by Gina Ranalli
Jude touched Andrew’s shoulder and hissed, “What are you doing?”
Slapping his hand away, Andrew said, “She’s a witch.”
“A . . . what?” Are you insane? If you throw that word around, eventually it will come back to you!”
Andrew regarded him coolly. “What then?”
Grimacing, Jude was at a loss. “A spy,” he said finally.
Without missing a beat, Andrew suddenly shouted, “A spy! A spy for the sinners!”
There was much commotion as people scrambled to get out of the way of the zombie as he dragged the young girl to the front of the church by her hair.
Not enough people had heard Andrew’s shout, but the greasy man was one of them and he instantly jumped on top of the pew and repeated the accusation at the top of his voice.
“A spy for the sinners! A spy! A spy for the sinners!”
Andrew was very impressed with Rick’s powerful voice and wondered if he could put him to use somehow. The man was clearly dedicated and as the zombie began to rip the blonde girl apart with its teeth, Andrew watched Rick instead of the bloody spectacle happening at his feet.
The greasy man with the goatee continued his jubilant cries while bouncing on the pew, clapping his hands and grinning the grin of the eternally damned.
Chapter Thirty
Jackson got off six rounds, each one finding their marks and dropping the zombies mid-stride.
Despite the exploding skulls and bloody brain matter, he felt a twinge of pride then the cylinder clicked. He was out of ammo. He worriedly glanced in Lindy’s direction and saw she was flanked by Monty and Dusty, with Sebastian a yard or so in front of her, down on one knee, staring down the barrel of his beloved M14 rifle.
POP! POP! POP!
THUNK!
Beside him, Jado had thrown a knife with effortless expertise, catching one of the zombies smack in the eye from a distance of thirty feet. She saw him looking at her and said, “My father used to tell me, ‘Even though you’re a girl, you should always fight like a brave.’ I guess he’d be pretty proud of me right now.”
Immediately another knife appeared in her hand and she let it fly, tossing it almost casually at a zombie that had snuck up on their left. “You should reload,” she said once the second knife had been buried up to the hilt in the sneaky zombie’s forehead.
“Yeah,” he said and spun around, making his way down one of the grocery aisles to do just that.
By the time he came running back, not a single zombie remained standing; he skidded to a halt, sweat trickling down the side of his face.
Monty began to whoop it up, hooting and hollering, jumping around like a coked-up circus monkey.
Standing poised with her crossbow pointed, Lindy seemed older somehow. In fact, she held herself with such confidence and inner-strength that for a moment Jackson wondered what the rest of them were even doing here. He swallowed hard, remembering his own daughter without knowing why.
Turning away, he re-holstered his weapon and watched as Jado plucked knives from heads by planting one boot solidly on the faces of the dead, jerking her body in a sharp twist, and yanking the blades from the skulls in one fluid motion.
“We got those suckers!” Monty yelled. “Piece of cake! Woooo! They didn’t stand a chance!”
Sebastian rose from his crouched position to reload his rifle while Dusty spent a moment with each dead person, kneeling over them with her eyes closed. Jackson supposed she was praying for their souls and while he admired her for it, he knew it was going to be a lost cause, if not at this particular battle, then during the ones to come.
She wouldn’t be able to pray for them all.
Only Lindy still remained in her fighting stance, looking down the length of the crossbow and sweeping it from dead zombie to dead zombie, as if she feared at any second they’d get back up again.
Jackson hoped she didn’t know something the rest of them didn’t.
He approached her and gently nudged the weapon until it pointed at the floor. “Easy, kiddo. It’s over.”
She blinked at him, her eyes harder than he’d ever seen them. “For now.”
“Yes. For now. But you have to relax. You’re strung tighter than a tennis racket.”
“Wouldn’t you be,” she asked, “if you were me?”
“I guess so.” He sighed.
Her gaze wandered away from him to look at the others. “We came here for food. Let’s try to get some so this wasn’t just a waste of ammo.”
Watching her as she walked away, leading the others deeper into the grocery store, Jackson had a hard time remembering the girl he’d first met years ago when she’d been walking home from school that day. Just like that, she was a new person—the tough, fearless warrior had arrived.
He’d always known it would happen, but he hadn’t expected it to happen so suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped.
“She’s the one, isn’t she?”
Jackson spun, hand reflexively reaching for his weapon again.
Behind him stood a girl, maybe a year or two younger than Lindy, with crazy-curly dark hair that hung to her shoulders. She was dressed in dirty, ragged clothing that Jackson guessed had been on her body for at least a couple of weeks.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that,” he told her.
Unfazed by his gruffness, she repeated her question and added, “They told me she would come.”
Brow knit, he asked, “Who told you?”
“The Deadists.”
Jackson was afraid to hear the answer, but he asked anyway. “The who?”
“Deadists. My mom and dad are in the church now.”
The girl’s eyes were rimmed red and bloodshot. Jackson wondered when was the last time she had slept.
She added, “Father Andrew told everyone to expect her. He told us she was being sent to stop the cleansing, but I don’t believe him. He gives me a bad feeling.”
A lump of fear formed in Jackson’s throat. He swallowed painfully and wiped one sweaty palm against the leg of his pants. “Father Andrew.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah, but I don’t think he’s really a priest. He . . .” The girl wobbled on her feet and Jackson reached out a hand to steady her. “I think I might faint,” she said. “Or puke.”
“Here. Sit down.”
He kicked aside some trash and gently guided her to the floor. “When was the last time you ate anything?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Three days, maybe.”
The girl flopped over onto her side and Jackson put his hand to her forehead, cursing under his breath. Her skin was cool and clammy. She was probably delirious. Why else would she have marched up to him and just started talking like they were friends? He could have been anyone, done anything to her.
He sighed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this tired, if ever.
“What’s up?”
Jackson turned. Sebastian had his hand in a crushed box of cereal. The burly man eyed the girl with interest as he dumped sugared corn flakes into his mouth.
“You left Lindy alone?” Jackson asked.
“The others are with her. Besides, Jado is tougher than the two of us put together.” He offered him the box. “Almost empty, but better than nothing.”
After eating a handful, Jackson crouched beside the girl. “Hey. Open up.”
The girl groaned and shook her head. “I’ll throw up.”
“Are you gonna introduce us?” Sebastian asked.
“I don’t know her name. But she knows about Lindy. Said something about a church of ‘Deadists.’ And about a cleansing.”
Sebastian’s eyes widened a fraction.
“Max.”
Both men glanced down at the girl on the floor.
“What?” Jackson asked.
“My name is Max.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Though they didn’t have much, getting a little water into Max settled her stomach enough to get her into a sitti
ng position. A couple of bottles of the stuff had been found in a back office of the store, tucked into the bottom drawer of a desk.
The girl only took a few sips then Jackson took the bottle away. “That’s enough for now, otherwise you really will puke.”
She nodded, glancing around at the others with awe.
Lindy stared back at her, frowning, not because she was angry, but because she was concerned. This girl knew Andrew. Had been in his presence, listened to him speak.
Behind her, Lindy heard Sebastian whisper to Dusty about the inconvenience of taking on another kid. Lindy paid little attention. “What about the cleansing?” she asked Max.
Max saved most of her awe for Lindy herself, dropping her eyes when Lindy spoke directly to her. “He said you liked the way things were before and don’t want them to change. You like the greed and corruption and everything that’s wrong with the world-”
“What’s he mean by that?” Jackson shouted, startling them all. “She’s fourteen!”
“Easy,” Jado said, touching his back.
Jackson scowled and folded his arms across his chest.
“Andrew is fourteen too,” Lindy reminded him.
“And I doubt this kind of talk is coming from him,” Jado said. “He’s just a mouthpiece.”
Max nodded. “For the other albino, Jude. He’s the one who tells Andrew what to say, I think.”
This was no surprise to anyone, least of all Lindy. But the instinct to glance at Jado was too strong and so everyone did.
Jado laughed bitterly. “Ah, the evil twin. How cliché.”
Standing guard by the entrance, Monty said, “Man, what is your brother’s problem?”
Derailing this train of thought before it could even begin, Lindy prodded Max again. “So, killing everyone and bringing them back is a cleansing?”
“That’s what he says.”
Jackson grumbled. “I can’t believe anyone would be dumb enough to fall for that.”
“What choice do they have?” Jado asked. “It’s either that or believe it’s the end of days. You’d be surprised what people will latch on to when the alternative is hell.”
“It’s how Hitler came into power,” Monty said.
“We’re not talking about Hitler, for crying out loud,” Jackson said. “We’re talking about a kid.”
“Regardless—” Jado started.
Sebastian cut her off. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?” he asked. “I’m getting nervous just standing around in this store. We should be on the move.”
“Yeah,” Monty said, keeping his eyes on the parking lot. “It’ll be getting dark soon, too.”
“Think you can walk?” Jackson asked Max.
She nodded and allowed him to help her to her feet.
Once everyone had gathered their meager findings, they left the grocery store, Sebastian leading the way. They’d gone half a block when the cry of crows caused everyone to look up.
Lindy shrieked, covering her right ear with her free hand.
Probably close to eighty birds perched on the telephone wires above them, some of them squawking with an undertone of intent.
“You okay?” Dusty asked Lindy, her face creased with concern.
She nodded slowly, grimacing.
“Are they speaking to you?”
She nodded again. “Keep moving,” she told her tiny band of soldiers. “We’re still going in the right direction.”
Reluctantly, they all continued on through the deserted neighborhood. Though they saw no one, either living or dead, Lindy could sense eyes watching them from the surrounding buildings.
She hadn’t lied to the others; the messengers were telling her north, but what she hadn’t mentioned was that they still had far to go. Andrew and Jude—and someone else now—were not in the city proper anymore. They’d moved to some part of the outlying suburban areas.
A church, but not the one Max was familiar with. A bigger one.
Andrew’s army was much, much bigger than her own.
One of the birds swooped down, almost as if to attack her, cawing loudly three times. The pain was excruciating and Lindy felt her stomach turn over.
Jackson, seeing her pain, began yelling at the birds. “Get out of here!” He looked around on the sidewalk and street until he found a discarded soda can. He snatched it off the ground and whipped it high into the air, aiming for the circling bird. “Go on now! She got your message!”
In too much pain to protest, Lindy kept her eyes on the ground and her feet moving forward. Sebastian told Jackson to settle down for fear of attracting attention.
Monty fell into step beside Lindy. “Want me to carry the crossbow?”
She shook her head. “I need it.”
“Hurts pretty bad, huh?”
Every muscle in her body was tensed against the pain. “Uh huh.”
“Wonder if it feels like the time I shattered two teeth against my dad’s fist.”
Despite the agony, Lindy managed to give him a sympathetic look.
Monty shrugged and did his best to laugh. “What can I say? The guy had it coming.”
Knowing he was trying to distract her made Lindy’s heart swell. How could anyone continue to be so sweet at a time like this?
But then his smile vanished. “Uh . . . Lindy?”
Her first thought was he’d seen a zombie, but that couldn’t be right. He was looking at her. “What?”
With trepidation, he reached out and touched her upper lip. When he showed her his fingertip, she saw the red smear.
She was bleeding.
Chapter Thirty-two
So many survivors.
As he walked among them, flanked on either side by Jude and Rick, Andrew didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He preferred the dead over the living, but there was something to be said for all the adoration he was being given. Or maybe it was fear in their eyes and not adoration at all. Not that it mattered. It all amounted to the same thing. He was—just as he’d always wanted to be—king.
Strolling through the huge parking lot of a church—Andrew didn’t know the name of it, nor did he care—he was reminded of the time his mother and step-dad had taken him to a summer concert, not to actually see whatever band had been performing, but to hang around outside the stadium in the parking lot. A tailgate party, he thought it had been called. Now, the scent of burgers grilling wafted through the night air and they passed people dipping their hands into coolers and pulling out dripping beers and sodas.
“Where is all this coming from?” Andrew asked Jude.
“They raided the city,” he told him. “Everything edible or drinkable within miles is here now.”
“Impressive, eh?” Rick said.
“I thought people were starving in the streets?” Andrew said. “That’s what you told me, Jude.”
“They are. But this isn’t the streets. This is—”
“Father Andrew!”
A woman stepped into their path and Andrew instantly recoiled at the sight of her. Muddy eyes peered at him from beneath bangs the color of dirty dishwater.
“Please, Father Andrew,” she said, “it’s my husband, Charles. He died last summer. I know you can raise him. I miss him so much.”
“Back off!” Rick stepped forward and gave the woman a hard shove. She went careening backwards but somehow maintained her balance. “Father Andrew isn’t here to entertain you. He has a higher purpose!”
Jude grabbed Rick’s shoulder in an attempt to restrain him. To the woman he said, “Your husband can’t be brought back now. Too much time has passed.”
“His brain is soup,” Rick said, sneering. “Get it? Now take a hike!”
Andrew snickered as they pushed passed the woman, her muddy eyes filling with tears. He was about to remark on how stupid she was when she suddenly began shouting.
“You’re no miracle! You’re nothing! A child! Just a snot-nosed brat!”
She probably would have continued, but Rick
was on her immediately, grabbing her by the throat and squeezing until those ugly eyes bulged in their sockets. He yelled obscenities in her face, telling her to shut up.
All eyes turned towards them and Andrew’s sneer widened. He wanted everyone to see what happened to anyone who would dare cross him in any manner whatsoever.
Rick looked back at him, his hands still wrapped around the woman’s throat. “Should I feed her to the undead guardians?”
“No,” Jude said quickly. “Let her go!”
In unison, Andrew and Rick asked, “Why?” They sounded equally angry at the order.
“Just do it,” Jude hissed through gritted teeth. He glanced at the crowd around them and forced a tight smile. “It’s natural to have doubts and questions regarding our circumstances here. The world has never seen the likes of And—er . . . Father Andrew before.”
The woman wrenched herself free of Rick’s grasp and shrieked. “This is blasphemy! That child is the spawn of Satan! Only Jesus can raise the dead!”
“I’m not a child,” Andrew told her, raising his chin. “Didn’t Jesus only raise one person? What good did that do?”
“Andrew,” Jude warned. “Don’t.”