In the morning I kicked dirt over the last coals of my campfire, strapped Baskerville’s armor on, checked that my gun was loaded, and went back to Happy Valley. I was not in the best of moods. So I figured, God help anyone who decided today was the day to fuck with me.
— 29 —
DAHLIA AND THE PACK
Dahlia fought for more than her life. More even than Neeko. She fought for the whole Pack. She fought with anger and heartbreak and passion.
She fought with coldness, too. And that was strange for her. Even as she moved she was aware that the heat of rage was not there, or . . . not real, at least. Instead the furnace of her heart seemed to be stoked with shovelfuls of ice. When she attacked, it was no blind rush, but instead an attack designed to disrupt the group of Rovers and sow the seeds of confusion. It was strategic rather than impassioned.
It was how Mr. Church had trained her.
The Rovers were positioned in two knots: three in front, and two behind. She went straight at the knot of three and as they shifted to meet her charge, she suddenly jagged right and struck the Rover at the edge of that group. Not with the knife, but with her hand, parrying his reach with her forearm and then bouncing off of that impact and using the resulting force to power a blow with the open Y of her hand formed by thumb and index finger, so that the big knuckle of the index finger struck the man’s Adam’s apple. He gagged and sagged back.
Most people are right-handed, Church had said, and most right-handed fighters are awkward when fighting a left-hander. Although Dahlia was right-handed she had been relentlessly trained to fight ambidextrously. Church had insisted on it. He’d been inflexible, almost cruel about it. As the Rover canted backward and crashed into the smaller of the two women, Dahlia understood why.
Don’t stand and admire your work. When you create an advantage, press it.
She followed the Rover’s fall, reaching now with the heavy kukri knife and striking with a loose, deft flick of her wrist. The blade caught the dreadlocked man across the bridge of the nose. He screamed and reeled back so sharply, grabbing at his face, that his elbow struck a tree trunk. He screamed and fell, landing on top of the man she’d hit in the throat.
When in a pincer attack, don’t turn to see what danger is behind you. Keep moving and turning. If you’re in the center, then you are trapped.
Dahlia jumped sideways, turning in midair and slashing with the kukri as she did so. The blade encountered a stab from the leader of the gang. The muscular woman had a military bayonet and had lunged forward with a powerful blow that was intended to end the fight there and then. The blades rang off one another, striking sparks but drawing no blood. The fifth Rover grabbed Neeko and wrapped a tattooed arm around the little scout’s throat.
“I’ll fucking kill him,” roared the Rover, but then he grunted in pain and surprise as Neeko struck backward to hit the man in the crotch with the side of his fist. Immediately the scout turned inside the choke, pushing his chin into the crook of the arm to create a narrow margin for breath, and twisted his whole body toward the muscular arm. A turn-away would have tightened the choke, but turning toward the shoulder of the choking arm created exactly the opposite effect. For a split second the arm was a cage and inside that cage was Neeko and everything on the Rover’s body he wanted to hit.
When you create an opportunity for counter-attack you must waste no time and show no mercy. Overwhelm the attacker with as many strikes, kicks, head-butts and bites as you can manage. Do not let up because if you give him even a moment to catch his breath he will come back harder. Take that option away completely.
Neeko did exactly that. In the space of a single fractured moment he head-butted the Rover in the nose, kneed him in the crotch, stamped on his instep and ground the man’s foot-bones, bit the side of his neck, boxed his ears and punched him in the throat. All of the blows were sloppy with fear, and no single strike was crippling, but the cumulative effect was akin to being dropped into a threshing machine. The man staggered and Neeko pivoted to kick him on the kneecap with a flat-footed attack that filled the air with a huge dry-stick crack.
Dahlia saw all of this out of the corner of her eye, but all of her other awareness was drawn to the leader of the Rovers, who drove at her with a furious attack. The bayonet slashed and chopped and stabbed. The woman was shorter but very solid, with ropey muscles and catlike speed. Her attacks drove Dahlia back step by step.
Never allow the enemy to fight his fight. The rules are yours to change.
Dahlia suddenly threw herself sideways into a tight shoulder roll and came up with a handful of dirt and small stones. She rose and hurled them at the woman, forcing her to shield her eyes and turn away. The woman tripped over a root and fell heavily, losing her knife.
That’s when Dahlia made her first mistake.
Mr. Church taught her to press an advantage, to never leave an enemy able to regroup. One part of her knew that and understood the logic of it, but another part—an older, less confident and perhaps more moral part—shouted that to press the advantage meant killing these people. All of them. She was not sure she could commit five murders. Not in cold or hot blood. Killing the living dead was one thing; this was something entirely different.
And so she ran to Neeko, grabbed him by the shoulder and propelled him into the woods with all of her strength.
“Run!” she yelled.
He gaped at her and looked past Dahlia to where the Rovers were all climbing back to their feet. Then he gave a small cry and vanished into the woods. Dahlia knew that in a flat race no one was going to catch the little scout. He was as fast as a weasel and slippery as an eel, and terror put wings on his feet.
Dahlia tried to run, too, but she was neither as fast nor as nimble. She tore into the woods, but with howls of fury the Rovers gave chase. The air was abruptly split by the sound of whistles—like the gym teacher in high school used—and after a moment there were answering whistles from deeper in the woods.
That’s when Dahlia realized the full scope of her mistake. If she’d done as she was taught, then maybe there would have been a way out. Now she was caught in a trap with who knew how many of the killers.
She ran.
Other bits of Old Man Church’s training came to her, guiding her. She cut left and right, avoided collision with bushes whose branches might be damaged by her passing and thereby be proof of her direction. She stepped on flat rocks and leaped over obstacles, then changed direction two or three times after landing. She cut back across her own trail to confuse pursuit. All the time the whistles screeched, signaling one to the other as the Rovers tried to catch her. Some blasts were long and steady; others short and staccato. There was some kind of pattern to it, but there was no time to suss out what it was. The Rovers were likely using the whistles to talk to each other.
She heard one whistle directly ahead and dropped low, becoming absolutely still as a Rover broke from the woods, a hunting hatchet in his hand. He looked left and right but did not see her, and then ran to follow the call of another shrill whistle blast. As soon as he was gone, Dahlia rose and moved into a dense stand of pine trees.
And there was a Rover directly in front of her. Tall. Powerful.
Familiar.