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  “Shit,” Peter said, twisting the wheel hard to the left, doing his best to not throw his passengers, while keeping them on the road around a bend. Back on a straightaway that continued as far as he could see, Peter stretched for the weapon again and came up short. Knowing time was short, he toggled the adjustable tilt switch on the side of the wheel, which sprang up. It still wouldn’t allow him to lean straight down, but that wasn’t the plan.

  Leaning to the side, Peter slipped down beneath the steering wheel. He kept one hand on the wheel with the hopes of maintaining a straight course, but when the back of his neck struck the leather wheel-grip, he was pretty sure they were careening toward the swamp at a slight angle.

  Peter’s hand slipped beneath the seat, easily reaching the hidden weapon. He gripped the handle, pulled it out and sat back up. The road came back into view. So did the swamp. Peter turned hard to the right, narrowly avoiding the drop-off into several feet of water and even more muck. The sudden move kept the truck on the road, but pulled Boone’s feet out from underneath him. The man toppled backward and the Rider followed him down.

  The Rider lifted its head up, howling in victory. Its prey was pinned and defenseless. The creature’s eyes had been compressed. One of them was a mess of blood and viscous white fluid. But the injuries only fueled its mania.

  Peter lifted the Smith & Wesson Model 500 revolver and aimed it over the back seat. He had discovered the weapon behind the counter of a convenience store they had pillaged for water and any food old enough to safely consume. They hadn’t found much, but the gun was a rare gift. It was a .50 caliber hand cannon. Not quite as long barreled as Dirty Harry’s, but equally as powerful. And that meant a few things. First, anything roughly the size of a human hit by a single round would find itself with a basketball-sized hole in the bullet’s wake. Something like a Woolie might take two or three rounds, but a single shot in the right spot would still do the trick. As for the gator, Peter had no idea. But the Rider? One shot was all he needed, if he didn’t miss...or hit Boone.

  And one shot was all he might get. Firing a weapon like the Model 500 generally required two hands. The kickback would be substantial, and if the weapon didn’t buck from his hand, it might very well break his wrist. On top of that, he was firing one of the world’s most powerful handguns inside the enclosed truck cabin. The padded floor and ceiling would absorb some of the sound, but every hard surface inside the vehicle would reflect the cacophonous boom right back into Peter’s ears.

  This is going to hurt, he thought, leveling the sight through the back window. As soon as he drew a bead on the monster, its lower jaw opening wide enough to envelop Boone’s head and whatever limb he tried to defend himself with, Peter pulled the trigger.

  The explosion slammed into Peter’s ears and forced his eyes shut.

  He didn’t see the weapon tear free from his hand, but he felt it leave his fingers and then strike his forehead. As though the impact of a spiraling four pound revolver wasn’t bad enough, it was the scorching hot barrel that struck him, hissing briefly as it burned a red line above his brow.

  When he opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was a clean hole in the rear window. The bullet had punched through so suddenly that the rest of the glass remained intact. And beyond the window...nothing.

  Did the Rider bite down?

  Did he miss?

  When the Rider hunched its back and rose into view, Peter knew he had failed and that Boone was dead.

  Then the rest of the hairy body rose up, and he relaxed. Red blood chugged from a gaping wound where its head had been.

  Boone sat up, hands on the headless Rider’s chest. He pushed the creature up and then shoved it hard, sending the ragdoll body toppling into the road.

  When the scent of smoke tickled his nose, Peter faced forward. He shouted, but could only feel the air bursting from his lungs. Aside from a buzzing, he heard nothing else. Peter turned hard, following a fresh bend in the road. When the big truck was back under control, he lowered the steering wheel and pulled the revolver off of his pants, which had begun to burn. He placed the cooling weapon in the passenger’s seat and focused on the road.

  A moment later, he jumped when something tapped his shoulder. He spun to find Boone leaning in through the back window, shouting something.

  Peter tapped his ear. Shouted, “Can’t hear! Gun was loud!”

  Boone shouted something else. Peter still couldn’t hear him, but the man’s smile and obvious relief hinted that Boone was thanking him. And then everything changed. Boone’s face morphed back into fear. His eyes wide. His forehead a mountain range of wrinkles. Peter could even hear a little bit of Boone’s screamed warning. All of that and Boone’s pointed finger turned Peter’s gaze forward. To the road. And what stood in its center.

  A Rider.

  Female.

  She was large. Taller than Peter. In one hand she held a spear. Her free hand was pointed at the truck. No, Peter thought. At me.

  On the surface, this Rider looked a lot like Kristen had. For a moment, he wondered if she had somehow survived their last encounter and was back to haunt him. But the eyes were wrong. Where he saw a hint of the wife he’d once had in Kristen’s eyes, here he saw only a monster.

  A monster out for revenge.

  The idea that this creature might have followed him all this way simply because he killed the tribe’s ExoGenetic leader surprised him. Then again, Ella and Anne had been pursued halfway across the country by the even less intelligent Stalker pack.

  Peter eased up on the gas.

  He heard Boone shout. His voice sounded like he was speaking through a tin can. “What are you doing? Run it down!”

  Peter’s instincts were the same as Boone’s.

  “Kill it and grill it!” Boone shouted, his voice clearer.

  Well, not exactly the same, Peter thought, slowing even more.

  At first he wasn’t exactly sure why he was slowing down, rather than speeding up. But then he figured it out. The soldier’s worst enemy.

  Empathy.

  For the enemy.

  Peter stopped thirty feet short of the lone female. It wasn’t until he opened the door and stepped out that he noticed she wasn’t actually alone. Hidden just inside the swamp on either side of the road were seven Woolies and four male Riders. Where are the other females? he wondered, scanning the area, but then he refocused on the living blockade hidden in the swamp. Had he sped through the female’s position, he would have been met head on by a living wall.

  And the confused and somewhat disappointed look on the female’s face told him that might have been their plan. She and Boone were equally confused by his actions.

  “Hey,” Boone whispered, as Peter stepped down onto the dirt road. He was back inside the truck cab, leaning between the front seats. He handed the Model 500 handgun to Peter, keeping it below the window. “If yer fixin’ on going out there, best take some protection. Also, you know, there’s a good chance we might have trouble crawl’n up our backside any moment now.”

  Peter took the weapon and slipped it behind his back, tucking it into his pants. Then he stepped out from behind the door, hands raised. He walked toward the lone female, who was now even more confused, but had yet to take on an aggressive stance.

  All that changed when Boone slipped back into the pickup’s bed and swiveled the machine gun forward. The female raised the spear, cocking it back, ready to throw.

  But she didn’t.

  Instead, she waited, and with every step Peter took, her arm lowered a little further. She might want vengeance on Peter for what he did—he couldn’t think of any other reason she’d be here—but she was also smart enough to be curious about his strange response to her aggression.

  She’s still an ExoGen, Peter thought. If she moved to throw that spear, he wouldn’t hesitate to draw the handgun and fire. He was no Billy the Kid, but he could draw a gun and fire accurately, faster than most, especially at such close range.

 
; Twenty feet from the ExoGenetic woman, Peter stopped. They stood in silence for a good ten seconds, and then Peter spoke first, offering the only words he could think of that might carry his true feelings about what had happened to his wife. “I’m sorry.”

  22

  Ella sat on the first floor staircase, hands linked behind her head as instructed. She kept the grip light, her head still recovering from the blow that knocked her unconscious. Mason stood at the bottom of the stairs, revolver leveled at Ella, but his eyes on the front door. The hairy woman standing on the far side of the door, visible through the side windows, was swaying back and forth impatiently, waiting to sell Girl Scout cookies, or Mormon Jesus, or Jehovah’s Witness Jesus. She was a Rider. There was no doubt about that. The hooked teeth were impossible to mistake, and that adaptation, combined with the hair-covered body, was an unlikely combination to be repeated.

  But why was it knocking on the door?

  To call it strange behavior was an understatement. ExoGenetic creatures were driven by instinct. By hunger. They didn’t knock on doors. Then again, they weren’t supposed to talk, either, but Peter had communicated with Kristen before he shot her. Perhaps the other Riders could speak as well?

  It didn’t matter.

  None of it.

  What mattered was that the creature outside wasn’t just her enemy, but the enemy of every living thing that wasn’t also a Rider or a Woolie. It was a predator. They were its prey.

  “You need to give me a weapon,” Ella said.

  Mason waved her off, keeping his attention on the door, but his weapon trained on her. Dave stood by the door, clutching an assault rifle that he didn’t look very comfortable holding.

  Ella guessed he’d never fired the weapon, at least not at anything living. The men outside the compound, the ones who had taken them captive, were the real fighters. Dave and Chad guarded the house, and manned the third floor lookout, but they weren’t even good at that.

  “Mason,” Ella said. “The creatures outside are killers. Savages. And my kids are missing.”

  “They’re not all your kids,” he said, turning toward her. “Are they?”

  “They are now.”

  “How noble of you.”

  “Let me save them. Let me help you fight.”

  “What good are hair and teeth and claws against bullets?” Mason asked.

  Ella laughed. “When was the last time you stepped outside these gates?”

  He said nothing, which was answer enough. He hadn’t been in the wild since before the Change. He’d heard stories, but filtered through the bravado of his men.

  “I should have known,” Ella said. “Rape and subjugation are the tactics of a coward.”

  Mason’s left eye twitched, but he said nothing. Just stared.

  Then the Rider knocked again, louder this time, hard enough to rattle the thick wood.

  “Shit,” Dave said, taking a step back from the door.

  Chad entered the foyer, arms clutching an array of weapons. Rifles and assault rifles. All of them presumably loaded, but there wasn’t a spare magazine or even loose ammunition in sight. He stumbled, fell to his knees and let the weapons clatter on the hard wood floor. “Sorry, sorry.”

  The barrel of each and every weapon was pointed in Dave’s direction, and when he saw them hit the floor, he reversed course, back toward the door. His fear of a misfire wasn’t unfounded, but in that moment of confusion, he mistook the falling weapons as the greater danger.

  Ella slowly backed up a step.

  Dave’s back pushed against the side window beside the door. The solid glass panel was ten inches wide and four feet tall. It shattered inward as a large, hair-cloaked fist punched through. The thick fingers opened like a fisherman’s net, wrapping around Dave’s face. The man’s muffled scream rose to a high pitch as he was lifted off the floor, and then was silenced as he was yanked through the window.

  The ten inch wide space was far too narrow for Dave’s body. As his chest shot through the space, the jagged edge peeled away his shirt, and his skin from both his chest and his back. His sudden motion came to a jarring halt as his buttocks and hips became jammed in the narrow space. Past the thudding of his twitching legs, there was a pop and a slurp.

  Then the body, half inside, half outside, hung limp and still.

  Even Ella was immobilized by shock.

  She, Mason and Chad stood motionless, eyes on Dave’s savaged remains. Five quiet seconds ticked by.

  The spell was broken when Dave’s head and torn-free spine arced back through the window like one of those ‘The More You Know’ stars. And there was a lesson here: never underestimate the ExoGens. It was a lesson Ella found herself learning over and over. Making any kind of assumption about any ExoGenetic life—in this case that the Riders lacked the intelligence, mental and emotional, to track down their slain leader’s killer—was deadly.

  Ella backed away another step, preparing to flee upstairs. The windows on the second floor were barred, but the third floor might not be. And if it wasn’t, maybe she could hide?

  She stopped when a wide-eyed Mason turned to her. His face was slick with sweat and his lips were quivering. His first real up close and personal experience with an ExoGen wasn’t quite as glorious as his men had likely described it. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “A weapon. Take your pick.”

  “You aren’t afraid I’ll shoot you?”

  He frowned but then said, “I’d rather be shot than end up like that.” He waggled his revolver at Dave’s The More You Know head and spine.

  Ella moved down a step, not fully convinced. But a second look at Dave’s head, torn free from his body, twisting coils of nerves still attached to the spine, helped cover up her animosity for Mason. She would fight beside her enemy, for now, and if they survived, she’d put a bullet in his dick. And then his head.

  She stood and made it two steps down before a voice called through the broken window. “Hello, in there.”

  The voice wasn’t just human. It was familiar. It was unmistakable. Eddie Kenyon had survived, and he’d tracked her down. She closed her eyes and shook her head. They should have killed him. Instead, they’d allowed this very dangerous man to befriend and join forces with inhuman savages, all of whom wanted her and Peter dead.

  “Don’t answer him,” Ella warned, but Mason’s body language had already shifted. While the old man was no good in a fight against monsters, he could verbally spar with the best of them.

  Mason swiveled his handgun back around toward Ella’s chest. “Sit.”

  Ella sneered, but obeyed. She wasn’t far from the weapons, but couldn’t risk diving for one until Mason’s eyes shifted away from her.

  “I said hello in there,” Kenyon repeated, louder. Closer.

  From her perch on the stairs Ella saw more hairy bodies climb up onto the porch. They spread out to either side. Waiting. Strategizing. When the time came, they could each plunge through a window and bring the fight inside. Mason and Chad might get off a few shots, but the brute force and speed of the Riders would quickly overwhelm them.

  “Sorry for the messy introduction,” Kenyon said, “but these ladies aren’t really known for their subtlety. Let’s call it a show of force. A taste of things to come, if you do not reply right this God-damned second.”

  “We’re here,” Mason said. “We’re listening.”

  “Excellent,” Kenyon said. “So let’s get right to it. We have come a long way and my patience is like paper.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mason said. “What can we do for you?”

  Ella enjoyed hearing the terror in Mason’s voice, but would have preferred it be in response to her, not Kenyon and a bunch of female Riders.

  “We are looking for a group of people and have reason to believe you are sheltering them here.”

  Mason’s gaze became incredulous. Ella could nearly hear his thoughts, ‘You brought this upon us?’ If bending his index finger didn’t cause him so much
pain after cracking against her skull, he might have even pulled the trigger, but he refrained and said, “Anybody that’s here, that you want, you can have.”

  “Appreciate that,” Kenyon said. “Let’s start with Crane. Peter Crane.”

  Incredulity turned to anger. “He’s not here.”

  “Don’t fuck with me.” Kenyon’s voice shifted into rage so fast that Ella wondered if he’d resorted to eating ExoGenetic food.

  Maybe he’s not fully human anymore, Ella thought. Maybe he’s one of them.

  “He left ’bout two hours ago. But he’ll be back. We have his kids.”

  “They inside the house?” Kenyon asked. “Because there’s nobody out here.”

  “That wasn’t you?” Mason asked.

  “What wasn’t me?”

  “The missing people.”

  “You are the first person I’ve spoken to since I had a sit down chat with your men at the gas station. What’s your name?”

  “M-Mason.”

  “Mason. My name is Edward Kenyon. You can call me Eddie. You sound like a reasonable man. Like a real Southern gentleman. How about we stop talking through a closed door and you tell me where everyone is. If this is an ambush, I—”

  “Ella is here,” Mason blurted out. “I don’t know about the kids, I swear. But Ella is here. Right behind me. You want her, too, right?”

  After a beat of silence, Kenyon spoke. “You have no idea.”

  “I’ll bring her out.” Mason shoved the gun at Ella’s face and motioned for her to stand up. “Just...Just get down from the porch, okay? Give us some breathing room.”

  Heavy feet stomped over the front porch as the shadows hovering by the windows faded back.

  “Come on out,” Kenyon called.

  Mason hissed at Chad and then motioned to the door with his chin. “Open it.”

  Chad looked horrified, but part of him was still equally afraid of Mason. He flitted to the door like a nervous mouse, starting and stopping, until his hand wrapped around the knob and twisted. The door swung open, smooth on its hinges. He pushed open the storm door next, cringing as the glass pushed up against Dave’s headless and gored body. Dave’s wet flesh squeaked against the glass, leaving deep red smears.