Zombiemandias (Book 2): In the Year of Our Death

by David J. Lovato

  “Hey!” she said. The zombie grunted, turned, and abandoned the window and shambled for her.

  “Annie!” Will said. He ran toward the window, hoping to get through it and help her. Instead he stepped on a piece of glass. Will fell forward and hit his shoulder on the window, lodging another piece of glass in it. Will screamed, and whether it was the scream or the sight or smell of blood, the zombie turned to him.

  “Glaaaaat!” the zombie said. With its hands extended and its mouth open, it rushed forward. So did Jeremy, and he punched the zombie in the face before it knew he was there. There was a loud pop! and the zombie stumbled backward and Jeremy cried out. He grabbed Will with his other hand and pulled him away from the window, watching for glass as he went.

  The zombie was already reaching into the window again, but then its throat exploded and blood sprayed onto the people closest to the opening. The zombie gurgled until Annie yanked the shears from its throat, then it fell down. Annie raised the shears high and then brought them down into the zombie’s eye. It stopped making any sounds after that.

  Will was trying to clutch at his shoulder to stop the bleeding, but the glass had broken off inside it, and it hurt to touch. His foot throbbed, and when Rob said “God damn it, shut up!” he realized he was screaming. Since he couldn’t staunch his shoulder, he pressed his hands into his mouth instead, forcing his screams down to groans.

  “It’s all right,” Jeremy said. He took Will’s sock off, checked for glass, then took Will’s clean sock and wrapped it tightly around his foot wound.

  “What the fuck?” Annie said. She was at the window with blood all over her shirt, her neck, her freckled face.

  “He was trying to help,” Jeremy said.

  Annie used the shears to break off any glass still on the window sill, then hoisted herself over it and into the house. “You idiot,” she said. “I didn’t ask you to help me. I don’t need you to protect me, okay?”

  Tears were running down Will’s face, but he was pretty sure they were there before. He hoped so.

  “There’s a first aid kit in the hallway closet,” Annie said. Alex nodded and left the room. “Guys, quiet the fuck down.” Several people had been talking, with Rachel repeating “Oh my God!” and Sharon sobbing. Will’s shoulder hurt, and his heart was heavy in his chest.

  “Someone cover up that window, but watch out for glass,” Steven said. Alex was handing him the first aid kit.

  “Get his shirt off,” Jeremy said.

  “Careful for the glass,” Steven added. “Maybe those shears will—”

  Annie pulled a pocket knife from her jeans, flipped the blade out, lifted the front of Will’s shirt, and cut it off of him. They lifted the shirt over the glass, only a centimeter of which was outside of his skin.

  “It’s in deep,” Annie said. “Main bathroom, under the sink, there’s a pair of pliers.”

  Alex moved for the door again, but Kalli was already gone. Jeremy was holding Will steady, and Will looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Will said. “I’m sorry about the stuff I said.”

  “Will, you’re not dying, it’s just glass. Chill out.”

  “Still sorry.” Will tried to smile, and Jeremy smiled back at him.

  “I’m sorry too.”

  Kalli returned with the pliers. Annie took them, nodded her thanks, then looked at Will. “Don’t fucking move, okay? If I get this wrong, the glass could break off inside you, then you’re fucked.”

  “Okay,” Will said.

  He tried to hold still, but when Annie pressed the pliers against the glass, fire shot through his shoulder and chest, and he moaned loudly.

  “Give him something to put in his mouth,” Annie said.

  “Oh I’ll give him something to put in his mouth,” Alex said, and Hannah hit him so hard he looked like he would cry.

  “Do we have anything?” Jeremy asked. He looked around and saw everyone else looking around. “Move, guys!”

  “Fuck it,” Annie said, and she grabbed the glass and yanked it out of Will’s shoulder. He screamed and his back arched, and blood came running down his arm, but the glass was out and the release of pressure felt almost good.

  “Get a towel or something,” Steven said, but Rob yanked his shirt off and pressed it against the wound.

  “Hold it there,” Annie said. She opened the first aid kit and dug around for some gauze. She pressed a small bottle of peroxide into a cotton swab, put that on his foot, then wrapped gauze around it. She readied another one, and Rob moved his shirt off the wound, but Annie only sat looking at it.

  “What?” Jeremy asked.

  “It needs to be sewn shut,” Annie said.

  “Do we have anything that will put him to sleep?”

  “Does this look like a doctor’s office?”

  “Guys,” Gladys said, “maybe we should wait for an adult to get back.”

  “He’s bleeding, Gladys,” Ed said.

  “Someone get some Tylenol, it’s on top of the fridge.”

  “That won’t even kick in until you’re done,” Jeremy said.

  “I know that,” Annie replied, “but you didn’t have to tell him that.”

  “Just do it,” Will said.

  Annie looked at him. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Annie poured the bottle into his wound, then took a pair of scissors, a needle, and some thread from the first aid kit. She poked the needle into his skin, but his shoulder already hurt so badly, he hardly felt it. He clenched his fists and ground his teeth and whimpered, but after a few minutes it was done, and Annie wrapped gauze around his shoulder. When she finished, he was already feeling better, and the medicine was kicking in.

  “Thanks,” Will said.

  Annie slapped him. “Next time you decide to play hero, think about that.” Then she left.

  Jeremy helped Will to his feet.

  “Get him to the couch,” Hannah said.

  “No good,” Jeremy replied. “That window is wide open now, and if something gets in, he can’t get away. We’re taking him to the basement, and he’s staying there for a while.”

  ****

  Will sat alone in the basement, in the dark, listening to them yell. They would catch themselves and be quieter, but the voices would always rise again. Eventually Kalli came to check on him.

  “You okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “What are they talking about?”

  “Don’t worry about that, okay? You’ve got enough to think about.”

  “Yeah,” Will said. “I really ruined everything, starting from when I kissed her.”

  “You kissed her? I told you to talk to her.”

  “I just said I messed up, didn’t I?”

  Kalli smiled, but Will didn’t see any humor in it. She sat next to him. “It’ll be all right. Try to relax, okay? You need to let it heal.”

  “It’s not that bad. I can move around now and everything. The one in my foot wasn’t that bad either.”

  Kalli sighed. “I’m going to get back upstairs. Take it easy, okay?”

  “Okay,” Will said. Soon he was alone again.

  Will hoped Annie would come see him, but she didn’t. The voices upstairs receded, and all was dark and quiet. Will thought about how nice it felt to not sleep alone, how warm and comfortable he was, and how he might not ever feel that again.

  Everyone filed into the basement, and most headed straight for their beds. Rachel’s eyes were red, and everyone looked upset.

  “So what’s the verdict?” Will asked.

  “Exactly what we thought it would be,” Steven said. “Bill is pissed. About the window, the noise, everything.”

  Will took a deep breath. He knew what was coming, but he was still unprepared.

  “Bill wants us to leave tomorrow morning.”

  36

  On Break

  “How’s the food team doing?” Layne asked.

  “Barely skidding by,” Garrett replied. “Half of
them are working the farms we’ve got set up, but it’ll be a while before we grow anything. The other half goes out every day and gets just enough food for everyone to eat at night. Besides this meal, anyway. It’s from our personal store.”

  Garrett gestured to the meager feast of canned vegetables and bread before them.

  “We have a personal store?” Layne said. He took a bite of corn. “We should open it to everyone else. No one should have more than anyone else, not until things get easier.”

  Garrett smiled. “I thought you’d say that. I opened our personal store to everyone else two days ago. Just wanted to see if you were still made of the same stuff you were before.”

  “It has been a while since we’ve all gotten together like this, hasn’t it?”

  Keely smiled and looked around the old door they were using as a long table. The break room in the radio station held her, Katie, Garrett and Layne, Warren, Dex, Lacie, Ralph, and Vince. With New L.A. open to the outside world, everyone had been busy, and this was the first time she could remember all of them being in the same room at the same time.

  “How are we doing on—”

  “Layne, stop worrying,” Keely said. “We’re here to eat, not manage the city.”

  Layne scratched his head. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s hard to keep everything in order. There’s just so many people now.”

  “You ain’t alone, man,” Garrett said. “You keep doing your thing, we’ll keep doing ours, and we come to each other if we run into trouble. Just like always.”

  “No man should carry the burden alone,” Warren said. “If you ask me, there was way too much of that going on the first time around. We don’t need it now.”

  The first time around, Keely thought. She caught a glimpse of her tiny house in Seattle, of the times Katie visited it, but put it away. That was another lifetime, and despite everything, Keely was happy now.

  “Where’s your friend?” Dex asked Ralph. “That cute girl you’ve been spending all your time with. You could’ve invited her, you know.”

  “She said she had some important work to do,” Ralph replied. “It’s a little weird, actually. Sometimes she just disappears, maybe for an hour or two, then just shows up again like nothing happened. I trust her though, I’m sure she has her reasons. She has her dad here, and the guy’s not in the best of health.”

  “Bring her by sometime,” Layne said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met her.”

  “Her name’s Jane.”

  “Rhymes with ‘Layne’,” Dex said. “And ‘insane’.” Lacie bumped him, and he hugged her.

  “I just noticed something,” Vince said. The others turned to him. “The day after tomorrow’s Halloween.”

  “We should let the kids go trick-or-treating,” Katie said. “I bet they’d love it!”

  “There are only like five kids,” Dex replied. “And we don’t have any candy. Or costumes. And everyone’s so busy.”

  Katie nodded and looked at her plate.

  “Maybe next year,” Keely said. “Once things have settled down, and we have a little more time to prepare.”

  “That sounds like a great idea.” Layne raised his half-empty can of soda and said, “To next year, when we’re all less tired all the damn time,” and everyone laughed.

  ****

  “Jane!” Randolph said. Jane’s head snapped over to him. “Hand me that wrench. Pay attention.”

  Jane handed Randolph the wrench. He must’ve said her name at least three times. She was a thousand miles away.

  They had set up their workshop in the basement of an unused building, the farthest from all of the ones that were currently in use. Nobody ever came in here, so it was the best place to make the bombs.

  The same bombs that would end the life of everyone in New Los Angeles, and mark the beginning of the end for all the members of the Church of Lesser Humans.

  Jane felt sick. She could hear her father huffing and puffing as he walked around the bench to connect a wire here, solder metal there.

  “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” Randolph said.

  Maddock shook his head. “It has to be just right or it won’t go off, and we can’t risk that, or else the whole thing falls apart.”

  “We don’t have time, Maddock. Two days from now, Adam and the others will be outside, waiting for us to let them in.”

  “And if the bombs don’t go off, we won’t have the greater humans on our side, and then we don’t stand a chance. Now if you’ll kindly back off and let me work?”

  Randolph rolled his eyes and turned to the other bench, where a partially assembled bomb rested.

  “What are you doing?” Maddock asked.

  “Adam sent five people. You have four of us either twiddling our thumbs or collecting scrap. I’m working on this bomb. We need to finish. If you want you can look over it when I’m done. I already watched you make two, and this one’s almost done. It’ll work.”

  Maddock snorted, but didn’t argue. Maybe he didn’t have the energy. It was late, after all.

  “I don’t want—”

  Maddock and Randolph stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Had she said that out loud?

  “I don’t want to be down here at the moment,” Jane said. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Samuel and Beulah are sleeping. You’re on duty.”

  “I’m not doing anything. There’s nothing for me to do.”

  Randolph turned back to his bomb. “You need to be here to hand us what we need.”

  “You can get it,” Jane said, and started up the stairs.

  “Remember what we talked about!” Randolph called after her. He said it to her almost a dozen times a day.

  The talk in question had happened their second day in New L.A., when Randolph had seen her with Ralph. The scene played back in her head many times, always different in the details, but the gist was the same: If you tell anyone, I’ll kill your father.

  She had thought about trying to convince her father to leave with her, to not go through with the plan, but once he had his mind set on something, he never changed it. Asking him that would only put Ralph in danger. But wasn’t he already?

  The night air was cool, and smelled of mixing concrete. In the distance she heard some of the heavy machinery working; they built barricades even at night. New Los Angeles never slept.

  Jane passed the building she and Maddock were assigned to live in and headed for the radio station. She stood outside it for an hour, and then she saw a half dozen people come out. Ralph was among them.

  “Ralph, can we talk?”

  Ralph broke from his friends Dex and Lacie and approached her. “Sure. Something wrong?”

  “I have to talk to you about something, but…”

  “But what?”

  Jane pushed back tears. “You’re going to hate me.”

  Ralph leaned down a little to look her in the eyes. “I’d never hate you. What’s going on? You all right?”

  “It’s—”

  “It’s me,” Randolph said. Jane spun around, stifling a shout. Randolph was approaching quickly along the sidewalk.

  “Randy, right?”

  “Yeah. Randy.” He reached the two of them and threw a punch without stopping. Ralph fell back and hit the pavement. Jane stepped between Randolph and him, but Randolph shouted past her like she wasn’t there.

  “Jane’s my girlfriend, got it? Back off, or I’ll kick your ass.” He was trying his hardest to sound genuine, but it sounded fake to Jane, maybe because of how impossible it was that she would ever feel anything but hatred toward him.

  “What—”

  “Don’t talk, just listen,” Randolph said. “I’ve had enough of your little games. You stay away. Don’t talk to her, don’t look at her, don’t think about her. Got it?”

  “What—”

  Randolph kicked Ralph in the side, then grabbed Jane’s wrist and yanked her down the street. She tore her hand free. “Don’t touch me! Go a
way, or—”

  Randolph turned to her with a look that told her he would kill her and enjoy it. “Or what? What, Jane?” Then he mouthed Maddock.

  “Just leave me alone!” Jane said. She ran down the sidewalk, toward the building that housed her bed. She formed a plan as she went: She’d wait until everyone went to sleep, then she’d go to Ralph and tell him everything. He would hate her and it would kill her inside, but that was her fault for waiting so long. She should’ve told him the first night. Maybe they could protect her and her father, maybe they could—”

  Samuel grabbed her from around a corner and put a hand over her mouth as he pulled her into the alley. He brought her back into the darkness, then let her go.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Jane, you’re going to get us all killed!” Samuel said. “You’re lucky Randolph was looking out for you. What are you thinking?”

  “I can’t do it,” Jane said. “I can’t murder all these people!”

  “They’re not people, Jane. You know that.”

  “But they are! We were wrong, don’t you understand? We were so—”

  She felt the blow to the back of her head, and then the world was dark.

  ****

  “What if she wakes up?” Samuel asked. “What if someone hears her?”

  “She won’t wake up,” Randolph replied. “And no one will hear her. I tied the gag tight. Help me lift her.”

  They had waited a few hours, until the construction crew stopped for the night. Then they had crept onto the site, carrying Jane, who was tied up with ropes and wrapped in a blanket. Now they stood on top of the scaffolding above the newest barricade: Two wooden walls, an empty car on its side, the whole thing ready to be filled with concrete in the morning. The car’s windows had been removed, and Randolph was thankful for that.

  “With any luck,” Samuel said, grunting, “she’ll suffocate.” They slid Jane down into the barricade, then let her drop through the car’s window, and she disappeared into darkness with a thud.

  “With any luck, she already has,” Randolph replied.

  Samuel wiped his forehead, then looked back into New Los Angeles. “Randol—”