“Mom!” Carter spins around, but I slam the door.
“Take care of everyone,” I say, throwing the car into reverse.
“Mom, stop!” Carter latches both hands onto the open window. “Mom!”
To my horror, he throws up a leg, hooking it through the window.
“Get down,” I cry.
The look he gives me is fierce. He looks so much like his father my breath catches. In a maneuver that is part strength, part yoga ninja, Carter drags himself through the open window. He slides across my lap and scrambles into the passenger seat.
“What the hell, Mom?”
“I’m going to blow up the library. You need to get out, son.”
“What do you mean, you’re going to blow up the library?”
I jerk a thumb toward the back of the van. “The beer kegs. They’re full of fermenting liquid. We have a bomb on wheels, sweetheart.” I meet his gaze. “I’m going to blow the side of the library. If I’m lucky, it will be enough to bury most of those fuckers and solidify our barrier.”
Carter stares at me, mouth agape. “Mom, there’s a shit load of zombies between us and the library. We’ll never make it.”
He’s right. In the last sixty seconds, the alpha and her pack have massed outside the library.
“I got this, Mamita.”
I turn in surprise to see Jesus standing by the open driver’s side window. The dents in his forehead stand out under the bright morning sun.
“I’ll clear the way. You get the bomb to the library.” His eyes are hard, focused. “Creekside crew! ¡Mi familia!”
Before I can form a sentence, Jesus fist pumps the air and sprints away, shouting at the top of his lungs. He streaks in the direction of the rubble, firing his gun into the air.
A keen crescendos, mixed with howls and growls. Like a giant amoeba, the pack flexes and rotates, oozing in the direction of Jesus.
“Drive!” Carter shouts. His blue eyes flare, and he jumps into the back. “I’ll get the kegs ready. It’s a good thing Jenna and I decided to age this ale or we wouldn’t have a bomb right now.”
There isn’t time to argue. There isn’t time to debate. There isn’t time to pull Jesus back to safety. There isn’t time to grab Carter by the scruff of his neck and heave him out of the van.
I do the only thing I can. I slam my foot on the accelerator and zoom toward the library.
“How are we going to detonate these?” Carter yells.
A glance over my shoulder reveals him packing lumps of C-4 around the base of the kegs. He has the kegs on their sides, the fermenting liquid leaking out all over the floor.
“Grenade.” I tap my belt, touching the only grenade I have. In the confusion of the morning, I can’t even recall how it ended up there.
“That’ll work,” Carter hollers. “The van has cruise control. We paid extra for it.”
“You paid extra for cruise control?” I shout back, recalling the shitty state of the van when I first saw it. I can’t imagine paying extra for any special feature on this rust bucket.
“Yeah, Jenna likes cruise control.”
I zip past the tail end of the swarm, straight through the corridor Jesus made for us. A blur of rotting skin and dark blood fills my periphery. A look in the rearview mirror shows several dozen peeling off to pursue us, but most of them continue after their alpha. After Jesus.
“It’s time for you to get out, son. I’ll take it from here.” I slow the van just enough so he can jump out.
“No way, Mom.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll put the van in cruise control and jump when I’m closer. I’ll have a better chance of pulling this off if I don’t have to worry about you.”
Carter narrows his eyes at me. “Okay. But you have to promise to jump. No kamikaze stuff.”
“I promise, sweetie. I don’t plan on dying today. Who’s going to take care of you guys if I’m not here?”
Carter flings open the passenger side door. The pavement whizzes past.
He turns for a bare second, our eyes meeting.
“I love you, baby.”
“Love you, too, Mom. See you soon.”
With that, he leaps. Even above the hum of the engine, I hear the impact of his body on the ground.
Carter.
I grip the steering wheel and zoom away, streaking toward the library. A glance to my right shows Jesus on top of a statue between the College Creek rubble and the library. He fires his gun into the air, doing his damnedest to draw the alpha and her pack.
I swerve around a group of stragglers. The library looms before me, a wide megalith of dark cement. All that knowledge. And I’m about to blow it all to hell.
Setting the accelerator to thirty, I punch the cruise control button. Then, I pull the pin, toss the grenade, and throw myself out of the van.
I have a brief glimpse of the grenade rolling across the floor of the van—then I crash headlong into a bush. Pain explodes as I tear through the plant and hit the ground on the other side. The grenade detonates, ripping through the air with an explosion.
The library leaps from its foundation. It seems to hang, suspended above the ground for several seconds.
The library crashes down as though in slow motion. It strikes the ground with a boom and ripples through earth and air. The rumble rolls outward, sending the building forth in every direction. A landslide of cinderblocks buries the left flank of the undead swarm. The rest are swallowed in an expulsion of flying debris—including the statue where Jesus is perched.
“Jesus!” I scream his name.
A cloud of grit and debris hurtles toward me. I curl into a ball and throw my hands over my head. The exposed parts of my skin burn as thousands of tiny particles scour over me like sand paper.
Then silence descends.
A few moans pepper the air. I raise my head, blinking through grime-encrusted lashes. The dust begins to settle, revealing a massive mound of misshapen debris all around.
There is no sign of the alpha, no sign of her pack. They are buried beneath the remains of the library.
“Jesus.” I try to stand, but my legs give out on me. I hurt everywhere. My eyes scour the rubble as I search for some sign of him.
I notice several small branches embedded in my skin, probably from the bush I landed on. One protrudes from my bicep. Another is lodged just below my collarbone.
I pluck them out, barely feeling the sting. My eyes continue to rove, searching for Jesus.
I want to pass out. I want to disappear into the dark.
“Kate!”
I blink in confusion. I must have hit my head. I’m definitely hallucinating. Either that, or I’m dead. Because what I’m seeing right now makes no sense.
Out of the dust and smoke and confusion comes Lila. She has three automatic rifles across her back and a string of grenades across her chest. A Sig hangs from either hip. And she’s riding a bicycle like a bat out of hell, coming straight for me. Grime and bits of blood spatter her face and clothing.
“Kate!” She leaps off the bike. It clatters to the ground as she rushes to my side. “Kate, are you okay?”
I stare at her. Maybe I’m not hallucinating. “Lila?”
“It’s me.” Her mouth tightens as she grips my hand. “I decided that if all you losers are going to die out here, I want to go down with you. It was really shitty of you guys to leave me to die with an unconscious man half-eaten by a shark. Can you sit up?”
My terrified Lila has finally pushed through. Hell of a time for a breakthrough, even if said breakthrough is taking its toll on her. Her eyes are a little too wide, her skin a little too clammy, and her hands a little too shaky for her to conceal her true feelings. She’s terrified.
Terrified, but she’s here all the same. Pride swells in my chest.
I once again try to stand. Fuck. It feels like a thousand needles are going into my skull at the same time. I groan without meaning to and plop back down.
“Kate?”
�
��I’m fine. We need to find Jesus. I—”
I break off as two zombies lope around a pile of concrete and smashed library computers. They’ve heard our voices and are coming straight for us.
“Look out!” I lunge to my feet—then trip on a chunk of concrete and go down. I sprawl forward, my hands scraping against the pavement.
Lila jumps in front of me, rocking back and forth in fear as she faces the zombies. Right before they reach her, she darts to the side.
“Over here, dick wads,” she calls, leading them away from me.
The zombies moan, rotating in her direction. They scratch at the empty air in front of them, searching for Lila.
I scramble to my feet as Lila stabs the first zombie through the nose. She dances backward as the second one reaches for her. I come up behind it and cave in the back of its head with my knife.
Lila and I breathe hard in the sudden silence, the two dead zombies between us.
“Thanks.” If Lila hadn’t been here, I might very well be dead right now. It’s a sobering thought. I wipe my cheek on my shirtsleeve, attempting to dislodge a clump of brain matter.
“I just saved Mama Bear.” Lila gives me a shaky smile. “Now if I could just do that about twelve thousand times, we might be even.”
“There’s no score between us, Lila. We’re family.” I glance back in the direction of Carter. He’s two hundred yards away, picking himself up out of some bushes with Jenna’s help. Good. He’s safe.
I turn my attention back to Lila. “Jesus is in there.” I point. With the dust clearing, I can just see the top of the statue.
“In there?” Her mouth sags open.
I don’t blame her. Protruding from beneath the building fragments are twitching body parts. The zoms might have been buried, but not all of them are dead.
“Come on. We have to find Jesus.” I force my feet to move.
My equilibrium returns and I’m able to walk with Lila’s help. I hurt everywhere, but I guess that’s to be expected when you jump out of a moving car. At least nothing is broken.
I pause over a zombie. The body is pinned, but its jaw continues to gnash. I stab it through the eye. No reason to leave a potential ankle biter out there.
Lila moves a few feet past me, drawing her knife. She killed her fair share of zombies at the start of the outbreak, but it’s been a while for her.
She pauses over another pinned zombie. Her chest heaves with an inhalation.
Her blade jabs down, punching through the zom’s nose.
“You haven’t lost your touch,” I say.
Lila glances over her shoulder at me, shrugs, then continues to pick her way through the rubble. We’re forced to climb over and around debris—broken furniture, shattered computers, and fragments of walls. Step by step, we inch across what had once been a large, peaceful quad for students.
Now, it’s a death zone. Lila and I pause only long enough to kill any zombies that pose a threat before continuing on.
We reach the statue. My throat closes at the sight, tears stinging the back of my eyes. The base is covered in chunks of large cement slabs.
“Jesus!” I call his name. “Jesus!”
A groan sounds off to our left.
“Jesus?” I scramble over rubble and drop down on the far side of the statue. “Je—”
Words dry up in my mouth.
“Do you see him?” Lila clambers down beside me. “Is he—oh, shit.”
23
Rubble
BEN
Silence.
Ben has never liked silence after battle. Silence after battle often means there’s no one left to speak.
The quiet presses in around him like a black hole. The vast space threatens to swallow him. The silence is a physical sensation—a lack of movement.
The explosion. The ambush. His men. Where are they?
Ben feels his heart pound against his sternum, a frantic thump-thump-thump.
His men. The explosion. The blinding sear of orange flames that blew up the corner of the meat shop as they came around the corner—
He claws at the pile of mortar and crumpled stone in front of him. Out. He has to get out. He has to find his men. He has to find the fuckers who ambushed them.
A nail tears, breaking to the quick. Ben doesn’t even feel the pain. His breath comes in short gasps as panic threatens to suffocate him. He shoves and claws, fighting to dig himself free of the hellhole he’s been buried in.
Light hits his face.
Something is wrong.
The air on his face doesn’t smell right. It’s salty. And cool. It’s not the bone-sucking heat of Somalia. It’s—
A soft moan breaks through the ringing in his ears, followed by another. Somewhere distant, a high-pitched keening raises the hair all along the back of his neck.
The world around him recalculates, swinging wildly as he struggles to get his bearings. The dry heat of the African desert disappears from his mind, as do the shanty towns, shrub lands, and the familiar feel of being surrounded by comrades in arms.
Ben finds himself dropkicked from the streets of Somalia into the ruins of Humboldt University in Arcata, California. The force of the return is so strong his head swims.
Where is everyone?
Where is Kate?
His knees scrape painfully against the pavement as he drags himself the rest of the way free from the rubble. He feels his pants rip, feels the bite of rough stone against his skin.
Panting, he struggles to his feet. His legs sway, threatening to give way. His vision corkscrews. He blinks, waiting for it to clear.
The details fall in around him. The dorms are all down, piles of rubble that create a perfect barrier between them and the dead. Beyond the dorms, the library has also been leveled.
Ben has never been much of a reader. Books were fine for killing time, though he preferred a game of cards over a book any day of the week. Still, the sight of the collapsed library is like the loss of a good Hummer. They used that library. An excess of information was always at their fingertips. All gone now.
The library hadn’t been part of the original plan, but it had been a damn good improvisation. The string of wrecked buildings has accomplished several things. Most zoms that breached the campus are buried. The collapsed library blocked the last large gap, leaving no egress for more zoms to enter campus. Even now, he sees large swaths of them tumbling down to the freeway on the west side as they follow the natural curve of the wreckage.
It’s far from perfect, but considering the situation, it’s pretty fucking good. And effective. With any luck, they can weather the worst of this storm.
A figure comes his way. A tall, lanky boy with broad shoulders. His face is bloody, his body covered in a fine layer of gray grit that mingles with blood splatter. The figure raises a knife.
“Carter?”
The figure stops, knife poised. “Ben?” the boy whispers. His face collapses into a smile. “Ben!”
Before Ben can figure out what the kid is up to, he finds himself seized in a crushing hug. The act of affection is so foreign that it takes Ben aback. He pats Carter’s shoulder, equal parts horror and appreciation over this open display of affection.
If Carter is at all put off by Ben’s uncomfortable reaction, he doesn’t let it show. “You’re okay!” Carter pounds on his back and shoulder. “We were all worried. Come on, let’s get back to the others.”
“What’s the sit rep?” Ben asks, following Carter through the rubble.
“The what?”
Ben grimaces, realizing again he’s slipping back into a time and place that no longer exists. “What’s the status of our people?”
Carter’s face goes blank. “We don’t know where my mom and Jesus are.”
Colors swim in Ben’s vision. “Where the fuck is Kate?”
“We drove Skip into the library,” Carter explains. “Jesus led the alpha and the pack away to clear the way for us. Mom and I used the beer kegs and some C-4 for explosi
ves. I jumped out of the van while Mom drove it the rest of the way and detonated the bomb.
Ben absorbs this. “Was that Kate’s idea?” he says at last.
“Yeah.”
Of course, it was. Only Kate would think of using beer kegs for bombs to blow up a library. Likely that was her definition of improvising. God, that woman. He isn’t sure if he wants to yell at her or kiss her. Both, if he’s ever lucky enough to get the chance.
“We have to find her.” He marches in the direction of the library, marveling at the swath of destruction cut by the explosions. Any soldier could mistake this place for a Middle East war zone. Carter falls into step beside him while the rest of the group follows a few paces behind.
“I would have stayed with her,” the young man says. “I tried to. She made me get out. You know how she is.”
“You’re a good kid.” Ben has an overwhelming urge to tousle the young man’s head, like he used to do with his own son. He deals with the urge by wrapping both hands around his knife hilts.
This isn’t the first time he’s had to remind himself that Carter isn’t Sam. Sam, his son, is on the other side of the country. With a stepfather who was a much better father than Ben had ever been. He hopes they’re all still alive.
“And yeah, I know how your mom is.” The damn woman is like a starving, third world dog with a bone when she gets an idea. “Is everyone else alive and accounted for?”
“Yeah. Everyone is pretty scraped up, but we’re alive.”
It feels like a miracle. Not that Ben believes in miracles. But considering the fucking shit storm they’d entered less than an hour ago, it’s surprising they didn’t lose more. He’s surprised to find himself relieved that even Caleb made it.
Someone off to their left waves arms in the air. Reed’s afro sends out poofs of dust.
“He found something. Come on.” Carter picks up speed. His long legs eat up the distance, forcing Ben to a jog to keep up with him.
The movement sends a spear of pain through his back. Dammit. He probably pulled some of Kate’s stitches. He bites down on the pain and keeps pace with Carter.
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