by Emma Shortt
Luke made his way into the kitchen area, and grabbed one of his many, many packs of noodles. Everyone liked noodles. Hell, everyone liked anything they could get their hands on these days, including rat, by the sound of it. He smiled slightly and thanked the unnamed bunker builder again. He wondered for just a moment where he’d be if he hadn’t had this hideaway. He was convinced the waking dead worked by following scent. They seemed to know where a human was hiding and what else could explain that but enhanced smell? Maybe in some way it was activated when the higher brain functions decreased. Like going back to the predatory days of old. Then too was their weird aversion to aftershaves. He suspected there was a common chemical in all of them that they disliked. That’d make sense with the whole enhanced smell thing. He’d have to ask Jackson what she’d learned.
At the thought of the kick-ass pixie Luke heaved a completely ridiculous sigh of satisfaction. He couldn’t help it. Finally he’d have someone to talk to. Some company to see him through the long, painful nights. Though he’d admit it to no one, Luke had been lonely. By the time he’d found his bunker he hadn’t seen another person for more than two months. He knew there were people still out there. After all, he was still alive, and more than once he’d thought about abandoning his safe house and striking out in search of those other survivors. Only the knowledge that he had it pretty good already had stopped him.
He wondered how Jackson had found her way from New York—she’d said that was her home town hadn’t she?—and how the hell she’d managed to survive so long. Considered objectively, it was certainly possible. Not everyone who was infected and died came back, and many who had, died all over again in the early days, killed by other zombies, other people, and the army had bombed many areas before they disappeared. These days you’d find a couple of thousand—mostly native residents—in the suburbs, split into their little packs, each with their own stomping ground. It was possible to avoid them if you knew what you were doing. Possible to stay hidden. Though of course Luke had no idea what it was like in the cities, he could only draw on his own experience, there could be millions still there for all he knew. But viewed realistically survival became a harder. Finding food was the number one priority, followed by staying warm and healthy. Having to do that while keeping clear of the packs was a nightmare. Luke had a hard enough time of it in his area, and he had a bunker at his disposal. Jackson sure was something for getting so far…
Well, she’s here with you now. A ridiculous grin spread across his face. It was safe here. She was bound to want to stay. He’d fed her, offered up toiletries and clothes, and could watch out for her. That had to count for something, right?
A few minutes later Jackson returned to the living area, trailing her backpack in one hand, warmly wrapped up in his clothes. The T-shirt came all the way down to her knees and she’d rolled the sweats up several times. His gaze lingered on the sweats a little longer than it should have but he couldn’t help remembering her bare legs. Sure they were covered in bruises and scrapes, and she clearly hadn’t seen a razor in some time, but they were a woman’s legs. All hidden dips and tempting curves.
“That was absolutely amazing, Luke,” she said, giving her head a shake.
Her hair was still damp—there was no hair dryer in the bunker—but if the smile on her face was any indication, she didn’t seem to mind. He smiled right back before spooning some noodles onto her plate and decorating them with a sprig of parsley. Dried stuff but it was the thought that counted.
“Here, eat this.”
She took the plate from him with her free hand and sat down at the small table. “There’s loads here,” she said. “And you already gave me soup.”
Luke grabbed his own plate and joined her. “Thin soup, so your stomach adjusts. Eat a little but go slow.”
Silence reigned as they both chomped their way through the noodles. Luke practically gulping his down, Jackson forking up little bits. After a moment or so, she pushed her half-full plate aside.
“I never thought I’d say this again, Luke, but I couldn’t eat another thing.”
“It’s because your stomach’s shrunk.”
“Yeah.”
She placed her hands on the table and Luke was struck by how small and dainty they were. That image contradicted the one of her severing heads and he shook himself inwardly. The woman and the bad-ass, how to reconcile them?
“I want to thank you for all this,” she said softly. “Sharing your resources and helping me take down the pack.”
Luke grinned and nudged a bottle of water toward her. “Not a problem.”
She took a hefty swig of the water and looked up. Their eyes met and Luke had to take a deep breath. She was so fucking pretty, and he knew it wasn’t just because she was one of the few women left on Earth. Luke was fairly certain he’d have felt the same way if he’d seen her before the world went to shit.
“But it’s time for me to get going.”
He started, completely surprised by her words, and had to take a moment to process them. What the fuck? “Going?” he said quickly. “Going where?”
“To find Tye.”
Tye. Luke felt an undeniable anger build at the sound of the other man’s name. No, not anger, he realized, as his stomach clenched. Jealousy. It was obvious. Maybe it should have clicked immediately? Jackson and Tye were together. She wanted to go looking for her boyfriend. While he applauded her loyalty, a large part of him rallied against it. If she did, by some miracle, find him she’d probably leave, and he’d be alone again. And what else was fucking new.
“Sooo…” She paused and Luke leaned forward, trying to bank down the anger.
“What?”
“I’d appreciate any information you can give me on the shop. Entrances, exits. I don’t think he’ll be there now. It’s been what over two hours maybe since we split up, but I need to be sure.”
“But if he’s not there,” Luke said slowly, “how will you find him? I’m assuming you don’t have a walkie in your pack.”
“I wish.”
“Then how?” he said, aware that his voice sounded a little demanding but unable to stop it.
“We’ll find each other on the interstate,” she said. “We’re planning to follow it—well as roughly as we can—down to where it finishes in Texas.”
“You’re driving to Texas?”
She laughed. “You know the cars don’t work anymore.”
Luke shook his head as her meaning hit. “You’re planning to walk to Texas?”
“Um yeah, of course that might be harder than I thought now.” She paused and Luke opened his mouth to speak, to ask what the fuck could possibly be in Texas that would make her crazy plan of walking there make any kind of sense, but she spoke before he did, and when she did his heart gave a nasty little thud. “Something’s going on with the zombies. Something weird.”
“Everything about them is weird.”
“Apart from the obvious I mean.” She paused for just a moment. “I don’t know if you picked up on it, but they’re banding together, almost like they’re working together. Oh, I know the packs do,” she said, waving a hand. “We’ve all seen that, four or five of them buddying up. They’re like animals, right, so why wouldn’t they do that? But today when Tye and I had to split up there were way more than five.”
Luke nodded slowly, putting the Texas issue aside for the moment, because this was not news to him, and for a brief second there he’d been expecting something else, something unknown. But then…how could Jackson not have seen this before? The packs had been joining up for months.
“How many were there, altogether?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Fifteen maybe? There could have been more that I didn’t see. They tried to cut off our escape, waiting on the roofs. And that makes absolutely no sense. They’re not supposed to be able to think.”
“They’re not supposed to exist at all.”
“Neither is tofu.”
“Huh?”
She
rolled her eyes. “Something my…just something someone used to say. Point is something’s changing with them. I saw it today with my own eyes and I don’t know what it means.”
“Something meaning what?”
She shrugged and wiped away a few of the water spots on the table. “They seemed almost like they were…plotting and planning…I know that sounds ridiculous but…”
Luke frowned because again this was not news to him. He’d seen more than one zombie acting that way, and he’d thought about it a fair bit. It horrified him—the cunning behavior, the gleam of a burgeoning intelligence—but in a weird way it made a nasty kind of sense.
Zombies should not exist.
Only they did.
Zombies should be dumb and stupid.
But they weren’t.
Jackson was oddly out of the zombie news loop. It was time to bring her in.
Chapter Ten
“It’s a whole lot worse than you think,” Luke said, lifting his sweater. “Take a look at this.”
Jackson’s stomach gave a funny little flip. Damn, even sitting down, Luke had some ab muscles going on, like really going on, and she was weirdly tempted to run a hand over the hard planes. She clenched her fist to shake the feeling off but relaxed them the moment she spotted the wound. It was located just below his rib cage and was about the width of a chunky human finger. Clearly he’d sewn himself up—not very well. The edges were still shiny pink and he wasn’t completely healed. On the plus, side she couldn’t see any sign of infection.
“Whiskey,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Johnny Walker Black.”
“Huh?”
“I pour it over me anytime one of them bites me. It seems to do the trick.”
Surprise hit and Jackson tilted her head, considering. “How many times have you been bitten?”
“Five or six in all. You?”
“Never.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yep. I came close one time.” Jackson closed her eyes as she remembered the incident. “It was at the very beginning, right before everything went completely to shit,” she said slowly. “She, well, it, I guess, grabbed my ankle and sent me flying. She was crawling along the floor, I think maybe there was something wrong with her legs, and went straight for my thigh.”
“What did you do?”
“I almost died of shock! It was just instinct that I kneed her in the face. Hard. She went down and I ran for it. I ran for so long…” She shook herself. “Like I said, those were the early days. I didn’t even think to behead her or chop her up. How could I? I had no idea what was happening.” The image of the dead zombie’s snarling face and bloodcurdling howl, were so vivid Jackson swallowed unsteadily. Some memories just stayed with you more than others. “So why the alcohol?” she asked. “You think it counters the zombie infection in some way?”
“I’m not sure,” Luke replied. “It’s just alcohol. But then it’s not like in the movies is it? When one bite equals death followed by waking? I’ve seen people bitten over and over and they’ve died a few weeks later of blood loss or normal infection or something, and don’t come back. But others are bitten, die, then get up zombiefied.”
“What about the pus?” Jackson asked, intrigued to have another viewpoint on the situation. Sure, theories and speculation had flown thick and fast in the first few weeks of the end, and Tye had been full of information, some more vital than others, but Luke had clearly seen other things. After all he didn’t seem in the least bit surprised by the idea of smart zombies. Plus he’d been in one place for a long time, while she, and Tye, had been traveling for the past two years. It was bound to give him an entirely different perspective.
“I’ve been covered in the stuff and I’m fine,” he said. “Even with open wounds. I really think it’s all about the bite. The pus seems to be an internal response or something. Like snot when you get a cold.”
“You might be immune to it,” she suggested. “The virus I mean, not the snot-pus.”
He frowned. “I doubt it. Besides I know of other people who’ve been sprayed too and they’re fine, or at least they were, but that was in the beginning. They’re probably dead now. Properly, I mean. Anyway, my point is that it just seems totally random to me. No one knows how it started. No one knows how the infection gets passed around. In the beginning, pretty much everyone I saw who turned did so because they got bit. The zombies were so fast and people were so shocked. No one ever expected this, did they?”
Jackson wiped up another droplet of water and frowned. “No, it was completely unexpected.” She paused for a moment, her brow scrunched. “Except for maybe a bunch of survivalist types. Preppers and rednecks.”
He snorted. “Yeah they’re probably fine. Hiding out in the mountains and shooting anything that comes up their path.”
“Most likely…so are you saying you think that the infection was spread purely from the zombies biting people?” Jackson asked. “Not from a virus transmitted through the water or the air or something?”
“If it was a virus, then why didn’t everyone get it?”
“I don’t know. But someone had to get it in the start, right? The first zombie?” She shuddered slightly saying those words. The first zombie had become almost a bogeyman in her mind, and yes, she got that that was weird. There were enough horrors already, no need to add more. But when she dreamed, which was not often, sometimes it was the first zombie that woke her up shaking.
It’s never made sense to me,” Jackson added. “How many people were there in the US before the zombies?”
“More than three hundred million or so, I think,” Luke said.
“And most of them just disappeared in the first few months didn’t they? Dead? Zombiefied? I don’t know. All I know is that one day the world was full of people and then they were gone or they were zombies. It never really stacked up,” she said softly. “How it could have happened so quickly if it was all about being bitten.”
“I never really thought about it like that. People were dying so quickly, zombies roaming the fucking streets.” He shook his head. “I always just thought that the odds were not in favor of survival and just worked off that.”
“But we survived.”
“Yeah. But out of a country of millions, I bet there’s only a few tens of thousands of people who are still human.”
“And that’s exactly my point. There are fewer every day.”
“Fewer every day,” he repeated.
Silence reigned for a moment and Jackson wondered if Luke was thinking about her suspicions that all was not as simple in the zombie world as it seemed, or maybe he was just thinking about all the people he’d lost. Indistinct faces started to form in her mind, and she spoke quickly in an effort to push them back where they belonged.
“So tell me where did this come from? It doesn’t look like a bite mark.”
“It’s not. I guess I need to tell you the whole story. Come on.” He motioned for them to sit down on the couch. Jackson hesitated. She needed to get moving, to go find Tye, but on the other hand if Luke had information that was important…well it would benefit them all for her to hear it.
She eyed the couch with a frown. It looked devastatingly comfortable and she knew it wouldn’t take much to sink into it and close her eyes. The shower had banished some of the exhaustion, mainly because she’d gone over the one-minute mark and had been hit with a bolt of freezing cold water, but still she was feeling it. Yes, it would be so easy to just lie back, but there was Tye, and Luke who had knowledge for her. So she straightened her shoulders, gave herself a mental shake, and joined him on the couch.
“Let’s hear it then.”
“I’ve been fairly lucky so far,” Luke began. “Well, lucky so far as other survivors go, I guess. It’s all about the perspective. I didn’t die or get eaten or turn into a zombie.”
“Amen to that.”
“But you’re right, Jackson, something has changed. You remember when the first of the zombies
started coming?”
Jackson nodded, even though the question was so obviously rhetorical. “I remember my first dead face-off like it was yesterday,” she said, despite the fact it was held back by one of her refuse-to-think-about-it barriers. Though the barrier was a little shaky now, and she clenched her fists as her brain tried to replay it, speaking before she could keep it silent. “It was the woman I told you about. The one whose legs didn’t work.”
“You got away from her though,” Luke said.
“Just about. I didn’t stop running for hours.”
And that woman had been a mere taster, Jackson thought, though she did not say as much. There was no need. No doubt Luke had seen his fair share of zombies running through the streets. They had come out of nowhere, were everywhere, and because no one had been expecting them, and the zombies had been able to fucking sprint, everything had been chaos.
“What did you do in those early days?” Luke asked and Jackson shook her head automatically. She so did not want to talk about the days she’d holed up in her apartment, waiting for her brothers. Or the fact that only one of her brothers had turned up… Jackson clenched her fists tighter, swallowed unsteadily, and dragged the mental barrier back into place. Stamping your first zombie brain, your brother’s no less, was something best not replayed…
Silence held between them for a moment and then Luke started to speak, clearly, and thankfully, getting the hint. “They were stupid in those early days,” he said and Jackson made an effort to unclench her fists.
“Yeah, they were.” Though it was an undisputable fact that her brother had found his way to her apartment—something that still broke her heart if she let herself think about it—so even back then, in truth, they hadn’t been that dumb.
“Fast yeah, but stupid,” Luke continued, then paused. “No, not stupid, that’s the wrong word. But it was like all they wanted to do was bite and eat and that consumed them. I think they were acting on their predatory drive more than anything else.”
The drive to find a sibling, a family member…Jackson shivered, and before she could stop herself she started to think about how many people had been eaten by their loved ones. It was an old thought, one that refused to go away, despite all her barriers.