by Emma Shortt
A quick fantasy flash shot through her mind. She imagined them finding Tye, the three of them striking out together, and the idea almost made her smile. It wasn’t a lot to ask for was it? To have the man that was like a brother, and the other that was already something else entirely, with her in this ruined world.
“Careful,” Luke whispered, pointing to a crack in the road. “You’ll disappear down there if you’re not careful.”
“I got it,” she said, the fantasy disappearing as quickly as it had come.
He smiled at her as they walked past an old street stall, and abruptly she remembered the light she’d seen in his eyes when she’d confessed her single state. Luke was interested, smaller pool or not, and the possibilities that created gave Jackson a weird feeling she hadn’t experienced in a while, and had not expected to feel again.
Anticipation. How odd.
“I wish it wasn’t getting dark,” he whispered, pointing his gun around the corner.
“Does it really make a difference?”
He shrugged. “It’s probably a survival thing. I always like to be back in the bunker before all the light goes. It makes no difference to them I know, but I feel safer facing off against them in the daytime.”
“Because you can see them?”
“Yeah.”
They passed a McDonald’s and Jackson’s mouth watered despite all the food she’d eaten already. Like whispering when the zombies were close by it was an ingrained reaction, because God knew she’d chomped down enough Happy Meals in her time.
“We’ll be safe in the bunker,” Luke added, interrupting her fast food thoughts. “And then we can start figuring out what to do from there.”
“What to do?”
“How we’ll get to the interstate.”
His words startled her, namely the “we,” and she almost stumbled into a pothole. “You’re going to come with me?”
“Sure I will. If Tye’s not there, you won’t be able to find the way back to the bunker…”
“You don’t think he will be, do you?” Jackson asked, picking up the tone of his voice and remembering his words from the pool room.
“You want honesty?”
“Always.”
“Then no. I don’t. When I arrived there,” he shrugged a shoulder behind them, “a pack of zombies were in and busy doing something. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what. I’ll come with you to make sure, but it might be that you have to accept they got him, and then we’ll have to start making other plans.”
“Other plans?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “You said something about Texas. Does that still hold without Tye?”
They rounded a corner and Jackson looked left and right before speaking—Luke’s thoughts, his question, prodding her. Without Tye. It was an odd prospect. After being alone for so very long, she’d gotten used to having him around. Maybe that was stupid. Maybe she should have expected this. After all everyone died, and in this new world, it happened a whole lot faster.
“I started this journey a while ago,” she said slowly. “Two years or so ago. Mainly, in truth, because I didn’t know what else to do. I had no clear plan on where to go. I just started walking, but meeting Tye changed that completely.”
“Changed it how?” Luke asked.
“He’d been traveling as well, almost as long as me, but he had a clear goal in mind, and the moment I heard it, it became my goal too. How could it not?”
“What was—”
Jackson held up a hand to halt Luke’s words, her heart suddenly hammering in her chest. She gestured to the side of the road and together they jogged over to the entrance of a large building. It looked like it used to be a bank, the first clue being piles of money on the floor inside. Now it was just paper.
Luke leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “What did you hear?”
Jackson shivered, not from whatever was moving, but from the feel of Luke’s warm breath feathering across her skin. He could easily become a major distraction. Priorities, she told herself. Remember what’s important. “I’m not sure. Wait.”
They stood perfectly still, stance ready for whatever Jackson had heard and then watched as a ratty dog skittered past them. The poor beast looked like it was on the verge of collapse and Jackson’s heart went out to it. Animals seemed to be immune to the virus, but were in trouble regardless. They got eaten.
“Little guy won’t last much longer,” Luke whispered.
“Literally.” She heard the zombie before she saw it and the momentary relief that had sparked at the sight of the dog died a swift death. Jackson flattened herself against the doorway, pushing Luke back as she did so. He made to protest but she held up Mandy and hissed a warning.
The zombie was faster than the dog by a fair margin and it was less than a heartbeat before it pounced. The dog’s bark was followed by a whine that screamed pain as the zombie ripped its front leg off, stuffing the limb in its mouth. Bright red blood pooled on the floor as the dog tried to crawl away. It had no chance.
Though she knew it was the height of stupidity, because the damn canine was pretty much a goner, Jackson moved forward, the image of one of those bastards doing the same thing to Tye flashing through her mind. Luke pulled on her arm but she shrugged free and stepped onto the road. The zombie paused, howled, and turned.
Despite herself Jackson’s stomach lurched. It was a woman and tufts of gray fur were stuck to its chin. Its mouth was working overtime trying to chew the dog limb up and as it straightened it spat out what looked like bones.
Bile welled in the back of Jackson’s throat, swiftly followed by anger. She’d always liked dogs, and the little guy had survived for so long. She shot it a quick glance and her heart squeezed. It was trying to crawl away, fangs not even bared.
“Take care of the dog,” she said.
“How about let’s get the fuck out of here?” Luke replied. “They travel in packs, remember?”
The zombie pounced. Jackson did not move. It was all about the timing. One, two, three…she stepped back. It landed right in front of her and met Mandy’s blade. Straight through the neck.
She moved to the left, avoided the spray of blood and pus, and pushed Luke in the same direction.
“How sharp is that blade?” he breathed. “I mean, Christ.”
“Not always sharp enough.” The zombies head was still attached, by maybe a half inch of sinew and skin. “Take care of it, Luke. I need to help the dog out.”
Jackson jogged forward, ignoring the thud behind her. Her heart was pounding and she had to swallow several times to push down what felt like a little ball of vomit. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought. Because there were probably others close by, and could arrive at any moment. She’d put them in danger, for what? The dog looked up at her and whined. For a quick death, her mind answered. For saving someone, something, the excruciating pain of being eaten.
Jackson thought of Tye as she brought Mandy down on the dog’s neck and her heart squeezed for them both. Dog and man.
For the headless zombie she felt nothing.
Chapter Twelve
“This goal of Tye’s,” Luke whispered a few minutes later, more to break the tension than anything else, because Jackson had been completely silent from the moment she’d killed the dog. “What is it?”
She didn’t answer at first, and Luke wondered if she was going to, but after a moment she spoke, and there was an odd note to her voice. Because of Tye or because of the dog? He had no way to know.
“I didn’t believe it at first,” she said, her eyes everywhere. Checking and checking, but it seemed the zombie had been a straggler—which was weird but not unheard of. Luke had come across a few in his time. They didn’t stay alone for long. “When he told me, I mean,” she added. “I didn’t believe him. I thought maybe he’d been alone for too long and had gone a bit…off…plus he was so reckless. It was like a game to him, the zombies. He was fearless.”
Luke wondered if Jackson realize
d she was using the past tense. Probably not.
“I asked him where he was heading,” she continued, “and he told me he was going south.”
“To Texas?”
“Exactly. It’s like forever away. It’ll take months, maybe even years to walk it, and I asked him what the hell could be so important.” She shook her head. “What could possibly make that walk worthwhile? I thought that maybe it had something to do with the heat. You remember in the early months people said that it affected them, that it made them slow? And it seemed to me that they are slower when it’s summertime.”
“Only summer doesn’t last long enough,” Luke pointed out.
“That’s true.”
Silence fell as they passed through a car filled street. Luke noticed that Jackson’s knuckles were white against the hilt of her blade. That, even though she was so small, she slid over the hoods of cars without waiting for him to help her. A strange feeling began to gnaw in Luke’s gut, more important than the information about Tye’s goal, and once free of the car jam he took a deep breath before asking, “You’re wondering why I didn’t save the dog?”
Jackson turned to him with a start. “No.”
“Because I’m kind of feeling a little like Robin here.”
“Robin?”
“Yeah with you being Batman and all.”
She laughed, though it was tinged with something he couldn’t quite identify, and shook her head. “I’ve never been called Batman before.”
“Superwoman, maybe?”
“How about just Jackson?”
“Look I didn’t save the damn dog because what happened would have happened anyway,” he said.
“The zombie eating it?”
He shook his head. “No, it dying. They always die, Jackson. Always. Zombies always get ’em in the end, and it’s not like we could have taken it to the bunker even if they didn’t.”
“I know. Believe me, I know.”
“So I was thinking more about us than it, you know. Thinking to get us safe.” Why did he feel like he had to explain himself to her? Luke frowned as they jogged across the street. He didn’t know, only that he wanted her to realize that he wasn’t a fucking wimp. That he could take care of both of them, given the chance. Yeah, you’re off to a great start there, his mind said. He ignored it.
“I know you were,” Jackson whispered. “I get that.”
He frowned some more. “But you just jumped in without thinking. Like in the pool room.”
“I always jump in without thinking. Impulsive you know? Gets me every time.”
They paused at an intersection and Luke’s eyes swept the area. He pulled in close to Jackson as they crossed the open expanse of road and was pleased to see that she did not move away.
“And going down south?” he asked when they were on the other side of the road. “Following Tye’s plan? Is that also impulsiveness?”
“No,” she said. “It’s all that’s left. A world without zombies, that’s my plan. Call me squeamish but I’d rather not see one covered in dog fur again if I can help it.”
“There is no such thing as a world without zombies.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Luke,” she whispered. “So wrong.”
Luke almost stopped in the middle of the street, shock punching him straight in the gut. “What the hell are you saying?”
“That there is a camp down there, a group of survivors,” Jackson said. “It’s not many, a few hundred maybe, but it’s some.”
“A camp of people?” he breathed. “You’re not serious?”
“I am.”
“But…” Luke paused and shifted. “Those rumors were just wishful thinking in the earlier days. There aren’t any big groups left. Not even the ones the army tried to set up. We’d have heard about them otherwise. I’d have heard about them. I have a radio in my bunker,” he added. “I check it every single night. I’ve heard nothing on it for months.”
Jackson sped up, probably in an effort to encourage him to do so. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “That nothing was left. But Tye came across another group in Indiana—they’d fortified a huge hospital. They weren’t as big, but they knew about this other group, gave him directions.”
“But why didn’t Tye just stay with them?” Luke asked, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. “If he was looking for a group, why not stay with the one he found?”
She shrugged and stepped over a broken laptop. “Tye used to be a cop. He said that he didn’t approve of the way that group was…ordering themselves. That they were…off. He didn’t want to stay there.”
“And they told him about this group instead. How did they know about one another?” Luke shot the questions out quickly, aware that he sounded skeptical but was that any wonder? The prospect of a group, groups, of people still living their lives with some kind of normality was staggering.
“They were in contact. Don’t ask me how,” she added. “Because I don’t know, and neither did Tye. But they are there, we just need to go west on the highway and pick up I-35 and go south all the way to Laredo, Texas. Apparently it ends there, just by the border crossing.”
“This supposed camp is next to the border?”
“I don’t know about that. Even Tye didn’t know where it was exactly. The other group said there are signs directing any survivors.”
“And you really believe this?” Luke asked. “You’re going to travel thousands of miles based on information from a group you’ve never met?”
“Based on information from Tye,” she said. “My friend. If he believed it, that’s good enough for me.”
“But—”
“Otherwise what’s the point?” she demanded. “What do we do? Keep on surviving and hiding? What about in ten years or twenty or, hell, forty, assuming we live that long? When we’re too old to go looking for food or too old to run away? When it’s our limb being shoved down a zombie’s mouth as we try to crawl away? That’s no life. I’m happy to risk mine on the assumption that there’s something else out there. The faint possibility of getting something back. And think about it, maybe this group will know things we don’t. Why the zombies are changing, maybe even a way to deal with it all. Hell, they might even have found a way to kill them a lot quicker than we can.”
“That really is wishful thinking, Jackson,” he said. “Dangerous thinking.”
“More dangerous than the way we’re living our life now?”
“No…but what if you travel all that way—assuming you even make it—and there’s no camp there. What then?”
She shrugged one tiny shoulder. “Then I’ll know, won’t I? And I’ll be down south. If the thing about the heat is true then maybe there’ll be fewer dead people to fight, at least.”
Luke shot her a look, trying to read her, to see if she really believed in the impossibility of what she was saying. It seemed to be her driving force and Luke knew a thing or two about that. In a world where nothing made sense anymore and all hope was sucked away, a person had to find something to hold onto. Something, no matter how little, to provide a reason for waking every day. His own motivation was the desire to kill as many fuckers as he could. He relished taking out packs and had even hoped that one day he could clear the area, I Am Legend style. It was probably a futile hope. After all, every time he killed a pack, another moved in, but it gave him some comfort, and more importantly stopped him from going crazy. Because what else was there for him? Unlike Tye, he’d never heard of the possibility of another group, and he had radio equipment in the bunker! If there were any left, surely they’d have broadcast something on one of the frequencies he constantly checked? But they hadn’t and striking it out on a vague hope would be beyond stupid. Maybe when his resources ran out…he’d thought maybe then, but for now he was safe, warm, comfortable. Why risk all that?
“You could come with us, you know,” she said softly. “I’d really welcome the company.”
His heart thumped. “Serious?”
�
�Yeah. Though you might want to really think about it. I’ve had two companions and they’re both missing…or dead, so I’m not exactly a lucky charm.”
“Everyone I knew is dead,” he reassured. “So I’m thinking it’s not just you.”
“Perhaps.”
Go south with Jackson? Go looking for a camp that probably doesn’t exist? The idea whirred around his brain and he was stunned to find he didn’t reject it immediately. It was odd. He’d known her for a few hours, but that didn’t seem to count for shit right now. She was another person, a human! And those were few and far between. More than that though, Jackson seemed like a genuine kinda girl, the sort he’d have made an effort to get to know even before the end of the world.
They skirted around the park. Luke loved this spot. He could see all around him at this time of year, and there was no chance of anything sneaking up on him here. It was why he’d run down it in the first place when being chased, and what had led him to his bunker.
Ah, the bunker. Could he really give it up? It had kept him safe for months, offered him every single thing he needed to survive. It was his haven and he knew without a doubt he’d have been dead long ago without it. On the surface, the idea of leaving that behind to trek a treacherous road south, with only the faint possibility of finding a zombie-free land full of healthy survivors, seemed like nonsense. But there was Jackson and already he hated the thought of her riding out of his life.
What about in ten years or twenty or, hell, forty, assuming we live that long?
She had a fucking point. He couldn’t deny that and he’d often wondered himself what’d happen, assuming he even lived.
“Will you think about it, Luke,” she asked as they approached the mansion.
He already was but as her small hand, Glock gripped tightly, brushed his arm and he looked down into her perfect green eyes he sort of forgot that. A weird sensation shifted through his chest and he swallowed drily.
“Yeah. I will.”
One last look around, Jackson’s words of earlier ringing in his ears, and they squeezed through the hedge. It only took a minute or two to jog the inclined perimeter and make their way to the shed.