Rain Must Fall

by Deb Rotuno

  The last section of the store I needed to check was behind the pharmacy counter. I’d already grabbed the basics—alcohol, peroxide, and a couple of packs of bandages—but I knew my parents; they’d want antibiotics and painkillers, just in case. It was all the way in the back, and the sunlight from the front windows didn’t exactly reach every corner. Pulling out a flashlight, I clicked it on and stepped around the register.

  The shelves were ransacked but still had a few things. I grabbed what I could, freezing when the stench of decay wafted around me. I barely had time to register the smell before the shelf beside me shattered and a blackish-purple hand grabbed my arm.

  “Aw, fuck!” I yelped, yanking my arm out of the zeak’s grasp, but it pushed against the other side of the shelf, causing it to fall toward me. Boxes, bottles, and pills scattered everywhere when I tried to stop the tall shelf from falling on me.

  “Quinn!”

  I couldn’t fight the zeak and the shelf at the same time. That same twisted, rotten hand reached and grasped at my hand, my arm, anything it could latch on to. The growls and snarls grew louder, as did Quinn’s running steps.

  “Christ,” he hissed, and the pop of his handgun rang loud in the tight space, making my ears ring for just a second, but I collapsed back to the floor, looking up to see the shelf was leaning against the one next to it at an angle.

  “Jack, you okay?” he called from the other side.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I sighed, shaking my head at how close that was to going really fucking badly. “Can you tilt the shelf back?”

  He appeared at the end of the aisle, braced his hands on the case, and pushed. It wobbled enough that I could scoot out from behind it.

  “How the hell…” I grumbled, knocking pills off me to the floor and wiping the sweat from my brow on the sleeve of my old Army jacket.

  “You mean why didn’t the zeak come a’runnin’ when the bell rang at the door?” he joked, grinning. “Look at him…”

  I snatched up my flashlight and shone it on the other side of the shelf. Apparently the pharmacist had been on duty when he was turned. His lab coat was no longer stark white but covered in vile shit and blood. But it was his legs that my eyes sought out.

  “Oh.” I gripped my hair, only to rub my scruffy jaw.

  The zeak’s legs were at least six feet away at the back door, but the bastard had dragged itself across the back room, only to practically climb the shelf to get to me.

  I cracked my knuckles, shaking my head. “Someone’s been at him. As in, they shot those legs off. I’d say shotgun? Maybe?”

  “Yeah, well…he still thought you were tasty.”

  I waved that statement away, shaking off the adrenaline still coursing through me.

  “Can we be done now?” Quinn asked. “I’m fucking starving.”

  “Yeah, kid. C’mon,” I sighed, shouldering the now heavy duffel bag. “I think I got everything, and if I didn’t…we’ll live.”

  We hurried through the store and burst out the doorway, ignoring the chiming bell this time. I dropped the duffel onto the seat of the four-wheeler, spinning when Quinn cursed, his gun engaging.

  “Put that gun down!” I snapped, pushing the barrel of his weapon toward the sidewalk.

  Standing in pure eerie silence was a little girl who couldn’t have been much older than Freddie. She was filthy, her pink dress covered in smudges of what looked like food and blood. She had light-brown hair and dark-blue eyes that reminded me of my Sara’s. Her shoulders were strapped down with what looked to be a heavy backpack. She wasn’t a zeak, simply because tears coursed down the little girl’s face, clearing her pale skin with those tear tracks.

  “Jesus, sweetheart…You just scared us. That’s all. You okay?” I asked her, stepping slowly toward her. As I got closer, I could see that she wasn’t carrying a backpack but another kid—a baby. The infant was weighing the girl down, but she was holding her own at the moment. Kneeling down in front of her, I asked, “You alone? What’s your name?”

  “Sabrina, but Mommy calls me Rina.”

  “Well, I’m Jack. This here’s Quinn.” I pointed a thumb behind me. “Now, why are you out here alone?”

  She hiccupped a sob, shaking her head. “Mom…mommy…She’s sick, and I couldn’t…And…I can’t reach…”

  Groaning, I closed my eyes for a second, only to nod slowly and reach out to wipe away her tears. “Okay, shhh…Where’s your mommy?”

  She simply pointed around the corner, which gave me a look at the baby on her back. He was at least healthy and quiet, chewing happily on his fist, his legs kicking restlessly.

  “Hey, big guy,” I called, smiling when I received a rather dimply, toothy grin.

  “That’s my baby brother, Aiden,” Sabrina whispered.

  “Sweetheart, why don’t you let me carry Aiden, and you take me to your mom, okay?” I asked, not really giving her a choice. The chubby little boy was weighing her down quite a bit.

  “Jack…should we?” Quinn started but shut up when I stood with Aiden in my arms.

  “I can’t leave them, Quinn. Not until I know just how sick her mother is,” I explained, raising an eyebrow at him. “Bring that bag.”

  “Ah, shit. Okay,” he sighed but nodded as he waved us on.

  Sabrina was a fast little thing once free of her brother, darting around the corner.

  “Hey, kid, wait up,” Quinn called. “You can’t know what’s around these corners.”

  “Don’t worry. Bob gots the bad guys,” she stated firmly before taking a quick right into a doorway.

  I heard her footsteps trudge up some stairs, and Quinn and I followed with Aiden now firmly gripping my dog tags. I snorted, thinking Freddie did the same damn thing when he was about Aiden’s age.

  The building was three stories and old. Each floor we passed, I could hear the scratching, the growling behind each apartment door. Sabrina didn’t even bat an eye at any of it, which was both a relief that she wasn’t allowing it to scare her and sad that this new world had already hardened the young. I forced that thought out of my head, simply because my son was seeing this new world—I hoped—and I couldn’t fathom how he was handling it.

  Sabrina stopped in front of a door at the end of the hallway, waiting until we caught up with her. She turned the knob and went in. The apartment was a mess. Clothes and toys were everywhere, not to mention open cans of food. Aiden wriggled in my arms, and I set him down in a toy-filled playpen, ruffling his hair, which was slightly darker than his sister’s.

  Sabrina, suddenly quiet and shy, stood in the hallway, pointing to a bedroom door. “Mommy’s in there.”

  I glanced over my shoulder to Quinn, who grimaced and slowly wrapped his hand around the handle of the machete in his belt. I did the same to the knife on my thigh, not sure what I’d find inside that bedroom. The door creaked a little when I pushed on it. The room smelled of sickness—the smell that came with medicines used to help someone breathe, the stale, still air of a room that had been closed up.

  There was no movement in the room, but the bed wasn’t empty. A woman with dark hair lay there sweating and unconscious. Her face was flushed, her brow wrinkled. Her leg was out from under the covers and haphazardly bandaged.

  “Her name’s Olivia,” Sabrina whispered, only to bolt when Aiden started to fuss.

  “Olivia?” I called, placing a hand on her brow. “Jesus, she’s burning up.”

  “’Cause she’s in shock, I think,” Quinn whispered, lifting the bandage on her leg.

  “Oh shit…” I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out the key to the four-wheeler. “You know the way back to camp, Quinn?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not leaving you, Jack. Your parents will kick my ass. Your dad, especially. And Joel will pound me!”

  I shook my head. “No, you’re gonna bring all of them here. Now! I need my parents for this, and tell my mother to bring everything she’s got. Go! Lead them straight through town and set up camp in the street d
ownstairs. Go as quickly as you can!” I pressed the keys into his hand, spinning him and shoving him out the door.

  He was out of the room and slamming the apartment door before I could tell him again. Walking back into the living room, I saw that Sabrina was keeping her brother occupied. I opened the duffel I’d filled at the pharmacy, grabbing the bottles of alcohol and peroxide, as well as a roll of gauze. Their kitchen was a mess, but I didn’t pay it much attention, considering there was no telling how long the little girl had been fending for herself and her brother. Her mother looked like she’d been out of it for some time.

  Inside the cabinets, I found a bowl, half a bottle of water, and a few dishcloths. Pouring some water and alcohol into the bowl, I dropped one of the rags in there. I had to get her fever down. My parents could look at the wound on her leg. It didn’t look like a zeak bite. If it had, then it would only be a matter of time before she turned…or she would’ve turned already. No, that looked like a bullet wound or a graze of a bullet. I couldn’t be sure, which was why my parents were needed.

  As I entered the bedroom again, I heard the four-wheeler’s tires squeal on the pavement below as Quinn turned around to head back to camp. It wasn’t far, just up in the hills. It would take him less than ten minutes to reach them and several more to move camp. If Quinn was smart, he’d bring at least one of my parents back with him with first-aid supplies. The rest could move the camp.

  Reaching into the bowl, I wrung out the cool liquid, setting the rag on her forehead. She flinched, moaned in her sleep, but didn’t wake. I wiped her face and wrung out the cloth again, only this time, I left the rag on her forehead. Carefully, gently, I checked where I could see for more wounds. I looked for bites, scratches, any sign that this was something other than shock or the flu or both.

  I heard shuffling at the doorway, and I smiled at the little girl. “How long has your mommy been like this? Sick, I mean.”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. She was all stuffy yesterday and went to the store for sumpin’ to stop her coughin’. She came back bleedin’.”

  I nodded, eyeing that leg again and then the shotgun in the corner of the bedroom. If I was guessing, then I’d say she ran into that zeak that had pushed the pill case on me. She’d most likely been surprised by him. If she fell, pulling the trigger at the same time, she could have accidently grazed herself with buckshot, but at least she’d rid the zeak of his damn legs. It had probably given her enough time to get the hell out of there—with or without the wound.

  I wrung out the rag again, putting it back on her forehead. Olivia still didn’t wake. I paced from the bedroom window to the living room window. The street was silent, eerie. After my fourth or fifth pass, movement caught my eye from the living room’s view of the street.

  A giant of a man was pushing a cart down the street. My brow wrinkled at the dead zeak on top of the cart. The white-coat-wearing, legless bastard from the pharmacy, with his legs piled atop his chest.

  “Dat’s Bob,” Sabrina whispered.

  “Who is he?”

  “The garbage man,” she stated, like I should’ve known such basic information, which made me chuckle at her.

  As Bob passed by under the window, I noticed he had made himself some sort of body armor using duct tape and sports equipment—shin pads, shoulder pads, and something around his forearms. He stopped and pulled a baseball bat from the bottom of the cart, and his lips moved like he was talking to himself. He walked without fear, without hesitation, to a zeak slowly stumbling out of an alleyway. One strong swing, and the zeak’s head imploded. Bob lifted the body as easily as I’d carried Aiden, dropping him on top of the pharmacy zeak, only to continue on down the street.

  “He takes them to the park.”

  Grimacing at that, I nodded and started to pace again. I lost count of how many laps I did around that tiny-ass apartment, but when I finally heard the four-wheeler’s engine on the street below, I rushed back to the living room window. Quinn had brought my mother, who was wearing the backpack with whatever medical supplies she’d been able to salvage.

  I ran down the stairs of the building, meeting her at the door, but pointed to Quinn. “Go help everyone else.”

  “I don’t need to, Jack. They’re coming,” he stated, pointing behind him with a thumb. “I gave them directions.”

  “Where is she?” Mom asked, and I led both of them back upstairs. As soon as she saw the disarray in the apartment, then the two little ones, her face turned up to mine. “Oh, Jack.”

  “Yeah, exactly why I sent for you,” I muttered as she followed me to the bedroom. “She’s burning up. And this looks like a bullet to me, but…I don’t know. It’s not a bite, for sure.”

  “No, no…it’s not.” She checked the woman over. “She’s dehydrated, fever. Probably the flu. But shock too, with this wound. I’ll need to clean it out, but it might have been too long to stitch it.”

  “Do what you do,” I told her as she pulled on rubber gloves.

  “I’ll need your help until your father gets here.”

  Nodding, I followed every instruction. Quinn piped up that everyone was pulling up downstairs as Mom started an IV of saline, asking me to hold it up until she moved a coatrack that had been by the front door so that she could hang it. She removed the haphazard bandage, flinching at the wound, but got to work immediately on checking it, cleaning it, and feeling around in it for any bullets or fragments. The plink of metal onto the nightstand proved my theory correct. She’d accidently caught a stray while defending herself—whether by ricochet or just plain fuck-up.

  Olivia moaned in pain when Mom cleaned the wound and rewrapped it tight, but my mother glanced over her shoulder when my dad appeared in the doorway.

  “We need to get antibiotics in her,” she stated.

  “I got some at the pharmacy, but they’re pills,” I told them.

  “Check the bag, Rich. If there’s not a vial, then we’ll crush up the ones Jack has.”

  The two of them went to work on the poor woman, so I left the room, finding Ruby and Ava with the kids. Ava was playing with Aiden, and Ruby was giving Sabrina’s face a wipe down at the same time the poor girl was trying to shove an apple in her face.

  “How is she?” Ruby asked.

  I shrugged. “She’s not awake; that’s all I know.”

  “Joel said to tell you he needs your help setting up downstairs. He’s gonna smoke that meat you guys got today. And these two need food.”

  Nodding, I raked my fingers through my hair and then rubbed the back of my neck. “What if…”

  Ruby glanced between the two little ones. “I don’t know, Jack.” She sighed, but her sad hazel eyes locked on mine. “What can we do?”

  Shaking my head, I made for the apartment door. “I think this one’s on my parents.”

  It was a long damn night. Olivia stayed unconscious through it all. My parents watched over her in shifts, changing the IVs, monitoring her fever, and checking her pupils. We were down to one last bag of saline, which meant hunting down more, but if she came out of this shit, it would be worth it. Watching the kids with Lexie, Ava, Joel, and Ruby was amusing. We were all worried they’d be orphaned by morning. If that were the case, we didn’t know what we’d do.

  Aiden got fussy after he’d eaten almost his weight in steak and canned green beans. He’d shoved it into his face by the tiny fistful, but he fought sleep. We were all piled in the living room of the apartment when he started to truly lose his shit.

  “Here,” I said, holding my hands out for him. “My son was like him at that age. It’s teeth and stubbornness.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine where he got that,” Lexie taunted, and I rolled my eyes at the chuckles around the room but gathered the little guy up.

  “Quinn, play something. Something soft, easy.”

  The kid smirked, but he’d already been plucking at the guitar anyway. He sat forward, resting the beautiful natural-wood instrument on his knees. His song choice was familiar
and almost painful. Smiling in memory of first meeting Sara, of slow dances the night before I had to ship out to Afghanistan, and of long kisses I’d wanted to last forever, I hummed the song against Aiden’s head. He picked up my dog tags and gripped them, starting to pull them to his mouth, but I offered him my fingers instead—at least they were clean.

  The little guy grumbled a bit more while Quinn sang words of tough times and being there for someone, begging to be a friend or more. Aiden let out a shaky sigh, but his head fell to my shoulder as I paced slowly, rubbing sore gums with my finger.

  Fuck me, I missed Freddie and Sara. She’d have been all over this situation, loving and doting on Sabrina and Aiden. She was an amazing mother, which gave me hope, and it made me sad too, simply because we’d talked about another baby. She’d wanted more time with Freddie, and I’d wanted to be out of the Army when we even attempted it. We’d been on the same page, but now I hated that we’d waited. Or maybe I didn’t. Life was iffy and short now. Shit had changed, but all I wanted was the chance to even have that talk again. Even if the outcome was no, I’d have killed to just…talk to my wife.

  “Jack,” Lexie whispered, coming to me. “Sweetie, he’s out. You can put him down.”

  I set him down in the playpen, and he grumbled again but stayed out. When I stood up, I could see that Aiden wasn’t the only one who’d crashed. Ava was curled up like a cat in an armchair in the corner. Joel had an arm around Ruby, and they were taking up most of the loveseat. My dad was stretched out on the couch, which meant my mother was probably in with Olivia. Quinn set the guitar aside, leaning back against the wall as he stretched his legs out in front of him.

  As exhausted as I felt, I was still restless. I reached for my compound bow leaning at the door, saying, “I’m gonna check our shit downstairs. This town isn’t empty.” Sasha perked up and joined me at the door.

  “I’ll come with you,” Lexie offered, adjusting her .45 to the small of her back.

  The night was eerily quiet, and without streetlamps, every star in the sky was visible overhead. It was amazing how much we took for granted, how much useless and constant noise was in our ears all the fucking time, and taking all that away was almost frightening. No planes, cars, or helicopters. No chatter, television, or radio. There weren’t any howling cats or barking dogs. And suddenly, I hated the silence, despised it. It made my boots seem loud as I checked the locks on the Hummer, the truck, and the RV, which were all parked along the sidewalk.