Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Thanks for reading!
Acknowledgements
Peripeteia
The City Series, Book Two
Sarah Lyons Fleming
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Sarah Lyons Fleming
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For you. Because you make the world beautiful.
Chapter 1
Sylvie
I rest my rifle barrel on the roof ledge with a sigh. My last pull of the trigger resulted in a shattered car window four feet away from the zombie I attempted to shoot, and though I’m confident my next effort will do the same, I’ve been ordered to use my allotted ammunition. Waste my allotted ammunition would be a better description.
Zombies roam the sidewalk below. I line up the sights on a broad-chested man, since I need all the help I can get. A head shot isn’t within the realm of possibility, and while a chest shot won’t finish him off, this isn’t only practice for killing zombies. While Grace and I searched Brooklyn Heights for her family, Eric and Paul met our newest neighbors—a group who’s taken refuge in Sacred Heart of Christ Church half a mile away. Apparently, they didn’t roll out the welcome mat, they had suspiciously large amounts of food, and they may have killed non-zombie humans. Sacred Heart promised to leave us alone, but no one is banking on it. I haven’t met them, nor do I want to. That might mean I’ll have to shoot them. And if the past half hour of target practice has taught me anything, it’s that I’ll lose a contest dependent on my ability to hit something with a bullet.
I pull the trigger, wince as the rifle slams into my armpit, and peer at the street. The same number of zombies continue to wander, though now they crane their necks to the sky for the source of the noise. Broad Chest Zombie is just fine.
“You suck big time,” Paul says, blue eyes glinting. “You’re the worst shot I’ve ever seen. Like, it’s not even close.”
He stands beside me, beefy arms crossed and brown hair slicked back over his big features and square jaw. Everything about Paul is big, from his appendages to his insults.
“You do know I’m holding a gun?” I ask.
Paul snorts, unafraid of my threat, for which I don’t blame him. Leo, his five-year-old son, whacks Paul’s stomach with his pint-sized fist. “Don’t be mean to Sylvie!”
Paul doubles over in mock pain. “I’ll do whatever you say. Just don’t hit me again.”
I wink at Leo, and he screws up one of his big blue eyes in return. His disposition is as sunny as his blond hair, which makes me his polar opposite, but he likes me anyway. The feeling’s mutual.
I set the heavy weapon on the roof and stretch out my arms. In the movies, the tough chick totes her rifle as though it weighs two ounces and then shoots a zombie in the head on her first try. That will never be me, either toting-wise or marksman-wise. I may not like guns, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be good at them.
On the opposite corner of the roof, Grace’s wavy blond ponytail swings while she nods at whatever Eric emphasizes with a motion of his hands. Then she brings her eye to the rifle, aims, and, one loud report later, a lady zombie lies on the sidewalk with a ruptured head.
It’s been two weeks since Grace learned her husband and parents are missing and most likely dead. She’s not what I would call fine, but she’s better than I hoped. There have been tears. Lots of tears. And anger. But she appears to have channeled that anger into an ability to blow the head off a zombie.
Eric congratulates her and takes the rifle before they walk our way. He moves easily, aware of how best to utilize his athletic frame, and I try not to imagine how that translates into other, more intimate, areas of life. I’m about as successful at that as I am at target practice.
As they close in, Eric bestows on me the crinkly hazel-eyed smile that never fails to make my face grow warm and the rest of me warmer. “Could’ve gone better?” he asks.
“That’s a nice way of saying I suck,” I say. “You should give Paul lessons in diplomacy once you’re through with Grace.”
He lifts the rifle he holds as though it weighs two ounces. “Maybe try this one. Grace liked it.”
“It’s easy, Syls,” Grace says. “Just line up the sights.”
“What are the sights?” I ask. Everyone, including Leo, gapes. I throw my hands in the air. “Really, people? I am lining up the sights.”
Eric laughs and walks to the roof’s edge, then tilts his head for me to join him. “Let me see what you’re doing.”
I drag myself over. It’s bad enough that anyone watch my incompetence, but Eric watching is worse. He rotates me so I face the street and places the rifle in my arms. One of his hand
s rests lightly on my back, and, when he leans over my shoulder, his mid-length brown hair falls to tickle my neck. This part of target practice isn’t bad at all.
“Show me what you’re doing,” he says by my ear.
What I’m doing is melting from his nearness. I know he likes me, and it’s obscene how much I like him, but I just can’t bring myself to start something that could go wrong so spectacularly. There’s a sweetness between us, an intimacy I’ve never had with anyone but Grace. The fantasy that I wouldn’t fuck it up is infinitely better than the reality where I do.
“You’re making me nervous,” I say, “which means I’m going to suck even more.”
He leans on the side of the roof. “Better?”
I nod and lift the rifle, then search for a stationary zombie. “I’m aiming at that one with the red shirt. Middle of the chest.”
I draw a breath. The sights are lined up perfectly in my vision, as they’ve been every other time. At the still point of my exhalation, I pull the trigger. The bullet hits a car tire.
Eric watches the street for a long moment, then runs a hand through his hair. “Huh,” he finally says.
“There’s no diplomatic way to say it: I suck.”
He coughs into his fist to cover his laugh. “Again.”
“I’m wasting bullets that could be used to kill things other than tires. I like my chisel just fine.”
“One more time.”
I grumble, raise the rifle to my red-shirted friend, and go through the rigmarole of sighting.
“Hold on.” Eric touches my shoulder. “You’re using your left eye.”
I practice squint. “Yeah?”
“You’re right-handed.”
“My right eye feels wrong. I can’t line up the sights.”
“You’re right-handed and left-eye dominant,” he says, a crease forming between his brows. “That’s your problem.”
“Great, another problem. Just what I needed.”
“The others are a lost cause, but maybe we can fix this one,” he says, eyes twinkling the way they do when he teases. “Try using your right eye.”
It takes me a full minute to focus, but my next shot grazes the Lexer’s arm. After two more misses that prove the close shot was a fluke, I beg, “Please can we stop? This is embarrassing.”
“One more thing I want to try.” Eric wants so badly for me to get this right, and that I can’t is not boosting my already unimpressive level of self-confidence.
He walks to one of the bags that holds our guns—I use the term our loosely here—and returns holding the small black pistol with purple grip that I’ve refused to carry in the past. “I wanted you to learn on a rifle, since they’re better at a distance, but maybe you should try this first.”
He hands me the .22, then situates me in the proper position. Left hand to steady, right hand to pull the trigger. Sight the same way, with the little doohickey centered in between the two other thingies. Don’t close my eyes or flinch.
“Go for the face instead of the forehead or top of the skull, if you can,” he says. “A .22 will hurt but not go through bone like something else will. It should scramble their brains if you get it in there, though. It did on my way here. Pick a close one and fire until you hit.”
The pistol weighs far less than the rifle. A definite selling point. I extend my arms and spread my feet as directed, then line up the sights on the face of a woman whose ugly sweater has annoyed me for days. I pull the trigger once. Nothing. Then again. She falls to the street, much to my astonishment.
“Nice,” Eric says. “Try it again.”
“Can’t we end this on a high note?”
“Nope.”
I go for Red Shirt. He’s wedged himself between two car bumpers and is immobile, unlike the ones who lurch around. I hit him somewhere beneath his head, then fire a second time, hitting skull but not scrambling brains. On the third shot, he slumps to a car hood. Another full magazine later, the zombies aren’t dropping like flies, but I’m finally able to hit flesh.
Grace claps beside me. “You did it!”
I nod, though I’d like to jump up and down as Leo is doing. “Maybe I only half suck?”
“Only half,” Eric agrees. I kick his boot.
Our gunshots have called enough zombies to this corner of our block, so we finish for the day. The .22 is the least scary of the bunch, but I gladly return it to the gun bag. Before practice, Grace and I were introduced to each weapon individually, which was a confusing mixture of safety or no safety, this ammo or that ammo, and magazine versus chamber, among other things. I tried, but once we were done, they all looked the same again. The pistol with the purple grip I can recognize immediately, thanks to my ability to see color.
“You should keep this,” Eric says, and proffers the .22 in my direction. “Wear it. Get used to it. My dad had some boxes of .22 LR hidden in the basement that never made it up to the cabin, so you have plenty.”
“Plenty of what?” I ask.
“Ammo. The gun takes .22 Long Rifle. Hence, the LR.” He crouches beside me, scruffy and smiling. I’ve seen him sick, and angry, and serious, but this is Eric at his core. Happy and so full of life it makes my heart skip. “It’s yours.”
“Are you wearing one?” I ask Grace.
Grace glances up from where she stows a rifle in a long duffel bag, her pretty features arranged in distaste. “Are you insane?”
I want to be the chick who totes a gun and shoots zombies with nonchalance, but the few bullets that have hit their intended mark, out of more bullets than I care to admit, don’t quite qualify me. “I’ll use it if I have to.”
“How about we make a deal?” Eric asks. “You wear it when I’m gone.”
He’s leaving for upstate to find his sister, Cassie, and I don’t ask when because it could force him to set a date. I may be able to shoot a zombie with the purple gun, but I’m not about to shoot myself in the foot. “You don’t really think I’m going to walk around here wearing that, do you? I’ll shoot my face off.”
“I guess you don’t want to move up to a larger caliber? You’ll have to be pretty close for the .22 to get through, and even then—”
I hold up a hand. The purple gun has a safety, which means it’s less likely to shoot me in the face. I’m not carrying one of the others. “I’ll wear it when I’m out of the house. Deal?”
“Deal.” Eric gets to his feet at voices from our yard and bends over the ledge. “Guillermo’s here.”
Chapter 2
Guillermo sits at our outdoor teak table with Indy, Eli, and Gary. All four live in nearby Sunset Park—the park for which this neighborhood was named—and which Guillermo has announced he’s newly christened Sunset Park Safe Zone. There’s no ribbon-cutting ceremony to plan, but it’s still a notable accomplishment, and he grins under the world’s neatest five o’clock shadow at our praise.
“Your mother must be proud,” Maria says. Her brown eyes are pleased and, perhaps, wistful. She must hope her missing daughters are doing half as well as he is. As we are. We’re still alive, and that in itself is a notable accomplishment when most of the world is either dead or undead.
“You know my moms, she’s proud of everything.” Guillermo pulls a bag from under his chair. “Oh, Sylvie. Brought you some cat food.”
“Thank you, Willie,” I say, and scratch under Cat’s chin. He perches on my lap, though with four visitors in our yard his tensed body is ready to run—an impulse with which I sympathize.
“That is the saddest-looking cat I’ve ever seen.”
I gasp and cover Cat’s ears. “He can hear you!”
“I was thinking we should save the cat food in case things get bad. Now that I see him, I think I was right.” Guillermo slaps his thigh at his joke. “You really want to keep that thing alive?”
I kiss the top of Cat’s head while everyone laughs. I’ll be the first to admit our found pet isn’t going to win Best in Show. His black and white fur refuses to lay flat, he has
a big black splotch in the center of his face, and his ears are a tad too big for the rest of him. But his quirky traits make him interesting, which is better than picture-perfect. He has earnest dark eyes, an endearing purr, and he shadows me everywhere.
“Stop making fun of our cat or you’ll regret it,” I say. Leo, my other shadow, sits at my feet, and now he turns furrowed golden-brown eyebrows on Guillermo.
“You will,” Paul says. “You don’t want those two ganging up on you.”
Guillermo lifts his hands in capitulation, still grinning, and then gestures to the rectangular patches of garden in our block-long yard. “Your plants are looking good. Wish ours did.”
Our gardens have sprung to life in the past week. And while I’m happy they’re doing well, I’ve had to resist clandestinely uprooting them at night; Eric once said he’d leave to find Cassie when they were in the ground.
Eric raises his head from the sheaf of papers he peruses with Gary, who has come to discuss all the trappings of civilization we wish we still had and how we can make them. “You had more ground to break up,” Eric says. “But you’re getting there.”
“Not fast enough,” Guillermo says. “That’s the other reason we’re here. We found a warehouse of chips and nuts down by the water. It’s full, but we have to move the cars so trucks can get there, load the food, and bring it back.”
The streets of Brooklyn are littered with abandoned traffic jams and roaming Lexers. Once Guillermo fills us in on the location, which isn’t far but is across car-and-zombie-packed avenues, it’s clear this is no small undertaking. He sips at the water Maria has set out while we digest the idea.
“So, you guys in?” Guillermo asks. “I need more people who know what they’re doing out there.”
I nod along with my housemates. When the world has become a place where dying for potato chips is a reasonable endeavor, you can be sure something’s gone amiss. That’s if the blackened buildings, the deaths of billions of people, and the bodies shuffling along the sidewalks of New York haven’t already clued you in.
“We can’t grow enough to live on this year,” Eric says, “and neither can you.” He says we all the time. I don’t think he notices, but I do.
Gary, a burly middle-aged man of few words, grunts in agreement. He acts as though he’s been given clearance to talk but to choose his words wisely, and therefore he sticks to grunts and words like affirmative.
The City Series (Book 2): Peripeteia Page 1