by A. M. Geever
Doug waved off her self-reproach. “They made some educated guesses and went from there. They discovered what they did about Santa Cruz on their own. I meant Seffie. What do you think?”
“We take her as far as the town,” Miranda answered, shocked that he had even asked.
“Of course we do,” Doug snapped. “We’re not leaving her out here to die, for Christ’s sake.”
Miranda waited.
Doug took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just— Jesus, we cannot catch a break! Harold a City spy? Come on,” he said in disbelief. “Now we’ve got three people to watch and guard instead of one, and you and Mario aren’t in peak condition.”
“We’ll manage.”
“Because we’ve done great so far.”
A crash came from inside the room the others occupied, followed by Seffie’s raspy yelp of surprise. A shout from Connor, followed by a thud.
“Goddamn him!” Doug hissed.
Miranda took a step toward the door when what felt like a freight train hit her in the chest. She flew off her feet and landed hard on her back. She gasped for breath, her lungs emptied by the impact.
Jeremiah ran past her, a length of rope still tied to one wrist, and disappeared into the stairwell. No, she thought, still gasping for breath. Connor followed a moment later. Miranda glimpsed blood coursing down Connor’s face. Doug sprinted down the hallway after them.
Miranda climbed to her feet and leaned against the wall. Mario appeared in the door, an assault rifle in his hand.
Seffie darted past Mario. “Come on!” she croaked.
“Give me that,” Miranda wheezed, hand out to Mario. “Was it Seffie?”
“No,” he said, moving past her to follow Seffie without giving Miranda the rifle. “Stay here. You can barely stand.”
“You should stay, too. We can’t risk losing you.”
“Just stay here, Miri.”
There was no point, no time, to argue. Mario turned and left. She watched, helpless, as he disappeared into the inky black of the stairwell.
52
Connor swiped warm blood and cold rain from his eyes. Thick underbrush clutched at his legs. The contours of the uneven ground reached up to trip him. He could hear the madman ahead, calling out to his undead ‘children’ for protection. From every direction, they moaned their reply.
If I’d just left the freak alone…
Furious with himself, Connor pushed harder. The knots Seffie tied were secure. He had said so himself. There was no rational reason to retie them, even less to move him, but reason had nothing to do with it. Learning that Seffie was at least partly responsible for the death of almost everyone who had left Mazatlán with them had not just clouded Connor’s judgment. It had obliterated it.
He squinted against the rain, saw a glimpse of Jeremiah’s silhouette against the lighter background of one of the buildings ahead. Connor pivoted to follow and tripped, an ensnared foot dragging him to the ground. He started to push himself up when he heard a raspy hiss, like air leaking from a tire. He snapped his head toward it. A rush of decay hit him full in the face. His eyes widened in horror at the skeletal face inches from his nose, almost invisible in the dark underbrush. Connor reared away, crab-walking backward. Over his initial panic, he stopped and kicked his heel into the writhing zombie’s face. He reached for the machete on his hip. It wasn’t there. He had set it aside so that Jeremiah couldn’t make a grab for it while he moved him.
Another zombie came toward him from the tall grass to his right. He sprang to his feet and started to run.
“Connor, wait!” a voice called out.
Connor looked away from the zombie to see Doug closing the distance between them. “I’ve got it,” Doug said as he approached the staggering cadaver. Connor heard a dull thwack. The zombie dropped.
“This way,” Connor said, gesturing in the direction he had last seen Jeremiah.
The moans of the zombies grew louder. The torrential downpour seemed to marry the faint sound of Jeremiah’s voice with that of the zombies’ moaning. A damp rustle that the rain could not account for sighed from the overgrown trees and underbrush.
“I’ll go around to the north of that building, in case he heads that way. Keep going east,” Doug ordered.
“I don’t have a weapon. I just took off after him.”
Doug produced a bowie knife from a sheath on his thigh. He handed the knife hilt first to Connor but did not let go when Connor gripped the hilt.
“Don’t fuck up again.”
The wind picked up, pelting the stinging rain against Connor’s face. He slowed as he approached the building ahead. He poked his head around a corner, praying Jeremiah wasn’t poised with a zombie to set loose on him. There was movement ahead.
A hand gripped his shoulder. Too tight. Too cold. Connor knew it was a zombie before he turned around. He shoved the zombie against the wall as he turned toward it, using its grip on his shoulder as leverage. The zombie lurched at him again, catching Connor’s shoulder and elbow in its hands, its grip so tight Connor almost dropped the knife.
The zombie didn’t moan, but its jaws snapped with a nasty clicking of teeth. Connor fought to raise the hand that held the knife. The zombie’s grip tightened. Its jagged fingernails scraped against the chain mail protecting his elbow, twisting the metal against his skin.
With a grunt, Connor kicked. His boot connected with the zombie’s knee. The vise-like grip he had struggled against loosened. He wrenched his elbow free and jammed the knife into the creature’s eye. He pulled the blade out and sent the zombie crumpling to the ground.
He rounded the corner. There were zombies everywhere. Staggering figures distorted by the rain: ahead of him, behind, closing in from the exposed side not sheltered by the building. A few more minutes of this and he was done for. He had to find the Prophet or retreat. Not retreat, he thought, fail. If he did not capture Jeremiah, it was over. The whole world would be doomed because of his stupidity.
Connor heard a snatch of a human voice from across the clearing. He charged toward it. Zombies snatched at his clothes as he ducked and shoved, deflecting their attack with elbows and punches. He didn’t try to kill; that would slow him down. He had to reach the voice of the lunatic, not just to capture Jeremiah, but to save himself.
Then he saw a lone figure inside a ring of zombies, maybe ten feet away. The zombies lurched toward the central figure, only to be repelled when they got too close. For a moment, it seemed as if Connor’s and Jeremiah’s eyes locked, even though Connor could not make out more than a shape and white shirt. He could feel the insanity behind Jeremiah’s golden eyes pulse like a beacon before Jeremiah pivoted away.
Jeremiah broke for the tree line. Connor strong-armed the closest zombie, knocked another to the ground with a shoulder check. If Jeremiah made it, he would get away. Desperate, Connor leaped over the nearest zombie and dove, stretching his body as far as he could. He hit the ground with a tooth-rattling thump. His fingernails scraped against Jeremiah’s bare ankle. Scrambling on the sodden ground, Connor lunged and caught Jeremiah’s foot.
A startled cry escaped his quarry’s mouth as he almost tripped. Then a yank and the slippery bare foot slid through Connor’s fingers.
Connor scrabbled to his feet, swaying like a drunkard as he dodged and deflected zombies. He squinted through the rain, but Jeremiah had slipped through the tree line.
Connor surged forward, lungs afire, summoning his last reserves of energy. He followed Jeremiah under the sparsely spaced trees, but the underbrush and the silhouettes of thickening redwood trees made it hard to see. Instead of capturing Jeremiah, he tumbled onto the fragrant carpet of wet redwood needles.
Connor looked ahead: slow shapes that were somehow closing fast. Everywhere he looked walking death advanced upon him. The moaning became a dull roar in his ears. The stench of decay filled his nose, penetrating his mucous membranes to coat his mouth with its bitter taste. Would it be so bad to just stay down? The mission ha
d failed. None of them would make it to Santa Cruz. One by one, they would be picked off. The vaccine would remain a perquisite of the powerful, and the world would continue as it always had, its indifference to injustice intact.
It would be okay, he thought, dazed. I’ll just stay here a little while. He looked forward, into the slack, blank face of the nearest zombie.
“Fuck that.”
He sprang to his feet. He had to get out from under the trees. A zombie lurched toward him. Connor looked for something, anything, that might save him. As he ducked under the arm of another zombie, he saw a boulder, perhaps three feet high. Not enough in itself, but enough to give him a boost to the branch above it. He ran, blind to the peril around him as he jumped onto the boulder. Connor crouched low, then exploded upward. His fingernails scratched the branch, and then he was falling. He crunched down to the boulder’s uneven surface and fell to the ground.
He climbed back up, zombies footsteps away. Again he crouched low, praying as he forced his legs upward to break gravity’s hold. He stretched his arms above his head.
The rough bark bit into his palms. Miraculously, the branch was dry, sheltered from the storm by those above it. Connor pulled himself up. As he slung his arm around the branch, a hand grabbed his foot. Heart racing, Connor kicked wildly. He felt his foot slip free and pulled his feet up, then swung his leg over. It took every ounce of strength to wriggle onto the prickly limb. He leaned back against the tree trunk, gasping.
The zombies below him moaned and thrashed, driven wild by his presence. Connor slumped against the tree, relieved to be alive but knowing he was screwed. Sleep or water, taking a piss or getting tired from standing, zombies were troubled by no such considerations. The horde below was focused on him and going nowhere.
They have the horses; maybe they’ll make it, he told himself, thinking of Miranda. The light blue of her eyes as they shone with laughter. The mutinous set of her jaw when she was angry. The way her body felt nestled against his as he had watched the fear recede from her eyes and be replaced by a cautious fondness. A fondness that he had hoped might turn into something more, but she was slipping away from him, bit by bit, and he couldn’t stop it. He saw it in the tilt of her head as she listened to Mario speak. The way she looked at her former lover, as if she was trying to figure out something necessary to her survival. But with him, she was impatient and short-tempered, felt smothered. However it might once have turned out, it wasn’t going to end with him and Miranda together. But he had to believe she would survive. The alternative was unbearable.
The zombies below shifted. The moans turned to snarls, as if they were angry. Connor peered down. The horde moved almost like a wave, forward and back, as if pulled by a magnet and then released. Before he could puzzle it out, a voice cut through the gloom.
“We told you, did We not? You cannot thwart the will of God the All-Father on Earth.”
The zombies below the tree began to roil. For a moment, Connor thought he was hearing things, but the strange behavior of the horde below told him otherwise.
He’s come back to gloat, Connor thought, stunned.
Aloud, he said, “You did.”
Jeremiah laughed softly. “How did you think you could succeed?” he asked. “When the righteousness of Our Will is so plain?”
“Because we had to.”
The space around the boulder cleared. Jeremiah strolled into view a few feet away, a light-colored shape in the gloom. But he stood too straight, moved with too much purpose, had too much personal space around him to be a zombie.
“But We can move among the Hollow Men. We understand more clearly now. They are not just Heavenly Father’s Judgment, but Our Children. They become Our Shield.”
And you can be mine.
He just had to keep him talking. Since he was pretty sure Jeremiah was a pathological narcissist, Connor figured it wouldn’t be too hard.
“What will you do now?” he asked. “Return to New Jerusalem?”
“We will,” Jeremiah said, his voice becoming flinty. “We will purify Our Body of infidels and rebels. We will restore Our Order. Our Justice will be terrible.”
“Finn killed the Prophet’s Guard. Who will help you?”
Slowly, to try and mask the movement, Connor pulled one leg closer to his body. He shifted his hip just enough to set his heel on the branch.
“Still, you think Our Will can be thwarted!” Jeremiah exploded.
Connor let Jeremiah’s unhinged tirade wash over him as he shifted his other leg into position. Now crouching on the branch, he took a deep breath.
“You have no answer?” Jeremiah sneered.
Connor’s stomach flipped over. He had been so intent on getting into position without detection that he had not been paying attention to Jeremiah’s tirade. Then he grinned.
“Damn straight I’ve got an answer.”
Connor sprang from the branch. Jeremiah stumbled back. A second later, Connor landed on top of him. Jeremiah thrashed against him with surprising strength, slippery as an eel.
“No fucking way,” Connor hissed, jerking Jeremiah toward him.
“My Children!” Jeremiah screeched.
The madman bucked and thrashed. No longer needing to protect himself from zombies, all of Connor’s attention was on Jeremiah. He straddled him, wrenching Jeremiah’s arm up behind his back. A thrill of triumph raced through him at Jeremiah’s furious howl of pain.
“No more!” Connor shouted. He wrapped his free hand in the neckline of Jeremiah’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. “I will break your fucking arm,” Connor threatened, cranking Jeremiah’s arm higher. Immediately, the thrashing subsided.
Connor turned himself and Jeremiah around, strong-arming his captive out from under the trees into the rain. He picked up the pace, hoping to outstrip the zombies behind them. Even though he knew they could not get close enough to Jeremiah to be a threat, the ebb and flow of the ever-growing horde surrounding them unnerved him.
They hurried to the building where he and Doug had split up. Jeremiah did not struggle anymore but muttered under his breath. As they rounded the corner where he had last seen Doug, Connor stopped without warning, the yank on his captive’s arm producing a yelp of pain.
It seemed as if every zombie in the world lurched toward them. The number of undead among the cluster of buildings they had chosen to shelter in had quadrupled in the time it had taken to catch Jeremiah. There were hundreds of zombies between Connor and the building he had to get back to.
How the hell was he supposed to rejoin the others without risking their being eaten alive before he got Jeremiah close enough to protect them? How was he going to find Doug? He’d only had a piece of rebar. He’s probably dead, Connor realized.
For a moment, he just stood there, overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombies he now had to contend with. Jeremiah began to laugh, as if sensing Connor’s fading resolve.
Connor shook himself. One problem at a time. I need to get back to the others. As he started forward, a whistle pierced the air. Connor turned toward the sound, the building on his left.
“I’m up here,” Doug cried. “Second floor, come get me!”
Connor scanned the second story of the building the voice seemed to come from. Through the downpour, a faint motion caught his eye.
“Get moving,” he said, giving a resistant Jeremiah a shove forward. They slogged across the sodden clearing toward Doug’s voice. As Connor approached, he saw Doug’s lanky form, hunched on the sill of a second-story window above a growing group of determined, if out of reach, zombies.
“Hurry up,” Doug shouted. “There are more inside and this window isn’t going to hold!”
When Connor and Jeremiah were below Doug’s perch in a newly created clearing, Doug turned toward the window, positioning himself to lower down from the sill. Then the glass cracked ominously. He jumped, landing almost at Connor’s feet.
“I thought you were dead,” Connor said as Doug climbed to his feet.<
br />
“Me too.”
“Your evil plans will not succeed,” Jeremiah ranted.
“For the love of God,” Doug said. He pulled a bandana out of his pocket and shoved it in Jeremiah’s mouth. The Prophet’s muffled protests continued while Doug helped tie his arms behind his back.
“I could see the others from up there,” Doug said as they dragged Jeremiah between them. “They’re saddling up the horses.”
53
A burst of red caught Connor’s eye. He recognized it immediately: a flare. Relief surged through him. The flare’s incandescent glow was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.
“Thank God.”
Doug started to laugh. “I should know by now that God is always good, but sometimes”—he motioned at the sea of zombies surrounding them—“it’s hard to hold on to.”
They had lost track of the others. Doug had seen them saddling up before he jumped from the second-story window ledge ten minutes ago. They hadn’t been able to see anything since, with hundreds of zombies surrounding them and nightfall approaching. The ground was slick and uneven, churned by hundreds of feet to the consistency of sticky taffy. Even with Jeremiah and his immunity-produced zone of protection, it had been slow going.
They turned south, toward the flare. Slowly, zombies moved out of their way. Occasionally one would lunge toward them before jerking back. Connor’s heart leaped into his throat every time. He had often imagined what it would be like to walk by zombies undetected or unharmed, thinking it would be liberating, but this was one of the most harrowing journeys he had ever taken.
They stepped into the red halo of the flare’s burning light. The zombies ahead of them began to move to either side of the three men, then spilled back out into the horde like a riptide. A section of chain-link fence blocked the gap between the corners of two buildings, the flare tied to its top rail. The hastily erected fortification from some poor bastard’s doomed last stand was rusty, ten feet tall, and in poor repair. The much smaller building on the right had “N.S. 2 Annex” stenciled on a metal service door. Connor couldn’t tell what the other building was and didn’t care. All he cared about were the people on the other side of the fence, three figures on horseback about fifteen feet from the fence in the area between the buildings. The two outer figures turned their horses sideways for a moment, almost perfectly synchronized. They turned away again.