by Rosaria, A.
His cold eyes bore into her as each word slapped her. Did he really think like that about her? This man, an employee of those who doomed earth? For whatever selfish goals they had? And tried to cover it up under the guise of fixing the problem? They who killed her family and friends? And he dared call her a shallow bitch? Him? She did nothing to deserve this. Fuck him. To think she softened up to him. For what? For this? For his disgust?
She tore from his gaze and stood up.
Geon said, “Open the damn door and get this over with.”
As Sarah opened the door, a weeping Priss flew into her arms. “It’s been hours. Where have you been? I thought something bad happened to you.”
With reluctance, Sarah freed herself from the embrace. “I’m okay.” She looked around. “Where is Vance?”
Priss drew back her flushed face. “He wanted to explore. I didn’t want to. The door was locked. And… I begged him not to…” Priss sobbed. “He got angry at me and went outside. He forgot to bar the exit, and it shut behind him.”
Sarah couldn’t remember Vance barring the entrance. Sneaky bastard must have done it while no one watched. He shouldn’t have been able to get outside. “Great,” Sarah said. “We’ll deal with him later.”
“It’s dark outside, it isn’t safe.”
“After I take care of this.” Sarah pointed at the two wrapped-up corpses at her feet. “I’ll look for him.”
Only then Priss noticed the corpses. She wrinkled her nose when the stench registered. “Who are they?”
“We have to bury them.”
Priss noticed Geon. “You’re sad. You know them?”
Sarah stopped Priss from uncovering the body nearest to her. “It’s his wife and daughter,” she whispered.
“Oh, Geon, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” Priss frowned as she remembered something. “Sarah, you told me Geon said he didn’t know of any nearby shelter.”
“This is not the time, Priss.”
Priss looked from her to Geon and the two corpses wrapped in bedsheets. “Yeah, but we must discuss this soon, in private.”
They moved the corpses outside. Geon barred the door with a heavy stone, preventing it from sliding shut. This way they could enter and exit without him having to use the keycard each time. Geon went inside to get a shovel. Sarah felt Priss scrutinize her. With each second the silence between them went on, she felt her shoulders tense more. Sarah realized she couldn’t keep this up. “Say it.”
“You lied to me.”
“I’m sorry, I had to.”
“Why!”
“Because of Vance, because he would’ve objected and gotten in the way.”
Priss grabbed Sarah’s coat and pulled her closer. “Look at me.”
Sarah did. Priss’s eyes trembled. “What if I objected?”
“I… you… wouldn—”
“You mean it never crossed your mind I would disagree with your crazy plan to use us as bait?”
“Wait, you knew?”
Priss pushed her shoulder. “Of course I did, but I wanted to trust you. I am such a fool. You’re just so…”
“I’m so what?”
“Never mind.”
“No, enlighten me.”
“So easy to read. You think you know what is best for everyone else. You make shitty decisions about others, or put yourself in danger and expect us to accept that. Jeez, Sarah, I gave everything up to go along with you, because I believed you were my friend, but you treat me like someone you need to baby around and use whenever you fancy.”
Sarah recoiled. “I’m sorry, you are my friend. My only friend.”
“But are you my friend?”
“I am. I lied. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“How many times now did you promise me you wouldn’t?”
Sarah grabbed Priss’s wrist, preventing her from leaving. “I’ll do anything you ask if you forgive me.”
Priss yanked herself free. “Bring Vance back. And you will accept him for real and stop bitching about him every time.”
“But he is—”
Sarah raised her hands to ward off Priss’s pointing finger. “You want to say he is not good for me? Allow me to make my own mistakes.”
Sarah kept silent, not sure what to say. She disliked Vance. Something was wrong with him. It was a lot to ask to completely lay off of him.
“Fine,” Priss said, “you don’t want to, be like that. Leave me alone.”
Sarah felt tears well behind her eyes. Priss was wrong about her. She felt her gut wrench. Or was she? She watched Priss leave.
“Priscilla, stop. I’ll find him and I’ll behave.” Sarah wiped the tears away and went after Priss. “Please, I love you.”
At that, Priss stopped, eyes large in shock. “You do?"
Sarah nodded. “Maybe I don’t deserve your friendship. Maybe I’m too messed up to be the friend you need. But if you want him, and it’s really what you want, I’ll accept him for reals.”
Priss relaxed. “No more lies?”
Sarah nodded. “No more lies.”
“For real this time?”
Sarah nodded again.
“Good. And you love me?” Priss said with a smile.
To show her love, Sarah pecked a small kiss on her lips. Priss, caught by surprise, blushed, as did Sarah. What the heck did she do that for? Again. She loved her. As a friend. Sarah was glad when Geon returned with two shovels. He roughly pressed one into her hands, giving her an out from awkward thoughts.
Priss grabbed the shovel from her. The blush was still on her cheeks as she said, unsure about herself, “Go find Vance.”
Geon looked at them dubiously. Sarah shook her head and went inside to gear up. She left Priss and Geon digging a grave near the burned SUV, wondering why Geon chose the spot where he butchered their killers. Was it because he felt he murdered his own family by leaving them to their fate? Who knew what thoughts went through the madman. Sarah wondered if the nutcase she met almost a week ago was the crazy one. Not her problem now. She was on a mission to return another liability to her life. Her fault for being an idiot and lying to Priss. Maybe she herself was the real nutcase? It wouldn’t surprise her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sarah reached the tunnel without finding a trace of Vance. She walked over to the half-burned wight’s corpse and kicked it. Guess no miraculous standing back up from the dead for this one. She flipped on the flashlight attached on her P90 and entered the tunnel. The bodies were where she left them, these ones burned to a crisp. Good to know those things were killable and stayed dead.
She swayed the flashlight, looking for a sign. No one else was inside. She crossed to the other side and followed down the path, wondering what had gotten into Vance to leave the shelter in the middle of the night. She would rather be back inside the compound. With some effort, they could transform the place into the perfect permanent shelter. Totally worth the danger and hard work to clear the place. It was secluded, and the four of them could last a few lifetimes sheltered inside. Enough time to learn to live with the fool.
Fifteen minutes later, she stopped to peek over the ridge into the distance. All along the horizon, the first sunrays of the new day stabbed the sky red. Transfixed, Sarah watched as the night changed into the day. The beauty of it all and how she wished it washed away all the night’s horrors. From within she felt at peace with the idea that even when humanity retired from existence, this would continue for a long time after. As the sunrays spread and the land in front of her became visible, she observed the beauty and the ruin. The zombie horde was at the mountain base. As far as the horizon reached, a sea of death stretched. All with a single purpose: to walk and eat and change into beings both beautiful and monstrous. Dead but not dead. Was there even a point in going on? Eventually, death would claim her, and the passing of time would destroy these creatures.
Sarah perked up, cocked her head, and concentrated. Several voices came from down the road. She hurried away from the ri
dge back to the mountain wall and found cover behind a large rock sticking out. Two men and Vance talked with each other. She could hear them, but not what they were saying. It could turn ugly if they had captured Vance. Sarah didn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut. She inched out from cover, holding her P90 aimed at the men. The men halted when they spotted her. The two strangers following behind Vance held their rifles pointed down. Vance raised his hands. “This isn’t what it seems.”
Sarah motioned with her gun for him to get down. Vance shifted his head a little sideway, frowning. She motioned again. He dropped to the ground. Her mouth felt dry, but she had made a promise to Priss to return Vance back to her. Sarah squeezed the trigger. The P90 coughed out three bullets. The impact threw back the head of the man to her right. He dropped to the ground, half his face missing. The other man fumbled to raise his rifle. Sarah shot again, and the man fell to his knees clasping his throat, blood pulsing out between his fingers. Sarah stepped up to him, her hands trembling, and shot again, blasting his face to a cratered mush.
She stood for a while, trying to regain control of herself. What kind of monster was she turning into? She pulled back. Vance was still on the ground, covering his head with his hands.
“Are you all right?”
Panic coursed through his eyes.
“You okay?”
He nodded and stood up. He gawked at the bodies and gasped. “What have you done?”
“I saved your ass, that is what I’ve done.”
“You… you… bitch. You don’t go about shooting people like that.”
Sarah trailed her gun on him. “Are you saying you were leading them to our shelter?”
“No! I just…” Vance sighed. “Well, yeah, they forced me to. Please don’t tell Priss, okay?”
Sarah smiled. Something in her smile must have upset Vance, for his face morphed into a worried frown. She grinned. She didn’t feel at all that good. She killed two people without giving them a chance, and she didn’t feel like she was supposed to feel about that.
“We need to hurry. Priss is waiting for your sorry ass.”
Vance carried the two rifles and ammo they took from the men. Sarah followed behind him, not trusting him with her back. Vance kept glancing over his shoulder at her, an increasingly worried look crossing his face.
“I didn’t want to tell them about us.” He glanced back, sweating. “They would have killed me if I didn’t talk. Jeez, Sarah… I… I needed to…” He threw his hands in the air.
They reached the tunnel. The darkness inside didn’t prevent Vance from blabbing. He kept on going about how little choice they left him, how they tortured him, threatened to kill him, forced him to divulge their hideout. Sarah kept silent. Vance took a wide berth around the wight’s corpse. Sarah stepped over it. They exited the tunnel to the sight of the dissolving corpse of the wight Priss killed last night. The sun burned them up good.
Sarah cuffed the back of Vance’s head. He stopped in the middle of pleading his innocence for snitching on them. “That story about a wight walking in daylight, you were bullshitting about that, weren’t you?”
Vance shuddered. “No, I didn’t. Not about that.”
“Come on, see how the sun bites into that one. No way one could walk outside under the sun for long.”
“What do you want me to say? You want me to beg so you believe I’m innocent?”
“I didn’t ask about that. I want to know about the story you told us. Is it true?”
He glanced back at her, his eyes blinking with the sweat in them. “The guy raved about it, delirious with pain when… when I cauterized his arm. He couldn’t stop blathering about it, not believing he survived that shit and to be… well, he didn’t live long after.”
Sarah didn’t know what to think about that. Hearsay, and a flimsy one at that, from someone dying in pain. Al the wights she encountered burned under the sun.
“And the bullshit about a talking wight?”
“Yeah, that seems far-fetched, doesn’t it?”
“Totally.”
Vance sighed. “I messed up. I got scared and told them about the place. Please, don’t tell Priss, and not him. He scares me.”
Sarah eyed him for a long time.
Vance shuddered. “Your eyes are just like his. Don’t do it for me, do it for Prissy.”
Sarah cringed upon hearing Vance calling Priss that way. Like she was his little thing to play with. The right thing to do was to tell Priss everything. The only thing holding her back was the promise she made Priss to tolerate Vance. To at least not get between Priss and him. She owed her that promise, but she also promised not to keep anything back from her.
“Okay. I won’t, as long she doesn’t ask me about it.”
Vance flashed her his big white teeth. “Thank you, thank you so very much, you won’t be sorry.”
Sarah already felt sorry. “I will if she asks. Save your thanks for when she doesn’t. You better tell a good story so she doesn’t feel the need to ask me shit.”
Her words erased his smile. Vance nodded once and continued on the road. The way back they kept silent. They found Geon and Priss still digging the hole. Priss screamed in delight when she noticed them. Like a nimble monkey, she crawled out. Vance dropped the rifles and caught her as she flew into his arms, kissing him. “Never leave me again like that.”
Done kissing him, she hugged Sarah, and it was Sarah’s turn to receive kisses. Priss held her hands and looked up with shining eyes. “I knew you would come back with him.”
Priss pecked Sarah’s lip and beamed at her with a kind of happiness Sarah witnessed for the first time in her. She hoped that this would keep the girl from asking too many questions.
“Where did you find him?”
“She found me on my way up,” Vance said.
Priss frowned. “Did I hear shots fired?”
Vance grinned and draped his arm around Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah stiffened under his sweaty arm. She hid her revulsion from Priss. “She saved me from two guys who ambushed me.”
“Did you?” Priss asked Sarah.
Sarah nodded. “Something like that.”
Priss kissed her cheeks and hugged Vance. “I’m so glad you did.”
For once, so was she. Not because of Vance, but seeing Priss like this, it lightened everything around her in a good way. Maybe Vance wasn’t so bad to have around if it meant Priss would have hope in her life. Priss grabbed Vance’s hand and led him back to the compound. The two became lost in themselves and oblivious of their surroundings. Sarah shook her head. She lost Priss to him. Nothing she could do or say to change that.
Her eyes fell on Geon, who was still digging, not having paid them any attention. And why should he? His family was still dead and needed burial. Sarah jumped into the three-foot hole and grabbed the shovel Priss left behind. Without a word to the man next to her, she started digging.
Shoveling the earth and seeing the grave grow deeper relaxed her mind. A moment to be alone. Sure, Geon stood shoulder to shoulder with her, also lost in his own world. Him in his sad existence and she for once clear minded. She wondered if, when it was her turn, someone would dig a grave for her, or would she end up shambling around the Earth till there was no Earth to walk on?
“Done,” Geon said in a raspy, dry voice.
Sarah climbed out the hole. He lay the bodies in their grave. Isabella first and Lisa on top of her mother. He did it with a gentleness you would not expect from him. Finished, he climbed back out to stand next to her. Tears rolled down his cheeks while he watched the bodies.
“You want to say a prayer?”
“We were not religious.”
He stuck the shovel in the mound of earth. “There can’t be a god in a world like this.” He scooped up dirt and threw it into the grave. Sarah waited for him to cover the corpses in a layer before joining in. It brought her back to the day she buried her own family. She choked at the thought and fought against the tears. It wouldn’t be right to
cry now. This was not her moment to do so. She wiped her eyes and kept shoveling.
Throwing the last bit of dirt on the grave, Geon faced her. “Thank you, Sarah.” He squeezed her shoulder and left. She waited for him to enter the compound, fell on her knees, and sobbed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sarah sat on a bed in a small room. The only other furniture in the room was a clothing cabinet and a desk. Her eyes went to a picture frame hanging on the wall of a tall, thin man with glasses standing next to a large, shaggy dog. In front of her lay a few gathered chemistry books and a stack of comics she found in the room. She lay the comics aside to read later.
Sarah chuckled. She must be crazy for wanting to read comics about a cop waking up from a coma in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, while she herself was living in one. She leafed through the comic and put it aside again. No matter how gruesome fantasy was, it paled in compared to the real horror she experienced.
Geon had unlocked this room for her, and a larger one for Priss and Vance. He gave each a keycard with their own biometrics attached to them. He applied the clearance that came with his title of chief security to make accounts for them in the system. With the click of a mouse, they became employees of SPACE, according to the compound. Geon also restored the power over the whole facility. All it needed was a flip of a switch. An underground automated nuclear facility provided the energy, guaranteed to run at least for fifty years—technology humanity would not come close to recreating for centuries, if ever.
Vance and Priss had returned with the last sunrays from an outdoor romantic stroll. From the way they sauntered glued together, Sarah assumed they’d been having sex all day long. They most likely were still doing so in their own room. She needed to accept that Priss was her own person and wanted to make her own mistakes. Those two behaved like newlyweds without a care in their life. It didn’t help when Geon gave them a corporate room with its own shower. Sarah smelled her shirt. How she wished for her own shower.
Sarah went two floors down to the mess hall. She made her way behind the counter to the kitchen. A large twin door blocked the way to the freezer. The fridge was still stocked with meat. The emergency power relay that had powered the labs also powered the building-sized freezer unit.