She never saw the move he made. It was a blur and when he stepped back there was a blue mark on her stomach.

The clapping paused for a moment as everyone gaped.

“Don’t stop,” she roared at them, and the clapping was renewed with increased fervor. She moved and touched. He moved and marked her.

Over and over again.

It very quickly rose from exercise to frenzy, and her taps became hits. Or attempted hits. She struck and struck, and no matter how, or from what angle, or how fast, he reacted. Her rage and frustration rose together, throwing fuel on the fire in her chest. Finally, Dahlia screamed and swung a kick at him, trying to hit him in the groin.

He stepped into it and let the force of the powerful kick expend itself on his thigh. Then he put the flat of his palm on her sternum and gave her a small push. There was no trace of emotion in it, and not even a lot of force, but the angle was good for him and bad for her and Dahlia fell. A sob broke from her as she landed hard on the ground. The noise from the Pack died immediately and there was silence everywhere.

Mr. Church reached up and removed the blindfold, blinking momentarily in the bright sunlight that slanted down through the trees. He fished his tinted glasses from a pocket and put them on.

“You cheated,” she growled, but he waved that away as if it was nothing more important than a gnat. That made her madder, but then she saw that Neeko was staring at her. Not eye-to-eye, but at her stomach. She looked down at the red and blue marks on her boiler suit. They were not random marks. They were words. She twisted the material and cocked her head to read them and saw that they were not in English. It was a short phrase written in Latin. The son of a bitch hadn’t just marked her, he’d actually written on her. She was so absurdly stunned that she could not move except to mouth the words. “Dum spiro spero.”

Dahlia could read it. Latin was one of her languages at school. Had she mentioned that in one of her conversations with the old man? Yes. Probably.

She spoke the English translation in a tight whisper.

“‘While I breathe, I hope.’”

She remembered the lesson in school. The words combined ideas fr

om two different philosophers, Cicero and Theocritus, and was thought to be paraphrased by St. Anthony.

Mr. Church came and squatted down in front of her. “Listen to me,” he said gently, but with a voice pitched loud enough for the others to hear. “Listen. You’ve survived this long on a useful combination of wits and natural talent. That’s good, but it’s not enough. There are tougher and scarier things out here than you. I’m one of them. The dead are a threat, but there are people out here—living people—who are far more powerful, more frightening, and much more dangerous. If you ran into any of them, you’d be dead. You all would.” He paused and gave her a tiny smile. “Lessons like this are frustrating and they’re hard. They’re supposed to be. I won’t make them easier. You need to rise, become craftier, refine your senses, get stronger and faster, become wiser. If I didn’t think you had that potential, we would not be here in this moment. If I thought you were just a thug, like your friend Trash, then you’d either be recovering from wounds received or be dead.”

He rose and looked around at them.

“Understand this,” he said. “I am not a nice man. I am not particularly patient and in no way forgiving. Not before the outbreak and less so now. I am not interested in whether you think these exercises are fair or fun. They are neither. I am not interested in complaints of any kind. If you have assessments, useful opinions, insights or ideas, then that door is always open.”

He turned back to Dahlia.

“You make a lot of jokes about Star Wars and Harry Potter and The Karate Kid. I get them. Maybe if the world hadn’t turned into a horror movie then they might be funny. They’re not. They are both inappropriate and a waste of our time. Either discard them or find something useful in their themes to draw on. Stories often contain wisdom.” When she began to speak he held up a finger. “We will do this exercise again, right now. You will do better this time. You’ll endeavor to take your ego out of gear and stop pretending to be tough . . . and simply become tougher. Do I make myself clear?”

Dahlia got slowly, heavily, to her feet. The others sat in silence, none of them daring to speak a word or make a sound. She wanted to grab a knife and stab the old man. She wanted to tie him down and let the dead have him for lunch.

Instead, she unzipped the boiler suit and tossed it to him, then bent to pick up the blindfold so she could put it on again.

***

That night, they all crouched around a set of maps that Church spread out on the ground. Everyone had eaten and was full, and the firelight painted them all in soft tones of orange and yellow. The woods around them were pitch black, but there were trip wires everywhere, and noise-maker alarms to signal if the dead were coming.

The maps were marked with pieces of color-coded Post-it notes to indicate where pockets of resistance were or were rumored to be. He asked Dahlia a series of questions about how their Pack might approach each group, and why. The conversation went on deep into the night.

They did not see or hear the figure crouched high in a tree, his body covered with a black canvas tarp. The flickering firelight did not reach far enough to glimmer on the lenses of the high-powered binoculars. Trash watched the camp with cold eyes. Inside his chest was a heart grown colder still.

— 15 —

THE WARRIOR WOMAN

Rachael, Jason, and Claudia walked quietly behind the Happy Valley group as they led them toward their home. The man with the knife wound to the thigh was supported by the others, and Rachael stirred around in her emotions for some sympathy. Found a little; not a lot. Maybe once she saw how things were in their town she might carve off a thicker slice of compassion.

Beside her, Jason was visibly tense, prepared for a trap that never sprang, his eyes darting around as they traveled, hand practically glued to his knife hilt.

Rachael wanted to believe that these people were good people. That she and her friends had finally gotten lucky and this wasn’t a trap. She wanted to create a community like the one John and Heather described, one where people could find a permanent home. Where they didn’t have to constantly be on the run and fear for their lives. Where normality could resume.

She missed the mundane activities of her former life. She missed attending classes and going to work. Missed seeing her friends and having dinner with her parents. She knew she was never going to get that life back, but God damn it, she would make sure someone else got to have that life, even if she had to fight every orc on the east coast to do it.

Tags: Jonathan Maberry Dead of Night Horror
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