Luke chuckled, not looking the least bit repentant when I shot him a glare. “Starting to second guess yourself?”
He spoke too loud, at least in my opinion, but no one else seemed the least bit concerned by the way his voice carried down the street and bounced off the trees and remnants of buildings.
“No,” I said in a tone that was much more defensive than I’d wanted it to be. “It just surprised me. I was too focused on—” I waved to the buildings, at a loss for how to describe them.
Jim glanced back at me but said nothing.
Jada, however, wasn’t as reserved. “It’s the same thing you can see on every street in every city all over the country. Nothing too exciting.”
“To you maybe,” I said. “But I’ve spent my entire life inside New Atlanta. I’ve never seen another street or another town until yesterday.”
Jada’s steps slowed, but the look she gave me wasn’t judgmental or accusatory. “I never considered that.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine staying in one place your whole life. Being out here can be risky, but it’s better than being stuck behind a wall. At least this way you get to experience life.”
I nodded because she had a point, but I also knew that my parents had made the decision to stay in New Atlanta because they’d thought it was what was best for us. They’d been on the road, had struggled to get where they’d thought we’d be safe, and to them that wall hadn’t signified a prison, but a source of hope. Too bad it hadn’t turned out that way.
A moan broke through the air, cutting our conversation short.
“Heads up,” Jim said, pulling his knife free from the sheath on his hip.
Luke did the same, freeing the knife that was strapped to his chest while Jada mimicked the movement. I did too, and it didn’t escape my notice that I was the only one whose hands were trembling.
“Were you scared?” I whispered to Luke as we continued down the road in a close group. “The first time you came out, I mean.”
Luke let out a small laugh. “Shitless.”
“How long did it take you to get over it?”
“Only a couple nights.”
“More like a couple months,” Jim piped in.
Luke flipped his middle finger up, managing to cling to his knife in the process. “You know I was a natural.”
Jada rolled her eyes.
A zombie stumbled from between a couple old buildings right then and all conversation stopped. Not just that, but so did the three zombie slayers I was with. The zombie caught wind of us and changed courses, heading our way, and my heart beat faster. I waited for Jada or Jim or even Luke to get the thing, but none of them moved. Instead they all stared at me.
“What?”
Jada nodded toward the zombie. “You wanted to learn.”
I swallowed and tried my best not to look like I was on the verge of peeing my pants, but it wasn’t easy. This was nothing, or so I told myself. I’d been out before, had faced a horde with my crew when we’d gone out to patch the wall. Plus, I’d been around some pretty nasty zombies in Dragon’s Lair. Sure they had all either been in cages or fighting Donaghy, but it still counted. At least in my book.
My fingers tightened on my knife as I stepped forward. The air I filled my lungs with was thick with moisture and the scent of decay. I sucked a mouthful in anyway and kept moving, focusing on the creature in front of me.
He was pretty old. His gray skin was ripped and saggy. The black blood I’d come to know so well dripped from the cuts, as well as every visible orifice. He had little left in the way clothes, not that he needed them, and his arms and legs were so rotten that I was pretty sure I could actually see bone in a few places.
He was a walking skeleton. With teeth, but even so, I couldn’t imagine how this bony thing would ever be able to overpower someone. Not even a thin apartment girl who’d spent her entire life inside the walls of New Atlanta.
I took a deep breath and moved.
The zombie was less than five feet away from me, which didn’t give me much time to consider how I wanted to do this. In fact, I was still trying to come up with a plan when the thing lunged. I let out a little squeak as I dodged out of the way and the zombie stumbled past.
Behind me there was movement and I heard Jim say, “She can handle it.” But I didn’t turn to see what was going on. I was too focused on the dead man in front of me.
I gripped the knife tighter and took a deep breath. I needed to get behind the thing. It would be a hell of a lot easier to get the blade into its brain if I didn’t have to worry as much about his teeth and nails—assuming he still had some on his fingers, which was unlikely with how decayed he was.
This time when he charged, I ducked and twisted so I was behind him. Before he could register that he’d passed me yet again, I popped up and grabbed what was left of the collar of his shirt. He growled when I jerked him back, and even though the sound made my heart thump harder, I didn’t ease my grip or hesitate to lift my knife and slam it into his skull.
The blade sank in, but the impact of metal hitting bone was more jarring than I would have thought. Still, it did the trick, and in seconds the zombie had gone slack and dropped to the ground.
I was out of breath, but feeling good. The thing was down and it hadn’t been nearly as scary as I’d expected it to be. Of course, if I’d been facing a horde I’m sure I would be feeling differently, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to allow myself the satisfaction of knowing I’d been able to take the thing out.
When the others came over, Luke slapped me on the back. “Good work.”
“Thanks,” I said, beaming.
Jim nodded to the body as he knelt next to it. “You’re not done yet.”
It took a few seconds for me to figure out what he meant, and then I remembered that I was expected to collect the zombie’s ears. It was how the zombie slayers verified that they were actually doing their job, and in New Atlanta the decaying ears of a zombie could actually be traded in for credits.
“It’s all yours,” I said, wrinkling my nose and backing away.
Luke gave me a little shove. “You’re not getting off that easy. It’s part of the gig.”
“You want to be a zombie slayer, right?” Jada said, a teasing tone in her voice.
“Not really.” I looked around, waiting for them to give in and cut the ears off themselves, but no one moved. “You seriously want me to do this?”
Jim grabbed my arm and pulled me down so I was kneeling next to him. “It’s not a big deal. The guy’s already dead.”
Since I didn’t think I was going to be able to get out of it, I grabbed one of the ears and slowly started to saw it off with my knife. The skin that covered the cartilage was soft and gooey, coated in both dirt and zombie blood. Not only that, but being this close to the body made my stomach twist thanks to both the smell and the view. I may have spent my life surrounded by zombies, but that didn’t mean I was used to the stink of death.
It only took a few seconds to get the ear free, and when I did I held it out to Jim. “Take it.”
He did, chuckling to himself as he slipped it into a pouch he wore on his hip. He was still laughing as he flipped the body over so he could get the other ear, and I jerked back when he expertly cut it off with one swipe of his blade.
“That’s how you do it,” Luke said, grinning.
“She did about as well as you did the first time,” Jim said, standing.
I stood too, turning just in time to see Luke give Jim the finger for the second time since we’d left the settlement.
“Come on,” Jada said.
She rolled her eyes at the two men just before turning away, but there was a small smile on her lips too.
Luke hurried after her but Jim stayed at my side while I retrieved my knife from the zombie’s skull. It slid out with a squish that made me cringe, and I took a moment to wipe the blade on some weeds before tucking it away.
When Jim and I started walking we were a goo
d five feet behind the other two, but he didn’t hurry to catch up. Instead, he lit a cigarette and walked at my side.
“So you knew my parents?” I asked, taking the opportunity to ask the question that had been nagging at me since I’d learned this man had come into New Atlanta with the rest of my family. “Jon and Hadley, I mean.”
Jim didn’t turn his head my way, but his eyes did dart toward me. “I did. Although I knew your mom as Ginny.”
“Ginny?” I shook my head because I had never heard anyone refer to her by that name. “Why?”
He pressed his lips together as if trying to decide what to tell me before saying, “I think she just needed a fresh start.”
The statement reminded me of what Angus had said to me about Vegas, about how strong my mom had been to be able to get through it. Something bad must have happened to her there, but whatever it was, my parents had never mentioned it to me.
“Doesn’t matter.” Jim shook his head as he took a drag off his cigarette. “I knew your dad better. Jon and I worked together in Colorado, helping clean the dead out of the city. I didn’t trust many people back then, but he was one of the few that I would have trusted to watch my back.”
“Is that why you left Colorado with him?”
“Partly. Ginny was determined to get to the CDC because she was expecting you and the babies out there were dying. Jon wanted me along to help keep her safe, so that’s what I did. Then he died along the way and so did she, and I felt like my promise extended to you. So I did what I needed to do to keep you safe.”
My steps faltered. “What did you do?”
“You don’t know?” Jim slowed too, his cigarette forgotten halfway to his mouth.
“No.”
He made a sound, but I couldn’t figure out if it was a laugh or a grunt of annoyance, and then took a long drag and started walking faster. I hurried to keep up, ready to badger him until he answered me, but it wasn’t necessary, because he started talking like he’d intended to tell me all along.
“We were trapped in a house, surrounded by zombies, so I ran out the back and led them away so everyone else could make a run for it. I got to Atlanta weeks after everyone else.”
I’d never heard this before, but I had no clue why no one had ever mentioned it. It couldn’t have been a secret, like whatever had happened to my mom in Vegas obviously was, but for some reason no one had ever mentioned Jim’s name or what he’d done for them. What he’d done to save my life.
“Thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around him so suddenly that I caught him totally off guard. “I had no idea.”
He didn’t hug me back, and when I pulled away he looked more than a little uncomfortable, but he nodded and mumbled a quiet, “You’re welcome.” We walked for a few seconds in silence before his eyes darted my way and he said, “It worked out. That’s how I met Amira…” The sadness in his voice left little doubt in my mind who Amira had been.
“Jada told me that you’d had a woman before, but that she died shortly before you left New Atlanta.”
Jim dropped his cigarette to the street and ground it out violently with the toe of his boot. “Star had her killed.”
“I’m sorry.” I swallowed, thinking about what Luke had just told me. “I had a boyfriend who died a few years ago.”
“I know. Colton.” His eyes darted toward me again and then quickly away.
“You knew him?” I couldn’t figure out how, except that maybe they’d met when Jim came into the city to get credits or supplies. Colton had worked the wall with my dad, which was how we’d met to begin with.
“Met him a couple times.” I didn’t miss the way he wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“You know.”
Jim pressed his lips together but didn’t respond.
“You don’t need to pretend. Luke told me that Jackson had him killed.” I hesitated, unsure of how he was going to react but feeling compelled to say what I was thinking. Life was too short. “It’s why I brought him up. It hurt when he died, still hurts, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a chance to have something good again.”
This time Jim didn’t look my way. He looked toward Jada. “I know she didn’t put you up to this. It isn’t her style.”
“She didn’t. I just thought I’d bring it up. Since we’re being honest with one another.”
To my shock, he let out a little laugh. I didn’t know him well, but I never would have thought butting into his love life would have gone over so well.
Then he said, “You sure do remind me of your mom,” and I knew why he was laughing.
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” I replied.
“I bet you have.” Then he turned his body so he could look right at me, his gaze sweeping over my face like he was trying to take all of me in. “But you have a lot of your dad in you too.”
Tears pricked at the back of my eyes, but I didn’t know why. These were people I’d never known, and even though I’d always dreamed of meeting them and wondered what they’d really been like, I already had parents. Good parents.
Still, if Jon and Hadley hadn’t died, so much would have been different. And when I thought about it, about how they’d been killed on the way here when they could have stayed in Colorado and been safe, I realized for the first time that Star was to blame for their death too. If they’d refused to come here, if they had run off with Angus instead of bringing him to Atlanta, things would have been different for all of us.
Then again, if that had happened, we never would have found out about the failsafe. Maybe all of this, every horrible, awful thing Angus and the rest of my family had been through, was fate.
Chapter Twelve
Meg
We only stayed out for about an hour, long enough to take a few more zombies down and for me to get a couple pointers from Jada about how to use my height to my advantage. Target practice would be next, although we could do that inside the gate and it wasn’t necessarily something I needed help on. I was a good shot. I wasn’t sure if any of it would help me if I had to go up against Jackson, but at least now I felt a little more capable than I had before.
“Was it as bad as you thought it would be?” Luke asked as we crossed the street and headed for the gate.
“No.” I hadn’t given it much thought until now, but thinking back on it, my time outside the wall hadn’t been anything like I’d expected. “I think I built it up to be scarier than it needed to be.”
“Don’t drop your guard based on what went on out there today,” Jim said. “Sure, most days are like this one, an occasional zombie that isn’t very difficult to wrangle, but there are still hordes. You can get into trouble fast out there if you aren’t paying attention.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said even though I had no real intention of ever doing what these three did. Not to mention the fact that if we were successful in our mission, the people at my side may very soon be out of a job.
We were less than ten feet from the gate when the sound of an engine made me turn. An old faded green truck that was so rusty it didn’t look like it should be able to drive was coming down the road fast. The sun was shining on the windshield, making it impossible to get a look at the driver, but the expression on Jim’s face told me he knew who it was, and when Jada started jogging toward the gate, it reinforced that impression. Seconds later, Jim took off after her.
“Why do you think they’re here?” she called as they ran side by side.
“No good reason,” he replied. “They weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.”
The truck sped by us, but it was moving too fast for me to get a look inside. The gate was already open for us, giving the truck an opportunity to drive right in. Jim and Jada obviously knew who it was, which meant that the gate guards probably did as well, so no one bothered to stop them.
The truck screeched to a stop at the end of the road and within seconds it was surrounded by people who had hurried out to see if they could help. Jada had sta
rted running full speed, as had Jim, and when Luke picked up the pace I followed his lead. I didn’t know what I was running toward, but I knew the others wouldn’t be running if this was nothing.
“What is it?” I yelled as I ran alongside Luke.
He shook his head but I barely saw it because my gaze was trained on the vehicle in the distance. Someone climbed out of the passenger’s side, but the door prevented me from getting a good look at them. Then the driver stepped out and the dark skin of the man forced my legs to move faster. It was Dragon. It had to be. A sense of foreboding came over me, but I didn’t know why until he dragged a barely conscious man out of the cab, and then I knew.
“Donaghy,” I gasped.
Jim reached Dragon and together they worked to help Donaghy across the lawn toward the houses. Every single person who had been outside when they’d pulled up seemed to have frozen in place, and people stood watching as the group made their way across the settlement. The closer I got to them, the heavier my body began to feel and the harder it got to catch my breath. I could now tell that Donaghy was conscious, but he was shaking for some reason and barely able to lift his legs. What had happened? He didn’t look hurt other than a couple bruises, but his skin seemed impossibly pale. I tried to tell myself I was only comparing him to the men on either side of him, Dragon who had skin the color of chocolate and Jim who spent his days out in the Georgia sun, but I knew that wasn’t it, and the reason behind Donaghy’s lack of color terrified me.
Jackson. Another shudder shook my body as I ran up behind them.
“What happened?” I called, barely recognizing my own voice thanks to the tremor in it.
“Angus!” Dragon’s voice bellowed through the settlement.
Helen left the men and ran to my side as if she knew I was going to need comfort. “It’s going to be okay. There’s time.”
I shook my head as my steps faltered, trying to move away from her outstretched hands. “No. No.”
Helen reached for me, but I ignored her and watched as Donaghy was pulled up the steps. I snapped out of it and ran after them, as did a handful of other people I couldn’t identify at the moment. I had tunnel vision and all I could focus on was Donaghy, on taking in every inch of him, trying to determine where he was hurt, hoping to convince myself that it wasn’t true.
Twisted World Series Box Set | Books 1-3 & Novella Page 81