Dies the Fire

Some truth in that, Juniper thought, bending to massage a kink out of one calf. Judy had a core of hard common sense, probably from her years as a nurse.

On the other hand, how could anyone know that the Change was here to stay, or that it was everywhere?

For that matter, she still didn't know that the Change was worldwide. She was morally certain, but that wasn't proof. If you were a garden-variety common-sense sort of person, staying put probably looked better… until it was too late.

"Plus we're just too close to Salem," she said, looking back a little east of south. "The requisitioning parties probably got everything around here."

They could still see the black columns of smoke around the city as a smudge on the horizon; luckily the wind was from the west, and bent them towards the distant line of the Cascades-she could still see the peaks of the Three Sisters from here.

"Are you sure?" she asked Judy.

The other woman nodded. "I'd never seen it before, but the black patches of skin and the swellings in the armpits and groin are unmistakable."

A long breath. "It's been three days now. We'd be showing symptoms, if we'd caught it, but my skin still crawls."

And mine, at the memory, Juniper thought. Those pits, where the bodies still smouldered…

The truck stop a little way up the road had a gas station with attached convenience store, and a long low-slung board building advertising the fact that Bill's BBQ had the best dry ribs in the Willamette; a graveled country lane crossed the blacktop there, and the parking lot was dirt. They swerved in, coming to rest in a rough line and looking the windows over.

Quite often there was something useful in places like that. Not food, of course, but aspirin, sterile bandages, condoms, toilet paper-newspaper left stains, they'd-discovered, and twists of grass could leave you itching for days. Sometimes there was even instant coffee or diet sweetener, occasionally salt. Nothing with any calories, but it made bland boring food taste better, and they were all worth the effort of lugging along. Sometimes they spotted something useful enough and bulky enough that it was worth marking down for a foraging party to come fetch with a wagon and escort, although they were getting too far from home for that.

"Wait a second," Juniper said, as she heeled down the kickstand of her bicycle. "I smell something cooking!"

It's meat, too. Her mouth watered and her swallow was painful. Meat and a trace of woodsmoke, or charcoal. Could someone have found a last strayed cow in this wilderness of death? Could they be talked or traded out of some?

Something moved behind a Subaru a few yards away. Juniper tensed slightly, then relaxed as she saw it was a girl in a stained white dress; about twelve, she thought, with stringy brown hair.

The girl waved and walked over towards them, smiling; a couple of her teeth were missing. As she got closer, Juniper wrinkled her nose.

I'm not a blooming rose myself, but that's awful, she thought.

The girl looked bad, too. Not emaciated like so many they'd seen; if anything, a little overweight, which was something she hadn't seen much lately. But her hair was thin on top, showing patches of scalp, and there were odd-looking lumps on her arms; she walked like someone much younger, holding her hands behind her back and half skipping. There was a small sore beside her left eye, trailing yellow matter.

"You're sick!" Juniper said, and looked over at her friend.

"Not the plague," Judy muttered. "Where have I seen- must have been a textbook-"

"It's all right!" Juniper called. "We don't want any of your food. Maybe we can help, if you're ill."

The girl giggled, coming closer. "It's all right," she said back, her tone singsong. "We've got plenty to eat. You can come for di

We? Juniper thought.

Perhaps that was what made Juniper start to jerk backward as the hand came out from behind the girl's back with a glint of steel. The long kitchen knife missed her throat; it would still have killed her as it stabbed into her chest, but the plates of her jack turned it, breaking the point.

"Oooof!" Juniper said, struggling for wind.

The girl screeched, puffing the smell of rotten meat in Juniper's face, stabbing again and again with the sharp broken stump of the knife. She'd probably never met body armor before. Long detested hours of instruction from Chuck and Aylward took over; made Juniper duck a shoulder forward to body-check and knock the enemy back on her heels, reach down and grab the hilt with the right hand, rip it out and swing with the same motion.

The point scored across the girl's body, and the cloth parted-skin beneath, too, blood leaking as she turned and fled clutching at herself and screaming in shrill squeals.

Juniper fought shock. I just cut at a child! she thought.

More figures popped up from among the cars and trucks and poured out of the buildings. One burst right out of the rear doors of a van not fifteen feet away, roaring and holding an ax above his head in both hands. He was naked to the waist, his torso covered in boils. Vince drew to the ear and waited until the axman was five feet away before shooting; the arrow struck full in the throat, splitting the neckbone with an audible crack. The shouting cut off with knife finality, and the man toppled backward like a cut-through tree.

A woman with a butcher's cleaver ran at Matucheck. "Night of the fucking living dead!" he screamed, eyes wild.

He punched the blow aside with his buckler in an iron clang of metal on metal and stabbed, as much in revulsion as anger. The point slid home.

Judy was grappling with a teenage boy who tried to gnaw at her face as they danced in clumsy circles. Juniper bared her own teeth and struck with her buckler, using it like a two-pound set of brass knuckles. The crumbling feeling as the steel disk struck just below the base of his skull made the hair bristle up along her spine even then.

"It's a nest of Eaters!" Juniper shouted.

Most people would rather die than turn ca

"Get back in here!" she called. "Stand them off!"

Three cars made a loose triangle; too loose, but the Eaters were all around them. The Mackenzies retreated, Vince shooting as fast as he could knock and draw, then turned at bay. But the gaps between the cars were too big, and the Eaters swarmed over the hoods and trunks as well. For a minute the four of them pushed and shoved, hit and stabbed and chopped; their jacks were a huge advantage, and health and sanity and real weapons they had some idea of how to use.

But there were too many; it was like trying to fight in a nightmare where nothing worked and more and more came at you. Juniper knew with some dim distant part of her mind that the horror would come back to her if she lived, but most of her was a reflex that shouted and swung and struck.

Then something hit her across the shoulders, sending her reeling forward into the press. Two Eaters grabbed at her buckler and dragged it down. Another hugged her sword arm, and a third raised a baseball bat in both hands-

Thock!

A broad arrowhead stuck out from the Eater's chest, barely to the left of the breastbone. Blood gouted from his mouth, and he had just enough time to took surprised before he collapsed, kicking.

Behind him was a mounted giant with the head of a bear.

Juniper had only the blurred glimpse; then she was too busy getting her right arm free from the momentarily slackened grip. She hadn't lost her sword-the sword De