from the passing animals in surprised fear, but now, in the light of day, he felt like a coward.

Alexa would expect him to fall in line for her triumphant walk into Lincoln. He would have to suffer the feelings of pride and the boastful comments of the men who’d done the fighting, and he would have to tolerate their pitiful and scornful glances at him for being too weak to come alone. It was humiliating.

Paul didn’t get up as the boots stopped, not sure if he would refuse to go with them. He’d almost made his choice and that bunker was looking better and better. Underground, he would at least be with his own kind. He understood now that he wasn’t enough like Alexa to make it, but he wasn’t very sure about going to the bunker either. He had enough information to be let in, but there he’d be a prisoner again.

“Maybe I’ll go off on my own,” he muttered, ignoring the boots now outside the door. “She doesn’t need me and can survive without her.”

The front door was jerked open, causing the broken cupboard to crash over and Paul glance up angrily. “I’m not going.”

The chuckle in response was unexpected, mostly because it was male.

“Yes, you are rabbit. Right back to being the bait, where you belong.”

Unlike the others, these soldiers were harder, meaner, and older. They had guns ready, faces full of determined hatred. They were a threat.

Shane laughed maliciously as he ordered Paul brought out. His strawberry red hair gleamed in the dim sunlight.

“Load that good luck pile into a truck and get set. She burnt the house. It won’t be long now and we’ll collect a double reward.”

Paul had once loved to stare at Shane’s smooth red curls and pretend they were his. It had gotten the soldier jobs and attention he didn’t deserve. Paul had almost been friends with Shane and upon killing his father, Paul had even missed Shane, but his time with Alexa had already changed him. He could now spot evil.

Paul spun in the grip of the two men who’d expected a frightened rabbit, and snatched his gun from his belt.

Before Shane could do more than put up a hand, Paul pulled the trigger.

5

Alexa came to an hour after they climbed from the silo. She snapped into alertness all at once and Daniel immediately stopped and set her onto her feet.

Ribs throbbing, Alexa stared at the charred landscape, noting that the fire had run ahead of them. It would be stopped at the river, but the bikes they’d made would be nothing but charred piles of metal by now. Her men hadn’t bothered to go check anyway, she noticed. They’d kept going toward Lincoln, and were now within a few miles of it. She wasn’t upset with them. From the looks of the land, the stores she’d hoped to clean out had been destroyed. The fire was merciless.

“You’ve done well.”

Her praise was a topping on a fine desert and all six men grinned happily.

Alexa resumed their walk toward Lincoln, stretching carefully to discover they had tightly bound her ribs with a cloth. It was helping her breathe and move without showing much sign of it.

She took the water and biscuit Jacob handed her, picking out signs that the animals had tried to run ahead of the fire. Burnt corpses of all varieties littered the road.

“You’ve done very well,” she remarked. “We’ll move to the next levels of training from here on out.”

None of the men protested. Each of them had spent the last hour of walking considering their actions on this run, their reactions and deeds of bravery.  Each of them had performed well, but if the next missions would be harder, more training was definitely in order. However, it was already somewhat amazing how well they’d adjusted to this lifestyle. It was as if they’d been born waiting for this time to arrive so that they could shine.

“We all have some questions,” Billy said to her. “If there’s to be a reward, we’ve agreed on that.”

Alexa allowed the boldness. After this, she may or may not crack down on their arrogance a bit, but for now, they could do little wrong in her eyes. They come through the first real test. It was enough.

“Such as?”

Billy grinned wider. “Sweet. Uh… The hag. Why did the two trees hold her back?”

“Holly trees have long been used to guard against such foulness. They only glow when true evil is present.”

“And the branches we stabbed her with?” Daniel wanted to know.

“Dogwood,” Jacob guessed. He’d been thinking hard on that one. “With the religious associations, it makes sense.”

“Religious associations?” David asked.

“Supposedly that was the tree used to crucify Christ. It even has a discolored center that resembles the nails in the hands and feet.”

“Did you notice those trees didn’t have the mold on them?” Edward brought up. “Weird.”

“They were all fast-growing varieties that had to have been transplanted,” Daniel said. “Holly trees grow in a swampy environment.”

David shrugged. “Well, if we ever meet the person who planted them, we owe a big thank you.”

All of them nodded and Alexa kept her thoughts to herself. Safe Haven had traveled this way and she couldn’t help but wonder if those trees had been put there intentionally by someone who’d known they would need the material. Dogwood and Holly were both popular at Christmas time, which it had been when the war came, so she wasn’t sure what to assume. In the end, she settled for fate taking care of its descendants, as it always had.

“Did you bring a few—”

Alexa stopped talking as the men held up small handfuls of the branches they’d used against the hag and then a small stack of others that would be divided up as soon as they made their stop for the night.

Alexa smiled at them, full strength. “Excellent.”

It was a moment before any of them could remember how to walk. This was when she felt the most alive-right after facing down death.

“What about the little girl?” Billy asked, after Edward filled her in on everything she’d missed. “Why didn’t she die with the house?”

“None of the undead was destroyed except by the natural spread of the fire,” Alexa explained, noting that they were now beyond the burn line. It hadn’t come this far. “The undead aren’t connected as strongly to their creator once they’ve had fresh blood.”

“Then the other one could still be out there?” Daniel asked, grimacing. “Attacking travelers?”

“Yes,” Alexa nodded. “Do you want to go back and hunt him down?”

“I thought he was only an extension of the master?” Jacob asked, confused.

“He was during the changing process, but after a few days, each victim becomes their own master. Most stay with their creator simply because it’s the life they know, but these children were taken from their families and brought here, so they’ll roam.”

“Are there more of them?”

“Oh yes,” Alexa confirmed gravely. “The master of the house hadn’t been challenged since the conquest of Lincoln. Scores of townspeople and travelers fell prey, I’m sure.”

“And we’re going to leave them out there to hunt?” Mark asked, surprised by that.

Alexa shrugged, voice gentle. “Say the word, my pets and we’ll turn around.”

As much as they wanted to, none of the men spoke and Alexa kept walking. It would take them years to hunt down all the undead children that had been created here and it was hard, soul-killing work, as they’d already found out.

Bang!

The gunshot echoed through the corn and sent birds fleeing toward the fighters.

They were less than a mile from the shack now, and Alexa took off running, fighters on her heels. They’d all recognized the sound of Paul’s gun. Who had he killed this time?

Free Will

1

Alexa and her men stopped at the edge of the corn, and scanned the shack that was surrounded with soldiers. They recognized the men they’d spared yesterday, but the redheaded body on the ground nearby wasn’t familiar to any of them.

“Come out, Rabbit!” a soldier shouted. “We’ll burn it.”

“No reward if I’m dead!” Paul shouted, sounding terrified.

“Body gets a pass, you know that, Rabbit,” another man answered, laughing.

“I’m worth more alive,” Paul denied in desperation.

“You should have thought about that before you shot Shane,” one of the soldiers roared. “Now get out here you little scum!”

Alexa’s men waited for her orders, but she had none to give.

Edward recognized the silence of a teaching moment and assumed she wanted them to plan the rescue.

“Okay, we use a decoy formation and take out the front row,” the horseman stated, looking at the others.

“Sure,” Jacob whispered as the shouting at Paul stopped abruptly. “But maybe the sight of us will stop it. They might trade.”

“What do we have that they want?’

“Just me, pets,” Alexa offered patiently.

All six men frowned at her and she shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re about to rescue a man you hate. Do you?”

Edward paused in his planning. “You don’t want him back?”

Alexa stood and calmly walked away from the shack.

The confused men hurried after her, throwing anxious glances over their shoulders.

“So we let them take him back to the labs?” David asked uneasily.

“Oh, he won’t make it to the bunker,” Alexa predicted. “The redhead was well-liked.”

Realizing what that meant, and that she was leaving Paul to die, drew a hard silence that brought her around to face them in annoyance. “You don’t want him along. You don’t want him around me. Why would you insist on this?”

“It isn’t right to leave him,” Jacob answered quietly. “Doesn’t feel right.”

“Interesting,” she commented. “How was it right for all of you to pick on him and try to drive him out?”

Silence.

Alexa started walking again. “I’m hard on you. I was hard on him, many times. You were cruel. Tell me why.”

“You need him!” Mark protested, suddenly finding a ray of hope. “We’ll go get him ourselves.”

“Why not let him die quickly at the hands of true enemies?” Alexa asked. “A little dignity and honor is better than the abuse he’ll suffer with us.”

The guilt was crushing.

“The members of this team have to get along, to bond and be friends and brothers. If you can’t do that with the rabbit, then let him die.”

Alexa kept walking as her men stopped to share unsure, guilty glances. She didn’t stop even when she felt them fall out of her sight. This was their mess to clean up.

2

“Burn it!”

The call brought a handful of men with lighters and torches forward to set the shack on fire. It caught quickly, flames racing over the roof and walls like wind.

“In two minutes you’ll be dead from the smoke,” the new leader yelled, getting angry. He needed to hear Paul scream for what he’d done. As soon as Paul came running out, Raphe planned to shove him back inside and let him roast.

“Hey!”

The soldiers spun around to discover all six of Alexa’s men lined up out of range of their sidearms. Two of the men grabbed for their rifles.

Before anyone could take aim, the fighters dove into the cover of the corn and disappeared.

“Damn it!”

“Where did they go!”

“Get down!”

A long volley of gunshots echoed across the corn as Alexa’s men rushed through the tall stalks, firing at will. Behind the fleeing soldiers, the shack flamed up and Paul started screaming.

Raphe hadn’t moved from his vigil on the door and he caught the smoking man who came barreling from the shack. He twisted Paul’s wrist to get rid of the gun and used his fist to beat the scientist into submission.

Paul quickly sagged under the onslaught and Raphe hefted him up to throw into the inferno.

“I have an offer!”

Raphe paused with Paul over his shoulders, face ugly in the strain and his eyes widened in betrayal as Edward’s slug smacked into his chest.

Raphe fell heavily and Paul landed mostly on top of him, moaning.

“Thank you for accepting my offer,” Edward quipped, noting that the scientist had been hurt in several ways. His guilt grew.

Daniel helped him get Paul over a shoulder, both men glad he’d passed out, and they were joined by the others. All the soldiers were dead. After the bad feelings they’d brought into this shootout, there was no way it could have ended any differently.

Alexa didn’t speak as her men fell into their places. She also didn’t look at them or their burden. They were learning well, but allowing them to see how pleased she was by their actions wasn’t a good idea. A year from now she could do that and it wouldn’t leave wiggle room on the rules. Right now, she had to remain steady, hard, and she would.

3

“Stash your treasure there,” Alexa ordered, surprising and pleasing her men. They’d been unsure what would happen to Paul, but in his condition, the guilt wouldn’t go away if they dumped him on Roscoe’s mercy.

They put Paul down on the dusty bed in the center of the empty house and left a two-day kit, assuming his had been lost. The farmhouse was fully stocked for people, as if the family here had left one day and never returned. It was an extremely lucky find and the men felt better about leaving Paul there.

Alexa led them the rest of the way to Lincoln in silence, refusing to give them the satisfaction they were hoping for. It would keep them on the edge, right she needed them.

Right before they topped the rise into Lincoln’s garbage roads, Alexa slowed them long enough to give a cryptic instruction.

“Things that pretend to be something they are not, always give themselves away with an oddity.”

“We’re not done,” Edward realized.

“No.” Alexa stopped, but motioned them forward. “Tell me what you see.”

Mark and Edward peered over the rise as the others stood sentry, then switched out as they answered.

“Gates are shut, but the garbage wagon is heading that way.”

“Roscoe has a waiting party behind the gate. Small arms, big bodies.”

“The zone fences are lined with people. They’re watching for us.”

“They’re scared. More than usual.”

It was the last two men Alexa studied as they took their turn.

“It’s not the same,” Jacob said, noting oddly shaped clouds that were the wrong color for afterworld. “It’s too…”

“Serene,” David supplied.

Alexa drew them to her side and waved a tired hand in front of each face, repeating the same thing. “As it is, not as it seems.”

When she finished, she led them over the rise.

Edward started to confirm a suspicion, but Lincoln came into view again and everyone halted, attention snared. The city was gone.

The city had been destroyed, burnt to the ground, but it wasn’t smoking. It had happened years ago, and they had to accept that the same as they understood the clouds above the destruction was actually the white fog of ghosts.

“What the hell?” Mark got out, taking in the corn-covered roads they’d come down the first time, and the huge gates buried halfway in the mud outside the city entrance.

“How can this… This isn’t…” Jacob fell silent as he noticed the shadowy forms among the ghosts. It wasn’t only the dead down there waiting for their return.

“No, it isn’t,” Alexa confirmed. She was staring at the outcasts side, noting Robert and Emmerson coming her way. They were transparent, like in any movie, and it was shocking to learn that legend was also accurate. The notebooks had mentioned ghosts, but she hadn’t ever seen a live one.

Alexa snickered at her mental joke and headed down the first dirt path.

Edward caught up, forgetting the formation in his shock. “Were they real before? When did this happen?”

Alexa shrugged. “They were always real, thus having personalities, but no, they were not alive when we brought them through the corn.”

“When did you know?” Jacob asked. He hadn’t felt anything wrong spiritually at all and he tried to listen for those things even now.

“Know? Now, the same as you. Suspect? During the first fight when we found the bloody handprint, but the kids weren’t injured. It had to mean they were helping the wolves.”

As they got closer to the city that wasn’t there anymore, the more details they could pick out. The ghosts swirling above the city were a blurry mass of white, but those on the ground still retained their human shape and appeared exactly as they had before. Except for the glow coming from them. It was as if each of them were in their own cloud.

“What is this?” Billy asked. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve been able to remove the magic that keeps this trap camouflaged,” Alexa explained. “It won’t last long, but for us, it’ll be more than enough.”

“None of this is possible,” Jacob whispered. “This isn’t how it works.”

Alexa didn’t argue, only let the evidence speak for itself. The crap they’d been fed most of their lives was just that—crap. Adrian had known and he’d left that dangerous information for her. She would honor it by teaching her fighters that death wasn’t something to fear, only to avoid as long as possible, because with death, there could finally be peace. It was something they would long for in time.

The fighters walked straight to the city entrance without slowing or stopping, but their gazes were drawn repeatedly to the sky where the souls darted and dipped dizzyingly. As they neared the charred street, they could see someone waited for them on the other side. It was the Roscoe family, pale and out of place.

“He’s not dead!” Jacob exclaimed in surprise.

“No,” Alexa confirmed. “And maybe we can get a full story this time.”

“Are we… I mean, “Should we be ready to…” David was nervous, in awe, and not sure he could pull the trigger against some of these spirits. They felt angry, vengeful even, but not at them, only toward Roscoe.

“They can’t harm us,” Alexa said, leading them to the cowering males. “I suspect that’s why we were sent to the master of the corn, because she could.” Alexa rubbed her ribs and muttered, “She did.”

“I am so confused,” Billy complained good-naturedly. He was too astounded by the views to be honestly angry at any information that she may have withheld. Never in his lifetime had he expected to be a part of such things.

“Patience, my pets,” Alexa told them.

Roscoe and his son were the same men they’d left, only somehow, they weren’t. In comparison to the souls above, these two were the dead ones, devoid of life.

“Please,” Roscoe begged as she stopped in front of them. “For my son.”

Alexa studied the glassy-eyed boy without compassion. “He can’t be saved.”

“Mercy!” Roscoe cried, hand coming up in defense.

Alexa waved Mark forward and the instant he was in range, young Roscoe lunged, baring fangs and revealing his transformation.

Roscoe screamed in denial and Alexa gently turned him away as her men used their guns again.

Above them, the ghosts grew louder in their humming, their approval of what was happening. They couldn’t stop it or help it, but their justice was sweet.

“Tell me,” Alexa ordered. “Free yourself, Mayor., and I shall give mercy.”

Roscoe collapsed at her feet and her men stood a close sentry so as not to miss a word.

“Please.”

“Not until you admit your sins,” she denied.

Roscoe crawled to his son’s body in defeated misery. “I sold them. To keep control and protect my son.”