by Siara Brandt
She watched his eyes narrow thoughtfully as he looked across the room at her.
“I know you’ve got no reason to trust me- ” he began a little too quietly.
“You held a knife to my throat,” she reminded him.
“And I apologized for that,” he reminded her right back. After a pause, he told her, “My name is Reyne.”
She surprised herself by answering automatically, “I’m- Emma.”
“Well, Emma, you still haven’t told me your plan on how you’re going to get safely out of here.”
“I’ll- figure it out.”
“Yeah, well how are you figuring to get around the two hungry zombies downstairs? Not to mention the ones in the yard, and in all the yards after that.”
She stared at him blankly.
“Still don’t want my help?”
She didn’t answer him, just looked back at him with wide green eyes.
“That’s what I thought.”
While he continued to stare at her, she frowned and asked, “What are you trying to prove?”
“Not a damned thing.”
“Are you sure? You’re not assuming that, because I’m a woman, I can’t possibly survive on my own?”
One corner of his mouth tightened in a brief imitation of a smile. “I try to avoid making assumptions. Besides, I’ve fought with you. I know you could survive better than half the male population out there. Where’d you learn those martial arts moves?”
“From the group I was in. They wanted everyone to learn how to fight and to defend themselves.”
“Smart,” he said.
“It didn’t work against you,” she reminded him.
“That’s because I’ve taught martial arts.”
Her gaze raked his clothing. “Were you in the military in your old life?”
“Something like that.”
Something like that could mean anything.
“So as an insider, do you have any idea what caused all of this?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t call myself an insider, but my best guess would be that it was some kind of bio-weapon that got out of control. Or a government - maybe ours - released something, Whether intentionally or not is hard to say. But in my opinion this all happened too fast to be some random act of nature. Somebody made a mistake somewhere. I’d bet on it.”
“The last we heard was that the whole world was being affected,” she said.
“That’s the same thing I heard.”
“So there’s no help coming?”
“If there are, I haven’t seen any signs of it.”
“You think we’ll ever have any answers?” she asked.
“To what caused this? Probably not. Somebody knows. Whether they survived to tell their tale will probably never be known. All we can do at this point is to try and stay alive and hope to God we’re able to pick up the pieces of society and start re building again and-”
“And what?”
“And keep believing that whatever good there might still be out there will prevail in the end.”
His answer surprised her and it showed in her face.
He gave her a smug shadow of a smile. “Surprised I’m not the insensitive jerk you assumed I was?”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” she said cautiously.
His gaze narrowed shrewdly. “But you’ve known a lot of insensitive jerks. Which is why you find it so hard to trust me. If I was hard on you last night, it’s because I had to be. You realize that, I hope.”
More than anything, Emma wanted to trust someone, anyone. She didn’t always want to be constantly questioning people’s motives or to be anticipating danger around every corner she looked. It was too exhausting to live that kind of a life. But what choice did she have?
“So you’re telling me that I should trust a man who held a knife to my throat?”
“You caught me by surprise.”
“You surprised me, too. In fact you scared me half to death,” she heard herself admit.
“Fear is a normal, healthy reaction in a bad situation,” he commented shortly. “And absolutely essential to an alert state of mind.”
“Did you learn that in your previous line of work?”
Reyne was only vaguely aware of her question. He had already noticed when he came back upstairs that her damp hair had been pulled back into a ponytail. It was a little messy, a little sexy because of the mess. And her mouth-
He backed off of those thoughts right away. This wasn’t the time or the place to be noticing things like the sexiness of her hair or how kissable her mouth was. His reaction to her surprised him, given the circumstances. He refocused.
“Hmm? Yeah,” he answered her question. “So you want to tell me about that plan? Nobody survives without a plan these days.”
“I only thought about getting out of the city.”
“Yeah, I gathered that. How are you going to do it?”
“I thought about cutting through the golf course and staying west of the lake.”
She wasn’t sure she should be telling him all that, and she wasn’t at all sure why she did.
“Sounds like a reasonable plan,” he said, thinking it through.
She had several weapons on her and Reyne knew just where they were. During that little skirmish with her last night, he had felt the knife strapped to her boot, and another one under the armor on her arm. And what felt like some kind of smaller weapon, pepper spray maybe, inside one of her pockets.
“You figure two little knives will be enough if you run into trouble?”
She frowned. How did he know about the knives? She didn’t want, nor had she asked for, his help or his criticism. “I wasn’t exactly equipped for a war when this all started,” she informed him.
He breathed out a sigh. “None of us were. But I know a place that is and that’s where I’m headed.”
She wondered where that would be, but she didn’t ask. It wasn’t any of her business.
“What about you?” he asked, cutting into her thoughts, making her his business. “Just where is it you’re trying to get to?”
“I’m trying to go home.”
“And home is where?” he wanted to know.
She hesitated a moment before she said, “Westfield.”
“That’s south of here. You have family back there?”
She nodded. “I need to find my mother.”
“In Westfield?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t know why, but he experienced a strange, vague sense of relief because it wasn’t a husband or a boyfriend she was trying to find. Again, he wouldn’t be honest if he tried to tell himself that his reaction to her reply hadn’t surprised the hell out of him
“That takes us in the same general direction, at least.”
“I didn’t ask for your help,” she repeated. She didn’t need the complication of him upsetting her plans and probably telling her what to do every step of the way.
“I noticed that.”
She fixed him with those incredibly-green eyes. “I don’t need your help.”
“I wasn’t offering it.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong. Didn’t you just suggest that we should go together?”
With a shrug of one of those wide shoulders, he said, “Travelling together makes sense. Maybe I’m hoping you can help me out some time.”
That was doubtful. He was armed. She wasn’t. He looked like he could take on a small army of zombies with his bare hands. So far, she had only run away from them.
“I’ll have your back and you’ll have mine,” he went on. “It’s definitely better than going it alone.”
But was it? Emma wasn’t at all convinced.
“What are you thinking?” he asked abruptly, cutting into her thoughts.
“To be perfectly honest, I have been a terrible judge of character in the past and it has cost me. I don’t want to repeat any of my mistakes.”
He couldn’t help wondering if that had been before or after the wor
ld had fallen apart. He didn’t know why, but she kind of intrigued him, had him wondering. About a lot of things. Despite her obvious reluctance to have him tagging along with her, he knew there was one thing he couldn’t do, and that was to leave her behind in a world that could eat her up and spit her back out again in a heartbeat.
“YOU GAVE ME QUITE A SCARE.”
The masculine voice was as deep and velvety as the darkness she had been drifting in. Vayna opened her eyes at half-mast. When she was finally able to open them all the way, she focused on the man who had spoken, or the man she assumed had spoken.
He rose up beside her, as if he had been sitting in a chair. Her impressions were still hazy and disconnected as he leaned over her. His hair was dark as the night sky, framing a face with Asian features. There was a frown on his face and concern in the man’s eyes as they continued to stare down at her.
“Do you have pain anywhere?” he asked.
“My head hurts,” she answered him, surprised to hear her voice come out as barely a whisper.
“That’s to be expected,” she heard. “You had quite a fall. Anywhere else that is hurting?”
She tried to shake her head but the pain behind her eyes immediately intensified so she went still again.
“Try to lie still and rest for a while,” he said. “It’s almost daylight. I’ll be able to see your injuries better then.”
Was he some kind of doctor, she wondered.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Someplace safe.”
Safe. Was there really a place that was safe?
She saw the deep blue of a dawn sky and something else above her, something dark, something that shifted and floated as if it were breathing. The wall beside her seemed to be moving slightly, too, and there was an earthy smell every time she took a breath.
None of it made any sense. She tried to turn her head. “Where . . . ” she tried again, her voice fading weakly before she could fully form the question.
“You’re in the greenhouse in the park,” she heard.
As the fog in her brain cleared for a moment, there came fear. If it was almost morning, then where was her son? Where was Ryland?
Please, God, let him have survived.
“Was I alone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
That was not the answer she wanted to hear and it caused her a great deal of distress.
“I need to get out of here.”
She tried to rise, but hands held her down too easily, and she saw the grim set of the man’s mouth, right before he told her, “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
Chapter 12
The woman had been young. She had been lying on her back on the bare ground without even a blanket. There had been blood, a lot of it, because she had just given birth. The baby was alive, but just barely. Fearing that neither the woman nor the baby would survive if they didn’t get them immediate medical care, Jonah and Dev had taken them both back to the Compound.
Bram had decided to continue on to Kate’s house on his own. He had come too far to turn back now. It wasn’t the way they wanted it to be, but it was the way they had to do it.
Bram knew that Ariene was not going to be happy when they returned without him and he wasn’t looking forward to spending another night out in the open, especially by himself. The sun was already going down and the light was fading fast. At least he was armed, he reminded himself, and at least he knew what he was up against.
He also knew the area well. He had roamed these woods as a boy, so he knew there was another shed not too far ahead. Just as the sun dipped behind the trees, he saw the dilapidated structure before him. It looked worse than he remembered it. The unpainted boards were weathered to a soft grey and covered with moss. There were boards missing from the door and the walls. The roof was in bad condition, too. But it was better than nothing. With the door closed, nothing should be able to get inside. He would spend the night in the shed and head for Kate’s at first light.
He was maybe twenty yards from the small structure when something rose up from the tall weeds to his left. He made it to the shed just in time and slammed the door behind him. Once he was inside, he spun around in all directions to see if he was alone. He was.
The thing outside had followed him to the shed. It pounded at the closed door for a while before quieting down, but he could still hear it moving around outside. Pressing its face against the walls, it would peer at Bram through openings in the boards until it got too dark to see and sometime after darkness had fallen, Bram didn’t hear any sounds outside any more. He dropped off to sleep only to awaken later in the night to the sound of rain pounding loudly on the tin roof. The hard rain didn’t last long. It settled into a soft, drizzling mist that kept up for most of the night.
When Bram woke again, he guessed that it was near dawn. The rain had ended and in the pre-dawn silence, stars were twinkling brightly through missing slats in the walls and the roof above him. At first, he thought he was alone, but a shadow passed by the wall outside. He drew his gun from his holster and laid back down to wait out the dawn. He wasn’t going to try and outguess that thing in the dark and it might not be alone.
After a while, the boards of the shed groaned as if something was leaning against the wall beside him. There was a continued groaning of wood, followed by a loud bang. And then there was more creaking, this time from the roof timbers overhead. The sharp cracking of boards alerted Bram immediately and he bolted upright. He knew what was happening, but it was too late. Before he could even get to his feet, the ceiling came crashing down around him. He threw his arms up to protect his head from the worst of it, but everything collapsed in on him. One of the ceiling beams hit his shoulder and knocked him to the floor. The rest of the shed came down, burying him under a pile of wood, shingles, dust and decay.
Dust drifted slowly in the aftermath as the debris settled, and then everything was still again. Under the rubble, Bram groaned once and tried to ease himself off the ground, but there were too many layers on top of him and the world went dark even though the sun was just beginning to rise. As he sank back down and lost consciousness, Ariene was his last thought.
“IT’S BEEN LAYING OUT THERE FOR FOUR HOURS NOW,” Athan said as he stared out the bathroom window.
The zombie that had chased their mother to the house was still wandering around the yard the next day, so the boys came up with the idea to duct-tape their mother’s taser onto the end of a broom handle. When they stuck the broom handle through a narrow opening in the window and tasered the zombie as it passed by, it had dropped like a rock.
“We still can’t be sure it won’t get up again,” Caleb said without looking at his brother.
“We can’t be sure it’ll keep laying there, either,” Athan rejoined as he rested his chin on his folded hands.
Kate had been horrified when she found out what they had been up to, but she had spent some time watching the zombie herself because she wanted to know what they were up against.
“It stinks,” Athan said as he wrinkled his nose. “Even with the window closed, I can still smell it. It’s worse than the meat in the dumpster.”
It should stink. It was crawling with worms and maggots. And flies were all over it.
“The eyes keep moving,” Athan said, squinting his eyes as if he was watching a bug under a microscope. “You think it can see us?”
“I’ve got no idea,” Caleb answered him. “It looks like it can. Let’s move to the left and right and see if the eyes follow us.”
The zombie hadn’t moved a muscle since it had been tasered, but those eyes continued to move. They followed every movement as the boys leaned one way and then the other.
They had tried everything they could think of to see if it would move or get up. They poked it with a fishing pole. They threw things at it. They even shot nerf balls at it, but so far, except for those creepy eyes, there had been no reaction.
“I think it’s paralyzed,” Caleb said
.
“Maybe we short-circuited its brain,” Athan suggested.
They had already discussed the idea of poking both its eyes out so that it couldn’t see where it was going. That way if it did get up again, it wouldn’t be able to see them. But even though the thought of those eyes right outside the window always looking at them was more than a little unnerving, actually poking them out seemed way beyond gross.
“You think there are a lot of them out there?” Athan asked as he scanned the overgrown, unplanted field across from the house.
Caleb just shook his head silently. There was no way of knowing.
“What do you think happened to Ardella Dade?” Athan asked next.
“I have no idea,” Caleb answered his brother.
“I don’t think we can wait for grandma anymore,” Athan said soberly.
Caleb nodded. His brother was probably right. They had waited long enough.
“He was somebody once,” Athan said as he looked back down at the zombie. “Somebody just like you and me. Maybe they’ll find a cure and fix them. Maybe they’re fixing them already.”
“Maybe,” Caleb murmured under his breath.
Both boys thought that over. If that happened and there really was a cure, they would feel terrible if they had taken out its eyes.
“What if we tied its shoe laces together?” Athan said suddenly as the thought occurred to him. “Then even if it did get up again, it wouldn’t be able to walk.”
Caleb looked at his brother. He didn’t dismiss the idea as being stupid. In fact, there was something almost like admiration in his eyes.
They didn’t know that Kate was standing in the doorway listening to them. At least they were fighting zombies, not each other, she thought. It seemed both boys had grown up overnight and were actually getting along for once. But why did it have to be because of a zombie apocalypse?
When she had reached the house the day that the zombie had been chasing her, they had both told her, “We’ll protect you, Mom.”
After that, she had broken down in tears and cried for a good hour. But then a good cry was something she’d been long overdue for. It seemed like only yesterday that they had been happy, carefree children who wanted nothing more than to play in their sandbox or swim in their wading pool on the back patio. Now they couldn’t even go outside. They should be living the best years of their lives right now, not worrying about how to protect her from zombies. She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of a future they were facing.