Surviving the Dead 03: Warrior Within

by James N. Cook

  With nothing else to do, I turned around and started toward home. The streets were deserted this early in the morning, as most of the townsfolk didn’t get out of bed until after sunrise. Dawn was just turning red and gold to the east, and soon the streets would be crowded with people opening their businesses, forming work crews, boarding wagons to begin another day of work in the fields, or heading to the sheriff’s station to arm up for security duty. For once, I didn’t look forward to the prospect of being among the bustling crowd. Right then, all I wanted was a warm bed and some uninterrupted sleep. It had been more than thirty-six hours since I had last slept, and my steps were beginning to weave from exhaustion.

  When I got home, I took my boots off on the porch, stripped out of my filthy clothes, and crawled into bed. It had been two months since the last time I had lain in my own bed, and it felt indescribably wonderful. The sheets were clean, crisp from being dried on the line, and smelled like Allison and soap. I nestled down into them, relishing the warmth.

  I was out in seconds.

  *****

  The next thing I knew it was dark outside, and someone was crawling into bed with me. A soft, female body slid under the sheets and rolled over so that her back was against my chest. I put an arm around her, told her I loved her, and went back to sleep.

  *****

  I’ve always had trouble remembering dreams.

  When I wake up, I can still feel whatever emotion the dream wrung out of me—usually fear—but I can’t recall the specifics. Not that I wake up screaming, or anything that dramatic. Mostly I just awake with a start, stare around in disorientation for a few seconds, and then reality takes hold and I relax. It had been happening more and more often lately, and it happened again when I woke up next to Allison for the first time in two months.

  She was still asleep, snoring softly, her hair tucked behind her ear and falling gracefully down her neck. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, on the jaw, and on the tip of her nose. Her lips curved into a smile and she rolled over onto her back, eyes still closed. Sunlight from the window played over her soft skin, turning it bright gold in the sullen morning haze. One of her hands came up to the back of my neck, her slender fingers sliding through my hair. She pulled me down, and as soon as our lips met, I wanted her. Not just a little, but a lot. A burning, raging need that made my heart pound and my skin feel like it was on fire.

  I shifted on top of her, gently sliding her legs apart with my knees. At the same time, I kissed a line down her cheek all the way to her neck. Allison turned her head and arched her back, offering her throat. She was wearing nothing but a pair of panties, and her breasts were firm against my chest, hard nipples pressing into my skin. I sealed my mouth around her neck, bit down just a little, and ran my tongue in slow circles, just the way she liked it. She groaned, and clutched at my back, raking me with her nails. Pressing down with my hips, I could feel her wet heat against my cock and began grinding against her. I leaned back, intent on kissing my way down her chest, her stomach, to the deliciously hot softness between her legs.

  Allison opened her eyes to look at me and, with a frightened jolt, I saw that they weren’t brown anymore. Her eyes had turned blue. Her hair had lightened to a honey blond color, and her breasts were two cup sizes bigger. My blood stopped in my veins as I realized it was no longer Allison beneath me.

  It was Miranda.

  Her mouth opened, but there were no words. Just a dark gurgle of blood that sprayed me in the face as her eyes went from the hooded languor of sex to the wide, shocked rictus of panic. She struggled to speak but couldn’t get any words around the black fountain gushing out of her mouth. As I watched, her eyes went pale, then gray, and then shriveled into the wasted orbs of a walker. Her skin wrinkled, rotted, and began to peel away from muscle and bone. I sat up, drew in a breath to scream, and then-

  I woke up.

  Not with a scream. Just a start.

  Allison lay exactly where she had curled up next to me hours before. Neither one of us had moved. She was wearing one of my T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. I stared at her for a moment, making sure her hair was indeed brown, and resisting the urge to pull her eyelids up to make sure her irises were still the color of dark honey.

  In a few moments, my heartbeat slowed, my mind kicked into gear, and the biting cold made its presence known on my skin. Before getting out of bed, I leaned over and kissed Allison on her cheek just as I had done every morning before this whole mess started. This time, she did not stir. Her breathing stayed slow and steady, her body small and still under the heavy comforter. She must have been exhausted after working so late at the clinic. I tucked the blanket back around her neck and left her in peace.

  Grabbing a set of clothes from the closet, I got dressed in the living room so I wouldn’t wake Allison up. On my way to the kitchen to get a bite to eat, I saw something propped up in the corner and stopped. The light in the living room was dim, being that all the windows faced north, and I had to blink a few times to make sure it was really there.

  I took a few steps closer, the hardwood floor creaking under my feet, and reached out a hand to pick it up. Smooth, lacquered rosewood met my fingers as I lifted it out of its stand to hold the headstock close to my eyes. At the top, the stylized curves of a Celtic knot formed an A above the tuning pegs. Breakfast forgotten, I sat down on the ottoman, pulled the guitar across my lap, and ran my fingers across the smooth cedar soundboard.

  I didn’t have a pick, but my fingernails had gotten long enough to pluck the strings. It took me a few seconds to get my stiff fingers to obey my commands, but finally I managed to fire off a scale of basic, one-string notes. The instrument was perfectly tuned, each string vibrating with flawless resonance that echoed effortlessly throughout the room. I had been worried that it was a knockoff, but it wasn’t. In my hands was a genuine Avalon premier series. Before the Outbreak, the particular model I was holding would have sold for more than five thousand dollars. I wondered where Allison had gotten it.

  The light pouring into the kitchen grew brighter, heralding the start of another day. I sat on the ottoman playing note after note and, once my hands were sufficiently warmed up, I began playing a few chords. As the morning wore on, the chords turned into riffs, and the riffs turned into songs. I didn’t think about what I was playing, I just let my mind drift, my eyes drooping shut, and my hands taking over from there.

  I thought about the tiger those Legion raiders had killed, how cottony its thick fur had been, and what it had sounded like when it died shrieking in agony. It was still hard to believe that anything living could have made a sound like that.

  I thought about the Rottweiler I had shot, and the rest of its pack, and wondered how they were doing. I hoped they were still alive, and finding enough to eat. Maybe they had moved north to McKenzie to hunt wild goats.

  Then I thought about the bird that had watched calmly while I sat on a bench surrounded by dead bodies, and cackled like a madman. I wondered if it still remembered me in its little birdbrain.

  Distantly, I became aware of soft footsteps entering the room and settling on the love seat across from me. A sweet, throaty contralto started singing, the voice rising and falling with the music pouring out of the guitar. The voice stirred me, opening my eyes and slowly pulling me back down from the rafters. Once my feet were firmly on the floor again, I realized what I was playing—Eric Bachmann.

  Allison’s voice was like ice on a raw burn, so I kept on strumming the instrument in my hands. She sang on ...

  Crescent blushing veiled by rain,

  Glowing so the day she came.

  Sweet as laughter flowing free,

  Nowhere river carry me.

  Nowhere river carry me.

  I began to drift away again as I played the bridge and she sang along. I wandered back to the warehouse somewhere north of Hollow Rock. There was a bloodstain in that warehouse, lumped in among many others. It was at the edge of a crudely drawn yellow circle, a blotc
h of darkness in the lightless space. I remembered how Number Four’s head had snapped to the side when I kicked him in the neck, and the melonlike crunch as his skull hit the ground. Tears slid out from beneath my eyelids as it occurred to me that I hadn’t thought about him since that day. Maybe too much had been going on, or maybe I was too focused on not blowing my cover. Maybe I had grown so inured to killing that my sleeping mind simply glossed over it.

  Or maybe I just didn’t want to remember.

  Wrenching myself out of that minefield, I came back into the room just in time to hear Allison sing the final chorus.

  Full moon silver snowfall lay,

  Still tonight to light my way.

  Though I may drift and I may roam,

  She’s the one I call my home.

  She’s the one I call my home.

  As the last note faded, I saw Allison staring at me from across the room. She was smiling, but it was sad at the edges. I stood up and put the guitar back on its stand, then crossed the room and sat down next to the woman who had thawed my heart more than anyone I had ever known. Her head came to my shoulder, her arms around my neck. One hand strayed down to my chest and began to rub, back and forth. Back and forth. Sometimes it came up to my face, fingers threading through the growth of beard. Vaguely, as though from a great distance, I became aware of my own voice. I was talking. Relaying in a lifeless monotone the events that had occurred after I stepped foot onto that stealth helicopter two months and a lifetime ago. Allison’s head never left the hollow of my shoulder.

  At some point, I wrapped my arms around her and drew her close, but I didn’t remember doing it. By the time I was finished, the sun had climbed to its tallest perch in the sky, and my beard was wet with tears that had trickled down my face and dripped onto the back of Allison’s arm. The room was silent then, and we let the silence sit there for a while. Finally, she raised her face up to mine and put a warm hand on my cheek.

  “Eric, I’m so sorry.”

  I had expected her to be angry. I had expected her to take her hands off me and recoil in disgust. She knew about all the people I had killed. About torturing Mitchell Carson in that abandoned town. About killing Number Four—a man whose name I would never know—to fulfill my mission against the Legion. About forcing Miranda to … do what she had done in order to maintain my cover. She knew all of it, and she was still there. There was no judgment in her steady gaze. No anger. There were tears at the bottoms of her eyes, and an endless, aching pity.

  Gently, she pulled me down to brush her lips against my forehead, and then drew my face to her chest. I clutched at her, my shoulders beginning to hitch despite my best efforts to stop them. Loving hands caressed my back and held my neck, and all my carefully built walls came crashing down. I held my woman, my love, my anchor, and I wept into her embracing warmth. All the while, the refrain echoed in my head and my heart, falling like a cleansing rain.

  Nowhere river carry me.

  Nowhere river carry me.

  *****

  An hour later, I wasn’t quite myself again, not yet. But at least I wasn’t a blubbering mess anymore.

  I made flatbread sandwiches and held hands with Allison as we ate breakfast in the kitchen. The love of my life made tea, and once two cups were down the hatch, I decided to make something out of my day.

  “You feel like coming with me to check on Gabe?”

  Allison turned away from the sink. “Do you think he’s back in town yet?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  She left the dishes where they were and went to the hall closet to get her coat. I smiled, grabbed my jacket, and followed her out the door.

  Gabe was in his yard when we arrived, hacking away with a sling-blade at the dead, knee-high grass surrounding his porch. It struck me as odd, watching the big man doing something so tediously normal. I had seen him in action so many times, teeth bared and a blazing rifle clutched in his fists, that it was hard to perceive him any other way. But like anyone else, he was just a person. Just a man getting on into his forties. A man who liked to sit on his front porch sipping whiskey, and who, in the midst of a war where he would soon be on the front lines, still found time for the little things. Like yard work. If the next few days went badly, he might not live long enough to enjoy the neatness of a well-tended yard, but nevertheless, here he was. Thwacking away. It made me smile.

  Allison crossed the yard ahead of me and called out, “You know, there are people in town you can hire to help you with that. It’ll take you a week to knock all this grass down by yourself.”

  Gabe stopped working, looked up, and grinned. “Yeah, but I’m old and miserly. I’d rather do it myself and save a nickel.”

  He propped the blade against the porch and made his way over. “What are you two troublemakers getting into today?”

  “Just coming over to make sure you got home in one piece,” I said.

  “Ah hell, I’m fine. I got in yesterday morning. Spent half the day debriefing with General Jacobs. He wants to see you next time you’re free, by the way.”

  “Why? Didn’t he get my statement from Steve?”

  “Yeah, he did. But he wants to hear it from you, face to face.”

  I groaned, and ran a hand across my forehead. “Well, he’s gonna have to wait. I don’t feel like rehashing that. Not right now, at least.”

  “You know, he told me to have you report to him at 0800 yesterday. Do you believe that? Like you’re his fucking errand boy, or something. I reminded him, none too politely I might add, that you’re not in the Army, and he has no authority to go ordering you around. If anything, he owes you a debt of gratitude.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  Gabe grinned even wider. “He goes, ‘Shit, I keep forgetting that Riordan’s a civilian.’ So I say, ‘So am I, just in case you forgot. And this is the last time you try to give me an order, understood?’ He didn’t like that too much, but he kept his mouth shut. I tell you, it’s a lot of fun talking shit to a general and getting away with it.”

  That got a laugh out of me. Allison smiled, and rolled her eyes. Movement caught my eye from the intersection down the street, and I saw a young man in a militia uniform riding a bike toward us.

  “Shit.” I sighed. “What now?”

  The cyclist caught sight of Allison and swerved down Gabe’s driveway. His brakes squealed in protest as he slid to a halt a few feet away from us.

  “Mornin’ Robinson,” Gabe said, recognizing the young man. “What do you need?”

  He pointed a finger at Allison. “One of the patients fell out of his bed and broke his arm.”

  Allison’s smile disappeared, and the calm, clear-eyed mien of a doctor took its place. “How bad?”

  The kid paled a bit, which was impressive considering how dark his skin was. “I could see the bone poking through.”

  Allison said something decidedly unladylike, and reached toward Robinson’s bike. “I need to commandeer this from you.”

  He hopped off hurriedly. “Yeah, go on. Take it.”

  Allison climbed on and turned to Gabe and me. “Guys, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  I waved her off. “It’s fine, sweetie. Sounds like somebody needs you more than we do.”

  She reached out, grabbed my arm, stole a quick kiss, and then pedaled down the road. Robinson followed her at a brisk trot. When they had gone out of sight over a hill, I turned to Gabe and said, “Care for a drink?”

  He sighed, and started walking toward the porch. “Why the hell not?”

  Once inside the dark, cool house, Gabe poured two tumblers of Mike Stall’s finest and we took a seat in the kitchen. I put my back to the warm sun coming in through the window and looked across the table at Gabriel.

  “Listen Gabe, we need to talk.”

  His eyebrows came together. “About what?”

  “Since when do you speak Russian?”

  The eyebrows drew down tighter. “The hell difference do
es it make?”

  “I want to know. Your always saying, ‘You never asked’ when I find out something new about you that you never told me about. So now I’m asking. Since when do you speak Russian?”

  He thought about it for a while, ruminating over his drink. He took one sip and put it down. Spun it twice on the table. Another sip. Another spin. If he was trying to wait me out, he was going to have to wait a long damn time.

  “Gabe?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because you’re my best and oldest friend, but sometimes I feel like I don’t know you at all. Or maybe I just know a part of you, the Gabe you let out for the world to see. I think I’ve earned an explanation at this point. You’re not being much of a friend by keeping me in the dark.”

  His gaze flickered as I spoke and, by the end of the last sentence, he had lowered his face to the table.

  “Okay then.” He pointed a finger toward a bookshelf in the living room. “Go get a book off that shelf for me.”

  I turned to look at it. “Which one?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Any one of them will do.”

  I shot him a quizzical glance, but did as he asked. Returning to the table, I held the book out to him.

  “Open it to any page.”

  I put my thumb in the middle and flipped it open. It had been shut a long time, and the pages crackled as I pulled them apart. Gabe held out a hand, and I gave him the book.

  As I sat back down, he started reading. I watched his eyes flitter back and forth as he worked his way down the page. Finished, he handed the book back to me and pointed at the top margin.

  “Read along with me.” He said, and closed his eyes. Over the next minute or so, he proceeded to recite the page he had indicated.