“This is my baby,” Annie said. She grabbed something from the corner and held it up, and it took Will a second to adjust to the light.
“It’s a guitar.”
“It’s a Jazzmaster. Like Robert Smith uses, but this one’s ice blue, like Jesse Lacey’s.”
“It’s electric,” Will said. “How do you play?”
“I have an amp that runs on batteries. The big ones, not many got looted when this first started. I try not to use it unless I have to, so mostly I play quietly.”
“I didn’t know you played.”
“Sit,” Annie said. She sat down on her bed with the guitar in her lap, and patted the spot next to her. Will stood still, barely inside the room. Annie sighed and stood up. “You really gotta snap out of this, kid.” She took his arm and pulled him to the bed. He sat down, and she sat next to him, so close their legs were almost touching. Annie strummed her guitar, stringing chords together. It was quiet, but audible. “Have any requests?”
“No.”
“What kind of music do you listen to?”
“Whatever my friends play on their phones, I guess.”
“Come on, Will. Who’s your favorite band?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Everyone has a favorite band. Here.” Annie had only been messing around before, and now she started playing a real song. It was slow, and sounded sad. “This is one of my favorite songs,” she said. “Something Corporate. ‘I Woke Up in a Car’.”
Will spoke so quietly he barely heard himself over the guitar. “I’ve never heard it.”
Annie stopped playing. “You have to.” She took the guitar strap from around her shoulder and set the guitar against the wall, then reached to the side of her bed, where a record player rested on a night stand. It was battery-powered, and she flicked it on. Annie shuffled around the room in the dark and found a record, then put it on. Soon the song began to play, but with a piano instead of a guitar. It sounded close enough, though on the piano it sounded sadder.
A man began singing about notes from places Will would never go, and then Annie was sitting next to him again. When she looked at him and her smile faded, Will knew she could see he was crying. He wanted more than ever to leave the room, there had to be some smartass comment on the horizon. But Annie only said, “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have a favorite band because I never got to find one. I just… went to a friend’s house one day, and that night, I never got to go home. If I had known I would never go back home I wouldn’t have even gone out, but then I’d just be dead.”
Will was trying to stop the tears, but he couldn’t. It was like his life had been put on pause when he was twelve years old, like he had been stuck as the same person since then, and always would be.
“What I said before,” Annie said, “about not being in a girl’s room… I didn’t mean that, you know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.” Will wiped his eyes, but that only made more tears come. “I’m being a big baby.”
There were a million things Annie could’ve said, a thousand jokes, a hundred looks, countless ways to let Will know how silly he was being. He almost flinched when she raised her hand, but she only put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him close to her, pressed his face into her shoulder. Will began sobbing. He didn’t try to fight it anymore, he just cried into her hoodie, and beneath the music coming from the record player, nobody else would ever know.
32
At the Optometrist
“Hurry it up, doc,” the guard said.
“Stuff it,” Abril replied. “I’ve never used one of these before.”
Abril shifted her gaze back and forth from the manual to the machine before her. The guard looked around, mostly keeping his eyes on the door. He, Abril, and Nelson were crammed into a little office made littler by the amount of machines inside it, and Nelson could barely see at all; the lights in the store were off.
“I don’t like it here,” the guard went on. “Too dark. You know there’s zombies out there in the aisles.”
“At least you can see,” Nelson said.
“Barely.”
“Oh, settle down,” Abril said. “Your friends are dealing with the zombies now. You just have to keep an eye on a fat nurse and a blind scientist. Just watch the door, and zombies can’t open doors anyway.”
“Most of them can’t. I lost a man once banking on that assumption. I won’t do it again. You see one zombie do something, you might as well proceed assuming they all will.”
“Not a bad philosophy,” Nelson said.
“Maldición. I need more light.”
“Lady, are swears the only Spanish you know?” the guard asked. He opened the door a crack and looked out, then closed it and took out a flashlight to point at the manual.
“Mostly,” Abril said. “There we go. Give me your numbers, Nelson.”
Nelson reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. Abril and the guard both laughed. “Something funny?”
“You still use a wallet,” Abril said.
“Old habits, I guess.” Nelson took a small card from the wallet and handed it to Abril. She pressed buttons on the machine, each beep seeming louder than the last, and then it roared and whirred as it came to life. A tiny metal arm took the giant plastic disc Abril put into it, and the machine spewed water into a tray to catch the bits of plastic the grinder sheared off of it. A few seconds later Abril took the finished lens out, set it down, and put another disc into the machine.
Nelson picked up the lens and held it to his eye. The world was clear again, but so dark.
“Careful with that,” Abril said. “The edges are sharp. I’m a doctor, I don’t know how to buff them.”
“I don’t even know why we needed you here,” the guard said. “Any one of us could’ve done this.”
“Oh? You knew how to find his focal point and mark it down? How to read the machine?”
The guard shrugged. “I’d rather not lose our only doctor on a mission to help a scientist I don’t even know.” He turned to Nelson. “No offense.”
“Yeah, well, it’s your job to make sure we don’t lose anyone,” Abril replied. She took the second lens out of the machine, then punched in different numbers and put in another disc. A few minutes later she was snapping four lenses into two frames. “There. Two pair, in case you have another mishap.” She handed a pair to Nelson. He put them on and saw clearly for the first time in days: The dark room around them, the tall and weathered-looking guard, and Abril, who wasn’t really fat but not exactly thin, shorter than she had seemed when she was blurry, and had a little gold cross dangling from her neck.
“Thanks, Doctor,” Nelson said.
Abril waved her hand. “I’m not a doctor. How’s the vision?”
“Perfect. The frames can use some tweaking, but I can do that with a match and some pliers. We should go.”
“Yeah,” the guard said. He opened the door and let in the sound of a scuffle a few aisles away. “Stay here!”
The door clicked shut behind the guard as he rushed out of the room.
A thought occurred to Nelson. He had his glasses, and an extra pair, and he was unattended. If he wanted, he could sneak out of the store, back down the highway, and reach Hoover Dam by tomorrow. Bart and his men might come for him, but would they even know how to get to the dam? They might find out. But what really kept Nelson in that room was Abril, standing patient, no sign of fear in her eyes.
“I can’t do this,” Nelson said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Make weapons for Bart. Help him do to other people what he did to those two last night. In my own home.”
“If there was a way out,” Abril said, “I would have found it by now. You think I want my son growing up around these assholes?”
“Of course I don’t. I just… I’m new to this. It’s been a long time since I even saw anyone else. How is Uriel, anyway? After last night…”
“He’ll be oka
y. You should meet him. I’ll bring him by tonight, when I come check up on you.”
Nelson laughed. “I don’t think I need a follow-up for a simple eye exam.”
“I check on everyone, every night. Bart’s orders. Neither he nor I know what the hell I’m supposed to be looking for, but I do it.” Abril leaned in close. “Truth be told, I think he thinks people might still turn into zombies, and he wants to make sure none of us do.”
The door flew open, and Emilia and another guard who Nelson thought was named Parker came inside, covered in sweat and, in Emilia’s case, flecked with blood. “We gotta get the fuck out of here,” she said.
Emilia and Parker stayed on either end of Nelson and Abril. Crouched low, they ducked from end cap to end cap, working their way toward the front of the store. Gunshots rang out somewhere on the other side, echoing off of the shelves and racks of clothes. Now and then a zombie rushed past, groaning as it headed for the noise.
The front door was in sight. Emilia rushed to the next endcap, Abril followed her, then went Nelson, but halfway between the aisles something jumped at him from behind a shopping cart, groaning as it fell upon him. Nelson turned in time to catch the zombie, then landed on his back, hitting his head on the linoleum.
“Fuck!” Parker shouted. He pulled out his gun and fired, the zombie’s head exploded and its body went limp, then two more zombies down the aisle and a third and fourth in the checkout lanes shambled toward the source of the sound. Nelson struggled to get out from under the zombie as Parker turned to fire at the zombies in the checkout.
“Wait—” Nelson started, but the zombies from the aisle were upon Parker before he even noticed them. Parker screamed as one of the zombies bit into his shoulder, tearing out a chunk of skin and shirt.
“Parker!” Emilia shouted. She turned, gun drawn, but another zombie had grabbed Abril. Emilia ripped a knife from her belt and jammed it in the zombie’s head.
Nelson had scooted out from under the zombie, backward into a checkout lane. He stood and turned in time to catch another zombie. “Blaaag!” it shouted, shoving itself on him and knocking him back down, gnashing and grabbing at him while he held it by the shoulders.
“Fuck!” Nelson said. He looked to the shelves beside him for anything useful, but saw mostly candy, charging cables, and lighters and pocket knives in little plastic wrapping. Better than nothing he supposed, and wiggled his foot upward under the zombie, got his shoe on its chest, and shoved as hard as he could. The zombie only sat back, but it was enough time for Nelson to roll over, grab a knife from the shelf, and start tearing the package open. The zombie came back, moaning like it was tired or hungry, and Nelson brought his arm up. A terrible idea, but too late; luckily, the zombie’s neck caught his forearm, and not its teeth. It lurched forward, biting at him, and with his free hand Nelson wrestled the knife out of its packaging, unfolded it, then crammed the blade into the zombie’s eye.
The zombie’s head went backward, but it only groaned loudly and came back again. Nelson pulled the knife free, the zombie’s eye came with it, then he closed his eyes and jammed the knife into its face and neck, over and over again, warm droplets splashing his skin. When he opened his eyes his glasses were covered with blood, but he could see enough to tell the zombie was no longer moving.
Nelson shoved it off of him and stood up, then looked around. Mostly he saw blood smear, but to the side and somewhat through it he saw a dark store with dark shapes moving here and there.
“Nelson!” Abril called. She and Emilia were by the door. Emilia fired her gun, and a zombie Nelson hadn’t noticed fell.
Nelson looked to the end of the register aisle, were a zombie was crawling toward him, trailing blood from a bullet hole in its knee. Nelson climbed onto the conveyor belt and into the next register lane, then ran to the front of the store and joined Emilia and Abril. Emilia fired two more shots, then followed them into the sunlight and down the street, where the world was dead silent.
Over the next hour a few more of Bart’s men joined them. In the end only Parker and the guard who had watched over them in the office didn’t make it out, and as they headed back toward the casino together, Nelson realized he never even knew the man’s name.
****
Two soft knocks came from Nelson’s door, and he sat up. “Come in.” Abril entered, and behind her hid a young boy with dark hair. “Hey there. You must be Uriel.”
“Hi,” Uriel said. He stayed behind Abril, until she walked behind him to shut the door.
“What are you up to?” Nelson asked. Uriel didn’t reply.
“Just here to check up on you,” Abril said. “How is everything? Any headaches?”
“No. I got the frames fitting the way I want. Nice and tight.”
“That’s good. And… are you okay, otherwise?”
Nelson knew what she meant by her tone. “Yeah, I’m fine. More or less.”
Abril smiled. “More or less.” She sat down at a chair by a desk Nelson didn’t dare think of as his. “Uriel, don’t just stand by the door, it’s rude.”
Uriel came a little closer and sat down on the carpet.
“You… want to draw or something?” Nelson asked.
“I don’t like drawing,” Uriel said. “I’m no good at it.”
“What do you do for fun?”
“He has his video game,” Abril said. “One of the handheld ones. Uriel, Nelson here keeps the power on. He’s the reason you get to play still.”
“Really?”
“Up at Hoover Dam,” Nelson said. “I keep the machines going so the closest cities have power. What games do you like to play?”
“I like racing,” Uriel said.
“That’s pretty cool. What about music games?”
“Not really.”
“I don’t play games much,” Nelson said, “but I have a guitar, a real one.”
“What color is it?”
“Black and brown. I’ll show you when we—”
Nelson looked at Abril. “He knows,” she said. “Not that it matters much. It’s not an option.”
“Can you… show me how you play it?”
“I doubt I’m any good, but sure. Maybe you can show me some of your racing games sometime, too.”
“Okay,” Uriel said.
Abril stood up. “Well, I think we should probably go. I have other people to check on.” She and Uriel headed for the door.
“Wait.” They turned back, and Nelson motioned for Abril to come closer. Uriel waited by the door, and Abril sat on the bed next to Nelson. “If I could get Bart out of the equation—”
“This is dangerous talk,” Abril whispered.
“Let’s just say I could. Would you help?” Abril looked at Uriel. “There’s a home for you and him at Hoover Dam, either way. I promise.”
“I don’t know that I could.”
“If you could, would you?”
“Yes. Of course. But if Bart ever caught on—”
“I’m just talking hypotheticals here,” Nelson said. “I’m keeping my mind and my eyes open. All I’m asking is for you to do the same.”
“Sure,” Abril said. “If we could get out from under Bart’s thumb? Of course.”
“Thanks,” Nelson replied, and Abril and Uriel left him to his planning.
33
On the Road to New L.A.
Maddock’s face was so red, Jane almost couldn’t bring herself to turn and look at him. There was no escaping the sound of air being forced in and out of his mouth. He was only a little out of shape, and he really wasn’t so old, but the California heat takes its toll.
It’ll be cold soon. You won’t live to see it.
He had always been a little out of shape, even in the military. Maybe that’s why he was the demolitions expert and not a foot soldier. Or maybe he just really liked blowing things up. She didn’t like thinking of him as a soldier at all, especially now, huffing and puffing at the back of the line.
The sky was almost as red as he
r father’s face. She wondered if they’d have to camp out here. She looked at Randolph, who would get several yards ahead and force himself to slow down, hardly trying to hide his annoyance.
“How much farther?” she asked him.
“You’ll see the city over this hill. From there, maybe an hour. Less if we don’t stop to talk.”
“It’d go faster if we took the road,” Samuel said. Beulah nodded.
“The roads belong to the greater humans. We have no quarrel with them. Best to give them as much room as we can.”
They crested the hill, saw the city, and walked toward it, through tall grass that eventually became fenced back yards. Randolph stopped them once to put a finger to his lips, and from then they were silent, going through yards when they could and chancing the streets when they couldn’t.
The sun was almost gone, but a faint glow remained in the distance.
“Is that it?” Beulah asked as they crossed a back yard in darkness.
“Yeah,” Randolph said.
“We have to stop,” Jane said. The others turned to her.
“Are you insane? We can’t stop. I should’ve been back a long time ago. They’ll wonder where I went, they’ll know something’s—”
“They’ll think you went out foraging and ran into other survivors. It makes more sense anyway; we’re all sunburned, don’t you think they’ll notice if you tell them you never left but you suddenly have a sunburn? Anyway, you need my dad to make explosives, and he can’t do that if he has a heart attack before he makes it there.”
Randolph looked at her sideways, his mouth slightly open, his eyes narrow. Samuel turned to him. “She has a—” Randolph raised a hand and approached Jane slowly.
“Say that again.”
“Say wha—”
“That last part.”
“My dad needs to catch his—”
“No. You said ‘you need my dad to make explosives’. ‘You.’ There’s no ‘you,’ Jane. It’s ‘we.’ We need him to make explosives, that’s me, Samuel, Beulah, everyone back with Adam, and you.”
Zombiemandias (Book 2): In the Year of Our Death Page 18