Taking everyone with only what they can carry and leaving the comforts of the apartment was a terrifying thought. It wasn’t because he was afraid to go out there. In fact, he spent most of his time out in the world alone. The zombies didn’t make him squirm. They looked disgusting and smelled putrid, but he was quick and talented with his longsword. He hadn’t had a close call in weeks. But taking these people, most of whom he didn’t know that well and surely didn’t believe in their capabilities, and pushing them out into the cruel wilderness…that he wasn’t sure he was ready to do. Their lives would be in his hands. They looked to him as their leader, a role he had never lobbied for, but was handed anyhow. If someone died out there, no matter what the cause, that was on him. He knew the overwhelming weight of responsibility he would feel should he failed. He felt it when Anita was killed.
Slowly, he edged his shoulder out from under Christine’s head and laid her down gently on the pillow. With small steps so he wouldn’t wake her, he backed away. She finally seemed to be having a decent night’s sleep, something she needed if they were going to head out into the messed up world soon. When his back hit the door handle he twisted it open and slipped out without being heard.
He closed his eyes and sighed as he shut the door gently. His body felt weak from the emotional draining he’d endured with their talk of Liam. For a moment, he wished desperately Liam was there so he could talk to him, get his advice on what to do. Then, he remembered all the times he heard Christine talking in her room, presumably alone. But she wasn’t alone, was she? Many times he’d heard her say Liam’s name while conversing, as if he were right there with her. Nothing terrified him more. He didn’t want to lose another friend, but it felt like she was slipping away already. What’s dead should stay dead and that included Liam.
From outside the front door, a stair creaked loudly. Zack’s eyes popped open. There was another creak. Lee Hickey, the giant Irishman, was already on his feet clutching a tire iron he’d found on their last outing for supplies. When Olivia Darling tried to go to the door, weathered bat gripped tight in her hands, Lee held out the metal rod to stop her.
“You serious, Hickey?” she whispered, her cheeks flushed with annoyance.
He didn’t answer, just narrowed his eyes and stared at her the way a father would if he caught his daughter sneaking out.
Olivia huffed out a sigh and lowered her bat, rooted at Lee’s side. “Next time, I’m going,” she said under her breath. “I can handle myself, thank you.”
Lee’s eyes drifted over in her direction, but not a single muscle in his body moved. His ears were trained on the other side of the door as another stair let out a groan from the weight of a body.
Zack unsheathed his steel sword that lay by his sleeping bag and held it out in front of him with both hands. He took large, but soft steps on the padded beige carpet as he made his way slowly to the bolted front door. He almost didn’t dare to breathe in case it could be heard by whomever was on the other side. Whoever it was, they were making their way slowly to the group of huddled survivors inside.
By that time, the others in the apartment had heard the noise and started to stir from their rest. Gretchen Moore stretched her hands high over her head and let out a silent yawn that wrenched her jaw wide open. “What’s going on?” she whispered in a ragged morning voice.
“Shhh!” Lee, Zack, and Olivia hissed together.
Gretchen’s hands flopped down to her side as she sat up on the couch. Finally, her eyes adjusted to the dark and spotted Zack creeping along with his replica Game of Thrones sword. Her jaw clenched tight. She jumped when she felt a hand reach up from the floor to grip her thigh. When she saw manicured pink fingernails she let out a breath of relief.
Carolyn Bock looked up at Gretchen from the floor with wide blue eyes. Her long, mermaid blonde hair was ruffled and stuck out as it draped around her round face. “Is it the dead?” she whispered so softly no one could hear her but Gretchen. “Have they learned to climb stairs? Are they coming? Are we going to have to climb down the balcony like we practiced? I don’t know if I can do that again—“
“Shut it!” Gretchen whispered back angrily.
Carolyn’s lips stopped moving, but hung open like a wounded child.
Zack finally made it to the door. He leaned his ear against the cold faux-wood steel as his fingers slowly worked the bolts. There wasn’t a single sound in the apartment at that moment. If he wasn’t waiting for something on the other side, it might have been peaceful. But there was something on the other side. He heard the shuffle of feet, two he believed. One larger and slow while the other one smaller and quicker. Zack’s heart sped up. With slow breaths, he forced himself to calm down.
Then, he heard it…a whisper.
“We need to be quiet,” the voice said softly.
Zack threw the door open and reached out into the darkness blindly. With a heavy thud, a large figure was thrown into the apartment. Behind it, a small shadow lunged inside, shrieking.
V
Zack had his sword raised, ready to bring it down on the thing curled up on the floor. There were screams coming from all ends of the cramped apartment. The scrape of a match was heard beneath the din. A dim light filled the small area of chaos.
“Stop! Stop!” the man on the floor shouted, his hands up to guard his face.
“Get the hell away from my dad!” a teenage girl said from behind.
The young girl screamed and then Zack felt excruciating pain from something colliding with his shoulder. He went down next to the cowering man, his arms spread out as his face rested on the carpet. He groaned and attempted to push himself up. He felt the warmth of fresh blood running down his shoulder.
There was a small click of a door opening and Zack felt soft hands grip him and pull him up.
“Are you okay?” Christine asked, blue eyes glistening.
He brushed himself off and shook himself free of her, more harshly than intended, “I’m fine.” The contrast of scarlet droplets on the beige carpet caught his eye.
By then, the unknown teenage girl who’d hit him had stopped screaming. She stood in a readied stance, baseball bat held tightly in her small hands, sharp nails sticking out from it at odd angles. The girl’s chest heaved as her brown eyes remained trained on Zack. He matched her glare-for-glare as he sized her up.
She couldn’t have been older than sixteen. Her rough, black hair fell in tight frizzed curls around her face and shoulders. She dressed in brightly, mismatched colored layers, as if she picked things up here and there without concern for who she was taking them from. Her black combat books hugged her small feet, the leather groaning each time she shifted her weight.
Once he was sure the girl wasn’t going to attack him again, he allowed his eyes to move from her to the man on the floor. Zack assumed it was the girl’s father. His hands were still over his face, concealing his identity and his intent.
In one swift motion, Zack reached down and pulled the man up by the collar. He whimpered pathetically. The young girl took a step toward them, but Zack quickly shut it down.
“Nuh-uh! You stay right there, Babe Ruth. I just want to ask a few questions.”
She didn’t take another step, but she didn’t lower her bat either. She never even blinked.
The stranger straightened his jacket and looked up at the face of the bearded man who held his fate in his hands. “Zack?!” the man asked.
“Luke?!” Zack’s voice immediately gave it away. He was disappointed to see Luke alive at all. “What are you doing here? We thought you were dead!”
“Hoped I was dead is a more accurate description, isn’t it?”
Zack didn’t respond, but fixed the middle-aged man with a withering stare.
“All right, all right,” Luke held his hands up, stepping over to his daughter. “Imani, put the bat down. I know these folks. They lived in the building with me.”
She did as her father said, but her ey
es warned Zack not to make another move, but at the same time almost begging him to so she could use her bat again.
“Coward,” Zack said softly but sternly.
“Excuse me?” Luke retorted. He turned his head so his left ear would have a better chance of hearing him say it again.
“You’re a coward!” Zack shouted, causing everyone in the room to jump. “You left in the middle of the night with no word, no warning. We thought you’d gone to get your ex-wife and kid, that you’d be back to help us, but you never came back! Do you know what one less person helping to get supplies every day looks like?”
Luke stared at Zack, unable to look away though he shifted uncomfortably.
“It meant Liam, Ralph, and I had to go on more runs together. It meant that when Ralph’s baby needed formula he had to search day and night for it. It meant that sometimes we had to go out alone at night because there were only three of us doing all the work! It meant Ralph’s wife had to watch her husband die and then come back to life just to rip her to pieces. God knows what happened to their little girl, Lilly! It meant that when the fences came down and the zombies swarmed in, Liam didn’t have enough help to stop them and he was bit! He died! Christine here had to plunge a knife into his skull to stop him from turning into one of those things!” His hands gestured wildly as he shouted.
Zack had worked himself up so much, even the people of his own group inched away from him. As he screamed, spit flew from his mouth and his cheeks burned a fiery red. With each painful memory spoken, he took a step closer to Luke until he was chest to nose with the short librarian.
Luke couldn’t contain himself. His wide brown eyes clouded with tears that spilled over and rolled down his dark-skinned cheeks. He glanced around Zack’s shoulder to look at Christine. She held a hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her face. It almost broke his heart.
“I’m sorry,” he forced out through ragged breaths. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to them, dad,” Imani spoke up from the foyer. “Not after the way this jerk treated you before you left. Not after the things he said. He’s just pissed he couldn’t take care of his own so he’s taking it out on you.”
Zack stepped around Luke and moved toward Imani, but Luke put himself in his path again. “Let’s just calm down and talk about this,” he said. “We’ve all been through a lot.”
Suddenly, a fist flew out from nowhere and struck Luke in the jaw. Before he knew what happened, he was down on the floor clutching his face. The room was in an uproar again. Some gasped while others snickered.
“That’s for locking me in my apartment!” Carolyn Bock yelled with her fists still raised. “I had to climb out a third-story window!”
Again, Luke was crumpled on the floor in the fetal position with his hands in front of his face. A lump had already formed along his left jaw-line, the purple and blue discoloration quickly taking over his brown skin.
Zack held an arm out to separate Carolyn from Luke, though a creeping smile played at the corners of his mouth. “The man wants to explain himself, let’s let him explain himself…if he can.”
Luke eyed the group suspiciously as he slowly pushed himself up to his feet again.
“Talk,” Zack growled.
“Well, I…I mean…well there was—“
“Let’s start with why you planted one of the dead in your apartment after you left.”
Luke’s brows pulled together as his mouth slowly dropped open. He was dumbfounded, unable to answer.
“You knew we would check on you, come looking for you to see if you’d come back. Was it a trap to kill us?” Zack demanded answers. “Jerry hurt his back fighting off the zombie you left in there for us. He might still be alive if it wasn’t for you, you piece of—“
“I didn’t do it on purpose. It all happened so fast!” Luke interrupted, his eyes welling with more tears. “I left to find my family, but all I found was Imani. I brought her back here to collect some things before we set out to find somewhere to live. I meant what I said. This place wasn’t safe, and I was right, wasn’t I? The walls came down and—“
“You better choose your words carefully, Librarian.” Zack’s eyes narrowed to angered slits.
Luke pursed his lips and let out a slow sigh from his nostrils. He swallowed the saliva that had collected in his mouth and continued on carefully. “I didn’t know they could climb the stairs.”
“They can’t,” Zack retorted.
“Well, this one did. It pulled itself up one step at a time with its hands until it was at my door. We were caught off guard, without our weapons to defend ourselves. Quickly, we got around it and made a break for it. I shut it in the apartment, not thinking anyone was going to go in there again, only thinking about saving my life.”
Zack glared daggers at Luke.
“My daughter’s life,” Luke added strongly. “It wasn’t until we were already in the car, miles away from here that I thought about what would happen in the morning as you guys made your rounds. I knew how many you and Liam and Ralph had killed together. I thought you guys could handle it, no problem.”
“Guess that zombie caught us with our guards down. When we went in there, we thought we were going to find you, maybe your family, and give you the lecture of your life. Not be greeted by a blood-thirsty monster!”
“I’m sorry,” Luke breathed out as more tears collected in his eyes. “I’m sorry for everything. I never meant for anyone to get hurt, to die because of my actions. All I wanted was my family…I just wanted my family.”
With those last few words, Luke couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. He covered his eyes with one of his large hands and sobbed loudly, his shoulders racking with force. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered.
The soft touch of someone’s hand on his shoulder made him startle. When he looked up, revealing bloodshot, tear -soaked eyes, he saw that it was Christine who gripped him comfortingly.
“Where’s your ex-wife? Your step-son?” she asked softly.
This sent Luke into another fit of sobs. “I wanted to help them,” he cried out. “I just wanted to help them. I went there to help them.”
“Tell us what happened.”
Luke nodded his head.
VI
Luke Benson crept from his apartment in the middle of the night. The half-moon hung in the sky peacefully, as if it enjoyed watching the chaos that consumed the world below it. It cast long shadows, mocking those that had to find their way in a zombie-ridden land. He shut the door as quietly as he could, not daring to wake any of the other men inhabiting the building. After his spat with Zack at the old lady’s funeral, he wanted to avoid them at all costs. That was part of the reason he had decided to leave that night. He barely had time to pack anything. All he could think of was his wife and daughter and getting them all somewhere safe.
Once he had tip-toed down the stairs and out into the uncovered Dune Ridge Apartment’s parking lot, his heart raced. It was almost impossible to decipher the shadow of a tree from the shadow of a hungry corpse lying in wait. Each step he took, he tried to force himself to take a breath and then release it, but it kept getting caught in his chest. The overwhelming desire to cough took hold of him, but he refused to open his mouth to release it into the night where anyone or anything could hear him.
When he reached his old Buick, he was finally able to let out the air he’d been holding. He shut himself inside as quickly as he could and slammed a hand down on the lock. When he turned the key, the old engine rumbled, gurgled, and grumbled to life. There was nothing he could do about the noise at that point. If someone heard him, then they heard him. He would drive away if they tried to stop him and leave them in his dust. The plan was to never return again. How could he live peacefully with those people and with the dead trying beat down their walls? He had to find somewhere impenetrable to take his family.
As he drove down the toll road to Whiting, the small lakeside town outside
Chicago that his family lived in, he thought about the last time he’d seen his ex-wife. He had been picking up his daughter for the weekend before the dead overpowered the earth. Her beautiful, dark eyes glowered at him after he rang the doorbell, three hours late. No matter what he said, it didn’t matter. He had said it all to her before and she was done hearing it. Nothing he did made her smile anymore. But now, things have changed. The world was crumbling and it would force her to see what was truly important. He would make her smile again when he showed up to save her.
What used to be a forty minute drive at seventy miles an hour was now a fifteen mile an hour crawl around the wreckage that littered the road. Abandoned cars, suitcases, clothes, garbage, dead bodies; it was all scattered from one end to the other. As he drove, Luke found his mind drifting to the people those things belonged to and how they came to lose them. Each time he arrived at the conclusion that they probably met an unexpected and bloody end. Some were even lying in pieces next to their things as proof.
When he finally made it into Whiting, air caught in his lungs and stung. It was worse than he’d imagined. The main strip of buildings on 119th Street were burned to the ground. Smoke no longer rose from the charred pits of the brick businesses. The road was impassible, even to someone on foot. Luke’s jaw separated as he stared, stopped in the middle of the four-way intersection next to what used to be a White Castle. Instead of going straight into the wreckage, he turned left down a brick road and weaved his way around the neighborhood to his ex-wife’s house on Central Avenue.
Even though there was no one out on the roads, especially a police officer patrolling the area as he had foolishly hoped, Luke still felt the need to stop at all the signs and use his turn signal. Just because civilization had crumbled that didn’t mean he had to forget how things used to be. He felt in his heart he could keep civility going if he just pretended like everything was fine and obeyed the rules of the old world.
Dead Soil (Book 2): Dead Road Page 2