Gwen’s look changed to concern when she saw his blood-covered harness and pants, but Steele didn’t care. “I’m fine,” he said, replacing the barricade before turning on Ahmed.
Steele stepped up an inch away from Ahmed’s face and slammed a finger into his chest. “Dude, what the fuck was that out there? You almost got me killed.”
Ahmed pushed his chest into Steele’s finger.
He sneered as he spoke. “I didn’t want to draw more of them in. Besides, you handled yourself just fine.”
The final straw had been drawn. This guy had been ogling his girl for the last few days, undermining him at every turn, and now he had sat back while Steele almost had his face chewed off. Some people just needed a good old fashion ass whooping to straighten them out, he thought, feeling happy to oblige the man in his correctional therapy.
Steele swung a wild haymaker. Not a characteristic strike considering his training, but his blood boiled in his veins. A punch that he immediately regretted throwing on emotion alone.
Ahmed anticipated the strike and ducked low, bringing a forearm up to block the blow. He led with an uppercut, catching Steele on the chin, and followed with a cross to Steele’s nose.
Steele staggered back, using a bookcase to catch his fall. His hand leapt to his nose as the blood flowed freely. He stared down at the blood covering his hands, wide-eyed.
“Steele we can talk this out, right?” Ahmed asked, showing open palms and smiling.
Steele narrowed his eyes. The nerve of this prick. He knew Ahmed was strong, but he hadn’t thought he would be as well-versed in martial arts. Underestimating his opponent in his rage, he admonished himself for his stupid mistake.
Gwen’s voice driveled in the background, telling them to stop. Steele completely ignored her. She knew nothing.
“Stay out of the way,” he barked, not taking his eyes off Ahmed flinging his blood onto the floor.
Steele feigned a jab and a crossover, allowing Ahmed to block them away with minimal effort. During the exchange, Steele moved close enough to catch Ahmed with an elbow to his eye. Ahmed tried to back away and cover his face, but Steele dropped himself to waist level and took him down with a double-leg takedown.
Steele picked him up off the ground. Raising Ahmed over his head, he slammed him down hard, causing his head to bounce off the hardwood floor upon impact.
The slam-dazed Ahmed gave Steele a starry-eyed look, but Steele wasn’t waiting to see if he submitted. He scampered into a full mount, straddling Ahmed’s hips.
Punches rained down on Ahmed, as he feebly tried to cover his head. One, two, three times Steele connected with Ahmed’s face, each hit punished him. Ahmed’s eyes danced back and forth not knowing which way to go, his body telling him to keep breathing and fighting, not understanding that he should have been knocked out.
Fighting to survive was an involuntary action. Steele wrapped his fingers around Ahmed’s neck and squeezed. Fuck this guy. He tried to get me killed. With his other hand, Steele reached up to his harness where his dagger lay sheathed.
Ahmed pushed his face away with two hands, not having seen Steele rip the dagger free. The blade hovered next to Steele’s body, waiting ready as he prepared to strike. A moment later, someone grabbed Steele’s arm and someone else grabbed his neck. Knowing it to be Gwen and Lindsay, he didn’t resist as they pulled him away.
“What the hell are you doing?” shouted Gwen, her face floated surreally above him clouded in anger. “What were you going to do, kill him? A federal agent was going to kill somebody because he was pissed off. Get your shit together.”
Across the room, Lindsay wiped blood off Ahmed’s face. He looked distraught, his cheek and lips swelling up from the beating.
Steele sheathed his knife. In a few days it would only be his pride that hurt, if they made it that far. “Gwen, you don’t know what happened out there. He tried to get me killed.”
Why won’t she believe me? Why is she taking sides against me? Isn’t it clear that Ahmed is the bad guy here?
Gwen shook her head. “Pull it together,” she repeated.
“An infected lady almost bit me,” Steele said, hearing the whine in his voice. My shit is just fine, thank you very much. He stood up, his face still flushed from the fight. He stared at the rest of them; his eyes still wild. “Be ready to go at dawn. If you don’t want to come with me, you’re more than welcome to stay here.”
GWEN
Fairfax, VA
Gwen had a fitful night’s sleep. She tossed and turned, never really falling into a restful slumber. Mark had been distant with her since the fight. She snuggled deeper into her blanket, searching for comfort and finding only the distinctive musty scent of an elderly person’s closet.
Something rustled through the bushes near the front of the house fumbling along the walls. She held her breath, listening intently. Is it the wind or something more sinister? The rustling moved along. She couldn’t help but hold her breath every time one of them came near the house, scratching the vinyl siding with filthy evil hands. The departure of the dead allowed her to focus on her true problem: Mark.
Gwen’s brow creased as she lay there. She couldn’t put her finger on Mark’s problem. There is no way Ahmed would have tried to get Mark killed. Why would he do something like that, when he had gone out of his way to save her?
Mark had been insistent that Ahmed hadn’t helped him when the infected people attacked. She asked him again and again what had happened and he had simply repeated that he knew what he saw. He was utterly convinced. She had known Mark for a long time and he wouldn’t lie about something like that, but he had drawn a knife on Ahmed. A knife.
Mark had been trained to take a life, but she knew him as a reasonable man who used reason and logic as much as his emotions. Mark had almost killed Ahmed. A half-second quicker and he would have slit Ahmed’s throat. Could he do that to me? No, he never would. He had never shown any outward aggression toward her in their relationship, but she knew violence lurked underneath his stoic surface. As are men, perpetually closer to their distant primal relatives.
Mark frayed at the edges. She was sure of it. I have to help him somehow. Oddly enough, he probably needed to get to a safer place even more than the rest of them. He stood guard most nights, constantly watching the infected that roamed the neighborhood. Dark circles set in beneath his eyes, and his facial features were fixed in a perpetual glower, as if he were pissed off at the world and everyone in it. His temper flared at the slightest provocation.
Gwen rolled over in bed searching for a cool spot, and glanced over at his side. No hairy chested man lay there. He was up again. A shadow sat near the wall in the dark, a rifle across his lap and gear stuck out from his vest in the dim light. Even in the dark, she could tell that he was awake, his head resting on the wall. He needs a place where he can shut down, cool the engines and turn off the higher state of readiness, or he would snap and hurt someone, or worse. Gwen fell back into a restless sleep. She rose before dawn and checked the power on her phone. The display read twelve percent. She switched plugs. No lightening bolt popped up across the top of her phone. Power’s out.
Gwen gave Mark a break from his vigil, taking up watch by the top floor window. The things outside were hideous to look at, so she checked her email instead. Department stores, flower shops, fitness gear and home goods were all apparently having sales. No you’re not. You don’t exist anymore.
She scrolled through her email, clicking on one from Becky. Her sister was at the farm, where everything was fine. The flyover states were unaffected, as of now.
Gwen opened the sheet a crack and snapped a picture of the undead below. The photo turned out blurry as the creatures were too far away. It failed to accurately depict the mutilated walking corpses below. They looked like ordinary people in the streets, despite the fact they were missing arms, legs, organs and souls.
She wasn’t a particularly religious person, but it made her wonder if they had souls or i
f they were just empty bodies, human husks. Did they remember who they were? Were they mindless or did some grandiose master drive them? Were they spawns of the devil, as a religious expert on the news had suggested? I wonder if the ‘infected,’ can be fixed. Mark is insistent that they can’t be, but maybe he isn’t giving it enough of a chance. Hopefully, Mount Eden will have electricity up and running, so I can stay in contact with my family. The situation was hard enough as it was.
The clock in the bedroom blinked 9:07 which meant the power in the townhouse had been out for twelve hours. They weren’t using lights for fear of attracting the infected, but their phones were running out of battery, draining in fact.
The thought of being cut off from the social media world was a terrifying reality for anyone who was left alive. The internet had been taken over by people posting and publishing on their loved ones’ walls, pages and platforms. Her friend Heather kept writing on her husband’s personal page: “Please come home, Tony. The kids miss you.”
All the messages were similar: people trying to reach their loved ones, people searching for answers, people grasping for life. Day after day, fewer and fewer of these people were finding those things.
People’s last days could be counted down by following their social feeds. She cried when she saw that her friend Patrick had left a farewell post on his page: “I can’t take the sounds of Rose being ill in the next room. I’m going to get help. Love you all. Patrick.”
That had been his final post. No other posts lined his page. Your last status update while you were with the world of the living. She wondered what her final post would say, or if anyone would be around to read it.
Some people were sending out useful information: stay quiet; kill the infected with headshots or blunt trauma to the skull; barricade your house; infected loved ones are dead; no lights; stay on the top floor; grab any weapon you can get hold of and fight; get out of town; use the back roads; make sure you have enough water.
For every helpful post there were a twice as many bad ones filled with fatal information: the infected are just sick; take them to the local hospital; treat them with antibiotics; if bitten, stick with the group; the Army is on its way; use high-percentage body shots; you only need a week of supplies; the infected cannot see flashlights; the infected are repelled by loud music. Unfortunately, these posts would be self-correcting errors. For some folk it was probably more terrifying to be without internet than to have their friends, family, neighbors and strangers trying to kill them.
Mark came back up the stairs and started shoving items into his pack. They switched places. Someone always had to have eyes on the front of the house. The door was barricaded, but no one was sure how long it would hold up under pressure.
Gwen packed in silence. She had taken a picture from their townhouse of the two of them and Mark’s family on a trip to Beaver Island, Michigan. She placed it in Mark’s pack. Hopefully, it would remind him why he fought. People depended on him.
The group needed him to survive; he had the weapons training that could help keep them alive. On a personal level, she needed Mark to remember what it was to be in love, to be happy, to be human. She knew he hardened himself so that he didn’t have to come to terms with all the death and destruction he witnessed and partook in.
Gwen had tried to do the same but, while she let herself cry at night and talk quietly about the deaths of her friends, he kept it all inside. He would just lie there bottling all his anger, sadness and pain; internalizing his problems. He bore the deaths of the people under his watch personally, and she knew that it ate him alive inside.
She took it upon herself to help him remain the man he once was, and in doing so, she hoped to keep part of her humanity intact. Together they would maintain in each other the small parts of a normal life. They owed it to one another.
Gwen punched a small pink pill from a dispenser, the last one in her cycle of birth control. She had been awaiting her new prescription in the mail, but when the D.C. outbreak occurred the mail carriers had been among the first to be attacked as the disease spread. Those who were outside in the community, going door to door, were basically facing a death sentence, much like most first responders.
Her birth control had never arrived, and she knew she would have to get more from somewhere. Mount Eden might have some, but she doubted it. Gwen knew that she and Mark would have children someday. It had always been a part of their plan after they were married. How could we bring a child into this disaster of a world? It would be like feeding her newborn to the wolves.
She didn’t know why, but they had made love every night since they had been reunited. Maybe it was the stress of survival that drove them to live their days like everyday were their last, or maybe it was just to dull the pain long enough to fall asleep. Not that she minded the nightly ravishing.
Gwen’s pulse quickened at the thought of Mark’s hands all over her, and her neck burned with embarrassment at her carnal thoughts, although only the two of them were in the room.
“Why are you all red?” he whispered and her cheeks burned at the sound of his voice.
“Nothing.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
He looked back out the window satisfied that she was okay as if she were some sort of soldier.
“It was about last night and the night before.”
He gave a sly glance at Gwen. “Oh,” he mouthed. Then he chuckled softly, cracking the first smile she had seen from him in days.
“Why are you laughing?” she said in mock anger.
“No reason,” he smirked.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.
His face hardened and she immediately wished she hadn’t said anything. “What is it?” he asked, running a hand through his beard.
She looked down at her empty birth control package. “Nothing. I love you,” she whispered.
He gave a faint smile. “Love you too. We’re going to be okay,” he said, his eyes betraying his own doubt.
It wasn’t the right time for that conversation. Mark had so much on his plate that finding out she was out of birth control might push him over the edge. She finished shoving the rest of her belongings into her hiking pack: hiking clothes, batteries, a flashlight, shotgun slugs, food and medicine. She strapped Mark’s machete to the outside.
She hoisted her pack onto her back and slung her pistol grip shotgun around her body. She was as ready as she would ever be. She put on her bravest, most confident smile for him. “I’m ready.”
Mark hoisted his pack onto his shoulders, checking the status of his weapon. “Let’s roll.”
It isn’t during the shit people went through that they decide to quit; it is during the periods of relaxation, Gwen concluded. The idea of leaving the house terrified her, but it felt good to be on the move. She wanted to be doing something instead of waiting to die.
They gathered in the basement, and Mark made sure they were ready. He inspected everyone’s gear. Ahmed eyed her over his shoulder as Steele checked his pack. She broke eye contact focusing on Lindsay. The woman looked like she was about to cry.
“We are going to be okay. We just have to make it to the car.”
Lindsay smiled weakly. “I guess.” Gwen returned her smile.
“Mark will get us there.” He looked at her, tightening a strap on Lindsay’s pack.
“We are up. Everyone stay close and quiet.”
Quietly, they funneled outside. Everyone waiting tensely while he knelt on the ground, commencing the first part of their escape. He wedged a flimsy red stick into the ground and, with a flick of his thumb; he sparked up a lighter holding it to the fuse. The rocket screeched overhead to the other end of the cul-de-sac with a loud pop. Mark repeated the process three more times and launched several old bottle rockets into the middle of the cul-de-sac. Apparently, old man Benson was even more of a kid than they had thought, as Mark had discovered a stash of fireworks in his workshop.
&nb
sp; Everyone held their breath while Ahmed looked over the fence. “They’re hurrying over to the other side of the street,” he said with a grin.
“I’ll go up front with Gwen and Lindsay in the middle. I want Ahmed to take the rear.” He hoisted his AR-15 in front of his chest.
“Remember, if things get bad, make a run for it. No one looks back,” he said, staring right at Gwen.
“I know,” she mumbled. She locked eyes with him. She knew the plan. I won’t leave him. No matter what he wants.
Mark went over it again and again until she wished he would stop talking about it. Does he think I’m an idiot? The whole thing was easy enough.
With a cautious look backward, Mark pushed open the fence gate. He set out at a brisk walk along the tree line, scanning back and forth with his rifle in the high ready. She found herself breathing hard without much exertion.
Mark waved them hastily on to the ground his flat palm pumping downward. A group of infected plodded past toward the townhouse. Gwen held her breath, hoping not to be noticed. Moaning, they were close enough for Gwen to catch a whiff of their putrid stink. Her breath tightened in her chest, her heart pounding. The infected wore a variety of ripped hoodies and purple letter jackets. Looks like the stoners and jocks have finally united.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Gwen quietly stood up. She copied Mark’s high ready position with her shotgun, making sure she was not about to flag Mark in the back as she scanned for incoming threats. She swept her shotgun left and right searching for the infected, taking in too much scenery and almost running into Mark.
He gave her a sidelong glare. “Fist means stop,” he reprimanded her, pulling her aside when he saw how flustered she became.
Her heart dropped when she looked over his shoulder at the Jeep. Infected milled around it as if they had been waiting for them.
End Time Page 31