20

Nothing. No dreams, no sound. No thought. Just … nothing.

Then, pain: a red shriek that went on and on and on. Voices, too, but they bled into one another: hold him watch out he’s tanking working as fast as I … Screams and other sounds, but they were garbled and elusive as thin mist. Only at the end—right before his fade to black—did his mind grab at a single, clear thought: those awful, bloody screams were his.

More blank. More dark. Every once in a while, his mind sputtered to life like an ancient engine that refused to turn over, no matter how gently that pedal was goosed. Sometimes, he heard himself moan and there were other shrieks, but those felt detached and … elsewhere, like voices trapped in those floaty cartoon bubbles.

A longer blank.

Then, all at once, he jammed to consciousness in a great searing, molten shriek of pain. The transition was shattering. His body was a white blaze of agony, but he was in the dark. His eyes wouldn’t open. Or they might be wide open and he just didn’t know it.

Oh God, I’m blind, I’m blind, I’m … A scream boiled from his throat, and then he was straining, trying to move—and couldn’t.

“Easy,” someone said. “Take it easy, I’m right here.”

He couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to a man or woman. “I … I …,” he wheezed. He tried turning his head, but another red arrow of pain pierced him to the core, and he let go of another scream.

“Stop.” This time, a hand touched his shoulder. “Try not to panic.”

If he wasn’t hurting so much, he might’ve laughed. My God, what is wrong with me? He could smell himself: sour flesh, old blood, and fear. “Can’t … s-see … can’t m-move.”

“That’s because of the restraints, boy-o.” This voice definitely belonged to a man. Peter heard the hard boom of command but also a rough weariness he associated with the old. “You’re a fighter, I’ll give you that.”

Restraints? His heart crowded into his mouth. “K-Kincaid … wh-where …”

“Easy.” The first voice again: a soothing contralto. A woman. “You’ve been out so long that we put bandages over your eyes to keep the corneas from ulcerating. Take it easy.” Her fingers spidered over his cheeks and then she tugged. His skin bunched as the gluey adhesive let go. Air sighed over his closed lids. “Try now.”

The simple act of opening his eyes took tremendous concentration. His muscles were creaky, like long-unused gears mucky with coagulated oil and grime. A sliver of light appeared and then his lids were rolling back. Another lurch of panic clawed his chest. “Bloo.” He wanted to cry. His tongue was thick, a flap of muscle that refused to cooperate. “Blooor.”

“Blurry?” Beads of water dripped onto his forehead. “Close your eyes again … that’s good. Just give it a couple minutes, okay? I had to use animal tranks. I’m sorry about that, but it’s the best we have. Good thing you’re strong as a horse and your heart’s young. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

The cloth felt so good and cool and wet. He stopped fighting and let her work. There was a gurgle and splash, and then she was swabbing his forehead, his face, the underside of his neck. Her fingers worked at buttons, and then she was sponging his chest. He moaned, this time with relief.

“Yeah, I’ll bet that feels good.” The cloth went away again, and then she was tugging a shirt over his chest and drawing up a rough blanket that smelled of old wool and death. “Try opening your eyes now.”

He did. His vision was still foggy, but he could make out green canvas above his head. A tent. His gaze roved over a metal pole at his left shoulder, and a bottle of clear liquid that dripped fluid into the big vein at the crook of his elbow through a plastic tube. Leather restraints with big metal buckles were clamped around his wrists. From the pressure around his ankles, he knew his feet were tied down, too.

Some kind of infirmary. The air smelled chilly and damp. He lay beneath several blankets on a metal stretcher that felt flimsy and too light, like one of those pop-up gurneys EMTs used. Military?

“Better?” Above and to the left, the woman’s face took on angles and substance. She wasn’t heavy but solid and blunt. Her hair was scraped back into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her murky eyes were set in weathered skin. She was much older than he expected: maybe mid-seventies or early eighties. Her fatigues were dated, like they were from a surplus store. But the flash on her left shoulder looked new: a Colonial flag with a Roman numeral III dead-center in that circlet of thirteen stars.

Oh shit. Before the world went bust, he’d been a sheriff’s deputy. So he knew exactly what that flash meant.

“Who are you people?” he whispered.

The booming voice came again from his right. “Relax, boy-o, you’re among friends. Have to admit, though, you gave us quite a scare.” The man was blocky and solid, and his head was huge, like a chunk of granite furred with a thick shock of white hair cropped flat and square as a broom. His chest was so barrel-shaped and big around that his arms seemed an afterthought: stubby and thick and tacked on. He wasn’t tall but massive and compact, tough as an ox. His uniform was different, too: jet-black from head to toe, but with that same shoulder flash and a single yellow star pinned to either lapel of the old man’s fleece-lined, black-leather bomber jacket. A bulky walkie-talkie—of the same vintage as the military surplus units Rule used—was clipped to his left hip. A holster rode on his right, a faint glimmer of pearl shining from the revolver’s grip.

“You were gone eight days, boy-o. Glad you saw fit to rejoin us.” The blocky man’s lips pulled into a grin. “We had a bet going about whether you’d make it. Happy to say that I was on the winning side. Name’s Finn. This fine woman is Dr. Mather. And you are …?”

Eight days. He’d been here more than a week? If Rule was looking for him, they’d have given up by now. Chris wouldn’t want to; he knew that. But even Chris wouldn’t be able to justify a search forever. “Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re safe and you’re alive.”

“But wh-where … what about my m-men?” His voice was rusty as an old hinge. “There was a boy.”

“Hold on,” Finn said. Turning aside, he poured water from a plastic jug, then slid in a straw. “You’re probably dry as a desert.”

The straw was tantalizingly close. The water’s scent made him dizzy. Still, he hesitated. He sensed he would be crossing some line if he took water from this man.

“Go on, take it, boy-o. I don’t bite—not like those Chuckies.” Finn tilted his head at the far side of the tent. Peter’s eyes swept right and he saw what he hadn’t spotted before. More gurneys, with bodies: two boys, one girl. All were restrained and completely out, probably drugged from fluid dripped into their veins through plastic tubes.

Finn said, “Soon as we decide to let those little darlings wake up, we’ll put them in our holding area with the other six. Ten’s all we can safely handle and feed. Nasty little buggers. You’re the first normal your age the hunters have brought in. Be interesting to see what happens over time.”

What did that mean? And hunters. Bounty hunters? Oh God. Capturing him and Tyler had been the objective all along. He remembered the snow coming alive with icy geysers. They could have killed him but hadn’t.

They tried pinning me down, but then I ran to Tyler and that’s when I got hit. They shot me as a last resort because they didn’t want me getting away.

He stared up at Finn. “Where’s the boy?”

“I’m afraid he’s gone. But rest assured we put Tyler to very good use.”

What? “I … I don’t …”

“Come on, no more questions. Drink up, boy-o. You’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re O-negative, did you know that? Pretty rare, and while that’s good if I need blood, Mather could only transfuse you with the same blood type. Lucky for you, Peter, we’re not talking something contagious.”

What did that mean? And Finn already knew his name—and Tyler’s. Of course, he must. The bounty hunters knew who they were and where they’d been heading.

They were tipped off, but how? I didn’t decide on Dead Man until that morning. That was when he’d sent Lang ahead. Had Finn’s bounty hunters ambushed his runner? That had to be it.

“Where am I?” he rasped.

“Why, you’re in my territory, Peter, and I’ve got the water you want and need. Come on now.” Finn proffered the cup again. “No more questions.”

Despite his fear, he desperately wanted a drink. He let Finn slide the straw between his lips. The water—cold and blessedly wet—flooded over his tongue. He thought he was going to faint. He sucked the cup dry in three gasping gulps.

“Excellent. Keep that down and you can have more in a little while.” Finn looked over at Mather. “Bring in Davey, will you? He and Peter should get acquainted.”

“Yes, sir.” Mather fired off a salute, then brushed past the Changed on their gurneys. Watching her go, Peter realized something else.

“You …” His gaze snagged on an old caged shop light. The light wasn’t soft or pleasant but very hard, a spray of bright yellow that hurt and burned shadowy afterimages on Peter’s retinas. But he couldn’t make himself look away. “You’ve got light.”

“Some,” Finn said. “We have enough juice to warm a few tents: the infirmary here and where Mather does her surgery and … other work. Our depot is fairly well-stocked—vehicles are virtually useless, though we have a few older trucks—but we use what we have very sparingly.”

Generators. And a depot. He was sure now. It all tallied, right down to that shoulder flash. The Roman numeral III stood for the Three Percent. That was the statistic private militias liked to throw around because only that small percentage of the American colonists actually fought the British in the Revolutionary War. So this wasn’t just a camp of survivors. This was a private militia compound that probably existed well before the world died.

“You know, as unfortunate as it was that you got shot, that did give us a chance to disprove another theory,” Finn said.

Despite the water, his mouth was puckery and parched again. “Wh-what do you m-mean?”

“Well, you lost all that blood. Strong or not, young or not, you’d have died if Mather hadn’t found a donor.”

What had the old man said? Lucky for you, it’s not contagious.

Oh God. “You …” The words wanted to wedge in his throat and stay there. “You gave me blood f-from …”

“Yes, I did, and here you woke up still you.” Finn drew his hand over his brow. “Whew. Talk about a nail-biter.”

The words tripped over his teeth. “How m-much?”

“Every last drop. Bled that little Chucky dry. Even that animal knew he was going. You could see it in his eyes. I got right up in his face. Little prick tried taking off my nose, but old habits die hard. I cut off his eyelids so I could watch the whole thing. It was very gratifying.”

He was as close to screaming as he’d ever been in his life. “You’re militia, right? But who are you people? What the hell do you want?”

Finn’s expression darkened. “We’re what’s left, and you will show the proper respect, or so help me God, I will carve you into kibbles and feed you to the Chuckies a piece at a time. I’ll save the eyes for last. Eyes, they really like. Something about that little pop.”

The tent’s flaps parted. Through the gap, Peter saw the slant of snow. Mather ducked in, followed a moment later by a man.

Oh my God.

“Where would you like it, sir?” Lang—his man, his runner—snapped a crisp salute. Lang’s snow-salted uniform was identical to Mather’s, and he carried an automatic rifle. He spared Peter not a single glance.

“Right here.” Finn patted an empty gurney, then slipped Peter a wink. “Don’t take it too hard now, boy-o. Lang served under my command in ’Nam.” Finn said it as if the country were a sweet potato. “Imagine how pleased I was when he reported how much you respected his combat skills.”

Lang was Finn’s man. A sweep of dread blackened his brain as he remembered something else. Lang and Weller had served in Vietnam together.

But that doesn’t prove anything. Weller tried to save my life. But wait. Something Weller had said suddenly marched before his inner eye like that electronic ticker tape at Times Square: You remember when your time comes, it was me did this.

Oh Jesus. A deep and darkling sickness crept through his veins like a contagion born on a plague wind. Weller hadn’t saved his life. Weller was under orders to keep him alive. But why?

“Busy putting two and two together?” Finn lifted an eyebrow. “They said you were a smart boy.”

They. So, only Lang and Weller? Or were there more? How many men had Peter thought loyal but who were really working against Rule? And it’s personal for Weller. This is a grudge, something to do with me, but what? “What do you want?” he rasped.

“God moves in a mysterious way, Peter, His wonders to perform. He rides upon the storm and deep in unfathomable mines.” Finn’s eyes sparkled. “Why, I believe you know all about mines, don’t you?”

Mines. All the breath left his lungs, and the words struck him dumb. How did Finn know that? No one outside the Council did, not even Chris. Especially not Chris.

Finn turned as Lang held back the flap and two more people bullied in on a frigid cloud of fresh snow. Finn’s man, bald and bucktoothed, had his hands firmly clamped around a long metal rod Peter recognized at once as an animal control pole, the type with a swivel head. That was important, because no matter how much a wild dog might fight, it could not strangle itself on that nylon noose. A good thing, too, because this animal was putting up quite a fight.

Only … it wasn’t a dog.