The storm was almost upon them. The sky was dark. Lightning crackled. Thunder crashed in a long, restless rolling peal that shook the ground beneath them. Another splattering of big rain drops hit the pavement and the roof of the bus garage.
Dek leaned forward until his face was only inches away from Eby‘s. “You’re only thinking about yourself,” he spat. “While I’m thinking about the group.” He swung a terrific blow towards Eby’s midsection. Eby’s breath left him in a prolonged, groaning gasp.
Dek stared down at his battered victim. Unbelievably, Eby was now muttering what sounded like prayers.
“If I nailed you up to that wall,” Dek jerked his head in the direction of the garage. “Where to you think your prayers would get you then?”
Suddenly the rain came pouring straight down in a hard downpour. Water fell over the ledge of the roof, all but drowning out Eby‘s words, drenching him till his bloody shirt was plastered to his body. “I’m sorry that you- ”
Dek stared dispassionately at Eby‘s battered face, washed clean now from the driving rain. “Naw, you’re not sorry,” Dek gritted. He looked up at the seething sky while rain rivulets ran down his own face. “There’s your god, bringing this storm down on us. Just like everything else he’s brought down on us.”
Lightning sizzled a searing path straight to the earth.
Eby muttered something about shelter. He coughed and blood spittle sprayed from his mouth.
Dek stared as he leaned down and taunted Eby. “You gotta realize, you brought this all on yourself.”
Eby whispered, “ . . . in our darkest hour . . . forgive . . . ”
“You want to talk about darkness? First you need to see what hell on earth looks like. Come on inside before you even think about forgiveness. Your prayers are about to turn into curses.”
Chapter 15
Aili fought down the panic as she stared at the blood staining the back of Bresh’s shirt. He was just standing there with his back to her. He was rigid. Unmoving. There was a dead lying on the ground near him, which also wasn’t moving.
God, she prayed. Don’t let it be Bresh’s blood. Don’t let him have been-
She heard a low groan. From Bresh. But he still didn’t turn around.
“Bresh?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Lord, that hurts,” he finally gritted.
“What happened?” she asked, so afraid of what his answer might be that she couldn’t move.
“Backed into a damned tree branch,” he said as he turned around.
“But you- you’re all right?” she asked breathlessly.
“I will be.”
She almost went limp as relief flooded her. But she’d had a moment, a breath-stealing moment when she thought he had been bitten or had turned.
“There’s so much blood. Are you sure that you- ” She couldn’t even say the words.
Bresh registered the look on her face and finally realized what she had been thinking.
“No,” he assured her. “He came out of nowhere and backed me into that tree.” He flexed his shoulders. “Feels like a spear went through my back.” He tilted his head to look down at the dead. Finally he said, “He was just a kid.”
“Is that a sign on him?” Aili asked as she stared down at the bright orange cap. “What does it say?”
“It says- ” Bresh had to stop for a few moments. “It says,” he went on in a quieter voice. “My name is Jacob Ashton Moore. Please put me to rest.”
Aili turned her face away. He had just been a kid. That could have been Elan. She pushed that thought away as quickly as it had come and looked at Bresh, who said, “We need to get to a safer place.”
A safer place was an abandoned camper parked next to a small pond.
Standing next to a fold-out table, Aili said, “Sit.
“Sit,” she repeated when he did not immediately obey her. She could see the pain in his dark blue eyes. The blood stain on the back of his shirt had been steadily growing all the way here.
“Take your shirt off.”
She was glad his back was to her, so he couldn’t see how badly her hands were shaking. These past few months had shown her how short life could be. How uncertain. But she never got used to close calls. She had had a bad moment when she realized just how devastating it would be for her if something really had happened to Bresh. She couldn’t imagine being out here all alone without him.
After she cleaned the blood away, she put pressure on the wound.
“So, have you ever had a spear actually go through your back?”
“A spear?”
“You said that branch felt like a spear.”
“No,” he answered. “That isn’t among the growing list of my experiences. Though give it time. We might be battling people with spears at some point. Sometimes we seem to be headed for a Stone Age existence.”
“They were probably more civilized than we think they were,” she murmured as she dabbed at the wound. “They must have had a lot of the same feelings and thoughts that we do.”
“Maybe.”
The sun was striking his dark hair which had grown out quite a bit. They never had time to think about things like haircuts, which were low on their list of priorities.
As Aili concentrated on stopping the oozing of blood, she was suddenly aware of other things. Like the familiar male scent of Bresh, which was something she found almost comforting now. There was the smooth curve of muscle that defined his incredibly sexy back. The warmth that radiated from his flesh drew her as well. Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she leaned a little closer, like a moth to a flame, resisting the urge to lay her cheek against the strength of his broad back. It was a dangerous and inexplicable yearning, but she had experienced this same thing more than once lately. It frightened her, sometimes, to realize just how strong the need to be close to him had become.
In a moment of madness she found herself imagining what his reaction would be if she were to give in to the growing fascination, though she knew that it was a completely unreasonable one, to lay her hands caressingly on his back and explore the hard muscles there. Or to slide her arms around-
She shook her head to dislodge the wayward thought. Whatever was going on, she could resist it. She would resist it. A zombie apocalypse was not the time to be thinking about sex. It might be natural to be attracted to Bresh who was so completely, and maybe unfairly, male, but giving in to that attraction would not only be incredibly stupid. It would be dangerous as well. Especially in this world.
“See that Chinese take-out place across the street?” Bresh asked two days later.
Lee’s Chinese was written in bright letters on one of the windows.
“Mm-hmm,” Aili murmured looking over his shoulder to see deads pressed up against the door and the glass windows. On one side of the Chinese restaurant was a shoe repair shop. On the other side was an insurance agency. Narrow alleys separated the three buildings.
“There’s something, or someone, in there,” Bresh told her.
“It’s probably someone who is looking for food,” she said. “Unless they’ve been hiding in there all this time.”
“If there is anyone in there, the deads can probably see them right through the glass. Whoever is inside, if there really is anyone, is trapped.”
“What about a back door?” she asked.
“No, I saw deads in the alley behind the building, too.”
“Maybe they can outwait them.”
“Not with some of those windows already half-way broken out. With that many deads, the windows won’t hold much longer. No, those deads are going to find their way in there pretty quick.”
Bresh was strategizing as usual, making his usual military calculations. “There are second- story windows in the alley,” he went on. “If whoever is in there can make it upstairs and then make it across to one of the other buildings- If- Yeah. They’re thinking.”
As they watched, a board dropped from a second-story window in the restaur
ant to a window in the shoe repair shop, making a bridge between the two buildings.
Aili held her breath as she watched an Asian man climb out onto the board, balancing precariously as he tested it. She herself didn’t know if the board was going to hold under the man’s weight. It was bowing badly. By now, the deads had spotted him and they were swarming into the alley between the two buildings, gathering right under the board. If the man should fall, he would have no chance of surviving at all.
They both watched the man crawl slowly along the board. It seemed to take him an eternity to get from one building to the other, but eventually he made it safely across. Right away, a second man, also Asian, followed him.
Aili put her hands to her mouth to cover her sudden gasp. “Oh, my God. They’re not going to try and cross that flimsy board with a baby, are they? Oh, I can’t look.”
She covered her eyes and turned away. She stayed that way until she heard Bresh say, with a fair amount of relief in his own voice, “They made it.”
It must have been a family because a young Asian boy started across the board next. Halfway across, he slipped and looked like he was going to go right over the side. He righted himself, but he looked terrified and clung to the board like he was frozen with fear. The other people in both buildings were waving and talking to him. Trying to calm him down and keep him going, Aili imagined.
Finally he did begin to crawl again, but Aili could see his shaking from where she stood.
An Asian woman wearing a baseball cap started out the window next. After she had safely crossed to the other building, no one else appeared.
“My bet is that they’re trying to make it to that van parked in the front of the shoe place,” Bresh said. The green van said Lee’s Chinese on the side of it.
“How with all those walkers surrounding it?” Aili wanted to know.
“We’ll draw them off,” Bresh said as he grabbed the door handle before him. And then with a quick “Stay here”, he opened the door and stepped out into the street.
“Bresh,” Aili ground out tensely with her hands clenched into tight fists against her mouth. “How can you talk about me taking chances?”
After the deads were re-focused on Bresh and they were heading straight for him, a group of people rushed out of the shoe repair shop. Bresh had been right. They ran straight to the van. Doors slammed shut and the engine started up.
Bresh was safely back inside by now. Looking out the window again, he said, “They should make it now.”
“What about us?” Aili asked as the van took off down the road. Deads were swarming outside their building now.
Almost immediately after the words had left her mouth, the van came back again and stopped in the middle of the street. The van’s motor revved up. The horn honked. People started yelling out the windows. The deads, drawn to the noise, turned around and headed for the van.
“What are they doing?”
Bresh grinned. “They’re returning the favor.”
The people in the van waved to Bresh. He waved back as the van slowly led the way out of town, like some kind of motorized pied piper, with the deads following like a zombie marching band.
“See?” Aili said behind Bresh’s back. “There are still decent people in the world.”
About five minutes later, the van came tearing down the street again. Tires squealed as it stopped in front of the building Aili and Bresh were in.
The young woman wearing the baseball cap was driving. Aili saw that it had the logo of the Chicago Bears emblazoned on it. She waved and called out, “Hey, you people want ride?”
As Eby’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw that there was a man, half-naked, who was tied to a wooden chair. His head was hanging so far forward that his chin was resting on his chest, but the signs of a brutal beating were plainly visible. He was dead or he was unconscious. Either way, he wasn’t moving.
“What is this?” Eby asked, also beaten, but shocked by what he was seeing. There were other bodies lying on tables in the deep shadows along the walls.
“This?” Dek said behind him. “This is my private interrogation, and experimentation, room.”
Dek was watching Eby closely, gauging his reaction, almost enjoying his look of horror.
“I can’t make good decisions without proper intelligence, can I?”
“This is what you’ve been hiding?”
“People aren’t always willing to tell me what I want to know. Here we do what we can to persuade them. And we have to know how the rotters react. We especially need to know how to kill them.”
“Is he- ” Eby swallowed, tasting his own blood. “Did you kill him?”
Dek walked over to the man in the chair, leaned over and looked at him more closely. “Well, so he is. Axton must have pushed him a little too far. But sometimes that happens.”
Dek watched dispassionately as the man’s head lifted. He had definitely turned.
“Watch this,” Dek said. “Since you’re so curious, I think you’re going to find this interesting.”
Chapter 16
The road had been long and monotonous, deserted by both the living and the dead. Hunter had never felt more alone in his life, more empty. He was eager to reach his destination, and yet he dreaded the end with every step. Life had become a brutal lesson in suffering and loss when the people you cared about were gone, usually with no warning, with only shadows of memories left behind. There were no funerals, no burials where you said goodbye. There was nothing left to hold onto.
He tried to tell himself that Dani was at peace now, just like Desah had said, but no matter how hard he tried, he found no consolation in the thought. The bitter truth that lay as heavy as a stone inside him was that he had not protected her from a violent, horrifying death. And no matter how much he wished he could change what had happened, he knew that there was no going back, and no undoing it. He felt raw inside. Hollow. Lost without her.
While grief clawed like a relentless demon at his soul, he saw the sign for the town up ahead: PLEASANT VALLEY WELCOMES YOU. With a heavier heart, he trudged on.
Another mile, maybe a little more, should put him at the house. He was bone weary but resting was not an option. Stopping meant letting the pain catch up with him. So he pushed onward.
He had found a surprising abundance of nourishment on the way. In unexpected places. At a small truck stop. In an abandoned vehicle. It was as if some invisible force was helping him along, guiding him when he had little will to see to his basic needs. There was only one thought in his brain. To reach Dani.
He found the grave right away. It was just where Desah had said it would be. Underneath the oak tree. It was unmarked. And forlorn-looking. The bare dirt was almost completely covered with fallen leaves.
There was no name. Not even a stone or a crude cross. There was just a faint indentation in the earth to tell that she had ever existed. It was a woefully inadequate testimony to a life. To the woman that he had loved. Still loved.
He hesitated for the space of several heart beats, then got down on his heels. He swallowed hard as he stared down at the sunken dirt, fighting the final breakdown that he knew would come, already feeling the tears that desperately wanted to come to the surface.
Desah had been right, too, about it being a hastily-dug grave. His mouth grew taut with bitterness. She had been wrapped in a sheet, Desah had told him. They didn’t even get the sheet completely buried. Hell, he thought fiercely. Dani deserved better than that.
It had rained last night and the dirt had settled smoothly around several small, muddy pools in the unforgiving clay soil. “Damn,” he ground out loud. “They barely covered her. She had deserved- ”
That’s when he noticed that something wasn’t right. His first thought was that wild animals had started to dig her up. Or maybe the undead. With a sick feeling in his belly, he reached down to cover her back up, like a parent might re-cover a sleeping child with a blanket. But as he looked closer at the disturbed dirt, he suc
ked in a breath in a shocked gasp.
He quickly shoved some of the dirt away. Then, on his knees, he frantically began to dig with his bare hands. He kept digging until he was clutching one thing only. An empty, dirt-stained sheet.
Bresh had left the bedroom window open. He always felt better that way. Less confined. Maybe he could hear better. Maybe it helped him be more alert. Aili was still sleeping peacefully in the big, king-sized bed. He was grateful for that. She needed to be resting as much as possible. How long had it been since they’d slept in an actual bed with warm blankets and clean sheets? Too long. How long had it been since they’d slept an entire night with no disruptions?
He went into the bathroom and picked up the can of deodorant setting on the pile of new clothes. He might need a haircut and maybe he looked a little rough around the edges, but there was no sense in smelling like a hog in a pen. He had clean, new boots that he looked forward to wearing, too. Nice soft, leather ones.
He shaved and then after getting dressed, he took a moment to assess himself in the mirror. Hell, how vain was he getting? Pretty damned vain, apparently, because he found himself wondering if Aili would approve of the new clothes he’d picked out. He even smiled to himself when he remembered that she had told him that he looked like some kind of dark hero that had stepped straight out of some surreal video game world.
Video game world.
Sometimes it did seem like they were living in one. They fought deads all the time in a world they could not even have imagined just a few months ago. They saw terrible, heart-rending things on a daily basis. Not everyone was strong enough to make it. They’d heard about a group who wrote their names and the names of the loved ones that they had lost on tiny slips of paper. They attached the names to balloons with little lights. Then they let the balloons go and waited for the deads to come and kill them, too.
Deadrise (Book 3): Savage Blood Page 15