The Valley: A Lee Harden Novel, page 45
She bent at the waist, lowering her face over his. “You. Used. Me.”
Movement out of the corner of his eye. He glanced, and saw Tonya—Freya’s true mother—sliding down off the stage. They did not usually venture off the stage without their entourage of females around them. But they’d all left. They’d all chased after the thieves who’d taken Bea. The sanctuary was empty, save for Lander, Freya, and his wives.
Diana followed after Tonya, and Sable after her. Slinking towards him on silent feet.
He looked sternly at Freya. “I didn’t use you! What could you possibly be jabbering about when I’m laying here wounded—agh!” God, but he needed to stop shouting, it hurt more every time.
It was with an obvious effort that Freya spoke, perhaps the longest string of words she’d ever dared to undertake. But her gaze remained locked on his, intense and focused, as she brought each word up and deposited it painstakingly in his ears.
“You. Used. Me. As a shield. You. Hid behind. Me. You. Put me. In front. Of the bullet.”
Lander’s mouth worked, brain whirring along, trying to spin something useful up. He felt an unfamiliar mix of emotions. There was the anger, of course—the bitch was making spurious accusations! But there was also fear. Because for the first time in her life, Freya looked mad—at him. And when he flicked his gaze to the side, he saw something else for the first time. The three half-human creatures that had taken him in when he’d been exiled from humanity, who had cared for him, and mated with him, and set him up as their king…
They looked mad too.
Confusion and self-pity added themselves to the slurry of feelings. He knew they weren’t fully human, but even so, how could they be so dense? They might not be able to speak as much as Freya and Kat, but they were perfectly capable of understanding. He was the leader of this family! He was the one with all the power, all the importance! Couldn’t they see that his life was more important than any of theirs? More important than Freya’s? Because there was only one of him, but he could always make another Freya. All these bitches wanted to do was fuck and make babies. So what was the big deal if he’d tried to save his life by using Freya as a shield?
He was the human for fuckssake! And they were barely more than animals! Couldn’t they see the hierarchy?
But saying so would have required a bit more honesty than someone as narcissistic as Lander was capable of. So he chose instead to deflect and deny.
“I wasn’t using you as a shield!” he whined in his most put-upon voice. “I’m the one that got shot, after all!” He pointed emphatically at his wound. “I was shot! I was shot! I took the bullet for you, Freya! And this is how you repay me? This is how you show your appreciation for me saving your fucking life?”
It happened so fast, he couldn’t even tell which of his wives had done it. One moment, he was really feeling the heat of his words, and thinking that he could see Freya caving, and the next moment there was a flash of movement and a blinding, tearing pain in his right shoulder.
He cried out, more from the surprise of it than the pain itself. He looked at his shoulder and saw the wide, half-moon chunk of flesh that had just been torn out, the muscles beneath twitching and writhing as blood welled up to cover them.
He gaped at his trio of wives, disbelieving.
All three of them were baring their long teeth at him. But Tonya’s teeth were stained red, and her tongue flicked, and out of her mouth fell his missing piece of flesh.
“Y-you!” Lander stammered. “You bit me!”
Freya leaned away from him, standing to her full height. He looked into her eyes, expecting to see that his words had had some effect, and how she might rush to him, protect him from her own wily mother. But her expression was blank. Unpitying. Immovable.
She stepped back, and Tonya, Diana, and Sable filled the gap, a chorus of low, threatening growls issuing from their throats. All three of them were crouched low on their muscular haunches, so Lander could still see Freya’s head over theirs. She was still looking at him. Still emotionless. Still slowly backing away.
Leaving him. Abandoning him.
And after all that he’d done for her!
He tried to remember what all those things were that he’d done for her, so he could point them out in that moment, but for some reason he couldn’t think of a single one.
A clack of gnashing teeth snapped his attention back to his wives.
Fear supplanted self-pity as the dominant emotion now—but only just. He searched their faces for any semblance of affection and found nothing. He singled out Diana. She’d been the first one to find him, the first one to take pity on him, and the first one to mate with him. The others tended to follow her lead. If he could get her to come around…
He raised a hand to her face. “Diana. My dear, sweet, gentle—”
She snapped. Something crunched—popped. He jerked his hand back with a gasp. Stared in abject horror at his missing index finger, blood trickling from the stump in a steady stream.
He clutched his hand in front of his boggled face and screamed. “My finger! You bit my fucking finger off!”
His three wives were spreading out now, circling him on all fours. Their nostrils were pulsing with the scent of blood. Their eyes were those of strangers. The humanity that he’d seen in them was gone, and they looked no different than the others. Savage. Base. Primal.
Beyond their circling forms, Freya continued to back away, still watching.
“What are you doing?” he screamed, head snapping from left to right and back again as they circled him. He wanted to sound furious and in charge. Wanted to try to cow them into fearing him again. But the façade had been broken. And he realized with mounting terror that his place amongst these creatures had always been fragile—how could he have not seen it?
Something hit him in the back. Pain and rending flesh.
He twisted with a short screech, and saw Sable behind him with a flap of his skin hanging from her teeth. She spat it out, as though the taste of it was repugnant to her.
“Stop!” he cried out. “Stop it right now!”
Wham!—something hit him in the side of his face.
His hand—the one with the missing finger—shot up and felt a stinging, wet crater in the side of his face. He couldn’t even tell which one had done it, they were all circling so fast now, jumping in at him, then feinting back. As soon as he looked at one, another would hit him from the other side, and another piece of his flesh was gone.
A piece of his arm.
A piece of his side.
All the chunks spat out and littering the ground around him.
His heart thundered in his ears. He tried to scream, but it either wasn’t working or he couldn’t hear himself. His lungs ached for air. He felt like he was breathing as fast as he could, and yet couldn’t get enough.
The only emotion he felt now was panic.
“No!” he warbled, rolling to his hands and feet. He could see the dark doorway that he’d come through before—the passage to his own private room in the back, what used to be the pastor’s office. It had a lock on the door. If he could make it there, he could keep them out—
Teeth sank into his left buttock, but they’d gone deeper than just his skin now. His wail was punctuated rhythmically as the jaws clamped onto his buttock thrashed back and forth, ripping a great chunk of muscle from him.
The pain was so intense that he couldn’t move his leg anymore. He collapsed onto his belly. His bloody hands and arms clawed at the concrete floor, moving him by tiny increments, his vision closing in, and all he could see before him was the black opening of the door, so very far away.
They came more rapidly then. A piece of his hamstring. A piece of his calf. A piece of his lower back. But none of them went for the neck. Maybe this was only a punishment. Maybe they did not intend to actually kill him.
But the more he curled in on himself, the faster their attacks became. He could not even keep track of his missing pieces any more. They were hitting him two at a time now. Then all three at once. Growling and snarling and snatching bits of him.
The ground around him became slick with his own blood so that even when he tried to paw himself into motion, his hands went slipping and sliding. Eventually, he just curled up into a ball with his hands over his head, and with each piece gone, began to realize what he could not admit before.
He was being killed.
His wives were killing him!
The agony stretched time. It seemed it would never end.
Piece by piece, until, for the first and last time in his life, Lander Hollis wished for it all to be over.
Piece by piece, they took him apart.
Piece by piece.
Chapter 44
The night wind whipped at Abe’s face as he held the thermal spotting scope up to his eye, tripod and all. It was a bit hard to get a solid picture as the truck hurtled over uneven terrain, but after a few seconds of shaky scanning, Abe hadn’t seen any heat signatures.
He immediately leaned back, stretching over a huddled mass of humanity, bristling with rifles, to slam his hand on the roof of the cab. “Hey! Stop the truck!”
He should’ve known not to say it with such urgency.
Whoever was driving slammed on the brakes, sending Abe toppling into the jumble of weaponry and limbs. The truck skidded through loose dirt and then rocked to a halt, somewhere in the vast, hilly terrain of the Valley.
Swearing up a storm worthy of a Category Five rating, Abe extricated himself to the nearest side of the bed and hurled himself out onto blessedly-steady ground. Questions chased him from nearly every mouth in the bed of the truck, but he ignored them, taking another scan for good measure, now that he wasn’t bobbling around on a moving platform.
He confirmed his earlier assessment: They’d ghosted the pack of primals that’d been chasing them.
Problem was, he had no clue where they were in relation to the Town. They’d been driving for several minutes, but Abe hadn’t exactly been keeping track. And he didn’t know how fast they’d been going. Fast enough to escape the primals, who could run about thirty miles an hour, so…
Abe gave up on trying to do the math, and instead keyed his comms with a more important question: “Abe to Lee, can we get a sitrep?”
He waited while Marie snapped at the people in the bed to shut up and they gradually fell silent.
Seconds ticked by, each one compounding the dense brick of dread in the pit of Abe’s stomach. He turned in a slow circle, looking for the slight glow in the sky that would denote a settlement, but then remembered the Town had no lights.
He keyed the comms again. “Abe to Lee, how copy?”
He counted the seconds this time, and when he got to ten, he cast a worried glance at Marie, who was now standing up in the bed, watching him with a pinched expression.
Had they driven out of radio range?
Shit and fuck. “Abe to anyone on the infiltration team. Sam, Jones, Lee. Come back.”
One. Two. Three…
Abe was about to transmit again when his ear practically exploded with sound. Shouts and howls and screams and gunshots and heavy, raspy breathing. Then Lee’s voice, straining with effort, bouncing to the rhythm of clattering gear and pounding footsteps.
“Bit busy! Standby!”
Abe immediately swung back to the truck. “Shit’s going down. They’re gonna need an exfil. Everyone out!”
“Out?” someone goggled at him.
Abe began jamming his thumb over his shoulder. “Out! Out! Out!”
“Abe!” Marie shouted over him. Got his attention. She shook her head. “We can’t just leave them out here with a pack of primals running around, chasing their scent!”
“Too many bodies in the bed!” Abe countered hotly. “There’s not even room for everyone that’s in there, and there won’t be room for five more bodies when we extract them!”
“We’re gonna hafta make it work!” Marie countered with equal fire. “Figure it the fuck out, Abe! I’m not leaving these people in the dark to get torn up!”
“They have guns!”
“ABE!”
Then someone said, “Who’s Abe?”
For some reason, that gave Abe just enough pause that he ran out of steam before he could continue to protest.
“Don’t worry about it,” Marie quipped at whoever had asked.
“Fuck! Fine!” Abe started crossing around the front of the truck. “Clown car it is! We’ll cram as many as we can in the cab! Lay on top of each other if you have to.” He reached the driver’s door and ripped it open. The dome lights came on, revealing none other than the kid that couldn’t have been much more than sixteen, with his hands still clutching the steering wheel. Abe almost laughed, but was too pissed. “Joyride’s over, kid. Get out or scoot over.”
Lee had bought them time. One 40mm round right into the sanctuary had gained him enough of a gap to get out of the building. It had also sent a chunk of something exploding into the back of his head with such force that it had almost knocked him out. He never did find out what it was, but was pretty sure it had been wet and meaty.
Head ringing from the blow, Lee burst into the outside world, then laid three more rounds into that short hallway, one after the other.
Time. Time to turn around and get his bearings. Time to see Sam and Jones, ten yards up the dark street, covering him. Bea behind them, watching, but looking like she wanted to turn and keep running.
“Go!” Lee yelled. “Get to the ATV!”
Time, and not enough of it.
The roar of the horde came spilling out of the smoking ruins of the hallway. He’d lengthened the gap to fifty yards, but against a creature that could run twice as fast as a man, that fifty yards wouldn’t last long.
He had two rounds left in the launcher.
Sam and Jones laid down a few quick bursts of covering fire for Lee, then spun and sprinted for the front of the megachurch, shoving Bea along with them.
Lee pumped out a few more strides as hard and fast as he could go, then spun, shouldering the launcher again. His heart felt like it hit the back of his tongue as he realized his lead had already shrunk to thirty yards.
Whump! Whump!
The last two rounds went out low, Lee intentionally skipping them off the pavement right at the feet of the nearest primals. The first one blew a softball-sized hole in the chest of a primal, then detonated a fraction of a second later, scattering body parts in a burst of blood and fire. Lee didn’t wait to see what the second round did. He heard the detonation, and felt the pressure wave smack him in the back, nearly making him stumble.
Up ahead, Sam, Jones, and Bea started to break left around the front of the megachurch. Then they came to a skidding halt, and Lee instantly knew they were fucked. Bea immediately switched directions, fleeing across the street, while Sam and Jones emptied what was left in their mags, backing up as they did. Then they broke, spun, and took off after Bea, reloading as they did.
Lee took the hint. The primals hadn’t just mindlessly followed their quarry through the emergency exit. They were cunning creatures, and knew how to outflank their prey. They’d come out the front to cut them off.
Lee would not be getting to the ATV.
He charged across the street at a diagonal, slinging the empty launcher and bringing up his rifle. Adrenaline blotted out the pain of his injuries, but there’s only so hard that the mechanism of your muscles can be pushed, and already Lee could feel his stride shortening, eating up less distance.
Distantly, he registered the sound of Abe’s voice in his earpiece. Now that it hit his brain, Lee thought that Abe had been transmitting for the last few moments, but Lee’d been too distracted to answer. He wasn’t too distracted now, but he needed to save his wind for running.
“Bit busy!” he transmitted in a gasp. “Standby!”
Where could they go? What could they do?
The hopelessness of the situation hit him as fully as the grenade blast. They couldn’t outrun the primals. They didn’t have enough ammo to hold them off. And their extract wasn’t even in the city with them.
Lee hit the opposite side of the street just as the second horde of primals surged around the front of the megachurch.
Sam and Jones, about fifteen yards ahead of him, running with no clear objective.
He spared a glance over his shoulder. Caught the fullness of the threats arrayed against him. The horde that had chased them through the emergency exit was fifteen yards behind him. The horde that had come around the front of the church was maybe twenty yards, but lateral to him.
Hopeless, some part of him screamed.
But the steadier part—the part that had been to hell and back so many times already—said, Well, you’re not dead yet!
As long as there was breath in his lungs and enough blood for his heart to pump, he was still in the fight. Hopelessness was not a reality—it was a mindset. And if you could have a mindset, then you were still alive. And if you were still alive, then it wasn’t hopeless.
Sam and Jones disappeared around the corner of a building just ahead. Lee broke the corner just behind them. Darkened streets. Trash and wreckage. Abandoned vehicles…
He saw it.
To say that it gave him a sense of relief would be stretching the truth. What it gave him was a sense of graduating from snowball’s chance in hell to maybe by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin.
Ten yards ahead of Sam and Jones, and twenty yards ahead of Lee, stood the hulk of a defunct cement truck that’d crashed into the side of a building, burying the front half in rubble. But the back half was exposed. The back half, with its big, steel drum. The big steel drum, with the very narrow opening. An opening through which only one body could fit at a time.
Well, he had been hoping for a bottleneck of some sort. Beggars can’t be choosers, and those with their necks in the hangman’s noose can’t complain about a stay of execution, even if it’s a short one.
“Sam! Jones!” Lee bawled with breath he couldn’t afford to lose. “Cement truck!”
