Bloodlands Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2 - Mariah

  Chapter 3 - Mariah

  Chapter 4 - Mariah

  Chapter 5 - Gabriel

  Chapter 6 - Gabriel

  Chapter 7 - Gabriel

  A World Gone Mad

  Chapter 8 - Mariah

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10 - Gabriel

  Chapter 11 - Mariah

  Chapter 12 - Gabriel

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14 - Gabriel

  Chapter 15 - Mariah

  Chapter 16 - Gabriel

  Chapter 17 - Gabriel

  Chapter 18 - Mariah

  Chapter 19 - Gabriel

  Chapter 20 - Mariah

  Chapter 21 - Gabriel

  Chapter 22 - Mariah

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24 - Gabriel

  Chapter 25 - Mariah

  Chapter 26 - Gabriel

  Chapter 27 - Mariah

  Chapter 28 - Gabriel

  Chapter 29 - Mariah

  Teaser chapter

  A Stranger in Need

  “Sick.” Gabriel lowered his gaze again so I couldn’t read it. “Back to . . . bed . . .”

  I removed my waterpack, then bent down to ease his own off. Then, carefully—careful for so many reasons—I maneuvered his arm over my shoulders and led him to his blankets.

  In doing so, I couldn’t help breathing him in, my lungs tight with the struggle of trying to keeparefullyses fortified at the same time. But I lost the battle, becoming saturated with the scent of him—a vague tinge of earth where there should’ve been musk and the tang of skin.

  Without hurting him, I made quick work in setting him down, then backed away, my limbs weak and quivery.

  It was only when he reached for his flask that I succeeded. I concentrated on how he gulped down its contents, how he closed his eyes and reveled in the shuddering pleasure of the liquid—a mixture that left his lips flushed red.

  Then, obviously satisfied, he capped the flask and slumped to the blankets, keeping the container close to his chest.

  Damn. Damn. What had I let in?

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  BLOODLANDS

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / August 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Chris Marie Green.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-52924-9

  ACE

  Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Sajen, my creative and brilliant buddy in the fantastic.

  Love you a million times over!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you so much to everyone at Ace—Ginjer, Kat, the art and marketing and sales and editing staff, and every single person who made these books happen. Hats off also to my team at the Knight Agency—Pamela, Deidre, Elaine, Jia, and the gang. And to Judy Duarte and Sheri Whitefeather—you guys are the best partners a crazed writer could ever hope for!

  Thank goodness for the New Yorker magazine, one of the best idea-generators a writer can treasure.

  Lastly, a big shout-out goes to all those Westerns that provided us with High Plains Drifters, Shanes, and Pale Riders, plus all the greedy ranchers and gunslinging villains, feisty homesteaders and rugged pioneers. I wanted to twist and reshape those wonderful tropes into something new while recalling the old. Most important, though, I wanted to pay homage to the mysterious cowboys who have wandered across dusty landscapes to face down the bad guys.

  I’ve taken licenses with this work of fiction, so please forgive any flights of fancy or mistakes. Any errors are my own.

  1

  They called this ravaged, sun-sucked place the New Badlands and, under the gray-hazed shine of the swollen moon, it certainly lived up to the name.

  Bad because of its dull, apocalyptic scape. Bad because of its throttling day heat.

  Bad because it allowed a night monster such easy, easy hunting.

  Hidden behind a boulder perched on a withered hill, one such monster waited patiently, its hunger knocking against its skin, its saliva stinging its jaws.

  Tonight, nature forced it to hunt, and someone was coming. Someone with blood, hot and nourishing. Someone who could quench a bitter, desperate thirst.

  Its mind went as fuzzy as ether-soaked cotton, pulled apart by fingers of appetite. As it gripped the boulder and felt the stone crumble under its fingertips, its vision, which turned the murky night into a blue-tinged, throbbing haze, caught small animals that looked like electric blurs while scurrying for cover.

  Heat. Food. Blood . . . The cadence echoed, called, invited the monster to feast.

  Its breath came faster, faster as the prey shuffled closer . . .

  Unable to help itself, the monster eased to the side, peering round the boulder, craving a look. It saw the buzzing outline of a human mazing through the Badlands scrub. The male was slim, almost painfully so, stick-legged and awkward-gaited. His face was near featureless in the creature’s neon sights except for lips gaped in a wobbly attempt at song.

  The creature’s hearing picked up the low, whistled tune. Melancholy. Something that might speak to another wholly human heart, if one was beating within range.

  The monster’s nostrils flared from the strength of the man’s flesh, sweaty and musky beneath his tattered clothing: a wide-brimmed hat, a poncho, boots. There was also a te of turtlegrape alcohol, cheaply made and readily available on the bla
ck markets found in any city that was still standing.

  Mouth even wetter, the creature ran a tongue over the pierce of its teeth. It recognized this smell. It had tracked the scent tonight.

  Heat, food, blood . . .

  Anticipation ran cold and urgent in its veins. Its body stiffened as the prey tripped on a rock, cursed at himself, then started to whistle again—sad notes reminding the monster of something lost. . . .

  He was coming closer, closer.

  The wobbly song warped into a death dirge that competed with the quickening call in the monster’s mind as the scent and pulse of blood became unbearable.

  Heatfoodblood . . .

  It winced, yearning, as the man pulled within mere feet—

  A rock skittered from the creature’s hiding place as it shifted.

  The human startled to a halt, peered round. The creature heard the prey’s heartbeat thudding, smelled his blood heating.

  Food—

  Like dark mercury, the monster unfurled from behind the boulder, fully showing itself. It flashed its teeth.

  Heatfoodblood . . .

  With a thin cry, the man tripped into a run, his hat toppling off his head. But the creature was faster—so much faster.

  It sprang, arcing through the air, grasping its prey’s booted ankle and hauling him in.

  “No—” the human begged, panting, clawing at the dirt for purchase and sending up abraded wisps of dust instead.

  Beyond pity, the creature pulled at the man’s hair to expose his throat and, for one beautiful moment, the thing thrilled to the engorged strand of a jugular vein as it pounded.

  Food—

  Just before the monster sank its teeth into the man’s neck, it helplessly groaned, so hungry, so needy.

  The human swiped at his attacker, drawing red stings, scratching, scratching—

  But he couldn’t stop the feeding, the flood of hot liquid coating the monster’s throat in frenzied comfort.

  The man’s last stand didn’t endure. Neither did his last screams. They gurgled to nothing as the monster ripped into his throat, sucking and tearing and reveling in wet, thick heatfoodblood—

  When it was over, with the taste of fulfillment still vivid on its tongue, the monster sank to the dirt. A twinge of consciousness bit into it as the carcass of its victim sifted back into focus.

  The human, the prey, was staring at the sky, the shadow of what would soon be many carrion feeders blocking the moon and spreading darkness over a horrified death gaze.

  The monster closed its eyes, but then the scent of blood consumed it again and the moment disappeared, replaced by the hunger and thirst.

  Diving back to the man’s neck, the creature continued gnawing, feasting. Glutting.

  That was all it knew, all it felt—at least right now.

  Only when its body was heavy with satiation did it look back up, touching and testing the wounds itssifted bacd inflicted—injuries that were already healing. Then it scanned a wary gaze over the New Badlands for other creatures that used this night to hunt.

  All that stared back was the blue-bathed desolation of a world gone terrible.

  2

  Mariah

  Eighteen Hours Later

  When I saw the stranger weaving through the newly settled dusk on my visz monitor, he looked like a lie—a mirage, half wavering fantasy, half dust in my eyes. Chaplin didn’t even believe me when I told him about it, but then again, he knew that I’d stayed partway sane only because of one altered version of the truth or another. It always took him some good thought before he ever put stock in what I did or said, and I wouldn’t blame him, or anyone else, for that. Lies and omissions were how we lived out here in the nowheres. It was how we made sure strangers like this one on the visz never paid mind to us.

  We lied about reality to survive.

  Hell, I would lie to anyone, even you.

  When I grabbed my old revolver from the wall arsenal, that must’ve lent some credence to the situation for Chaplin. He looked at the visz, seeing that I was telling him true about a stranger coming toward us.

  “Think he’s another one of them?” I asked, while keeping an eye on the screen. “Think this guy’s one of Stamp’s?”

  My dog chuffed, then padded over close to me, leaning against my leg. His long tail curled over my boot, like a child wrapping an arm round a protector.

  Not that I’m all that good at protecting. Sometimes I even think that Chaplin does a better job of guarding me than the other way round. There’s a lot of ways a person needs to be protected.

  Strung tight with tension, I adjusted a knob on the visz’s side to get a better look at the approaching stranger. The long view was gloomy with the surreal blur of the camera’s night vision, streaking his movements as he lurched even nearer to my underground home. Could he somehow see this earthen dwelling, even though I’d taken great care to disguise the entrance amongst the scrub and mounded landscape?

  Chaplin made a garbled sound, and I rested a hand on his furry head.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll bet he saunters right past us.”

  I didn’t even believe myself this time.

  My dog softly yowled, as if chewing on words. To anyone not trained in Canine, his sentiments would be inarticulate. But years ago, when I was no more than a pup myself, I’d begged my dad for one of the Intel Dogs he bred and trained at his lab. Dad had obliged only much later, just before we’d been forced to flee our Dallas home; then Chaplin had become necessary for survival—a watchdog genetically tooled to be more intelligent than most humans. Stronger, too. He was also a balm for us after my mom and brother had been murdered right in the home we’d abandoned.

  I guess I needed Chaplin more than ever now, long after the murders and one year after my dad had taken his own life. My dog wasn’t just my best friend—he was my only friend. In particular, he was nice to have round at night. Nice to have round whenever I thought about what waited outside the dirt-packed walls.

  Just thinking about outside made the phantom scars on my body itch, but I forced myself not to touch them. They’d only bring back what had supposedly healed.

  Now Chaplin growled low in his throat, his brown-haired ears lying flat against his skull as he backed toward a door barring a tunnel that connected our domain to one of the underground caverns.

  I offered him a nod, a show of unity that didn’t need to be voiced between the two of us. Then I turned back to the visz, which showed the stranger in post-stumble pause.

  When I found him staring right back at me, my heart jerked, sending my adrenaline bursting to a hum that I fought to contain. His eyes were rendered luminescent by the camera’s night vision and . . .

  It was like he could somehow see the camouflaged lens.

  Like he knew we were in here.

  Pacing my breathing, calming myself lest I lose control—God-all help me if I did—I hefted down a mini-crossbow from the wall, then stuffed my revolver into a holster built into my wide belt. I loaded the bow with a bolt because it’d be quieter than the bullets if I should have to defend my home. Bullets might attract attention.

  “If he’s one of Stamp’s men,” I said, “I’ll show him a lesson about coming here when he’s drunk and looking for trouble. Stamp’s got to be sending his crew to poke round, just like that other man who was already here.”

  My dog didn’t make a sound, and I was glad about that. Neither of us wanted to talk about Stamp’s workers. Meanwhile, the stranger loomed closer on the visz, his features coming into shocking focus.

  Something in my stomach fisted at the sight of his facial wounds, but I battled back the clench, the emotion. Battled hard, until all that was left was a tremor that only reminded me I wasn’t safe.

  Then my dog crept to my side and stared at the visz, too, almost like he’d been drawn closer. He let out a long, sympathetic whimper.

  Hurt, was what Chaplin’s sound meant. The man is hurt.

  I tried to glance away bu
t couldn’t. The blood enthralled me, even more than it had when I was young, back before my family had been attacked and before we thought the world was going to end. Back when the media had first started entertaining the masses with violent news images, films of close-up war casualties in North Korea and public executions that people had clamored to witness in real life. Carnerotica, it had come to be called, until that form of amusement had become old hat under the new thrill of the subliminal fantasies I heard they were airing on TV now.

  This man was a lot like one of those old executions.

  The visz’s pale night vision showed his face to be a wounded map to nowhere, etched with open gashes on his forehead and cheeks. Blood and dirt seemed to crust his short-sheared hair. His battered mouth opened round a word.

  “Help.”

  Chaplin whimpered again. Hurt.

  “Maybe that’s what he hopes we believe.” I gripped my crossbow all the harder, sweat breaking out over my skin, even though summer was a season away—a dry, brutal time that made staying inside my shelter all the wiser.

  When Chaplin cocked his head, I realized that, for the first time, I couldn’t exactly translate what his gesture meant. He was acting addled, off-kilter. Off-guard.

  Inexplicably, a sense of isolation expanded in my chest, filling me up so there was no room for much else. I didn’t like this sudden lack of simpatico that separated me from my only real ally left from better days.

  “You’re posing like you’re going soft, boy. Where’s the wariness in you?”

  Chaplin turned his big brown eyes in my direction, emitting a series of whines. I still didn’t understand, even though I could translate. It was his gaze that befuddled me, because it brimmed with foreign haziness, an utter lack of focus.

  The dog wanted to help the stranger?

  “You think we should open the door and let him in for nursing and shelter?”