Chapter 26

Mia held her two lovers closely to her chest until they each began to breathe deeply in contented sleep, their fears now forgotten. Caressing their minds with her will to insure that their sleep would not be disturbed, she wriggled her way out from between them. She quickly dressed and then leaned back over the bed to plant a lingering kiss on Tom's lips and a fond peck on Dana's forehead.

As she stood gazing at them, guilt flooded through her. Guilt of such magnitude that it brought tears to her eyes. They trusted her so completely and, all night, Tom's mind had practically glowed with his love for her. But she had betrayed that trust and love by taking a human life. Her conscience demanded an act of contrition. While she knew that she could never truly redeem herself after what she had done, perhaps she could shift the karmic balance back to a state with which she could live. Protecting innocents from the ferals that hunted them would, at least, be a step in the right direction.

She walked to the living room and peered out the window into the night. The fog had mostly dissipated but an occasional scream still broke the silence of the city besieged by fear. Tom had been right about one thing: had all three of them gone out, her companions would quite likely have been quickly apprehended and detained. Alone she would have no such difficulties.

Pushing her awareness out into dark streets, she made certain that there was no immediate threat to the two people slumbering in the other room and then silently eased out the window and dropped to the ground far below. Striding to one of the neighboring houses, she broke several posts off from the white picket fence, adding to the damage she had done the night that she had asked Tom to kill he, but he had instead taken her in.

She loped through the city streets, hunting the hunters. There were dozens of packs, numbering anywhere from five to twenty, running openly and unchecked through the vacant streets. They ran hunched over, sometimes using their hands to help push them along in an ungainly lumber. Their heads were raised to both take in the fear scent that pervaded the city and to seek the smell of fresh victims. Driven by guilt, Mia moved to intercept all that she encountered. This was nothing like the close quarter fighting in the hotel hallways. In the open, her speed far outmatched that of her prey and feral after feral fell before they could even react to her sudden presence. Her trail was soon littered with bodies that had already been dead for anywhere from a few hours to a day, but would now rest in peace.

She quickly learned that Tom and Dana would actually have had nothing to fear from the checkpoints; every one that she came across in the vicinity of downtown Pittsburgh was the site of a massacre. The horribly disfigured and often disemboweled bodies of those who had manned the barricades were strewn about the streets and sidewalks in slicks and puddles of blood. A few had even been draped over the tops of street lights so as to throw immense and horrifying shadows across the front of nearby buildings. Any remaining doubts she had concerning Arthur's continued existence were dispelled by the gruesome displays. In her experience, only he could be so wantonly and unnecessarily cruel.

Surprisingly few of the bodies she found had been drained and the crude injuries inflicted on most of those who were hinted that they were the work of ferals. Nevertheless, she snapped the neck of any body that was not already injured in that manner to make certain that none would rise.

She had been wondering why no one had come to relieve the unfortunate men at the checkpoints. Her questions were answered when she ran by the city-county building. It was apparent that those who were to take the second shift at the barricades had assembled there for assignment and transportation. The bodies were piled deep.

There, she also found, for the first time that night, evidence of successful mortal resistance to the onslaught of the undead. At least ten ferals, their fanged mouths gaping open in true and final death, laid among the fallen, their bodies riddled with arrows. Some of Tom's men must have been there and had come prepared for what they knew prowled the night. In an effort to find out if they had survived, she searched among the dead for bodies armed with bows.