Night Resurrected
Night Resurrected
Joss Ware
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Nora Ephron,
who wrote one of my all-time favorite screenplays.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
About the Author
Romances by Joss Ware
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
June 2010
A suburb of Denver, Colorado
Wyatt adjusted his facemask as the black wall of smoke surrounded him. The sounds of his breathing, forced through the regulator he clamped between his teeth, were barely audible beneath the loud roar from the fire. Glowing flames rose in a hot, angry blaze and cast eerie shadows that danced on the ceiling and along the top of a long sofa. His protective gear helped shield him from the heat and smoke, but once inside an inferno, it was impossible to see.
Yet, with the aid of his TIC, Wyatt could use the thermal imaging device to make out vague shapes in the living room. No sign of the woman here. Her husband waited in the front yard of their blazing home, hysterical and half dead from smoke inhalation himself. If his wife was closed up in one of the rooms—a bedroom, or better yet, a bathroom—there was a chance she’d come out alive.
The loud crash behind him had Wyatt dodging as a chunk of ceiling fell in a flaming mass. A new wave of heat shimmered in the eerie blue light of the camera lens. He felt his helmet jolt and then the skim of hot pain over his back as a second piece fell.
Fuck. Got me.
Wyatt grabbed Handlemann and gestured toward the dark hall, relieved the flames hadn’t spread here yet.
Cheech McDermott hadn’t wanted his boss to go in after the woman. He’d planted himself in front of Wyatt in a wide stance as he adjusted his helmet. “It’s too damn late for her, Chief. You know it is.”
But Wyatt and Handlemann went in anyway. If there was a chance, and even if there wasn’t, he’d go in. Just like if there was any chance of dragging a member of his platoon out of the remnants of an explosion in Iraq, he’d take it.
He’d want someone to do the same for any member of his family.
Love you, Cath. Love you, Abby. Love you, David.
Take care of them for me if I don’t make it out.
Only moments ago he’d sent up this silent prayer as he stepped onto the porch of the burning house, Handlemann behind him.
Now he started down the hall, moving as quickly as possible in the dark. The smoke was thick and his breath rasped in his ears, but it was half a degree cooler over here at least. Sweat trickled down his spine and cheeks. A noise-dulled shout from behind had him spinning in time to see a chunk of flaming wall collapse.
Handlemann ducked out of the way, but now there was burning drywall and wood flaring between them. Flames skipped in a riotous orange fence. Wyatt pressed the button on the mic clipped to his collar and said, “H, I’m going on.”
He took two more steps and the floor gave out. Christ. Pain shot up his leg and he knew he’d scraped the shit out of it, probably burned it too. He was up to his hips, one foot dangling into the basement below, the other miraculously stopped against a ceiling beam. Now the flames were coming along the hallway fast, and he had to pull himself out.
But it was like dragging yourself out of a broken patch of ice . . . the floor kept shattering every time he put any pressure on it.
This could be it.
No, not yet. Not yet by a long shot.
Wyatt forced himself to ignore the throb in his leg and the same ache in his back. Focus. He needed leverage. There. The underside of a closed bedroom door.
His fingers curling up beneath the bottom of the door, he gripped the wood, and leveraging with his one stable foot, pushed up and pulled with his hands. With one hard, sharp movement, he launched himself out of the hole and tumbled onto the ground.
Christ.
He staggered to his feet, a flash of panic whipping through him. The hall was choked with flames behind him and in front loomed darkness . . . but not for long.
He still had his TIC strapped around him and he lifted it as he felt for the knob of the door that had just saved his life. The brass knob was warm even through his gloves, and Wyatt knew he had less than a couple minutes to get the hell out, woman or no woman. Or his wife would be a widow and his children would grow up without a father.
But not this day. No, not this damned day.
He twisted the knob and stumbled through the door as yet another chunk of something crashed to the floor. The bedroom was filled with smoke, and he looked through the viewer of the imaging device, searching for the shape of a human body. Then he saw it—the lump on the floor by the window.
A window. With fresh air on the other side, and a streetlight streaming through. Flashing red and blue lights from the trucks strobed in the darkness. Hot damn.
Wyatt staggered over, his leg still screaming with pain, his back scraped and already blistering, and scooped up the body. She moved weakly and he felt a blast of relief.
He smashed the window with his axe and didn’t even have to wait; his crew was outside. Ready.
Curling his arm around the woman, he climbed out the window.
Three hours later Wyatt wandered into the kitchen at the fire station. His back was bandaged up, the first degree burn medicated and protected. His leg, the skin peeled off in a three-inch wide swath, was not burned and had been attended to by the paramedics on-site. He kept his limp to a minimum, practicing for when he got home.
“Yo, Chief, you about done being a hero and want some chili now?” Cheech looked up from the pot he was stirring.
“If it’s Bev’s chili, you’re damn right I want some.” Wyatt settled gingerly onto a chair, careful not to press his tender back against it. He could have gone home, but the injuries were mild, relatively speaking. And he only had two more hours on his twenty-four-hour shift. He’d be home for a day, then take off for the weekend to Arizona with his buddies. Elliott and Quent were two of his closest friends, their bond forged when they met doing hurricane relief in Haiti a decade ago. This was going to be a fun trip, though—an all-guy getaway, where the only danger was running out of beer or hiking too long and too hard and having to sleep on tough ground. He couldn’t wait.
Besides, if he went home early, Cathy would be all upset and probably make even more of a fuss about him going away this weekend if he was injured. Better to power through it. This was nothing compared to the time he ended up beneath half a car in Iraq. Or nearly fried in the fire at a dry cleaner’s. And then there was the time he fell on his ass into an iced-over lake, trying to extricate a hunting dog . . .
The chili was damn good. Spicy as hell and filled with chunks of tender beef, and accompanied by a hunk of corn bread. The only thing that would make it better was a cold one to go with it—but not while on duty.
“The wife tonight—she gonna be all right?” Cheech asked, settling at the table with his own bowl. He scooped up a bite before his ass even touched the chair. “Damn, this is good.”
&
nbsp; “Your Bev makes the best,” Wyatt agreed, shoveling in another bite. “And yeah, the wife’s gonna live. Close one, that.”
“You’re telling me. Handlemann thought you weren’t going to make it out.”
“I thought I wasn’t going to make it out. But I did. I sure as hell wasn’t going to miss this weekend,” he added with a grin. “First all-guy getaway in three years. We’re going on an extreme hiking trip deep in the Sedona caves in Arizona. Just us and the outdoors. Think you can hold the fort while I’m gone?”
Cheech snorted. He was the assistant chief, and because their department was so small, both of them worked normal twenty-four-hour shifts at the fire station while managing the department. Wyatt liked it that way; it kept him close to the work, reminded him why he did it. “We all can’t wait for you to get your tight ass out of here. You need some time off.”
“That’s the truth.” Wyatt grinned, feeling about as happy as he’d felt the day he and Cathy got married. The only other times he’d felt so full of himself, so beyond happy, was on the days his children were born. And the day he stepped off the plane, Stateside, after his last tour in Iraq.
He loved his children, his wife, and his life—but there was nothing like being able to just be with his friends and have no responsibility but to enjoy himself. Every so often a guy needed a getaway.
He gulped down a big glass of milk and looked at Cheech. “Just so long as Cath doesn’t hear how bad it was tonight, okay? Tell everyone to keep it under the hood.” He knew how close he’d come to biting it tonight. But it was best to keep that stuff to himself. His wife didn’t need anything else to fuss over. She understood why he did what he did, but she didn’t like the long hours and the danger that came with it.
“You got it, brother.” Cheech nodded.
The next day, Wyatt kissed his wife Catherine goodbye. He bear-hugged his eight-year-old son David and smooched his ten-year-old daughter Abby. Then he got on a plane and flew to Sedona.
Chapter 1
May 2061
Somewhere in the former State of Nevada
“What are you doing here?”
Wyatt looked at Remington Truth, who was pointing her gun at him, and thought, Christ, sweetheart, I’ve been asking myself that for a damn year.
If I’d never gotten on that damned plane to Sedona . . .
Instead of answering, he walked over to the fire she’d built for her overnight camp in the woods. She wouldn’t shoot him. Not yet anyway.
Not that she hadn’t already tried.
“How the hell did you find me?” Remy asked, lowering the gun. Even in the dim light, he could see the fury in her eyes. “Dantès showed up early yesterday, so I know you didn’t follow him.”
He hadn’t expected a particularly warm welcome. After all, it was almost butting up to midnight. He was surprised she wasn’t sleeping, and even more surprised she was camping out in the open like this. Damn good thing he’d decided to track her down and make sure wherever she was going, she got there in one piece.
But Dantès was glad to see him. Wyatt crouched by the fire as Remy’s large dog, a German shepherd/wolf mix, greeted him with soft, ecstatic whines and crazy licking kisses.
“Hey there, bud,” he said, shoving his hands into the thick, warm fur around the dog’s neck and massaging. The dog was so enthusiastic, there was a danger he’d knock Wyatt into the fire, so he shifted from his haunches onto his ass. “Glad to see you again too.” It was true. Dantès was one of the few things that made his new life somewhat bearable.
He glanced over at Remy, then around the small encampment. “You’re a sitting duck for zombies here—or worse. I thought you’d know better than to be outside and on the ground at night.”
Remy shot eye-daggers at him. She had the most incredible blue-violet eyes, but right now he imagined they were black with ire. He couldn’t see for certain in the dark.
“It was only a temporary stop. I’ve gotten pretty damn good at avoiding getting myself killed, in case you haven’t noticed. Besides, Dantès will smell or hear any threat long before it gets close enough to me. Although,” she said, jabbing the fire with a violent stick, “he didn’t see fit to warn me about you.”
Wyatt held back on the obvious comment. Instead, he unhooked the pack he was wearing and let it flop to the ground behind him. “Did you eat yet? I—”
“I don’t want you here; I’m certainly not going to feed you,” she informed him. “I don’t know why you followed me.”
He stretched out one long leg as he untied the boot on the other. “I have food. I was offering it to you,” he said mildly, pulling off his shoe. Ahhh. He wiggled his toes, then went on to yank off the other boot and sock.
At first he’d been on and off horseback while tracking her from the small settlement she’d left nearly a week ago. But when Dantès took off after finding his mistress’s scent yesterday afternoon, Wyatt set the wild mustang free so he could better follow the trail on foot. He suspected once Dantès was with Remy, she wouldn’t allow her dog to go back and bring Wyatt to her, so he’d moved as quickly and expediently as he could before the trail went cold.
It had taken him a little more than twenty-eight hours to catch up to her, even though he could tell she’d increased her pace. He had to give her credit: she moved along at a good clip, leaving only hints of her trail.
“What are you doing here, Wyatt?” she asked again. This time her voice wasn’t as strident. It was weary.
It’s complicated.
And even that was an understatement. Fifty-one years ago he’d boarded that goddamn plane from Denver to Arizona. He’d met up with his buddies Elliott and Quent for what the latter called an extreme camping trip, exploring some mountain caves in Sedona.
While they were deep in the caves with their guides Fence and Lenny, all hell broke loose. Some major earthquakes caused falling rubble and cave-ins, released poison gases, and knocked them all out . . . or something. When they woke up again and stumbled out of the cave, they discovered that the inconceivable had happened.
The earth had been changed. Most of civilization was destroyed—people, buildings, infrastructure.
And it was fifty years in the future. The year twenty-fucking-sixty.
And he—none of them—had aged a bit. They looked exactly the same.
But they’d lost everything.
Wyatt reached for Dantès, who’d settled halfway between his two human companions. Scratching near the dog’s tail, he tried not to remember how devastating and paralyzing the realization had been. And still was. It was a year since he’d walked out of that cave, grateful and jubilant to be alive . . . only to find himself in something worse than hell.
He, Elliott, Quent, and the two others who were in the cave had been trying to accept this changed world ever since then . . . a world populated by dangerous crystal-wearing immortal Strangers, zombies, and lacking anything resembling infrastructure. This new environment was a strange mixture of simple, almost third-world settlements in overgrown buildings and empty towns combined with glimpses of twenty-first century America. Cell phones and the Internet didn’t exist anymore, but there were lights and washing machines running on solar or wind power, carefully maintained televisions, and disc players for whatever DVDs survived—or had been scavenged—along with random books, clothing, and even furnishings that lasted fifty years for a variety of reasons. It was a strange juxtaposition, almost like the Old West meshed with a world filled with superhero pop culture and synthetic fabric.
Wyatt and Remy had been crossing paths for months—she wearing her distrust of him and everyone else on her figurative sleeve by being secretive and running away whenever she could. But this time he’d followed her, because he knew she was in danger—from the zombies as well as the Strangers. They’d been searching for someone named Remington Truth ever since the devastating events of the Change.
So far, he didn’t think the Strangers knew that the woman sitting in front of him was the
granddaughter—and namesake—of the deceased Remington Truth. But when and if they did, they’d be after her just as desperately.
“Do you have a destination in mind, or are you just running away again?” Wyatt asked.
“It’s none of—” To his surprise, she stopped. Clamped her lips shut and looked at him through the fire. “I have a destination,” she said after a minute.
“Good. I like to have my missions closed-ended.”
“I’m not your mission, Wyatt.”
He shrugged. “Dantès is. I can’t believe you left him behind.” With me. The dog was her most prized possession . . . except for the thumbnail-sized crystal she wore beneath her shirt. His gaze couldn’t help but drop to her midriff, mostly obscured by the flames dancing between them.
She looked away, and might have intended to respond. But whatever she’d have said was cut short as Dantès’s ears snapped up and he froze, completely at attention.
They both stilled, listening while looking into the darkness along with the canine. Dantès gave a low growl and got to his feet. And then Wyatt heard it. The low moans, rumbling in the distance.
Ruuu-uuuuthhhhh. Ruuuuthhhhh.
Zombies.
Searching for Remington Truth.
He didn’t need to say a thing; Remy was already up, kicking dirt onto the small fire. He jammed his sockless feet back into his boots and snatched up his pack. She grabbed the one next to her, shoving her gun into the waistband of her jeans as he said, “Let’s go.”
He pointed north as she started to head east, but he was faster and grabbed her by the arm. “This way,” he said, and propelled her toward the forest. “From the shadows, looks like there’s high ground in the distance.”
Damned if she refrained from arguing, setting off at a good pace instead with Dantès at her side. If they got to the base of the hill before the zombies found them, they could climb up the other side, leaving the clumsy creatures behind them. Zombies—or gangas, as they were also called—couldn’t climb stairs or anything steep. But despite their awkward movements the bastards covered ground quickly, especially when they smelled human flesh. They were strong. And they were violent.