Night Zero- Second Day by Rob Horner

Author:Rob Horner [Horner, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-06-09T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

The trail was unmistakable.

Two trips along the same route for one of the nurses, this time with the doctor and the previous one with the nurse practitioner. Also, there was the fading but still strong backtrail, where Jessica had returned alone along this route, presumably to retrieve the doctor.

The hunter noted how far apart the cross streets were, how dark the surface of the road. Gaffney didn’t have much in the way of urban anything, being more of an overgrown suburb to its larger neighbors, and Cherokee County was, by and large, one huge swathe of rural farmland slowly being eaten away by the termite of civilization. There were still places where those who didn’t mind a few skunks, the occasional coyote, and a swarm of insects in summertime could find a few acres away from the city noises and dangers, sometimes in the strangest places. Take the large outlet mall abutting the Interstate. The area was overgrown with rest stops, fast food joints, and the requisite furniture and mattress stores around the mall, but that only extended for a mile. Outside that periphery were farmlands and homesteads, crops and cows and dilapidated Main Streets with boarded and shuttered Mom and Pops and a single school bus stop to pick up all the grubby country kids and ship them twenty miles so they could go to a chronically failing despite being well funded public school.

Get five miles away and all they might have was a single gas station at a four-way stop sign, with streets more often designated by numbers and hyphens than with names. Up here in the hinterlands of the county, with the North Carolina state line only a few miles distant, the only hint of suburbia was the acrid tang of meth cooking in a backyard shed, carried by a vagary on the wind. The hunter estimated the nearest “lab” at several miles away, closer to Shelby, North Carolina than to his current position.

The scent rounded a curve and made a sharp left, onto a street with an actual name, Green Park Drive.

The hunter took the turn at speed, small pieces of gravel and road dirt digging into the soles of his feet. There wasn’t much left of his thick boot socks but hairy fringes tickling the sides of his ankles. He’d have to see about replacing his footwear when he stopped.

The road eased over an incline, descending to a shallow valley. A single become moved along the road, a dark-skinned man wandering aimlessly.

Unlike his maker, the hunter couldn’t read other become. He didn’t know if the man was following a specific target, or if whatever thought processes remained to him had pushed him to come this direction. Given the strength of the scent he followed, the hunter thought the become might be following the same source. Perhaps the van passed him, and the man thought to give chase. Without the specific benefits the hunter enjoyed, the regular become had no hope of catching its prey. And…out of sight, out of mind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.