Suckers Page 18

  Without even giving me any greeting, she glanced over at me, striding eastward. "Lily, Elisa, Tracy, and Diana will catch up to us at the wall. I'm going to send Elisa, Tracy, and Diana, to the north, south, and west, though. I just decided that earlier this morning.

  “You, Lily, and I can handle the east, where the largest groups of Huskers will probably gather, but the north, south, and west shouldn't be completely unattended. Huskers can, and likely will, come from those directions, too, though maybe not in such large numbers. We'll definitely have our hands full in the east. Reverend Thompson is probably going to come join us once he shuts and locks the gates after all the men leave."

  Reverend Thompson, who most people in the village just called Rev by this point, was the minister who married Nick, Blaine, and me. In his late sixties, and with various health problems, he wasn't sure if he could be effective at taking out Huskers, and in fact, he figured he'd probably only be in the way.

  However, I reminded him that he had to kill Huskers while bringing his little grandson, Asher, to Helena. He'd said that he'd done what he had to in order to keep Asher safe, and I told him that that was what he needed to do now as well. Even though he wasn't the only one protecting Asher anymore, he could still help protect him within the village. Finally, Rev agreed, saying that he would do his best to kill Huskers until his arthritic knees gave out.

  Several of the eighteen women in Helena were pregnant now and had decided not to fight because of that, and two had recently given birth and weren't in any kind of physical condition to fight. To my great disappointment, and to a little bit of irritation and anger as well, several other women in the village simply refused to fight, saying they didn't want to get flattened and killed in the event that a portion of the wall actually did come down, despite best efforts.

  I thought this way of thinking was a little backward, to say the least, because if a portion of the wall did come down, they might then be killed in their homes anyway, if a horde of Huskers rolled into the village. Whereas, if we all worked together, the chances of any part of the wall falling down would be significantly decreased. Kathy and I hadn't been able to change anyone's mind about refusing to help, though.

  Chris and another non-shifter man who'd joined the community with his nine-year-old daughter in tow would be manning the guard tower during the fight, scanning through binoculars in all directions and letting our shifters know with blasts of the alarm each time a new wave of enemy fighters were joining the fray.

  Using a complicated system of blasts and signals, they would even be able to let Nick, Blaine, and the rest of our shifters know what direction the new waves of fighters would be coming from. This advance warning from men who could see the entire battle area was expected to be a very significant help.

  Once all of us Husker-slayers, including Rev, had assembled at the section of wall directly east, Kathy dispatched Tracy, Elisa, and Diana to their posts manning sections of the wall in different directions.

  Then, almost shouting to be heard above the snarling and growling that was already intensifying to the east of the village, Kathy told Rev, Lily, and me that it was time for us to get into battle mode. "The Huskers are probably going to start heading out to the walls soon, if they haven't already, so grab your weapons and-"

  "Look!"

  Lily said that single word in a strangled shriek, and now she pointed at a section of wooden wall with a several-inch gap between two thick boards, where a gray-faced male Husker had stuck its face, moaning.

  Immediately, Rev pulled a knife from his belt and began heading over to that section of the wall. "Let me send this poor soul to heaven, if that's where he was going before the virus hit."

  Within seconds, more moans and faces between the boards announced the arrival of more Huskers, lots of them, and Kathy, Lily, and I joined Rev in getting to work releasing them from their current hellish state of being nothing more than bloodthirsty husks.

  Between kills, I took a few peeks at the battlefield in the distance, hoping to see Nick and Blaine in their respective lion and tiger forms, but I was unable to see much more than a blur composed of hundreds of wild animals in a melee.

  I could really hear the fight much better than I could see it. With roars, growls, and snarls intensifying along with the fighting, I would have had to cover my ears with my hands in order to not hear the din. And even then, it still might have been audible.

  I could, however, see at least enough to know that during this early stage of the battle, Nick was doing just what he'd said he and his men would, which was keeping all the enemy shifters away from the walls and the village. Good thing, too, since Kathy, Lily, Rev, and I were quickly becoming swamped with hissing, moaning Huskers, who were beginning to come faster than we could stab them through their rotting chests and bloodshot eyes.

  Within several minutes, the four of us were breathless, especially Rev, who I noticed was already beginning to wince in pain as he dashed along the wall on his creaky knees, stabbing Huskers fast and furiously as he went.

  After another several minutes, with the Huskers still coming, but still at a manageable level, Kathy told him to take a break to take a slow walk around the interior of the wall to see if Elisa, Tracy, or Diana needed any help at their posts. Since the Huskers clearly seemed to be coming in from the east, shambling around the walls in the direction of the fight before catching human scent, it didn't seem like Elisa, Tracy, or Diana probably did need any help.

  I knew Kathy was probably just letting a wheezing Rev off the job early, but that was fine with me. As long as things didn't get much worse, I knew Kathy, Lily, and I could keep things under control, and I didn't want Rev to injure himself continuing to fight further.

  Seeming to be having difficulty catching his breath, he didn't argue with Kathy at all, just began walking off south with a weak wave, telling her to send for him if things got really bad. Although after Rev left, things only got really bad for Huskers.

  With Kathy, Lily, and I really beginning to hit our stride as a team, the three of us began dropping Huskers like flies, making their corpses pile up four and five deep at several points along maybe an eight-mile section of wall.

  However, after a while, Lily cut her hand badly in the exact same way that I'd done nearly two years earlier. She even managed to do this while wearing leather gloves that she thought would protect her from this very thing. Quickly soaking a bandage Kathy had pulled from her pocket, Lily tried to fight on, using my backup screwdriver as a weapon, but it soon became clear that she couldn't fight anymore, and Kathy dispatched her to the guard tower to see Chris.

  "He's got a medical kit up there for emergencies, and he'll get you straightened out. Shout up to him, even scream if you have to, to get him to come down for you. I don't want you to climb up the ladder one-handed in case you get dizzy and fall. Now, go."

  Clutching her crimson-bandaged hand, Lily began striding away, pale and clearly rattled. We'd previously discussed our respective squeamishness levels, and she told me that she never fainted at the sight of blood but that she wasn't "really too great with lots of it."

  Being that I definitely wasn't too great with lots of it and did have a tendency to pass out when confronted with the sight of it, I felt like Kathy should accompany her to the guard tower to make sure she made it okay, but now that it was down to just the two of us, Kathy really couldn't be spared.

  Just a few moments after Lily left, Kathy and I started dashing along the wall again, stabbing Huskers; and within a few minutes, we actually had them down to a very 30manageable level. There weren't nearly enough of them to break down the wall, that was for sure. Killing maybe two or three every minute or so now, Kathy and I continued along, and I realized that although her build wasn't exactly athletic, she was in better shape than most women half her age.

  With her expression one of calm determination, she wasn't even breathing that hard. Though I was nowhere near to being winded, I, former Olympic figure skater, was actu
ally breathing harder.

  She and I worked so well and efficiently together as a team that after a few more minutes, we were actually able to take a break to drink some water and observe the shifter battle through a pair of binoculars.

  Kathy looked first, soon saying that our men appeared to be doing just fine. "They've got their hands full for sure, but they're definitely holding their own. I don't even see any of our men injured or dead out on the field yet. There are many Borderliners and Pine Hill shifters dead, though...maybe even a dozen of them. But I don't see even a smudge of blue paint on a single one of them."

  Wisely, so that our shifters could tell friend from foe, they'd quickly smeared blue paint on their foreheads and backs before streaming out the gate. Weeks earlier, red paint had first been suggested by a few shifters, just because it seemed like a fierce color appropriate for battle; but Nick had ultimately vetoed that idea, thinking that once the enemy became bloodied, it might once again become difficult to tell friend from foe.

  After scanning the field until she spotted Mike and Sam and could see with absolute certainty that they were okay, Kathy handed the pair of binoculars off to me, grabbed her knife, and strolled away to kill a hissing female Husker who'd stuck its entire rotting face between a steel beam and a wooden plank maybe just ten feet away.

  Gaze locked on Kathy, snapping its sharp fangs, it was clearly desperate to bite her and drink her blood, though that wouldn't be happening. Kathy dropped it with a single rapid stab to the eye, muttering something about how she wasn't going to get bitten that day.

  After putting the binoculars to my eyes and looking through a wide crack between two thick wooden planks, I quickly located a ferociously fighting lion that I was fairly certain was Nick, who was a decidedly dark-colored lion, with fur nearly the same shade as dark maple syrup.

  Blaine was also pretty easy to identify, because his tiger stripes were unique, with some of them tapering off into zig-zag lightning bolt-looking things on his sides. The fact that most of the fighting was happening on a very gently sloping hill that came down from the forestland to the east had also made it easy to identify them, because I could see nearly everything. Like Nick, Blaine was also fighting furiously, decapitating an unpainted enemy wolf with one snap of his powerful jaws.

  Completely unable to see any more gore after this, I moved the binoculars to my right a little ways, not because there was much of anything to see to the southeast, because the battle was still really contained dead east, but I just wasn't quite ready to put the binoculars down yet. Once I had taken in what there was to be seen to the southeast, I immediately dropped the binoculars, gasping. "Kathy. Kathy. Help me find a ladder. I'm going over the wall."

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  My squeamishness, which had made me turn the binoculars away from the battle, had caused me to see a sight at once miraculous and horrifying. It was a sight that made me instantly begin trembling from head to toe, and that was no exaggeration. Also, my breathing had suddenly accelerated to a near-pant. At the same time, I felt more filled with energy than I probably ever had in my life before, like I could have ran a marathon full-out without ever slowing, unless my rubbery legs gave out beneath me and made me collapse to the ground. But even then, I felt like the electric energy my body seemed filled with, would allow me to quickly reach the finish line just by crawling.

  I'd seen my sisters. I hadn't been hallucinating. I was certain. I'd seen Jessica and Ebony. They'd been near the middle of a gently-sloping hill similar to the one to the east. To their right, there had been a group of men. I didn't know how many men were in the group. I'd seen the men somewhere in the corners of my eyes. My gaze had been locked on Jess and Eb for every millisecond of the two seconds I'd been looking directly at them before absolute shock made me drop the binoculars.

  The sight had been, without a doubt, the most miraculous one I'd ever seen in my life. However, at the same time, it was the most horrifying. Dozens of Huskers were closing in on Jess, Eb, and the men with them from all sides. Some of the Huskers were only maybe thirty or forty feet away. And because there were so many of them, there was no clear escape route that Jess and Eb could cut through. Not without fighting a line of Huskers three or four deep.

  After dispatching another Husker sticking its face through the wall, Kathy frowned at me, lowering her massive knife. "Now, why in the hell would you say-"

  "Just help me find a ladder."

  "No. Now, you tell me right this second what-"

  "Never mind. I already see one."

  I was already dashing toward it. Not twenty feet beyond Kathy, it had been left in place a few days earlier when a few of us were repairing a rotting section of wood high up on the wall.

  Having zero fear of heights, I'd actually been up on the ladder myself. Which is how I knew that once I climbed to the top, I'd be able to easily scramble down the other side of the wall, even though there was no ladder. Looking over at the other side of the wall just out of curiosity, I saw that it was constructed of so many different pieces of timber and steel that there were a few places where a person could get a few good footholds on the way down.

  When I was dashing by her, Kathy grabbed my arm to stop me. "Stop, Eva, right this second. Stop."

  I tried to shake her hand from my arm, but she had an iron grip. "You don't understand. My sisters are out there. They're alive. I just saw them. They're to the southeast. I don't know how, but they're alive and completely fine, but I have to go help them. There's a good-sized horde of Huskers-"

  "No. No, goddammit, you're staying right here."

  "No, I'm-"

  "You're really ready to just throw it all away? The happiness you have with Blaine and Nick? Your very life? You're really ready to just throw that all away? And for what? For a slim chance-"

  "Of saving my sisters? Hell, yes. Now, let go of my damn arm so I can-"

  "No. Rethink your choice, Eva. Happiness and Blaine and Nick, or probable death. At the very least, they'll never forgive you, though you probably won't even be alive for them to-"

  "I guess this is just who I am, Kathy. I'm the kind of woman who flies out of trucks to help men she's just met, and I'm the kind of woman who's about to climb over a wall if there's even a one-in-a-trillion chance my sisters can be saved. I guess I'm just dumb. But-"

  "If all the Huskers out there don't kill you, you know the Borderliners will drag you back to their village, right? Where you'll be raped, and where you'll probably never be heard from ever-"

  "I don't care. Now, let go of my damn arm, Kathy, or else I'm going to punch you in the face."

  In response, Kathy only tightened her already-fiercely-tight grip, adding a hand to my other arm as well. "No. No, you can't go out there, Emily! Don't you realize you'll never come back?"

  Clearly in her frustration and anger, Kathy had misspoke, calling me Emily, though there wasn't even anyone named Emily in the village. I didn't have even a second to puzzle this out, though, and Kathy didn't even seem to realize her mistake.

  She suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard enough to make my teeth chatter. "You stupid, stupid girl! Why have you always been so impulsive...so reckless!" Just as suddenly as she'd begun shaking me, she backhanded me across the face. "How could you have done what you did?"

  She'd hit me so hard that stars had instantly appeared in front of my eyes, and I'd staggered backward, falling to my rear, stunned. It hadn't even been the pain of her blow that had done it, just the sheer power and force. I'd never been hit a single time in my life, let alone backhanded by a very strong lady who'd seemed to put every ounce of her strength into it.

  Kathy was suddenly sorry now, though, crying with her hands covering her mouth, as if she couldn't believe what she'd done. "I didn't mean to do that, Eva. I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry. I just wanted you to be Emily...thought you were her for a second. I'm so sorry."

  I had a feeling I was getting really close to hearing why Kathy had always behaved stra
ngely toward me, but as intrigued as I was, I just simply did not have a fraction of a second to spare at present.

  Quickly getting to my feet, I rubbed the stinging side of my face, trying to shake the stars out of my eyes at the same time. "Follow me, Kathy, and I will punch you in the face. Twice now, for what you just did to me."

  Softly-lined cheeks wet with tears, she just nodded, the perfect picture of contrition. "I won't follow you. I won't try to do anything to you. I'm just so sorry that I hit you."

  I didn't have time to hear anymore and began sprinting off to the ladder at top speed. When I reached it, I raced to the top, just flying. I came down the other side of the wall at about the same rate of speed, just jumping the last five or so feet, unable to be bothered looking for another foothold.

  Now looking to the southeast, I couldn't see Ebony and Jessica at all. All I could see was a tight circle of at least a hundred Huskers clearly in some kind of a frenzy, moving faster than they usually did. I realized it was possible that Eb and Jess might have already been bitten, and the Huskers that I could see on the outside of the circle were desperate to move in for a taste of their blood.