“We can’t be together with my virus. But we were going to figure out something,” Corbin said. Austin didn’t know how they had gone from fighting in the parking lot to sharing the basement to being friends to dating again.
The Shepherds would have seen her as a collaborator, deserving of a bullet for just being a decent human being. Austin wanted to tear apart that jackass to pull the trigger on Zaley. Rip the shithead to shreds with his teeth. The last thing that fool heard would be Austin screaming that Zaley had been his friend. His friend, his mom, his protector, and he was the same to her. Since the Shepherd hadn’t respected that, he was going to die. The final bite belonged to Corbin. That was right to do. Zaley had been his girlfriend.
Nudging Micah’s shoulder, Austin whispered, “Micah?”
Silence. The van turned right and they fought to not be tumbled along with it. The floor was wet, and so was the left side of his face. Tucking his head close to Micah’s ear, he whispered, “Jubilee.” That had to piss her off enough to wake up, the pretty name she rejected, the name that fit her in ways she didn’t see.
“Corbin, I need help,” Elania said. She was edging over to the other side of the enclosure. “They’re probably taking us to a confinement point, and I doubt they’ll let me keep this backpack. Corbin! Stop crying.” Her own voice was thick with tears. “The Zyllevir is in the pouch of my backpack. We have to get it out and hide it in our clothes.”
“So we can live longer in a confinement point? Do you know what those places are like?” Corbin asked bitterly, his voice breaking twice. “That bitch of a woman told the Shepherds we were there. She just stood in the kitchen sort of smiling while they cuffed me.”
“Help me,” Elania insisted. They wriggled around to find a way that two people could unzip the pouch with their hands cuffed behind their backs. Micah groaned, the sound filling Austin with relief. He kissed her forehead. Outside, cars were honking.
“Hi, Micah,” Austin said.
“I shot that bitch,” Micah whispered. “I shot her in the fucking face.”
“Tarley?”
“I shot her,” Micah repeated. “Twice. Aussie, I killed her.”
“Did you see what happened to Zaley?” The others stopped moving to listen.
“She . . . she fell. I don’t know. I don’t think I hit her, but she fell. Then . . . I don’t remember.” She dragged a hand to her face and pushed her hair away. Her cheek was swelling and pushing her right eye shut. Corbin and Elania resumed their attempts to get the bottle. Micah whispered, “Did I shoot Zaley? I didn’t mean to. Aussie, my head hurts.”
So did his. “It’s okay.”
“It is not okay!” Corbin spat. Elania was kneeling against the glass wall and Corbin had opened the zipper of the pouch with his teeth. “We’re getting carted off to die!”
“I don’t know where I am, Aussie,” Micah said.
He wanted to tell her that they were going to school, just for it to be true for a split second. A regular day with her putting on the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth act for teachers; a regular day with Austin pretending to be straight for the student body. They got through it because they knew that they weren’t the only ones lying. At least one other person knew the truth of the fairy and the ogre. That was what they had called themselves back then. He’d forgotten that. The blow to his head had jostled it loose.
The truth of where they were was too awful to speak. He lowered his lips to her head a second time. “You’re with me.”
Elania said, “Her hands aren’t bound. Austin, get her up.”
“She’s too fucked up,” Austin said.
“Get her up! Micah! Get up right now, we need you!” Her voice was an angry crack through the van. Micah pushed up weakly and Elania barked, “Come here. Take out the Zyllevir.”
“I can’t see anything,” Micah breathed.
“I don’t care. Feel in the pouch for the bottle.”
“God, Elania!” Austin said. Elania inched along the glass to bring herself closer to Micah, who flailed out for the backpack and almost lost her balance when the van turned. Austin sat flat on his ass and braced Micah between his legs to let her rustle around the pouch.
When she found the rattling bottle, she sank into him with it slack in her hand. Seeing her so out of it was frightening. Her brain could be hemorrhaging if the blow had been hard enough. She could still die.
“Where should we put it?” Austin asked, his anger at Elania dissipating. She wasn’t being mean to Micah for the sake of being mean. They needed these pills.
“Did I shoot Zaley?” Micah whispered. “I shot her in the face. Tarley. I heard her laughing about us. So I shot her.”
“Is anyone wearing a tucked in shirt?” Elania asked. No one was.
“My jeans,” Austin said. They were slightly too big on him. Pulling back his legs, he got to his knees. “Micah, put the bottle in my underwear.”
“Okay.” Micah turned around and unzipped his jeans clumsily. Pulling his underwear away from his skin, she tucked the bottle directly under the waistband.
Even though Zyllevir bottles were slim and the pants were roomy, it would be seen there. The jeans were puddled at his knees. He had her take the bottle out and fit it down the back way behind his nuts. That was uncomfortable, but less noticeable. She fixed his underwear and pulled his jeans back up. No jokes about getting in his pants or slaps on his ass, she didn’t even look like she was paying much attention past following directions.
Sitting straight down was going to hurt. He sat on his bent legs and kept them spread apart a little. It was even less detectable if they took the pills out of the bottle and stuck them in their ears or up their noses, yet getting them to stay there and come out when it was safe was an impossible task.
Micah ran her hands over the back of her jeans and said, “Where’s my gun?”
“They must have taken it away from you,” Elania said.
The light from the bulb illuminated the blood dampening the side of Micah’s head. One of those Shepherds had really walloped her, like they had with Austin. Blood was on his jeans, but some belonged to Bleu Cheese. With a start, he realized that Corbin would never update The Daily Cheese again. The star of the show was gone. “I liked your blog,” Austin blurted. “I looked at it pretty much every day.”
Corbin nodded miserably. “She’s the best dog.” He had used the wrong verb tense, present instead of past, and tears slipped down Austin’s cheeks. Rubbing his face on his shoulder, Corbin said, “All I thought about in the tree on the Klaman Trail was how much I didn’t want to be holding her. I was so tired of her. I wished that she hadn’t come with us.”
“Corbin, that’s not fair,” Elania said. “You protected her. She didn’t know your thoughts. Those didn’t hurt her feelings.”
“I would hold her now,” Corbin whispered. His breath hitching in his chest, he said, “Micah, do you really think that you hit Zaley?”
“I don’t know?” Micah said in a question. “I shot a Shepherd through the door of the bathroom, the one trying to break in. I ran out into the hallway as Zaley appeared. She was screaming. Tarley was there. She just stared at me stupidly and I shot her in the face. I pulled the trigger a second time and they both fell. I wasn’t aiming for Zaley. Did I shoot her? I’m sorry.”
“I heard four gunshots,” Elania said. “Or five.”
“Four were mine,” Micah said. Her right hand clenched, remembering the pulls of the trigger. “Twice through the door to the Shepherd, twice at Tarley. Aussie?”
“The Shepherds caught us, baby.” Austin was feeling nauseous, the unexpected turns of the van causing his stomach to roll. He closed his eyes to quell the roiling. That made it grow worse, so he opened them. They weren’t going to run out of air, which was being piped in through a vent to the cab. Could the Shepherds have heard this whole conversation about the Zyllevir? Austin couldn’t hear them.
He had thought they were going to make it to Sable Heights. This evening they would
walk into Elania’s aunt’s house. That had been a sweet taste on his tongue, the triumph and the safety of that place. Elania’s aunt had to be a nice person, since Elania was. There they were going to ride out the rest of this battle and emerge when it was safe to pick up the pieces. He didn’t really have pieces to pick up, so he’d start fresh and let this time sink farther and farther into his memory until it was gone.
“This is it,” Corbin whispered. “We’re going to die. We are literally being driven to our deaths.”
Elania didn’t have one of the cell phones in her backpack, so they couldn’t call anyone to say goodbye. Austin didn’t have anyone to call, but the others did. All of their running and hunger and misery had been for nothing. To escape Cloudy Valley and get caught anyway, scant miles from freedom . . . Paradise would only ever be a dream that got Austin through for a little while. No guy was ever going to take his hand or sleep next to him at night. Whatever the four of them were destined to become in this life were stories to remain ever unwritten.
He hurt so badly, in his head and in his body. Austin looked down at his bloody knees and said, “I love all of you. Thank you for being my friends.” They reached out to touch him, to lean on him, to stay as one group as the end approached. He couldn’t have asked for better friends, and he was sorry for all the time he wasted in school with people he didn’t really care about. Those friendships had made him look cool, and more importantly, straight. They’d been carefully designed and orchestrated. All the while, he should have just been with his real friends.
“Elania, would you pray?” Corbin asked.
It had been foolish for Austin to worry about sending the dead boy Boomslang to God with the wrong holy words. Like God wouldn’t know the intentions of the person praying. Of course God knew. Elania spoke in words that Austin couldn’t comprehend, but God had invented every language on this planet so He knew, and that was what mattered.
“I’m becoming an atheist,” Micah said conversationally when the prayer finished. The van had stopped after a big bump, and now it was creeping along.
Austin was mad at her for saying that after the prayer. It was so disrespectful. Then he thought how normal it was for Micah to have said it at that exact time and for that exact reason. “Oh, Micah.”
She looked much more present. “Because of that proverb that there are no atheists in foxholes. I want to be the first one. When under extreme stress or terror, the threat of death, people are forced to believe in a higher power. But I’m not going to. I’m tired of all of it, whether God is male or female or both; whether there is one or many. A God who creates humanity and then passively loves us while watching us suffer? I don’t accept the bill of sale. If He were a real parent, social services would remove His children to foster care. I don’t know how people believe it.”
“I don’t think that the infinite of God can be fathomed by a human mind,” Elania said. Austin worried that she was offended, but that wasn’t her way.
“That’s a cop-out,” Micah said. “We can’t figure it out, but we’ll just bow down and worship it anyway? I don’t know exactly how a toilet works, but I don’t kiss the bowl for being there.”
“I bow down before this world, which is too vast for me to know in the time allotted a human life,” Elania said, speaking slowly and with pauses for consideration. “We could live a million lives, Micah, a billion lives, and never know all there is to know. I bow down before principles of truth and equality and peace, what people have the hardest time achieving, yet they’re so worth fighting for. I’m not bowing down before a man holding a scepter on a throne. That isn’t how I see God.”
“How do you see Him?” Corbin asked.
“I’m still working on that,” Elania said. “I think the act of knowing God takes a long time.”
Time was what they didn’t have now. The van rolled to a stop. They huddled together more tightly as doors slammed shut, the vibrations carrying through the floor. Corbin whispered, “Please keep praying.” Elania did, and Austin let the words sink into him to cover the sounds from outside. The waves of her voice passed in and out.
“Fuck these people,” Micah hissed. “I’m not meeting them bent over.”
Elania stopped praying. “Me neither.”
There wasn’t enough room for them to stand, but the girls got to their knees and lifted their chins to the back door. Austin did the same. The only weapon he had against the Shepherds was not showing fear. They could kill him, they were going to kill him one way or another. But they’d have to do it with him not cowering away, looking at his face and seeing that he wasn’t a zombie. Just a guy. Whether or not they believed it wasn’t under his control. They might believe it in ten years, or forty, his eyes still staring at them in their dreams. Elania resumed praying.
The hard floor was rough on his knees. Stubbornly, he stayed in that position with everyone else. The side of the van was thumped, and voices called out words as indecipherable as Elania’s prayer.
The van doors opened, a blaze of blinding light eradicating the dimness. Austin’s eyes took a moment to adjust. Shepherds were clustered there with their guns pointed to the glass enclosure. Past them was a hallway of grass, fences rising high on each side. Yellow tarps were attached to the outside, blocking whatever was beyond. The hallway led to a building, the propped-open double doors showing a wooden floor.
Keys rattled in the hand of a Shepherd, who picked one out and clambered into the van to undo the lock on the enclosure. He threw the keys out to a second Shepherd before opening it up. A pale face behind the visor, he had a white scar below his lips. His gloved hand reached out and grasped Elania’s upper arm. He dragged her out and passed her to the other Shepherds. The hand came back for Austin.
His knees screamed on the floor, and screamed again when he straightened to stand on the grass. He didn’t scream with them, determined to look at every Shepherd doing this. Make eye contact. There were six of them in total, including the one in the van. Four men, two women, some young and some older. Three were white, two were black, and one was Hispanic.
“Don’t even think about fighting,” a Shepherd said to Austin. Austin wasn’t thinking about fighting. He just stared at the man, who’d cut himself shaving this morning. The man pushed him along the grass hallway to the building after Elania.
It looked like it had once been a tiny nature museum from the displays about flowers on the walls outside of the metal cage. The bars were gray and thick. Elania had been pushed up against the wall, facing it with her cuffs removed. She was being patted down by one of the women. The backpack had been tossed across the cage. Austin was forced up beside her and his cuffs were undone. The guy kicked his ankles roughly and yelled, “Spread them!”
Austin spread his legs and put his arms up on the wall like Elania had hers. Hands moved down him, pressing his shirt flush to his skin. His jeans pockets were checked, and then his legs were patted down. The guy hiked up the bottoms to pat his socks and force a gloved finger into his sneakers.
“Shut up!” the woman yelled at Elania for praying. She kept on, her voice carrying through the shouts. God still belonged to Elania and Austin, even if the Shepherds thought He did not. He wasn’t reserved for those who didn’t have Sombra C. The words to the Lord’s Prayer came to mind and he whispered them to acknowledge a greater power in this room. The man did nothing to stop him, but the Jewish prayers were pissing off the woman unbearably. Maybe she was also Jewish, and didn’t want a zombie to be the same. Though she smacked Elania on the back of the head, Elania did not quiet. Her voice rose in a beautiful defiance. If Austin had been straight, he would have been proud to call Elania his girlfriend. As it was, he was proud to call her a friend.
“Do you want me to fucking shoot you?” the woman screamed at Elania.
“God will forgive you,” Austin said to the woman. They were going to die without granting the Shepherds their power trip. The deep fear in his heart quieted, and the roiling in his stomach turned to
peace. The woman didn’t like what he’d said, accusing her of doing something that God would have to forgive. He returned to the Lord’s Prayer. This Shepherd had to live with the fact that monsters spoke to God, and possibly with the same words that she used. Austin and Elania were loved just the same as she was.
Shepherds dragged Micah by her feet into the room. The hands went up Austin’s legs again and were taken away. The man hadn’t found the Zyllevir. Corbin was checked on the wall beside Austin, and a Shepherd kicked Micah in the stomach for refusing to get up. She curled into a ball with an agonized scream. They shouted at her, “Get up! Get the fuck up!”
“Get the fuck to hell and burn there!” Micah screamed back.
Two Shepherds patted her down roughly on the floor, ripping at her clothes to see what she had hidden. She thrashed and tried to bite them, causing one to reel back and fall on his butt. More Shepherds came to pin her down. Austin prayed as loudly as Elania. This moment would pass. Every moment did. It had to pass, because he couldn’t stand it.
A walkie-talkie crackled and someone called to hurry it up. Once they finished the pat down, a man knocked Micah’s head into the floor as a boost to get up. The Shepherds backed out of the cage, the woman who hated Elania scooping up the backpack on the way. Guns pointed at the four of them until the double doors were slammed shut and locked on the other side.
Rising to her elbows, Micah spat bloody onto the floor. Her clothes were askew; her underwear and bra exposed. To return some of her dignity, Austin got to his knees and pulled down her shirt. One blue-green eye looked at the doors hatefully. The other was swollen shut.
“Why didn’t you just walk?” Austin asked in exasperation. The lid of the Zyllevir pinched at him.
She rolled onto her side and got to her knees to zip up and button her jeans. “Why should I make it easy for them?”
There was another person in the cage with them. Wedged down into the corner beside a bench was a blond boy of ten or eleven years old in green pajama bottoms. He had one fuzzy green slipper on his foot and his hair was tousled. The red of the stamp was livid on his white skin. Tears were slipping from his pale blue eyes. When he saw them looking, he buried his head in his arms. The ball he made was so tiny as to be almost nonexistent. Soft sobs came from his corner.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 83