Remy let out an undignified snort. “Are you sure? Because you two looked awfully cozy in the van on the way here.”
“Cozy?” she repeated incredulously. She angled her flashlight in the young woman’s direction, trying to read her expression. Remy put up her hand to block the light from her eyes. “We sat beside each other.” She climbed down the ladder, landing on the concrete floor with a thump of her boot heels, and started searching under the counters for something she could open the case with. “That’s hardly ‘awfully cozy.’”
“Well, you two move at the speed of snail,” Remy quipped. “So for you, that is getting cozy.”
Cade shook her head in exasperation. “I’m going to hardware to get a crowbar so I can pop the lock on this thing. When I come back, you better not still be trying to make something out of nothing, or I’ll use the crowbar on you instead of the case.”
* * *
Theo studied the mostly bare shelves in front of him, shining a flashlight over what few products remained. A sinking feeling that could only be described as despair settled into his stomach.
There wasn’t much left. Theo had managed to salvage a couple of crushed boxes of rolled gauze and some bandages, but there wasn’t any medical tape; he’d have to find a suitable substitute. He wondered if duct tape would work. Medications? Well, he could hang that idea right up. Only a few random, broken bottles remained. Theo contemplated the pharmacy itself, its metal sliding doors and shutters, and wondered just how hard it would be to get inside—and if the attempt was even worth it. a lot of drugs inside were probably expired, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about using expired medications. He supposed it was better than nothing, though; the only real consequence was a weakened potency on some of the drugs—which, in the worst-case scenario, could risk giving one of his companions a drug overdose if he tried to tweak the dosage too much.
The only thing he needed now was a couple of crowbars.
Gray came around the corner from the next aisle before Theo could pursue that line of thought, his arms full of red boxes. “We got lucky. A ton of elastic bandages, splints, and braces,” he announced, dropping the boxes into the cart beside Theo. “And there’s still some stomach and heartburn meds if you want me to get some.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Theo suggested. “And some multi-vitamins if there are any. I’m worried about us getting malnourished. No way we’re getting all the shit we need eating all that canned crap.” He put a few of the cracked bottles of sleeping pills and pain medications into the cart, careful not to spill the pills inside. “I’ll tell you what I could really use.”
“What’s that?” Gray asked, his voice tinged with curiosity.
“A fully equipped ambulance,” he said. “With a working EKG and everything.”
Gray snorted and added a few packages of air-activated heating pads to the cart. “Yeah, that’d be great. You expecting one of us to drop dead on you?”
Theo laughed and shook his head. “No, hopefully not anytime soon, you know? I don’t think I could handle losing you, too, not after…not after Dillon.”
Gray’s grinning face went somber at his words. He immediately felt guilty for ruining his brother’s apparent good mood, and he looked down at the painkillers in his hand for a moment before setting the bottle gently in the cart.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“For what?” Gray asked nonchalantly, a faked cheerfulness in his voice.
Theo shook his head and shrugged. “Nothing,” he said simply. “Hey, what do you say we go see if we can find some scissors? I think all of us could use a haircut.”
Gray looked at him and finally smiled again. “Some razors, too, yeah? I bet the ladies would appreciate that.”
Theo nodded and rubbed a hand over his cheek and chin. “Hell, I think I would appreciate it,” he admitted. “Two months of beard is enough for anybody. I’m starting to look like a hobo.”
Gray snorted and punched him lightly in the arm. “Theo, you always look like a hobo, beard or not.”
Theo punched him back and grabbed the shopping cart. “After the scissors, we’re breaking into the pharmacy. So lead the way, you silly little shit,” he ordered.
Gray smirked at him. “Fine, fine. But if you run over my heels just once with that cart, the infected are going to be the least of your worries.”
* * *
Nikola was obviously nervous as she and Avi worked their way to the back of the store, where the electronics department was. She stuck to Avi like glue, even though she didn’t really know her and knew even less about her fighting ability or lack thereof. Avi was concerned about her, but she decided to not comment on Nikola’s jitters as they walked through the aisles.
“Do you think maybe we should get a weapon or something?” Nikola asked. “Like a gun or a knife or whatever? I mean, I don’t think my little baseball bat is going to do much if we run into something in here.”
“Do you know where the hardware department is?” Avi asked.
“No.”
“Do you want to go track it down while I do what Ethan asked us to do?”
Nikola bit her lip and shook her head. “No, not really.”
“Then I think we’ll be okay until we get back outside,” Avi said, trying to be reassuring. She pulled her machete from its sheath on her belt and showed it to her. “Besides, I’ve got this. I think I can deal with one of the infected if it comes down to it.”
“Have you ever had to use it?” Nikola asked. She paused to look at a messy rack of CDs. Even Avi stopped to take a quick scan. The discs were spilling out everywhere, and she resisted the urge to browse through them for something good. They didn’t have space in the van for anything extra, especially not after they loaded their newly obtained supplies into the vehicle. Music definitely qualified as something extra.
“Not yet, but that’s a good thing, right?” she asked. She moved to another aisle and stopped at the end, squinting into the dimness and trying to make out what items were stocked there. Then she gave up and motioned to Nikola, waving a hand at the aisle in question. “Shine your light down here for me, would you?”
“I don’t know,” Nikola said thoughtfully as she did as she’d asked. “I mean, it’s sort of good that you’ve never had to actually use it. Means you’re really good at avoiding the infected. But I know some people who would say it’s kind of bad, too. Like Remy. She actually gets excited if she gets a chance to kill something. It’s kind of scary, really. Especially since she’s so good at it.”
“How many has she killed?” Avi asked.
Nikola shrugged. “Oh, loads. She practically hunts them down for sport.” She found the two-way radios Ethan had requested and pulled several packs of them off the shelf. “She told me that before the others found her, her entire family was killed by the infected.”
Avi frowned and took a couple of packages from Nikola. “Why didn’t they get her, too?”
Nikola tucked one of the packages under her arm. “She said she wasn’t home when it happened. And when she got there, she killed them all,” she explained. “Like, on her own. She was so angry and upset that she just…lost it. It was a miracle she didn’t get infected herself.” She sighed and shrugged. “So the story goes, anyway. I’m not sure how much of it I believe. After that, Remy said she took off and made it as far as Biloxi before she got trapped in an RV with a broken ankle and surrounded by a bunch of infected. She got rescued by Cade and Brandt and Theo, obviously. Normally, Ethan wouldn’t have let her stay with us—so he says—but I guess the fact she managed to kill so many infected on her own with only a bolo knife and a hunting rifle impressed him or something, because he let her stay. Ever since then, she’s been tracking down and killing as many as she can when she’s able to. I think it’s a revenge thing for her family. I keep telling her she needs to be more careful, but she never listens.”
“How old is she?” Avi asked. She kept her tone casual as she looked around the aisle, checki
ng for anything else that might be useful. The story of Remy and her one-woman war was a little unnerving. She hoped Remy was at least a little discriminating in her choice of whether or not to deal death; it wasn’t like the victims of the virus could truly help their actions.
“Twenty-one,” Nikola answered. She picked up a game console controller and studied the package. “Oh man, I miss video games,” she said wistfully, tossing the package back onto the shelf.
“And you’re…seventeen?” Avi guessed. She motioned for Nikola to leave the aisle, making a move to follow her.
“Fifteen,” Nikola corrected.
“Where are you from?”
Nikola raised an eyebrow. “Memphis. Are you interviewing me or something? Because I’m seriously not interested.”
“Not interviewing, no. I just want to get to know you guys better, that’s all,” Avi said. She stopped at a broken laptop display case and wondered what possessed people in a crisis to steal things with zero usefulness. “I mean, I need to know something about the people I’m traveling to Atlanta with, right?”
Nikola shrugged and wandered toward the end of the aisle. “Yeah, maybe so. I’m not exactly happy about going into that city, to be honest. Memphis was hell. I don’t want to imagine how much worse Atlanta is.”
Avi frowned, glancing back behind her as she thought she heard a noise. She shook it off when it didn’t repeat itself, attributing it to one of the others in the store. “Well, don’t you have somewhere else to go? I mean, like, with family or something?”
Nikola paused and looked up at her. “All of my family is dead,” she said softly. “Ethan…he’s the closest thing I’ve got to a father. I’m not letting him go anywhere without me. My luck would be that he’d never come back.”
Avi nodded in understanding, shifting her eyes away from the teenager. Her heart hurt for her, deeply. She couldn’t imagine being so young and so alone in the world. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“It’s okay,” Nikola said quickly. “I mean, it’s fine. You didn’t know.” She gave Avi a reassuring smile and stepped out into the main aisle running down the side of the electronics department. Avi turned to look down the aisle she stood on once more. But she was quickly brought back around at the sound of the young girl’s scream.
Chapter Eight
Remy plundered through a bin of camouflage jackets as she waited for Cade to return with the crowbar she’d gone looking for. She was honestly a little bored; supply missions really weren’t her thing. She much preferred the missions that involved tracking down a group of infected that was threatening to cross into whatever area she and her friends were hiding in and killing them all.
Cade returned after several minutes, holding a crowbar and several screwdrivers. “Ran into Theo and Gray in the hardware department,” she explained, an odd edge to her voice. “Ransacking hardware for crowbars. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on, though.” She circled the counter and continued, “We should go back by hardware before we leave and get some tools in case we end up breaking down or something.”
“Jumper cables,” Remy said thoughtfully. She leaned against the bin and watched Cade climb the stepladder behind the counter again. “Of course, that’s dependent on finding a vehicle that still runs to jump off on, but better to have them than not, right?”
Before Cade managed to ascend more than three rungs and before she could reply to her statement, a piercing scream erupted not far from their location. It echoed off the high ceiling and the concrete floors and spread out across the store. Both of them froze. Remy immediately dropped her hand to the long bolo knife she always kept with her.
“What was that?” Cade asked. She stepped off the ladder onto the countertop and walked along it in the direction the scream had come from. Her blue eyes narrowed as she squinted into the dim light cast over the back end of the store. Remy followed her gaze, but she couldn’t see anything in their immediate vicinity.
“Sounded like somebody screaming,” Remy said in a well duh tone of voice.
Another scream echoed out as soon as she stopped talking. Her breath caught in her throat as her ears and brain finally recognized exactly what she’d heard. “That was Nikki,” she said breathlessly. Cade leaped from the counter in alarm, stumbling as she landed, and Remy took the opportunity to snatch the crowbar from her grasp before taking off at a dead run toward the electronics department.
“Remy! Fuck, slow down!” Cade yelled. Remy didn’t bother looking back. She couldn’t slow down and wait for Cade. Nikola was in trouble. The teenager wouldn’t be able to fend off a direct attack for long, if at all.
Remy could just see Nikola’s head over the short walls surrounding the electronics complex. She spotted Avi as the older woman pushed Nikola behind her. At least Avi was good for something besides putting them all in danger, even if it was merely as a human shield. And there was an infected man, closing in on them, moving at a slow, limping, almost shuffling pace.
She gritted her teeth, skimming the short walls for the quickest route around them and identifying the best path. Without breaking stride, she planted a foot on the lowest shelf affixed to the outer side of the wall and climbed the shelves, reaching the top in three strides and vaulting over.
Remy performed the leap a little too enthusiastically. Her momentum threw her right into the video game display cases on the other side of the aisle. She landed behind the infected man, staggering and colliding with the glass, which cracked under the onslaught. She righted herself and raised the crowbar, bringing the sharp, hooked end down into the back of the man’s neck as hard as she could.
The crowbar’s tip struck bone underneath the skin and was nearly jarred right out of her hands. She managed to keep her grip and hauled back, pulling the infected man away from her two companions. She could hear Cade’s footsteps running up behind her as she braced a foot, gripped the crowbar tighter, and pulled hard, dragging the man to the floor. Remy freed the crowbar with a hard yank and raised it once more. Before she could strike, the man’s hand closed around her ankle and jerked. She fell backward on the floor, and the wind rushed out of her lungs.
Cade was still approaching. Nikola was still screaming. Remy coughed, trying to get her lungs working, and kicked to dislodge her ankle from the man’s grasp. She rose to her knees and tightened her grip on the crowbar. The man reached for her again, but before he got his hands on her, she raised the crowbar and, with a last swing, slammed it into his right temple as hard as she could, crushing bone and sending the hook directly into his brain.
The man’s thrashing stopped as the metal met brain tissue. Panting, Remy scrambled to her feet and took a quick step away from the body. She looked up at Nikola and Avi; both watched her with wide eyes. She wrenched the crowbar free with a vicious twist of her wrist, and blood and gray matter splattered onto her boot, dripping from the hook to the floor.
“You guys okay?” Cade called as she reached them. She jumped over the dead man’s body and went straight to Nikola and Avi.
“Y-yeah,” Avi stammered. She still gripped her machete, holding it in front of her defensively.
Remy rolled her eyes and tossed the bloodied crowbar onto the floor; it let out a loud, metallic clang on impact. Then she drew her knife from its sheath on her belt, looking past Avi to Nikola. “Honey, you okay?” she asked calmly.
“I’m okay. Wow, Remy, that was pretty badass,” Nikola said, obviously impressed with her heroics.
“Thanks,” Remy said as running footsteps came at them from two different directions. She tightened her grip on her knife and whirled around, raising the weapon, ready to fight. She just as quickly lowered it as she saw Gray and Theo coming from the left and Brandt and Ethan from the right. “Took you guys long enough to get here.”
“Oh, stuff it, Remy,” Brandt said. He went straight to Cade, predictably. Ethan too brushed past her, much to her surprise, and went to Nikola, taking the girl’s face in his hands and studying her intently.
<
br /> “Are you okay?” Ethan asked softly, leaning back to look her over for injuries.
“Yeah, I think so,” Nikola frowned. Ethan frowned, and Remy squinted at her. She was starting to shake and look a little sick, probably from the sheer amount of adrenaline that had surged through her system when she’d been attacked.
Despite her concerns over Nikola and her condition, though, Remy’s pissed-off levels were quickly rising, and she gritted her teeth in irritation. “Great job, Remy. Fantastic work. I’m so glad to see you’re still alive and breathing,” she muttered, sliding her knife back into its sheath and fighting to keep from glaring at Ethan’s back. She had no idea why she even cared about trying to impress him, but every time she did something crazy and he didn’t at least acknowledge it, she felt like smacking him really hard across the back of the head. Violent, she knew, but it would feel so satisfying.
Instead, Remy wrestled down the urge, as she always did, and decided to take the irritation out on the infected thing lying at her feet.
She studied the man thoughtfully, ignoring his crushed skull as she took in the rest of him. He wore khaki pants and a dark blue shirt; his nametag, still hanging precariously from his collar, pronounced him as having once been Daniel. She frowned as he lay there twitching. She’d obviously damaged his nervous system. She marched over to Avi and took her machete, looking the blade over to see if anything was functionally wrong with it, but she didn’t see anything.
“You know, next time, you should try actually using the damn thing,” Riley said, pointing the tip of the blade in Avi’s face. Then she marched back to the infected man with the machete in hand, raising it and swinging it down directly onto his neck as hard as she could. It took several strokes, but she finally managed to decapitate the corpse as the others looked on, their expressions ranging from impressed to horrified.
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