by Siara Brandt
If she was foolish enough to think about leaving, then she could do so on her own, he decided then and there. He didn’t want to hear anything more about it. Ryland was staying here with him and she had better realize that.
Vayna didn’t say it out loud, but she was grateful she’d had the presence of mind to put away her own secret stash of water for her and Ryland. Cigarettes? Times were desperate enough for her to give them up altogether anyway. They were not on her list of priorities.
“If we could get to the bank, we could buy water somewhere,” she heard him say. “And food.”
She blinked when she realized just how delusional he really was. The bank? Did he seriously think banks were still operating? Ryland had already told them both some time ago that not only were the stores empty, but that money was worthless. Apparently he didn’t realize yet that they had lost all the money that they’d had in the bank, and that aside from Vayna’s two extra gallons of water, they had nothing. Nothing that really mattered.
Chapter 6
Lee Young-Jae had dreamed of being a landscaper most of his life. But being a dutiful son, he had pushed his dreams aside and did what was expected of him. He had followed his father’s profession.
Today, however, he couldn’t help feeling a tinge of regret for his lost dreams. The weather was one of the reasons for that. It was a perfect day. The windows were open and the lilacs were in bloom, so the air was filled with their heady perfume. In addition to that, there was the scent of newly-mown grass beckoning him. Everyone up and down the street seemed to be outside cutting their lawns, so the fragrance of grass was almost intoxicating.
There was also the fact that Weston Breen had been a landscaper. So Young-Jae’s sigh was more than a little bit wistful, and more than a little bit nostalgic as he snapped on a pair of gloves.
With both his parents gone now, he had been thinking more and more about making a change and pursuing landscaping as a career. He was thirty-six, still young enough for major changes in his life. The right woman had not come along yet, so he had no wife and no family to hold him back. He told himself that this was the perfect time to make changes if he was going to do it. In fact, there would never be a better time. His favorite part of this job had always been maintaining the grounds around the funeral home.
The deceased might, ironically, have been a landscaper, but Young-Jae concentrated on what he always concentrated on, making this as easy for Mr. Breen’s loved ones and providing the best in services to the grieving family. He still had to organize floral arrangements, write an obituary and counsel the Breen’s on legal matters. Right now, however, he had to finish preparing the deceased for viewing.
He had his back to the table and he was humming an old, nearly-forgotten song about grass, of all things, when he straightened and froze as a chill crept up his spine.
He was alone, except for the body of course, but he had heard what sounded like the slight brush of cloth sliding over flesh. Or it might have been a slow, indrawn breath. Whatever he had heard, it was a sound that shouldn’t have been there.
When he turned around, Young-Jae’s blood felt exactly like ice water flowing through his own veins as he saw the impossible. The corpse was sitting up.
Young-Jae watched in horror as Weston Breen slowly turned his head to the side and looked straight at him.
“BRAM, I’M SCARED.”
“This is the safest place for you to be.”
“I’m scared for you.”
Yeah, he knew that.
“I wouldn’t leave if I didn’t think you’d be safe here,” he told her.
Ariene sighed in exasperation and looked earnestly up at her husband. “How long do you think you’ll be gone? When should I start worrying?”
As if she wasn’t going to start worrying the second he walked out that door. They both knew that, too.
“I don’t know,” he answered her honestly. “None of us knows what we’ll find out there.”
He had always been truthful with her and he wasn’t going to change that now, but he also wanted to reassure her. “It’s a simple extraction,” he said. “We find them and then we’ll bring them back here.”
He avoided looking at her for a few moments as he recalled how those smoking, charred bodies from that plane had gotten up and started walking around when they obviously had not survived the crash. That was when they began to get an idea of just how bad it was. Some of their group had managed to get some calls out before everything had gone dead. They had contacts who had painted a very grim, very devastating worldwide picture. So there was only one decision they could make, and that was to gather their families and retreat to the Compound where they would be able to survive in isolation if it came to that.
They had seen things most people hadn’t seen. They had been involved in covert ops around the globe and so they knew just how precariously close to self-destruction the world could be at any given time. Of course they were prepared. Hence, the Compound.
Kate Jarrett had had a hard time making ends meet since she had thrown her worthless ex-husband out after she had caught him cheating on her. As a single mother suddenly on her own, they knew it wasn’t easy for her. She had run a daycare for a few years and a lot of their kids had grown up under her maternal wing. Kate was the one to go to if you wanted a caring day care provider, one you could trust your kids with. She lived on the far side of the Ridge and for all they knew she was still out there alone with her two boys. They were good kids. Jonah’s oldest boy, Will, had been friends with Kate’s son, Caleb, since kindergarten. Jonah had coached both boys in little league and they all tried to give them some of the fathering they were lacking but desperately needed.
With everything that was going on, there were no guarantees that Kate and the boys were still safe, and they didn’t know what they would find when they reached Kate’s house, or what they would run into on the way there, but they had to try to bring them safely back if that was possible. They couldn’t live with any other decision.
Ariene was not a nagging, clinging kind of wife. She never had been. And it wasn’t like this was his first dangerous mission. “I know you have to go,” she said softly. “This is what you do.”
“This is what I do.”
“I just don’t like the thought of you being out there after everything I’ve heard. Especially at night.”
After everything he’d seen and heard, even he didn’t like the thought of stumbling around in the woods after dark. Especially not after what he’d seen at the Dade’s.
“That’s why we’re not leaving till daybreak,” he reminded her.
“You’d think I’d be used to this,” she said.
Bram was brave to a fault. It was one of the things she loved about him. She still didn’t know how she had gotten so lucky. It had taken her a long time to find the love of her life and she didn’t know how she could bear it if she lost him. But he was who he was, and he was not the kind of man who could leave a woman and her children alone in a dangerous situation when he could do something about it.
He shrugged his wide shoulders. “We gotta go. You know that.”
“I know.”
“Besides,” he said, looking down at her. “I’m not going halfway around the world to do this. And Jonah and Dev will be with me. I’ll be back before you know it,” he added.
She touched his jaw lightly, lovingly. “Since you’re not leaving until morning, I’m letting you know now that I’m going to be selfish with your time tonight.”
He grinned down at her. “I’m counting on it.”
“I HEARD SOMETHING,” Athan whispered in the darkness.
“So did I,” Caleb whispered back. “Where did it come from?”
“Outside.”
Caleb was silent for a moment, and then he asked, “I already know that. Where outside?”
“Somewhere in the front yard, I think.”
Barefoot, and still groggy from sleep, both boys padded down the hallway that led fr
om their bedrooms to the living room, where they made their way to the front door.
Athan was standing annoyingly close and Caleb’s first instinct was to shove him away. For once, he restrained himself, but not without first grumbling, “Stop being such a baby.”
“Did you lock the door before you went to bed?” Caleb asked as they both stared at the closed door.
“Of course I did.”
He probably did, Caleb thought. Athan was afraid of the dark and what might be lurking in it, which meant he never forgot to lock the door. Ever. For once, Caleb was grateful that his brother was such a big baby.
Still silent, both boys went to the living room window together and peered carefully out through the closed curtains where they had a good view of the front yard.
There was nothing out there. There were no sounds. Nothing moved. Nothing peered back at them.
Caleb turned to his brother. “Where’s the flashlight?”
“I left it on the patio.”
“What the hell were you doing with it on the patio?”
They weren’t supposed to use profanities, and they would be in serious trouble if their mother heard them. But sometimes, in extreme situations, men swore. This could turn out to be an extreme situation.
“I was knocking down those wasp nests. Remember?” Athan reminded him. “Mom told me I had to get it done before tomorrow. I had to wait until it was dark. Anyway, if someone is outside, wouldn’t it be stupid to turn a light on in here so he could see us?”
Caleb didn’t answer him. He wasn’t going to admit that his brother had brought up a good point.
“It was probably an animal,” Caleb said, his voice trailing off into a yawn. He squared his shoulders a little, for once thinking that it might be a good idea to calm his brother’s fears rather than to make fun of them. At least that’s what a father would do. If they actually had one. “A stray cat maybe. There’s been enough of them around here lately. Or maybe it was that raccoon that keeps tearing into the garbage.”
“If you would let the garbage burn all the way down,” Athan reminded him, still talking in a whisper. “There wouldn’t be anything for it to eat.”
“I did burn it most of the way down.”
They had been allowed to go outside and burn the garbage just once because it had been piling up so bad in the kitchen that it had begun to stink up the whole house. They couldn’t walk into the kitchen without gagging. It was so bad that no one wanted to eat in the kitchen anymore.
“It started getting windy,” Caleb went on. “I wasn’t going to let the field catch on fire.”
Neither one of them wanted that to happen again. There was a lot of frantic work involved when a field caught on fire. It was embarrassing, too, when the neighbor’s had to run over and help them put it out.
They might have gone on arguing about burning the garbage, and scorched fields, but something clanged loudly on the back patio. They immediately made their way through the dark house, both of them freezing when they saw a black shape moving around on the patio. It was a moonlit night and they could make out a very large shape, something too big to be a cat or a raccoon.
“That’s no rac- ” Athan began.
“Shhh!” Caleb hushed his brother as he grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down behind the dining room table. “Someone is out there.”
Both boys drew back, and neither could suppress a smothered, frightened cry when something thumped hard against the side of the house.
“They’re trying to break in,” Athan hissed in a strained whisper. He immediately wanted to get his mother and he tried to rise up.
“Stay down!” Caleb ordered him, pulling harder on his shirt sleeve. “We can’t let him see us.”
“But we need to call the police.”
For once Caleb didn’t disagree with his brother. Or call him stupid. He crawled on all fours through the dining room. Keeping to the deepest shadows, he made his way down the hallway to his mother’s room. Athan was right behind him.
Kate was already sitting up in her bed. “What’s going on,” she asked them. “What was that noise?” She obviously thought that one, or both, boys had to be responsible for whatever had awakened her. Sometimes their arguments got very disruptive, even physical.
“Someone’s outside,” Caleb told her as loud as he dared.
There was a moment of tense silence before Kate said, “I’ll call the police.”
After a few more silent moments, they heard her say, “The phone’s not working.”
No help was coming. What did they do now?
Caleb watched as his mother threw back her blankets and got out of bed. She picked up the bat that she kept next to the dresser and handed it to him.
He heard the drawer slide open on her nightstand. “Here, take this, Caleb.” It was her taser.
“And here’s my pepper spray,” she said to Athan as she placed it in his hand. “Be careful with it. Don’t spray yourself.”
Then she got out her gun.
At least they were all armed.
“Maybe we can scare him away,” Caleb suggested.
Kate didn’t agree or disagree. She led the way through the dark house with her gun gripped tightly in both hands.
All three of them stopped and stared at the lighter square of moon-lit darkness beyond the sliding glass doors that led to the back patio. At the same time, they saw the shapeless bulk that was still outside cross right in front of the doors.
As they watched, however, they were shocked to see that the him turned out to be a her.
“That’s- ” Kate whispered in astonishment.
“Mrs. Dade,” Caleb finished for her.
“The drone lady.”
Caleb’s head turned as he stared at his brother through the darkness. “Drone lady?”
“Yeah, her yard has all those drones in it.”
“You mean gnomes, you idiot.” Caleb turned back to the glass doors, “And I hope you’re not stupid enough to say that in front of her.”
“Why would I?”
“What’s she doing in our back yard?” Caleb asked. “Why didn’t she just knock on the front door?”
“There’s something wrong with her,” Athan said as he squinted to get a closer look.
“You’re right,” Kate said. “Maybe she’s hurt. Maybe there’s been some kind of accident. Whatever has happened, we need to help her.”
Kate had lowered her gun and she took several steps toward the door.
At the same time, Ardella Dade slammed hard against the glass. What the three people in the house saw made them draw back and stare in disbelief. And mostly, it made them think twice about opening that door, or any other door for that matter.
Ardella’s face was stark white in the moonlight, but her face, chin and her clothes were dark with what look like-
Blood?
It was her eyes, however, that the people huddled in the house found so terrifying. In the pale moonlight, they seemed colorless, inhuman, almost-
Demonic.
It was not the Ardella Dade that they knew.
They drew farther back as she slammed against the glass one more time.
Had she seen them? Heard them whispering? Sensed them in the house?
“I told you,” Athan said in a frightened whisper. He was shaking from head to toe. You could hear the terror in his voice as he said, “It’s zombies!”
They all looked back at the door and what was beyond it. This time no one argued with him.
Chapter 7
Emmalia Haven was exhausted, but she didn’t dare close her eyes. The only way to stay alive - the only way - was to maintain constant vigilance at all times. Even when you were dead tired, survival came before sleep. She had spent so many sleepless nights since this had all started that she was almost used to existing in a constant state of exhaustion. More often than not she found herself waiting out the dawn in a terrified, sleepless state of hyper-vigilance, trying not to think that any moment might
be her last.
Thunder rumbled lingeringly in the darkness. It was an ominous, angry sound, a reminder that the rain still fell in spite of the entire civilized world falling apart, that nature still ruled, even during a zombie apocalypse.
Spidery veins of lightning flickered out beyond the dark cloud masses, like a primordial pulse of life throbbing in the darkness just before it was about to give birth. The smell of impending rain was heavy in the air, bringing a sudden, unexpected nostalgic feeling of homesickness with it and a reminder of the way things used to be. Emma choked back the emotion rising into her throat as she lifted her face to the night sky. Society might have fallen completely apart, but as far as nature was concerned, it was like nothing had changed at all. Part of her wanted desperately to believe that some things were still the same.
She was crouched behind an abandoned car. From her cramped position, she could see the entire parking lot. Bodies in various states of decay littered the ground and were strewn about like abandoned, disjointed rag dolls among the cars. There was no way to know how long ago or why each person out there had died. With so much death everywhere, there was no burial for the dead, so the ever-present stench of death in its various stages combined with the heavy smell of rain that was about to break over the city.
She waited and watched for a while. Nothing moved out there, nothing that she could see at least, so she sprinted across the back of the weed-grown parking lot and headed straight towards a residential area of historic, older homes, the place she had been trying to reach for days.
The yards surrounding the homes were small but heavily landscaped. Just like all the other plantings, the grass was overgrown and unkempt. While Emma knew that the bushes and fences surrounding the houses would provide cover for her, she also knew that they could provide hiding places for things she would rather not run into.
But she set her jaw determinedly as she eyed the long, double row of dark, unlit homes. Some people said that only the strongest, most ruthless people were going to survive. So far Emma had survived, but she didn’t think of herself as being strong or ruthless. She only thought of herself as being desperate. And terrified. During the past few weeks, she had seen enough to know that no one, not even her, was immune to the same sudden, violent death that had overcome those bodies in the parking lot. Or the bodies that were surely in the houses looming before her.