She got out. She was almost disappointed. Still holding his arm, she wrenched it behind his back. He yelled in pain and she slammed her fist to the side of his head. A man crying get ’er from behind the tents shouted in dismay.
Untrained. She wouldn’t have gotten out of a real chokehold. Every struggle of hers should have resulted in an even tighter grip. He was just one more fool. The world was packed with them. He swung out for her legs and she leaped away. Before she could retrieve her gun, the guy stabbed out with a blade for her midsection. She gave his arm a good bitch-slap and a second when he charged and stabbed again. More of her blood got on his arms. Reversing his hold on the blade, he came at her a third time, slashing in a flurry of moves that made everything a blur.
Aren’t you a cute little streetfighter?
There was no time to get her gun. There was no time to throw a punch. She blocked and blocked until she had a hand on his forearm and one by his elbow. Then she shoved herself into him and spun them both crazily. Swept from his feet, he fell onto his back and she jumped to her gun. Now she had the lethal force in this relationship, and she employed it. Goodbye, Tim or Tom or Brayden, who picked up his fighting skills from video games, Internet videos, or sibling scuffles.
Her leg was stinging from a cut that hadn’t come from the blade. A bullet must have grazed her at some point. All she wanted to know was who had done the shooting. It had to have come from one of the men hiding behind the tents, which were in such a hodgepodge arrangement that they were having as much trouble seeing her as she was seeing them. But that was no problem. She wore out her clip in shooting through them, aiming low in case they were on their bellies. Then she helped herself to a dropped handgun and stalked around to eliminate whoever persisted in breathing.
The harbor guards were yelling. She didn’t look up to them. Guns fired from somewhere behind her, toward the corridor, but no one was there when she glanced over.
The handgun had one shot left in it now, and a dead man had a semi-automatic. She put the handgun down the back of her jeans and checked the clip on the other. It was nearly full. That was excellent.
And that was it. No one was around. It was time to leave. If the others had chickened out, then getting into the harbor was their problem. She had done all she could do for them. Time to spin and select a way to go. Penguins or cornfields or ocean or Oregon, none of which sounded very interesting. The zombies, the hunters, the survivors, the search for food . . . her life laid itself out before her like a book she’d read a dozen times and hadn’t enjoyed the first.
Any way she went, north or south or east or west, up or down or sideways, she was going to see the same old boring shit and wonder what the point was. Her epitaph when she died of old age would be wasn’t worth it. Visitors to the cemetery would have a shit-fit about that. Of course it was worth it! How dare someone say that? Life was beautiful! But here was someone who had gone before them, and she said it. Because she was dead, it made her statement ironclad and beyond debate. That would bother them, to have her in a place beyond rebuttal. What if she’s right? In the dead of night, awake from a bitter dream or kept awake by a sour day, they would wonder.
Micah was right.
They came around the eastern edge of the wall, half a dozen men with handguns and rifles and semi-automatics, the early morning light gleaming on the black metal. One cried out to see her partially exposed by a sagging tent, and though they were at quite a distance, they opened fire. She flattened herself on the grass and slithered for the trees on her stomach as the air was torn to shreds by blasts. Also torn to shreds were the tents she was behind.
They stopped firing. A tent fell over on her back, its support blasted away. If she got over to the trees, she could dodge among the trunks, snatch her backpack out of the rock pile, and be off to let the world swallow her up. But she’d be open to them for several meters, so she had to run fast . . .
No. She didn’t have to do that; she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t care what was out there and no one could make her care. She was done with the world, with herself, with everything, in every possible way. Done.
She was going to stay here, stake this ground outside the harbor as hers. But she wasn’t going to stalk around in the green and brown, circling the white walls and creeping up on the unsuspecting for days and weeks and months and years. She was going to besiege these fools until . . .
“Do you see her?” a man called, and voices hushed him.
This was her chance to go, to walk away from here, and she let it bleed out from her fingers. The top of her hourglass was dry as bone, and the mountain of sand had reached its apex underneath.
They were approaching, trash crunching under a foot, whispers harsh in the silence. A feral woman. Yeah, she’s got a gun. She waited for them and tightened her hold on her new semi-automatic. Just a little closer, she thought to them. Walk just a little closer to me. Their footsteps were hesitant, and they sounded like children in their hushed argument of you go, no, YOU go.
Mama is coming, Mars.
She threw off the tent and rose with her finger on the trigger. Three were hanging back, reluctant to challenge her; three had reached the far end of the campsite. The world exploded in gunfire between all of them, those in the lead staggering as her rain of bullets struck them.
Then she was flat on her back.
The sky was pinkish blue, caught between dawn and day. Her senses had divided, so first she saw the color of the sky, and a beat after that she felt the wetness on her breast. That was followed by pressure in the same area. She became aware of the grass on the back of her neck, and the smell of shit. It wasn’t hers. There were many bodies in the grass, one with his arms thrown out like he was making a snow angel.
She had taken a bullet to the chest.
Because she was stuck in that realization, she didn’t grasp the words being spoken in calls and shouts, or turn her head to see the speakers. A bullet had hacked through her, and she was . . . happy. It wasn’t a peripheral, fleeting thing but a growing saturation of her being. She was becoming waterlogged in the happiness, which pushed away the pain. She spun higher and higher on it, the way she wasn’t going to have to spin to pick a place in the world.
She wanted to see what came next, not variations of what she’d seen before, and a rush filled her to join the happiness. No one knew what came until those doors opened. In her opinion, it wasn’t anything. But that was just an opinion. She could be wrong, and soon step onto a walkway made of clouds and sunflowers. There could be a silly heavenly kingdom of castles and fields, angels soaring around and souls reposing on chaises with the trials and tribulations of life behind them. Heaven was a resort where the drinks didn’t stop flowing and you never got drunk enough to vomit. Or it was a cathedral in which they all sat in pews and prayed to infinity. Or it was a waystation where her soul’s guide reviewed her life with her, and presented options for the next life to follow.
Or there was nothing, a darkness wiped of consciousness, the period at the end of her life’s sentence. She didn’t know, and the biggest rush of all was to be on the brink of it. Once she had the answer, the question would be boring. But for now, here in the grass, she was radiant in her anticipation. So many others knew the secret. Now it was almost Micah’s turn to be initiated, and she was exhilarated to be next in line.
The pressure on her chest was growing greater, and a portion of the air going down her throat in fits and starts vanished into nothingness. A man approached cautiously, training a shotgun on her, and she inspected him. It was interesting only for it being the last time. Average height. Average weight. Below average looks. Forties. Brown hair that had a home trim look. A deep cleft was in his chin, creating a pair of tiny, hairy facial buttocks under the pale waistband of his lower lip. Brown eyes, one with a large broken blood vessel. A big skin tag was on his eyelid, so big she could see it and they weren’t even that close yet. It drooped off the tip of his eyelid and why hadn’t he just pinched it b
etween tweezers and yanked before it had gotten so big? It was a teardrop of flesh drooping from the lid, ugly and enormous and impeding. More tags circled his eyes, both pink and mottled brown, but they were much smaller.
He was a former teacher paper pusher bank teller bus driver . . . no. His arms were heavily muscled and his hands callused. Whatever he used to do, it involved his body. He was wearing heavy work trousers and his boots were layered in dirt. Worked in construction . . . as a mechanic . . . in the vineyards . . .
The pressure was getting heavier. It was Mars, fast asleep on top of her as Micah bled in the glow of dawn. He was warm and it was good, so good to feel that warmth and heaviness on her chest. She struggled to put her arms around him and the man tightened his hands on his shotgun. Mistaking her for a threat. But she had gotten her baby back, and she didn’t give a shit about that ass-faced man. Mars woke up and lifted his head to smile at her. If Micah was there, all was right in his life, and she was there. She would always be there, making it right for him. And by him.
Why wasn’t the man shooting her?
She read his mind for the answer. Because he wanted to see if she was going to die on her own and spare his bullet. He slinked ever closer since he didn’t want to miss and waste a second one. He was new to guns. His grip was uncertain. This wasn’t something he’d purchased. He had raided it from someone’s home, stolen it, or taken it from the dead. He hadn’t fought at the battles here. She had the sense that she was going to be his first kill. His fingers trembled.
So that was what she guessed about this man, and he wasn’t interesting anymore.
I’m ready to go, she thought in a moment of clarity. Hello, Holy Asshole, if You’re there, I’ve been shot in the chest and I’m ready to go! But still she was here in the grass, the sky committing to blue overhead and the white wall of the harbor blazing. No tunnel opened up before her eyes with a light at the end. No beautiful guardian angel crouched down to tell her it was time, and her soul didn’t lift from her body. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes, nor did the ground open up to swallow her into Hell as punishment for not accepting Jesus as the one true Lord and Savior, or for the mistakes she had made in her life.
That was interesting. Everything she had been told to expect upon dying wasn’t happening to her.
The baby was getting too heavy and she couldn’t roll him off, or roll at all. She couldn’t ask Austin to take him. But there was one thing that Micah could do, and that was make this man waste his bullet. Pulling air down her throat stubbornly, she stared at him and did her damnedest to move what little she could. Fuck you. He crept a little closer when her efforts resulted in minimal reward.
The pressure . . . it wasn’t the baby. The baby was gone. The warmth was her blood spreading out on her chest.
She would make this man fire and usher her into the mystery. If it was anything like what her mothers believed, what Austin believed, then she was going to set off into heaven to find her baby, scoop him up and track down Elania’s house in the clouds to say hello. She’d check out her latest mermaid picture from Clarissa and show Mars what Earth looked like from on high. At night when he slept, Micah would steal a dead dog and rove around to peek in God’s windows. See what He or She had or didn’t have, what news channel They watched. She’d rifle through the mail in the holy box and stake Them out as They drank in bars to see if They drove home or called an angelic chauffeur.
Her mind had floated away. She brought it back and lifted her lip at the man with the shotgun. He thought it was a snarl, but it was a smile. The barrel slipped through the air in a swing to her face that lasted less than a second but stretched out to eternity. There was so much noise, of guns and shouting, but it didn’t touch her. She didn’t even know if she was hearing it, or had heard it and was only now registering it.
Her blood and brain matter were going to explode everywhere, and the man was close enough to get struck. He had no protective gear on, no glasses or helmet, no haz-mat suit. Nothing. He was just a fool. And the others were fools for not warning him.
The bulbous skin tag caught her eye again as he blinked. A cowardly fool. He was too much of a wuss to do it with tweezers, or to tie a piece of floss around the smaller part of the teardrop and choke it free. You could know so much about someone without ever exchanging a word, and here was a total weenie with an IQ overshadowed by his shoe size. And he didn’t have very big feet.
“Is she still alive?” The frightened voice came from far away.
“Yeah, still alive, but hurt bad,” replied the only man stupid enough to face a dark goddess, who had one last smack of justice to mete out.
She was alive because she had been right after all. She’d refused to die until she was ready, and now she was going to die her own way. The bullet would make her come apart as the doctor came apart, and the cheerful little buggers of her virus would launch themselves at a new host.
But she didn’t care about that, not really. It was just icing on the cake. The man adjusted the shotgun against his shoulder and took aim.
She was so excited to see what was coming. Her hand was closing around the knob and beginning to turn. To the stars . . . to Mars . . . to nothing whatsoever . . . the pressure on her chest lightened and a giant, invisible hand scooped her up from the grass. All of the noise faded to a great rushing sound.
As his finger drew back on the trigger, she felt the meaning of her given name for the very first time.
Jubilee.
Austin
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
The voice pierced through the gunfire and Austin turned. He shouldn’t have done that. It displayed his naked stamp to four guys who had come out of nowhere.
They came from somewhere, naturally, but to Austin’s perspective, they simply teleported to a spot fifty feet away as he crouched to run to the corridor. The men at the campsite were scattering and falling to Micah’s bullets; this new foursome appeared from the western side of the harbor and all of them had guns.
Before the cry of zombie could erupt from their throats, before they could take aim and shoot, Austin, Corbin, and Zaley fired off a round simultaneously through the trees. It created a boom that helped itself to some of Austin’s hearing, and the three of them ran to the grass. Open to the world. He would have waited a little longer, but that choice had been taken away.
Waving frantically to the harbor guard stationed in the watchtower, Austin sprinted for the wall. He was afraid to look at anything but the corridor, to invite something to look back at him.
Oh Jesus, they were about to die. They were going to get their heads blown off . . .
If that happened, they would be in heaven. There was nothing to fear about being with God. All he had left to fear was that it would hurt getting there. Fixing his eyes to the closed door so far away, he flashed over the ground. Corbin whirled around and fired at someone, still running as he did. Austin and Zaley pushed ahead in those moments, Zaley screaming up to the guard, “Open the door!”
Her voice was lost in the gunfire. It came from everywhere, like every person in the world was shooting at them. Austin’s head tucked in protectively and he clutched his gun that had one bullet left. Blades of grass snapped under his boots. His ankle was a little angry from yesterday’s twist on the rocks, but adrenaline papered over the tweaks.
He was going to make that door. Dammit, he was going through it if a thousand bullets peppered through his body and he made it past that barrier just to collapse and bleed to death on the other side.
The guard in the watchtower was shouting, his mouth open but his words coming out as staccato blasts. Then a second guard raced along the wall above the corridor. He was going in the direction of the door like they were, just from twenty feet above.
The grass ended at the wall, and the long stretch of corridor was bare earth with a few thatches of dead grass growing out of it. All three of them made it there, Corbin having caught up to run on Zaley’s other side. Austin
had meant to look for Micah, but it slipped his mind from panic until it was too late. The walls rose up around him.
The guard at the watchtower lifted his gun (Jesus, was he going to shoot them?) and fired over their heads. Someone shouted and Austin threw a glance over his shoulder to one of the four guys falling out in the trees. A handgun dropped from his grip. Corbin also turned and raised his gun to aim, which slowed him down again.
A third guard leaned over the wall and screamed, “Go! Go! Corbin, just go!”
It was shocking to hear Corbin’s name coming from a stranger’s lips. Corbin didn’t react. He hadn’t heard it in the noise. The third guard ducked as someone opened fire. The one going to the end of the corridor kept running. Zaley staggered a little and Austin caught her elbow. She didn’t grab a part of herself, tumble down, and scream from being shot. It had just been a wrong step as she hunkered in on herself from the gunfire. Even though he wanted to fly ahead, he kept pace with her and Corbin. Those two were running so madly that he didn’t have to slow all that much.
“They’re in the corridor! Shoot!”
The guards fired furiously at men following into the corridor, causing them to retreat and hide around the wall. Dust shot out from the wall ahead of Austin, who shouted. He couldn’t see the bullet, but another burst of dust from the other side of the wall told him that it was ricocheting. Other than those sprays of dust, the wall showed no damage.
The door was opening.
He couldn’t see anything beyond it but white. The guards traded fire with the men at the far end of the corridor, who shouted, “Shoot those fucking zombies!” A burst of dust came out of the wall inches from Austin’s face.
Austin turned to fire back. One bullet, all he had was this last bullet, and then it was gone. And whether or not it was his bullet or one raining down from the guards’ guns, or both at the same time, a guy coming around the wall to fire at the three of them was struck. His face burst apart like a piñata and the contents of his skull exploded into the sky. Another man, who was raising his gun to Corbin, got covered in it and had to pull back.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 172