Zomb-Pocalypse 2

by Megan Berry

  His ropes are bloody, but he doesn’t complain as he brushes past me on his way to Ryan and begins to cut him loose. “No offense to you, Blondie, but if those guys came in here right now, I want someone free who stands half a chance in a fight against them,” Silas mutters as he hacks away at Ryan’s ropes.

  “I didn’t say anything,” I protest innocently. His reason actually makes a lot of sense to me, now that he’s looped me in.

  “You were thinking it,” he retorts, finishing up with Ryan and moving in behind me. I feel the cool press of the knife against my skin, but thankfully he doesn’t cut me. The ropes spring off, and the air actually makes the rope burn hurt worse.

  “Thanks,” I tell Silas gratefully, but he doesn’t reply as he kneels down behind Sunny. The little girl whimpers when he starts to cut, but Silas is uncharacteristically gentle with her.

  Sunny runs to Ryan as soon as she’s free, and Silas doesn’t bother sparing her another glance.

  “See, Blondie, this is why you don’t always need a Crocodile Dundee sized knife,” Silas takes the time to tell me, and because he’s expecting some kind of reaction from me, I stick my tongue out at him—though I also make a mental note to start hiding my own small jackknife somewhere from now on.

  “What now?” I ask, and we all look to Silas for an answer.

  “We need to get out of here, but they have our guns and the keys to the truck,” Silas says, thinking out loud.

  We all freeze when we hear the door being unlocked from the outside. “Put your hands behind you and pretend you’re still tied up,” Silas whispers urgently as he lunges forward and kicks the severed rope under one of the pews.

  We all gather in a tight circle and move as far away from the door as possible, up towards the podium at the front.

  One of the large men who’d wielded an automatic weapon earlier comes strolling in, though he’s ditched the scary looking machine gun now for my pistol. Anger flashes through me as I recognize the muzzled weapon. The man strides in without fear, wrongly assuming we are no threat to him because we’re tied up, and I can’t help but wonder how many people they’ve done this to! He seems so calm and confident; I know we can’t be his first victims.

  He gets closer and points the gun towards us. “Time to go,” he orders with a sneer, and fear starts gnawing away at my belly. I have a lot of trust in Silas, but what can he really do with a small knife against a man with a gun?

  “Where are you taking us?” Silas demands, probably trying to piss the guy off so he’ll make a mistake.

  “To meet your maker,” the guy says with an evil chuckle, and Sunny starts to whimper. Ryan quickly moves in front of her before she can give away the fact that her hands are no longer tied behind her back.

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask, taking a page from Silas’s play book.

  “I’m not the one doing nothing,” the guy replies with a twisted grin. “I just like to watch ‘em bleed out,” he retorts, and I feel sick just looking at this monster’s face.

  “We’re not going,” I goad him, and he gets a funny look on his face as he strides towards me, intent on proving me wrong. He pushes past Silas and Ryan as he takes a grab at me.

  The boys spring into action, and Ryan jumps the guy from behind while Silas lays a bone-crunching punch to the center of his face. Our captor lets out a roar of anger and accidentally drops his gun when he’s forced to use both hands to ward off his attackers.

  I dive for the gun, and the guy aims a brutal kick at my ribs just as my hand grazes the barrel. I let out a yelp and double over in pain as all the air is forced out of my lungs. My head spins, and I try to suck in a breath but can’t. I begin to panic and look up just in time to see Silas viciously stab the guy in the stomach. He stabs him several more times before he collapses down on his knees, and I have the vague presence of mind to wrap my fingers more firmly around the gun and roll out of the way with it.

  Silas stabs the guy again and then pushes him all the way down onto the ground. The guy collapses beside me with his eyes wide and lifeless, and if I’d enough breath left in my lungs, I definitely would’ve screamed.

  “Are you okay?” Ryan asks, falling to his knees beside me.

  Despite the horrible pain, I nod.

  “Just force yourself to take that first breath,” Silas tells me, bending down and clasping my hand and pulling me to my feet. The sharp pain of being pulled up makes me gasp and, thankfully, air finally finds its way inside my burning lungs. The next breath is easier, and even though it still hurts, it isn’t as bad as it was. Silas pulls the gun from my hand and pats me on the shoulder.

  “You did good, Blondie,” he tells me.

  I manage a weak smile at his praise; it is few and far between.

  Ryan lets go of me to tend to Sunny, and I use a wooden pew to lean on as I watch Silas skillfully take apart my pistol and check how many rounds are left in it. “Full,” he says when he catches me watching.

  “What now?” I ask, hiding the majority of my pain so I won’t be a burden.

  Silas ignores me for a minute as he bends down to search the corpse of the guy he just ruthlessly dispatched. He pulls another gun from the back of his pants and hands it to me. “You and Sunny stay here,” he commands. I want to object, but he has that look on his face that says it won’t change his mind.

  “Shouldn’t we all sneak out of here together?” Ryan questions, and I smile at him gratefully. It still hurts to breath, never mind talk.

  Silas shakes his head. “They have our keys, and probably half of our supplies pulled out of the truck by now,” he disagrees. “Besides, we can’t leave them alive to keep hurting people.” The last bit is spoken with a deadly intent that makes me shiver, glad that Silas is on my team.

  “You stay here and keep the kid safe,” Silas says, obviously done debating anything. He motions for Ryan to follow him. Ryan looks torn between staying to protect us and going out there to protect us. After a minute he walks over and plants a short but sweet kiss on my lips.

  “You’ll be okay,” he tells me, and I’m not sure which one of us he’s trying to convince. I pull away from Ryan’s arms and see Silas watching us, his eyes lingering on my lips. He looks away when I glance up at him.

  “Keep it together, Blondie,” is all he imparts to me as he heads to the door.

  Sunny and I watch the boys sneak out the open door before disappearing, slipping away into the shadows.

  Sunny starts to cry, and I pull her more closely to my side, wincing when she burrows her head in a painful spot. I pat the girl gently on the back as I struggle to take a couple deep, not-at-all calming breaths. “It’s going to be okay, Sunny,” I tell her more confidently than I feel. “You need to be a good girl and stay quiet,” I say sternly, trying to channel my inner Silas.

  I lead us past a couple rows of pews before I steer her into a row mid-aisle. She goes to sit on the seat, but I shake my head. “Let’s sit on the ground instead,” I tell her, and she slides to the floor without protest. I join her with a small huff of pain, and then we have nothing to do but wait.

  I worry what the effect of seeing all this violence will have on Sunny as she grows up, if she grows up. Hell, I should probably be worried about myself too!

  We hear gunfire erupt from somewhere in the church, and I grip the pistol until my knuckles turn white. I hear the door creak open, and my heart stutters in my chest. I glance carefully around the aisle and see that it isn’t Ryan or Silas, but one of the guys that helped kidnap us.

  I look back at Sunny and put my finger up to my lip to warn her to be quiet. Something about my face must have alerted her to how serious this is, because she claps her hands around her mouth and closes her eyes, burrowing herself right underneath the pew. I wish I could do the same thing, but I wouldn’t fit.

  The guy is breathing heavily and moving up and down the aisles, looking for us.

  This is a dangerous game of cat and mouse, and I have to repeat my warning to S
unny back to myself. Every fiber of my being wants to scream at the top of my lungs.

  As the guy gets closer, my mind wars with what to do. Part of me wants to pop up and shoot him, but he also has a gun and is probably a much better shot. I finally settle on hunching down further and praying that he won’t spot us.

  It doesn’t work. “Well, well, what have we got here?” a cruel voice says as he stops right in front of us. He has his gun in his hand, but the barrel isn’t aimed at anything in particular—he doesn’t seem very afraid of little Sunny and me. My brain screams at me to use it to our advantage.

  “Please don’t hurt us,” I whimper, and it isn’t acting. I’m shaking like a leaf right now.

  “It’s a little too late for that,” the guy spits angrily, stepping back a bit to give us some room. “Stand up.”

  I motion for Sunny to stay behind me and climb shakily to my feet. When I’m on my feet, the guy finally spots the gun in my hand, but his reaction is totally opposite of what I expected. He actually laughs at me.

  “What do you think you’re going to do with that, girl?” He taunts me, and I feel a white hot surge of anger streak through me.

  “Let us go!” I demand.

  The guy actually continues laughing and bends over to slap his knee. “Not on your life,” he manages to get out around his laughter.

  My mind goes blank, and I squeeze the trigger.

  The gun is aimed at him, though I’m not sure what exact part of him. I know I’m close enough that I can’t miss, and if I do, we will be dead. I squeeze the trigger without any thought of pity or remorse for another life. This guy wants us dead. It’s him or us.

  He lets out a strangled cry, and the humor is quickly replaced with new looks of shock, pain, and anger. I see his hand raising his own gun up, and everything is like slow motion as I pull my gun up faster and fire another round right into his face. He drops like a lead balloon, and I stare down at the man I just murdered, stunned.

  I hear the clatter of running footsteps and duck back down, though with the body lying out in the aisle, it won’t be hard to figure out where we’re hiding. I sit hunched on the floor, sweating bullets with crazy, hot tears running down my cheek as I resign myself to commit murder again.

  “Jane?” I hear Ryan’s frantic voice call out as he enters the room, and I’m so relieved that I collapse, bawling on the floor.

  “Jane?” Ryan calls again, and I hear Sunny stand up behind me and call back to him. Then I feel his strong, capable hands wrapping around me and dragging me out of my hiding spot. He holds me tightly, and I feel Sunny’s small arms wrap around us both.

  “I was so scared when I heard that gun shot,” he tells me, sounding like he’s on the verge of tears himself, and it makes me bawl harder thinking about what I did and what could have happened if I hadn’t done it.

  “Is it safe now?” Sunny asks the question I should have had enough sense to ask.

  “It is,” Ryan tells us, squeezing us even closer to him. My ribs protest, but I don’t. I bawl for another ten minutes, and Ryan holds me the entire time, even Sunny pats me on the back.

  “I’m sorry,” I say at last, pulling away from his soaked shoulder, feeling embarrassed.

  “No, it’s okay,” Ryan denies.

  I finally look up into his face and give him a watery smile. I’m suddenly grateful that I’m not wearing mascara right now—I would have the worst raccoon eyes! I shake my head at my deranged brain. Is this really the stuff I think of after just killing a guy? Talk about a strange coping mechanism! I let out a ragged sob at the reminder, but force myself to take a deep breath rather than giving in to it.

  “Where’s Silas?” I ask suddenly, looking around and realizing that he didn’t come in with Ryan and hasn’t shown up since.

  Ryan hesitates and my heart sinks. “Is he dead?” I ask in a dispassionate voice, even though my emotions are starting to well up again.

  Ryan quickly shakes his head to reassure me that he’s alive. “No, sorry,” he exclaims, “He is… interrogating Danvers.” He confides in me, and I wince. I’m sure that isn’t going very well—for Danvers. “We should probably wait here,” Ryan tells me, and I nod, too tired to argue. We walk as far away from the bodies as possible and sit down to wait.

  We hear footsteps, half an hour later, and we all look up, suddenly alert, guns up.

  “It’s me,” we hear Silas call from the hallway before he even tries to enter the room.

  He walks in, covered in blood. I jump up and run to him, looking for his wound, but he waves me off impatiently. “It’s not my blood,” he tells me, stopping me in my tracks.

  “Oh.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” is all Silas says next, holding up the keys to our truck, and we all nod, glad to be getting the hell out of this place.

  We don’t bother taking anything other than our own stuff that they took from us. Silas hands me back my leather weapon carrier, complete with all my stuff, and I somehow find the strength to belt it around my waist. Then we’re outside in the bright sunshine, and it’s like a completely different world than the horror story back inside the church.

  I’m grateful there are no zombies outside in the parking lot. I don’t think I have the strength right now to fight any off. We load up into the truck, and Silas gets the motor running before ducking back out again.

  I turn in my seat and watch him pumping some gasoline from the tank in the back into a bucket. Then he disappears, sprinkling gas all over the outside of the church. I watch him light a match and the gasoline ignites with a woof, the flames licking hungrily over the pristine white wash of the exterior.

  Silas looks like some kind of movie hero, outlined by the flames, and then he’s running to beat hell, back to the truck as the inferno really gets going.

  We peel away at breakneck speed, and I can’t help but wonder if the flames will bring all the zombies in the area, and if they’ll be stupid enough to walk right into the fire when they get here. I hope they do.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You shouldn’t cry for him,” Silas snaps ten minutes into my latest crying jag, and I look up and narrow my eyes at him through the tears that won’t stop falling down my cheeks.

  “I’m not crying for him, you idiot. I’m crying for myself,” I say stuffily, having no other way to describe the emotions plaguing me right now.

  Silas glances into the backseat at Sunny, who has curled up into Ryan’s arms and fallen asleep. “You did the right thing,” he tells me after making sure the girl is asleep.

  I nod my head. “I know. It was him or us… I didn’t even think about it, I just pulled the trigger.” I take a deep breath and scrub angrily at the tears that run down my cheeks. “I just didn’t know I was the type of person who would be able to pull the trigger,” I say honestly, and Ryan reaches up and touches my shoulder from the backseat.

  “That guy was bad news, they all were,” Silas says, a dark look coming over his face.

  “How do you deal with killing people?” I ask him honestly, knowing he must have killed at least a couple people today, and who knows who else before I met him. Silas frowns as he thinks about the question.

  “Easy,” he says softly after a minute of thinking.

  I look over at him incredulously. Nothing about this experience is exactly what I would describe as “easy.”

  “I only kill the people that need killing.” He replies.

  I open my mouth to say something—I’m honestly not even sure what—but he cuts me off.

  “It’s a completely different world now, Blondie, and believe it or not, we are actually the lucky ones.” I let out an unladylike snort, causing Silas to shoot me a sharp, disapproving look. “We got to survive when millions of others didn’t. That’s all the matters, it’s up to us, now, to figure out the rest. It’s like the cavemen when the Ice Age hit, or the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs—adapt or lay down and die.”

  I fall silent, not willing to argue w
ith Silas’s twisted logic because it actually makes crude sense, so I close my eyes for a minute and just focus on the feel of Ryan’s hand rubbing rhythmically against my shoulder. My eyes feel gritty and sore from all the crying. Poor Sunny has been traumatized, even more than usual, and Silas is a bloody mess and smells like gasoline, which is giving me a headache…

  “I want to stop for the night,” I say, glancing at the clock on the dash. “It’s nearly five anyway.”

  “I think that’s the best idea you’ve had all day,” Silas allows, surprising me with his willingness to stop and set up camp for the night… but, I guess the guy is covered in another man’s blood.

  We drive in silence until we come across a place. It’s a small farmyard with a fair-sized travel trailer parked in the driveway. The yard looks abandoned enough, but the first thing I do is scan for a doghouse. I have a feeling ‘no dogs’ will be a crucial part of our checklist from now on.

  “This place looks alright,” Silas says as we pull in. He surprises me by pulling alongside the large, white camper, rather than the house.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, not sure what his intentions are, but having an inkling, and it makes me extremely nervous.

  “This trailer looks like the perfect place to spend the night,” Silas says, “We’ll have to check and make sure it’s empty, and the house, but it’s a lot smaller and will be easier to secure.”

  I stare at the travel trailer with mixed feelings. It will be easier to check for the bogeymen, and there for sure aren’t any pet doors, but if the zombies come, we will essentially be trapped in a tin can with only one way out. My stomach ties in knots at the thought.

  “You’ve had a bad day, why don’t you stay here and look after Sunny while we check things out?” Ryan suggests kindly, and for once, I don’t argue that they’re being sexist. He’s just being nice.

  I nod, and the boys get out of the truck with their weapons drawn. They are in and out of the house quickly, just in time to intercept a lone zombie that comes stumbling around the corner of the house. I fumble with the door handle to warn them, but Silas has already seen it and pulls his hatchet from around his belt. He lands two solid whacks to the zombie’s rotten skull before the thing collapses into a decrepit pile at his feet.