17.
It wasn't the sight of blood that sickened Eric. It was the smell. Heavy. Thick. Like overripe fruit rotting in the sun. Cloying like dried rose petals. It drowned alt other senses, submerged them until the act of breathing became claustrophobic.
Eric forced himself to breathe evenly as he waded past body after mangled body, but the air, once charcoal- laced with the memory of raging fires, now swarmed with the sourness of death. It was as if the air were too dense to be breathed, or didn't contain enough oxygen, or just didn't want to support any life form capable of this carnage.
'They didn't have a chance,' Rydell said, stooping to check the pulse of one of the guards. He let the wrist flop limply to the ground and stood up.
'Jesus,' Season gasped as she stepped over the toppled barbed-wire fence.
Molly and Tag jogged up behind her, their mouths gaping as they stared dumbly around what was left of University Camp.
'Right,' Eric said sharply. 'Let's get to work. Rydell and Season, start fixing the fence here. Molly and Tag, scout the perimeter for any other breaks.'
'Shouldn't we check for survivors first?' asked Rydell with some shock.
'Yes,' Tag agreed, 'or search the grounds to see if there are any invaders still around?'
'They're gone,' Eric said. 'This was a hit and run operation. They're not sitting around raping women or getting drunk. As to survivors. They'll be coming out of hiding soon as they know it's us out here. The wounded will just have to wait until we've secured our defenses. We don't want them coming back. Or any of the others waiting out there. Do we?'
Molly grabbed Tag's arm, tugged him after her. 'Let's go check the perimeters, partner.'
Rydell glared at Eric for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to argue. Eric stared back, his eyes unflinching, his face grimly set. Finally, Rydell nodded reluctantly. 'C'mon, Season, grab that post. We'll wedge it between these desks.'
Eric sprang off across the grounds toward the bookstore, ignoring the corpses and moaning wounded he passed or hopped over. Why hadn't they heard the alarm bell or drum? They could have been here sooner. Helped. Done something. As he edged around the cafeteria, he saw why. The kettle drum was smashed in, the post with the iron bell was splintered in half. Griff Durham, the hammer clutched in his hand to strike the bell, lay sprawled in the parched brown grass, two arrows sticking out of his back.
Eric forced his body to do what was militarily correct, what he'd been taught, rather than what it wanted to do. It wanted to throw his bow down and run for Annie. To see if she was okay, or if she'd managed to hide herself and the kids in time. But Eric didn't bolt. He ran purposefully to the bell, unstrapped it from the wood beam it had hung from, pried the hammer loose from Griff Durham's death grip, arid banged that bell with an All Clear pattern any survivors would recognize. At least now he and his soldiers could move around the camp without fear of being accidentally shot while mistaken for the intruders.
'Come on out, people!' Eric shouted. 'We need help. There's work to do.'
As he hammered the bell dangling in his hand, he could see doors opening, faces peering out of fourth-floor library windows. Some staggered from wounds, others staggered from shock. But they came, their weapons hanging limply at their sides.
'Those of you still armed take guard positions around the perimeters. Anyone outside comes near the barriers, kill them. Anyone. You three-yeah, you-start checking the bodies. Help the wounded first, then start dragging the dead over in the open quad.' Everyone wandered off wordlessly, following orders because it was something specific to do, easier than thinking about what had happened.
Satisfied that they were at least defensible again, Eric now ran for his home, for Annie. He checked each dazed face as he dashed past, hoping to recognize her features among the living. But she wasn't there.
Perhaps she was still home, hiding there with the children, huddled behind the desk with a bow. Waiting for him to come back and protect them.
'Help me. Please, help me,' someone begged hoarsely as Eric ran by. Out of the corner of his eye he recognized
Fred Donnelli, a stockbroker whose father had been a tailor, qualifications enough to make Fred part of the clothes making group at University Camp. A crossbow bolt had pinned his shoulder to door, blood spiraling down his arm. Eric kept going, the image of Annie fixed in his mind. Fred could wait.
But Eric couldn't. He pivoted sharply around, ran over to Fred Donnelli. He quickly examined the bolt, saw that it was a broadhead hunting tip. 'This is going to hurt, Fred,' he said.
'It already hurts.' Fred sagged weakly. 'I had another one in the side, but I managed to work that one through.' He pressed his left hand against the wound. Blood seeped between his sticky fingers. 'I just don't have the strength anymore, Eric, to aaiiiieee.'
Eric snapped the samurai sword from the scabbard on his back and leaned Fred forward to expose an inch of the shaft sticking between his back and the bolt's tip. Then with a chopping sweep, Eric severed the wooden shaft and yanked the arrow from Fred's shoulder. Fred slid to the ground.
'Thanks,' he said, his eyes heavy, his tongue thick in his mouth.
Eric whipped the sword back into the scabbard, grabbed his crossbow, and ran on without answering. Fred's shoulder wound was minor, but the hole in his side had looked bad. Maybe fatal. He needed medical attention right away, but not from Eric.
Lanterns were being lit around the camp as people busied themselves with the wounded, secured guard posts, dragged the dead away. The wretched sounds of sobbing and crying echoed throughout the camp like distant cries of a mournful bird. Eric ignored their pain and suffering, concentrating on his own fears of what lay ahead.
He took the short cut through the locker room and around the pool, finally rounding the last corner. What he saw sent electrical currents buzzing through his heart.
The door was open.
He was through it in seconds, his eyes raking every inch of the room in a glance. Empty.
No Annie. No Timmy.
He ran back out to the main grounds, grabbing people roughly by the shoulders, shaking them for answers. 'Where's my wife? My son?'
No one knew. Some too devastated by their own loss to care.
'The hospital,' he said aloud, already running in that direction. Of course. Annie would go to the hospital in the library to check on Jennifer. Hope surged through his body, catapulting him toward the library.
Susan Connors was holding the door open with her backside while two men carried a woman in on a stretcher. A long deep gash divided her arm lengthwise, exposing muscle and bone. 'Get her in here,' Susan urged. Half a dozen people were asking her questions at once. She answered each patiently, but quickly, sent them running for whatever she ordered.
Eric saw her react when she saw him coming. She looked over her shoulder, hollered something he didn't hear from that distance. He saw Tracy running up behind her, the two of them talking, looking at Eric as he approached.
'Is she here? Annie?' Eric said.
Susan and Tracy blocked the doorway with their bodies. 'No, Eric,' Susan said. 'Annie's not here.'
'Where is she?'
'I don't know.'
'Don't feed me that crap. If she's dead, tell me.'
Tracy put her hand on Eric's arm. 'Really, we don't know where she is. Most of us have been in hiding in the top floors of the library. It all happened so fast. One minute everything was quiet, normal. The next, they were all over us. Killing and looting. I don't know how it happened.' A sob caught in her voice, but she shook it off, aware that there was no time for that now.
'If you two don't know where Annie is, why are you trying to keep me out of the hospital?'
'We're not, Eric. It's just that Annie isn't here.'
He stared at the two of them, the nervous shifting of their eyes, the fidgeting. They were hiding something.
