Blood Scourge: Project Deadrise Page 6

  Ana sighed, nodding slightly as she yielded to his decision. “It would be nice to see the sun again.” She paused, looking at her husband, trusting in him. “I don’t like living in darkness. I think I would go mad eventually. We weren’t made to live underground. Think what we will feel like after a few more months if we feel this desperate and this bad already.”

  She paused a moment. “Your Dad always tried to warn us that we were headed for something terrible. He kept saying that if we didn’t plan, we were going to be unprepared for disaster. Of course, I don’t think he meant this exactly. But I think you’re right. We should head there, to his farm.”

  “Yeah,” Gabe agreed. “Luckily he talked us into getting the guns. All that target practice might come in handy.” He gave her a small reassuring grin. “You were always a better shot than me. I’ll feel safe with you watching my back.

  “It’s settled then. It’s almost dark outside now, so we’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  Ana smiled faintly and then, suddenly sobering, she said quietly, “Gabe, I’m scared.”

  “I won’t lie and say that I’m not scared, too. But I have given this a lot of thought. I need you to trust me. Enough to do whatever I tell you without question. We’ll make it, Ana,” he said as if to reassure himself as much as her. “If there’s any way in hell, we’ll make it.”

  “Gabe,” she said softly as she laid her hand lightly on the side of his face. “If we have to go through this, I’m glad we’re together. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” Gabe told her back, realizing that it was going to be a very long night.

  The next morning they made their way cautiously up the steps and out of the basement. They moved carefully through the house, gathering what they thought would be priorities for survival in the open.

  Ana couldn’t keep her stomach from clenching as Gabe said in a low voice, “I’ll go outside first and make sure everything’s good.”

  As Ana waited tensely in the living room, she didn’t see a dark shape move past a window behind her. And then there was another black form silhouetted against the rising sun.

  “Ana!” she heard Gabe call. “They’re in the yard. Don’t- ”

  His voice ended abruptly and she heard nothing more except the sounds of a desperate struggle. Then snarls and growls. A window broke and Ana raised her gun at the hands reaching for her.

  Chapter 7

  “What’s your name?”

  “Savhanna Lehne. Just Hanna.“

  “Greyson Kincade,” he introduced himself from behind the store’s counter. “Just Grey.”

  “Well, Hanna Lehne, it looks like this wasn’t just a good place to get you some new shoes. It looks like we’re having canned chicken and peaches for dinner. And ravioli.” He held up several cans. “Somebody hid some groceries behind the counter.”

  “Better than what I’ve been eating for the last week, too,” he said, accurately reading her expression. Apparently she was looking forward to the change in diet, the same as he was.

  MRE’s were good for keeping you alive when there was nothing else to eat, but he’d take a home-cooked meal of any kind, any day. Right now a can of chicken and another of peaches, and the ravioli, seemed like a gourmet meal.

  He watched her walk past a shoe display near the window, and peer carefully outside. “It’s kind of spooky out there with the fog rolling in.”

  He settled back in a chair and watched her as she went back to looking over the shoes.

  “What’s in that squirt gun you carry around?” he asked.

  “Pepper spray. With a few secret ingredients.”

  “Secret ingredients, huh.”

  She looked at him, wondering if he was making fun of her again. She never could tell. “In case you haven’t noticed, guns are getting scarce.”

  “No need to be so touchy,” he said. “I’d use one, too, if that’s all I had.”

  He had to admit, the pepper spray was a good idea. Not as effective as a gun, but a good idea all the same. He’d seen firsthand that it worked. He gave her credit for thinking on her- feet, he thought as he looked at her suddenly bare feet, distracted for a moment by the pink toenails. He wondered when she had time to paint them. He wondered that she bothered to paint them at all.

  “So where did you get those garden boots anyway?”

  “I had high heels on when things got bad. I couldn’t run in them. So I put on the first thing that I found that fit. The boots.”

  He got distracted for a moment by the image of a combination of those shapely legs and a pair of sexy high heels. He shook his head slightly to clear it.

  “Well, you need something better than the boots. One of the first rules of survival is having decent shoes. Can’t run, you’re done. Make sure you pick out a few pairs of soft socks while you’re at it.”

  She needed some better clothes, too, he thought to himself. That yellow sundress wasn’t remotely suited for survival. And the neck line had been torn when he first came across her. It got even more torn by the guy groping her. He admitted to himself that it got a little distracting at times. Especially when she leaned over to try on some shoes. Like she was doing right now.

  He got up to distance himself. He crossed the store and took a quick look outside. He stood at the window for a while, then turned and put the cans inside her backpack and brought the backpack over to her. Dropping down into a chair across from her, he scrubbed his hand across the rough whiskers on his unshaven face. “Now we just have to figure out how to get those cans open.”

  She stopped to fish around in the backpack and held up a can opener. “I saw The Pianist,” she explained.

  He lounged back in the padded chair, stretched his long legs out and watched idly as she tried on several pairs of practical shoes. “What will you do if you get to Settler’s Grove and you don’t find- anyone there?” he asked.

  She had told him that she was going back to her home town to look for her mother. And her kid brother.

  She shrugged. “I guess I’ll just keep looking.”

  Hanna removed the shoes she had just tried on. They were too tight. And too stiff. Hard to think blisters could be a death sentence. But they very well could be if she had to get out of a difficult situation in a hurry and they slowed her down. She’d been through plenty of difficult situations already. There was no reason to think things would get any better any time in the near future.

  She assumed she would be on her own again soon. She didn’t need a savior. Just because Greyson Kincade was a male didn’t mean he was more capable than she was. At anything. The only reason she had survived so far was because she was on her own. She made her own decisions.

  She studied him covertly from beneath her lashes. He was good at one thing. Keeping his emotions to himself. The strong, silent type, she mused. Whether he had learned that in the service or in his personal life, there was no way of knowing.

  At the moment Mr. Macho wasn’t looking at her. He was frowning down at a newspaper headline on the chair beside him. Against her will, her gaze ran over his mile-wide shoulders and down along the camo-covered, long legs sprawled out before him that ended in combat boots.

  He was good looking, she admitted grudgingly. But looks didn’t count for much. Especially in this world. And she certainly wasn’t susceptible to handsome men. She never had been. In the end, they almost always turned out to be selfish, conceited jerks.

  But she also admitted to herself that it had been a good idea to stick together these last couple of days. She might even go so far as to say that he had saved her life on one occasion or two.

  She sighed. He had proven to be capable at survival. More than capable. The cold, hard truth was that she probably wouldn’t have survived what they’d gone through yesterday if she had been on her own. There was no denying that things were getting worse. And he might still be useful until they got out of the city. She hoped things were a lot better out beyond the city limits. Of course there was
no way of knowing for sure. Grey had come from the East and he had told her what he’d seen there. But she was heading West.

  “Do you know how to hot wire a car?” he suddenly asked. “Or siphon gas? You know the gas pumps won’t work without electricity.”

  As if everyone hadn’t already figured that out, she thought as she got up to walk around in her ninth pair of shoes.

  “We need to get you armed,” she heard as she stomped around a few times in the shoes to see if there were any hard places that might rub excessively and cause blisters. “Can you even shoot a gun?” Grey asked next. “Or do I have to teach you?”

  She turned her face to look at him as if he had just suggested a leisurely trip to Disney World in the morning. Had he just committed himself to staying with her? And teaching her how to shoot? It sounded like he’d done exactly that.

  Grey had been telling himself all along that he didn’t want to be responsible for her. But it looked like he’d just accepted full responsibility. Willingly. And he’d made the decision all by himself. She hadn’t tried to influence him at all. In fact, he didn’t know if she even wanted to be with him.

  He frowned down at her new shoes. There was no way for him to get out of it now. No, it looked like he was stuck with her.

  “Are you a Navy Seal? Special Ops or something like that?”

  Grey didn’t look at her. He was leaning back in his chair and looking up at the stars through the skylight. “Something like that,” he said with an inward grin, remembering how she had avoided answering him the first day he’d run into her with that very same reply.

  “Is that why you’re so into self-control and discipline?” she asked. “And following orders?”

  Is that how she saw him? Self-control and discipline were important to Grey. They had to be. In his previous line of work it had often meant the difference between life and death. And it was even more important now. Technically, the whole world could qualify as a war zone now.

  “Those things could save your life some time,” he pointed out. He glanced back up at the skylight. He seemed relaxed and at ease for once.

  After a silence, Hanna sighed and looked up, too. “It’s hard to think the same stars are out there to look at. And the same moon. Nothing’s changed there. It’s just people that have changed.”

  “Yep, we’ve got the same stars to look at,” he said as he looked back down at her and speared another wedge of peach. “And candlelit dinners are still around.”

  She looked straight at him. He saw right away that something had changed in those candle-lit eyes.

  “Hey, I wasn’t suggesting anything like- what you’re thinking,” he said with a frown.

  She was touchy in some ways. Like when it came to relying on someone. Or being told what to do. And especially when it came to any kind of intimacy or closeness. Which had been strictly accidental. Grey wasn’t the kind of guy that got his kicks out of random groping of women like some men did. Sex was the last thing on his mind. Mostly it was the last thing. Survival had to take priority. And yeah, he was disciplined in that respect.

  He suspected there was something in her past, maybe in her experiences with men, that made her so jumpy. Maybe she’d had a bad relationship. Maybe she’d had a few of them. That wasn’t so unusual.

  She didn’t have a ring on her finger. But that didn’t mean anything. She could have had a husband somewhere. She could still have a husband somewhere. He could even be a stagger.

  “Did you have enough to eat?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “I’m full.”

  “Yeah, I am, too,” he said, pushing away from the table. “But I’d give anything for a big thick steak for tomorrow’s dinner.”

  It was such an innocent statement, one they’d both heard, or maybe made, a hundred times in the past. But they were both silent as they thought that over now. The staggers were meat-eaters, too. Carnivore had taken on a whole new meaning over the past few months.

  Grey was still speculating about Hanna’s past while he cleaned up after dinner. They had found some decent food in the abandoned house, and there was plenty of bottled water. So for a while they would have no shortage there. They would carry what they could with them when they left tomorrow.

  Right now, he was taking the opportunity to shave, something he hadn’t done for quite a while. Be nice to take a bath, he thought. Maybe when they got out of the city, they could find-

  His hand stilled, the razor freezing only an inch away from his lathered jaw.

  “Hanna?” he called around the doorway to the other room. “Come here for a minute.”

  She appeared almost immediately in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

  At first she froze like a deer in headlights, staring at him as if she’d never seen a bare-chested man before.

  Hanna swallowed hard after seeing a half-naked Grey, a muscular, fit-looking Grey lit only by candlelight. His face was still full of lather. His wide shoulders seemed to fill up the small bathroom.

  He was a soldier. Of course he was supposed to look like that. And then she shook herself mentally and turned her face to follow the direction he was pointing.

  While she scolded herself for staring and for wanting to look again, she did her best to ignore those muscles and refocus as he re-positioned one of the candles that was setting on the bathroom counter. And then he set down the shaver and picked up the flashlight, focusing it on a spot in the shower stall.

  “You see anything wrong with that spider web?”

  She went as far as she dared to go. In spite of everything else she had been through, spiders could still give her the creeps and she wasn’t getting any closer. Everyone knew spiders could jump.

  She saw that the web wasn’t in in the usual octagon-like shape. It zigzagged everywhere in random, haphazard patterns. It was- bizarre. She had never seen anything like it.

  Grey was standing close beside her. He leaned closer, using a finger under her chin to gently turn her face. “And look,” he said grimly as he indicated something with the flashlight. He wanted her to look at the spider itself.

  Her eyes widened. She couldn’t help instinctively backing up another step or two till she was peering out from behind him. “Are you telling me that now we have to look out for zombie spiders, too?”

  Chapter 8

  “Where do you think your Mom is? She should have been back a long time ago.”

  Patchwork didn’t look up from the video game he was playing. He was too engrossed in his new game, Zombie Takeover. He was on Level 21. Game etiquette was crystal clear and indisputable. You didn’t disturb someone on Level 21. It just wasn’t done.

  But Patchwork was getting hungry, in spite of the intense concentration necessary to beat the game. “You know what would be good right now? Pizza rolls. Or nachos. And a cold root beer.” Yeah, all of those would hit the spot.

  He began to wonder himself where Mom was. It seemed like she should have been back already.

  “You sure she’s not back yet?” Patchwork asked his cousin. You couldn’t always hear what was going on in the rest of the house from the family room. The room was paneled and carpeted which made it practically soundproof, especially with the door closed. “Did you check?”

  “She’s not here. It’s been a long time, Patch.”

  “I know. I hope she brings back some- ” Patchwork yelled out as a zombie flew out unexpectedly from a hiding spot and startled him on the game. “Groceries,” he finished as his thumbs worked frantically at the control buttons.

  “Patch, I think she’s been gone for days.”

  “Days?” Patchwork frowned, but he continued to stare at the TV screen. “How could she be gone for days? I would have noticed.”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t remember seeing her yesterday either. Or the day before.”

  Everyone called them Patchwork and Gunhawk, or Patch and Gun for short. They’d had the nicknames since before the first grade. Patchwork had carried a patc
hwork quilt around with him everywhere he went when he was little. And Gunhawk had been obsessed with the story of a legendary ancestor who had fought in World War II. The black and white photo still had a prominent place on their fireplace mantle.

  Patchwork shook his head, his frown still in place. “She’s got to be in the house somewhere.”

  “No, she isn’t. I already looked everywhere. And her car’s not in the driveway. Or the garage.”

  “Did you try calling her?”

  “Yeah. She didn’t answer.”

  “I mean on the phone.”

  “The phone’s not working. Patch? Something’s not right.”

  Patchwork’s frown deepened. He was beyond annoyed now because now the lights were flickering. That would be just his luck. To have the power go out.

  “Maybe we better check the news,” Gun said to his cousin.

  There were two TV’s in the room, but there was a game system hooked up to each one of them. They were arguing over who should turn their game off when something crashed outside.

  “Patch, either I’m really messed up right now, or our front yard has turned into a video game.”

  Patchwork turned his face to look outside. What he was seeing did look like something from a video game. It was like something straight out of Zombie Takeover.

  “What the heck is going on?” Gun asked, alarmed now.

  Patchwork wasn’t sure himself. Out of habit, he even pointed the controller at the big picture window next to the TV and pressed the buttons. It looked so real.

  “There’s another one,” Gun cried out, pointing. “What are those things? Maybe it’s Seth and Bill dressing up and trying to scare us.”

  The lights flickered a few more times. And then they went out completely. Seth and Bill couldn’t have had anything to do with that. The games, of course, shut down. But the zombies outside the window were still there. And Patch and Gun could see that they weren’t just kids playing a prank. They were grown men.