Crisis Event: Black Feast (2 page)

“Idiot!” Sadie said, She snarled and got up, slapping at her pants and parka, knocking the dust out of her clothes and letting her thoughts turn murderous.

“You’ve killed me!” the cop said with a wail.

He dropped to his knees, out of fight. His shoulders sagged and he looked ready to topple over as his anger disappeared and shock set in.

Sadie winced, her own anger suddenly all gone. She didn’t want to see or hear any more of this. The man was dying, but his suffering would go on a long time if she didn’t do something.

“You should lie down,” she told the man, her voice quavering. Her hands were shaking—a delayed fear reaction—and a symptom of terrible sorrow.

Already she regretted what she’d done, despite knowing that what he would have done to her would’ve been unspeakably worse.

She wanted to pack up and go. To leave the man to his death. But then she heard her grandfather's words: “Desperation brings out the worst and best in the best and worst.”

“I know,” she said out loud, and the man turned toward her again, shuffling his knees around in the dust. Then he moaned, and his bloody hands scooped more dust and ash to rub against his face.

Maybe this guy had been a good man once. An honest cop who’d never taken a bribe or beaten an innocent citizen. Maybe he’d kept the peace.

She couldn’t control who he was before the Crisis, or who he was now. All she could control was who she was. And today she wasn’t the kind of person who’d let someone suffer for days when death was certain anyway.

Before she could talk herself out if it, she circled around the cop again, this time stepping up quietly to put the gun against his back.

“Sorry” she whispered.

“Uh!” he said, trying to turn to face her but unable to.

She was already crying when she pulled the trigger.

Chapter 2

              Half an hour later Sadie was still beside the dead man, kneeling and crying. She kept seeing the way the man had gone down like a sledgehammer had hit him, his arms jerking in spasms beneath his chest, his hands still trying to wipe at his cheek as he lay on the ground dying.

The gunshot had been swallowed up by the dusty gray landscape and the silence had returned quickly—except for the low fizz of the unrelenting acid and the distant rumble of thunder.

She’d be seeing him die in her dreams—common for all the non-psychopaths out there who’d been unfortunate enough to kill other humans.

If you’ve got any kind of a heart at all, killing people leaves a pretty big mark.

And boy was she marked up now.

She could hardly believe that in less than a twenty-four hour period she’d been forced to let a murderer go so he could look after his kids, and to kill twenty or more feral dogs with a chlorine bomb, and to execute a crazy man to keep him from suffering a terrible death.

None of it felt real.

Yet it was.

As real as the wind that pushed at her hair, fluffing and swirling the thick brown strands so that they tickled the back of her neck.

When she looked out at the horizon to the west, she saw why it was blowing. A wall of black clouds and dust and ash was coming her way, along with dozens of flickering forks of lightning, still tiny in the distance, but getting unmistakably closer.

It was time to think.

And act.

She stared down at the man.

How could he have ever been a cop?

When she looked closely at the uniform, she saw it fit him. The seams lined up at the shoulders, and the pants were the right length.

The man hadn’t lost a whole lot of weight in the last nine months either, since his job in the Shanksborough Police Department had likely ended.

Sadie didn’t want to think about why that might be, but she had to.

He’d been eating well.

That meant he’d either been a prepper who’d stocked up on emergency food, or he’d been willing to do whatever was necessary to survive—stealing food from others, eating rats, dogs, cats, birds, and horses in the early days.

Eating humans when the other food sources ran out.

The fact that he’d sharpened his teeth told her all she needed to know.

“Soylent Green is people,” she heard her grandfather say. He’d forced her to watch the old movie one time.

She’d fallen asleep halfway through, but her grandfather hadn’t seemed to mind. When she’d awakened at the end in time to see Charlton Heston get it, her grandfather had been asleep too, though later he’d said “I was just resting my eyes.”

Sadie hurt. The cop club had really worked her over, and now that she was out of the battle, she could no longer ignore the damage. She’d be lucky to make it a mile down the road today, let alone the hundred miles she’d expected to make when she went to sleep the night before.

“Peeing blood by breakfast,” she said, her voice dying almost immediately.

She’d begun to shiver because the day was as overcast as everyday was, and the temperature wasn’t likely to climb.

The gloom wasn’t helped much by the lightning strikes dancing closer, and the dark, sludgy rain she could see falling on the horizon like an old-school widow’s veil.

She had three hours at most before the leading edge of the storm arrived. She had to get herself warm. To get ready to ride ahead and find somewhere to dig in—even if it meant spending the day inside another car. Otherwise she could get caught out in the storm. So she went about doing what she’d planned to do before she was attacked: building a fire.

She built a good-sized tripod out of branches, then expanded it by piling up sticks and logs in a semi-circle, leaving a narrow wedge open for tinder.

She used her multi-tool to cut the dead man’s pants off at the thighs. They were a cotton and polyester blend, so when she stuffed them under the tripod and held the little red Five Flags torch lighter to them, they caught right away.

Soon flames were consuming the wood and she had a good-sized fire blazing. It may not have been very good bush craft, but it was easier than working herself to death with a bow drill.

Fifteen minutes later Sadie sat facing the fire. Heat was radiating into her tent, and though her back—from her left shoulder blade to her left hip—was a throbbing mass of misery, the last five tablets of her Ibuprofen stash had already begun to dull the pain down to a tolerable level.

The half ounce shot of ethanol from her chemistry bag hadn’t hurt either, so she had another half ounce shot to speed along the relief. Then she began slicing the tops off four shotgun shells with the sharpest blade on her multi-tool.

When the shells were all cut open, Sadie poured the BBs from each one into a small metal bowl from her pack. She dropped half a candlestick in and shoved it right up against the fire. The wax quickly melted and she swirled it over the BBs.

Sadie used the spoon from her Swiss Army knife to ladle the paraffin and BBs into the shotgun shells, until she’d filled them all to the rims.

When the shells were full she stood them on the ground away from her fire to cool. She wiped the paraffin residue out of her bowl with a scrap of dusty cloth she cut out of the back of the dead cop’s shirt and put it back in her pack.

Despite the heat from the burning wood, she was shivering. The cold wind was beginning to gust, and dust was swirling up into the air, darkening the sky even more.

As she fought off the shivers with her fire, Sadie packed everything but the Geiger counter into her pack. She’d forgotten about it overnight, but now that she’d seen it again she figured she’d better try to use it.

She pulled it out of the box and removed its protective case and turned it on. The readout showed no sign of radiation, and the single chirp and silence that followed was a welcome sound.

After putting away the Geiger counter, Sadie retrieved the cop’s .357 and loaded it with the shells he had in his ammo pouch. She tossed it into her left side saddlebag. Then she used her rifle scope to sight along the highway she’d been on the night before.

It was awkward trying to use the scope with her respirator on, so she pulled it off and looked for any movement or a sign that someone was out there watching her. She had no idea where the cop had come from, but she knew she didn’t want to meet his friends—Jim and Bryce—or any other friends he might be travelling with.

She saw nothing through the scope. The highway looked as dead and quiet as J. Franklin, cannibal cop. So after forcing down a few drinks of water, she put her respirator back on, took down the old camo tarp, and folded it up.

She rolled up her thermal blanket and packed everything she wanted to take with her. This included the cop club and Taser gun, which appeared to have no charge left but might be useful at some point—just as the acid from the battery had proven useful.

After loading her sawed-off shotgun with two newly cooled shells, Sadie rolled the dead man over and unbuckled his belt. She jerked at the buckle, but it barely moved until she rolled him back onto his belly. Then she could work the leather out of the belt loops and pull it free.

The first thing Sadie did with the belt was clip a foot off it. Then she threaded it through her own belt loops and poked a hole in the leather so that it would cinch up tight enough to stay on her hips—which, she noted—were much too narrow compared to what they’d been nine months ago.

Once she was satisfied with the fit of the belt, she went to work on the Taser holster.

The holster was black and boxy, made of leather and plastic. Sadie stuck the shotgun barrels down in the holster to estimate how wide a hole she’d need to make in the bottom, and used her multi-tool to modify the rig.

When she was finished, she slid the shotgun down into the holster and let it rest there, at the place where the barrels and stock widened enough to keep it from falling through.

To make the rig safer, Sadie cut a piece metal wire off the spool and threaded it through holes she cut in the sides of the rig. Then she hooked the wire over the butt of the shotgun so it wouldn’t accidently fall out if she fell or was tackled.

Her back pain had eased a little by then, and she was beginning to think she’d be all right. Another half ounce of ethanol further suppressed the pain and boosted her confidence, and soon she was almost in a riding mood.

With a groan, she climbed astride the Honda, turned the key, and pushed the starter button. The bike’s engine turned over and caught, rumbling low and steady.

Damn good machine,” Sadie said, and patted the gas tank. Then she clicked the bike into gear, let out the clutch, and cruised slowly back to the highway.

She went slow at first, watching for any sign of the cop’s friends. That was how she found his bike—a BMW police bike parked half a mile away from where she’d left the road.

She was tempted to trade bikes, but she hadn’t found the keys when she searched the cop. Now she didn’t want to waste time going back.

Instead she took the gas can stored in the cargo space at the back of the BMW and poured it into her own gas tank. She checked the BMW’s air filter to see if it could replace her own, but they weren’t compatible.

After a quick search found only a spare air filter, a Bit of Honey candy bar, and a box of .357 shells—which she tossed into the Honda’s saddlebag with the pistol—she climbed back onto her own bike.

Funny how I already think of it as mine.

Out on the road the wind came at her like an abuser, punching at her chest and guts with chilly fists, slapping at her head with icy palms—and she hadn’t yet accelerated up to a fast pace.

When she saw the black wall of dust and rain coming her way, she cursed. Darting in and out among the swirling sheets of rain were silvery streaks of lightning.

She was going to run into the worst weather of her months-long trip today. Much worse than the sludgy weather she’d encountered in the national parks in New York two months earlier.

Off to her right Sadie heard the crack of a rifle over the Honda’s engine. A puff of dust exploded three feet in front of her front tire. Then there was another crack and a bullet slammed into the fender of a Ford F-150 truck not a foot from her.

Sadie opened the throttle and leaned forward to get low on the bike.

It wasn’t the first time she’d been shot at. Getting shot at in the new world wasn’t uncommon.

Scared people hiding out in their houses were likely to mow you down just for coming within a hundred yards of them.

She could relate, though she’d never shot at anyone back in Boston.

She’d done her best to just remain quiet and unobtrusive and hidden, only going outside at night to retrieve the water she needed from the toilet tanks or water heaters inside abandoned houses—or the houses with murdered or suicided families inside them.

“People must be getting hungry,” she said.

The bullets stopped coming a few seconds later, and as far as she could tell she didn’t get shot at again.