The Eros Plague Epoch

Wendy helped me bury Gil that morning. Burying my brother next to his wife, I tried to focus on them, but I was wracked by Bailey's absence. I knew I was putting the feelings of loss into a box, but there was so much to do. I had to believe the little guy was somewhere I could find.

Once we got Gil set in his grave, Wendy insisted on checking my stitches, both in the back of my head, and the ones on my leg. Thankfully, it was all good on that front, but where in the hell Bailey had gotten to was at the front on my mind.

Afterward, we ate canned ham and beans for breakfast. Thankfully, she was happy to let her demonstration of Freddie's effects on some of its survivors go by without any further comment, but all of it seemed insane to me.

I looked around the island, every room, closet, cupboard, hiding place, all of it. His treehouse hadn't even been opened up before Wendy checked it, and looked untouched from last year. I checked and climbed trees to look for him, I even walked the perimeter of the island, praying I wouldn't find him floating face down.

Nothing.

"Wendy," I walked into the kitchen where she was organizing our supplies.

"Mmm-hmm?"

You said you'd been hiding out a couple days when I came across you, right?"

She looked up, hair pulled into a loose knot behind her. "Yeah, when I found you trying to steal my boat-."

"That you couldn't sail.

"That I hadn't yet figured out how to sail as well as you can, I'd been hiding out from that pack at Slead's Landing a couple days." She cocked her hip at me and stuck out her tongue, "ass."

"Happen to hear any boats on the lake in that time?"

Her eyes widened, and she pondered. After a few moments she narrowed her eyes, "yeah," she chewed the pencil she was using to write down the lists of items we had. "Yeah, I did. In the distance, probably over on the east side of the lake."

There was a series of large islands on that side of the lake, lots of small family homesteads that could drive up on a causeway to the larger islands. A few islands too, all accessible by boat. I'd started to wonder how many other survivors were around the area. People from the city who knew the area would flee here. For a cunning predator, that would be tempting, easy, work.

I had a simple plan in mind, and Wendy was not much in favour, but she agreed after some begging. If Bailey were alive, and bandits had him, my best shot finding him was to get their attention.

So, it wasn't long until we'd loaded the old power boat my Grandad had loved so much, and Wendy was opening up the motor on the open water of the lake.

The day was calm, a light west wind blew and the sun was shining. For the first time since I'd gotten out from under the crawl space, I felt a little, in control. Seated in the back of the boat, I held my old set of field glasses to check distant docks and houses.

We'd been at it two days, scouring the eastern shore and its many tiny bays when Wendy stopped the motor dead, hopping up on her seat, staring toward a small island with a red cabin on it.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

A sonic thud rang in the distance. Wendy raised a finger to the sky. I looked through my binocs, not the place with the little red house... I scanned the shore. Another crack.

"I see it," pointing into a bay, I'd seen movement. Someone had flitted out of a boathouse, racing into it from the tree line, "there."

Wendy hit the gas and we coasted into the bay. I got ready. Grandads deer rifle was at the ready. The handguns set. Wendy told me she'd done some target shooting at girls nights, so she got the.38. I promised she wouldn't need it, but still. I wrapped the strap of the rifle that had put deer on the table in many a thin year around my left hand, kneeling across the seats and sighting as we drifted past a small property with a single-floor cabin, fronted by a big closed-in veranda.

A woman in a dark jacket, jeans and boots with a tight ponytail, holding a gun on screaming child smashed out of the screen door, pointing a hand cannon that was too big for her as she was followed by a frantic woman holding a fireplace poker. The cannon went off, widely missing the woman with the poker.

"One, two, buckle my shoe," Wendy jumped when I pulled the trigger, the kidnapper's head snapped to the side and she fell, the wailing kid dropping.

"Fuuuuucking hell, Travers," Wendy looked at me with wide eyes. I ignored her and looked for the others. One in the boat, trying to stay out of sight. There had to be at least three.

A man whipped out of the door of the boat house, raising a rifle of his own, looking toward the screaming like a rookie. He wore a similar outfit to the first one. Dark jacket, boots, jeans. Cleaner than most folks I'd seen. I waited, he began to turn, his jaw exploding in a burst of teeth and blood and bone. "Three, four, knock at the door..."

Wendy didn't react to that one.

An engine roared to life, and the boat in the little boathouse began to back out at full speed. A woman was at the wheel, terrified, wide eyed. She wore the same outfit as the others. I sighted, exhaling, "five, six, pickup sticks."

The motor jolted as the shot pummeled it, and began smoking and sputtered off.

"Get me over there," I ordered Wendy. She turned the keys and our motor kicked to life.

The runabout sputtered and made horrible grinding noises as we inched toward it. I'd switched out the rifle for one of the semi-auto pistols, keeping it trained on the woman cranking the key in the ignition despite the death throes of the motor.

Reaching over the side, I wound my hand into her hair and wrenched her head back. She went for a gun, a shitty little thing that looked like it'd explode in her hand if she pulled the trigger. I smashed her nose with the butt of my own gun and she dropped hers, shrieking in pain as her nose splattered blood across her boat's dash, the revolver pinwheeled over the far side, splashing into the water.

The woman with the little girl didn't wait for us to come to the shore before grabbing her daughter and hopping in her car. I tried to flag her down, to reassure her that we were friendly, but she was gone already. I turned to my captive.

"Lovely day for kidnapping, tell me all about it."

She did

=====================================

I bound our captive's wrists, putting her in my boat with Wendy before taking the tank of gas from her boat, and then using my knife to pop the hull plugs. We went ashore, having drifted back to the mouth of the bay, while the little runabout bubbled under the water.

They were a crew set up on the north end of the lake where the new rich richie riches had built boxy monstrosities on the bluffs that faced south. Huge docks, long staircases, and fancy bullshit lined those bluffs, nestled between two small towns that were not almost entirely dedicated to serving them. The one her group was in, another nine of them based there, was a flat angled roof with a gigantic first floor overlooked by the second, a large hallway with bedrooms and bathrooms. Stairs access the second floor from either end, and the entire front face was glittering glass overlooking the lake. I knew the one.

She refused to speak on why the kids were being grabbed, crying and looking away from us. Wendy stared at me fearfully as I raised my gun, rage bubbling in my veins... but I knew better. This woman was just another desperate mess that didn't know how to get by on her own.

Quickly grabbing the weapons from the other two kidnappers, I discovered that they were both packing trash. A Walmart deer-rifle of almost non-existent quality, and a wheelgun that looked like it'd been assembled from four different weapons. It was a miracle it had fired at all. I pocketed the ammo, tossing the guns into the water.

I left the bodies for the scavengers.

Wendy was deathly silent, sitting in the drivers seat of the boat, pale. Behind her, I kept a gun on the bandit, her smashed nose oozing gently. I couldn't bring myself to kill her out of ease.

"We'll drop you at the shore, just east of Slead's Landing," I told the woman, "that way, you'll have a chance on your own. Maybe hook up with some survivors that aren't stealing kids and killing folk."

"Fine," she mumbled.

I leaned into her, pressing the barrel of the gun under her chin, "don't let me find you back with those people. Don't give me an excuse to put you down."

The bandit stared at me hatefully, but nodded slowly.

We slipped through the water toward the eastern edge of the lake. There was an old lakeside rest area there that the woman could clean up safely and get on her way. Slipping into the small launch there that fishermen would have used in normal days, Wendy pulled up to the dock, and I forced the bandit out at gunpoint, quickly cutting her bonds as Wendy threw us into reverse. I watched as the dock faded into the distance, the woman standing at the end of it, watching until we were a dot on the horizon.

Back at the island, Wendy still hadn't spoken once we got out of the boat, tying up the front while I took care of the back. Walking out of the boathouse without a word, she determinedly didn't look at me. I waited a few minutes, taking my time unloading the boat, and headed to the house, putting the guns away carefully.

Wendy sat in the living room on the same couch where she'd slept, sipping cold coffee.

"You really were some kind of badass, weren't you." It should have been a question, but no, it was a statement. I could see it in her eyes, years of stories and rumours around town, trickling to her family about what I was up to, just as they had to my family about Grace.

"I was a soldier, Wendy, a very good one."

"I remember you winning some shooting competition when I was a kid..."

Nodding, I sat down on the armchair nearby her, "I don't know if you remember my Grandad, he died when you were a baby, but he taught me to shoot and hunt, I'm good at it."

Wendy sipped at the mug and winced as the tepid coffee hit her mouth. "I've seen some stuff, Cal, I helped run an emergency room... I put people back together after horrible accidents..," looking over at me with wet eyes, "it's not the same when you're the one doing the violence."

Getting up, I sat next to her, putting a brotherly arm around her shoulders and hugged her to me. We sat silently for a while.

"There'll be more killing, won't there," she asked.

"More than likely," I told her soberly, "we're back in the jungle now, but I promise, it won't be my first choice if I can avoid it."

I knew the last part was a half-truth... but so did I.

=====================================

We spent the next day laying low, checking for activity as best we could from cover, just in case. We'd hear boats, but anyone searching from the western shore would easily able spot us moving around, so we kept low and stayed inside,

Fidgety and anxious, I was struggling to create the calm space I had learned for those hours, days, even, that I would spend waiting for a target to surface. A state of mind had to be able to descend to manage the boredom, the stress, the sheer mind-numbing state of waiting.

But I couldn't quite manage it.

It had been days now, somehow, since I'd been with Danni. I'd felt it when Wendy played her little prank on me about pheromones and attraction. I hadn't been interested actively, but when she offered, I'd been hard instantly. I'd wanted to throw her onto the table and pound away.

But, obviously, that hadn't worked out as I'd hoped. We had no spark, or pheromone match, whatever she called it. I didn't think it'd matter if I had Wendy a thousand times.

During the shootout and afterward, I'd felt it, that surge in my body, an all-over roar in my blood, but it was the rush of life-and-death, of violence done well. The woman we'd captured hadn't presented any interest to me, but still, I felt it in the pit of my stomach.

I needed a lay, but I didn't have any way to get one. Days out, and I was ready to climb the walls. I felt like a caged animal, the pressure in my mind, let alone my balls felt like it was cracking me in half.

Trying to take care of it myself lessened the one pressure, but not the other. I understood what Wendy had said about needing a good lay. It wasn't just my readiness, but my need, that had increased.

So, I did what I'd been trained to do; strip, clean, and reassemble each firearm.

First, the spare Glock that I didn't have ammo for. Then the old.38. The M1911 next. It was a pretty gun that need e some love to be used.

Aftet that, Grandad's two deer rifles. Then his bird gun. Last, I had plans for his 12-gauge.

Finally, as night crept over the horizon, I pulled out the fancy pants long gun I'd looted from the gas station crew. It was a thing of beauty, and I knew it'd have its day soon.

Two days later, Wendy ran down the stairs. She'd been sleeping in the old guest room across from

the bedroom Gil and I had shared. I was still on the couch, unable to bring myself to sleep in my old room, and not able to go into my parents yet. She shook me awake.

"I hear them."

Two boats, similar to the one I sank, were roaming the eastern shore of the lake, a crew in each checking the properties, heading back out, checking the next, skipping to the islands nearby, heading back to the shore.

Their search wasn't organized, they crossed over each other often, doubling work. They weren't people with training and skills, that was a help to things. Wendy sat next to me on the northern edge of the island, hiding in the trees. I had my field glasses, she my Mom's old birdwatching binocs.

The bandits were fairly far away, so I couldn't get much on how they were armed, but they were, I could see that. It took them until afternoon to try the bay we'd found their friends in, and we lost sight of them. Things were silent for a while, the second boat joining the first. They might have a walkie.

I turned to Wendy, "go close up the boathouse, and make sure that things look like they did from the outside when you and I got here. Just in case."

She nodded and headed off, I grabbed her hand, "if you hear them coming this way, hide. Wherever you are, just hide and don't make a noise."

"Okay."

I watched for an hour. One of the boats zoomed off toward the north shoreline at the end of the hour. The other headed south-west, shooting right past us toward Slead's Landing. My guess was that they figured someone would go to the nearest town, but I couldn't really be sure. I moved to Bailey's old treehouse, looking out through the thin tree cover that watched over the channel toward town. In the distance, I could hear the motor droning off and on for a while.

My heart sank, they might have found their friend if she figured out a way to signal them. Maybe a fallback plan? I'd need to grab Wendy and head over in the boat, hopefully take them down quickly... and then I heard a shot echo on the wind.

"Hell," another rang across the water.

"Wendyyyy," I hollered at the top of my lungs.

We were in the boat with with my bag of tricks in minutes.

Wendy was scared to head into a firefight, but I made her put the hammer down, and we blasted across the water, the fibreglass hull thumping on each wave. The shooting sounded like it was coming from the eastern end of town, not far from where we'd dropped the female bandit the day before. Cursing, I left Grandad's old deer rifle in the bag, getting the double barrel shotgun ready. I'd sawed off the length of it for close encounters the night before, thinking of the experience with the huge Redeye. I slung it on a long belt, and pulled out the Benelli.

It was a beautiful weapon that a moron had bought to make himself feel big, and had needed a lot of cleaning and some care, but the action was smooth, the sights were perfect, the barrel clean, and the scope clipped on. The body was wood with high-impact plastic around a smooth grip, and the We'd be coming in hot, and I was assuming at least three bandits would be there. Maybe some Redeyes if luck decided to fuck us.

"Goddamn," Wendy glanced up at the long-gun as I scanned the shoreline two-hundred metres out, "can you really hit something from here?"

I slid the bolt, inserting one of the beefy Creedmor rounds I'd found on its old owner into the breach. I glanced at her and winked, "I could give them a shave and a haircut."

Another shot, they were heading into town. I scanned the boathouses along the shore, catching movement on the street ahead. The houses and boathouses blocked my view, but there was some kind of gunfight happening. A woman with a smashed nose had a kid, she was racing toward a boathouse that was angled away from us, but it looked like the runabout I'd seen was in it, just a corner bobbing at the edge of the dock. I couldn't get a look at the kid, but it wasn't a tough guess on what was going on.

Two others, they were the one's doing the shooting. A break in the shoreline at the public beach opened up the scene. A minivan in the road was being shot to pieces by a man and a woman. Someone was hiding behind it. The man wasn't a great target, but the woman...

"One, two..." I exhaled. The Benelli roared, the vents on the barrel lighting up the grey midday. Wendy ducked, yelping in surprise. The woman on the street dropped, a ragdoll without a spine. More shouting.

I pointed to the boathouse where the runabout bobbed, "there, come across the opening. Wendy flipped me a thumbs up and headed in.

The kid's screams for her mother rang across the bay, the bandit I'd let go cursing her though the busted nose I'd given her. Leaping to the dock as Wendy pulled up to it with a loud thud, and I racked the slide with a fresh round as I ran toward the street. Howling had joined the noise in town, off to the west where the marina was...

"Cal, we have to be fast," Wendy shouted, not needing to remind me about the pack of infected that were surely surging through the woods from her family's home, her sister, my first love, among them.

Knowing Wendy was right, I stormed forward to the street. The bandit holding onto the girl spun not twenty feet from me, her face, no longer bloody, was mashed and bruised across the ruin of her nose. Her eyes widened as she recognized me, scrabbling for a weapon that was not there, letting the little girl go. A bullet pitted the road near my feet, and I spun to see a third member of the group crouched on one knee, firing in my direction with a handgun that they balanced on one knee. I took off at a run toward the woman I'd encountered yesterday as the kid finally broke free.

Catching the bright brown-gold haired child in one arm, I ran as hard as I could, two bullets clipping the woman I'd freed yesterday, karma for her actions catching up. As she fell to the pavement, I hunkered behind a rusty sedan in the mouth of the drive next to the boat house I'd come from.

I looked at the girl, checking her for wounds, taking a breath of relief that she had none, but stopped cold at her face.

Katy. Filthy, streaked with tears, but I'd know that slightly olive-complexion under her mother's sun kissed brown hair anywhere. The heart-shaped chin and high cheeks were the same, the small nose with the gently blunted tip...

"Cal?" Bullets pocked the front of the car, shattering the lights on the grill and my moment of realization.

I counted to three, estimating where the shooter with the Browning would be, snapped the sight off the gun, and rolled on one, the Benelli ready, and pulled the trigger.

A half second later, I would have missed, a half second later, they would have killed me right there, but a half second is an eternity.

The shooter took the FMJ round through the heart, falling flat on their back, one knee still propped up. Katy was screaming in terror.