The Company of Death by Elisa Hansen

Author:Elisa Hansen [Hansen, Elisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Published: 2019-01-16T22:00:00+00:00

18

Union

“I’m thirsty.”

On a high rock, stretched out on his stomach, Scott adjusted his binoculars. The land appeared deserted, but he stayed low, confident the dusty lump of his backpack blended with the boulder shadows.

“Hey, is that you down there?” he called in a low voice over his shoulder. “Or is someone else in metal shoes sneaking up on me? Did you have any luck?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Carol said from the other side of the ridge, closer to the road.

“Hey, did you hear me?” he said a little louder.

“Yes, I heard you.”

“It got dark way too fast.” Scott squinted harder through the binoculars for any definite shapes in the valley below. The wild flipflops in the air pressure over the last few minutes left him with a headache. The dust in the high wind also scratched in the back of his throat, and his body creaked, stiff and sore from spending all day in the car. He felt overheated, his back itched, and he’d scraped the center of his palm while climbing the rocks to get a look at the freak heat storm that apparently took place in only one small section of the sky.

And he was thirsty.

“I have no record of weather like this.” Carol kept her volume on low, but Scott could still hear every nuance of her wariness through the rocks. “Of lightning flashing in such a pattern.”

Scott sighed and cleared his parched throat. “Well, there’s no one out there. And whatever fire that smoke came from is gone now. I can’t find it. I think we’re fine to keep going.”

“This is bad,” she said. Her feet crunched the gravel around the boulders below his perch. “We are now on foot after dark. Your safety is compromised.”

If he heard the word “compromised” one more time, Scott was going to throw something. They’d had no luck with fuel on the highway and then took to side roads to continue their search. He adjusted himself on the rocks, mindful of his shotgun by his arm. They were in the middle of nowhere, no buildings, no places from which anyone, living or undead, could jump out and surprise them. He was on guard, obviously, but an attack ranked low on his list of concerns. “There’s no one on the road, right?”

“No,” she said. “But no stranded vehicles either.”

He scanned to the south. “You don’t— Whoa! What’s that?” His binoculars slipped from his fingers.

“What?” The fuel can made a hollow ring as Carol plunked it below Scott’s rock.

He tucked the gun under his elbow so he could use both hands to focus the binoculars. “There’s something out there.”

Carol scaled the boulders to crouch beside him. He pointed into the valley. “Do you see it?” he whispered. “I thought it was a big shadow, but then it moved. And look, there’s where the smoke came from, those bushes are all black.”

He put his face back to the binoculars and held his breath. As the shadow turned, Scott better saw the outline of a man-shaped figure in a hooded cloak.

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