Bilbo is tied to the tree and I literally don’t have time to untie his reins. If I try, the zombies would fall on us quicker than they’ve fallen on Brandon. So I slice down with my sword and the reins snap at the touch of the blade’s edge. As soon as I jump onto Bilbo’s back, he lifts up on his hind legs, kicking his front ones out in defense. A few more zombies have snaked around the tree trunk, knowing they’re too late to the dinner party that is Brandon. I can’t even distinguish their features, they are too old and weathered. Ancient corpses. Unholy. Unnatural.
“Go! Go!” I shout at Bilbo, but he doesn’t need me to tell him. He lands and, in a burst of speed, bowls over the zombies. Their death radiates off of them in waves. I feel it on my skin, as cold as the Grim Reaper’s touch. Down the hill we go, me hanging on for dear life, leaving the zombies behind, leaving Brandon to his demise.
What unnerves me the most throughout our entire descent is that I never hear him scream.
Not even once.
Nine
Bilbo gallops until we are clear of the forest, back on the road again. I don’t think I’ve taken a breath since we left that horde.
I pull on what’s left of Bilbo’s reins. “Whoa,” I say. I need to catch my breath and so does the horse. We are on a bridge, water rushing beneath us in a steady roar. It sounds like some runaway monster.
I spur him on at a trot. This isn’t the place we should be. Hearing is everything in the apocalypse. My ears are tuned to listen for the slightest out of place noise, but if I can’t hear anything over the roar of the water, it’ll make no difference. Anyone or anything could sneak up on us.
Just as we cross the bridge and hit solid road again, I do hear something. My gun comes out in a blur and aims down the dark woods where I think I heard the sound.
It’s footsteps.
“Not again,” I say. “Fucking zombies.”
But it’s not a zombie. It’s a woman, and she comes out with her hands held high above her head. “Don’t shoot,” she pleads.
It takes a moment for me to register who the woman is, and once I do, I can’t believe it.
“Lilly?” I say.
“Hi,” she replies. “I didn’t mean to spook you.”
“You’ve been following me.” It’s not a question.
“I had to get out of there,” she says. She approaches Bilbo and strokes the bridge of his nose. What you call that on a horse, I have no idea. Snout? Muzzle? I’ll settle with muzzle.
“Not safe out here,” I say.
“Not safe in there, either. You saw how the District comes in and acts like they run the place. I’ve never seen anyone stand up to them like you did.”
I smile, but it’s a tired smile. Lilly’s sudden appearance irks me more than makes me happy.
“I’m serious. I’m not trying to suck up to you, Jack,” she says.
“Thanks,” I say.
“What did you do to the one you tied up? Brandon is his name, right?” she asks.
“Was his name,” I say. The way I speak gives me chills. Heartless monster comes to mind, and I’m not thinking about Brandon. I’m thinking about myself.
“You killed him.” This not a question, either. She looks pale in the moonlight, as if the idea of death is as foreign to her as real zombies were once foreign to the world.
“Not exactly,” I say, and this is true. I didn’t kill Brandon, but I didn’t help him, either. Getting out of those ropes wouldn’t have been impossible if he had more time. I don’t want to think about it anymore. What happened there is something I don’t understand, something I don’t think I’ll ever understand. The way his eyes blanked out and he talked about seeing the future. It was like some sort of voodoo that has no place in the real world.
“I heard the gunshots and the screaming.”
“I wasn’t screaming,” I say. “I don’t scream.”
Did I? What the hell happened out there?
“I heard someone screaming.” She crosses her arms as if I’ve offended her. Maybe she heard Brandon and I hadn’t in my rush to get out of there.
I look over my shoulder across the bridge. I’m guessing we’re only about a half-mile away from where all those zombies were. Too close. Much too close.
“Come on,” I say. “We gotta get out of here. It’s not safe.”
I dismount Bilbo. It seems like the gentlemanly thing to do. I could invite her up on the horse to ride him with me, but that seems weird. Seems like I’d be betraying Darlene in some unspeakable way.
“Why’d you follow me?” I ask.
She hesitates, runs a hand through her short, dark hair. Even in the night, her eyes shine. “You intrigued me.”
“Intrigued you?”
“Yeah. You’re different. You’re good.”
“Good?” I laugh. “Hardly. There’s no such thing as good anymore. Only evil, bad, and gray. I’m closer to bad than I am gray, and there’s some days where I feel just plain evil.”
“We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of,” she says, a hand on the saddle, walking in rhythm with the horse, who snorts at her touch. “It was true before the world ended and it’s still true now. But I don’t think you’ve done anything without purpose. You’ve never done anything purely out of evilness.”
I think about that for a moment. “What about those men I killed back in your bar?” I pause and look at her.
“You did what you did because you didn’t want to see Shiv die.”
“Shiv?” I ask.
“The piano player.”
I did what I did because Brandon and the other guards deserved to die.
We approach a fork in the road. I know if we go west, we’ll eventually end up back in Freeland’s orbit. I have no intention of going that way, but neither do I have any intention of picking up a partner on this journey of revenge. So I point at the road and hand Lilly the reins.
“Looks like your exit is coming up,” I say.
She frowns. Ignores me.
I stop, making sure the horse stops with me, otherwise Lilly is liable to go on. I hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but I’m pretty sure I have to give it to her straight or she’ll just follow me around like a lost puppy who thinks I’m its mother.
“Back to Freeland,” I say.
She says nothing.
“Or wherever you want to go. Just not with me,” I continue.
Still, she says nothing.
Now it’s my turn to frown. I hope it comes off more natural than my smiles do.
“You don’t know how good you got it there in Freeland,” I say. “You’re protected.”
“By the District? Hardly,” she replies. Her arms cross again. It’s a gesture I’m beginning to not particularly like.
“Hey, it’s better than no protection at all. Like out here.” I sweep my hand around the road. It’s overgrown. Weeds stick up from the cracks in the asphalt. The lines aren’t as faded as they were on the roads I took to get here, but you can tell no city street department has been this way in a long time.
“I can handle myself.” Lilly moves her long-sleeved shirt up at the waist. On her hip, a big revolver hangs. It’s ancient. I think about Norm’s Dirty Harry gun, about the Colts gunslingers use. I’ve fired one before. It has a hell of a kickback. In my mind’s eye, I see Lilly flung a few feet backwards as she pulls the trigger.
“I suppose if you’ve survived this long, then you can handle yourself,” I say. “But I’m not looking for company.”
“Company? What do you think I am, a prostitute?” She smirks at this.
I ignore the remark. “This is my mission and my mission alone,” I say, trying to insert a sense of finality into my voice.
“It doesn’t have to be. I hate the District just as much as you do. You ever seen Star Wars?” she asks.
“Me seen Star Wars?” I chuckle. “Of course, I’ve seen it. Who hasn’t?”
“Well, I have, but it’s not exactly my favorite movie.”
I grima
ce, all humor going out of me. “Star Wars should be everyone’s favorite movie. Especially Empire Strikes Back. That’s my favorite.”
“That’s the one where Darth Vader says, ‘Luke, I am your father,’ right?”
“Not exactly what he says, but at least you know that much,” I reply. Star Wars used to be one of my favorite things. I showed it to Junior. We marathoned all seven main movies and it was beautiful. But now that memory hurts, and instead of seeing the hope in Star Wars, I just see the bad. The Empire took over the galaxy, slaughtered the Jedi and scores of people and aliens while they were at it. They were defeated, but evil never dies. It always rises again.
“It was my son’s favorite movie, too,” I say absentmindedly.
“You have a son?” Lilly asks, her voice hopeful.
“Had a son,” I say.
She nods, looks down at her shoes. Understanding. I know that look, it’s the polite look of people who think they’ve overstepped their boundaries or offended you in someway.
“I had a little brother,” she says. “And a mom and a dad and a boyfriend.”
A silence falls over us. It’s near complete in the stillness of the road. All that can be heard is the chirping of bugs, the intermittent coos of birds dream-talking, the snorting breath of Bilbo. I stand up straight. “Anyway, back to Star Wars. I feel like you were about to make a point there, or something close to it.”
“Right,” Lilliana says, nodding. “Star Wars. I was going to compare the District to the evil Empire. You know, the big bad people a plucky group of nobodies-turned-to-heroes has to defeat before all hope is entirely lost. Luke couldn’t defeat Vader and the Empire by himself. He needed Han and Leia. He needed Chewie, and those cute robots,” Lilly continues.
“But they just come back in Episode VII,” I say flatly.
She arches an eyebrow. “Didn’t see that one.”
“Yep, back to Freeland you go,” I say. “Let someone else worry about bringing down the ‘Empire’.”
“No,” she says.
“Why?” I ask. It is a question I seem to be asking more so than usual. “Why me? You don’t even know me.”
“Because I saw what you’re capable of. You may not be a good person—which I doubt—but you certainly know what you’re doing when it comes to taking down the District.”
“It’s not about taking them down,” I say. We are still standing at this fork in the road. I am annoyed, frightened, shaken.
“Then what’s it about?” Lilly puts her hands on her hips, cocks her head at me. The way she does it reminds me of Abby. She was the little sister I never had, the wise-cracking, know-it-all, who would be there for you no matter what. God, I miss her. God, I miss all of them. The thought of my family, of all who I’ve lost, makes my answer come out smooth and natural.
“It’s about revenge. Simple as that.”
“Now we’re talking,” Lilly says. “What better revenge than bringing them all down?”
I look at her sternly. It’s hard not to picture her gutted, her organs hanging out, her heart no longer beating. All because of what? She wanted to follow me? I will not have her blood on my hands along with everyone else’s.
Then again, Jack…what’s a little more blood to add to the mix?
No.
“Go home,” I say. “Go back to Freeland. Live out the rest of your life without anymore bloodshed.”
“There’s always bloodshed.”
“It’s out of your hands sometimes, yeah, but there’s less bloodshed when you don’t go out looking for danger.”
“I’m not looking for danger,” she says.
My eyes go wide, and my arms are out to the side. “What are you talking about? You want to overthrow an entire apocalyptic empire! If that’s not danger, then I don’t know what is.”
She shakes her head.
I hand her Bilbo’s reins. The horse is content with standing here, nose to the ground, tail swishing back and forth as sporadically as the hooting of owls in the nearby forests. “Take him back to Bill or Curly. Whatever the hell his name is.”
“No,” she says, and she actually stamps her foot down. The echo of sole hitting asphalt rolls among the trees.
Don’t have time for this.
I’m not giving up. I just choose to end the argument. To the right, I go.
I’m taking the horse with me.
“Wait,” she says. There is a slight desperation in her voice. I sense it because I’ve heard this desperation in my own voice before.
I stop, turn around, and look at her. She knows I can hop onto Bilbo and leave her in a cloud of dust. Will I do that?
Probably not.
They say chivalry died long before everyone else did, but I don’t believe that. Who would I be to leave a poor, defenseless woman to the dark? Not to mention the surrounding horde of zombies undoubtedly tracking our scent right now as we speak.
I stare at Lilliana, waiting for her to say her argument, her last desperate attempt.
And she does.
“I have a working car,” she says.
I narrow my eyes at her. Impossible. These days, the only cars you see driven are by the higher ranking District officers. Not even Brandon is that—was that, my apologies. And these days, I tell it like it is. No other way to do it. “Bullshit.”
She raises her right hand. I get a glimpse of that gun she has on her belt again. “Honest to God,” she says. “There’s one catch, though.” She shrugs when she sees my expression.
“Always a catch, huh?” I say.
“It’s about twenty miles away and the man who owns it is one tough son of a bitch,” she says. “He’s got guns—a lot of guns—and soldiers willing to die for his cause.”
I’m silent for a long moment.
“Jack?” Lilly says in a soft voice that I barely hear, even in all the silence.
I shake my head. I can’t believe I’m going to do this. But a car? Jesus Christ, that would make things so much easier.
Safer, too.
“It’s a working car, right? Not some piece of shit clunker?” I ask.
Lilliana nods eagerly.
For a moment, I’m transported back to a time where I watched one of the most famous safe havens crumble. Eden. The way we escaped was by stealing a beat-up van. A piece of shit clunker, if you will. That van lasted us longer than it should’ve. So maybe even a clunker is better than nothing at all.
“It’s nice. I’ve seen it in action many times before,” Lilly says.
“Whose is it?”
“An officer’s.”
“You mean a District officer’s?”
She nods, her face going ashy. “He is not a very nice man.”
“To become an officer in the District, one cannot be remotely close to nice,” I say. I try to picture this man. I’m having trouble, especially with the image of Brandon’s neck and face being torn away by chomping zombie teeth so fresh in my mind.
“I was going to steal it myself,” she says.
“Why don’t you?”
She grins, but she hasn’t gotten the color back in her face. “Well,” she says, “like I said, Luke was nothing without Han, was he?”
All I can do is shake my head. She just doesn’t understand.
Ten
The sun is coming up now. To a man like me, one who sleeps the day away and patrols the night because there’s less people about, this ungodly hour is hardly dinnertime. We have been taking turns riding Bilbo. Neither of us is comfortable enough to share the horse. I am content with walking.
Lilly is in the saddle, dozing off. I could just leave her right now. I could save any future pain she might cause me. Whether that pain would be inflicted by losing her or by betrayal, time will only tell.
But should I even risk this?
I don’t know. The prospect of leaving her seems enticing, if only because it has been so long since I’ve been in the company of others on the road.
Then again, I have to keep my numb
er one goal right there where it belongs at the top. That, of course, is revenge. The longer it takes me to get to Ohio, my chances of revenge slip further away. Same goes for ever finding out what happened to my brother and Abby.
Sometimes, I wish I would’ve found their bodies among the remains of the countless others slaughtered at Haven. At least then I would have known what happened to them. I would’ve been able to lay them to rest the way I had laid Darlene and Junior to rest.
The unknown is so much worse than the known.
Lilly mumbles something in her sleep. It sounds like ‘Momma.’
My hand finds its way into my inside breast pocket. For a moment, my insides go cold. The pocket is anything but empty. All of my important items are in here, but the most important item seemingly isn’t.
That would be the locket, the one that contains the picture of my wife and son, that moment of perfection captured by a Polaroid.
I stop in the road. Bilbo doesn’t, and since the broken reins are currently tied around my wrist, Bilbo’s force pulls me forward.
“Damn it,” I say. “Hold on.”
The horse listens.
Lilly stirs in the saddle. She moans sleepily, then this moan turns into a deep yawn. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her stretching. Not for long, though, because I’m ripping my cloak off. The cool, fall air blasts me through my t-shirt, sending chills all up my spine.
“Where is it?” I say, turning my cloak upside down and shaking everything in the pockets free.
“Jack?” Lilly’s voice says. “Jack, are you okay?”
Batteries and pill bottles clatter off the road, bouncing up and down, rolling to the ditch. Band-Aids float lazily toward my feet, caught on the morning breeze. There’s a pocket knife, well-used, that cartwheels out of my line of sight. Bullets, clips, rifle attachments such as red-dot sights, ACOG scopes, and a homemade silencer that is anything but silent.
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