Keep Your Crowbar Handy

by SP Durnin

  Kat slid away from the door. Sheathing her sword again with a shaking hand, she leaned against the outside wall, wrapping her arms around her torso in an attempt to get herself under control. The young woman felt extremely conflicted. She knew, without a doubt, that she should forget about Jake and those weird eyes and that smile and the way her heart raced when they kissed and...

  Stop it. Laurel is your best friend. Are you really so low, so desperate, that you'd stab her in the back? Betray her trust? Ruin everything?

  She didn't have an answer. She'd never intentionally hurt her roommate. She loved her like a sister and wanted her to be happy. Kat was overjoyed that her friend and Jake had hit it off. Laurel deserved him. She deserved someone who was sweet and strong and kind and honest and sexy and…

  Stop it!

  Kat heard their ragged breathing from inside the office and, against her better judgment, slowly moved to the doorway again. She knew she should go. This was private. Intimate. Something she had no right to see. She decided to turn around and go back to the others. In just a minute or two.

  Her friends were still locked together, unwilling to let each other go as their bodies trembled and their minds reeled in the aftermath of the coupling. Jake remained hunched over Laurel, head down, chest working like a bellows, still holding her up away from the surface of the desk. Laurel gripped him tightly, face mashed against his shoulder as she panted, and continued running her hands over his back. She leaned against his arm, moving his face around again to meet his lips.

  The kiss was slow and sensual, not a frantic demand. Kat looked on and her stomach fluttered. What she could see of Laurel's heavy-lidded face glowed in the low light and Jake's, while still tired, was content. Both were covered in a light sheen of sweat and still slightly out of breath, but she could tell there was real affection in their eyes. Her pulse sped up. Whether at the thought of her friend finding happiness in the writer's arms or the fantasy of him directing those pale, blue eyes her way as he wore that look, Kat couldn't tell.

  Upon seeing the expression on Jake's face, an irrational surge of jealous lust flowed through her. Kat realized the silent vow she'd made wouldn't hold an ounce of merit if she were given half a chance. She wanted that. She wanted him. Unless Jake flat-out told her it could never, ever happen... she'd wait. Be there, quietly in the wings, in case…

  Stop it, her intellect told her.

  Screw. You, her heart answered.

  She realized it was selfish. She also had no illusions as to how deeply Jake cared for her lovely, red-haired friend. The problem was any sense of self-control she had went right out the window when he turned those eyes towards her.

  Edging away from the door, Kat listened as they whispered to each other. Though she couldn't make out her words, Laurel's voice brushed past her like a soft scarf, made of velvet smoke. Jake's followed in a murmur that stroked the base of Kat's spine and made her breath catch in her throat. She stood pressed against the wall, eyes closed, wishing desperately that she could trade places with Laurel to have that husky timbre against her ear. Then the pitch of his voice deepened and Kat heard her friend hiss with pleasure.

  Again? Already? she thought, as Laurel's breathy moans floated quietly from the room. Oh my God!

  Kat fled, unable to listen any longer, let alone dare to peek through the doorway again. She crossed the dark hangar's width, making sure to circle long-ways around the Mimi, and returned to the small circle of dim light emanating near the garish transport's rear hatch.

  Rae and the Barbie duo had already sacked out for the night, locked away in the Mimi's coffin-like sleeping bunks. Kat didn't like the things. She never got much rest in them. It was lonely in there. Most times, she would just lean back in one of the seats, or stretch out next to the vehicle's rear hatch on a mummy bag.

  Elle and young Leo had volunteered to share watch duty on the roof earlier, so only Foster and Gertrude, who was knitting something, remained awake. They sat on a pair of camp chairs looted from Tim's Emporium, sipping coffee brewed from an old-fashioned percolator, via their Coleman stove.

  "Hey guys. Any more of that left?" Kat asked hopefully.

  George tossed her a metal cup from the pack beside his chair. "Just remember ta wash it afterwards, huh?"

  The pretty Asian stuck her tongue out at him and, using one of Gertie's knitted potholders, poured herself a cup of Joe. They didn't have any milk, only dry creamer and sugar packets, but after stirring both into the brew it tasted of Heaven.

  "Do you know where Jake got off to, dear?" Gertrude looked around. "I haven't seen him in a bit, and if he's unsupervised for too long, he tends to do fairly heroic but very stupid things."

  Think fast, Kat thought.

  "I saw him with Laurel a while ago. They had a spat the other day and needed to work some things out."

  "I know what they needed to work out." George waggled his eyebrows with a leer.

  Gertrude rolled her eyes and went back to her knitting.

  "What?" Foster demanded. "She's a knockout. He's a decent lookin' guy. You do the math."

  Kat sipped her coffee and decided to keep her mouth shut. For once.

  "No different than Leo and Elle up there." He waved a hand at the ceiling. "Or Al and that Heather girl, fer that matter."

  George sobered as he mentioned Jake's skinny friend, then stated he had some numbers to run regarding the transport's fuel consumption rate. He folded up his chair and took it, along with his mug of coffee, up the ramp into the Mimi.

  "He's very worried about poor Allen." Gertrude explained. "George is sure if we don't get to them in the next day or so, those awful men will probably kill him."

  "Al's a lot tougher than he looks," Kat replied. "I'd have thought he'd be worried about Maggie and the girls."

  Gertrude continued. "He is, dear. But unless something causes those men to become a lot crazier than they are, they'll keep our ladies alive. Allen may not be of any use to them if you get my meaning."

  "Oh." Kat considered that. "Well, we'll think of something. There's no way Jake will let Al get killed. They've been friends forever. He'll figure out a way to save them and we'll go deal with those creeps. The same way we did with the men—and I use that term loosely—who captured the Barbies. "

  Gertie was watching Kat's face as she spoke, and for some reason it made the ninja-girl decidedly uncomfortable. Gertrude put her needles aside. "Come here for just a moment if you would, dear?"

  Frowning, Kat circled the camp stove, and moved close to Jake's neighbor. Gertie placed her mug on the concrete floor next to her chair. As she took hold of Kat's hands, she pulled gently until the younger woman went slowly to her knees in front of her chair.

  "You need to talk, don't you?"

  "Um. I'm not sure what you mean," Kat said.

  Gertrude gave her a level look. "Alright. I'll just ask. Have you told Jake yet?"

  Kat was surprised at that. "What?"

  "That you're in love with him?" Gertie clarified. "Please, dear, close your mouth. It's very unattractive to have it hanging open that way."

  Quickly pulling her slack jaw up off the floor, Kat's first instinct was to deny, deny, deny. "Gertie, I am not in love with Jake. I don't know where you would get that idea, but…"

  "Really?" The aged woman asked in a droll tone. "The fact that you nearly tore through the wall of our safe house when he was fighting those creatures? That was a fairly good indication."

  "I had to hurry! They were going to eat him!"

  "And your kiss afterwards?"

  Kat blinked. "How did…"

  "The security camera in George's office."

  "It-It was just relief!" she stammered. "I was glad he hadn't been bitten! He is my friend after all. Why wouldn't I be happy?"

  Gertrude waved that argument aside. "And the fact that it's you, not Laurel, going out among the zombies with him in our Humvee? You kind of blackmailed that one out of him."

  "I did not! Well... not really,
" Kat admitted. "Laurel's a good shot, but she doesn't have a vicious bone in her body. There has to be someone out there to protect him when things go all pear shaped."

  "Mmm-hmm. Those are all excellent explanations, Katherine. Believable even. But I know differently." Gertrude patted Kat's hand. "Maybe my generation is simply more observant than... what would we call the current one, dear? Generation Z?"

  "Gertie, it's late and…"

  "When he's nearby, no matter what you're doing, your eyes keep going back to his face." Gertrude interrupted in a gentle but no-nonsense tone. "When he so much as stumbles, your hand twitches to reach out for him. I saw your face when the two of you kissed, dear. You looked like a love-sick teenager. You get that way every time he so much as glances at you."

  "I do not..." Kat stared at the floor.

  "Katherine, it's obvious." Gertie took her by the chin lightly with one hand and brought her face up. The younger woman's eyes were wide and frightened. "If you don't come to terms with it, you're going to end up falling apart."

  A tear tracked its way down Kat's face, and when she spoke Gertie could tell she was fighting to remain in control.

  "But Laurel…she's my friend. Besides, you said you liked her, and…"

  "I do like her," Gertrude admitted, "but I never said she was The One. Or that she and Jake should start picking out china patterns. That remains to be seen. I want the boy to be happy too, Katherine. He's had far too much pain in his life, even before the last two months. Do you know for a fact that if the pair of you became romantically involved, you wouldn't end up being deliriously happy?"

  "Just the opposite." Kat whispered, closing her eyes against more tears. "We have a lot in common."

  "Then for heaven's sake, tell him."

  Kat had trouble speaking. "I can't! He and Laurel… I don't want to hurt her. Oh, Gertie, what am I going to do?" She threw her arms around the older woman's waist, laid her head on her oversized, camouflage pants, and began to cry.

  Gertrude held her as she sobbed quietly. She smoothed Kat's hair and rocking her slowly, as the blue-haired girl tried to keep the sound of her heart breaking from echoing through the empty hangar.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The next morning, Jake's group of survivors received a surprise.

  Leo had thrown together oatmeal and dried fruit for breakfast, which wasn't bad, and earned him a peck from the sleepy-eyed Elle as she headed for the Mimi to change her clothes.

  "So what do we do?" Kat was twining Laurel's hair into the braid her friend kept it in lately, while making a conscious effort not to look at Jake every few seconds. She double wrapped an elastic hair-tie on the end of the braid. "All done!"

  "You're the best." Laurel smiled.

  Don't look at him, don't look at him, don't look at him...

  Jake finished his smoke and tamped the butt—don't think about his butt—out on the hangar floor. "Rae, has Al's signal moved?"

  "Yeah," Rae replied, "about three meters. I'm thinking the attackers took our people straight to their home base. We need to scout it fast."

  "Which means I'll be taking another trip in the Hummer." He stood and brushed the seat of his pants.

  Do not. Think about. His butt!

  "You sure we shouldn't just convoy?" George suggested.

  Jake winced. "We might need to move fast and the Mimi's just too big to move through…"

  He was interrupted by the sound of something meaty thumping on the hangar's entrance. It was basically a small hatch in the huge, sliding door at the southern-most side, allowing entry without cranking the mammoth slider open.

  "Do zombies... knock?" Rae wore a confused look.

  "Oh God, it's those things!" Donna exclaimed in a voice that made Jake's hair hurt. "They're trying to get in! They're…"

  "Shut it!" Foster growled. "The damn things can't work a doorknob! She-e-it, woman. Long as we stay quiet and out of sight, it'll be fine. It probably…"

  The low thumping sound came from the door again. The survivors looked at one another silently, and began reaching for their weapons. As the others waited at their vehicles, Jake, Kat, Elle, and Foster ghosted towards the door. There was another series of thumps as they approached, and the old fixer motioned for the trio to fan out around the entrance. That would allow for overlapping fields of fire if something nasty came through. After getting thumbs up all around that they were ready, George slowly unlatched the deadbolt and yanked the door open. Foster spun behind the steel slab as he pulled it from the frame to give himself some cover, but when none of them fired, poked his head out to take a look.

  A short man in a pair of grey coveralls stood outside. He held a small .22 hunting rifle, thankfully pointed away from the group of heavily-armed and hard-faced individuals currently targeting him with automatic weapons, which was why he didn't get perforated. The newcomer had a small backpack over one shoulder and his well-worn, dirty but serviceable pair of Bates work boots were all but glued to the tamarack in shock. He also wore a fishing vest. Jake noticed that his left bottom pocket held a cheap two-way radio. The man's eyes widened as he saw them, weapons steady and locked on his face. He lowered his rifle to hang from its strap on his right shoulder, then put his hands in the air.

  "Oh, shit," he said. "Please don't kill me. The world is really fucked up, but I'd rather not have to explain to the Almighty why I had to shoot my boss in the face just yet."

  Foster took the man's weapon and motioned him into the hangar. As he entered, the stranger caught sight of the rest of their group standing near the Mimi. He gave them a good, long look and seemed to slump a bit in relief.

  "Who are you?" Jake demanded. "How did you find us?"

  The short man turned towards him. "Uh. Warren Jenner. I work here. Worked here. I saw you come in yesterday."

  "Why didn't you approach us then?"

  The stranger snorted. "Yeah, right. Maybe get my head blown off by somebody who got trigger happy? I'll pass, thanks. I thought it would be better if I came over once everyone was fresh in the morning."

  Jake couldn't find any fault with that reasoning.

  "Go ahead and put your hands down." He waved to the others and they lowered their weapons. "Look, we're not going to kill you. Unless you turn out to be barking, shit-house crazy or something. In which case George here is going to take great pleasure in putting a hollow-point through your left eye."

  Jenner looked at the aging fixer, swallowing audibly as Foster patted the Glock riding his hip. "Okey-Dokey."

  "How'd you end up here?" Jake lit up and, seeing the look on Warren's face, passed him one as well.

  Jenner took a deep drag, closed his eyes, and sighed with pleasure. "Christ that's good. It's been a month since I had anything but a crappy menthol."

  Warren Jenner had been among the last to make it out of Dayton alive. Two weeks after the initial outbreak, it was evident that the city had become a deathtrap. Most major metropolitan areas east of the Rockies were written off by the powers-that-be, but many of the smaller ones had been relatively safe. For a while. That all changed when the National Guard units pulled out. At that point, hastily erected barricades of semi-trailers, overturned cars, and razor wire had been holding back the dead around Wright Patterson's 88th Medical Group's hospital. It had only been a matter of time until they broke through the Disaster Aid Center's defenses.

  Warren, his boss Terrie, her husband Pete, Don, and a trio of film students they'd picked up at Wright State University, had watched from the roof of Myong's, a Korean restaurant a block away, when it happened. They'd been trying to determine how to get inside without being eaten, or shot by the Guardsmen walking the tops of the trailers, so they'd seen it all. There were easily hundreds of the things pounding on the barricade and the sight of all that hungry evil was enough to make Jenner believe his veins had suddenly been filled with ice. As they looked on, the eastern barrier failed and all hell broke loose.

  The densely-packed dead had pushed forward on each
other with such combined strength that one end of a trailer began inching into the sanctuary, away from the rest of its impromptu wall. The soldiers protecting the perimeter fired into the crowd, dropping zombies to the pavement by the dozen, but others continued their press onward. The guards began abandoning their posts when the first of the creatures slid around the trailer's edge. The gap in the protective wall widened, and soon the trickle became a river, then a flood. Warren and his companions watched in horror while the surrounding streets emptied and the refugee center turned into a killing field. Thankfully, they were too far away to see many details, for which the short man would be forever grateful. Distant figures went down, and the crowd began feeding on their victims' still-warm flesh. But most were lost in the press of corpses long before they ceased to scream.

  "That was bad. The screams." Warren sipped absently at the coffee Rae had passed him. They were all clustered near the Mimi's rear hatch, listening as he recanted his story. "People calling for help while those things tore them apart...I'll remember one of them until the day I die. I think it was a kid, maybe eight years old or so. Kept screaming, 'Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!' then just cut off. I couldn't see where."

  They all knew the infected had no conscience, but Jenner's story sickened them. A zombie's mental capacity was basically that of a Guinea pig, sans all the fluffy cuteness. A vicious, ugly, bloodthirsty Guinea pig that smelled like road kill and feces. The Mimi's occupants would, in all likelihood, encounter much much more horror of that caliber too, which did nothing to improve Jake's opinion of their chances.

  "How did you end up here?" Jake lit a third American Spirit and passed Warren a second.

  "I was a mechanic for DSL's executive fleet. Four planes make up a fleet. What a joke. Landed the job just after my stint in the Air Force. Terrie's husband Pete ferried their big-wigs around and told us Texas had a secure zone near Pecos. At least that's what the last broadcast said before the TV stations went belly up." Warren snorted. "Pete was sure he could get us down there in the Beechcraft King Air 200 he flew, because it had a seventeen hundred mile range."