It was a forlorn hope and I knew it. At best, I had thirty rounds in the rifle and whatever I had left in my pockets, plus a dozen each in my pistols, assuming my little bath in the lake hadn’t wrecked them. Meanwhile, I’d pretty much rung the dinner bell for the hungry locals, all of whom would be pleased to stand there until kingdom come, or until I passed out from the cold and fell right into their waiting arms.
I guess it’s nice to feel wanted.
Someone heard the gunshots, right? They’ll find me. The angry biker gang, at least, if not Tony and Dax. They might shoot me instead of rescue me, but at least that would be some kind of ending that didn’t involve serving me a la mode.
The tree moved.
I latched back onto the trunk and looked down. “Are you kidding me?”
If there’s one thing ghouls are good at besides looking terrible and stripping the flesh from your bones, it’s banging into things repetitively. They will just hurl their bodies against a door, window, or in this case, a tree, until said object finally gives way. A group of them could probably knock this tree down pretty quickly.
I was toast.
Well, fuck this noise. In the last week alone, I’d been pistol-whipped, gotten involved in some post-apocalyptic gang war, beaten up and held captive in some redneck biker stronghold, and this was how it all ended? Hiding up a tree, attracting every dead person in the vicinity?
Hot, irrational anger bubbled up inside me, and I lifted the gun in an effort to look as menacing as possible. “You know what?” I leaned as far out as I dared, pointing at the nearest rotting fiend. “Fuck you! And you, too. Fuck you shuffling rotten sacks of shit. I’m taking at least thirty of you undead assholes down with me!”
POW!
I almost fell out of the tree when the noise blasted across the traffic circle. I clutched the nearest branch, looking around wildly for the source of the sound. Is that a shotgun?
Another shot went off, and I twisted around as much as I could. Some of the ghouls looked around, but I was still too close for them to disregard.
Glass shattered, followed by another blast from the shotgun.
The throng started drifting toward the sounds, their attention sufficiently attracted. The faster ones moved with more purpose, and the slower ones got caught up in their wake, stumbling after them because—well, because zombies cave in to peer pressure each time.
I held my breath. The closest ones still clustered around the bottom of the tree. No fooling you guys, is there? Was I dealing with brains or instinct?
The sound of the engine started out as a low hum, then quickly rose up to compete with the baying. I twisted around in the tree just in time to see a big gray van with some odd blue markings across its side come barreling into the circle. It chose the path of least resistance, mowing down the ghouls that were still in its way. I was so busy ogling the scene that I didn’t realize it had pulled up to the tree. A black-haired man shoved his head out the passenger window. “Hey, Treehouse, get down here before they come back!”
I stared down at the van, not entirely comprehending what had just happened.
The man waved a hand at me. “Hurry up!”
I’m being rescued? Praise Ezekiel.
“Now, Treehouse!”
If you ever find yourself in the midst of the apocalypse and someone in a giant van abruptly shows up to save your ass, be polite and let them do so.
I dropped down two branches, decided it wasn’t too far to jump, and let go.
I landed on the van’s roof, miraculously ending up in a crouch. My knees and ankles burned as they absorbed my weight, and the driver abruptly threw the thing into reverse, sending us screeching back across the circle. I flattened myself against the roof, holding onto the edge that sloped down to the windshield. We sped down the next feeder street, me clinging to the top, squinting against the wind and soot.
Holy shit, I thought, that really just happened.
The van belched loudly and stopped. I lost my grip, slid down the windshield, and wound up on the hood, which pretty much cancelled out my badass leap from the tree.
The windshield wipers swiped away ash from the glass. The passenger door opened, and the man who had shouted at me leaned out. “Quit trying to wax the hood and get in here!”
I rolled off the hood and managed to climb into the open door, not entirely sure I wasn’t hallucinating the entire thing. A wave of heat slammed into me the instant the passenger door closed, and I found myself perched awkwardly between the driver and passenger in a very hot compartment.
Still, it never hurt to be polite. “Thanks,” I gasped. Sweat broke out immediately along my forehead, and I stuck a hand out, feeling hot air spilling out of the vents. My jacket suddenly felt too damn heavy again, trapping heat against me. My vision hazed up, and I sagged against the driver’s seat. “Holy…I haven’t felt one of these since…”
“Since it happened? You look like you’ve been on the road for awhile.” The driver, a woman in fatigues, glanced at me. She had probably been pretty back before we lost the sun; even now, with an ashen tint to her skin and her brown hair stuffed under a hat, she looked more like a friendly neighbor than a fellow survivor of the apocalypse. I had to chase down the absurd urge to hug her.
“You’re lucky we heard you shooting,” she went on.
My brain finally started working again. It took me a second to recognize her without makeup, but I knew her voice. She’d talked to me morning and night for the last few weeks. “Gloria Fey?” I squeaked.
She looked ready to deny it, then shrugged and offered me a weak smile. “At your service.”
I looked around wildly. “Is this the news van?”
“Was,” her passenger corrected. “We had to blot out the marks after the military started taking potshots at us.”
The military’s taking potshots at Gloria Fey? Hammond had never issued that sort of order, as far as I knew.
Gloria patted my hand. “Take a breather,” she said. “You’ve just been through a lot.”
Gloria steered confidently, and though the van rattled and groaned, I didn’t hear any of the choking and stuttering that most internal combustion engines seemed to suffer when they got out into the ash. “Would’ve gotten you sooner, but I had to pick up Vijay.” She jerked her head toward the man that had called me Treehouse. “We’re gonna have to floor it outta here. Hope you don’t have somewhere to be.”
“Actually, can we make a detour down—” I had to wait for the name of the street behind our safe house to come to me, “—Smyrna Street? I left some friends over there.”
“The ones having some kind of firefight with those brigands?”
Uh-oh. I guess it was too much to hope that the unfortunate biker/zombie situation had miraculously cleared up on its own. “I…we might have killed one of their leaders.”
“Really?” Vijay asked. “Which one? Mal? Blair?”
“Blair,” I said. “At least, I figure he’s dead. He was in pretty bad shape last time I saw him.” I held my hands in front of the heater, and my aching knuckles slowly loosened up. I was still sweating like nobody’s business, but there was nothing to be done about that. “You, uh, know them?”
“Only by reputation. Don’t like what I’ve heard about him and that whackjob Arthur. Not sure I want to wade into all of that.”
No. I can’t leave the guys. “Then can you drop me off nearby?” Dammit, I’d really just said that. Stop being stupid, Vibeke.
Gloria side-eyed me the way I usually side-eyed Tony. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. C’mon, Gloria, you saved my ass, you can’t just say no…
Of course she could. Common decency went right out the window when the world ended. She didn’t know me, probably couldn’t care less about my friends, and why the hell should she risk her own life for a bunch of strangers?
“You want us to wade into that mess over there?” Vijay said, clearly thinking along the same wavelength.
“My
friends are trapped over there,” I said quietly. “They got me out of a tight spot yesterday. I can’t leave them.”
Gloria turned down another street and pushed down on the gas, sending the van tearing forward through what must have been a recently cleared street. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel and hummed softly to herself. “I guess there’s no harm in taking a look.”
Vijay slouched down, and I spotted a video camera nestled behind his feet. He must have been her cameraman before all this happened. “Curse your infernal good nature.”
SIXTEEN
“So tell me, Treehouse,” Vijay said, patiently reloading his gun, “are your friends hiding up trees, too?”
His snide smile told me I was never going to live that one down. “No, they’re holed up in a house on Smyrna. Well…one of them is. The other’s trying to get back to him. Last time I checked, they had the revenants and that angry biker gang on them.”
Gloria kept scanning the road ahead, and checked her mirrors every other second. “Do you know which brigands are on you?”
“Well, we really pissed off Blair’s gang, so it might be them. Or their friends. Do they have friends?” I shivered in spite of the heat.
Gloria responded by turning down the heater. “Sorry about that. The heat’s probably tripping out your system if you’re not used to it anymore. If you wiped out Blair’s group, it might be Arthur looking for retribution. They were friends, or allies, or some shit like that.”
Retribution? I stared numbly through the windshield. “I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”
“Me either,” Vijay said. “I figured things would go all Mad Max, but I thought we’d have a grace period.”
You and me both, Vijay. “Who’s Arthur?”
Gloria shrugged. “Not sure. Near as I can figure, Blair was just a thug that managed to scare some of the hooligans out here into obeying him. Arthur came along and started using brainpower or something. Then there’s Mal, but he’s kind of a shadowy figure. Not sure if he’s real or not.” Gloria pulled back onto the road, goosing us down an unfamiliar route. “Tempura Sal and Eggbeater were watching Blair for awhile, and I was condensing their reports. They both wound up dead, so I took a hint.”
“I hope that fucker Blair is dead,” Vijay said. “He was no good.”
You can say that again. “I don’t get this. How are they finding all this time to start gangs, take over places, and terrorize people? Aren’t they trying to…I don’t know, survive?”
Vijay leaned forward to turn down the heater a smidge. “Strength in numbers, Treehouse. Eh, I’m sure Arthur will wind up in charge. Assholes don’t go down that easily, and Blair was building up some kind of army.”
“Between us, his army got a little fried by radiation exposure, or whatever came down with the meteors.” Gloria turned us down another street. “From the shit I was hearing, they don’t seem all there.”
Well, I could have told them that. “They definitely got fried by something,” I said. “Blair and some of his pals had radiation burns.”
Vijay nodded. “He and Arthur joined forces awhile back, when Hammond ejected Arthur’s gang from Elderwood. Then there’s Malachi to worry about, but—”
“Malachi?” The warning alarm in my brain kicked back on, and I sat up straight, almost knocking my rifle into Vijay’s ribs. “Is that Mal’s full name?”
“Believe so,” Gloria said. “I knew it was something Biblical and ridiculous.”
“Tall, blond, pissy-looking?”
Gloria glanced at me, then returned her attention to the road. “I haven’t seen the man in the flesh. Why?”
Because I bashed his head in with an antique revolver and left him for dead? I decided not to share that information yet, instead saying, “We might have had a run-in with him, back before all this got so bad. Right after the dead got up, really.” I recalled visiting the ammunition store and watching the undead proprietor and his son enjoying a mid-afternoon snack, but try as I might, I couldn’t pinpoint a date. Everything hazed together into one gruesome, post-apocalyptic zombie hellhole. “Must have been a few weeks ago…”
“We’ll figure it out later.” Gloria braked, put the van into park, and pointed out the windshield. “Were these guys here before?”
Damn, she’d steered us right back to Smyrna, where Dax and I had discussed smart zombies and what to do next. It didn’t look quite as peaceful as I’d left it. Several figures were out in the street, staggering this way and that. None of them seemed to have noticed us…yet.
“Oh, hell.” Vijay reached across me, grabbing Gloria’s arm. “Gloria, don’t do anything dumb. There’s a lot of them.”
“Oh.” I wanted to slouch down in my chair. “Those revenants do congregate.”
“Revenants?” Gloria glanced at me. “Did they ever manage to make that term stick?”
“I worked in a military camp,” I said. “Our commanding officer said zombie reminded him of barhopping.”
“What camp?” Gloria asked. “Sorry, was I supposed to ask that earlier? My etiquette’s all messed up. Nice to meet you.”
“Elderwood. We’re supposed to go to Hastings to ask Captain Durkee for help.” I paused when they both turned to stare at me. Did I have something in my teeth? “Um, nice to meet you, too.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Gloria asked. “Is Elderwood all right? We haven’t heard them broadcasting at all.”
That was the million-dollar question, and I had no idea how to answer it. “There was an attack. Brigands, the undead, everything. The place fell apart. Three of us are trying to get to Hastings to send help.” I made myself stop after that. No need to get even deeper into the unfortunate news.
Gloria nodded. “Well, let’s get your buddies out of there and—”
“Wait.” Vijay rapped his gun against the floor. “We can’t just dive into this. We need a plan!”
“We don’t have the luxury of planning.” Gloria shifted the van back into drive. “Besides, if Elderwood’s hanging in there, that’s a lot of people that need help. Hang on, kids.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Improvise.” She stomped on the gas.
The van’s wheels squealed against the pavement and we hurtled toward the group of ghouls. “You’re fucking crazy!” Vijay yelped, bracing his feet up against the dash. I clung to my rifle, ready to bail if I needed to. Gloria kept the pedal to the metal, barreling closer to the figures.
The mini-horde swung toward us and lifted their arms.
“Out of my way, soulless abominations!” Gloria yelled, slamming her hand against the horn.
The van jolted when we hit the first ghoul; seconds later, another went flying. Gloria twisted the wheel and hit the brakes, and we fishtailed wildly to the side. My stomach lurched, and Vijay’s string of obscenities reached Tony levels of epic.
We came to an ungainly halt in front of the neighboring house, and Gloria leaned on the horn. “Go get your buddies. I’ll just be running these bitches over.”
“I’ll cover us out here,” Vijay said. He reached under the seat and pulled out a rifle to go with his shotgun. I sat there marveling at his preparedness while he flung open the door and jumped out.
I turned to Gloria, intending to thank her, but all that came out was, “You know, I remember when you were interviewing Brad Pitt and you got so nervous you dropped your microphone.”
The ghost of a smile crept across her face. “I hope he’s still alive. That man’s too fine to be undead.”
“Hey, Treehouse, let’s move!”
Here goes nothing. I jumped back out into the frigid air of the wasted earth, shoved the rifle into the face of the nearest ghoul, and blew its skull apart. Vijay was already halfway around the van, shotgun primed and ready. “Get your pals, Treehouse.”
That was either going to become an endearing nickname or drive me crazy really fast.
Gloria tapped the horn, momentarily dist
racting the other zombies. I booked it up the driveway and through two backyards to our hideout, and found the back door hanging open.
Gray, wizened fingers reached for my shoulders. I shifted my grip on the rifle again and clobbered the dead guy until he stopped moving. I took a second to catch my breath, then barreled up the back steps and toward the door.
The club soared out of nowhere and nailed me right in the gut, driving the air out of my lungs and sending everything in my midsection hurtling against my spine. I sagged to the side as my knees gave out, the rifle falling out of my suddenly boneless fingers. Air moved, and a second blow hammered against my back, sending me sprawling against the dusty linoleum flooring.
Air. Air. Air. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. My stomach twisted and thumped, and my lungs seemed to have abruptly gone on strike. Broken, I’m broken, did he shoot me? I didn't hear gunshots. Some logical part of me tried to assess damage, but it rapidly clouded over, driven into panic with the rest of my body. He didn’t hit my solar plexus. Lungs should work. Work, damn you!
I sensed someone looming over me and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for another strike. This one would probably be my head.
“Stop it!” Dax sounded distraught.
“I didn’t say clobber her,” a man snapped. Footsteps came toward me, clacking across the linoleum. A hand grabbed my hair, jerking my head off the floor. “She breathing?”
I managed to drag in a wheezing gasp.
“See, she’s fine,” a second man said.
The man let go of my head. I pulled in more air, gingerly unfolding myself, then stopping when the very motion brought tears to my eyes. Hot pokers jabbed up and down along my spine, and my stomach twisted and clenched, trying in vain to make me vomit up nothing at all. I dry-heaved, thumping against the floor like a hooked fish.
You never forget your first sucker-punch.
I forced my eyes open. Everything blurred together, but several figures hovered around me, and I heard the faint barking of the dog.
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