by D C P Fox
Clarence and Jocelyn both kept silent. Clarence couldn’t help flicking his gaze over to the sword.
Ollie turned his head and looked in the sword’s direction. “What’s going on over there? Is there something there? . . . Is it that sword?”
He turned and looked at Clarence. Clarence tried to give a blank stare.
“Yes, it’s the sword, all right. Brooke, didn’t you take this sword off of this girl before burying her?”
“Now that you mention it, yes we did. The sword was hers.”
Ollie slammed his hands on the table. “Why do you need a fucking sword, eh?”
Clarence and Jocelyn kept silent. Ollie made an almost imperceptible nod, and Brooke hit Clarence again. Then she hit Jocelyn. There was a pause and Ollie tipped his head to them. They still kept silent.
He nodded and Brooke hit Jocelyn several times in the head until Jocelyn’s lip split open and she bled. Inexplicably, perhaps without thinking, Jocelyn wiped her lip with her tongue.
Uh-oh.
Brooke pummeled Clarence, and he closed his eyes to absorb the punches psychologically.
“Jesus Christ, she healed! Her bloody lip healed!” Ollie cried out. Brooke stopped pounding on Clarence, and Clarence opened his eyes. Both Ollie and Brooke stood open-mouthed, staring at Jocelyn.
“You sure, Ollie?” Brooke asked.
“Well, you saw it, right? Hit her again. This time till she bleeds again.”
Brooke pounded away at Jocelyn’s head for quite a while.
“Stop, stop!” Ollie called. “She has a cut now, another one at the corner of her mouth.” Jocelyn had now bowed her head, an attempt to conceal her injury.
“Lift her head up and wipe that blood off,” Ollie ordered. Brooke lifted Jocelyn’s head and wiped away the blood with her finger—and the wound was gone.
“Well, I’ll be gone to Hell . . .” He turned to Brooke and said. “Quick, hit grampa until he bleeds.”
A barrage of painful, more forceful, punches struck Clarence. When Brooke stopped, he tasted blood in his mouth.
After staring at Clarence for a while, Ollie concluded, “It’s her isn’t it? You’re just along for the ride?” he asked Clarence. Clarence kept his mouth shut, except to spit out blood onto the table. Ollie looked at Brooke. “She sent zombies after us, they didn’t attack her or him, just us. They tried to sneak in and steal this sword, and she can heal herself so well she can come back from the dead . . . And if she can do all that without that sword . . . What the hell can she do with it?”
Brooke was silent.
Ollie shook his head. “I’d heard stories of the woman who could take bullets and keep going as if they were bee stings, but everybody thought that was a story concocted to cover up incompetence. But now, it’s clear what we have here, Brooke.”
“And what’s that, Ollie?”
“A witch. She’s a god-damned witch, and she scares the hell out of me.”
“How do you know she’s a witch? And what is a witch anyways?”
“Witches are capable of extraordinary things. One put a hex on my mother once and strange, bad things kept happening to her until she died from being hit by a bus. Witches are dangerous.”
“Well, what should we do?” Brooke asked.
“Well, now the first thing we’ll do is kill her. Put a bullet in her head right now!”
“You mean now?”
“Are you deaf, or are you just stupid, kill the fucking witch right the fuck now!”
Jocelyn sighed, closed her eyes, and shook her head.
Brooke obeyed, aimed and fired one shot into Jocelyn’s skull.
Clarence just closed his eyes and gave an “oh, fuck.” His heart beat rapidly as he feared he was next. This was it. This was where the zombie apocalypse finally claims his life. He felt like an idiot for leaving his safe room.
“Okay, Ollie. What do we do next?” Brooke asked.
Clarence opened his eyes. “We do what everyone does with witches,” Ollie said, gaze fixed on Clarence. Anger flashed in his eyes again. “We burn 'em. Care to watch?”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Day Eleven
Oliver Simpson was anything if not thorough and methodical. First, kill the witch. Check. Second, burn her to a crisp. Third, torture grampa, get him to spill the secrets of the sword. Fourth, kill grampa. Fifth, leave this motherfucking supermarket.
Perhaps grampa would tell them what hole he’d climbed out of.
He ordered Fred and Cameron to clean up all the bodies and pile them up outside the front of the store along with any remains that they could pick up with a shovel, and while they had been spared the battle, Oliver didn’t want them to be spared the carnage.
Oliver pulled back the witch’s slumped head until her eyes pointed at the ceiling.
“If she so much as blinks, if a muscle so much as twitches, shoot her in the head again,” Oliver instructed Brooke Reynolds. “In fact, if you’re just feeling jumpy, shoot her again.”
“What’s your name?” Oliver asked grampa. “You don’t want me calling you grampa forever, do ya?”
Grampa shrugged. “My name is Clarence. Are we supposed to be friends, now?”
Oliver laughed. “Of course not, I don’t take you for a fool, and I’m not one either. But I want you to know it’s nothing personal. Under different circumstances I believe you, me, and the witch could have been friends, but we can’t, and right now I’d love nothing more than to send you back to Hell or wherever it was you came from. But there’s no reason we can’t be civilized, and I need you to tell me about that sword, and . . . What is her name?”
“Was. It was Jocelyn.” Oliver sensed a little defeat in Clarence, but he was still somewhat defiant.
Oliver chuckled. “Was. Is. She came back from the dead once, I assume she can come back again. But if you would tell me about that sword over there, I’d much appreciate it.” He continued to laugh. Clarence was probably not going to spill the beans without some good old-fashioned persuasion, but hell, maybe he could get this done the easy way.
“Why don’t you go check out the sword yourself?” Clarence asked.
“What? And leave you and the witch alone with Brooke? I figure we’ll have plenty of time for our other activities once we can get those bodies piled up. Speaking of that . . . “ He talked into his walkie-talkie. “Fred, how’re you coming along? Over.”
“About halfway done, Ollie. It’s slow-going. Man, the stink . . . Over.”
“Wait till you breathe burning flesh. Over.”
Oliver caught Clarence eyeing the fire extinguisher on the wall.
“Are you crying?” Cameron Carr asked Fred Grant.
Fred tried not to cry. He succeeded, but doing so left a knot in his gut. He couldn’t let Cameron or anyone else witness his weakness. Oh, he was a very weak man, having stayed out of this battle.
Battle? More like a massacre. Fifteen dead. Fifteen! None of which possessed anything left of the top of their heads but pieces of skull, with or without hair, and bits of brain all over.
“It’s the goddamned smell of the zombie sores,” Fred said. “It’s making my eyes water. I know all of them are outside now, but I just can’t get rid of that stench.”
Seven of the corpses were zombies. Zombies. More like diseased rats.
But Fred surmised burning human and zombie flesh would be a less appealing odor than the sores.
And so when Fred slipped and fell in aisle five in the blood and brain tissue of his good friend Chris, he suppressed an urge to bawl his eyes out. And to vomit. He managed to keep that down. At least he thought it was Chris’s remains, the body nearby sure was, but there was a dead zombie near, too.
One by one, they piled the bodies on top of each other outside. The zombies on the bottom, the fallen survivalists on the top, some still with no or partial noses or ears. On top of those bodies they placed scooped up brain matter, skull, and hair. Such was their reward for not having to take part in the battl
e. Kind of like having to do dishes after someone else has cooked a large meal.
That last thought brought up the contents of Fred’s stomach right onto the top of the pile. Cam followed with his own vomiting.
Their task completed, they gathered all the stray weapons and locked them in a utility closet in the break room. They then carried the dead witch over to the pile, and, because the stack was so high and broad, they threw her body down just inside the edge.
They left Clarence alone in the break room, his arms still wrapped around the back of his chair, his wrists clamped together with a zip tie. He tried to wriggle his hands free despite the pain in his left wrist, but the restraint was just too tight. He could, however, squeeze his hands into fists, and if he found something sharp within a few inches of those hands, he might cut his way through the thick plastic. They had bound his ankles to the legs of the chair.
He “made a break” for the fire extinguisher by inching his chair around the table, and while he did so his knee screamed in pain, his wrist less so. He clenched his jaw and stifled any noise his throat wanted to make. Eventually, the pain subsided as the adrenaline pumped through his system, but some pain persisted. After a couple minutes, he arrived at the extinguisher, turned his chair around so his hands were next to it, and grabbed onto it. It slipped and dropped onto the floor. Cursing, he turned his chair around again and fit a chair leg into the hook of the extinguisher. He dragged the chair with the canister over to the swinging doors of the break room and, after what seemed like an eternity, pushed the chair and extinguisher through the doors. Though this process was loud, Clarence thought fast was better than quiet.
He got a good look at the nearby aisle signs. As luck would have it, “Housewares” was two aisles down. He started the slow process of dragging himself, chair, and fire extinguisher toward that aisle.
Oliver knew both Fred and Cameron did not hold up well, but most importantly, they’d been able to do the task at hand. So he let them keep their dignity, pretending not to notice the vomit on the pile.
If the witch woke up, it would be a rude awakening!
And dangerous for him. It occurred to him she probably would have left them alone if he’d just given her the sword. But that wasn’t his style. If the sword was worth this much trouble, then he wanted that sword for himself! Before the zombie apocalypse, before witnessing all sorts of crazy shit, he did not believe in any supernatural crap. Even the witch’s curse on his mother he had chalked up to coincidence. But now he believed.
He and Brooke kept their weapons trained on Jocelyn as the others started to pour gasoline onto the corpses. They had plenty of liquor, so they made a lot of Molotov cocktails. Igniting the tops with lighter guns, Fred and Cameron hurled them onto the pile. Oliver had made sure they covered Jocelyn’s body with plenty of gasoline, and now he made sure she had two cocktails thrown on her, one at her head, the other at the bottom of her torso.
The rancid stench of Jocelyn and the other corpses burning filled the air as wind drifted the smoke in Oliver’s direction. It was like burned hair, bad barbecue, and melted tires and plastic, all magnified a thousand-fold.
Nothing smelled so sweet as a burning witch.
The fire, however, was too strong. They probably used too much gasoline. The flames shot up too high, with embers blown toward the building. The wooden archway caught fire. The store started to burn.
Smoke drifted into Clarence’s aisle. Jocelyn must be burning! How much time did he have? He looked around and spotted a pair of scissors hanging on a display hook. He inched the back of his chair over to them and lifted and tugged until he had them in his hands, a difficult feat because of the throbbing in his wrist.
The hook fell to the ground with a loud clang. Clarence hoped the others were too busy to hear it. He might just be able to escape on his own while Jocelyn burning distracted them, but it was a long shot. Even longer odds to save her. On a mission from God, having lived a full and prosperous life, he contributed what little he could.
Even with the odds against him. Even if it cost him his life.
“Jocelyn?!”
Alexander, in the front passenger seat of an SUV, turned his head to see Jocelyn, burned on most of her body, in the opposite corner of the cabin. As he watched her, the burns gradually became worse. The soldier next to her was staring wide-eyed.
“How the fuck?—” Alexander began.
<—I’m not really here. I’m astral-projecting, and I’m being burned alive by some survivalists. It’s a long story, as I’m sure yours is—considering the military fatigues you are wearing and that swastika on your forehead—but I came to say goodbye. It appears the burning is stronger than I can heal.>
“But . . . I can’t hear you—”
<—I’m dying. I wanted to say goodbye—to all of you, but especially to you.>
Alexander turned and looked off into the distance through the front windshield. A plume of smoke was rising in the North. “Oh, my god . . . Is that you?”
“We’re just south of Beaver Park. We’re running up to a traffic jam and will have to drive on the median strip and parking lots.”
“Who the hell—”
A disembodied thought entered Alexander’s mind.
“Who was that?”
“Alexander,” the driver said, “could you tell me—”
“Did you hear that? Just answer the question,” Alexander said. “Can you get us there?”
“That’s anyone’s guess. It’s two miles up the road, but there’s a lot of stalled traffic to weave in and out of. It’ll be tight.”
“Of course it will,” Alexander said. “Hang on, Jocelyn, we’re coming. Hurry, Francis!”
“I don’t know, but the sheriff and I . . . “ Alexander looked back at the SUV following them. “The sheriff’s in the car behind us. Soon after the military freed us from the skinheads, we decided to look for you and Vin in case either of you was still alive, or to bury you if dead, but we never found the scene of the ambush. We looked for the van but didn’t see it anywhere. When we realized we’d gone too far, we backtracked, but neither of us remembered exactly where the ambush occurred. We guessed—or, rather, the sheriff did—that you’d repeat what we did before: get a new van and head south to get to Colorado Springs. So we were heading up toward the rental place, hoping to find you, the old van, or a new van on the road—”
“Francis.”
“How did you get here?” Francis asked Jocelyn.
“Sheriff, do you copy?” Alexander said into his walkie-talkie. “Over.”
“Marty here,” came the reply. “Over.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Francis said.
“No time to explain,” Alexander said. “We’re in for a bumpy ride. Follow us. It’s life-or-death! Over.”
A brief silence.
The SUV lurched, coming off the median strip, and scraped a car on the right side as their car
swerved around a light pole and sped into a clear intersection.
“Will do,” the sheriff said. “Care to explain now? Over.”
Jocelyn disappeared.
The vehicle turned into the right-turn lane and down an embankment to avoid some cars. Alexander leaned onto his door as the SUV listed to the right, driving on a steep curve of grass. If they didn’t go fast, they might not get there in time, but if they crashed and got stuck for even a few minutes, it would be all over.
The hillside started to get muddy, and the wheels spun. But whether it was the four-wheel drive, or the traction control, the SUV regained its forward momentum.
They approached a drainage tunnel. They couldn’t fit through, so they had to turn back up the hillside. It looked like up ahead there might not be room for them to squeeze by the cars on the left. The wheels started to spin again, and the SUV slowed to a crawl. Its wheels kept spinning, and it started to slide back down.
Unable to get a grip on the scissor handles, using one edge, Clarence tried to cut through his zip tie for about ten minutes but barely cut into it.
Should he give up at this point?
His nose burned on the inside as the smoke in the store thickened. He coughed violently. All this smoke from Jocelyn burning? Could the building itself be on fire? Maybe the survivalists had not been careful.
The smoke came from the front, but if he gave up on cutting the zip tie, even if he made it to the rear door, he wouldn’t be able to turn the knob. There was a small chance the front of the store opened at some place to the outside to allow him to escape.
If he knocked over his chair, he might survive longer, as the smoke wouldn’t be as dense at floor level, but then he’d lose his ability to move at all. He’d be trapped, relying on someone to find him.