by Russ Watts
Freya looked at him with hatred, and Javier smiled. “That’s better. If you don’t like me, just be honest about it. Don’t pretend like we’re friends. I’ll be honest with you. You’re not getting that stupid key chain back until we’re in Canada. If you try anything like this again, I’ll go and cut your Dad’s heart out right in front of you. Got that?”
Freya’s bottom lip dropped, and she nodded.
“Good. I’m going to let you go now. We’re going back to the office where Quinn is where you’re going to be quiet, and you’re going to go to sleep. It’s way past little girls’ bedtime.”
Javier grabbed a handful of Freya’s hair, and frog-marched her back to the office. He was amazed that Freya had tried to attack him. He thought it was only Quinn and Erik he had to look out for, but it turned out the girl was going to be a pain in the ass as well. Back in the office, he shoved Freya to the floor.
“Stay there.” Javier closed the door, left the room, and locked it. He put the key in his pocket, and wandered into the front room. The street was quiet, and with only the moonlight to see by, it was dark. They were in some quiet backwater town where most of the residents had been zombies before they became actual zombies.
As he waited for Erik to finish checking upstairs, Javier admired the artwork on the walls of the shop. He crossed over to a display case full of books and picked up a worn folder. He flicked through the pages, letting his eyes scan the photographs and drawings, not really taking them in. Animals, symbols, and all manner of different things jumped before his eyes, but there was one that caught his eye and made him stop turning the pages. There was a rose wrapped around a nail, in simple black and white, adorning a woman’s tanned arm.
Javier knew he shouldn’t have left her like that. He was angry with her, bitter at the way things were heading, but he knew he shouldn’t have left her behind. Those things would eat her until there was nothing left, not even her tattoo. He hadn’t meant for things to work out that way, but Rose should’ve listened to him. It wasn’t his fault she had ended up dead. If only people would just listen. It was small consolation that Hamsikker and his wife were dead too. He hoped there was nothing of them left to prove they were ever alive.
Javier traced his fingers along the outline of the tattoo, remembering how he used to do the same with Rose’s tattoo. Maybe he was better off alone. Rose had been itching to settle down, and eventually something would have driven them apart. All Javier needed was to keep moving and find his brother. He closed the book and set it back down on the table before returning to the foot of the stairs. There was no point in dwelling on the past. He had to look forward now, forget Rose, and find Diego.
“Well?” Javier asked Erik, watching the man descend into darkness.
“Nothing,” Erik grunted. “It’s clear up there.”
Javier pointed the gun at Erik’s face, who looked distinctly unimpressed. “Right then, best we get you back to Quinn and Freya. You can…”
“There’s something else,” said Erik, pausing on the last step.
“Something else? You want to take a leak?”
“Out there, across the street. There’s a light.”
Javier looked at Erik with disdain. “What a fascinating story, big man. Be sure to save that for dinner parties; it’s a real conversation starter. ‘There’s a light.’ Any more to add? Was it, by any chance, a big white circle in the sky? I don’t know, big enough to be a moon perhaps?”
Erik stared at the gun. Javier always held it just far enough away that he couldn’t reach it. He ignored Javier’s sarcasm and explained. “In the house, opposite. There’s a light on in the window. Someone keeps turning it on and off at regular intervals. It’s not just random, and I’m not imagining it. Someone’s doing it on purpose. I guess they’re signaling for help. Thought we should check it out. They might need our help.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Erik. I think you’ve got enough going on without worrying about who might be out there. You should be thinking about your daughter and the millions of zombies who are just waiting to take a bite out of her young, supple flesh. Who cares who’s over there?”
Erik stepped down off the stairs and looked at Javier. This was the man who had killed his wife. This was the man responsible for the death of his son, of his best friend, Hamsikker, and was holding his daughter at gunpoint. “I care. I care because if I don’t, who will? I know you think we’re scum and that we’re nothing to you, but believe it or not, I still care. I care what happens to you. I care about my daughter, and I care who is over the road trying to signal us.”
Javier smirked in the half darkness. “Erik, be my guest,” he said stepping aside. “You want to save the world? Go ahead.”
Erik rolled his eyes, stepped into the tattoo parlor, and looked outside. The streets were practically deserted, he knew that. Upstairs he had looked from the window and made sure it was safe, noticing only one or two zombies. If he could get into the building opposite, he saw no reason why he couldn’t be over and back in no time. Whoever was over there needed help, and if Erik could get them on side, they could be crucial in helping to wrestle control back from Javier. Still, he wasn’t happy that Javier would be left alone with Quinn and Freya. “It would be easier if there were two of us, you know?”
Javier burst out laughing. “I think we’ve already established I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about who is over there. No, you want to go, you go on over, I’m not going to stop you. I’ve got my driver and my bargaining chip, so really you’re kind of surplus to requirements anyway. We’ll be leaving in a few hours, as soon as the sun’s up. If you want to see your daughter again, I would suggest you’re not late.”
“I’ll be here. Just be ready.” Erik needed revenge for Peter and Pippa. His family had been destroyed because of this man, and he wasn’t about to let Javier leave without him. He knew Javier was a coward at heart. He wouldn’t leave in the dark, and he wouldn’t want to leave without Erik. Javier liked having his bodyguards, someone to do the hard work for him. Erik just hoped he could bring back someone who might be able to help him.
“Erik, I know I’m sending you out there empty handed, so I should also point out that I expect you to come back that way,” said Javier. “You turn up with anything more than what you have now, and the first thing I’ll do is put a bullet through Freya’s skull.”
Erik nodded at Javier. Charming as always. Javier had to have the last word. If Javier killed Freya he had nothing. Quinn would refuse to help him, and so would Erik. She was the only reason they were still alive. Erik strode toward the door, feeling the temperature drop as he neared the exit. As much as he hated leaving Freya, he knew Quinn would look out for her. He was lucky he had managed to get Javier to agree to let him go at all. Erik just hoped he wasn’t wasting his time. They needed some luck, and whoever was on the other side of the street might just prove to be that someone.
CHAPTER TEN
Erik hated being unarmed, but he had no choice. Stooping as he left the tattoo parlor, he ran to the van and used it as a shield to hide behind so he could check the street. It still appeared to be empty other than a few cars bathed in moonlight. The town was perfectly silent. Seeing the way was clear, Erik jogged across the street and into the open doorway of a sporting goods shop. It was directly beneath the window where he had seen the light flicking on and off. Moving inside, he looked around. It looked as if the store had been looted. Empty boxes and broken glass littered the floor, display cases had been turned over, and the cash register lay in pieces behind the counter at the far end. He hoped he might find a hockey stick or something he could use as a weapon in case whoever was up there wasn’t friendly, but other than three soccer shirts still hanging on a rack, there was nothing left. He looked for a way upstairs, and found a door behind the counter that led into a storeroom. There were no windows, and no source of light, so Erik had to use his senses to guide him. He ran his fingers along the painted wall, finding only a useless light switch.
His feet scuffed the wall as he carefully went deeper into the back of the store. He found himself at the end of the wall, and abruptly tripped over a pile of boxes, causing them to scatter their contents.
“Damn it,” whispered Erik. He picked himself up, and carried on edging his way around the room until he found another door. Opening it, he saw a staircase leading up. At the top there was an intermittent light coming from underneath a closed door. Erik stealthily began climbing the stairs, hoping the noise from his accident in the storeroom hadn’t alerted the person upstairs to his presence. Once he was outside the door on the upper floor, Erik took a deep breath. It had been almost too easy.
He was going in unarmed, and had no idea who or what he might be facing. What if it was a trap? What if the light was just on some sort of timer, and the room was full of zombies? Erik had to know. He wanted to find help, and getting a moment out of Javier’s sight was a rare opportunity. There was no time to think, to plan, or to grieve. Even now, it was hard to accept Pippa was gone. She had been taken away from him so quickly that it didn’t feel real. She was so much a part of him that he would never let her go. He wanted Freya to remember her, too, and once this whole sorry situation with Javier was resolved, he would make sure he taught Freya everything he could about her mother. In the meantime, he had to focus on staying alive and getting Freya way from the murderous psycho who currently controlled their every waking moment.
Erik watched the light beneath the doorway flickering, and then suddenly it stopped. He waited, hearing nothing but his own breathing, hoping the light would restart, but it didn’t. Had he been heard? There was no backing out now, and Erik slowly turned the door handle. He began to inch the door open slowly until it was wide enough for him to get through. He eased himself through, keeping his back against the wall. Once fully inside the room, he stayed still, listening for a sign of who was in there with him. The room was pitch black, and he couldn’t see or hear a thing. Surely he hadn’t been mistaken? He was sure the light had been coming from this room. He knew he could go exploring in the darkness, but he could walk into anything, or fall over and hurt himself. He was going to have to take a chance and hope he wasn’t wrong.
“Hello? Anyone here?”
Erik waited for a reply, but he heard nothing.
“I thought I might be able to he…”
The bat smashed into Erik’s midriff, and he fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. He was winded, and it hurt like hell, but he knew better than to wait for the follow up knockout blow, and he rolled to his side as the bat swung again. He heard it smash into the wall where he had been, punching a hole in the plaster.
“Stop,” Erik rasped. “I’m here to help.” He rolled away from where he thought his attacker was standing, and cursed as he rolled over something wet and sticky. It smelt like something had died in here, but he knew zombies didn’t use weapons, and he took a moment to catch his breath. The situation could still be resolved. He had faced plenty of confrontational situations in the past that he had managed to control, and faced plenty of angry assailants who could be reasoned with.
“Who the fuck are you?” shouted a shrill voice. “I’ll shoot you. Answer me!”
Erik couldn’t see the owner of the voice, but he knew better than to take on someone unarmed. They obviously knew the layout of the room, and had a distinct advantage over him. He stayed where he was, lying on the floor, now covered in filth with his clothes absorbing the damp.
“Please. My name’s Erik. I saw your light.”
Erik heard a creaking noise and sensed something was coming toward him again. He really didn’t want another hit like his stomach had just taken, and he waved his hands out in front of him to ward off any attack. In the darkness it was impossible to know from where his attacker was coming, and it was unnerving.
“I saw your light,” he said again. The creaking noise became louder, and he braced himself. Whoever was in there was close, close enough to hit him. He began to think he had made a terrible mistake coming up here. Not everyone could be reasoned with.
A glaring white light suddenly shone on his face, blinding him. He tried to shield his eyes, but it felt very much like he was being interrogated.
“Don’t move. If you move, I’ll blow your head off. What do you want?”
It seemed to Erik that the voice had softened. It sounded actually more like someone was trying to scare him, to ward him off, but the tone of the voice was calmer now. It was likely that whoever shone the light on him was just as scared as he was.
“Look, if you’re going to shoot me you may as well get it over with,” said Erik. “And if I was going to shoot you, trust me, you would be dead by now. So let’s start again, shall we? My name is Erik. As you can see I’m unarmed. I saw your light and thought you might need help.”
Erik waited for an answer, but none came. The light in his face moved down his body as his interrogator checked him over. Once the light had swept down to his feet and back up, the light flicked off, and Erik heard the person sigh heavily.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t be too careful these days.”
The room was abruptly filled with a dull light. Erik looked at the person who was talking to him. They were holding a battery-powered lantern over their head.
“It switches to a torch function that I used to signal out of the window. I’m running low on batteries so I only do it every other night now. Lucky you were coming past when you did.”
“Sure, lucky me,” said Erik. The woman speaking to him was young, pale, and very thin. It looked as if she hadn’t eaten in days. It wasn’t hard for Erik to figure out why she might be running low on supplies. The woman rolled her wheelchair forward.
“Claire. Sorry about that,” she said as Erik stood up holding his stomach.
“Forget it. I’ve had worse.” Erik looked at Claire. She was so thin that her clothes hung off her. Her cheekbones were pronounced, and her attempt at make-up only served to heighten how skeletal she appeared. This woman was in no state to help him, and his spirits sunk. He had hoped to find someone who could help him take on Javier. All he had done was disturb this poor woman from a slow lingering death.
“You got a gun?” Claire asked.
“You?” countered Erik.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be hitting you with this crappy bat, would I?” Claire put the baseball bat in her lap. “It’s all I got since that shithole Mart left me here.”
“Mart?” asked Erik.
“My husband. Ex-husband, now that he’s a shambling zombie. Asshole.”
“Right,” said Erik, looking nervously around the dirty apartment. “This Mart, he’s not here is he? With you?”
Claire raised her face to look at Erik. “You think I’m braindead?”
“No, right, of course he’s not. So…”
“So he ran out on me. Left me stuck up here. Look at me,” said Claire.
She spread her arms wide, exposing her frail body and the metal wheelchair in which she sat. From the smell of her, she had spent quite some time in that chair, and Erik suspected it doubled as her bathroom.
“Can’t get down the stairs can I? Asshole left me. We were only visiting my sister, Niamh. I’ve been at her for years to get a freaking stair-lift installed, but do you think she’d listen? No. So now I’m stuck here. My sister took off to find help and never came back. Mart went after her, promising he’d be back, ‘cept that was months back. Wouldn’t be surprised they had a thing going on. I always wondered why he was so keen to visit Niamh, you know what I’m saying? What am I supposed to do now? So are you the rescue party, or what? You with the army?”
Erik looked around the apartment. The woman had no gun, no food, and couldn’t walk. He had wasted his time coming here, and despite her obvious bitterness, he could understand why she was so angry. She had been deserted, left to wallow in her own filth and fend for herself. He suspected he had slipped in a pool of vomit, and had no intention of looking at where he had fallen. Whils
t Claire couldn’t help him with Javier, he could hardly leave her behind. She needed help, and it seemed he was all she had. If he left her, she would undoubtedly die up here.
“Can you walk at all?” asked Erik. He was worried that if she left the light on too long, it might attract the zombies outside. If he was going to get her back over the road, he would need to move quickly.
Claire stared at Erik. “Not since some asshole drunk ploughed into me on a crosswalk when I was seven years old. He got some piss-ant fine and a suspended sentence. I got a lifetime in this fucking thing.” Claire rolled her chair back, freeing up the space between Erik and the exit. “So I figure you ain’t military then. You a loner? You got family? You got any friends waiting down there or what? Spill it.”
Erik had to admit that for everything that she had been through, Claire still had a lot of fight left in her. She certainly wouldn’t like taking orders from Javier. “Here’s the thing,” said Erik as he approached the door. “I’ll be honest with you. There’s just me and my daughter, and a friend, Quinn. We’re travelling with someone. A man. Javier. He’s…not pleasant. He killed my wife and some friends of mine. He has the only gun between us, and he’s in charge. We’re heading for Canada. At some point between here and there, we have to get that gun from Javier. If we don’t, we’re dead. He will kill us. I can’t promise you safe passage. I can’t promise you anything. It’s your choice. You can stay here, or…”
“Stay here, are you fucking kidding? I started eating the wallpaper yesterday. I have nothing left. I stay here, I die. I’ll take my chances with this Javier if you don’t mind.”
Claire gripped her bat, and Erik smiled. “Okay then. Let’s get out of here. We’re just across the street.”
Claire rolled herself up to him, and Erik bent to take her bat.