Abby’s hopes for surviving this trial fell as quickly as the fire grew. Thick, black smoke billowed up around the ceiling, choking Abby. She rocked the chair from left to right, eventually getting enough momentum to toss herself down onto her side, down on the floor where it was easier to breathe. The people outside laughed at her, reveling in her distress.
A few more minutes passed, and the fire began to grow in intensity. A ring of fire surrounded Abby, and she was fairly certain that the upstairs was also on fire. The smoke stung her eyes, even as she lay on the floor. Over the roars of the flames and the shouting of the people outside, Abby could also hear groaning from the walls. The structural integrity of the old house weakened by the minute, and Abby feared that she would be crushed and burned and suffocated all at once.
The ring of fire around Abby was contracting steadily, inching its way towards her. Her body was slick with sweat, soaking through her clothes, and she could hardly breathe as the black smoke sent a river of tears running down her cheeks. Abby began to panic now. What the hell kind of opportunity was she supposed to be waiting for? When her corpse became so charred that it just broke into ashes and slipped through the ropes? Abby began to work her wrists free of the ropes binding them. Isaiah would have her shot the instant he noticed her trying to escape, but Abby was not about to lay down and die like this, tied to a chair in a burning house.
Through the crackling of the fire, the jeers of the townspeople, and her own hoarse coughing, Abby suddenly heard a familiar sound, the sounds of the undead. Several loud and high-pitched shrieks pierced the frosty winter air.
“Demons!” somebody yelled, and everyone broke off into small groups, running in different directions. Abby could hear Isaiah shout instructions to his people, but she did not bother listening. She had already slipped her wrists through the restraints and untied her legs.
It took only seconds for Abby to free herself. She grabbed the chair and set it up near the flames that surrounded her, then used it as a platform to jump over the fire. She sprinted for the back door and burst outside into the cold, snowy morning, coughing and hacking as she sucked in fresh air.
Over to her right, about a hundred meters away, she saw a small pack of zombies. She counted ten or eleven, which was still a dangerous number of those things, but nothing the townspeople couldn’t handle in short order. Abby knew she had to escape quickly.
But before Abby could head towards Nina’s home, she heard someone running along the other side of the burning building. She whirled around and prepared to ambush whoever was coming her way, but it was Emma, carrying a backpack on her shoulders and Abby’s ruck and rifle in her hands.
“Come on, kid!” she said, thrusting Abby’s ruck into her arms and running away from the zombies.
Abby was still coughing as she stumbled along behind Emma, blindly following her past several houses and small buildings. Emma shouted at Abby to hurry up once or twice, threatening to just leave her behind. Abby figured it was bluster, but thought it wise to not test Emma’s pragmatism.
Once they were a few minutes out of town, Emma pointed to the first house that they came across and said, “In here. This will only take a minute.”
Abby followed Emma without any questions, seeing how Emma clearly had a plan in place. Once inside, Emma unslung her backpack and, after rummaging through it for a moment, produced a balled-up pile of clothes. She handed these to Abby and said, “Go on and change into these. You’ll freeze to death in that sweaty shit you have on. These are my clothes, so they should be pretty close to your size.”
Abby took the clothes, which included pants, a shirt, undergarments, and some socks, and went into the nearby bathroom, closing the door behind her. Emma chuckled and said, “You know you don’t have anything that I don’t have, right?”
“Just because the world is fucked doesn’t mean I can’t get a modicum of privacy now and then,” Abby retorted from behind the closed door. “How did you know that there’d be a zombie attack, anyway?”
“I’ve been tracking zombies ever since The Crisis. Figured it would be useful information,” Emma replied. “Every time I go out, I look for them. They usually travel in small clusters, rarely alone, and sometimes in larger hordes. I mark their position on a map, write down the time and date, and try to identify what they’re wearing or other distinguishing features, so I can be sure when I see the same cluster again and give them a name.”
“Anyway, when everyone was getting ready to skin you alive, I remembered seeing the Foxtrot cluster the other day a lot closer to town than they normally are. Going off of my map, I figured they’d be practically within earshot of town by this morning. And I know Isaiah, and a trial by fire has always been a favorite of his, which is why I suggested it. I figured that if the zombies were nearby, they’d see the smoke and come running. Luckily for you, they did. They were almost too fast, though As soon as the trial began, I left to get your stuff and mine, but I barely made it back to you before everything went to shit.”
“So it sounds like there was a good chance your plan would have resulted in me just burning to death,” Abby said in a dry tone as she finished changing clothes.
“Yup. But that was your only hope, kid. I wasn’t about to get myself killed for you.”
Abby came out of the bathroom now, changed into Emma’s clothes. She stuffed her old clothes into her ruck and said, “Gee, thanks for caring.”
“What do you expect?” Emma asked, shrugging her shoulders. “That after knowing you for a whole twelve hours I’d be willing to die just to give you a long shot at escaping?”
Abby shook her head, but said nothing. Zach had been willing to die for Abby before even meeting her, but he was cut from a different cloth.
“I’m just being honest, Abby,” Emma said. “I’m a survivor, and I go with whoever I think will give me the best chance of surviving. I had to get away from that freakshow back there, but I didn’t have any friends that I could count on.”
“What about Nina and the others?”
“Acquaintances. I never really cared for them. But you’re different. I can see it in your eyes.”
“So we’re partners, but not friends?” Abby asked as she and Emma both stood up and prepared to leave.
“For now, yes,” Emma replied. She handed Abby her KA-BAR and pistol and said, “I think I like you. You remind me of… myself. I figure we’ll make a good team.”
Emma then led the way back outside, holding the door open for Abby. “And maybe,” Emma said, “we’ll become good friends too.”
Abby allowed herself a faint smile, which Emma returned in kind.
***
They followed the road west out of town for several minutes, but eventually decided to head off through the fields. Emma suspected that they would be followed, probably by the town’s truck, and she hoped that the heavy snow and rough terrain would be too much for even an old Ford F-350 to follow. They kept up a rapid pace and only stopped twice to eat a little bit of food that Emma brought.
It wasn’t until the sun began to set and the temperature fell that Abby and Emma started to look for shelter for the night. Actually, a more accurate statement would be that they picked the very next intact building they saw. It was cold and windy, and they wanted to get out of the horrible snow. They came across an old, tiny gas station with a Texaco sign outside, and this seemed like a suitable place to spend the night. After a quick scoping out of the area, the two young women went inside.
Before they lost all their daylight for the night, the pair scavenged through the old building. It was small, and built like an old timey American gas station, so they were not expecting to find anything useful.
“Hey, check this out,” Emma said. She held an old gas lantern, the type you might have seen in old pictures of miners. Emma set the lamp on the floor and pulled a sleeve of matches out of a pocket inside her coat. She struck one and used it to light up the lamp, projecting a soft, yellow glow into the gas station’s dar
k interior.
“I wonder how long this will last,” Abby said as she sat down next to the lamp.
“Doesn’t really matter,” Emma replied.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, just watching the tiny, flickering tongue of flame as it danced around inside the lamp. Outside, the sun sunk below the horizon and the wind whipped across the plains, making the walls of the gas station shutter and creak.
Abby was reminded of the cold winters back in Illinois, when she and Zach were still hoping to wait out The Crisis in their cabin, afraid to take their chances on the road. Would that they had never left, then perhaps she would not have gotten Zach killed.
“So what’s your story?” Abby said, wanting to dispel these unwelcome memories.
Emma looked over at Abby and said, “You first.”
“Okay,” Abby replied, sitting up straighter. “I’m not really from anywhere specifically. I was born in Texas, but my mom and I never stayed anywhere for more than a couple years.”
“I figured you’d be from Texas. You have a little accent still.”
“I eventually ended up in Chicago, not long before the outbreaks. I didn’t get out with everyone else, so I was pretty much trapped there for most of the last three years.”
“So you were, what, sixteen when it all started?”
“Twelve.”
Emma cocked her head to the side in confusion. “I thought you said you were nineteen.”
Abby shrugged and said, “I lied. I figured y’all would take me more seriously if you thought I was older.”
“So you’re only fifteen years old? How the hell have you made it so far?”
“I’ve had help,” Abby replied.
The matter-of-fact tone in her voice made it clear to Emma that she was not going into any more detail about this, so she didn’t press for more answers. “I was in college, in St. Louis,” Emma said. “It was the start of my last year, and I already had the next ten years of my life all planned: finish up college, go to law school, move to New York City, and become a bad-ass attorney.”
“I imagine a whole lot of people had their plans ruined,” Abby said.
Emma nodded her head and said, “Yeah. As soon as I heard about what happened in Chicago, I got the hell out of Dodge and headed west.”
“What made you stop here?”
“A good friend of mine. Debbie,” Emma said, her voice just above a whisper. “I loved that girl, but she was just so goddamn weak. The smallest thing could make her cry hysterically, so you can imagine how she was when the news showed New York, Chicago, and D.C. being overrun by zombies.”
“She didn’t take it well?” Abby asked.
“That’s putting it nicely. Once I convinced her to leave with me, I had to hold her hand wherever we went. The first settlement we came to was Isaiah’s, and I hated it from the first moment. But Debbie, she just wanted someplace to stay. She needed some kind of safe haven.”
Emma paused to shake her head. “She was such a fucking child,” she said. “She literally sat down on the ground and refused to move. I couldn’t just leave her alone, so I stayed with her. Things weren’t so bad for the first year or so, but one morning I woke up to find Debbie gone.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know. It was so sudden. Nothing had been unusual the night before: we ate, we went to bed, and we fell asleep. But when I woke up, she was just gone. I followed her tracks for a while, but I eventually lost the trail. I searched for days, but never found her.”
Abby paused, and then asked, “So why did you stay?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Emma said as she fidgeted with the zipper of her coat.
Abby was surprised that Emma was so forthcoming about her past and how she’d lost a loved one. She didn’t think that she could ever talk so candidly about the way she had lost Zach.
They both continued to stare at the tiny flame inside the lantern, feeling just a smidgen of warmth from it as silence stretched between them.
“So who was your celebrity crush?” Emma asked after a few minutes.
“What?” Abby replied.
“I’m tired of always having serious talks. So let’s talk about something pointless,” Emma said.
Abby smirked and shook her head. “Well, I always kinda had a crush on Orlando Bloom.”
“I was in love with Chris Evans. You know, Captain America? God, that was a good looking man.”
“Yeah, I remember him. Definitely a handsome guy.”
“Scarlett Johansen, too. Whenever those two were in the same movie, I could barely stand it. They were both just so gorgeous.”
Abby chuckled and said, “Yeah, they were.”
“Man, I miss watching movies.”
“I miss my books. I used to have a lot of books, even after The Crisis.”
“So you had a place to stay for a while?”
“Yup.”
“Sometimes that can be the most important thing in your life, just having a place you can call your home.”
“Sometimes you don’t have anything else.”
The conversation died off again without reaching any real conclusion. Both Abby and Emma figured that this was probably the best way to get comfortable with each other: short, concise conversations with pauses in between.
“Well,” Emma said after a few minutes, “I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to go to sleep.”
“Okay,” Abby replied. “I’ll probably be up for a little while longer.”
“Not gonna run off and leave me on my own, are ya?” Emma said as she opened up her backpack and pulled out a tightly packed space blanket.
“No, but I might slit your throat,” Abby replied. Emma laughed at the dark joke, and Abby did too.
“You’ve got a fucked up sense of humor, kid,” Emma said.
“Yeah, I know,” Abby replied.
“Don’t stay up too late. I want to get an early start tomorrow,” Emma said. She then laid down on her side as she covered herself with her blanket and rested her head on her backpack. “Wake me up when you’re ready to go to sleep, and you can share this blanket with me,” she said.
“Sounds good,” Abby said. She then leaned in towards the lantern, lifted up the glass, and blew out the flame, enshrouding the interior of the gas station in a cold darkness.
Abby hugged her knees against her chest and leaned back against the counter behind her. She felt far too restless to sleep just yet, and she wanted some time to be alone with her thoughts and emotions. She had gone over a month without anyone trying to kill her, and in just the last three days, she had almost died twice. Fighting off bad guys and lunatics was hard, Abby realized. She had known that, of course, but she hadn’t actually known that. Zach had always made it look so easy.
“Was it this hard for you?” Abby thought. “Did you ever feel like you were in way over your head? How did you handle all this pressure?”
She just wanted some guidance, but none came. And why would it? If Abby wanted guidance in her life, she shouldn’t have killed Zach, she thought.
Chapter Six
Abby woke Emma up almost two hours later, but it wasn’t to go to sleep. She covered Emma’s mouth with her hand and gently shook her. Emma’s eyes snapped open in momentary fear, but she relaxed when she saw Abby point towards the front door. Disturbing the snowy silence of the night, the sound of a running engine reached their ears, and it was slowly getting louder.
Emma sat up and stuffed her blanket into her backpack as Abby rechecked her pistol, ensuring there was a round in the chamber, and they both moved up to the closest window. They looked down the road, in the direction they had come from earlier that day, and saw a pair of faint yellow headlights facing them.
“Fuck,” Emma muttered.
“Is that them?” Abby asked.
“It’s gotta be. Be careful, Isaiah probably sent Ted and Gary after us.”
“Are they dangerous?”
Emma nodded her head i
n reply as she watched the truck, praying that whoever was driving it wouldn’t notice the footprints out in the field and just keep going. But it pulled to a stop right outside the gas station, its headlights faintly illuminating the interior of the old building.
Abby and Emma crouched down and moved towards the back to hide, splitting off towards opposite corners as they did, but ensuring that they could still see each other. Emma was around the corner of the counter, out of view from the front door, and Abby crouched behind a magazine rack next to the wall of coolers.
The truck was idling outside for a minute before every door except the driver’s side door opened up and four men climbed out into the snowy night, each one armed with a rifle or shotgun. They had indeed seen Abby and Emma’s tracks leading into the gas station, so they approached the front door with caution.
“Emma!” the man in front yelled. “It’s Gary! We know you’re in there, and we know you’ve got some tricks up your sleeve, so let’s make this easy for everyone. Give us the girl, and we’ll leave you alone.”
Abby cast a worried glance over to Emma. She had made it very clear that she would do whatever it took to stay alive, and earlier she had not seemed too interested in whether Abby lived or not. Emma’s face betrayed no emotion, but she was clearly deep in thought. Slow and quiet, Abby drew her pistol, just in case Emma made the pragmatic choice, and flicked the safety off.
Emma heard this and looked up at Abby. She saw the pistol in her hand and noticed that it was angled slightly towards her, so she gave Abby a wry grin.
“Come on, Emma! This is your last chance!” Gary bellowed. “If I have to come in through this door, you ain’t gonna like what follows after!”
Emma still did not respond, so Gary gave a signal to Ted. The brother kicked the door in and brought his shotgun up to his shoulder, aiming straight ahead. But no one was there. He cautiously moved into the gas station, followed by Gary and two other men. Gary and one of the other men split off to the left, and Ted and the last man went to the right.
His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby Page 6