“No!” Tess wailed.
Grandpa scrambled over to his granddaughter and grabbed her right wrist. “Tess! Tess!”
Tess was gawking at her brother, her eyes wide and frightened, her breathing loud and irregular.
“Tess!” Grandpa shook her. “Listen to me! We’ve got to get out of here!”
“But Johnny!” Tess cried.
Grandpa glanced down, frowning. “We can’t do anything for him. And we can’t stay in this house. Whoever did this has us hemmed in here.
We’ve got to get out in the open where we can maneuver.”
“I can’t leave Johnny!” Tess protested.
“You must!” Garndpa hauled Tess to her feet and pulled her toward the doorway.
“No!” Tess objected, digging in her heels.
“Get a grip on yourself!” Grandpa snapped. “Come on, girl! You can do it! I don’t want anything to happen to you too!”
They moved to the top of the stairs and Grandpa paused, listening.
“Johnny is dead!” Tess said softly, sniffling.
“Quiet!” Grandpa ordered. The lower level was quiet, seemingly safe.
His grip on Tess tightened and he started down the stairs. One of the wooden steps creaked and he froze, waiting with baited breath, but nothing happened. He wondered how many enemies were lurking outside.
If there was only one, he stood a chance of escaping with Tess. But there were few solitary Raiders abroad in the countryside. Most of the slime traveled in gangs, and usually they roamed the less-inhabited areas and retreated into the mountains if Free State soliders went after them.
The ground floor was plunged in inky blackness.
Grandpa stopped at the foot of the stairs, surveying the front door and the porch beyond. The door was suspended to the right of the doorway, and two strides past the door was the collapsed section of the porch.
“We’re going out. Are you ready?” he whispered.
“I’m ready,” Tess responded gamely.
“Good girl. Stay with me,” Granda advised. He released her right wrist and crouched, then darted to the left side of the doorway.
Tess was right behind him.
Grandpa leaned against the jamb and peered outside, the cool air tingling his skin. He found himself wondering about the weapon used on poor Johnny. What could kill so silently? He had not heard a gunshot, not even the muffled retort of a firearm firing from a distance. And the weapon couldn’t have been a bow, because there had been no arrow.
“Grandpa?” Tess whispered.
“What?” He looked at her.
“Why don’t we stay in here until morning?” Tess inquired, her tone strained.
“Because if there’s more than one out there,” Grandpa said, “and if they decide to come in after us, we’ll be trapped like sitting ducks.”
“I wish I’d never bugged you about taking a shortcut,” Tess remarked.
“Forget about that.”
“Johnny would be alive right now if it wasn’t for me!” Tess lamented.
“Tess, you’ve got to put Johnny from your mind for the time being,” Grandpa instructed. “You need to concentrate on what we’re doing. We have to make it into the trees on the far side of the road. We’ll find a place to hide until daylight.”
“I’ll be okay,” Tess said unconvincingly.
“And if something happens to me,” Grandpa stated, “get to Los Angeles and find my sister. Betty will take you in.”
“We never should have left the farm,” Tess mentioned.
“Concentrate,” Grandpa said. He slowly eased around the jamb to the porch, the Astra cocked in his right hand. The yard was a jumble of shadowy vegetation. He led Tess to the left, past the hole in the porch.
They slid over the edge into a patch of waist-high weeds, ducking below the tops of the plants. Stooped over, they started toward the road.
Tess followed in her grandfather’s footsteps, prudently endeavoring to tread as lightly as possible. She cast apprehensive glances at the murky woods, deathly afraid they were being watched by hostile eyes.
An owl hooted off to the north.
Another owl answered to the west.
Tess nearly collided with her grandfather when he abruptly halted. She saw him stare to the north, then the west, and suddenly he was sprinting to the east, toward the road. Tess took off after him, startled by his unexpected haste, dreading he had seen something behind her.
Grandpa reached the road and paused, looking over his left shoulder to verify Tess was still with him.
There was a pronounced swishing noise and a sharp thump, and Tess saw her grandfather hurled from his feet, his head jerking back, and her face was splattered with a spray of liquid. He was slammed onto his back by an invisible force. Heedless of her safety, Tess was next to him in one bound, kneeling alongside him and clutching his right shoulder.
“Grandpa?” She leaned closer, and that was when she spied the fleshy hollow where once his right cheek and eye had been.
A third owl was hooting, this one to the south.
Tess, petrified, bolted, fleeing mindlessly to the east, into the forest on the far side of the road, exactly as her grandfather had directed. Branches tore at her clothing, impeding her progress, lashing her skin. She sobbed hysterically, unable to control her seething emotions.
A bulky shape rose in her path.
Tess shrieked in terror. A hard object clubbed her on the left side of her head, and she collapsed onto the dank earth, overcome by dizziness. She struggled to stand, but couldn’t.
“What do we do with her, mate?” a gruff voice asked.
“Can we have some fun and games?” inquired someone else in a falsetto tone.
Tess became aware of figures looming above her. She raised her head, counting four of them.
“No fun and games,” stated the tallest of the figures.
“Why not?” responded the man with the unnaturally high-pitched voice. “What can it hurt?”
“Yeah, guv! I could fancy a bit of the fluff,” commented the one with the gruff manner.
“Are you disputing my leadership?” demanded the tallest figure.
The other two men simultaneously answered with a prompt, “No!”
Tess rose to her elbows. She sensed the two men were wary of provoking the tall figure.
“No distractions until the job is done,” the tall one said imperiously.
“You knew my requirements before you signed up.”
“I was just, you know, wondering,” the man with the high voice mentioned obsequiously.
“You can stop wondering,” the tall one said.
Tess was perplexed by their apparent lack of interest in her. Not one of them had acknowledged her presence.
“Nightshade,” the tall one commanded.
Tess saw the fourth figure, the silent one, lift his arms and point something at her. She realized she was about to suffer the same fate as her brother and grandfather, and she opened her mouth to scream, to vent her shock and dismay.
The cool air was rent by a loud, inarticulate screech, a cry abruptly curtailed, fading to an odd gurgling whine and expiring as a gagging cough.
Unperturbed, the forest resumed its nocturnal pattern.
Prologue 2
“Do you think I’ve done the right thing?”
“I’m not paid to think, sir. Just to follow your orders.”
The first speaker gazed out the window of his office in the Capitol Building at the twinkling lights of Denver, his blue eyes narrowed in thought. He ran his right hand through his clipped black hair and sighed.
“Innocent lives could be lost if I’ve made a mistake.”
“No one ever said being President of the Civilized Zone would be easy,” commented the second occupant of the room, a man with rugged features, attired in a military uniform. His dark hair was cut short in the typical Army fashion. He studied the outline of his superior, noticing a slump to the shoulders covered by the blue suit, his brown eyes reflecting his concern.