Tooth & Nail

7

The four girls kept shifting their desperate stares from the zombies converging on Tiffany, then to Samantha, and back again. For her part, Samantha was working it all out. Distance, speed, the presence of the two dozen strangers, the terrain, everything. She was the leader of their pack because she knew how to work things out. Ida had called it three-dimensional thinking.

Samantha had to weigh the safety of the remaining girls against the small chance of saving Tiffany, and factor in the personal risk for all six of them. A trap set for one could catch a rescue party as well. All too easily.

She also had to try to assess what total strangers would do if the girls made a rescue attempt. The people in black and red were clearly alive, and somehow — impossibly, or so it seemed — they’d discovered ways to both control the dead and keep themselves safe from them. Until a few minutes ago Samantha would have thought neither of those things could be done.

However… the evidence was clear and irrefutable; therefore it could be done. Her view of the world needed to change to accept that and work with it.

“Okay,” she said quickly, an idea forming in her head. “Heather and Laura, I want you to go two hundred yards north. Stay low and stay hidden. Prep arrows and wait for my signal. Go!”

The two youngest girls, both of whom were superb archers, dropped from the tree, using the trunk to hide them. They melted into the high grass the way they’d been taught. Even Samantha, who was the best hunter in their group, lost sight of them at once.

“Good. Amanda, you and Michelle go south. Fifty yards will do it. Kindle a fire but use the driest brush you can find. No smoke. Wait for my call and then put wet stuff on the blaze. Soon as you do, leave it and go west. Find that old farm road and head for the barn. Wait as long as you can, but if we don’t catch up in ten minutes, get out of there.”

“What about you?” asked Michelle.

“I’ll be right here. We have to move fast. Tiff is running out of time.”

The girls moved fast. They dropped from the tree like squirrels and vanished into the brush.

Tiffany had a lead of maybe thirty yards on the main body of the dead, but she had six hundred yards to go to reach the creek. Two lines of dead were converging, and Samantha judged they’d cut her off sixty or seventy yards shy of safety.

Samantha counted off the seconds she judged were required for the other girls to get into position. It was going to be tight. So tight.

She still had the binoculars and, while she waited, she took a longer look at the people in black and red. The field glasses were very powerful, and now she was able to see the design each of them had on their chests.

Wings.

White angel wings.

So strange a symbol for people who were driving the dead like a pack of dogs to try to murder a teenage girl.

What made it even worse was that the people with the wings and the knives were all smiling as they hunted Tiffany.

Smiling.

God.

Who were these people?

Over the years Samantha’s ragtag family had met more than their share of wild loners, badlands human predators, bounty hunters, and worse. The fall of the world had driven so many people mad and corrupted so many others. That’s what Ida always said, and she’d prayed for them to find their souls again.

Samantha studied these smiling hunters of innocent girls and wondered how long it had been since they’d lost their connection to either God or humanity. The fact that there were so many of them, and that they were acting in a coordinated way, suggested intelligence and control. And yet what they were doing was mad.

It made no sense to her.

There was a loud birdcall to her right, and she glanced north. She could not see Heather and Laura, but she knew the call. They were in position. Samantha turned to the south and saw a few thin wisps of smoke. Amanda and Michelle were ready.

Samantha slung the binoculars over her shoulder, took a deep breath to steady her nerves, took her spear in both hands, and dropped out of the tree. She bent nearly in half and moved down to the closest point of concealment near the creek.

Tiffany was running as hard as she could, but by now she had to know that there was no chance she’d slip through the closing jaws of the trap.

Not unless…

Samantha set her spear down, cupped her hands around her mouth, and gave a sharp cry. The screech of a hunting hawk.

Instantly two threads of darkness stitched across the sky, and suddenly arrows struck quivering in the throats of the zombies closest to the right-hand part of the trap. One zombie fell at once, the brain stem clearly severed. The other staggered and crashed into another of the dead. They fell heavily, and the zombies behind them tripped and fell over them.

The zombies on that side of the field turned toward movement as first Heather and then Laura rose up, fired, dropped down, and rose up again a few yards away. Arrows flew across the creek, and each one hit a target. The girls were not trying for a kill, not at that distance, but they were good enough to hit heads and necks. Nerve and brain damage, even if not fatal, made the zombies far more erratic and confused. Within seconds that whole side of the trap was a jumble of falling bodies, thrashing limbs, frustrated snarls, and grasping hands.

Tiffany saw this and for an awful moment she slowed almost to a stop, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Then there was another birdcall — an eagle’s shriek — and within seconds thick white smoke billowed up from the south. Amanda and Michelle had thrown wet grass on the fire. The smoke was so dense that it did exactly what Samantha wanted it to do: It cast a writhing shadow on the waving marsh weeds. The zombies on that side of the trap staggered to a clumsy stop, and with Tiffany barely moving, their attention was now drawn by the column of smoke and its wavering shadow. The zombies turned and lumbered that way.

The path was now wide open, but Samantha knew it wouldn’t be for long. The people in black and red had spotted the smoke and the arrow-struck dead. They began moving toward those points, weapons glinting in the sunlight.

Samantha rose up out of the grass and gave a third birdcall. The wild, mournful call of a marsh bird.

Tiffany jerked erect, looked the wrong way first, and then swung around toward the cottonwood. When she saw Samantha, she didn’t waste a single moment gaping or waving. Instead she broke into a run again, pouring on the speed, racing with all her heart and fear and muscle toward the blue ribbon of water.

Samantha ran to meet her and as Tiffany splashed down into the deepest part, Samantha was there to catch her under the armpit and haul her to safety on the opposite bank.

“Who are those people?” demanded Samantha.

Tiffany was too breathless to say much, but she gasped out a single word.

“Reapers.”

There was no time to learn more. The dead had heard the splashing and saw the movement of the two girls in the water. So had the people in black and red.

The reapers.

Holding on to Tiffany, lending strength to her exhausted friend, Samantha ran toward the high ground and the tall grass. The forest reached out with shadows and green arms to enfold them.

However, behind them they heard the moans of the dead, the splash of feet in the water, and the yells — the very human yells — of the reapers as they ran in pursuit of their prey.