“Do you think Valerie showed interest in Dawson or is he delusional?” I ask as we lay together and pretend we don't hear the moaning and groaning or the gunshots outside the window. Holly does a weird, little half-shrug thing.
“There's a chance they both might die. Haven't you ever heard of having one last hurrah?” I do the same kind of half-shrug thing and try not to think of Martin and how he said he didn't want to die a virgin. I guess that that was probably the least of his worries when he was lying on his back in the bathroom, but I still feel sorry for him. What I feel like when I'm with Holly is … different than anything else in the world, and even though we're still not that good at it, I wouldn't trade it for anything.
“How did he die?” I ask Holly after a few moments of contemplative silence. “Martin, I mean.” Holly doesn't answer for a long while and I start to drift back to sleep, oddly comforted by the sound of gunfire.
“Martin was right, in a way. The magic is like a virus. If you're sick, and it gets inside of you, it'll take you down. Martin obviously had some kind of compromised immune system.” Holly pauses as the missing tabby cat reappears from beneath a desk and comes over to us tentatively. Unlike me, she doesn't find the guns comforting at all and has been hiding since before Martin died. When Holly finally gets a hold of her, she grabs her by the scruff and drags her up between us where, after a moment or two of resistance, the cat starts purring.
“How did it get inside of him?” I ask, wondering if it's in the air or the water or the blood of the monsters themselves. It could be anything. Holly sighs and looks up at the window nervously.
“Galen,” she says, pitching her voice so low that it's hard to hear her over the happy cat. “Can I tell you something?” I nod and Holly swallows hard, like she needs a moment to let her thoughts catch up with her. “Since this all started happening, I haven't just had dreams. I … ” She pauses and scratches the tabby behind the ears. “I just know things, like they're instinct or something.” I nod my head and hope that she continues, that she lets it all out and just tells me. She'll feel better that way, I know it. “Galen, I'm a coward,” she blurts just as a pair of tears fills her eyes and sits on the end of her blonde lashes. She's trying to be brave, to hold them back, but she just can't and soon they're crashing down around me. “The hot spots,” she says and then has to pause to catch her breath. “Where the demons come from … ” Holly shakes her head like she can't believe she's saying this and forges on. “They're not that common. I picked this area because I know that they make it harder for her to see me. I knew it would take her longer to find me that way.” She looks into my face like she's searching for something that isn't there and curls her fingers in the fabric of my shirt. “Don't hate me for that, okay? Don't hate me because I needed more time. If you do then I'll never recover, never.”
I stay silent for a moment as I process this.
“It's not wrong to be afraid,” I tell her as I do my best to turn over with just one arm. Once we're face to face, nose to nose, I feel better, like I can say more this way. “You know she's coming now and you're staying, you're going to confront her. You can't undo the past, but you can change the future.” Holly presses a kiss to my lips and smiles through her tears.
“Thank you,” she tells me. “For not hating me.”
“Holly,” I say, and I know this is one of those moments in my life that I'll remember forever, even over the zombies and the demons and the deaths; this time with Holly will stick with me until the end. “I could never hate you.” We touch foreheads and share a brief moment of peace before everything comes crashing down around us.
CHAPTER 18
Premonitory
Fifty-Four Hours And Forty-Nine Minutes After …
“They showed up about a half an hour ago,” Valerie says as we stand in silence and gaze down at the newest breed of DeadBorn. Mummies. They're fucking mummies. Martin had asked about them before when we were on the highway, but I'd never even given it a second thought. Now there's a cluster of them emerging from the trees in a slow drag. None of them are running or screaming or spewing anything disgusting. They're wrapped up tight in dirty linen with bloody splotches for mouths and eyes, arms dangling floppily by their sides. I know though that none of us is going to make the mistake of thinking that they aren't dangerous.
“Are they under Patricia's control?” I ask Holly, thinking of the ooze spitters and the fire faces. It makes a huge difference in our plan of action. Either Holly can go down there or she can't. Either we have to use the last of our ammo or we don't. She stares at them for a moment and then shakes her head.
“No,” she says as Dawson narrows his eyes at her. “No, they're not.”
“So what's the difference then?” he asks as he prods at his swollen upper lip. Looking at him now, I can't even believe I did that. Then again, that black eye and that crooked nose are what he deserves for attacking Holly. Breakdown or no, nobody touches her like that, human, DeadBorn or otherwise. “Let's just shoot the fuckers and get it over with.”
“We can't,” Holly says as she moves away from the edge of the roof and starts counting supplies. There aren't many, enough for maybe two or three dozen more lopers. “If we break them apart, the dust inside will get in the wind and call more demons to the area.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dawson asks as he runs a hand through his hair. “What the fuck?” One of the mummies stumbles over a still moving loper and crashes to its knees. It's agonizingly close to the gnashing mouth of a severed head and we all watch in frustrated horror as it gets up in seemingly slow motion and continues to walk. “So now we not only have to shoot the zombies, but we have to avoid their mummy friends, is that it?”
“Basically,” Holly replies and Dawson lets out a scream of pure rage. He's at the end of his rope now, anyone could see that. “Not unless you want to be overrun with those freaky angel things.” Dawson stares at her for a long moment, turns around, and fires three shots into the closest mummy's head. The bullets whiz right through the coverings on its face and out the other side. Gray-brown dirt like ash, spills into the summer air and gets caught on an updraft, swirling into the sky like a dust funnel. Valerie stomps across the roof and slaps Dawson hard across the same cheek that I bruised just a few days earlier. He stumbles back and falls to his knees, not even bothering to stand up.
“What the fuck was that for?” she asks as she puts her hands on her hips and glares down at him. “I expected better out of you, and now you want to throw a tempter tantrum? Right before the shit hits the fan and we need you the most? Not acceptable, Dawson.” Dawson mumbles something under his breath but doesn't respond. He feels ashamed at what he's done. Good, I think as I follow Holly around the roof. At least now there's somebody around that can put him in his place. I'm guessing Dawson has never had that before. He had a nice house, a nice car, rich parents with a vacation home in Europe. He's never had to own up to being a dick before now. Except with Holly, but she broke up with him because she couldn't handle it. Valerie looks like she wants to handle it which is a big difference. I feel glad for him.
“All the downstairs windows are boarded up?” Holly asks and Valerie nods.
“Yep.”
“And the sliding glass doors?” Here the ranger sighs and shakes her head.
“We couldn't cover those with the supplies we had so what we did was push some bookcases in front of them and nail them down. Should be just as good, if not better. Why?”
“They're coming,” Holly says as she sniffs the air. It already smells like rot and decay, but somehow, whatever she smells tells her something. “What we need to do is hold them off long enough for Patricia to come.”
“If she wants you so badly,” Dawson asks, sounding unmotivated by Holly's words. “Then why doesn't she just have one of these flesh bags carry her over here so she can talk to you. Why attack us like this?” Holly purses her lips and bends down to pick up the shotgun. She puts two slugs in it and looks aroun
d for more. There are none. She sets it aside and picks up a handgun, checks the safety and puts it in her pocket.
“She isn't attacking me,” she tells Dawson. “She's attacking you. Valerie, do you happen to have a knife on you?” Valerie nods and without questioning why Holly wants it, pulls a knife from her boot and hands it over.
“Me?” Dawson says, taking Holly's words literally. “Why the fuck would she want me?” Holly rolls her eyes, sticks the knife in her pocket and picks up an ax from the pile of weapons that litter the rooftop.
“Not you specifically, you idiot,” she snarls at him. “The three of you. She wants you all dead. She's … ” Holly struggles to find the right word. “Jealous.”
“And how the hell would you know that? You said you've never even met the woman.”
“I haven't!” Holly yells, attracting the attention of a group of bone bags that have just come clattering out of the forest nearby. They chatter their teeth at her and jog across the space between us at least ten times as quickly as the slow moving mummies. “I'm telling you the truth about that,” she says, but she looks at Valerie when she says this, not at Dawson. “Don't ask me how I know, please. Just believe me.” Valerie nods her head, very businesslike. Dawson scowls. “Oh, and since we're all being honest here, I should probably tell you that Dawson was looking for condoms earlier. He thinks he's got a chance with you.” Holly spins around as Valerie casts an amused glance Dawson's way. “Come on, Galen,” she says with a small smile on her mouth. “Let's fortify the upstairs, shall we?”
I follow her into the building and down the stairs with a pile of boards in my hands. Holly carries the hammer and the nails and together, we check the locks on the doors and start to board them up. There are two here at the bottom of the stairs, one made of wood that leads into the gift shop and another, metal door that leads outside to the front patio, right next to a pair of water fountains. This is the one that Holly's most worried about since there's a square window in the center of it. Right now, it's covered with a Roman shade, but I know that if I were to open it up, I'd be staring straight at the mummies' shrouded faces.
“We have to be able to hold out,” she says with a few nails stuck between her lips. I reach over and pluck one out, using my zombie arm to hammer it into the door frame. “She wants to sweat us out and convince us to run.” I finish with the board and step back, wiping an arm across my forehead. “Galen, I don't know why, but … in my dream last night, you were dead again. I think she hates you most of all.” I nod, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to respond to that. I think for a moment and try to take a page from Martin's book. Humor never did seem to work all that well for him, but I might as well give it a try.
“Aren't all mothers a little distrustful of their daughters' boyfriends?” Holly doesn't laugh, but she does wrap her arms around my waist and press a kiss to my chest. I squeeze her as tight as I can and we stand there in anxious silence. I feel like we're standing on a beach, waiting for a tsunami to crash down and take us both out. It's there above us now, a wall of water that's covered our faces in shadow and blocked out the sun, but it hasn't hit, not yet. It's just sitting there, quivering, waiting. It definitely amps up the fear factor.
“My mother wasn't,” Holly says and this is the first time she's mentioned her parents since we left her house. “My real mother.” And then she cries and I let her because I know she needs this. If she's going to stand up to Patricia and be strong, she has to let this out and at least for the moment, let it go. Grieving can come later, when we're safe and sound and tucked into a warm bed together with nothing outside our windows but the night sky. “She really liked you, you know. My dad, too.”
“I know,” I whisper quietly and am surprised to find that I'm shedding a few tears of my own. “I liked them, too.” I hold her for as long as she'll let me and only stop when she declares that we've got to batten down the hatches.
“Come on,” Holly says as she takes my hand pulls me up the stairs. “I'm going to need your help with this.” She takes me over to the row of metal filing cabinets and helps me reposition them in the front of the steps, effectively blocking off the stairwell. After that, Holly moves around the room hiding weapons in various places. “I don't know where she'll appear or when, but I've got to be prepared,” she tells me. “Patricia can't suspect a thing.”
I help her for awhile and when there's nothing left to do, we go back out on the roof and find Dawson and Valerie waiting for us. There's a whole slew of fresh bodies on the ground, twitching and writhing in the parking lot turned graveyard, but it hasn't made a difference, the horde has already increased in size, and that's just what I can see. Beneath us, I hear moaning and scratching and pounding. The dead are at our gates, ready to break through and sweep over us like a plague. I swallow hard and pick up a gun.
“Do you think Valerie and I could go inside for a moment?” Dawson asks, perfectly serious. I think I know what he plans on doing, and I can understand why. Things do not look good for us right now. There's a very good chance that we could all die. I look over at Holly for confirmation and she nods, a naughty smile plastered over her lips like a mask. Inside, she's terrified, but on the outside, she's dying to make fun of the newly formed couple.
“Go,” she tells them as a horrible sputtering breaks the drone of moaning below us. A fire face appears soon after, lumbering out from behind the barn, a fresh heart beating behind the white bones of its ribcage. Valerie hesitates when she sees this, but Holly pushes them away with a forced chuckle. “Go, enjoy yourselves,” she says and only when they're gone does she pinch her brow and frown.
“We don't have any water,” I say unnecessarily, wondering what we're going to do about the fire face. If it burns the building down, we're screwed. I don't say any of that out loud however. I'm sure Holly is well aware of how helpless we are, trapped on the roof with nothing but a handful of bullets to get us through the day. She doesn't respond and at first, I wonder if her confidence is waning, but then her lip quirks up like she's amused.
“Just watch.”
As soon as the fire face gets within range of the lopers and the bone bags, the closest ones to him turn like a flock of birds and go raging across the parking lot. It isn't long before they're covered in magma, burning and melting like candle wax. I pull my shirt up over my face to stanch the smell and watch as Holly steps as close to the edge of the roof as she can get. She waits for the fire face to storm across the pavement, slaughtering zombies as it goes. Once it's in range, Holly fires the gun and the beating heart explodes in a burst of blood, like a macabre firework. The demon slumps to the ground and its skin hardens, becomes completely solid like rock. Moments later, it starts to drift away in the wind, nothing but a bit of warm ash.
Holly then turns her gun to some of the mummies and smiles.
“I think Dawson was onto something,” she tells me and fires off three shots into the chest of one of the creatures. When she glances back at me, beautiful golden hair wafting around her face and blue eyes bright, I smile back. “If we can get some more demons over here, we can pin them against Patricia's zombies and start a miniature war. What do you say?”
I don't say anything, just nod my head and marvel at the girl who never gives up, no matter the circumstances. She's a fighter, my Holly.
***
Fifty-Six Hours And Eleven Minutes After …
When Dawson and Valerie come back, fresh faced and just this side of happy, they're shocked to find the damage that Holly's done.
“Holy shit!” Dawson exclaims as he stumbles towards the edge and finds himself being steadied by Valerie's sure hands. “How did you … ” Here he pauses and I can see that for once, he's at a loss for words. There aren't many DeadBorn left now, most of them killed by fire faces and ooze spitters, two of which are still stalking the edges of the parking lot, suspicious at the lumps of darkened ash that used to be demons. It's weird to say this, but I think they're surprised to see their brethren dead. Guess
they're not so invincible after all.
“Don't get too excited,” Holly says as she grabs for her father's revolver and checks the chamber. There are three rounds inside it, two in the double barrel shotgun, and a full magazine in the pistol that she hid inside the building. Other than that, we're out of ammo. When Holly tells this to Valerie, her face falls completely.
“Aw fuck,” Valerie whispers as she runs a hand over her face and gazes down at the ooze spitters. They're creeping forward now, testing Holly with careful steps. I wish they had an Achilles' heel like the fire faces, but if they do, we haven't seen it yet. “What do we do now?”
Holly walks back to the wall and the spot where we've set up a seating area. The candy bag's out here now along with some water bottles and a few cans of soda that we found when Holly was hiding the weapons in the office. She sits down, puts the shotgun across her lap and says, “We wait.”
***
Sixty Hours After …
The ooze spitter that I've been practicing on looks kind of like a porcupine now with arrows sticking out of its body every which way. Or a pin cushion maybe. Yeah, I like that. A pincushion.
“Anchor the bow,” Valerie instructs as she pushes my right leg forward with her boot. I've got my feet too far apart again. “You're not a gymnast, Galen, stop doing the splits.” I correct myself quickly and try to focus. “Use your shoulders, not your arms.” Valerie reaches out and touches my wrist gently but firmly. “And stop tapping the release.”
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