“Cargill, you there?” Danton said into his com. After a moment he heard a few clicks. Morse code.
“T-A-L-K-L-A-T-E-R,” came the reply. He wondered if that pack was close by.
“P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N?” he signaled back to him.
He knew the base could hear, that there were at least a dozen dogs who knew Morse code, but he had to try.
“U-N-V-R-S-T-Y-A-N-D-D-A-L-E.”
“University and Dale,” Danton said. That was less than a half mile from here. In less than two hours he could be there. But how far would they have traveled by then?
And would he run into whatever hobo-man’s pack had run into?
As if on cue, Danton caught movement from the corner of his eye. He got into a crouch and peaked beneath the burned-out car he was next to, sliding his machete back in its holster as his took out his sidearm. A pair of tiny feet in black dress shoes were running his way.
Running. That meant whoever it was was alive. And young from the looks of it. She was probably running from something.
Danton scanned around then peaked up above the door and through the empty windows. The little girl had her head ducked low as she ran and when he looked past her he saw it. A single was about forty yards behind her.
She must have seen him because she was headed right for him. The little girl rounded the car and ran into his arms, burying her face in his jacket. He didn’t want to shoot the single, but he had no choice. It had seen her and she had run to him and the zig would follow them around until it had forced the situation. Hell, if it recognized that he was carrying, things could get real cat-and-mouse.
Danton waited until it was about fifteen yards before he squeezed the trigger. Ziggy’s scalp lifted like a puff of air had been injected beneath it and the flesh-eater fell over on its face mid-stride.
Danton looked around to see if anything else moved before checking on the girl.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a child. Well, a couple of the civvies had had kids, but they were babies, not even a year old. But what must have happened to the children out here in the wild… Danton got choked up just thinking about it.
He holstered his gun and pushed the girl back by the shoulders. She was filthy and stunk. Her hair was a tangled black mess that had grown down to her knees. Danton took an index and tucked the slick ropey mess blocking her face behind an ear.
She was pretty. Maybe not traditionally so, but in that all children were beautiful kind of way. He’d gladly shoot a hundred more ziggies in the face if it meant protecting her. She was looking down when he hooked his finger under her chin and raised her face.
“Honey, you okay?”
Her gold-grey eyes flashed up and he knew something was wrong. There wasn’t any time to stop it as she opened her mouth and sprayed a putrid green fluid into his eyes. Danton fell onto his butt, blind, spitting and gagging as the smell threatened to overcome him. He pulled his sidearm and shot where he thought it was, hoping he could at least wound the thing before it could attack him again.
Neotony. Danton had no clue how he knew such a word, or why it would choose now to pop into his head, but whatever that thing was, it wasn’t a child. He dug out his flask of water from his thigh pocket and did a quick eye rinse and squinted his eye open.
She was gone. Maybe whatever that poison was it was meant to debilitate him. He felt fine now, relatively, but that could change in a few minutes. He had to find a place to hide, but where?
Danton stood and ran, hoping he might be able to spot whatever that thing was and shoot it. He’d stomp on its head too if he got a chance. Maybe that would send a message to any more of them if there were others.
“That’s it, no more kids,” he said.
Where ever she’d run, she was quick. Other than a few burned out cars spread out pretty far from each other there wasn’t anything really to hide behind.
Danton realized he was afraid. He was alone now. Truly alone. He’d already accepted that, but now there was an x-factor. An unknown quantity, as Boyle liked to put it. Except he’d actually come face-to-face with it and it had spat in his eye.
Speaking of which, Danton realized his eyes weren’t burning any more. They still teared up and he could feel the gunk accumulating each time he blinked, but it was better. Much. So far as he knew poison didn’t do that.
But if it wasn’t poison…
Never mind. Best not think about it. If he started trying to be like the brains out here he’d be chow for Ziggy by noon.
The sky had turned a bruised red by the time he saw anything else that moved.
It was a shambler. It was old—grey-skinned with filmed over eyes. Its forearm was broken and half the hand missing. Its blond hair was perfect. Hell, it could have been a single, he couldn’t tell. It had no legs, but it had propped itself up on its… well, he guessed its waist. Entrails spider-webbed from its body into the street and when it saw Danton it began reaching for him with the hand it wasn’t using to balance itself.
He took out his nightstick and hefted it. It wasn’t fair, but that was life, or afterlife. Danton laughed at his half-joke as he circled the ziggy. It feebly turned to and fro as he stayed mere inches out of its impotent reach.
Danton’s mind went back a couple weeks ago when he’d last been outside, spraying that stupid crap of Boyle’s that had gotten this whole mess started to begin with. Well, not the wholemess.
But Cargill would never have gotten that lemon shit all over him had it not been for Boyle and Danton wouldn’t be out here now, an exile, trying to find the man, if not for the good doctor.
His fear was bleeding over into anger. Danton hated being afraid. The last time he’d felt this was he was still in the penitentiary, right as the world had started going to hell. He remembered hearing a guard had attacked an inmate and a few days later things had dissolved into chaos.
General Tarver had marched in and made camp just outside the outer fence. Danton and a few others had tried to tear their way through the fence, one had tried to climb over and gotten tangled up long enough for Ziggy to pick him down piece-by-piece.
“You gotta get me out of here,” Danton had begged, banging on the fence.
“No, son.” General Tarver’s tone was impossibly calm. He didn’t shout, but his voice carried to Danton just the same. “You need to do one of two things: get yourself out or survive the next three days.”
Danton shuddered at what he’d had to do to make it. But at the end of the third day the general and his men marched in and slaughtered every Ziggy in sight. Danton and two others had survived unscathed, but there were dozens of men who been bitten or injured. That was when Danton had learned fealty to his fellow man.
He’d been in the system over five years. He could honestly say he’d spent majority of the time hating everyone in there. The Aryans, the Brothers, the Chicanos, the Asians. Danton didn’t join the Aryans because he’d been a dick on the outside, but not that kind of dick. But that didn’t stop the other gangs andthe Aryans from coming at him. But Danton had always been able to handle himself. He almost always had given more than he got.
But Tarver showed him that all these men—regardless of color—were his brothers. There was a new enemy that was counting on men being divided to win and when he turned his back on his brothers he was offering his throat to Ziggy. General Tarver had seen to it personally that each man who had been bitten or scratched was put down in the most humane way possible. By the last few he’d had Danton take over—a clean shot to the dome. Danton was weeping by the time he’d shot the second man because he truly understood. All this time his love for these people had been disguised as hate, but he was making amends for it by sending them home.