I followed her—not out of any desire to help her, but because at least she was doing something, giving me some sort of instruction. How the hell was I supposed to navigate this on my own?
My hand struck something hard, and I felt around the edge of a building. I quickly placed my back against it, pointing the rifle blindly into the murk.
They shuffled forward, not unlike my roommate after too many hours in her five-inch stilettos. Hell, maybe eating people was just a cry for a good podiatrist.
“Vibeke!”
“Dax?” I felt along the wall and came across a leather-clad arm. He still had his gun clutched in his hands, though like me, he didn’t seem to know where to aim. “Where’s Tony?”
He shook his head. “I heard him over there, but there’s this…there’s a clump…”
Soft laughter caught my attention. Dax’s eyes met mine, and we slowly turned around to stare at the woman.
I could swear the gray thing in her arms squirmed.
Of course. Of course the thing decided to reanimate. Why wouldn’t it choose now, of all times, to get the munchies?
I guess it was a good thing we hadn’t tried to take it with us. I could imagine reaching into a saddlebag to find some crackers and winding up being used as a chew toy.
Evie’s barking cut into Operation: Gawk at the Undead Baby, followed by the scrape of feet against pavement. I tore my gaze away from the twisting gray bundle and focused on the bigger gray things still coming our way. The herd had thinned out a little, either staggering off to investigate Evie or simply too slow to really keep up with us.
A gun cracked nearby, and the ghouls nearest us paused. A faster, darker figure sprinted between them, swinging a thin rod from side to side. It thunked soundly against heads and shoulders, knocking the dead things off-balance, if not really harming them otherwise. Tony yanked out one of his silenced pistols and dispatched the one nearest us. “Come on!”
He slammed what I figured was a piece of rebar into the nearest ghoul’s head, then thrust himself in front of us. He’d bought us a few seconds, anyway.
He reached out with one hand, fumbling along my rifle’s frame until something clicked faintly. “They don’t seem to care for the dog. She’s drawing some of them to her, but they get bored and walk right off. Good to know.”
“You’re going to use our dog as bait?” I asked.
Tony pulled the rifle away from me and awkwardly aimed it at a ghoul shuffling toward us. The gun discharged with a loud blop, striking the revenant in its temple. The action bought us another minute, unless one of them took a flying leap.
Tony made a satisfied sound. “Only if we need to.” He glanced at the woman next to me. “You armed?”
She didn’t seem to notice him, and instead hummed to her bundle of terror.
Tony nodded. “Right, the brain’s gone on this one. I’m taking point with the rifle. Vibby, follow me. Dax…try not to…feel for the plight of humanity.”
Dax scowled at him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
The vocal acrobatics of the undead spiraled up into a full, bellowing howl. My eardrums rang. Maybe this was how they’d overpowered the army—sheer unholy noise.
Tony shoved the rebar at me. “If anything comes at you, swing first.”
“What if it’s alive?”
“Swing first!”
Right. Swing first. I closed my hands around the rebar, taking a couple of practice swings. I would’ve preferred a baseball bat, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers when the living dead come calling.
“On three,” Tony said. “Follow me.”
Oh, this is going to end badly.
“Three!”
He jumped out into the haze, the rifle issuing loud, distinctive pops as he aimed at the creatures coming toward us. Dax looked at me, briefly rolled his eyes skyward, and went after him.
That left me and my would-be club to bring up the rear.
I glanced at the woman. She smiled at me, though the baby had stopped moving. I stared at it a second too long—had it moved at all? Was I imagining it?
Shit, now I’m hallucinating the undead? This week really had gone to hell in a handbasket.
Well, when the going gets tough, the tough start smashing.
I lurched after the boys, breaking out my best Babe Ruth impression. I didn’t bother going for necks; my aim wasn’t that good to start with, and I had a long way to go before I could lift stretchers again. I smashed the rebar against whatever came close, swinging with every muscle I had left in my tired, overworked body. When I hit hard enough, the impact knocked them aside. When I didn’t…well…I swung again.
At least I didn’t have to reload.
I followed the sound of the gunshots and Evie’s howls, hammering away at anything that moved. Every impact traveled up the rebar, oscillating through my wrists and jeopardizing my fragile grip. The gunfire ahead seemed to have drawn off most of them, although the occasional figure still staggered toward me out of the haze, groping for me with the same gnarled, too-thin fingers. I tried to run on my toes, tried to stifle my too-loud gasps for air. Be quiet. Be quiet. They’re following the gunshots. Just be quiet…SWING!
The rebar thunked against a head.
The haze briefly cleared, and the harsh, guttural roar of the Road King’s engine briefly overwhelmed the sound of the dead. The lone ghoul coming toward me abruptly shifted its direction, turning to the bike and Evie’s frenzied barking—the dog almost sounded hoarse.
“Vibeke! Let’s go!”
I glanced left and right to make sure I was in the clear. A few more feet and I’d be on the bike, and we could throttle on down Industrial Road, leaving the fires and the ghouls and everything else to remain the stuff of nightmares.
The soft, almost delicate touch on my arm told me it wasn’t a ghoul trying to get my attention. I turned around, and there was the damned woman again, holding out her child and staring at me with big, glassy eyes. “Please.”
It wasn’t moving. Maybe I really had dreamed the whole thing up.
But even if I had…
“Vibeke, get your ass over here!”
Her voice went soft, and I had to strain to hear her over the sound and fury. “I can’t go with you. But you can save her.”
How do you tell someone their child is beyond saving? I hadn’t figured that out in two years as an EMT, and I for damned sure didn’t know what to tell this woman now.
I had the choice then, to be the selfless person and do the right thing. I could take the dead kid and shove it into a saddlebag. The woman was clearly half-gone herself; why not give her a little hope?
But we had crammed three people, a golden retriever, and supplies onto the Road King already, and I was pretty sure another burden—no matter how small—would be the end of us. There was no room left in the saddlebags…besides, with our luck, it’d probably wake up and bite us.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the mother. “I’m sorry. I can’t help her. She’s gone already. I’m sorry.”
All the apologies in the world mean nothing to a grieving parent. She hated us. I couldn’t blame her. I hated myself.
But I wanted to live, so I fled, ignoring the woman as she cursed and screamed and cried—the things we all do one day, when we face the dark, the cruel, and the horribly unfair.
I ran.
God help me, I ran.
ELEVEN
I woke up in a cold place.
I didn’t remember stopping or even lying down. Someone had tossed my jacket over me, and I pushed it away from my eyes, blinking in the dim gray light.
The Road King rested on its kickstand several feet away from me, along with what looked like two piles of makeshift bedding.
Skylights dotted the ceiling of what I guessed was some sort of warehouse. When did we get here? Did I pass out on the tank?
I ached all over. I suspected I’d accumulated some nasty damage, but didn’t feel like actually considering the possibilities.
I knew that my leg and side hurt from how I’d landed last night. My face hurt from smashing against the gas tank.
At least my head was cushioned against something soft and warm. One of the guys?
I shifted around for a look and wound up with a mouthful of slobbering golden retriever.
“Hi,” I mumbled to Evie, reaching up to rub her neck. I forced myself to sit up, clenching my teeth through every ache and pain in my body—which felt like an awful lot, all things considered. I hadn’t hurt this badly since I first started carting around stretchers. The inevitable adrenaline crash is always a bitch.
“Breakfast is on,” Tony said. He and Dax crouched around a tiny fire about ten feet away, each of them munching. “Welcome back to the world, princess.”
I managed to drape one arm across my knees. “What happened?”
“Engine choked. That fire didn’t help things.” Tony rubbed the back of his neck with his bandana, and the cloth came away smeared with dirt and grease. “I’ll clean out the filter. This place seemed safe enough to stop for awhile.”
I rubbed my eyes and made a face at the dark goop coming away from them. “How far did we get?”
“I think we’re out of Astra. More importantly, we’ve got a few hours on those things.” He poked at the fire thoughtfully, then inspected the smoking tip of the stick. “Wonder how much that inferno slowed them down. You remember anything?”
I frowned, trying to organize my thoughts. God, even thinking hurt. “I remember getting back on the bike, and you sped up, and then…things get fuzzy.”
“His fault,” Dax pointed at Tony. “We hit a speed bump.”
It took me a second to remember my position on the gas tank, and the resounding clud noise a human skull makes when it bangs against metal. “So that’s why my head hurts.”
“Hey, I didn’t see the fucking thing.”
“Well, maybe if you’d bothered putting on the headlight—”
“There were dead people and gangbangers and a goddamned fire up our asses! Did I have time to wire that fucker in?” Tony huffed and turned to me. “Anyway, I’m sorry if I broke your head. But you’re up and about, and that bruise’ll fade in a few days.”
I stared at him. “I have a bruise?”
Both men looked at me awkwardly for a moment. Tony decided the stick was really fascinating.
“Install the damned headlight,” Dax said. “While it’s light out and there aren’t hordes of angry undead trying to make us dinner.”
Tony grumbled, but got up and started rummaging around through the saddlebags. He got to work on the Road King, headlight in-hand, complaining loudly about not getting paid to act as a chauffeur.
Dax brought me some crackers. “This’ll be better for your stomach than jerky,” he said. “I’d give you some cheese, but Evie got into it while we weren’t looking.”
I glanced at the dog. “Bitch.”
She gave me a cheerful golden grin, probably just relieved to be off the luggage rack.
The sound of munching and metal tinkering filled the air, and accompanied by Evie’s good-natured panting, the place felt almost…normal. Well, as normal as things got, post-meteor shower. At least we weren’t being chased, shot at, or set ablaze. I looked at Dax. “Last night. That woman…”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Too bad, Boy Scout. “Her baby was already dead. We couldn’t have done anything.” I didn’t say anything about the woman herself, who hadn’t even tried to chase after me. She’d apparently decided things were over for her already.
Will I be like that, in the end? Will I just not care?
I decided it was better not to think about it, and pushed her empty, forlorn stare as far away as I could.
“Sure you could’ve,” Tony said around the screws held between his teeth. “You could’ve taken the kid and made her feel better, and one of us would’ve lost a finger when the thing woke up.” He took in my surprised expression. “Dax told me all about it once we stopped.”
Dax shrugged. “I felt guilty.”
“You both did. Makes you human, or at least bleeding hearts. Really cute.” Tony started fooling with the wires, hiding his face from us. “Good thing that kid was dead. You have any idea how fast a crying baby would bring bad things down on top of us? Times like this, we need to think of our own survival. It’s human nature.”
Are you trying to make us feel better? The kinder, gentler me would have recoiled at his words, but post-apocalyptic me found them oddly comforting. They made sense. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to live. “I still wish we could’ve done something.”
“Yeah, well, polite society goes out the window pretty fast. You get a few extraordinary sorts who step up to the plate and work for the rest of us, kind of redeem the species as a whole, but most people? We don’t care. We just want to cover our own asses. The corporate world is really very natural. It’s all about survival, and there’s not a lot of heroism in survival.”
Dax sighed heavily. “Thanks, Tony. You can stop now.”
I nodded in agreement. That seemed pretty heavy, even for Tony. Maybe he was just acting like a hardass for our benefit.
“Hey, I do what I can. Now if we can get this light mounted, maybe—fuck!” He stuck his fingers in his mouth.
“Shouldn’t you disconnect the battery?” The last thing we needed was him frying himself before he’d taught us how to ride the damn bike.
“Can’t. What if the bike won’t start up again?” Tony pointed toward the doors. “Something could come through at any minute. We need to be ready to get out of here.”
“Well, good luck with that. Now, if you’ll excuse me...” Dax stood up and walked stiffly to a door in the corner—bathrooms, I assumed. At least they picked a place with partitions.
Tony scuffled around with the bike some more. “You did a bang-up job back at the office,” he said, not looking at me. “Always thought you had it in you.”
Always thought I could kill someone? Gee, that’s swell of you, Tony. “Did you ever kill a guy?”
His head snapped up. “No.”
Something very much like relief coursed through me. “Good.”
I hadn’t meant to say it aloud. He swung around, smirking through the dirt and grease all over his face. “Wouldn’t you rather have a trained psycho guiding you along? Might keep you safer.”
“He might, until he turned on us.” I stood up and edged toward him, trying to ignore the sharp pain shooting through my legs and back. I could move, at least. I probably hadn’t broken anything too important. “Did you mean what you said, about covering our asses and leaving her?”
He turned back to the bike and stared down at the mass of wires in his hands. “What do you think?”
I knew he wasn’t that hard-hearted. I reached out and laid my fingers against his shoulder. “You saved us. Thank you.”
He smoothed his thumb along the headlight casing. “Most little kids want to be heroes one day, save people. Funny how that just bleeds out of you when you get older.” He took a deep breath. “I used to wonder what it’d feel like to kill someone. If I’d feel different afterward.”
“Do you?”
He looked up at me, a grim sort of weariness in his eyes. “No. I just feel…bad.”
It wasn’t much, but it was something I hadn’t seen in him before. Somewhere underneath all the cynicism and sarcasm, there was an actual human being. Who knew?
“You did good,” I said.
To my surprise, he reached up and tapped his fingers to mine. The feel of his callused fingertips against my knuckles startled me more than it should have—we weren’t much for open displays of gratitude. “You too,” he said, before shrugging me away. “I’ll open the throttle on her today. See how fast she can go.”
“I thought we weren’t going fast at all?”
“She’s fast enough to dodge the undead, but I don’t know what’s in front of us. More of the shuffling masses, sure, maybe genera
l psychos trying to get us to take their kids to the Promised Land. We’ll have to kill them or outrun them, and I have a feeling our gas will last longer than our ammo.”
At least he was honest.
The bathrooms here still functioned, as I discovered when I hobbled off to explore. I did my business carefully, silently praising the sewage system that had held up to the meteor’s pummeling. We might slowly devolve into gun-toting savages, but dammit, our toilets still flushed.
For now. Who knew how long the plumbing would hold up?
One look in the mirror chased away my momentary glee. Appearances and personal hygiene take a nosedive after the end of the world, but I still flinched at my reflection. I hadn’t showered for at least two days, and I was completely drained of color, save the bruise splashed across my face, along with the blood, dirt, and other fun things I was fairly sure I didn’t want to identify. Honestly, if I hadn’t stood up straight, I don’t think anyone could have separated me from the dead things stumbling around Astra.
I turned on the water and made do with the sink and what little soap was left in the dispenser. The grime came off easily enough, but I had to dig my fingernails into the blood to peel it away. Little flakes of horror dropped into the sink, where they congealed around the drain.
I turned off the water. Where was my toothbrush? Had I even brought one? My mouth felt as funky as a dead bird in a gutter. I swished water around my mouth, loosening bits of debris and God knew what else. I spat it out and carefully did not look at the colors.
Another look in the mirror told me I was at least passably clean. It would have to do. I left the bathroom in a hurry.
The boys were already cleaning up the campsite when I limped over. “Something was rustling around outside,” Dax said, sticking what was left of breakfast back into the saddlebag. Tony frantically dug crud out of the engine shield, his knuckles bleeding through their coating of grease and ash. “Evie got all upset.”
“Maybe it was an animal.” Yeah, right, and maybe this was all just a terrible reality show. The place had no windows; for all we knew, a whole mob of the dead were patiently waiting for us to come wandering out.
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