Tooth & Nail

10

Samantha and Tiffany plunged into the woods, and a veil of cool shadows dropped behind them. They ran hard and fast along a deer path for fifty yards and then cut sharply left toward a small stream that fed the larger creek. They stepped into the ankle-deep water and kept going, moving slower now, making sure they didn’t splash water onto the dry mud along the banks or dampen any of the low-hanging leaves. There was no way to know if their pursuers understood anything about tracking, but the girls were long practiced at stealth and concealment.

Samantha bent close to Tiffany. “Who were those people? Who or what are reapers?”

The younger girl was gasping for breath after her exertions, but she managed to get out what she’d learned. “I… was hunting in the eastern woods… and I heard a scream. I went running, thinking the dead were attacking someone, but it wasn’t that at all. Three men in black were chasing an old couple — they had to be seventy or eighty. The old lady saw me and begged for help.” She looked at Samantha for approval. “What else could I do?”

“No, Tiff, you did the right thing, I’m sure,” Samantha assured her. “Then what happened?”

Tiffany quickly told the tale. The old couple were the last of a small group of survivors who had been living in an old shopping mall. They barely had enough to eat, but they were safe from the dead. Then the people in black and red — the reapers — broke into the mall and just started killing everyone.

“Why?” asked Samantha sharply.

“That’s just it… they didn’t give any explanation. They kept yelling things about someone named Thanatos and about sending everyone into the darkness. Crazy stuff like that. The old couple and a few others escaped, but they were chased. They’d survived on the road, constantly heading west toward the mountains and forestlands, but the reapers picked them off one by one. Or they sent packs of the dead after them.”

“How?”

“The old man said that the reapers made up some kind of chemical stuff that keeps the dead from attacking them. They dip pieces of cloth into it and tie the cloth around their ankles and like that.”

Samantha nodded. “The red tassels,” she said. “But how do they make the zombies do what they want?”

“The old man thinks they use dog whistles.”

“But how does—?”

“The dead can hear it. Certain calls make the dead come to them, other calls make them go away. So, I guess they use the whistles to, I don’t know, steer them? Crazy, isn’t it?”

“It’s smart,” said Samantha. “Really smart.”

There was a sound in the woods and they both stiffened, ready to run or fight, but it was only a couple of zebras. More zoo escapees. The striped animals turned to where the girls hid, sniffed the air, and then whinnied in irritation and trotted away.

“Why were these reapers chasing you?”

Tiffany flushed. “Well, what I left out was how I had the chance to talk to the two old folks.”

“Tell me.”

It was a simple thing to say, but Samantha knew that there was a lot behind it. There’s always more to something than what it seems.

What Tiffany said was plain and honest and brutal. “They were trying to kill those two old people, so I killed them.”

Samantha studied Tiffany’s eyes. There were ghosts there, moving from one room of her mind to another. The reapers might have deserved the fate they got, but Tiffany would still carry the memory of what she’d done — what she’d been forced to do — for the rest of her life. Samantha saw similar ghosts when she looked in the mirror.

It made her wonder if the reapers were similarly haunted by the terrible things they were doing. Why, in fact, were they raiding camps and killing innocent folks? In a world where there was almost no one left, it was bad enough killing in defense of the innocent or oneself; but to kill for the joy of it, or for some other equally crazy reason, was a sin.

“What happened to the old people?” asked Samantha tentatively, afraid of the answer.

“I… was bringing them home. I thought we could help them….”

“But…?”

“But the reapers caught us. So many of them. They attacked us, and before I knew it the old couple was down. It was awful, Sam. What they did to those people was bad.”

Tiffany’s voice was fragile with pain and anger. And with shock, and Samantha knew how dangerous that was.

“I took another of them down, but there were too many, and I ran. You know the rest.”

“Reapers,” echoed Samantha. “If they’re coming this way, we may have to leave the motor court. We can’t defend that place against an army, and if they can control the dead, then that’s what they have.”

Leaving the motor court would be a sad thing. They’d spent most of their lives there. Their friends were buried there. And there were too many supplies to carry if they had to simply pack and run. And they had no idea what was west of where they lived. Some travelers told rumors of a bunch of small towns somewhere in the mountains, but if they’d given any specific details, that knowledge had died with Dolan and Ida.

There were birds in all the trees, but suddenly there was a single sharp owl cry. Samantha and Tiffany stopped whispering and listened. Heard it again. Samantha responded with the sound a baby owl would use to call its mother. Immediately two figures stepped from the shadows beneath an old weeping willow, both of them with arrows nocked to the strings of yew-wood bows.

Heather and Laura lowered their bows and rushed forward to help.

“I have her,” said Samantha, waving them off. “We need to get to the barn to meet the others. Buy us some time.”

Tiffany, who was puffing and gasping, croaked, “I’m all right… I don’t need help….”

They ignored her.

However, Laura said, “I’m almost out of arrows. I’ll take Tiff and find the others.”

Samantha nodded and, despite Tiffany’s breathless protests, let Laura take up the burden of supporting the exhausted Tiffany. Then Samantha took the short spear from the leather scabbard into which she’d thrust it. The weapon had a four-foot hickory shaft and a blade scavenged from a broken sword Dolan had recovered from an empty house. A Scottish claymore. Dolan said that the sword had been on the ground next to over a dozen corpses that had once been zoms. Someone had made a heroic last stand, but now that person was probably wandering the earth as one of the living dead. That was how it was in last-stand fights. The defender ultimately runs out of ammunition, or their weapons break, or they just fatigue out against an enemy that can never get tired.

However, twelve inches of that old sword now protruded from a sturdy knot of leather at the end of the spear. The metal was heavy enough to use as a cleaver, sturdy enough to block most blades, and sharp enough to cut through leather, flesh and bone. Samantha called it her dragon’s tooth, and with it she’d defended against a great number of enemies, living and dead.

She and Heather watched the other girls move off; then they addressed the ground. When Samantha and Tiffany came out of the water, they’d left a wet trail. That had to be erased. They set to work, using dry brush to remove all footprints, then scooping handfuls of dried leaves, sticks, and stones and laying them like a haphazard carpet over any wet piece of ground. Within seconds the trail looked old and disused.

Then they erased their own footprints as they crept into tall grass. They moved in silence, knowing that they were invisible to anyone except maybe a hunting tiger or wolf. Their route cut across the path most likely taken by the people in black.

The reapers.

Then they heard sounds.

Human voices.

“—this way, I’m sure of it—”

Samantha and Heather ducked down again and watched as three figures came hurrying along the deer path. Two men and a woman. All dressed identically, and at closer range Samantha could see that the white angel wings embroidered on their shirts were highly detailed. Good needlework, done with skill and care. They moved ineptly through the forest, either because they lacked woodcraft or because they simply did not care if they made noise.

She felt Heather trembling beside her. Her eyes were glassy with fear, but that was understandable. Samantha put a hand on the younger girl’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. Heather flinched, but after a few moments her trembling eased a bit.

The reapers were getting closer, and the girls caught bits and pieces of their conversation.

“—be good to get some hot food once we catch up to the main army. I haven’t had a cooked meal in—”

“—Saint John will open red mouths in the flesh of every—”

“—ought to skin that girl—”

Samantha touched Heather’s bow and then pointed to the reaper out in front. He was the smaller of the two men and the one most likely to run out of bowshot faster than his companions.

Heather nodded and very quietly drew the fletched end of the arrow back to her ear.

“Now!” said Samantha in a sharp whisper, and the arrow vanished from the bow. There was a meaty thuk, and it appeared as if by magic between the reaper’s shoulder blades.

Samantha was in full motion before the other two reapers could react. She struck the middle reaper — the woman — in the temple with the butt-end of her spear and with a grunt and a pivot drove the blade into the chest of the third killer. He opened his mouth to scream, but he died before the sound could escape. As he collapsed, Samantha wrenched her spear free and whirled toward the fallen woman, who was bleeding and dazed. The woman had lost her ax when she fell, but she scrabbled at her belt to draw a draw a long-bladed skinning knife. Samantha kicked it out of her hand and put the edge of her spear blade under the woman’s throat.

“One word and you’re dead,” she hissed.