by Emma Shortt
Chapter Thirty-three
A knocking on the door in the early hours, two days later, awoke Luke. He sat up quickly but Jackson was out of bed in one swift move, Mandy in hand, poised and ready.
“Zombies don’t knock,” he said, his voice still muffled with sleep.
“People don’t either in the early hours unless something is wrong,” she replied. “Though for all you know, the zombies might have learned.”
She moved quickly, quietly, across the small place and eyed the door. Luke sighed to see her stance. She was in fight mode. Hell, she was always in fight mode and it had not slacked off over the last few days. If anything, it had gotten worse. He suspected it was being in close proximity to the zombie that had her strung so tight, because she constantly looked like she was a hair trigger away from sending Mandy slicing through someone, and just last night she’d woken up screaming.
“Then by all means invite the courteous zombie in,” he said.
She turned, scowled at him, but gripped the handle. She was still in a snit about their conversation in the lab. Not to mention the fact he’d witnessed her full-on nightmare, something he suspected bruised her bad-ass ego a little. So yeah, it was snit all around. He knew it, she knew it, and right now there was a certain sort of barrier between them. Oh, it wasn’t a breaking barrier. They still spent time together, eating and talking and making love. But the barrier was there, and they were both aware of it. It colored their conversations, gave a hard edge to their time in bed, and it would have to be resolved. Only Luke didn’t have any clue how.
“No need for the ax,” Nancy said when Jackson opened the door.
“Force of habit, and it’s a machete not an ax.”
Nancy shrugged. “Same difference.
Nancy looked the same as she always did. Harassed. She was wearing an outfit very like Jackson’s. Jeans, a tee, boots, and a healthy dollop of attitude. Her hair was scraped back into a braid but strands of it were falling free and as he looked at her she brushed one back impatiently. Luke got the impression the woman was personally offended by her unruly hair and he jumped out of bed with a smile.
“Something funny, Luke?” she asked and he shook his head before pulling on a tee.
“Nope. Just wondering what’s up.”
Nancy grimaced. “We have a situation.”
“Which is?”
Nancy turned from him and fixed her gaze on Jackson. “One that needs you, apparently,” she said. “Sebastian asked me to get you ASAP.”
“Right.”
There was no need for her to get dressed. Jackson slept in her clothes. Jeans, tee, and socks. All she had to do was slip into her boots. He, on the other hand, loved the fact that he could just wear a pair of boxers. It reminded him of the old days. He dragged his jeans on, slipped his gun in his waistband, and grabbed his ax. Nancy saw his action and frowned.
“We only need Jackson,” she said.
“I’m coming.”
His tone left no room for argument. The last two days had been bad enough. Jackson setting out with Sebastian and leaving him behind every goddamn morning. When she got back she told him what she’d been dong, taking great pains to let him know that everything was safe, and that it had been almost dull. She spoke of the experiments and the possibility of a cure but Luke didn’t want to believe too much in it. It seemed impossible, really.
That, combined with the worry, ate away at him. He was angry and riled up and he hated the distance between them—but didn’t know how to fix it. He did not want her working with the zombies and the weird doctor. She wouldn’t give up something she thought was important—and hell, maybe it could be! Just because he was skeptical didn’t mean anything. They were in a stalemate.
“We’ll go together,” Jackson said surprising him, and he smiled automatically.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, come on.”
They sorted themselves out and followed Nancy out the door. Jackson somehow made her way to the front and made her way down the stairs ninja style. Despite the fact it pissed him off to see it, Luke couldn’t help but admire her style. It was the dual desires all over again. The desire to see her a little bit more normal, the desire to make her happy, and then the knowledge that she was bad-ass, good at this life. But that it was dangerous, and no matter how bad-ass you were, your luck always ran out in the end…
As they stepped outside the air was noticeably cooler than it had been in their room and Luke wished he’d thought to grab a sweater. There was no time to go back though because Jackson was striding forward. Her gaze was fixed on Nancy.
“So what’s up?” she asked. “Sebastian surely doesn’t want to hit the shack at this time of night?”
“It’s madness going there at night despite our security sweeps.”
Jackson laughed softly. “Yeah, well he wouldn’t see it that way if he got one of his ideas in his head.”
“I know,” Nancy said, “and sometimes it is necessary.”
Her words sent a chill up Luke’s spine and he was glad he’d insisted on coming along, sweater or no. Something was up and whatever it was he was going to be part of it. Jackson out and about in the heat of the day was one thing. The cool air of the night was something else entirely and she’d need him. Whether she wanted to admit it or not. He flexed his ax a little and was surprised at how good the wood felt in his hand. Though not as gung-ho as his girlfriend, Luke too had missed the feel of his weapon.
They made their way across the courtyard, around the opposite cluster of houses, and past a long row of greenhouses. Luke couldn’t help but look around the perimeter and was pleased to see people up there on the towers, chatting softly, laughing now and then but, more importantly, keeping an eye on the outside. At this time of night they stood between everyone and the zombies, and though Luke didn’t want Jackson doing it, he was grateful to those who were doing it, would probably take a turn himself at some point.
“Here we go,” Nancy said.
She opened the door of a large bungalow-type building.
“Whose house is this?” Luke asked.
“It’s the medical building,” Jackson replied. “Seb lives here. Keeps his stuff here.”
“It’s always useful to have things on hand,” Nancy said. “Things are necessary sometimes.”
She gestured to the end of the hall, and they followed her into a large kitchen. Of course, it wasn’t a kitchen anymore. The cooking equipment from every house—at least in those that it had been installed in—had been moved into the main house to create a large kitchen where everyone could eat their rations. And it was clear immediately that Sebastian had turned the faux kitchen into some sort of workstation. Luke gaped a little as he looked over the equipment because it had been so long since he’d seen anything remotely like it. Several laptops were plugged into an overflowing circuit breaker, and though he had no idea what was on the screens, something was. The laptops worked! Not to mention the printer he could see plugged in and a small circular thing that looked suspiciously like a satellite dish.
We have some things working. He remembered Nancy’s words and whistled slowly. This was more than he’d thought possible, put his shitty radio set to shame.
“Does he have Bejeweled Blitz?” he wondered and Jackson smacked him in the arm.
His muffled words were enough to pull Sebastian from whatever world he was in, because he started, his hair standing on end, a puzzled look chasing across his face. Luke opened his mouth to speak but Jackson beat him to it.
“What’s going on?”
“Erm, we have a small problem,” Sebastian replied, the puzzled look still in place. “We need your help here, Jack.”
“What sort of problem?” Luke asked, stepping forward.
Sebastian shot him a grin, surprising him and beckoning him forward. “Good to see you too, Luke. We’re going to need plenty of hands. Mack’s sent some people to get Pete and a couple of his friends.”
“For what?
Sebastian�
�s grin slipped into a frown and he pointed across the room. “For that.”
…
The red-haired zombie was inside some sort of cage, like one people would have used in the old days for a large dog, so Jackson guessed that was what Nancy meant by Sebastian keeping stuff here that was necessary. There were no dogs in the camp and he had several of these same cages at the shack. The zombie was also unconscious, and Jackson knew there was no way in hell the doctor had bashed it that way. No doubt he’d shot it to shit with something.
“How did it get in?” Luke asked, before Jackson could. “I thought after last time…”
Nancy scowled and walked across the room to look at the zombie. “We found something odd today when we swept the northern end of camp.”
“What?” Jackson asked.
Nancy scowled some more. “We might even have missed it the first time around for fuck’s sake. Who knew to look for that?”
“What?” Jackson repeated.
Nancy tucked her hands in her jean pockets. “A hole.”
“A hole?” Luke asked, breaking the silence that had fallen with those words. “Where? In what? One of the gates?”
“Not the gates, no,” Nancy said. “I wish.”
“Then where?”
“In the ground.”
Nancy turned at Jackson’s hushed words, shock on her face. “How the fuck do you know that?”
Jackson frowned, her heart giving a little thump. The words had just tumbled from her lips, but the more she thought about them the more she knew she was right. Images flashed through her mind. Creepyville. Sammy’s trap. “I’ve seen it before, more than once,” she said slowly, her throat suddenly dry. “At the time it just struck me as odd, but now…”
“What?” Nancy prompted. “What?”
Jackson bent down to look at the zombie and noticed the patches of mud covering it, just like Sammy. “I wonder if maybe they’re…burrowing…”
Sebastian gasped. “That’s…well…that’s impossible. They do need oxygen you know, not to mention they would be deliberately trapping themselves.”
“Only if they went too far down, and they could be working in tandem, one burrows, the other removes the dirt. Like tunneling or something.” Jackson shrugged. “It’s just a theory. But every time I’ve seen those burrows the place where they’ve been has been some sort of trap. Almost like they’re creating dens or something.”
“Fascinating,” Sebastian said. “Adapting their behavior to hunt their food.” He paused and picked up a notebook and pen. “I’ll have to start smothering them, see how long they can last without oxygen.”
Luke shook his head at the other man. “That is completely fucked-up.”
“It’s necessary—”
“Necessary or not you need to follow that hole,” Jackson said. “Follow it to the end.”
Nancy gaped. “You expect me to ask one of our people to go down a fucking zombie burrow—Jesus, I can’t believe I’m even saying those words—and see what’s there? Are you serious?”
“You’ll have to,” Jackson insisted. “You need to see where it comes out.”
“She’s right,” Luke agreed. “You’ll need to fill both ends.”
Nancy stepped back from the cage, pulled her hands from her pockets, and ran them over her hair, smoothing the stray bits back in place. “This creates a real problem.”
“If they did it twice…”
“Then they’ll do it again,” she snapped. “We’re surrounded by mud! We grow all our food in the fucking mud! How far are they burrowing?”
“No way to know until you find the other end of that hole,” Luke said. “Let’s hope it’s not too far.”
“I would imagine it isn’t,” Sebastian said, as he scribbled something down. “A few meters at most. Which means they are somehow sneaking as close as possible to the perimeter and then burrowing in. That’s what she probably did, and now that you mention it,” excitement filled his eyes, “it would explain why she is covered in dirt.”
“And why Sammy was,” Nancy breathed, her eyes meeting Jackson, realization dawning.
“Did she say anything about a burrow?” Luke asked.
Nancy bent down so she too was able to get a good look at the zombie. “No, but she’s had some difficulties since the incident and Mack doesn’t want her being shook up again, so I can’t ask a lot. She isn’t even telling us how they communicated with her. It’s like her mind’s blanked it out.”
“I can understand why Mack wants her to have some space,” Jackson said. “Especially if the zombies dragged her through a hole in the ground. She must have been terrified.”
Her heart clenched as that thought. They’d seen Sammy a few times over the last few days and Luke in particular seemed to have taken a real liking to her—no surprise there, he’d have made a great dad if the world hadn’t ended. Jackson enjoyed spending time with her too. She was a sweet little thing, and that moment in the garage had created a bond of sorts which both intrigued and terrified her. Luke and Tye were the only people in the past months that she’d allowed to get really close and the idea of letting little Sammy have a piece of her heart worried Jackson. The girl had nearly died once. It could easily happen again. Still, she was no trouble to spend time with, though whether the girl had been so quiet before the zombies had kidnapped her was something Jackson couldn’t answer. She certainly was now. But many of the children around the camp had that air to them. Watchful, considering. Jackson couldn’t even begin to imagine how it would feel being raised in the world of the waking dead.
Silence reigned in the room for a moment as everyone followed Nancy’s example, craning their necks to get a good look at the zombie. Sebastian was the first to speak.
“Entry method aside, she’s an impressive specimen, I must say.” He turned to Jackson, pulling some of his hair as he did so. “And think about it, Jack, now that Two-h-ee is pretty much done for, we can start on her. You won’t need to go and find one. We’ll call her Two-h-four, or maybe Red. So really, it’s a stroke of luck.”
“Are you serious?” Luke asked, gaping at the other man. “We have a real situation here—zombies coming out of the fucking ground like some sort of old-school horror movie—and you’re lining up your next lab rat? Giving it a nickname?”
Sebastian grinned. “Just looking for the silver lining. Besides, I can joke if I want. I woke up to find her standing over me, looking at me funny, I might add. I barely had time to grab the syringe before she took a chunk from me.”
“You did good, Seb,” Nancy said. “Very good.”
“It was instinct more than anything,” Sebastian replied. “I know, compared to the rest of you, I’m seen as a bit of a wimp. But I haven’t survived this long without taking out a few myself!”
Jackson snorted. “You’ve killed hundreds in the lab.” She’d looked through his files during the time they spent at the shack, and though she didn’t really understand the science behind his work, the roll call of dead zombies was impressive. One after the other he had captured them, worked on them, and then, once they were dead, discarded them. In many ways, Sebastian was as deadly as she. Only his weapon of choice was a syringe rather than a machete.
He shrugged. “Not quite the same thing, Jack.”
“Ummm.”
Jackson walked over to the zombie, surprised how calm she felt, considering. Sure it was unconscious but she didn’t even lift her blade, just sort of gripped it to her. She wondered if this was due to being used to Sebastian’s lab, around Two-h-ee. Listening to it groan and gag from whatever Sebastian fed it. At times, though she didn’t dare say so to Luke, or even really think about it after the fact, Two-h-ee seemed almost normal. Once when Sebastian had pumped it full of stuff and it had tried to curl in on itself it had seemed sort of vulnerable—ridiculous though that sounded. Jackson recalled the time the doctor had gone into the other room to get more chemicals or something. Two-h-ee had spent the previous hour screaming in what she assum
ed must be pain, though she’d never seen them do that before. The moment Sebastian left the room its screams had ceased and it turned its head on the table to look at her. Jackson’s gaze had held his, because there was no fucking way she was backing down from one of the bastards, and she’d waited for the usual hatred to rise, but it hadn’t. Her old moral dilemma had instead.
Its eyes had been filled with something that, for once, wasn’t hunger, and she remembered how it had once been a person, how it wasn’t even really dead. It groaned and shifted and its eyes begged for something. Part of her had wondered if that something might be death at last and she’d been tempted to simply finish it off, but before she could make a decision Sebastian had returned and Two-h-ee had resumed its screams.
Those screams had featured heavily in her nightmare last night. The one Luke had woken her from. Nightmares! Her brain had protected her from them for so long she couldn’t quite work out was happening.
Nothing good, Jack. No shit, Sherlock.
Shaking the thoughts off, Jackson bent down to get a good look into the cage and frowned. The smell was bad, but she’d encountered worse, and though the square grids of metal distorted the view slightly, Jackson could see the zombie fine. It was sprawled out on its side, one arm resting by its face, and maybe it was because it was out for the count, but Jackson realized that its face was more… normal?…than any zombie she’d seen before “You’re right, Seb,” she said slowly. “There is something about her.”
“It’s because she’s not groaning or snarling,” Luke said as he made his way over. “She looks almost human.”
“She?” Nancy asked from the other side of the cage.
Jackson pointed to the zombie’s top, which seemed to be the remains of a red sweater—or maybe that was just dried blood. Its breasts were obvious, despite the mud, as was the curvature of the hips, not to mention the wild red hair. It reached to at least the waist and was a marvelous hue, despite the dirt, knots, and grime. “She was a woman.”
Nancy stood up, brushing her knees down and glared. “She’s not anymore. It’s just a zombie now.”