The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  With her hand over her cheek and her pride wounded past the point of reason, Zaley burst, “What’s our community? You mean the Shepherds? The ones tearing through cities everywhere shooting innocent people, even attacking places like Inigo where Sombra Cs are secluding themselves? Is that the community you’re talking about, the one destroying the country? I don’t want any part of that community, Dad!”

  “Then you don’t want your family. So you get out.”

  Stunned, Zaley said, “What?”

  A cold smile spread over his lips. “Then you get out of this house! And don’t you take a damn thing, not a thing that we bought for you. Did we buy your phone? Hand it over. Did we buy those clothes you’re wearing? Strip them off and walk out that door, naked as the day you were born. Take off that sling, too. We paid for that. Throw yourself on the mercy of strangers and see how the world treats you.”

  “You can’t throw me out naked!” Zaley cried. He moved closer, frightening her with his size and intensity, and he looked expectantly at her shirt like he expected her to take it off right there. Mom didn’t say a word. “Dad, this is crazy!”

  “Crazy? You want to talk about crazy? Crazy is hanging out with zombies, thinking they’re your friends when they’re walking time bombs. Still going to call them friends when their Zyllevir stops working and they rip your face off? Is that what you’re going to think when you’re bleeding to death on the floor?” His voice rose into a falsetto, in mocking imitation of her voice. “But- but they were my friends! I trusted them! Golly gracious me, why ever did they do that?”

  She could not walk out that door naked. He gave a light shove to her left shoulder. “So are you a Shepherd? Or some zombie lover? Which is it, Zaley? Can’t be that hard to figure out.”

  “Dad . . .” she said in humiliation.

  “Zombie lover? Then you know what you have to do.” He shoved her shoulder a second time, and harder. Mom went into the kitchen.

  “Shepherd,” Zaley whispered.

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”

  “Shepherd,” Zaley repeated in a voice only a little stronger.

  “Show me the signal,” Dad ordered. She couldn’t, not with her arm in the sling, and gave it awkwardly with her left hand. “Thursday night you’re going to the youth group in Penger. Learn a little pride for your community. Take a pace. They’ll have something you can do. And the next time I hear about you getting in a car with some zombie, calling one a friend, you’re out of this house. You get in trouble out there, I won’t claim you. So you think about that.”

  On the way to her room, Zaley snagged the spare chair from the dining room. It was hard to wedge it under the knob one-handed, creating lots of thumps, but eventually it went under so no one could open the door. Sinking to a star rug, she leaned her head against the bed. Tears dropped onto her jeans, leaving warm impressions that soon turned cold. This she could not tell Corbin, not anyone, not ever. She wasn’t sure she even had the language to describe it.

  Zaley wanted to die, and wished she had at the party. A limit was coming up fast on her again. Picking up her phone, she wrote to Corbin. Tell me about my apartment. The one you think I’m renting.

  Is it bad there?

  Please just tell me.

  It’s small, since you don’t have too much money yet. The walls are white, the carpet some nubby brown, but you’ll put a flowerbox in the window. My neighbor across the street has those. You’ll fill it with beautiful flowers so you don’t see the white walls and nubby carpet. Dabey’s sells potted plants cheap in their garden department, Bulls-Eye even cheaper. I used to buy them for my mom’s birthday.

  She didn’t care about the white walls and ugly carpet. Those would be beautiful to her, since they were her own. Every piece of clothing in her closet fit. There wasn’t a single toy anywhere, not even a stuffed animal, and anyone stepping in would know an adult dwelled in this place. Only music played on the television. And unicorns frolicked beneath the flowerbox, Zaley thought sarcastically. I can’t see this, Corbin. It’s not real.

  It is. I can see it so well.

  Do I have a cat?

  Yes! You’ll name it Crouton. That’s what I want to name another dog if I get one. Bleu Cheese and Crouton. Don’t buy your cat food from Pet-Pet, they jack up the price fifteen percent over Mr. Foods. What’s going on?

  The doorknob turned and caught. Mom called and Zaley screamed to have this dream interrupted. “Leave me the fuck alone!”

  When Mom went away, Zaley wrote back. Still at Brennan’s? How’s your hand?

  Yeah, I’m still here, but leaving soon. My hand is getting better. Zaley, whatever it is, think about your apartment. It’s out there waiting for you. So is your cat, and a million good things.

  Did she go to Welcome Mat on Friday? Dad hadn’t said anything about dropping out of the club. He didn’t have trouble with her sitting in class with stamped students, if he even thought about it. So Zaley still had that, even if her afternoons had to stop. That made her howl internally, to keep getting drawn back into this dark world when she wanted to break free into the sunlight. Her phone vibrated to a picture of a Siamese cat at a pet rescue. This is what I think Crouton should look like, sort of sandy. Elania says Siamese are chatty cats, so be prepared. She had one.

  Poor thing, Zaley wrote about the cat abandoned in a foreclosure. She was sorry that she couldn’t bring him home right now. Her cheek still throbbing from the slap, she got off the floor and retrieved her hand mirror. The skin was stained an angry pink, and it hurt all the way through to her teeth. Ice would soothe the ache and reduce the swelling, but she wasn’t leaving her room. Her cell vibrated but it was Mom texting about having something special for dessert. Zaley turned off her phone, flicked on her tealight, and buried herself under the blanket of her bed.

  Anywhere. What if Zaley ran away? But she had little money and one working arm. Not to mention nowhere to go. If the police caught her, they’d bring her straight back here. Living on the street put her in danger of being assaulted. Everything outside her window seemed even more unfriendly than everything inside.

  Tomorrow night, she’d be at a youth group for Shepherds. Liberating her laptop from her backpack, she drew it into the nest she’d made under the blanket. The group in Penger had a rudimentary website, showing a picture of three smiling teens holding shepherd’s crooks. Beneath them, it read PRIDE HONOR VIGILANCE. From there she connected to other Shepherd sites, and read bewildering accounts of events during paces. Firebugs got me bumped from a hot eighth down to cold statue and that’s the night of all nights I nearly beaned a wos in an alley!

  Half an hour of roving obscure forums let her piece that one sentence together. Firebugs meant this Shepherd had blisters on his feet, so he couldn’t perform his shift of an eighth pace. That was a unit of measurement they used, an eighth pace being small. Fourth paces and half paces were bigger, and collectively all were just referred to as paces. Hot and cold wasn’t temperature but history of zombie action in the vicinity, and being a statue was a position for an infirm Shepherd who needed to stay in one place. Beaned was shot. The definition of wos took her longer, the word cropping up frequently in accounts and unveiled at last as a waste of space. That had a hundred definitions to a Shepherd, ranging from homeless schizophrenics to cops, even a Shepherd’s own family members who disapproved. In another account, she caught a reference to Patron Saint. Dad had said that once. A Saint was someone who donated money for basic supplies like food and coffee to the Shepherd squad, and a Patron Saint was someone who funded the operation greatly. The Patron Saint was a position of high honor.

  Fucking bleeders were hiding zombies in their barn! Beaned them all and searched the house. The ballgame runs from Dallas to Gauld, but list of catches are in code we can’t break. Braces being set tonight on the likely throws. Bring ‘em home instead. Zaley winced the more that account came together. Bleeders were uninfected people who sympathized with those suffering from Sombra C. I
n this case, they offered their barn as a hiding place for those trying to reach Mirror Lake. That made their home a catch, and the Shepherds were setting up roadblocks on the throws, the most commonly used roads that Sombra Cs utilized to get closer to safety. Chillingly, home was an illegal confinement point. That poster updated a week later, complaining that a bunch of doughnut eating, flashing-badge woses broke up two braces and arrested the Shepherds.

  Now that she had this knowledge, she didn’t want to know any of it. She definitely didn’t want to attend the meeting tomorrow night. Yet there was no doubt in her mind that her father would carry through with his threat if she caused trouble, so she was going. Oh God, she’d have to fake being a Shepherd until she moved out of this fucking house or killed herself. Getting out of bed, she did her exercises twice through and hated that the focus was dumb range of motion rather than weights.

  In the morning, the angry pink stain on her cheek had darkened to a bruise. Dad said nothing from the recliner. She ate breakfast quietly and only shook her head when Mom suggested that Zaley stay home since she was looking under the weather. Then Mom vanished down the hallway and returned with a container of foundation. She swiped it over Zaley’s cheeks and chirped about making an appointment for the two of them to get haircuts. So that was how it was going to be, everyone pretending that the slap hadn’t happened, that they weren’t the most fucked up family in Cloudy Valley. On the walk to school, she noticed every house with flowerboxes.

  Corbin was leaning on the wall outside her first period. The door was opening and shutting beside him as students filed in, most avoiding his eyes when he said hello. Spotting Zaley, he said with hurt, “I had to make sure. You weren’t answering.”

  She didn’t know what to say. Those people in the forums would snag him in a brace, bean him or take him home. That he was handsome and sweet and loved didn’t factor. Pushing up onto her tiptoes, she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, pressed her lips to his cheek in a soft kiss, and went inside as the minute bell rang.

  “You’re fucking sick,” a boy hissed, but what she felt was the jolt that had passed between her and Corbin. It was still there. She wanted to be in his bed, enveloped in his arms again. That had been the safest place in the world.

  Her classes drifted by. At lunch she sat by herself in the cafeteria, the others banished to the office when Welcome Mat was not in session. Students yelled and laughed around her, Zaley surrounded by a thousand people yet utterly alone. She thought of her personal goals for her arm and tacked on filling a room in her apartment with glass objects for the purpose of smashing each and every one with a baseball bat when the room was full. Her arm had to be strong enough for the bat.

  Add three more to my bean counter!

  Work up here, friend, we bag ‘em and take ‘em home for pay. Be a bagger, not a spiller. Fifty a head for spatters, seventy-five for swampies, cool hundred for cesspools.

  The last bell rang with her hardly aware of what she’d heard or done in class. Visiting her locker, she traded out books. There was no way to do this quickly with one hand, so it took the time that it took. The number three bus was filling down at the loop by the time she made the parking lot, one long gone and two pulling out into the road.

  Her friends were on the sidewalk, Elania laughing as Austin and Micah danced clumsily to ballroom music playing from a laptop. Zaley was unexpectedly jealous at the time the others had at lunch, telling jokes that didn’t include her, stories she wouldn’t hear. A car honked three times. She looked out and saw her mother waiting to take her to PT.

  “May I?” Austin asked Zaley, bowing and offering his hand. Spatter. He was a spatter, a Sombra C with a stamp under ten percent.

  “He means may I step on your feet?” Micah chortled. Another spatter, and a Shepherd who bagged her, caught her alive and brought her to an illegal confinement point, would be paid fifty bucks. Micah would fight, dear God would she fight, and that might get her blood spilled out of necessity and her body tossed in a gutter. Maybe set on fire.

  “Shut up, Micah, you stepped on mine,” Austin said. Mom honked three times again, the anger in it getting everyone’s attention.

  “I thought I was taking you,” Micah said.

  “I’m sorry,” Zaley said, backing away from them. “My parents . . . I’m- I’m not allowed to ride in the V-6 with you. I’m sorry.”

  Micah’s eyes cooled. “Whatever, Zaley.”

  “Please believe me, I’m so sorry-”

  “Whatever, Zaley,” Micah said, and turned her back. “Come on, everyone, let’s go.”

  There was foundation on the passenger seat. Zaley reapplied it on the drive to the PT Center. She ignored Mom’s attempts to chat. Mom sighed unhappily and said she missed the old Zaley who used to tell her everything. Capping the foundation in one hand, Zaley dropped it in the center console and thought fuck you.

  A limit or a flowerbox.

  She had no idea which one it was going to be.

  Corbin

  As he arrived at school, he received a text from Brennan asking if Corbin had ever heard of the video game Deadlock Five. Had he! He’d been the one to mention it to Brennan last year in the first place! Contracting Sombra C had wiped it from his mind.

  Reawakened excitement filled him. Running around with guns to shoot at terrorists around the world in soldier games had never interested Corbin, who preferred running around with guns to shoot at aliens on strange planets in the fantastical. That was one of the reasons he never had anything to talk about with the guys in Sally’s crowd, who derided the latter in favor of the former. But the Horizon games were fun, lots of fun, and Deadlock Five was in a similar vein.

  He had money from their family celebration at his uncle’s home of the New Year days ago, hong bao from his uncle, parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother. They weren’t such great amounts as in other years, with the economy the way it was, but those red envelopes carried more than enough for a game! His bratty fifteen-year-old cousin Kalhoun had been bitter about the reduction in funds, sulking in a chair until his mother slipped him another twenty to placate. Corbin was sourer about the sly glances to his stamp, and his ancient great-grandmother squinting through her gigantic glasses and crying, “Look at the size of that pimple on his neck!” Then she asked if he was getting straight A’s. Furious about the pimple remark, he blurted the truth of his grades. Of course he wasn’t, and Gramma Lulu chatted with herself about the bad karma on his side of the family.

  Now he forgot the sour of that family gathering and sent a message back to Brennan that Deadlock Five was fantastic and they were going to Game Tix downtown after school to buy it. He didn’t even have to stop at home for money, since he had the hong bao in his backpack. That message was forwarded to Janie and Austin as well. Both wrote back with enthusiasm. This afternoon’s gathering was at Corbin’s house, the slow cooker already loaded with stew and his mother asking that he pick up something for dessert since she was on the waning side of a cold and still not up to errands. Her cold had freaked him out, fearing that he’d infected her somehow, but it was just a regular old run-of-the-mill cold and nothing more serious.

  As Corbin settled into first period, happy to combine a visit to Mr. Foods with one to Game Tix, Brennan wrote back that he would mow the lawn and wash his mother’s car to earn money and cover his share of the purchase. Corbin liked Brennan, but he took things way too seriously. Since the bell had yet to ring and Mrs. Ervin was not in there, Corbin spoke into his phone for a text. “I don’t want money. Let’s just get it and play!”

  Brennan called. His voice was out of breath, since he was walking fast to make his class on time. “I must give you something.”

  “Brennan, do you have a few bucks in your wallet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then buy a liter of soda and some chips for us after school. Game Tix is right by Mr. Foods. Fair and square.”

  “Okay,” Brennan agreed. The two hung up.

  They w
eren’t even doing homework first when they got to his place. That disc was going in the player. Quinn and Elania would do their assignments, diligent as always, and Micah always traveled back and forth between her work and the television. None of those three liked games that much, but the others did and Janie had played every game Corbin ever heard of. Her older brother worked at 19th Floor as a character artist, currently designing a game called Hallucination. He was coming home for a visit late this evening with a demo for Janie to try out.

  Horizon II had gone by fast in their afternoons, everyone yelling out the game’s more mumbled dialogue for Brennan to hear and yelling again when anything was written on the screen so Corbin didn’t have to read it. Austin and Janie trash-talked each other’s performance good-naturedly and Corbin had made enough progress with his left hand to use the controller for a little while. His thumb had no trouble in maneuvers but his fingers weren’t strong enough to maintain a hold on the controller for very long.

  That made him think of Zaley as class got underway, how their injuries were in different places but had similar results on opposite hands. She’d come into Welcome Mat days ago and abruptly broke into an unscheduled piece. That was unusual for her, and everyone sat there in surprise. It creeped Corbin out to speak some Shepherd lingo now, and it was weird to think of Zaley placed on a street corner in Penger for a trial run as a statue. She was five-two and barely a hundred pounds, not to mention one-armed. It seemed dangerous for an injured girl to stand alone outside at night like that, with only a walkie-talkie for protection. Corbin wasn’t half as worried about a zombie appearing than he was a plain old thug spotting an easy mark.