by Shana Festa
Turning to his wife, he stroked her cheek. Her eyes closed and she leaned in, losing herself in his gentle touch.
"Casey," Dom whispered, "my beautiful wife. You are my everything: my love, my best friend, my confidant. The best decision I made in my life was marrying you. Nineteen years of marriage, and I love you more now than life itself. You are the strongest, most determined person I have ever known, and I know you will make it through this. Take care of our girl."
The man embraced his wife and daughter for the last time, leaving each of them with a light kiss on the forehead, and walked to the door. Jake and Vinny held out their hands to him in a show of respect. Meg hugged him, thanking him for saving our lives, and I did the same. I promised to keep his family safe.
Dom stood before Striker. "You're a good man, Striker. You took us in, saved us from death. I count you as a friend, and I know you will stop at nothing to protect my family." The two men locked arms, more than a shake but not quite a hug.
The fading man turned back to his family. "Stay inside," he ordered, and he stepped through the open door.
"Godspeed, my friend," Striker said, and closed the door, leaving his hand on the metal longer than needed.
Casey and her daughter clung to each other for support. Meg guided them back to the sofa and sat quietly beside them, rubbing Elorie's back in a soothing, circular motion.
Striker moved closer to Jake and Vinny. "Watch them. Don't let them near the door," he said before disappearing into his bedroom.
I followed him and watched as he picked up a crossbow that was propped against the wall. "What are you going to do?"
Striker ran a hand through his short hair and let out a grunt. "I'm going to respect the man's final request," he said, dragging the chair to the foot of the bed. "Now, go back in the other room."
My gaze fell on Jake, standing guard at the door in the adjacent container, and when I turned back, Striker stood on the chair unlatching a hatch in the ceiling. He deftly climbed onto the roof and disappeared into the night.
I looked back at my husband again and contemplated going back to comfort the grieving Dalton women. But I didn't have it in me at that moment. I needed to get away from it all, so I followed Striker to the roof.
He helped me to my feet, grumbling about me being a stupid, pigheaded woman. It was still dark, but the sky had begun to take on the hazy quality of dawn. The view from atop the shipping container was breathtaking. Panoramic vistas were obstructed by the stacks on one side, but the other revealed a glorious view of the ocean reminiscent of a postcard. One of those beautiful pictures that had some cheesy saying like wish you were here in bold text.
Striker walked around the edge of the roof, scanning the area for Dom. I caught sight of him first and pointed in the direction of the water. Dom had walked up the back of the row and was approaching. We made eye contact, and he smiled at me, a serene expression on his face. Zombies still roaming the area had honed in on his form and were slowly making their way toward him. They either didn't notice Striker and me from our position, or they didn't care because there was a more accessible meal between us.
Dom pulled a small piece of paper from his pocket and stared down at it, rubbing the front with his thumb and smiling. He looked up at us and gave a final nod before turning toward the ocean. He held up the object again, and I could see it was a photo of his family. He kissed the photo and knelt on the dirt, placing the precious memory into his breast pocket.
I heard the snick of the crossbow next to me as Striker pulled back the string and set it and sucked in a short breath, letting it out only when the arrow discharged from the crossbow and hit its mark. Dom's body slumped forward and went still. The approaching zombies stared down at the limp corpse, no longer interested in its infected flesh.
Chapter 11: Window Shopping
I didn't want to remember Dom that way, lying face down on the dusty ground with an arrow jutting from the back of his skull. While I hadn't known the man for more than a few hours, I had gained an immense respect for him in that short time. What he did for my family, saving us from certain death, was a favor I would do everything in my power to return.
After snubbing their noses at his fresh corpse, the zombies lumbered away, scattering in all directions. They knew there was food nearby but didn't have the foresight to look up. The last one shuffled out of view behind the stacks and I sat, legs dangling off the side of the shipping container. The coolness of the steel chilled my skin as it crept through the denim of my jeans.
Striker sat beside me, eyes focused on the water. I studied the man, not caring if my gawking made him uncomfortable. His dark hair was buzzed close to his scalp, and his cheeks and chin had a day's worth of stubble. An old scar marred the tanned skin of his face, a jagged line that ran from the corner of his eye to his ear. His chiseled jaw line set into a frown, and his eyebrows knitted together with stress, forming vertical creases.
"You don't talk much, do you?" I said, more a statement than a question.
"There isn't much to say," he answered, still fixed on the ocean.
The silence passed, and eventually I turned, staring unfocused out at the rippling water.
"He was a good man," he admitted.
"It's not your fault, you know," I said.
Striker looked down at his hands, forcing my gaze to follow along his body. The thin tee shirt stretched tight across his broad chest, threatening to tear open at his biceps.
"But it is my fault." He snapped his head up and looked at me, his sudden movement and hard expression causing me to flinch. When he realized he'd scared me, his face softened, leaving him looking haunted.
I squirmed under his stare, feeling exposed and vulnerable, and broke eye contact.
"What's your story?" I asked him.
"I don't have one," he answered, his clipped tone a warning to back off.
I tried again, changing tactics. "Is this where you live now?"
"I stay here when I need to."
"So, what then? You just move around?"
Striker huffed, annoyed that I wouldn't let it go. "I worked here, loading and unloading the containers from barges. I lived in the apartment building." He emphasized the word lived.
Before I could ask anything else, he got to his feet and climbed down through the open hatch, leaving me alone to reflect on the last few hours as the sun crept up from the east. My body registered exhaustion, the heaviness in my muscles weighing me down, and my mind fumbled to make sense of everything.
A hand appeared behind me holding out a water bottle. I took it, registering my husband's presence from the silver wedding ring he wore on his finger.
"You doing okay?" he asked as he sat, taking the spot Striker had vacated a few minutes before.
"Not even a little bit," I responded, my shoulder heaving with a long sigh. "What about the others? How are Casey and Elorie handling things?"
"Not good. Elorie cried herself to sleep not too long ago, and Casey is just sitting there holding her daughter."
"Don't let them up here," I told him, using my chin to motion toward Dom's prone form.
Jake saw him, and I heard his breath hitch. "This whole thing is fucked up. We can't keep doing this shit. It's eating away at me."
"Me, too," I agreed and leaned my tired body into him. "I can't go in there yet. I'm not ready to face them. Does that make me a coward?"
He turned his head; his face was so close to mine that I felt his warm breath on my cheek. "No, Em, it makes you human."
* * *
The sun was high in the sky, and the glare hurt my eyes. I reached out my hand to Jake to help him to his feet and he shook his head.
"I'll be down in a bit," he said.
Striker was gone when I finally went back inside. I felt a twinge of annoyance at his disappearing act and shrugged it off, remembering that we all dealt with grief in our own way.
Vinny sat on the floor still guarding the door we'd originally entered through. His eye
s were closed and soft snores escaped his open mouth. Meg was in the folding chair bent over the small card table, her head resting on her hands as she slept. Daphne lay curled up next to Elorie, her little body pressing against the girl's back.
Only Casey's eyes remained open, tracking me when I entered the small space. I gave her a small sympathetic smile and forced myself to look her in the eye. Her emotionless stare made me want to scurry into a dark corner like a rodent. The only seat available was on the sofa beside them, and I didn't want to disturb Elorie. Just keep telling yourself that, you weasel, I thought. If I was being honest with myself, it was because I was uncomfortable and didn't know what to say to them. What conversation could I possibly have that wouldn't end up sounding trite or rehearsed.
Casey slid out from beneath her sleeping daughter, gently resting the girl's head on the cushion, and walked toward me, motioning for me to follow her into Striker's bedroom. She sat on the foot of his bed and looked up at me with those dull eyes. I remained silent, giving her time to collect herself.
"First her brother, Tommy, and now her father. How am I supposed to help her through this if I can't even get myself through it? Dom was our rock." She cried into her hands.
I fidgeted, rooted in place and unable to command my feet to carry me to the devastated woman.
"I don't know what to say, Casey," I admitted. "Your husband was a wonderful man. I didn't know him well, but I know that from the bottom of my soul."
She looked up, smiling at the compliment. "Thank you for that," she said. "He really was, you know, a wonderful husband and father."
My feet carried me to her, and I knelt down, looking up into her face. I heard the echo of Jake shifting positions above us, and Casey looked up at the ceiling, almost as if she were trying to see right through the thick steel.
"You need to find a way to keep it together," I told her. "Not only for your daughter, but for yourself. I've been there. It's easy to fall so far into despair, but it's damn near impossible to climb your way back from it."
She nodded with her chin trembling and tried to will herself to stay strong.
"Get some rest. I'll go sit with Elorie."
Casey looked as if she wanted to protest, but in the end she laid back on the mattress and curled herself into a ball.
I stood in the throughway that connected the two containers and looked to the open door leading to yet another dark space. Pulling my small Maglite from my back pocket, I clicked it on and shined it into the opening. Boxes were stacked along the back wall. Curious, I crossed the middle container, not paying attention to the others, and looked around.
Daphne was scratching at the bottom of the door, whining to go out. I bent down and gave her a kiss. "Sorry, girl, it's not safe out there for you. If you have to go, you're going to need to do it in here. At least this time no one will get mad about it." I tousled the hair on her head and stood again, my joints aching.
The entire container was filled with boxes of food and water. Striker had been a busy bee. I peered into one, elated to find a package of Oreo cookies, and doing my best to stay quiet, I opened the plastic wrapper and stuffed a cookie into my mouth.
"Oh, sweet mother of cookies," I groaned, my taste buds titillating with euphoric bliss. My tummy screamed for milk to wash the cookie down, but I instantly grimaced at the thought of month's-old sour milk. "Blech."
I took a cookie from the wrapper and snuck over to where Vinny slouched on the floor. Careful to not make a sound, I leaned over and began to move the cookie under his nose, swinging it like a pendulum. His head slowly began moving side to side, tracking the cookie. His eyes pinged open and he stared up at me with an annoyed expression.
"Cookie?" I asked, shaking the delightful treat in front of his face. His annoyance vanished and was replaced with amazement as he snatched the cookie from my hand and gobbled it down. The look on his face was priceless. I swear the kid had just had a food orgasm—was that called a foo-gasm?
He looked behind me, alarm registering on his face when he saw that Casey and her daughter were gone. I turned to see what he was looking at. You couldn't be too careful these days.
"Shit!" He swore.
"Relax," I told him, "Casey's lying down in the other room. Elorie must have woken up and joined her mother. Hey, by the way, where's Striker?"
"I don't know," he said, getting to his feet and walking to the bedroom to check on the girls. "He was acting weird when he came back down. He left out the door in the bedroom without saying anything."
"What a dick move," I growled under my breath.
Vinny turned back to me with concern clouding his features. "The girl's not there."
"What do you mean she's not there?" I pushed past him and peered into the room. Casey was sleeping, still curled in a ball, but Elorie was nowhere to be found. I spun around, hoping to find her somewhere in the room, but Meg was the only form I saw.
"Get Jake," I ordered, closing the distance to the bed and shaking Casey awake. "Casey, wake up."
The woman stirred and rolled over, rubbing her puffy eyes and blinking a few times to bring the room into focus.
"What is it?" She asked in a groggy voice.
"It's Elorie," I said. "She's not here."
Like a fierce mama bear, she was up, stalking the three attached containers and calling out for her daughter. Meg startled awake, instantly alerted to danger. Vinny returned with Jake, and the five of us stood in the center container all yelling at once. Tension levels spiked when Casey started throwing out accusations at Vinny and Jake for not watching her.
The woman stalked to the door with no regard for her own safety. The door opened before she reached for the handle, and Striker stepped inside, grabbing her by the arm when she tried to lunge past him through the entry.
All the anger of the last two days erupted from within me, and I got up in his face, poking my finger into his chest. "Where the hell were you?" I screamed at him.
"Out," he responded. His one word answer caused my rage to grow.
"We needed you!" I continued to shout. "Elorie is missing!"
He backed himself against the wall until he couldn't escape my wrath. I descended on him, pounding at his chest until he pushed me and I fell over a milk crate, landing on my ass.
Regardless of the fact that I'd just been physically assaulting the jerk, Jake saw red. He leapt on him, punching him square in the jaw. Striker dropped his shoulder and went at Jake like a battering ram and they both fell to the floor in a jumbled heap. Meg helped me to my feet and, grabbing Casey's arm, we ran to the wall to get out of the way of the wrestling men.
Striker sat above Jake, pinning him to the floor and throwing punch after punch at him while we screamed at them to stop. With an animalistic battle cry, Vinny charged, effectively bringing Striker to the floor. No match for Vinny's size and strength, Striker was unable to move under his weight.
"Enough!" Vinny yelled in the man's ear.
Striker stopped struggling and lay on the floor panting heavily. I rushed to Jake, helping him to his feet and looking him over.
"Are you okay? I asked. "Is anything broken?"
He wiped the back of his hand across his lip, and it came away bloody. "Just my pride," he admitted.
"You done?" Vinny asked Striker, not loosening his grip on the man.
He nodded, and Vinny let him up. I glared at Striker, daring him to look at me, but he couldn't meet my gaze.
Turning to Casey, I said, "I need you to think. Where would she go?"
"I…I don't know," she cried. "We're not from this area."
"Wait!" said Meg. "Before she fell asleep, you were arguing about something. Something about family photos."
"Oh, God, that's it. The car. She went to the car for the family album. She was so concerned that she would forget their faces. I told her it wasn't safe out there."
* * *
Casey needed to be held back, pressed against the wall by Jake and Vinny, while we discussed how to a
ct. Running off halfcocked would just get us killed.
The tension between the men was squashed and they worked together as a cohesive unit.
Striker looked at me when he spoke. "I grabbed everyone a bike from a container. It's the only reliable form of transportation unless you want to go on foot."
"What are we waiting for?" shouted Casey, her eyes wild and crazed. "My daughter is out there. We need to go!"
I couldn't risk leaving Daphne behind— not knowing when or if we'd return to the shipping yard—so I packed her up and crossed the strap of her carrier around my shoulder.
The door swung open under Striker's weight, stopping when it hit the wall of undead behind it. Arms groped the opening, reaching for us. And the force of it shutting severed fingers from various corpses.
"Shit!" he said. "There's too many of them. We need to go the back way."
One by one we climbed through the roof hatch, surveying the mob below. A few feet from the zombies were six bikes. Six, not seven; this meant that Elorie must have taken one.
"I'll distract them," volunteered Vinny. "You guys grab the bikes when they follow me. I'll meet you at the entrance."
"Stay frosty, bro," said Jake, giving his brother an awkward man hug.
We dropped to the dirt behind the container, moving in the opposite direction of Vinny. Striker and Jake kept our path clear, eliminating any threats that got close. I heard Vinny start to yell when he rounded the far corner of the row.
"Hey, assholes, look at me! It's dinnertime, fuckers!" We hung back waiting for Vinny's cue, unfortunately close to the pile of rotting corpses Striker had made over the last few months. "Go! Get the bikes!"
We took off, darting down the aisle at an all-out sprint for the bikes, running them far enough back to avoid stragglers before getting on and pedaling to the entrance. Only Striker remained on his feet, a bike in either arm as he trailed behind us.