CLAY: Roads Beyond: A Five Roads to Texas Novel, page 21
Rufous gave a low, rolling growl that vibrated through the balcony floorboards, his tail rigid, ears locked forward like radar. Clay could feel the tension in the dog—every muscle strung tight, ready to spring.
Through the swirling snow, movement began to take shape—dark, shambling silhouettes spilling from the tree lines and over the fence. The infected moved in their grotesque, swaying march, heads lolling, arms jerking, each step carrying them closer to the Big House. Behind them, Clay caught flashes of faster movement—shadows that darted from cover to cover. The Wendigos. Herding the dead forward like shepherds driving wolves.
“They’ll drive the infected right up to the house!” Clay barked, his voice cutting sharply through the cold air. He didn’t just speak to Andrew—he raised it so everyone inside could hear him. “They want to distract us, make us waste ammo! When they’re close, the Wendys will break from cover and hit all at once!”
Andrew’s voice came tight and close to his shoulder. “What do we do, Clay?”
Clay didn’t take his eyes from the advancing shapes. The infected were staggering over the snowdrifts now, their pale, slack faces glinting in the dim light, mouths opening and closing like fish gasping for air. Behind them, the Wendigos crouched in the brush, waiting—axes and sledgehammers catching the faint reflection of the firelight from the house.
“Ignore the infected,” Clay said, his tone flat but commanding. “They can’t breach the doors or barricades. Focus your fire on the Dingos.” His voice dropped into a growl. “You see a weapon, drop ’em. The biters can rot at the door. Those assholes with hammers and axes plan to make a path for the infected; take them out first.”
The wind howled between them, rattling the iron balcony railing. Below, the first of the infected dragged itself over the hedges, glass crunching under its boots from the traps they’d laid. Somewhere inside, Clay could hear one of the girls chambering a round, the metallic snap echoing in the vast, tense silence.
From the back of the house came the muted clack of a rifle bolt. One of the teams was getting jumpy. Clay called out.
“Pick your targets but hold fire until I call it,” he said, voice firm. “Make your first shot count, after that, they will get harder to hit. Nobody goes hero unless it’s the last breath you’ve got.”
A scream rose from the tree line to their left—a sharp, manic cry—and the mass began to surge forward. The infected lurched faster, driven like cattle toward the mansion’s walls, while the Wendigos moved in their shadow, cutting across the flanks.
Elizabeth knelt on the balcony beside Andrew, her rifle leveled, eyes wide but steady. “They’re splitting,” she said. “Three groups. One front, one circling left, the other right.”
“Which means,” Clay muttered, “they’re gonna test us everywhere at once.”
“Let’er rip”—his signal—and the first rifle cracked from inside the house. A Wendigo with a sledgehammer dropped mid-stride, snow puffing around his falling body. Then the yard erupted in noise.
The whump of a shotgun trap in a side window sent a spray of glass and birdshot into the nearest pack of infected, staggering them into each other. From upstairs, one of the women shouted a warning, and a moment later, the sharp clang of a deadfall trap triggered—rocks cascading through a doorway, breaking bone and scattering attackers in a haze of white dust and blood.
Clay fired once, the rifle bucking against his shoulder, then shifted targets.
“Keep moving!” he barked. “Never give ’em a still target!”
From the back, a muffled explosion rocked the walls—a fuel-drum trap igniting in a blast of black smoke. The snow lit orange for a heartbeat, then settled again into the gray of battle.
The Wendigos were close now.
The balcony shook under a sudden, thunderous roar from somewhere deep in the house, followed by the staccato crack of rifle fire in rapid bursts. Clay’s head snapped toward the sound, rear of the house.
“Go!” Andrew shouted from beside him, already bracing his rifle on the balcony rail. “I got this, Clay—Go!”
Clay didn’t waste breath arguing. He tore back through the double doors, boots pounding the hardwood as the sound of the firefight swelled around him. The great hall was a haze of gunsmoke now, the air sharp with rifle smoke and wood splinters. Every shot echoed like a hammer blow in the cavernous rooms, the few moments of silence broken by the shrill, animal howls of the infected pressing the barricades.
He rounded a corner and nearly collided with a wall of noise—rifles snapping in rhythm, wood splintering, glass shattering. At the back windows, two of the women stood upright, firing over the barricades into the chaos below.
“DOWN!” Clay bellowed, shoving forward. “Fire from cover, dammit!”
The warning came too late. A shotgun blast boomed from outside, the pellets punching through the window frame in a brutal spray. One of the women was slammed backward, her rifle clattering to the floor as she crumpled with a cry.
The second woman froze, eyes wide, her hands trembling on the rifle. She looked at Clay, mouth opening to speak—but he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her into the narrow slice of safety behind the wall.
“Keep your weapon in the fight,” he barked, wrapping his hands over hers and squeezing them around the rifle. “But you stay in cover—understand?!”
She nodded hard, eyes glassy but determined.
Clay stepped into the window frame, leaned out into the cold night air, and let off three quick shots. Two raiders—bare-chested despite the snow, faces painted in bone-white streaks—crumpled in the snowdrift by the back door. Another tried to sprint for the breach; Clay dropped him before he was halfway there. He slid sideways to the next window, firing again into the pack pressing forward with axes and sledgehammers.
The woman he’d pulled to cover leaned forward now, firing in short bursts, her breathing steadying with each trigger pull. Together, they forced the mob at the back door to falter, then stumble, then fall back into the infected pressing behind them.
But the return fire was relentless. Bullets slammed into the wall around them, showering them in plaster dust and jagged splinters. The windowsill where Clay had been standing moments before exploded under a hail of rounds.
And then—over the din—he heard it.
A crash from the front. Shouts. The deep, splintering crack of wood giving way.
They’d hit the main door.
Clay swore and slapped the woman’s shoulder. “Hold this position!”
He sprinted back through the haze, the sound of the breach growing louder with each step. In the foyer, the great double doors hung from shattered hinges, the barricade torn apart. Figures in bone masks and scavenged armor poured through the gap, hacking at the remaining obstacles with their axes.
Up the grand staircase, two women were already in position, rifles braced on the banister, firing down into the melee. The first wave of Wendigos hit the bottom steps, bellowing like berserkers.
Clay raised his rifle, the retort of his first shot echoing off the high ceiling.
The foyer had become a storm of sound and motion—muzzle flashes strobing the walls, the thunder of boots on hardwood, the guttural war cries of the Wendigos echoing in the vaulted ceiling.
Clay fired until the bolt locked back, then let the rifle fall against its sling and drew his pistol in one smooth motion. The first man up the steps—a giant with a shaved head and a necklace strung with human teeth—took two rounds to the chest and one to the throat before collapsing backward into the others, tangling them in a flailing knot of limbs.
“KEEP FIRING!” Clay roared.
The women at the banister obeyed, their rifles kicking against their shoulders, spent brass clinking off the steps. Below, the Wendigos howled, rage and bloodlust twisting their faces into something less than human. Axes hacked at the stairs’ banister, clubs pounded against the risers, but each time a head rose above the step line, a shot slammed it back down.
One raider made it to the halfway landing, swinging a sledgehammer like it weighed nothing. Clay pivoted, fired, and the man pitched forward, his weapon tumbling from his fingers and clanging against the floor below.
The smell of blood and gunsmoke thickened, mixing with the cold stink of the infected pressing outside the open door. Their moans bled into the chaos, the sound of nails scratching at wood and flesh slapping against the barricade remnants.
Then—just as suddenly as it had begun—the momentum shifted.
Clay ducked under the banister, firing down into the entryway, and saw it: a ripple of hesitation in the mob—a barked order from somewhere in the back. The Wendigos slowed, stepping over their fallen, dragging the wounded with them.
“THEY’RE BACKING OFF!” one of the women yelled over the din.
Clay risked a glance toward the front door in time to see the bone masks retreat into the snow, their silhouettes melting into the swirling white. The last one out slammed an axe into the doorframe, a promise of return before vanishing into the dark.
From above, Andrew’s voice cut through the ringing in Clay’s ears.
“They’re running!” he called from the balcony, rifle still raised. “Clay—they’re pulling back!”
Clay exhaled, his pulse hammering in his temples.
But he didn’t lower his weapon.
“They’ll be back,” he said, voice low and grim. “Next time, they’ll come more prepared.”
The house was quiet now except for the creak of the stairs under his boots and the hiss of wind through the shattered doorway.
The first round was over.
CHAPTER 31
They carried her out wrapped in a sheet.
Sara.
Clay hadn’t known her well—just another face in the group, quiet, keeping to the edges—but now her absence was a weight pressing on the whole house. The women lowered her onto the dining table, the sheet soaked through in a wide, dark patch. No one spoke. The air was heavy with the smell of gunpowder and blood, the echoes of the fight still hanging in the walls like smoke.
Elizabeth whispered something soft and private over the body, a few of the others bowing their heads. Clay didn’t join in. He stood back, leaning on his rifle, watching the windows. Mourning was for safe places, and this wasn’t one.
“This isn’t over,” Clay finally said, his voice cutting through the silence like a blade. “You all saw how close they got. They’ll come again—maybe tonight, maybe at first light. They will sneak in this time. We need the barricades rebuilt, ammo counted, and spread to every post. No slack. Not for a second.”
There were nods, tired ones, but no argument. Everyone had seen the truth of it.
With Andrew, Clay worked outside. The snow was still falling, the wind cutting across the grounds as they dragged the bodies—Wendigo and infected alike—into the shattered entrances. They stacked them tight, a grotesque wall of twisted limbs and frozen faces. It stank even in the cold, a mingling of rot and gun oil.
Andrew stood looking at the barrier, jaw tight.
Clay glanced at him. “I told you once—you fight here, you won’t want to be here anymore.”
Andrew nodded slowly. “I imagined them coming like at the fairgrounds… but this? This was different. We were right on top of each other. I don’t even remember a lot of it.”
Clay gave a small, grim smile. “That’s because it’s too much for our brains to handle. So it shuts the lights off, takes over, and does the survival work. You don’t get to remember all of it. But don’t worry, kid—you’re still in there.”
They worked until their fingers went numb, then made one last sweep for loose rounds and half-spent mags before heading back inside.
By the time they got upstairs, the sky was dimming to bruised gray. Clay crossed to the balcony, glass crunching under his boots. Elizabeth stood there, hair whipped by the wind, eyes fixed on the horizon.
She pointed.
Far out, past the treeline, smoke curled into the sky—dark, steady, purposeful.
“Their camp,” she said quietly.
Clay followed her gaze, jaw tightening. The smoke drifted higher, a signal of presence, of patience.
“They’re not done,” Clay said. “Not by a long shot.”
Clay kept his eyes on that rising column of smoke.
“They’ll be back,” he said, voice low but steady. “Probably in the morning. They’ll want daylight for the numbers they’ve got left. But with the beating they took today, I don’t think they’ll be able to call for reinforcements in time.”
Andrew stepped up beside him. “Will the Army help us?”
Clay shook his head. “No. They made it pretty clear they wouldn’t get involved more than they already have. We’re on our own.”
Elizabeth, still staring toward the smoke, asked, “So what then? We wait for them to come back?”
Clay’s jaw tightened. He turned, walked to his pack, and dug into it until his hand closed on a cloth pouch—gray and grimy. The bone ash shifted inside with a dry whisper.
“No,” Clay said, looking between them. “Jackson is in that camp. Their leader. If I kill him, maybe this stops before it starts again.”
No one spoke.
He moved with purpose, stripping off his coat and pulling on the ragged parka of a dead Wendigo from the pile outside. It was stiff with frozen blood and stank of rot, but it would hide him in the shadows. From a torn duffel, he pulled a scarf caked with mud and old gore, wrapping it around his neck and jaw until he looked more like one of them than himself.
Next came the rifle—wiped down, mag seated, chamber checked. He set it against the wall, then reached into a tin for the soot-black war paint reminding him of fights from years ago in another life. With two fingers, he dragged it under his eyes, across his cheekbones, and down the bridge of his nose until his face was a shadow in the dim firelight.
Andrew stepped forward. “Let me go with you.”
Clay shook his head once. “No. This is a walk I need to take alone.”
“Why?” Andrew pressed, his voice sharp.
“Because if I don’t make it back,” Clay said, shouldering his rifle, “I need you here—fighting like hell to keep them safe.” His voice was low but carried the weight of an order. He glanced toward Elizabeth and the others, their faces half-lit by the flicker of the fire. Fear, exhaustion, and stubborn resolve stared back at him. “If they break in again, you hold them at the stairs and you don’t let them past. No matter what.”
Andrew’s throat worked as he swallowed, his jaw tight. He nodded, but his eyes never left Clay—like a man watching someone walk into his own grave.
Clay shifted his gaze toward the door below, the heavy barricade now more of a threshold between life and death. His voice dropped into something almost gentle. “Don’t get captured. If it comes to it, save a bullet for yourself.”
The silence that followed was heavy, almost suffocating.
Then Clay turned and moved for the door. Rufous padded forward to follow, tail low, hackles stiff, nose twitching at the scent of the night beyond. The dog gave a low, uncertain whine.
Clay crouched, pressing a hand briefly to Rufous’ shoulder. “Not this time, old boy.”
With that, he eased the barricade aside, cold air knifing into the warmth of the house. For a moment, he just stood there—feeling the sting of winter on his face, listening to the muffled creak of the house behind him, memorizing it in case he never saw it again.
Then he slipped out into the darkness alone, the snow swallowing him whole. The cold hit him like a wall, the air sharp enough to sting his lungs. Clay pulled the filthy hood of the dead man’s coat over his head, its smell a rancid mix of rot, smoke, and blood. The rags were stiff with dried gore, but that was the point—they had to smell like death, not a living man. The pouch of bone ash at his belt felt heavier than it was, a reminder that he was walking into a place no sane person should ever go.
The snow was soft beneath his boots, muffling his steps as he moved off the drive and into the dark line of trees. The Big House faded behind him until it was just a pale shape in the white gloom. Out here, the wind had a voice—hissing through the bare branches, whispering in the drifts.
He kept low, picking his path between patches of shadow, his rifle slung but ready. Every so often, he stopped, letting his ears take over. Somewhere far off, the guttural calls of Wendigos rose and fell—part signal, part challenge.
Then, movement.
He froze behind the splintered trunk of a windfall, breath slow, steady. Out ahead, just beyond the edge of the tree line, they lingered—a pack of infected, maybe eight or nine of them, scattered across the snow. Some swayed in place, heads drooping, others pawed lazily at the ground as if rooting for some phantom scent.
They were close enough for him to smell them, the reek of decay pushing against the back of his throat.
Clay stepped out from behind the trunk, slow and deliberate. One foot down. Then another.
Nothing.
The bone ash worked.
Their milky eyes slid over him without recognition. One even turned toward him, nostrils flaring, but its attention drifted as if he wasn’t there at all. He slipped past within arm’s reach, the way a man might edge by a sleeping dog, every nerve screaming but his body calm, controlled.
When he was sure they were behind him, he kept moving, deeper into the woods, toward the faint orange glow smearing the horizon—the Wendigo camp.
And with every step, the cold certainty settled in his chest: he might not be coming back.
The orange glow grew stronger as Clay closed the distance, flickering through the trunks like firelight from another world. The wind shifted, bringing with it the stench of smoke, burning meat, and unwashed bodies.
