Love in the Time of the Dead

by Tera Shanley

  Jarren nodded at Finn. “Your doctor. He’s good?”

  “Yeah, he’s great. Saved a lot of lives, but that doesn’t sound like the type of service you need from him.”

  Jarren looked questioningly at her, but she only shrugged in answer. How should she know if Finn could be trusted?

  “We need a type of science experiment performed.”

  “Well, I’d say Doc would be a good man to talk to about it. He worked as a doctor for the Centers for Disease Control before the outbreak.”

  The team looked at Finn, dumbfounded. How could they be so lucky? Jarren was making an effort to hide his excitement, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up when he spoke. “He’ll do, then. Where is he?”

  Finn frowned. “Uh, let me think. It’s about dinner time. I don’t think he’ll be at the clinic. He’s a self-diagnosed terrible cook, so I bet he’s heading to mess hall.”

  “Great. Let’s go,” Mitchell said, wiping crumbs from his lap before standing. “Let’s just hope we can avoid Laney’s new boyfriend.”

  “Oh, I’m not supposed to meet him for at least another hour,” she said absently.

  “Not Daniels,” Mitchell said, with the oddest expression on his face. “I was talking about Erhard.”

  “Oh,” she said lamely. She grabbed her pack and avoided eye contact as best she could. She didn’t want the boys to see how much this Daniels guy affected her.

  Rays of rosy evening sunlight hit her face as soon as they opened the barn door. The gray, grassy field in front had grown tall during the springtime, and though it was dry in the colder months, it still waved an alluring greeting. It would have been a profound sight if it weren’t for the stench of Deads that washed over her like a tidal wave. She keeled over and retched, her instincts like a fire alarm in her head. For a split moment she was in the woods again, and the sensation was dizzying.

  “Whoa, Laney. You all right?” Jarren asked. He dropped his pack and patted her back.

  Mitchell and Guist had crouched into position to cover them as they had done a hundred times before.

  “Deads,” she gasped. “It smells like Deads here.” She put the back of her hand over the side of her mouth and tried to catch her breath.

  “I don’t understand,” Mitchell said as he pulled a canteen of water from her pack. “It’s not usually like that in a colony, right?”

  “No, this is a first. Something doesn’t feel right, but Daniels assured me there are no Deads in the colony gates.” She thanked Mitchell and rinsed her mouth out with the offered canteen.

  “You mean you’ve been smelling them this strongly all day?” Jarren stood and looked around. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Finn spoke up. “Maybe your nose is becoming more sensitive. The rescue this morning was pretty intense. You’ve been through a lot.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” she admitted. “It’s the reason I haven’t told you guys before now. I think maybe I’m going crazy.”

  “Shut up,” Mitchell said. “You aren’t crazy. Look, let’s follow your nose. If it leads us to the fence, we’ll know it’s just being sensitive.”

  “What about finding the doc?” she asked.

  “He can wait,” Jarren said. “If you think there’s something wrong, we need to figure it out right away.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Finn said nervously. “Laney has dinner with the boss soon. And if Erhard catches you guys poking around, he’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “You can leave if you aren’t comfortable,” Guist offered. “We aren’t trying to get you in trouble.”

  Finn rubbed his face vigorously. “Honestly, I’m curious about what’s going on, too. The last few weeks have felt different here.”

  The group headed off with Laney the bloodhound in the lead. Her nose led her and the team back toward the gardens.

  The relief was obvious in Finn’s tone. “Looks like the smell is leading toward the fence. It’s about half a mile straight ahead.”

  She plowed on. If it was the Deads on the other side of the fence, great. But she had to know for sure.

  Daylight was fading as the navy dark of evening approached, and she quickened her pace. The men behind her also seemed to sense her growing urgency and walked faster to keep up. They passed through a group of storage buildings and headed for the fence. She started jogging and skidded to a stop after about two hundred yards. She doubled back and shook her head. She turned and looked toward the fence and frowned.

  “The smell lessens when I go toward the fence, which makes no sense. Deads usually gather around the fences, right? Why wouldn’t the smell be stronger there?” she asked Finn in a hushed whisper.

  “There isn’t much human activity on this side of the colony. The Deads tend to gather in areas they can smell us. They are rarely reported this far down the fence. We don’t even schedule as many patrols down here because of a history of no action.”

  She readied her Mini as his words took hold. “They are inside,” she whispered in horror. “What are those buildings?”

  “Storage for the harvesting equipment,” Finn answered, his voice thick with shock.

  Click, click, click. The men readied their weapons. She checked the mag in her own gun to find Guist had been true to his meticulous nature and refilled hers completely.

  “Let’s go,” Jarren said, lowering his stance and moving quickly and decisively toward the buildings.

  She and the others followed closely. They walked the perimeters of all three buildings and found nothing. The doors of the first two buildings were open, and the receding light illuminated the lack of anyone in them, dead or living. The third building to the far right was slightly bigger than the other. The grayed wood paneling added to the aged look of the structure. The door had a thick padlock, and a faint shuffling sound could be heard from the inside.

  “Give me a lift,” she instructed Mitchell, and he boosted her up to a high window.

  The window had a ledge on the interior that blocked her view, so she pulled herself inside to get a better look. The stench was the worst she had ever smelled. It was as if the odor had soaked into the wood with prolonged exposure.

  She pulled a handheld flashlight from one of her cargo pockets and shimmied forward on her stomach, shining a spotlight on the opposite wall of the building. Four groaning figures snuffled slowly to the attraction.

  One walked directly in front of her beam of light, and she stifled a gasp. The creature had some sort of muzzle over its mouth. She pointed the light at the other creature’s faces to find the same treatment. Someone had even gone to the extreme length of tying their arms behind their backs.

  “What the hell?” she breathed. She debated the distance it would take for her discharged weapons to fall unheard by the colony. They weren’t far enough away to avoid attracting attention, and it did appear the Deads had been rendered mostly harmless. Blades it was, then.

  “Guist,” she hissed out the window. “Hand up your ax.”

  “How many?” Jarren asked as Guist loosed his newest weapon and handed it upward into her waiting hand.

  “Four.”

  The anger in his voice sizzled like the crack of a whip. “No way are you offing four by yourself. Way too risky.”

  “Pipe down, Jarren. They’re muzzled and tied.”

  The men erupted into a whispered frenzy at the news and were aiming questions that sounded suspiciously accusing at Finn, who sounded as genuinely shocked and angry as them.

  She left them to it and set to her task. Shimmying to the edge of the ledge, she readied herself to lower down.

  “Pssst,” came a whisper from the window behind her. Mitchell. “I’m coming in, too. We’ll get the job done faster with both of us.”

  Relief fluttered in her stomach for the help. That place was downright creepy.

  The Deads smelled them, their human odor finally breaking through the stench of confined carcasses. The zombies groaned lou
dly and frantically searched for them. She and Mitchell dropped onto the unforgiving floor and rolled to cushion their impact. She came up swinging the ax at the nearest Dead and Mitchell drew the others away. He kicked in a female’s brittle knee caps before he turned on the other two.

  They were silent and efficiently deadly, and the deed was finished in moments. Mitchell hoisted Laney back up to the window ledge, and she climbed down to the waiting group. Mitchell followed directly.

  She said nothing, only looked at Finn and waited for answers.

  “I don’t know anything about this. I had no idea there were Deads in our gates or I would have killed them myself long before now.”

  He was angry, and obviously felt betrayed. Truth rang from his voice. He had no part in it.

  “Any guesses on who would bring them in here and why?” she asked.

  “No,” he answered miserably. “The guards have been acting off lately. It’s like everyone has a secret and no one talks about it. I guess this is it. Muzzled Deads are the big secret.” He shook his head. “How stupid could they be? Whoever did this, whoever brought them here, they could have killed off the entire colony! All of our family and friends could have died.”

  “We have to be careful who we tell,” Jarren whispered to the group. “We have to make sure to flush out whoever did this or they will just rebuild their little project. They brought Deads in here for a reason. We need to figure out why. Laney, you should go straight to Daniels and alert him.”

  “What if he’s the one who did it?”

  “It’s your job to find out. Go to dinner and make the decision either to tell him or out his plans. Finn, you go with her and act normal. Business as usual, okay? Don’t talk to your buddies or family. You will cause a panic and send whoever did this into hiding. Mitchell and Guist, you two track down the doctor. We don’t have much time here and we need to get things with Laney set into motion.”

  “What are you going to do?” Laney whispered to Jarren.

  “I’m going to wait here. Someone will come and check on their little venture. I’m sure of it.” He held up his rifle. “And when they do, I’ll wing them.”

  She had never met a better gunman than Jarren. He really was the person for the job.

  “Meet back at the barn if anything goes wrong. We’ll sleep there tonight when everyone is finished,” Jarren ordered. He lowered his voice to a whisper again. “Be careful, Laney.” He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly and jogged off toward a grove of trees.

  “You too,” she said quietly to his retreating silhouette. “Come on, Finn. Don’t want to be late for my hot date with Sean-Zombie-Puppeteer-Daniels.”

  “I think you’re wrong about him. He gives everything for this colony. He wouldn’t do this.”

  “We shall see,” she gritted out as she turned her sights toward the populated center of the colony.

  Chapter Six

  “IS THERE ANOTHER ENTRANCE?” Laney asked Finn from the shadows of the building they were hiding behind.

  Erhard stood guarding the main door of Sean’s house with a handful of other guards. The tension in his stance and the single-minded precision with which he scanned his surroundings while he gave hushed orders to his men said he must have caught wind of her scheduled dinner with the Denver colony leader. An unfortunate and irritating obstacle.

  “There is a back entrance, but it will be just as heavily guarded. Follow me, but stay hidden. Stay close if you can.”

  If the other entrance was guarded too, what kind of plan was Finn hatching to get her in? She didn’t trust anyone on the planet besides the team, so having any faith in Finn’s ability was about as far a leap as possible. On the other hand, there weren’t a ton of options. She slunk through the shadows as Finn walked casually around the house. He waved to other guards and talked cordially to a couple of them, and she smiled when she saw what he was doing. She liked it when people surprised her. To the other guards it would look as if Finn was thoroughly checking and re-checking if each bottom floor window was securely locked. One creaked promisingly, and Finn made a quick motion behind his back. He couldn’t have known where she was in the dark, but he must have trusted her to be close enough to see the gesture. Maybe Sasquatch wasn’t so bad after all. Finn strode over to a group of three guards who would catch her for sure if she ran for the window. He patted them on the back and joked easily with them while he positioned himself on the other side. When their backs were turned and they seemed engaged in conversation with a surprisingly animated Finn, she ran for the window and slid it open. Other than the creaking sound it made when Finn tested it, the window opened decidedly easily. In fact, if she were a betting woman, which she was on occasion, she would bet that window had been greased quite recently.

  Hooking a leg over, she panicked when one of the guards started to turn in her direction, and she flopped through the window like a beached dolphin.

  In a frozen pool of hope, she lay perfectly still on her stomach. Maybe she hadn’t made too much noise falling through the window. She lifted her face just enough to come foot to eyeball with someone’s boot. Busted.

  “Shoot,” she whispered.

  Sean Daniels sat in his office chair with an amused smirk on his face.

  He waved his hand toward the window. “Please don’t shoot my dinner guest.”

  She turned her head just enough to find three assault rifles trained in the general vicinity of her ear.

  The guard closest spoke first. “Sir, Erhard said—”

  “I don’t care what he said. At ease.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The men lowered their weapons and withdrew from the opening. Sean stepped over her and closed the window before locking it securely in place. Laney cleared her throat and stood with as much dignity as she could muster. Which wasn’t much. She sidled around him to stand on the other side of his desk.

  “Seems like you’ve made a lot of friends while you’ve been here. Must be your accommodating demeanor.”

  She glared at him. “Your second in command is a thorn in my side.”

  “Yeah, what did you do to get him so riled up? He told me he kicked you out of the colony, so I just assumed you wouldn’t be making it to dinner.”

  She shrugged. The real reasons she took the risk would have to wait for later. “I’m hungry. I figured the food here would be better than the crap I’ve been eating. He can kick me out tomorrow.”

  “Ah, a woman driven entirely by her stomach. You remind me of my three-year-old.”

  She opened her mouth to pop off but was cut short by the office door swinging open. A solemn-faced Finn stepped in and took a post in the furthest corner of the room.

  “Glad to see you’re still keeping our guest here out of trouble,” Sean told him.

  “She doesn’t make it easy, sir.”

  Sean chuckled. “No, I don’t expect she does.”

  “I have a question,” she cut in with annoyance. “Why do you have an unlocked window, all greased up and ready for anyone who wants to mess with you or Mona or your daughter? Do you trust everyone in your colony so much?”

  A flash of concern washed over Sean’s face before his mask was firmly back in place. He looked to Finn and arched his eyebrow. “The lady poses an interesting question.”

  “You are right to be concerned, sir. We do regular window checks. I didn’t think we had a shot at finding one unlocked, but it was the only way I could think to get Laney in here. I was pretty shocked when that one actually gave.”

  Sean drummed his fingers on the desk thoughtfully before he jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go eat.”

  She was surprised when he led her to an upstairs dining area instead of staying on the main floor. The upstairs was smaller but boasted a kitchen, dining room, and three bedrooms.

  “This is the strangest house I’ve ever been in,” she mumbled.

  “That’s probably because it wasn’t originally a house,” Sean said without offense.

 
; “What was it?”

  “It was a church when we found it. In fact, the original buildings and land used to belong to an extreme religious group, as far as we could tell. They were all gone before we got here.”

  “Extreme religious group? So a cult is what you are saying. Creepy.”

  “At first it was a little weird. We found an impressive cache of texts on the darker aspects of their beliefs, and if you lift up the carpet in any given room, there are strange markings in a red substance we can’t seem to clean off. But if you ignore that stuff, the extremists gave us a huge advantage.” He motioned for her to take a seat at an oak dining room table before he continued. “You see, the people who lived here had already started building the wall around the entire property. Not sure whether it was to keep outsiders out or members in, but it gave us a good foundation, not to mention a lot of the gathered materials to build the first wall. We worked constantly to get it built, but we still lost many in the first days of this colony. After we finished the first wall we were safe to build the interior gates in time. Without the gate having been started, we would have lost many more. Excuse me, I’m going to go check on Mona.”

  Sean disappeared into one of the bedrooms, and Mona and Adrianna both followed him back out.

  Laney breathed out of her mouth, but she could almost taste the rotting smell of death. How would she ever be able to stomach dinner with such a strong, lingering aroma of Deads that seemed to be absorbed into everything in the colony?

  Mona greeted her, and Adrianna waved shyly before she took a seat directly across the table.

  “Dinner is on the plates and all ready to go. I’ll be back later,” Mona informed them, pulling on a jacket.

  Laney’s stomach flip flopped uncomfortably. “You aren’t staying?”

  “No, dear. I’ve been watching Adrianna for Sean while he was on a supply run, but tonight is my night to myself. Some of my friends have invited me to a ladies’ dinner.”