BARREN: Book 1 - War in the Ruins (A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller) Read online

  “Hold on, Decker.”

  Katy stumbled onto the sidewalk, spinning and trying to catch a glimpse of Decker’s orange-tinted fur in the subtle moonlight. She heard the dog’s paws clicking on the asphalt. Katy turned left, going deeper into the ruins.

  “Decker!”

  The dog’s bark sounded more distant. Katy broke into a full sprint, no longer concerned about what might be lurking around the next corner or who might be watching her. She couldn’t lose Decker. She would not let that happen.

  The street led to an intersection. A massive copse of trees on the right side towered over the ruins, most likely an urban pocket park no longer held captive by its brick-and-mortar neighbors. Katy struggled to see an opening among the trunks. Another bark snapped the silence from within the forest.

  Katy put her hands on her hips and spun around. She reached up and pushed the hair from her face. Katy stomped on the ground as Decker barked again from inside the trees.

  “Dammit,” she said, following her dog into the depths of the unknown.

  CHAPTER 4

  The air inside the park felt heavy and wet in the dark of the night. The canopy held the day’s heat inside while the lake pushed a late autumn chill across the land. Shafts of moonlight filtered through the branches, but the trees strangled it, keeping the forest floor in shadows.

  Katy heard Decker moving through the brittle leaf piles collected on the ground, but she could not see him.

  This is not like him. He doesn’t run off without a reason.

  Katy wanted to call out to Decker, but something told her to hold her words. She looked around as dead leaves descended silently from above.

  She pushed onward and could now see the pocket park had grown significantly. Nature had a way of coming back from just about anything. Trees that had lined the park grew over the fence and those planted along sidewalks now enveloped the streets. Had she not been chasing Decker or had she remembered to bring a weapon, Katy might have wanted to explore this strange junction of what was and what would be.

  “Hey, boy,” Katy said, gingerly tossing words in the dog’s direction. “C’mon, Deck.”

  Decker darted around two trees but did not heed Katy’s call. The dog ran toward the west side of the park and Katy followed.

  Katy came through a tunnel of low-hanging branches and realized that what she thought was an overgrown pocket park was the edge of what had become a new wilderness. Junk trees and fast-growing weeds had sprouted in the old neighborhood and many now dwarfed the crumbling two-story houses that had once sat on this street. She saw broken windows with trees growing through them and chimneys crumbling beneath the overgrowth. Wild vines and fast-growing weeds grew over the cars on the street, smothering them in a blanket of green.

  “Decker.”

  The dog had run another half block west and so, Katy followed. She focused on the trees and on Decker’s location, refusing to acknowledge that she was deeper in the ruins than she wanted. The safety of her boat felt like a withering, distant dream.

  Katy saw a flash of motion and a few seconds later, Decker was at her side. The retriever’s tail was wagging, slapping Katy on the leg as the dog spun in circles. Decker was her best friend, her only companion, and she could intuit the dog’s emotions. He wasn’t excited about a night swim in the lake. Decker had found something and he wanted to show her.

  “I don’t know, Deck. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that I don’t trust what’s out there. We’re not supposed to be in the old city—we’re one sinkhole or missing manhole cover away from rotting alive at the bottom of a pit. I need to get us out of here.”

  But Decker wouldn’t quit. He hopped up on Katy, putting his paws on his owner’s thighs.

  “Jesus,” Katy said. “Can’t we just go back and find some caulk, get the hell out of here?”

  Decker responded by running further into the trees. Katy had to follow.

  Although a faint glow rose from beneath the eastern horizon, the ruins would remain in darkness for a few more hours. Predators—animals and otherwise—seemed to be much more active in the thin space between night and dawn. But Decker had something he wanted her to see and she trusted him.

  What choice do I have? I’m not going to leave him here.

  Katy trotted along the pathway, unable to tell if it was an asphalt path in the pocket park, a sidewalk or a road. It felt firm beneath her feet but a layer of leaves and debris covered it. Katy ran behind Decker with the hope her four-legged friend had a better sense for danger than she did. Dogs could sense natural disasters before they happened, surely he could detect a pothole.

  The forest, which was what Katy decided it really was, stretched as far as she could see. The old inner-ring suburb would not have had structures more than two stories tall and the fastest-growing trees had already eclipsed those buildings. Poplar and eastern cottonwood grew around and sometimes through the old structures. The area looked more like it had in the seventeenth century when the Western Reserve had been settled by the English.

  Decker darted and jumped. Katy followed. She had to trust the dog would have smelled predators or survivors, sometimes one and the same. She kept seeing those hideous masks in her mind’s eye.

  The dog came to a stop in a clearing. High grass waved silently, bordered on all sides by oak trees. At first, Katy couldn’t tell what was sticking up through the grass. The wind smelled rank, much like decomposing growth at the water’s edge.

  Stop signs. Must have been a town center or intersection.

  But the more she looked, the less sure she was about what was in the field. Decker began to whimper. Katy bent down and rubbed the dog’s head.

  “This is what you wanted me to see? A bunch of stop signs?”

  Decker lay down and put his head on his paws.

  “Okay. I’ll check it out if it’s that important to you.”

  Katy surveyed the perimeter of the field. She felt nothing, sensed no threat or human presence. She took two steps into the tall grass. The sun had risen a bit higher in the morning sky and now, she could see further than from beneath the trees. The things in the field weren’t stop signs at all. They were posts, stuck into the ground at odd angles. All of them had something at the top and Katy could not tell what they were.

  Baskets? Squirrel nests?

  Each pole had a mass on top of it. Katy stopped counting after twenty.

  She looked back at Decker, his tail coming up every few seconds to wave at her.

  Katy waded deeper into the grass, her arms out and brushing against the dry stalks that would soon fall to winter’s grip. She approached the nearest pole, her head cocked to one side and her eyes squinting.

  What the hell is this?

  As she came closer, the smell of decay intensified as did the sound of buzzing flies. Katy pulled her shirt up over her mouth.

  Drying hides. Or maybe survivors curing meat for the winter?

  She was now five feet from the closest pole and the air was rife with death. Katy knew what deer hides smelled like. She remembered the odor of cured pig.

  This is not a hunting camp.

  Katy saw the small toes first, but the pasty skin was unmoving. Rope circled the infant’s legs, wrapping it around the top of the pole. She forced herself to gaze upward and into the face of the dead child. Flies buzzed about the bloated face, the infant’s sex no longer recognizable. Tiny translucent insects crawled in a single-file line from the nostrils to the eye sockets.

  She gagged and then turned to vomit, coughing and not caring who or what heard her.

  Someone tied these babies to a pole and left them to die.

  The child above her was one of dozens of dead infants strapped to poles in the field. None moved and none cried out.

  She looked up one last time and saw a streak of color around its neck—one of the red scarves she had been handing out to her women patients, like the one she had given to Bella just a few hours ago.

  CHAPTER 5

>   Once the shouting began, the girl leapt from her hiding place and ducked down between the two doors she’d used to cover the hole. She held her breath, waiting for a better indication of how far away the monsters were while her heart thumped in staccato bursts. She used the back of her hand to wipe the dust and sweat from her forehead, despite the chill on the night air. The ruins tended to hold the heat from the day, but the night pulled it back out in the witching hour.

  Flashes of fire flickered within the crumbled buildings, now just fifty yards from where she hid. The monsters had been chasing her since her parents died. Their leader—the man with the red mask—somehow knew she had been given her father’s gift. The girl could smell the water and know whether or not it had been tainted with toxins.

  She had been living in a village with the old biker gang who called themselves Los Muertos, but her father had warned her before he died. He’d told her that nobody could protect her from the monsters but herself. He’d said she needed to stay on the outskirts of the ruins and occasionally come in to the villages for supplies, lest the monster in the red mask find her. The monster would do unspeakable things, he’d said.

  “Fifty yards to the north!”

  The command snapped the girl to attention, her eyes peering into the black velvet of darkness that descended on the ruins.

  “In the middle of those two buildings.”

  The monsters didn’t need to yell any longer. They were now close enough to hear each other.

  The girl dashed to her left, slid beneath a window without panes of glass and sprinted across the gravel. A slight tinge of silver illuminated the gray walls of the building, but the moonbeams were not able to penetrate the darkness of the open doorway. She leapt through it and dodged to the right, down a flight of stairs, and waited.

  She listened as the monsters’ heavy footfalls rumbled the floor above and dropped a fine mist of dust and dirt onto her face. She gasped then used a thumb and forefinger on her nose to pinch off a sneeze. She looked across the basement to the other set of steps. She could hide or she could make a run for the other stairs that would lead outside, hoping they weren’t descending both.

  “Down.”

  The single word sprung the girl into motion. She ran, kicking a bottle into the corner where it clanged off a piece of rusted furniture. She jumped into the stairwell and turned the first corner, her thighs burning on the climb. She passed the open door of the ground floor and then the second floor, catching a glimpse of the light from the monsters’ torches. She continued up to the third floor and sprinted for the room at the end of the hall. There were more monsters, but the girl knew the building. She mentally mapped out every inch of every floor.

  “Negative.” The word floated up the stairwell.

  The girl sighed. Judging by the reverberations of their voices, the monsters were still in the basement looking for her.

  “Bitch.”

  She felt a strong grip on her elbow at the same time that she heard the voice. The monster spun her around and she could see the mask through her strands of greasy hair. He squeezed her arm so hard, her fingers began to tingle.

  “Please don’t hurt me. Don’t do to me what you do to the babies.”

  The monster turned its head to the side, the mask hiding the creature’s facial expression. The girl heard wheezy breathing and sniffling coming from beneath the mask.

  “Up top,” the monster said, trying to toss his words toward the stairs where the others would be in a matter of moments.

  The girl saw shadows flicker on the stairwell as the monsters came with their torches. The one holding her arm was facing the stairwell. She felt his grip loosen slightly for just a moment. The girl slammed her right heel down on the tip of the monster’s left boot. The creature howled and let go of her arm.

  She ran for the open window on the opposite side of the room. The monsters coming up the steps were now ten feet away and the one who had been holding her arm was now running toward her as well. She stepped over the windowsill, into the night and down the fire escape, leaping two and three steps at a time. The monsters’ torches above her illuminated the darkened sky and their weapons rang off the iron ladder.

  The girl fell eight feet from the bottom rung of the fire escape, hitting her head on the cracked asphalt hard enough to make the ruins waver as if under water. She got up and staggered toward an old swimming pool filled with putrid, black water. Hunks of concrete and rusted wire blocked any passage around the pool.

  “Don’t let her in the water.”

  She heard the shouts behind her, but the girl knew they wouldn’t catch her before she threw herself into the cold, wet, dark hole. Her father had told her to do this only as a last resort—the monsters would not chase her, but the water could make her sick. The girl could not think of another escape. She leapt off the crumbled concrete and plunged feet-first into the oily water. Her breath caught in her chest and she felt an icy burn in her extremities as the temperature of the water threatened to immobilize her muscles. She went under and came back up, gasping for air and smelling the rancid chemicals floating on the surface. She pushed through, paddling her way across the pool. She grabbed on to the single remaining rail of a rusted ladder and climbed out on the other side.

  Most of the monsters stood with their weapons drawn and torches held high. Several stepped in her direction, but none pursued.

  The girl climbed over a fence and ran through a vacant lot away from the ruins and back toward the village. The cold night shook her wet bones and her teeth chattered in her skull. She kept running, the sounds of the monsters diminishing and the light from their torches dissipating into the night.

  Her father had been right on the first count. The monsters wouldn’t chase her into the water. Now, she had to hope that he had been wrong about that second part.

  CHAPTER 6

  Decker was up now, pacing on the edge of the field. Katy sensed the dog had accomplished his mission—he’d known there was something wrong about this place and he’d brought his owner to investigate.

  The sun cut swaths of light across the field, illuminating the tiny corpses tied to the tops of the posts. Katy had walked through the posts and recognized several of the wraps still clinging to the dead babies. Cloth she’d scavenged and had given to the pregnant women she’d tended to during the past several months. Katy began counting the scarves she recognized before realizing it would only push her further toward hysteria.

  Someone is tying babies to the poles and leaving them for dead. Babies of the women I treated. Babies I delivered. My babies.

  “Jesus, Deck.”

  Decker came to her side and pushed his muzzle into Katy’s thigh. She reached down and patted the dog on his head with one hand while wiping a tear from her eye with the other.

  “Let’s backtrack, head to the hardware store in the daylight and see if we can’t find a tube of caulk. Gotta hope Lake Haven isn’t already sitting on the bottom of Erie.”

  Decker barked and ran back in the direction they had come, toward the hardware store and the yacht club. Katy turned and took one more look at the gruesome graveyard, searing the image into her mind. She whispered part of a prayer she could no longer remember, from a faith that no longer existed.

  “Let’s go,” she said to Decker.

  They walked through the pocket park until it emptied back onto the street, the hardware store three blocks down on the right. Katy looked in both directions but was no longer concerned about traffic.

  Why would someone do this to infants, especially now?

  Decker stopped, ears up and tail down.

  Katy saw the dog’s pose and immediately spun in a circle. She looked into the broken windows of the neighborhood and behind the crumbling walls of the buildings.

  “What is it?” she asked Decker in a low whisper.

  The hair came up on the back of Katy’s neck. She had been awake all night, battling the storm, and now, she felt an extreme urgency to get the boat repaire
d and get back on the water where she would be safe and could rest.

  A sound came from the direction of the hardware store and Decker began barking. Katy cringed, knowing she could not stop the dog from doing so and whatever cover they’d had was now gone.

  Katy fingered an empty loop on her belt, regretting the decision to come into the ruins without anything more deadly than a utility knife.

  The sound of broken glass reverberated down the street and Katy surmised a band of survivors was emerging, drawn by Decker’s incessant barking. The monsters moved with a skillful silence, a deliberate approach like true hunters. She stood, choosing to appear confident and strong, knowing she could not outrun them on their turf or in her present condition.

  “Stay there.”

  The voice came from the building next to the hardware store. She saw the profile of a man who spoke with a deep voice and a Latino accent.

  Decker whined and sat at Katy’s feet. She watched as a massive hulk of a man emerged from the shadows. Even in the cool autumn morning, the man wore a black leather vest without a shirt, his biceps stretching the tattoos on both arms. He had a black bandanna tied around his head and a pair of biker goggles resting on top of it. Katy could see the Latino was older than she was, his strands of gray hair lying on shoulders hunched over from years of hard living. Judging from the number of patches on his vest, he must have been the leader of a gang. The knife on his belt and aluminum baseball bat in his right hand confirmed Katy’s hunch and the man’s intention.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Katy said.

  Four others—three men and a woman—followed the hulk and walked behind him on the street. They walked with weapons and yet, held them as if they were dead fish. Katy saw their thin, taut faces and missing teeth. They stumbled more than walked, shoulders slumped forward and feet dragging along the ancient asphalt.

  If I had a real weapon, I’d be able to handle all of them at the same time. Even the big guy.