“Do you need help?”
“Maybe,” Velvet answered, staring up at Eshe.
“Come on,” Eshe murmured. She squatted down and reached forward, looping her arms under Velvet’s armpits, and tugging. She pulled Velvet easily from the sleeping bag, and the woman looked up at Eshe.
“I feel like I could have done that,” she murmured.
“I believe you could have,” Eshe smiled back at her.
“I don’t really need help.”
“I know. Most of us don’t really need help,” Eshe admitted, “but it’s nice to have, isn’t it?”
Velvet nodded and got to her feet. Together, the two of them tidied up the room, got their shoes on, and headed out of the little bedroom to the living room. Eshe reached for the door and exited the apartment with Velvet close behind.
“Thanks again for letting me crash with you,” Velvet said.
“It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” Velvet corrected her.
“Trust me: you aren’t the worst guest I’ve ever had.”
“No? Do you have a lot of guests?”
Eshe looked over at Velvet curiously.
“No.”
“I was just wondering.”
“Don’t worry,” Eshe chuckled. “I’m not exactly partying it up in the world of the zombies.”
The two of them fell quiet as they headed upstairs to the top floor to meet Ambrose and Ryan. When they arrived, they were surprised to see that both Winchester and Grey were there, too. Grey looked wide awake, but Winchester had dark circles under his eyes and seemed sleepy.
“Good morning?” Eshe asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Why is that a question and not a greeting?” Grey crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t as rough and tumble as Winchester was, but he was still intimidating, Velvet thought. Being around this many people was going to take some getting used to.
Then again, once they rescued the kid, Velvet would probably need to be on her way. After all, she wasn’t a part of this group. They weren’t her people. They had their own little family dynamic going on, and Velvet needed to remember that she wasn’t a part of that. She was her own person. She was a loner. She couldn’t forget.
“Because you said you weren’t going to help.”
“Our plans changed,” he said, and he left it at that.
“Fine,” Eshe nodded. “I can live with that.”
Velvet felt relieved. Having some extra muscle around was going to be pretty helpful, actually. Who knew how many extra zombies had approached in the night? Who knew how many were on their way to the apartments?
Velvet walked over to one of the windows and peered out. She didn’t nothing any strange or unusual activity at this particular apartment building, but then again, they hadn’t been crying or yelling. The people in this building hadn’t been calling out for help.
That had been the kid.
A few minutes later, Ryan and Ambrose appeared in the lobby. Like Winchester, they looked tired, like they hadn’t slept as much as they should have.
“Ready?” Ryan asked.
Eshe nodded.
“Ready.”
Chapter 17
The walk to the building took only a few minutes, but Velvet felt as though time had stopped. She still hadn’t seen Dennis, and although she scoured windows of the buildings as they walked over to the other apartments, she didn’t see a little kitty cat.
Was he okay?
He was probably okay.
She had to convince herself that he was. If she let herself think, even for a moment, that he wasn’t okay, she knew that she was going to have trouble. Right now, she couldn’t afford trouble. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of what was important. She needed to focus, and what she needed to focus on most was finding this child.
“Let’s go,” Eshe led the way. As they headed down the street toward the building where the child was hidden away, tucked up in an apartment building, Velvet found herself wondering what had brought the kid to this city.
Seriously.
Was it such an endearing place that a child would want to be here?
Velvet wondered if there was more to the story. There had to be. Was the kid traveling with a parent who had gotten sick? Was she wandering around with someone who wanted her to be strong for them? Had the other person gotten bitten?
Had the kid?
“There’s a chance that this is a suicide mission,” Eshe lowered her voice as she walked with Velvet.
“We can hear you,” Ryan called out.
“Yeah, you aren’t being very quiet,” Ambrose added.
“It’s okay,” Grey said loudly. “You’re right, and we’re all aware of this.”
Suicide.
It wasn’t something anyone ever wanted to think about but living in the apocalypse meant it was something that everyone thought about almost constantly. Everyone wondered what it was going to be like to die, and everyone wondered what would happen if they were bitten.
After the apocalypse started, people became a lot more lenient when it came to suicides. Velvet thought people seemed all-around more forgiving of the idea. Before the end of the world had come, she’d heard a lot of sermons on what happened to people who killed themselves. There had always been whispers and warnings of things that revolved around suicide.
Now, though, nobody said those things.
Nobody said anything bad if someone shot themselves after they were bitten because it was less work for everyone else left behind.
If someone was bitten, they were going to turn.
End of story.
If someone died, they were going to turn.
End of story.
The virus was in the air now. Everyone turned into a zombie. Once your heart stopped, no matter what caused the heart to stop, you’d turn. If you wanted to put a bullet in your brain to prevent that from happening, nobody in the damn world was going to stop you.
If anything, people would commend you for taking the high road and doing the scary, yet honorable thing.
“Almost there,” Winchester said, strutting forward. He pointed ahead. “A couple of Z’s are out here waiting for us.”
“We’re ready for them,” Velvet nodded, and she kept walking.
She had her bat still, and that was what she’d use to fight, but each person in their group had a different item. Ryan and Ambrose had bats, like Velvet. Eshe had actually brought a crowbar this time. Winchester and Grey each had a bow with lots of arrows, and Velvet had to respect that.
“No guns?” Velvet asked, eyeing the bows.
“No guns,” Winchester repeated.
“Why not?”
“They’re loud,” Grey said.
“And sloppy,” Winchester pointed out.
“What do you mean?”
Velvet didn’t like guns, either, but it was rare to meet other survivors who felt the same way she did. Most people liked to at least carry a shotgun for an easy kill, but Velvet had seen too many mistakes. Guns made it easy to miss, and if you missed, you could hit another human.
“He doesn’t like the spray,” Grey offered.
“I don’t like the spray,” Winchester agreed.
Velvet’s stomach turned. Again, she knew what they meant when they said that. Shooting someone really was messy. It was the type of thing nobody ever really talked about when it came to death. If you were going to kill someone, even a zombie, there would be something left behind of them.
There would be a mess.
And the problem with messes in the zombie apocalypse is that they were contagious.
If you touched someone’s blood, or their fluids got on you, you’d be done for. You’d be finished.
Velvet didn’t want to be finished.
She had too many other things she wanted to live for. She wanted to live to be old and happy. She wanted to fall in love one day. She wanted another cat. She wanted Dennis.
And mostly, mostly Velvet just wanted to
save this kid.
She needed a win.
Things had felt dark and dangerous lately. Sometimes it felt like the weight of the world was so damn heavy she’d never be able to keep carrying it on her own.
So, why was she here?
That was the real question that plagued Velvet. She was a little worried that one day, other people would ask her, too. So far, no one had really dug deep into why Velvet might have wandered back to her college town. Nobody pried too deeply to find out what had caused her to return, but Velvet knew that eventually, someone would want to know.
Eventually, someone would want answers, and she’d have to have something ready.
Chapter 18
“You two start searching for a way in,” Winchester called out, moving away from the group. “Grey and I will start taking them down.”
The zombies were everywhere. Overnight, a group of zombies had appeared. There were probably a dozen of them milling about, but there were still too few to be considered a horde. The group was centered close to the building, which meant it hadn’t bothered wandering down to the apartment building where Eshe and her friends lived, but she knew it was only a matter of time before that happened.
They definitely needed to get these Z’s out of commission as promptly as they could.
First, they had to save the child.
“You ready for this?” Eshe asked Velvet.
“I’m ready.”
“I’m serious. You don’t have to do this,” she offered. “You can walk away. No hard feelings.”
“I’m not flaky,” Velvet told her. “I’m not going to back out of this.”
Eshe felt a little sense of pride welling from deep inside of her. That was nice. This was nice. Velvet seemed pretty cool, and Eshe liked the way that Velvet didn’t seem nervous or worried about moving ahead with their plan.
“Fire escape time,” Eshe said. “First, though, we fight.”
Even though the rest of the team was going to clear out the zombies, there were so many that Eshe knew they needed to help a little bit. Besides, the entrance to the fire escape was currently being guarded by six undead bastards who looked like they’d seen better days.
That wasn’t true, actually.
They looked like they’d seen terrible days in the apocalypse, and then they’d died.
These weren’t old zombies. These weren’t old bodies from the before times. No, these were creatures that had turned more recently: probably in the last few months. That’s what Eshe would guess, anyway. Their clothing was dirty and torn, and their hair was matted against their skin. Their eyes still existed – barely – and had sunk deeper into their heads.
“Gross,” Eshe muttered.
“Double gross,” Velvet agreed.
“I’ll take the three on the left,” Eshe told her, and she stepped forward.
The zombie closest to Eshe turned around just as Eshe swung the crowbar at its head. It fell almost instantly, falling to the ground in a heap of zombie gore.
Awesome.
Two more to go.
From beside her, Eshe heard Velvet swinging her bat, and from farther down the building, about fifteen feet away, the rest of the group was fighting. Winchester and Grey had each climbed on top of abandoned cars and were firing arrows at the zombies surrounding them.
If they could hit a creature in the eye socket, it would almost always fall right away.
Eshe knew that was their goal.
Eshe swung again, hitting the second zombie in the head. This one, too, fell easily.
Too easily.
Yeah, these were fresh zombies, but they still usually put up more of a fight than they had. Normally, a zombie would at least pretend to dart out of the way.
It was a little boring that they hadn’t.
Eshe knew that the third zombie was going to be different, though. The third zombie was going to give her grief because that one was the biggest and newest of the group. Its clothes were dirty, but cleaner than the other zombies, and its hair wasn’t quite as destroyed.
The zombie had skin that was dry and crusty like the rest of the zombies wandering around, but there were as many holes or tears in it. For the most part, this zombie just looked like a regular human that had just finished a long, hard day at work.
Was it still human?
Eshe hesitated for just a fraction of a second, and the zombie moved directly toward her, stumbling awkwardly, but fast. Its arms waved awkwardly as it tried to grab her. The creature’s hands were outstretched as it tried to claw her, but Eshe was too fast. Eshe stepped backwards quickly, slipping out of its reach, but the interaction had frightened her and left her on edge.
“Are you okay?” Velvet yelled out. Her bat swung and a loud thud let everyone know it had connected with a creature.
“What happened?” Ryan called out.
“Eshe almost got clawed.”
“Eshe! You okay?” Winchester looked in their direction.
“I’m fine,” Eshe told them all. Then, remembering that they probably couldn’t hear her over the sound of all of the fighting, she yelled. “I’m fine!”
“Good!”
Eshe turned back to her new enemy. This zombie was still walking toward her. Velvet was busy fighting. Everyone was busy fighting. Eshe needed to fight, too.
She needed to take down this zombie to prove that she could, but she also needed to prove that she was worthy. She was worthy of being here. She was worthy of fighting this creature. She was important enough to still be existing in the world and, perhaps most of all, she was good enough to exist in the world.
Not everyone in the zombie apocalypse got a second chance, but Eshe had gotten dozens.
Now she was going to prove herself.
“Come on,” she yelled to the zombie. “Come on!” She raised her crowbar up and waited as it shuffled toward her. It was slow, she knew, but it wasn’t dumb like the other ones, and it also wasn’t weak. This one had some mass to it, which meant it was bulkier, it was stronger, and it was more determined.
It was heading right for her, but she was ready this time.
As soon as it got close again, she swung, and her crowbar connected with its head.
The zombie fell, and Eshe screamed with happiness.
She looked over to see that Velvet had killed her three zombies and was now watching her.
“Nice work,” Velvet offered.
“Let’s go inside,” Eshe countered.
It was time to save the kid.
Chapter 19
Velvet jumped up to grab the bottom of the fire escape. Thanks to years of push-ups and pull-ups because she’d been bored, she was able to reach it easily and tug, but the ladder extension didn’t come down right away.
“Put some strength into it,” Eshe teased, and Velvet groaned.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Velvet complained.
The kid inside must not have noticed they were there, because she wasn’t screaming or crying out. At least, Velvet hoped it was because she hadn’t noticed and not because of something else.
She hoped it wasn’t because of something more terrible or sinister.
What if the kid had died?
What if she’d gotten hurt?
Had the girl been bitten overnight?
Velvet didn’t say anything out loud because she didn’t want her negative thoughts to make anything come true or real. She wasn’t really sure that she believed in imagining things into existence, but she was living in the zombie apocalypse. Anything could happen.
Anything.
Right now, that anything needed to include getting up the fire escape. If they could make their way up it, they’d be able to reach the floor where the kid was. They’d be able to slip right inside and head indoors, grab her, and carry her to safety.
It wouldn’t even be hard.
Last night, they’d been limited because of the darkness, as well as because of how many zombies had come, but now they were good. This shouldn�
��t take too long at all.
Velvet could hear Winchester, Grey, Ambrose, and Ryan all fighting with the zombies. From the sounds of things, it was going well, but she still didn’t want to waste time. She wanted this to be over as quickly as possible so she could go find Dennis and move on with her life.
She needed to figure out what she was going to do with her life.
“Come on,” Velvet muttered to herself. Once more, she bounced, trying to haul the ladder downwards so they could both climb it, but it really wasn’t moving.
Defeated, Velvet dropped to the ground and gestured for Eshe to give it a go. Eshe jumped up, grabbing the bottom bar of the ladder, but had the same problem as Velvet. The ladder wasn’t moving, which meant trying to make their way up the fire escape was going to be impossible.
“It’s rusted over,” Eshe murmured, dropping down.
“Okay, so what now?” Velvet looked toward the doors to the building. “Go inside?”
“We go inside,” Eshe nodded. “Let’s go.”
They headed to the front doors of the building. This complicated things slightly, but it was fine. Velvet once more found herself wondering how the hell a kid had gotten to the top of this building without help. Surely there was at least one zombie in the building – probably the kid’s mother – and surely, they were walking into a dangerous situation.
The other fire escapes that surrounded the building were falling apart. There wasn’t a chance in hell they’d be able to make their way up one of those, which meant they’d have to peel the boards off the front doors and climb in through the main entrance. They could do that without too much trouble thanks to Eshe’s crowbar.
It took less than ten minutes to get the boards off of the front door. Together, Eshe and Velvet worked to pull the boards away.
“Need any help?” Grey called out.
“We’re good,” Velvet said.
A moment later, the last board fell free. Eshe tossed it into a pile along with the rest of the boards, and then the two of them turned the knob on the front door, which was somehow still covering the entrance, and pushed the door open.
Beautifully Undead | Book 1 | The Chasing of Zombies Page 8