“She’ll get back up again. They shot her lung or something,” Ben said.
Isobel had stopped looking and, like many of the others, she was trying not to freak out.
“I think that’s the point,” Rob spoke up. He hadn’t seen any of it but from what he’d heard he could put the pieces together. “They don’t want this plague to end. It has been the only thing to successfully bring down the American government. Chaos reigns and they are right at home in it. If it was my cup of tea I certainly wouldn’t want it to end either.”
“Crazy bastards,” Vaughn shook his head but he couldn’t help but admire the blonde’s savageness. She wasn’t bad to look at either.
The megaphone found its way to her hand again and she spoke more animatedly than before, as though the shooting had reinvigorated her. The dead swarmed the truck, following the sound of the bullet and the megaphone to their shared source.
“We are the future of this forgotten world. The establishment will never return! If you kill a zombie, we’ll make you a zombie. That’s the deal, an eye for an eye!”
The fallen office woman stood back up. Blood still oozed from the bullet hole in her chest. She walked toward her killers without one thought of revenge on her mind. When she made it to the truck they pushed her backward into the mix to fulfill her duty as one of the dead.
The faces in the office building windows had disappeared but it was too late for them.
“The rest of you come out here and make your choice. Join us or join the undead!” The blonde yelled into the megaphone.
“Daddy, I don’t want us to go out there,” Gabe was crying as he whispered to his dad.
“They aren’t talking to us buddy. They don’t know that we’re here. We just have to stay very still and quiet so it stays that way; like playing hide and seek, except we don’t want to be found. Ok?” Rob said in the steadiest voice he could find.
“I like that game!” Gabe whispered again, but with more happiness in his voice.
The blonde was getting impatient. She pressed a button on the megaphone to make it wail. Everyone in Willow Brook jumped.
“Make me come in there and you’re dead. No choice,” she threatened.
Two more women, a man, and a child emerged. They looked like skeletons after all this time stuck in the commercial building.
“Those people, they have to know we’re in here,” Isobel said. “How many of us have left the building? How much noise did we make when Hayden was stuck on the roof? Vaughn, we walked right through that parking lot to go to the mall!” Vaughn nodded in acknowledgement.
“All we can do is pray. Pray that they are God-fearing people who wouldn’t betray us,” Moira said.
“That doesn’t leave me a lot of hope,” Ben said. “They are desperate and desperation often throws the fear of God out the window.”
Moira sadly knew that to be true.
“Those anarchists could have already scouted the area too. Don’t forget about that possibility,” Vaughn said.
The anarchists made the office skeletons stand in a line in part of the empty but filling parking lot. The man dropped to his knees and started to talk with the blonde. Isobel waited for his finger to point at Willow Brook. But instead his fingers came together in front of him like he was praying.
“See,” Moira said, “God-fearing.”
“No, he’s begging for his life,” Ben corrected her.
The anarchist leader slapped the man’s face and pinched his deathly thin arms, kicked him in his hungry stomach. She wouldn’t be sparing him or his family today. They were too close to death to save them from it. Four more shots were fired but never once into a brain.
“We’re in the zombie making business, fellas!” the blonde roared to her motley following, not into the megaphone, but at the top of her lungs.
“They don’t have room in that truck for anyone else. You see that?” Vaughn asked to the room, to everyone who dared look outside again. “They aren’t taking on anymore mouths to feed, just drawing people out and killing ‘em to keep the status quo.”
“Those people will be able to get through the stairwell in fifteen minutes,” Isobel said.
Moira had a bible out and she was reading it through tears. Everyone else had a weapon, even Jeff.
Vaughn was camped out at the top of the barricaded stairwell with an array of weapons. He looked eager for a fight. The possibility of urban warfare excited him. He clearly wanted to kill someone living, someone who was more of an adversary than a shuffling corpse. Molly watched him. It ran chills down her spine but surprisingly also sent a warm blanket of security over her. He could kill us all with his experience and his small armory, propped up against the wall. Or, he could protect us from this group of tyrants. She thought. She was confident that he could take down four of them before breaking a sweat. Her only doubt came from the fact that it was his choice and Vaughn wasn’t exactly known for his good decisions.
The group drank room-temperature coffee to stay alert as they sat silent for ten hours, until they felt like the anarchists had left the area. They relied on their bullhorn a lot, which allowed Vaughn to track their general location.
“We are really fortunate that they didn’t come by our building at night like Hayden did. We’d be dead now,” Markus said as he finally took the risk to speak aloud.
Reason to Live
Molly felt her loneliness ten-fold when she was surrounded by the others. Edward had Moira. Isobel and Ben had each other’s company. Jeff and Markus were able to create something new together. Vaughn had Hayden, even though it was wrong. Rob had his son. Staring out the window after everyone else had crept back to their own apartments, still fearing her own death, she realized that she had no one. Would it matter if she lived? Would it matter if she died? She was so stunned by her depression she couldn’t even cry.
“Hey,” Rob said. She thought she was alone and his voice made her jump. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, why?” Molly asked.
“You’ve been staring out that window for almost an hour.”
“No, it hasn’t been that long,” she said, but she knew it had been. She could see that the light was different outside.
Rob held his arms out and Molly welcomed his attention and his embrace. “I know you’re mad that I haven’t spent any time with you.”
“Did Hayden say something?” Molly fumed.
“No, no! You are easy to read. I want to tell you that I’m sorry. Gabe’s mental health has become an all-consuming thing for me.”
“What do you mean his ‘mental health’?”
“Something is changing inside of him. He is a darker version of himself.”
“Aren’t we all?” Molly said solemnly.
Rob didn’t answer, choosing instead to enjoy a quiet moment with her in his arms but mostly because he feared that she was right.
Permission to Leave
The whole building was asleep except for Vaughn. He was so distracted and antsy from the event with the anarchists earlier that he’d even pushed Hayden away. He spent an hour cleaning and reloading a handgun and shotgun. He sharpened his machete. He could have chosen to slip out quietly and return before the others woke up but he felt the need to let someone know he was leaving.
He went to the second floor and knocked on Isobel’s apartment door. Ben answered with his eyes still closed.
“Isobel here?” Vaughn asked.
“Of course she is. Where else would she be. Don’t think she’ll want to see you at this hour. What hour is it anyway?”
“Three or so in the morning,” Vaughn guessed.
“Jesus Christ. What do you want?”
“Isobel. I already said that.”
At that moment Isobel came to the door. “Who are you talking to Ben?”
“Isobel, it’s me, Vaughn. I just came by to tell you that I’m going out.”
“That’s all you had to tell her?” Ben asked, miffed. “I could have told her that.”
“You
always leave without telling anyone. Why now? Why me?” Isobel yawned.
“I don’t know. It felt important.”
“Ok. Well, have fun? Watch out for those asshole communists.” She wasn’t sure what he was looking for from her.
“They were anarchists, Isobel,” Ben pointed out knowledgeably.
“I know. I’m tired. Anarchists. Watch out for them. I’m going to go back to bed. Bye Vaughn.” Isobel waved half-heartedly and stumbled back to her bedroom.
“She doesn’t like you,” Ben felt the need to inform Vaughn.
“She doesn’t like you either man.” Vaughn shrugged and walked back to the stairwell.
Fresh Fare
The air outside still smelled of the burned out mall which only fueled Vaughn’s anger.
“Where did you go, you bastards?” Vaughn crept through the night, cursing the anarchists with every other breath. The loss of the mall was a heavy blow; a blow alone that he wouldn’t overlook. But then they came nearly to his front yard, killed people on his street, put fear into the eyes of his neighbors. His hatred of the anarchists was very personal because their destructive entrance into his life felt equally so.
He knew they had traveled east down Northgate Way because they had listened earlier to the blonde leader’s fading voice as it echoed off buildings in that direction. He picked up his pace to a light jog and found himself making good progress down the thoroughfare. Vaughn wanted to see the mall up close so he took a sharp right when he reached the parking lot of the bank on the corner of the shopping complex.
The middle of the mall had been opened up where the arched wooden roof had burned away. It was as though he was looking down another road lit by stars. He walked carefully through the hole where the North entrance had been and stood there for awhile. All the clothing was gone and left in its place were the twisted metal skeletons of racks that used to hold it.
“No more new shoes then,” Vaughn said in farewell as he exited the fallen structure and re-launched his pursuit of the blonde and her dirty cronies.
He was nearing more residential areas and the blanket of dead on the streets was growing heavier. It was almost so difficult to move forward without trouble that he was going to admit defeat in his search and turn home but then he heard a gunshot.
“Stupid fuckers. Lead me right to you.”
He traveled the remaining five blocks and ended up at the back corner of the QFC grocery store lot. He could hear the anarchists on the other side of the building. A Jiffy Lube sat even with the front parking lot of the store. Vaughn let himself into the small office of the vehicle maintenance business to plan his next move. He sat on the dirty floor, out of sight of anarchists and zombies alike. The smell of the grease and engine oil gave Vaughn a sort of high. He missed his truck and would give a lot just to sit in its cab again and drive around the city. It sat parked and untouched in the small parking lot of Willow Brook. Shaking himself from his daydream, he looked for a way onto the roof and he found a narrow staircase behind the counter that led to it.
He army crawled to the edge and lay flat, overlooking the entire lot of the grocery store. The anarchists had somehow found keys for enough of the large abandoned vehicles to form a semi-circle of them in front of the entrance. It had proven effective in keeping the dead away from them.
“Like a fucking wagon train laager.”
Vaughn laughed, mostly at the fact that he remembered the term for it.
From this vantage point Vaughn spotted one of the anarchists outside the protective half-circle. He was in the bushes, maybe urinating, and playing with a lighter. Vaughn watched as the man repeatedly flicked the lighter open and closed. It ticked him off. He climbed back down from the roof and made a large circle around the outside edge of the lot until he was right behind the man.
“You like to start fires, huh?” Vaughn spoke softly and the man jumped. “Don’t say anything. I’ve got my shotgun pointed at your back. If you want to live, you’ll stay quiet.”
“Who the fuck are you?” the man asked in a whisper.
“What does it matter who I am? All I can figure is that lighter in your hand looks like it could burn down a mall. My mall.”
The man turned around and came out of the bushes. Vaughn could just make out a large dirty beard on his face. “Your mall? Me and my friends own this fucking city now. We’ll burn what we want,” the bearded man said as he flicked open his lighter once again.
“No, you won’t. Not after tonight,” Vaughn said, his shotgun still trained on the man’s core.
“Whatcha gonna do? Steal my lighter?” the bearded man giggled. Vaughn could smell the sweet scent of alcohol on his breath.
“Much worse than that,” Vaughn said as he pulled his silenced handgun from his belt.
The man put his hands up like he was being arrested. “You got a lotta guts walking into this. What do you have that you are protectin’? A bitch? A family?” The man smiled and his eyes lit up at the thought of women.
“Neither of those. Just me. My right to live. Look, I’m tired of talking. I’m going to kill you now.”
The smile disappeared from his face and fear took its place. He dropped to his knees. It reminded Vaughn of the survivor that the anarchists had killed earlier that day, the one who had begged for his own life.
“Please sir. I’m just trying to survive, just like you. I’m just like you,” the man cried out.
“You’re nothing like me.”
Vaughn raised his silenced handgun to aim for the man’s heart.
“See you soon.”
“Ple-” the man tried one last time to save himself but Vaughn had already pulled the trigger passed the point of no return. The lighter fell from the man’s hand and to the pavement with a clink. His body fell too, only quieter. Vaughn took a length of rope and tied one end around the man’s neck to drag his body to the back of a nearby car. He tied the loose end of the rope to the bumper.
“Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back,” he said to the corpse that had yet to reanimate. “So will you.”
A Gut Feeling
Hayden couldn’t fall asleep. She’d been nauseous before breakfast and again after dinner that day. She didn’t feel sick otherwise but she did feel different and she’d definitely missed her period. She had to accept the fact that she was pregnant and hope that the others would welcome the idea when she decided to share it. She lay awake on Tom’s couch, waiting for him to return and cursing herself for coming to Willow Brook. Something felt wrong about the place but it was too late to leave. She couldn’t be a single mother on the streets of an infected city, running from house to house with a hungry baby. Surely they would die the first time the child cried aloud.
Speculation
Isobel had tried to fall back to sleep but Vaughn’s short visit had left her concerned. Ben saw Isobel’s concern and wouldn’t go back to bed while she was awake.
“Do you want some tea or something, Iz?” Ben asked, his hand resting on her shoulder as she sat in a chair in the living room.
“I don’t like being called ‘Iz’,” Isobel said bluntly.
“Vaughn calls you ‘Iz’,” Ben said to prove a point as he removed his hand and went to turn on the camp stove on the balcony to boil water.
“I don’t like it when he does it either,” Isobel said out the open slider. “And can you close that door? It’s freezing in here already.”
Ben frowned at her but she wasn’t looking at him to see it. He got the water set up and came back inside, closing the slider behind him. He sat across from her and waited for her to start a conversation. He was tired of trying to please her. After almost ten minutes of silence the water was boiling outside so Ben brought it in and made them both a cup of tea.
“Maybe Vaughn isn’t coming back,” Isobel said after she’d sipped her tea a few times.
“He didn’t have a whole lot with him. In fact he looked kind of like Lara Croft equipped with only rope and weapons.”
�
��She has nicer breasts,” Isobel laughed.
“I believe Lara was better educated too,” Ben laughed with her. “But seriously, he’ll be back. I think he enjoys feeling like the guy in charge. You can’t be a king without a court.”
“Hmm. You’re right. We’ll just have to wait for him to return to us lowly commoners.” Isobel blew on the surface of her hot tea and watched as the steam rose in delicate tendrils.
Sneak Attack
Vaughn moved right up to the semi-circle of vehicles. He climbed into the bed of a truck that was parked dead center in front of the store entrance. The anarchists had lit the front of the building with two torches, highlighting their location and inviting the dead to join them. The blonde leader sat in a folding camp chair smoking a cigarette and taking swigs from what was probably a room-temperature beer. He was ready to take her out when she stood up and went inside the QFC. She came out less than a minute later with two men that looked a lot like the bearded man he’d already killed. He could hear her easily as she spoke to them.
“Garrison went out to piss and he hasn’t come back. One of you needs to go find him.”
“I’ll go,” the skinnier bearded man volunteered. His arms were covered in tattoos that suggested a former membership with a gang.
“What about me?” the other man asked. He was fat and sweaty, like the pregnant woman Vaughn had wasted a rescue mission on some time ago.
“Brick, the dead will overwhelm us here if we don’t do something about it. Take some of them out.”
“On it,” the fat man said as he pulled a machete from behind his back and lumbered off out of the glow of the torches and into the dark of the lot.
Vaughn was growing angrier the longer he was with the anarchists. He went to look for the skinny gang banger but instead of following him he just went back to the body of ‘Garrison’ and waited for the living to find the dead. Maybe they’d designated this area as the urinal. Garrison had already returned from the dead and was struggling to get off the ground. Vaughn had tied the rope short though and the zombie was stuck in a kneeling position.
When the Dead Page 17