Blight Read online

  I’m up again, running down the dark hallway, through the kitchen, out the back door into the glare of the floodlights. I switch my pistol’s safety on, tuck it into my holster, and run at a crouch along the barricade at the heart of the Red Hand compound. Shouts, barks, and gunshots echo over from the next street.

  One guard stands at a break in the barricade, his back to me.

  Quiet. I swallow.

  I’m on him in a second, my arm around his throat, choking off any sound he might make before he can fully turn and see me. He’s bigger than me, but I let my weight go dead. He stumbles back and falls on me, but I hold tight, even when he lands on my leg, driving his elbow into my thigh. His eyes bulge, his face reddens, the cords in his neck strain. He smells like beer and burned plastic, sweat sticking his skin to mine. I tighten my grip and look away. He flails against me silently, arches his back, and then, at last, he falls slack.

  I drop him and run to the house on my right, the one with the open-top jeep parked on the patch of dirt out front. Alder’s rifle is still upright behind the backseat. I think about grabbing it, but my nine-millimeter will be better in close quarters, if it comes to that. I dash up the steps and push open the front door. The smell of diesel hits me, thick and sweet. Voices drift down from upstairs, but the main floor seems empty. Flags I don’t recognize hang over the windows, muting the floodlights. Someone has punched a hole in the drywall. Boxes of liquor and ammunition are stacked against the wall, alongside fuel cans.

  I grab a liquor bottle like a club and go up the stairs. Better not to shoot if I don’t have to. Gunfire is going to bring every man in the camp running. A hallway branches in two directions—three doors to the left, two to the right. Muffled shouts rise and fall behind one, on the left. I creep toward it, bottle raised. It swings open silently, and I freeze.

  Two boys—scrawny, maybe ten or eleven, with smears of dirt on their clothes—stand in the far corner of the room, shoving and screaming at each other.

  “Fuck you, shithead!”

  “No, fuck you, you fucking shithead!”

  A toddler dressed in a man’s filthy undershirt sits on the floor between the boys and me, playing with a mechanic’s wrench. He—she?—twists around to look at me with big brown eyes and then turns back to the wrench. The boys don’t notice me at all. I back away, pulling the door closed behind me.

  The next room holds a pair of bare mattresses and several sleeping bags crumpled in the corners. The one after that is a bathroom, with a double-doored metal cabinet shoved into the alcove where the shower used to be. I make myself breathe. Dammit. What if he’s not in here? What if he’s in a different house, or they took him someplace when the dogs broke out?

  I try the first door on the right. There’s a woman on a mattress in the middle of the floor, under a heap of blankets, a cluster of empty bottles near her head.

  “Erik, I told you all that bullshit is hurting my skull.” She starts to get up, and a current of fear bolts through me.

  But she falls back on the mattress. “Keep the goddamn door shut, I said!” she shouts.

  I move to pull it closed, but in that moment, the last door to my right flies open, and a man bursts out. Shaved head, puffy, bluish circles under his eyes.

  “I swear to God, Karlee, if you don’t stop complaining—”

  He stops dead when he sees me. All the air goes out of my lungs. I swing the bottle. He ducks, but I’m faster. It catches him across the side of the head and explodes in a shower of shards and blood. He sags, and I bring my knee up and catch him in the throat. Alcohol stings my nose and the sores on my hands.

  He crumples against the wall, leaving a smear of blood across the plaster.

  “Erik, what the hell—”

  I whirl around, pulling the gun and flipping the safety off in one movement. The woman stands in the doorway, staring at the man’s body, her skin pale and her brown hair wild. Heavy smudges of eyeliner ring her eyes. She sways a little on her feet.

  “Get back in the room,” I say, quiet and calm. If the younger boys hear me, if they come running . . . I swallow. I don’t want to have to do that.

  She lifts her eyes to me and narrows them. “You little bitch,” she spits. “You’re going to pay when my boys find you. They’re going to turn you over to the dogs.”

  “First they have to find me.” I move my finger down to the trigger. “So get back in the room.”

  She takes an unsteady step backward.

  “Now sit on the mattress.” I gesture with the gun. “Put your hands behind you.”

  She complies. I switch the safety on again and scan the room. There’s an old belt in the corner, next to an empty coffee tin that smells like urine. I snatch up the belt and kneel behind her.

  “Don’t test me,” I say, looping it around her wrists. “I don’t want to hurt—”

  The woman slams her head back, into my nose. I hear the crunch of cartilage and taste blood, and then she’s on me, raking at my face with her fingernails.

  I roll away and aim a kick at her side. It connects. She stumbles, but then she’s up again, fast as a cottonmouth. She lunges. I bring up my elbow and catch her across the face. We topple over in a pile of arms and legs. My back hits the wall, and suddenly I’m fighting blind, gouging with my thumbnails and pulling hair. Then I’m on her back, pinning her to the floor. I twist one arm behind her, grab her hair, and yank her head back. She screams.

  “Quiet!” I press up on her arm. “I swear I’ll break it.”

  She stops struggling. I let go of her hair and grab the belt again, then cinch it tight around her wrists. I prop her against the wall.

  She spits at me. One of her eyes is swelling closed. “You’ll be sorry,” she pants. “They’ll make you one of the dead men.”

  I grab a sock from the floor, stuff it into her mouth, and rip a strip of fabric from one of the shirts piled by the door to make a gag.

  I pick up my gun. “Not if I make them dead men first.”

  One more room to check. I leave her there and push open the last door.

  A pop-up hurricane lantern stands in the center of a soiled carpet. On the far wall, someone has painted an eagle, its outspread wings feathering into fingers, as if a thousand hands dipped in blood have given it form.

  A moan. I spin around. Alder hangs by his hands in the closet, a length of rubber hose looped over the metal clothing rod and tied around his wrists.

  “Alder!” I run to him, try to lift him up, but he’s dead-weight, barely conscious. A bruise the size and color of a plum has pushed one of his eyes shut.

  A fresh wave of anger surges through me, and with it, a shock of adrenaline. I storm back out to the hall, kick the Red Hand guard over onto his back, and kneel down to search his body. He wears a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun in a holster and a stupidly flashy knife with a blade formed to look like a lick of silver flame. Whatever. If it’s sharp, it will do.

  I run back to Alder, slide the blade between the hose and the rod, and start sawing. Either the guard in the hall was an idiot, or he kept his blade dull on purpose.

  “Tempest?” Alder blinks at me through his bruises and matted hair. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your ass.” I go back to sawing. “Obviously.”

  He shakes his head. “You’ve got to get out of here. They’ll come back. I can’t—”

  “Alder.” My voice is harsh. We’re short on time. “Can you stand?”

  “I think so,” he says.

  “Good.” I pull the knife up one last time.

  He nearly falls, but catches himself against the wall. I grab one of his arms, drape it over my shoulder, and drag him out of the closet.

  “Tempest.” His voice breaks. Outside, diesel engines rumble like thunder.

  I stop and look at him. Patches of blisters and raw pink burns cover his arms and throat. The urge to bash in someone’s face—whoever did this to him—floods my body.

  “The seeds,” he croaks. �
��They took them.”

  Guilt washes over me. There’s no time to explain. Brakes shriek. They’re coming.

  “Let’s get out of here.” I guide him to the door. “Quiet and quick as you can, okay?”

  We step over the guard, descend the stairs, and make our way to the kitchen with its sliding glass doors.

  The doorknob rattles and the front door swings open just as I push back the sliding door.

  I shove the knife into Alder’s hands and palm my own pistol. “You with me?”

  Alder blinks again, a little more clear-eyed, and nods.

  “Can you run?”

  He nods again.

  “Okay,” I say. “Run.”

  I bolt for the closest break in the fence, a wedge-shaped opening at the base. The links scrape my back as I wriggle through. I turn to help Alder.

  “Hey!” A man dashes out into the yard. “Got ’em running! They’re running!”

  I tug Alder up, and we sprint for the dark houses. Two more streets, and then we’ll hit woods. We can lose them there.

  More shouts behind us, and the sound of gunfire. I race around a house and dart across the street, boots pounding against the asphalt. I hear Alder behind me, breathing hard, stumbling, but still moving.

  Something flashes across the corner of my vision. A low, wet growl and the solid slap of bodies colliding, and then an ugly, animal scream. I turn back.

  “Tempest! Get it off me!” Alder shouts. A dog crouches over him. It has Alder’s arm clamped between its teeth, shaking the limb as if it could rip it from his body.

  No. I feel the word through my body. Rabies. Hydrophobia. Madness. Death. Time slows and the night snaps into focus. I raise my gun and square the dog’s torso in my sights. One heartbeat. Breathe. And I fire.

  The shot rings out through the compound, sharp and clear. The dog slumps over Alder. The engines rev again, and shouts fill the night. We’re out of time. I’ve pinpointed our position.

  I shove the dog off Alder and help him up. Blood runs down his forearm, welling from the deep puncture wounds. He sucks a breath through his teeth and clutches his arm to his chest. He needs a tourniquet, but there’s no time. We run for the trees, Alder struggling to keep pace with me. The memory of those people in the abandoned house, dead eyed and howling, smeared with their own waste—will that be him? Is it always a sure thing?

  I turn back, lock his arm around my shoulder, and hurry into the woods. Lights sweep the tree trunks behind us.

  “Keep moving,” I whisper.

  His breath comes short and uneven as we hobble deeper into the trees. “Tempest . . . ,” he gasps.

  I angle us north, where a scrubby patch of land slopes up to the overlook. “Only a little farther. To the top of the rise.” We’ll be able to see them coming from there.

  Alder stumbles, but I haul him back to his feet. He’s getting heavier, leaning more on me as we struggle uphill. I slip, too, and then right myself. The burst of adrenaline is wearing off, leaving me weak and shaky. We aren’t going to make it to the top, not like this.

  I stop and scan the hillside. There. A dip in the terrain, shielded by an overgrown mat of sedge. I pull Alder behind its cover. He collapses, breathing hard, sweat glistening over his face and neck.

  “Stay here.” I raise his wounded arm above his head. “Keep this elevated. I’ll be back.”

  “Tempest.” He catches the edge of my shirt. His eyes are wide and black in the dim. “They got the seeds. They found them—”

  “Alder . . .”

  “They took them. I was so stupid. I came running after you, and they—”

  “Alder!”

  I hang my head and sigh, then reach into my pocket and pull out the bag of blight-resistant seeds.

  He stares at them. “But I . . . I don’t understand.”

  “I wasn’t trying to steal them from you. I took them on my first watch, back when we were camping in that ruined house.”

  He presses his lips together. His skin is ghostly pale, and he looks like he’s going to be sick.

  “That’s what I was trying to say earlier.” I look at him through the hair falling across my face. “I was trying to give them back.”

  Alder frowns, and he opens his mouth to say something.

  “Don’t,” I say. “Just stay here, okay? Keep quiet. I’ll be back.”

  I run the rest of the way up the hill at a crouch, my ears pricked for engines, or the click of a round being chambered. I grab my backpack from where I stashed it, sling it over my shoulder, and stare down at the compound. Beams of flashlights and headlights flare and weave through the woods below.

  I half run, half slide back down the hill to Alder. He lies still, eyes closed.

  “Alder.” I shake him.

  His eyes fly open and he sits up, chest heaving, cradling his arm.

  “It’s okay. It’s me.” I pull a roll of gauze and the tube of antiseptic from my pack. In a better world, we’d wash his arm in clean running water. But we’re here, so I squeeze the last of the ointment onto his wounds and start wrapping the gauze fast and tight around his forearm.

  He watches me. “That was one of their dogs. The ones they keep penned up.”

  I nod.

  “You let them out, didn’t you?”

  I hesitate, then close my eyes. “I had to create a distraction. To get you out.”

  He swallows and nods. “They have—”

  “Rabies.” I look up at him. “I know.”

  His other hand begins to shake, and he balls it into a fist. “I’m going to die.”

  “No,” I say. “There’s a vaccine. If we get it in time—”

  “How much time?”

  I grimace. “Seventy-two hours, I think. Three days.”

  He laughs and rolls his eyes skyward. “And who has it? Them?” He waves at the compound below.

  “I can go back in,” I say. “I can find it. I—”

  “No. You’re not going back in there. You saw what they did . . . what they do to people. That’s worse than suicide.”

  “They aren’t the only ones with vaccine,” I say. “Any settlement, any company farm is going to have it on hand. We just have to talk someone into giving it to us.” It’s only a little thing. One dose and done, not like in the old days when it took weeks of shots to cure.

  He snorts. “With what?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. We’ll—”

  “Wait!” Alder grabs my arm. “Do you hear that?”

  I turn my head and listen. A diesel engine is approaching, growing louder and louder as it climbs the hill.

  “Down!” I push both of us flat behind the sedge.

  The jeep rocks its way into view, headlights illuminating the weeds. I press my face to the dirt and count. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. It passes us, crawling higher, to the overlook.

  The overlook. Shit. They’ll be able to see everything from there. Including us.

  I nudge Alder. “Come on.”

  “What?” Even in the dark, I can tell he’s looking at me like I’m crazy.

  “They’ll see us,” I whisper. “We’ve got to move.”

  I scramble up the hill on my hands and knees without waiting to see if he follows. A plan is forming in my head. A truly terrible, ill-conceived plan.

  The jeep reaches the top of the hill. I stop and flatten myself against the dirt, and watch as two men climb out, rifles slung over their shoulders. They begin a sweep of the ridge, walking past the spot where my bag was stowed a few minutes ago.

  Alder crawls up behind me, panting. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re never going to make it on foot.” I track the men’s movement against the tree line. They’re farther from the vehicle than I am. Now’s my chance.

  I look over my shoulder at Alder. “Stay here. Be ready.”

  “Tempest, don’t—”

  I jump up and race for the jeep. My feet thump the ground and my breath sounds imposs
ibly loud in the night air. Far off to my right, a faint blue glow is bleeding from the horizon. Morning.

  The driver’s side door is missing, so I boost myself onto the runner board and slide into the driver’s seat. I start to reach beneath the steering column to pull out the wires, and stop. They’ve left the key in the ignition.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, and turn the key. The engine revs.

  “Hey!” I barely make out the shout over the engine. A bullet pings off the roll bar, less than a foot above my head.

  I wrench the wheel, stomp on the gas, and take off down the hill. Bullets patter against the back of the vehicle. I glance behind me. One of the men is kneeling, taking aim, and the other is running wildly after me.

  I jam on the brakes when I catch sight of Alder. “Get in!”

  He pulls open the passenger door and jumps in. Then we’re off again, careening down the hill, weaving, me crouched over the steering wheel and Alder slouched low in his seat. I head west, in what I hope is the direction of a road, leaving the Red Hand and its dead men in our dust.

  .13.

  CRABGRASS

  DIGITARIA SANGUINALIS

  We drive west through abandoned fields. I keep an eye on the cracked rearview mirror. Still no headlights behind us. We have maybe a five-minute head start, if the guards on the hill ran straight back to their base—maybe more if the dogs were still causing chaos. But the grass is high enough to slap the jeep’s front grill, and we’re leaving a flattened trail behind us. We might as well be carrying a strobing LED sign saying WE WENT THIS WAY!

  I spot a weed-cracked blacktop road and take it. It doesn’t matter where it goes, so long as it leads away from Red Hand territory. We’ll figure out where we are later.

  Alder slumps, silent and pale, in the passenger seat.

  “You okay?” I glance at him and then up at the mirror again.

  “Fantastic,” he says. “Never better.”