by James, Jill
We hiked past a giant church with a parking lot full of cars. A shiver went down my spine. My imagination could all too easily see rows and rows of the dead who hoped that religion was the answer to the zombie apocalypse. I didn’t deny them the right to believe, I just always thought God was everywhere, not just in a building you showed up in once a week to talk to him.
I rubbed my stomach in a slow circle and smiled. God was in every miracle, not in a specific location at a specific time.
Nickie and I passed a school with zombie children behind the fenced-in play yard. As we moved closer, they scattered like nerds running from the bullies. I patted the bag holding the recorder as if it were a talisman against danger. I couldn’t afford to get used to thinking the sound was total protection. I kept my head up and my senses alert.
We passed subdivisions full of eerie quiet. Most of these houses had belonged to the people who had made The Streets compound their new home. Most of them had died when it was overrun by Peters and the zombie army. We were down to twenty-five or thirty people, plus the kids who had already made the RV yard their home.
The sun came out from behind a cloud and warmed my face, and as easily as that, brightened my mood. You had to enjoy every moment. Too bad it took this to make me see that. Why didn’t I enjoy the sunshine on the bay back then? Why didn’t I walk on the wharf and listen to the sea lions and feed the gulls? Why did I think the next charity ball was more important than just enjoying life, living in the moment?
“Come on, Nickie,” I said to the dog as we reached the end of the shopping center. The containers at this end still stood in place, but the buildings on either side were nothing but piles of rubble. Moans echoed on the other side.
I bit my bottom lip. Leave the recorder on or turn it off and clear them out? A decision was reached in a split second. If I were going to search for my necklace, I needed the place as safe as I could make it. I didn’t need to think it was safe and have the recorder pop off again.
Reaching into the bag, I pushed the thing off. I swung the crossbow to my back and climbed the pile of stones and mortar. By the time I reached the top, the stench of undead hit me. I gagged and swung my bow back around.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Two down and one too close to get with a bolt. I swung the bow to the side and got my knife. A shove through his skull and the zomb hit the ground. Catching my breath, I held it and listened. Faint moans carried from down the mall road.
I wiped the blade on the zombie’s shirt, put it back in the sheath, and swung my bow back around, fitting it with a new bolt. Grabbing the two bolts out of the undead, I wiped them and secured them on the crossbow.
Nickie padded in front of me, his nails scratching slightly on the concrete sidewalk. I stopped at each storefront to listen and sniff.
“Most of the skinbags must have died,” I whispered to the dog. “I think the buildings fell on them.”
His ears perked up as if he understood me. I rubbed his head and we moved on. I stepped as quiet as possible, as Nick had taught me when I’d first arrived and we’d been paired up.
A knot formed in my throat seeing The Streets destroyed like this. This had been my home for six months, a safe haven, and the General and his zomb army had taken that away. I prayed that General Peters had gotten his just deserts.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Seeking justice darkens the soul.
Finding justice frees the soul.
Sometimes seeking and finding
is one and the same.
— Seth Ripley
“Come on, Seth,” Miranda begged. “I don’t see any movement. We didn’t come all this way to just stand around and debate.”
“He’s just trying to keep you safe, Miss Miranda.” Even in a whisper the man’s voice rumbled like thunder.
She settled down and squatted next to him. “Do you see anything?”
He brought the binoculars down. Swallowing with a dry throat, he tried to put into words what he had seen. Nothing was coming. He handed the binoculars to Miranda.
She put them to her eyes and inhaled deeply. Her hand shook as she lowered them. “It looks like a battlefield. Like the pictures in my history book of the Civil War and the World Wars.”
Teddy stood tall and started walking toward the lower road to get to the shopping center. He called back, “Let’s see who won.”
Seth stood and pulled his backpack back on, watching as Ran and Cody followed suit. They trotted after the big man and finally caught up to his long strides. He looked up at Teddy as the man pulled a rifle from his back and set off over the weed-infested field. The foliage seemed to have grown a couple of feet since the last time he’d been here.
The closer they got to the shattered buildings, the uglier got the scene. Moans of the undead grew louder. Teddy held his arms to stop them from walking any further. Seth moved to the man’s side and looked down.
The muddy pit teamed with skinbags. The group’s approach had set them off, skeletal arms reaching for the living flesh they could smell and hear. Teddy aimed his rifle into the hole, but Seth pushed the barrel down.
“Too noisy.”
“If they’re still in the hole, they probably aren’t going anywhere,” Miranda added in a hushed whisper.
Seth nodded and his gaze swept the field leading to the mall. Several more pits filled the field. Along with several small holes and scattered body parts, they painted a picture of preparations on The Streets group’s part. They’d had some kind of warning of the attack.
Cody grabbed Miranda’s hand and moved a few steps ahead of him and Teddy. The boy’s back stiffened and he stopped in his tracks. He turned to Seth. “We don’t want to go this way, Dude. I think I know what made the scrambled zombs.”
Seth moved up beside them as Cody pointed at a green box in front of them a few paces. The words on it said, Front toward Enemy.
“I’ve seen those on the History Channel,” Seth said. “I think they need a detonator, but let’s go around, just in case.”
The group stepped back and went around the pit of zombies to a clear area and made their way to the first damaged buildings. His chest hurt as he stared at what had once been a beautiful mall in a different time and sanctuary to many in this time.
No sound filled the area in front of them. Seth led the way and stepped through the blasted and ripped container to the other side. The piles of dead and finally dead painted an ugly picture of a devastating fight. The group had been overwhelmed, but they’d continued to fight.
A body laid to his right. Her head and body had taken damage from flying debris, but he could still recognize Emily’s friend, Bobbie. Her hand held a detonator. She’d given her life to stop Peters from taking their home, and perhaps allowed some to escape.
“Damn him,” Seth muttered. When he found the General the man would join the dead.
“He’s here somewhere, I know it,” Miranda said, her head turning back and forth. “That stupid bus is still out front. They wouldn’t leave it; it carried the speakers and Antonio’s equipment.”
“I don’t hear anything, how can you be sure?” he asked the young woman.
That stopped her for a moment. “It’s below our hearing, like dog whistles. If you have fillings, it makes them hurt, like when you scrape them with your fork.”
They all stood still. “But I don’t feel anything,” she added.
Seth looked at Teddy. “Why don’t we look around? Maybe they all died. We can hope. I’ll take Miranda and you can take Cody and see if you find anything useful that we can carry away from here. If there were survivors maybe they left something to tell where they went.”
The man nodded and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. They walked away and Seth followed Miranda as she started looking.
♦♦♦
“You sent Cody away so he couldn’t see me go all ‘vengeance is mine,’ didn’t you?”
Seth laughed and walked beside her. “No, I know
this is important for you, so I want to be here for you, just like you were there for me after my mom died and I was bit.”
Tears filled Miranda’s eyes and she brought her hand up and brushed them away. “I didn’t think you understood.”
She caught her breath as Seth’s eyes turned dark and bottomless. She’d never seen that look before and hoped to never have it turned against her.
“If it wasn’t so important to you, I would gut Martin Peters and let him wander the Earth as a soulless corpse. What happens to him if we find him is up to you.”
“Thank you.” She hugged him and relaxed as he hugged her back. Her friend wasn’t lost. He was still here. She had time to convince him to live.
“That building over there seems a little less damaged. If I needed a place to stay, that would be it,” Miranda said, pointing a few storefronts down the sidewalk.
Glass and debris crunched underfoot as they made their way inside the store. A closed door marked Storage led off the hallway. Miranda reached over and put her hand on the doorknob. Seth’s hand held her back. He put his ear to the wooden door.
He nodded and she turned the knob. She pushed harder as boards and rocks blocked the door’s opening. Seth put his hands on the door and helped. The door opened wide and Miranda cried out.
The stench of blood, and death, and rot filled the room. Nothing moved except the flies attracted to the blood on the body slumped against the wall to her right. She brought her hand up to her nose and breathed through her mouth.
The hole in his temple and the gun in his hand told the story of his choice to not come back. She stared into his black, dead eyes and whispered a prayer for Antonio Gomez.
“Bastard,” Seth whispered.
Her gaze whipped around to the gore-soaked mattress. She’d assumed it had been a fight scene, but what was left of Martin Peters pulled against the ropes holding his zombie body to the bed. His face remained intact, those cold eyes no less evil in opaque undeath. His teeth snapped behind the Duct tape across his mouth and his neck stretched in impossible contortions as he tried to reach human food.
Heat rose in her face. He’d destroyed her again. She couldn’t kill him, he was already dead. She couldn’t finish him off, to do so would give him mercy she had no intention of giving.
She squared her shoulders and turned to Seth. “In the old world, I’d turn him in to the police for kidnapping and raping me and get justice that way. He’d be put away so he couldn’t hurt others. In this world, I guess we have to do the same.”
Miranda walked over to the mattress and the abomination on it. “Martin Peters. You will never hurt anyone again.”
She pulled her knife and placed the point on his temple. Seth’s hand came up and held hers.
“Let me do it,” he whispered. “Walk away.”
Stepping back, she gave the knife to him. Her eyes stayed glued to Peters as her friend shoved the knife through the monster’s head and pulled it back out with a twist.
The teeth stopped chomping and chattering. The body stopped twisting and turning. Martin Peters was dead.
Walking away, Miranda fell to the ground as something grabbed her ankle. Make that someone. She rolled over, scooting back and pulling Tanya with her.
“Oh, hell no,” she yelled, bringing her foot down on the woman’s head and listening to the satisfying crunch of bone.
She yanked her foot away and felt Seth’s hands under her arms pulling her up.
“Are you okay? She didn’t bite you, did she?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m better than fine.” She dusted her pants off. “The Evil King and his Wicked Witch are dead.”
Seth laughed. He turned to leave the room. “What’s that?”
She looked where he pointed. Antonio’s equipment was shattered and broken in the corner. “I guess he wanted to make sure nobody else could use it.”
He gave a loud exhale and put his arm around her shoulders. “It’s for the best. No one has the right to that much power.”
She nodded, leaving the room without looking back.
Outside, they found Teddy and Cody with a few more things to add to their supplies.
“The place is, like, empty,” Cody said in his funny, surfer-dude way.
She ran over and hugged him. “Like, totally.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Two days.
Could it really only be two days since I’d been held captive here? The helplessness I’d felt was gone, just a bad memory to send shudders down my spine and to bring nightmares in the future. I touched my stomach.
I was okay.
The baby was okay.
That monster didn’t win. I did.
Getting down on my hands and knees I searched the debris-strewn room I’d been held in. Dirt burrowed under my fingernails. I scraped my knuckles as I moved a large rock. Turning, I reached under the bed. Getting up on my knees, I ran my hands over the blanket on the cot.
Nothing. It had to be here.
I ripped the coverings off the cot and flung them across the room. The tinkle of metal against rock barely carried over the empty space, but I heard it. Jumping up, I rushed to the far wall. There it was. A little dented and the chain broke. My fingers shook as I grabbed it and rested it in the palm of my hand. My lucky necklace. I’d found it.
“Yes,” I whispered, tucking the necklace, broken chain and all into my pants pocket. A quick push of the button on the recorder in my bag and my ears hummed and Nickie bounded into the room to sit at my feet. His tongue and tail wagged.
“Let’s get out of here. Okay?”
I wasn’t going to borrow trouble. I’d come with a mission and I’d accomplished that. I’d meant to bury the zombie I’d thought might be Seth, but maybe I just needed to let it go. I could come back when I had more people with me and we could kill the undead and bury everyone then.
The dog heeled like a doggie school alumni as we left the broken store and came out on the sidewalk. I looked left and right. No skinbags. I would go back the way I’d come. It’d worked the first time. We crossed the small road and jogged to the garden area in the middle of the compound. I shrugged out of my backpack and put my crossbow down to get some squash and zucchini left on the plants when everyone evacuated so quickly.
I grabbed a couple and shoved them into my pack. Nickie started turning in circles and barking, butting me with his head. I jumped up and grabbed my bow, putting a bolt into it without thinking.
I stared around the plants and back the way we’d come but I couldn’t see anything. I turned back as the dog continued barking, running a little bit away and coming back.
My breath froze and my heartbeat stopped in my chest. I’d been so stupid. Just because the sound kept the skinbags away didn’t mean it worked on people, and right now four of them were standing as still as statues only fifty or so feet away.
The Black man stood head and shoulders above the three other men. I squinted. The small one might be a female, with hair even shorter than mine. A longer look confirmed it. Three men; one a giant, and one woman.
I couldn’t place the blond guy or the female. But there was something familiar about the other guy. His dark hair was long and tangled, along with a scruffy beard. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth.
“Emily.” His cracked voice carried across the distance.
My crossbow fell from my numb fingers and I ran across the grass before I knew I was moving. I slammed into him and his strong arms kept me from falling. My legs were shaking and I thought I might fall. They couldn’t hold me up and we fell to the ground together, our arms wrapped around each other.
My hands shook as my fingers trembled on his face. His eyes watered and tears fell down his dirty, grimy face. Seth, my mind yelled because my voice didn’t work.
He was alive.
He was here.
He was in my arms.
He ripped his gloves off and his hands were on my face as if he craved a skin-to-skin touch as much as I did.
His fingers traced my cheeks, rubbed my lips. I grabbed his hands and he hissed and pulled back.
I reached for them again. I took them gently into my own. His right hand was mutilated, missing fingers, and covered in burn scars. My heart pounded in my chest. I couldn’t imagine the pain, the suffering. My brain spun with not knowing what had happened.
Turning the hand over, I kissed the palm. He was here. He was alive. That was all that mattered. His other hand gripped my neck and he pulled me in for a real kiss. Lips to lips. Tongue to tongue. It started out tender and sweet, until our tears ran and covered our mouths with a salty taste. I wanted more. I wanted all of him.
A cough rumbled from the giant beside us. Large hands reached down and pulled us up. I craned my neck and looked up at him and shook my head.
“Teddy? Is that you?”
He enveloped me in a hug. “It sure is, Miss Emily.”
“Miss Emily?” Seth repeated, pulling me back into his arms.
Teddy smiled. “This is the fine lady my boat is named after.”
“You named your boat after me? That is so sweet.”
I looked up at Seth and included the two others in their group. “Teddy was my husband’s driver when we lived in San Francisco. He left when things started going bad so he could get back to his family.”
“Your family?” I looked up at him, but Teddy just shook his head.
“I’m so sorry.”
I turned in Seth’s arms to acknowledge the others in his group. “Hello, I’m Emily.”
The young woman smiled. “Oh, we figured that out already. All Seth has done is talk about Emily this and Emily that.”
I blushed as she shook my hand.
“I’m Miranda and this is Cody,” she said, hooking a thumb the young man’s way. “I ran into Seth at the hospital after the attack and we picked up Cody at the library there in Concord, and you seem to know Teddy, the King of Pittsburg, already.”