Love at the End of Days

by Tera Shanley

  A look of desolation clouded Vanessa’s face. “We came through here, Nelson and I. It was still beautiful then. Is it like this everywhere?”

  He wanted to lie just to save her sadness, but she’d see for herself soon enough. “Yes.” Pulling the truck to a stop near the curb, he checked his handguns.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not me—we. There’s a pharmacy across the street right there. We’ve hit it a few times, but we left stuff we didn’t know about alone. We might get lucky and find some of our supplies in here.” Twisting in the seat, he asked, “Brandon, you ready?”

  Dr. Mackey’s assistant looked terrified. At five-foot-three at best and with a shaky gun hand, his greenish pallor sure wasn’t doing him any favors.

  Sean handed him the list, and the door creaked loudly as it opened. A lone Dead with splintered legs stumbled slowly across the street, likely attracted to the noise of the Terminator. Her hair was short and stringy, and her eyes were so filmed over they looked white. With her jaw hanging open, her rasping could be heard from here. Mouth breathers. Unsavory.

  “Sean?” Vanessa whispered.

  “Don’t engage her. She’s focused on the truck, and gunfire will draw in others.” The breeze pushed a metal window frame open on the building behind her, and it creaked loudly, drawing the Dead’s flighty attention. He waved to the occupants of the truck. “Go now, while she’s turned away from us.”

  The seven of them sprinted for the pharmacy as quietly as boots on pavement could. The glass doors had been broken long ago, so they just stepped through. Tinkling shards crunched under the thick rubber soles of his shoes, and Sean gestured for Jackson and Keeter to stand guard. The door at the back of the small building was closed, and a quick peek into the window told him some dumb Dead had wandered in there and hit the latch that held the door open. Who knew how long the monster had been stuck in there.

  The lurching Dead was clad in only shredded pants, and his gray skin sagged like the Silly Putty Sean had played with as a child. His eyelids had pulled away from his eyes in his emaciated state, and the creature jerked and twitched like a junkie too long off drugs. All Deads were dangerous, but a hungry Dead was riskier still. Vanessa looked borderline panicked when she glanced through the window, but he put an arm out to shush her. He’d do it himself and be quiet about it. Stay here, he mouthed.

  Finn ambled off to pick through the littered shelves, and Brandon was doing a bang up job of looking nauseous, so Sean took three quick breaths to steel himself and threw the door open. The Dead’s reaction was instantaneous. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation as he ran toward his chance at a meal. The power of the monster was surprising, and as Sean pressed his forearm against its chest and drove his knife upward, he knew in an instant he’d hit too shallow. A gruesome effect to be sure, but Deads weren’t affected by pain. With a guttural moan, it pressed him into a wall and gnashed its rotting teeth around the dagger in its face. All he had to do was get the knife out and—Pow!

  The Dead went limp and dropped like a stone. Shocked, Sean swung his gaze to the open doorway where Brandon stood with his pistol still aimed in his general direction. Vanessa yanked the gun from him with eyes so big they could’ve rivaled a wood sprite.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” Sean asked.

  “Me? This is my fault? I didn’t know you gave the idiot a gun.”

  “Hey,” Brandon groused. “I just saved your life. And my IQ is double all of yours combined, so who’s the idiot now?”

  “Still you,” Vanessa deadpanned. “Deads are attracted to sound. Just like Sean explained in the truck.”

  “Oh,” he said with a worried moue.

  “We’ve got company,” Jackson called out from up front, and a pepper of gunfire trilled through the building.

  If Sean had time to punch Brandon square in the jaw, he’d gladly do it, but right now they had bigger problems than who would win the blame game. Finn stood with an idiotic grin and a box of condoms in his hand. “Stop waggling your eyebrows like that, or I’ll shoot you my damned self,” Sean growled. “We’ll go out the back and circle around to the truck,” he called out.

  “What about the medical stuff?” Vanessa asked.

  “We’ll have to try again on our way back. We can’t let ourselves get trapped in here. Jackson, Keeter, fall back.”

  Deads poured by twos into the building like some messed up version of Noah’s Ark, and Sean led the others at a sprint out the back door. Another Dead rounded the gigantic garbage bin and almost ran smack into Vanessa.

  Sean ordered, “Duck,” and popped it the moment she did. At least the woman could obey orders when it mattered.

  She and Brandon flanked him, while Finn and the other guards took out any Deads getting too close to their backs.

  It was then that they focused on run-and-hide tactics. Deads weren’t supernaturally fast or even graceful. As long as no one lagged behind, they could keep ahead of them. In a wide loop, they sprinted until they were flush with the Terminator. Heart pounding and adrenaline pumping through every cell in his body, Sean threw open the door, and the others piled in. The Deads knew where they were, and the sound of the shots wouldn’t matter. He picked them off until Finn was in and dragging Sean backward.

  He slammed the door closed just as the clawing hands of the Deads reached for him.

  “Ew,” Vanessa said, picking up a severed finger and tossing it out the cracked window before rolling it up again. As if by magic, a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer appeared, and she deftly worked it into her palms.

  Something about that struck him as funny. Deads were piling onto their truck, moaning for their death, and Vanessa was focused on the one little nasty occurrence that didn’t matter in the big picture.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked through an offended frown as he turned the key.

  The engine roared, and he threw it into first.

  “Nothing,” he replied. “Nothing at all.”

  Chapter Seven

  SEAN WAS A REDWOOD in a storm. Strong, immovable, steadfast. The durability of his branches offered shelter from the reality of what was happening.

  Vanessa had panicked at the first shots Jackson and Keeter fired at the horde, and when that Dead jumped out from behind the Dumpster, she’d frozen. She would’ve been a goner if not for Sean’s cobra-strike thinking. So shaken was she after that, she’d almost lost her lunch. Running for her life left her with a drained and sick feeling deep inside.

  But then there had been Sean. There was no hesitation in his command and not a trace of fear in his voice. He’d somehow formed a plan before he even knew there was a need, and because of him, they were all still upright. And able to eat salad. As easily as anything, she could’ve been one of the masses trotting after them as they sped off in the Terminator. The man wasn’t even shaking. One of his hands rested lightly on the wheel, and the other drummed light fingers against the window in rhythm to some song only he knew the cadence to.

  No frown let on that he was worried. No tension made his jaw clench. The man had obviously seen more Dead battles than she’d ever comprehend. He’d somehow managed to find a way to turn his fear off. Maybe it was because he naturally put others in front of himself. She could see that. He wouldn’t get into the truck until every one of them was safe inside. Or maybe he just didn’t have that trigger that released fear endorphins into his system. Such a possibility was frightening. A man without feelings? She scooted a little closer to Steven. Sean was not a person to get too emotionally invested in. He didn’t reek of reckless, but his chances of being taken were upped dramatically if he was going to play Captain America and continue putting their safety above his own. Especially trigger-finger-Brandon, who at the moment was heavy-breathing on the back of her neck.

  Twisting in her seat, she warned, “I will literally head-butt you if you don’t lean back.”

  “I’m trying to see out the front window,” he said.

  “Then switch places
with me. I’m not traveling all the way to Denver with you air-breathing a hickey on my neck.”

  Leaning back, he crossed his arms and looked out his own window with a man-pout. She couldn’t be sure, but the corner of Sean’s mouth twitched into what looked suspiciously like an almost-smile. How many times had he wanted to tell someone off, but couldn’t in his position? Thank God she was just a peon foot soldier. She could say whatever she wanted to the other expendables.

  “Hey, Brandon? Why don’t you explain that little list of yours in case you get yourself killed?” Jackson suggested.

  Huh. She liked Jackson even better now. He was average height with light brown hair worn longer. In his mid-forties, he all but dripped with Dead fighting experience and didn’t talk very often. When he did, it was apparently to offer legitimately helpful suggestions. Points for him.

  “What’s to keep you protecting me if I give you all of the information I know?” Brandon asked.

  “We’ll get you safely back to colony,” Sean promised.

  There rang such an honest note of conviction in his tone, she almost groaned. The nerd’s life would come before all of theirs because of his civilian status.

  Brandon swallowed at an annoyingly loud volume. “Dr. Mackey needs to get this vaccine he’s extracted from Laney to the masses. And even though there aren’t a ton of humans left, there are much more than our small medical cache can handle. To disperse the medicine to other colonies, the main thing we need is a way to get the vaccine from the vial to the vein.”

  “Dumb it down there for us, Einstein,” Vanessa drawled. “We’re but a humble crew of uneducated guns for hire.”

  “Needles,” Brandon said flatly. “We need as many needles as we can get our hands on. We also need components for the vaccine itself. We’ll need several different types too if we’re going to start testing this on people. Here,” he said, pointing to the middle of the second page. “These five alone are all variations of a stabilizer. We’ll also need antigens, adjuvants, and preservatives before we start poking people.”

  “Is that the only copy we have of the list?” Keeter asked.

  “No,” Sean answered. “There is another under the front seat, wrapped in plastic. If the person holding that list is lost, it’s up to the rest of the team to complete the mission. This is save-the-world work. If we don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.”

  A flutter started in her stomach at his talk about saving the world. She’d never looked at the mission as much more than an escape and a shortcut to guard graduation. This was much bigger than she’d given it credit for. And Sean’s deep velvet voice popping it off like that—like it was just another day saving the planet? Well that was just about the sexiest sound that had ever caressed her eardrums.

  The brakes hissed as Sean stopped at a dilapidated stop sign and poured over a map he pulled from under the seat. “We’ll have to hit up every hospital and medical facility in the Denver area and beyond until we find what Doc needs.”

  Finn groaned. “I hate hospitals.”

  “Why?” she asked. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They are always infested with Deads who are trapped in the rooms and hallways. And they’re the creepiest places you’ll ever be in.”

  Vanessa faced forward and grimaced. Goody. “Say we manage to get past all of the Deads in the hospital, how do we know there will be anything left worth taking?”

  “We don’t,” Sean said. “But there aren’t many colonies around here. I sanctioned all of the supply runs for the Denver colony before it fell, and we didn’t hit hospitals for any of this stuff. Dead Run River hasn’t either. We wouldn’t have taken medical supplies that we didn’t know the use for, and likely others wouldn’t have either.”

  “Heroin addicts,” she said. “Heroin addicts would definitely steal all of the needles.”

  Sean’s dark eyebrow arched, and she couldn’t seem to pull her gaze away from the perfection of it. “You know many junkies who survived the outbreak?” He shook his head and dragged his cerulean gaze back to the road before accelerating through the stop sign. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s survival of the fittest nowadays. The junkies were the first to go. Probably didn’t even know what hit ’em.”

  She dragged a somber gaze to him and let it rest on his. “My parents were junkies.”

  His mouth opened and closed and such a look of sorrow crossed his features that she couldn’t keep the smile from her lips. “Joke.”

  Glorious blue eyes narrowed in annoyance as masculine chuckles filled the cab of the eighteen-wheeler. In her defense, he’d practically set her up.

  “That’s a terrible thing to tease about,” he grumbled, turning onto an abandoned highway.

  Shrugging, she sank into the cushion of the seat. “I’m probably dying today. If I don’t have jokes, I don’t have anything.”

  “Don’t say that. You aren’t dying today.” His voice lowered to a barely discernible whisper, and she could almost swear he said, “I won’t let you.”

  He could’ve also said, “I want to cut you,” though, which also made sense. Looking down at her bandaged arm, she sighed. She had that effect on people.

  Denver was trashed, and the streets were paved with bones. Fires had consumed large sections of the city until only ash and charred ruins remained, never to be refurbished or cared for again. The destruction sent an ache through her. She sent a silent thank you into the universe for Nelson never showing interest in leaving the colony. His tender heart would be broken the second he stepped beyond the gates.

  As much as she’d hated morning PT, it was a lucky thing she was conditioned for this mission. It wasn’t like they could back a roaring truck into the hospital loading docks without attracting some serious Dead attention, so Sean had pulled them right beside an ancient Victorian house about two blocks away and led them inside. In the mildewed basement there was an entrance to a tunnel that led underground. They’d hoofed it twelve feet under the earth through winding tunnels with a carefully followed map. Plenty of rats were down in the shallow streams of water that coated the tunnels, but nary a Dead to be seen. Sean said they were wary of moisture. What with all the rotting limbs, it made sense some buried instinct inside of the monsters would want to preserve what little they had left.

  At the end of a sloshy tunnel main, Sean flicked his flashlight to a rusty ladder. “Up we go. The hospital is just across the street from this exit.”

  Keeter went first, then Jackson and Brandon. She ended up getting stuck between Sean and Finn. Meh. She’d been in much worse positions than serving as the meat in a sexy manwich. Plus Sean’s tight backside was her beacon of glorious light leading out of the depths of the smelly tunnels. She’d slosh through that goulash again if given the option. She’d sworn to herself she wouldn’t touch, but there wasn’t a good enough reason on earth not to look.

  As Keeter pushed aside the heavy metal mesh cover from inside a tangle of bramble vines, the storm clouds above only lent to the ominous sinking feeling that had settled into her gut. She pulled her Glock as soon as she was out. The street was bare of Deads, but they’d likely drawn any moaners in the area to the place the truck was now parked. Should be interesting getting back inside their escape vehicle with all of their appendages intact.

  Blinking against the gray light that was still leaps and bounds brighter than the black pitch they’d been immersed in for the past twenty minutes, she tilted her head back. Legions of black birds circled the wind currents above the city.

  “Crows,” Finn said in a hushed voice.

  She wasn’t one to believe in omens, but gooseflesh rippled across her skin. Maybe she was a little ’stitious, if not superstitious.

  Following Sean’s silent approach to a set of double doors behind a circular drive, she covered their backs as the others pried the once automatic double doors open.

  Movement, subtle and small, drew the aim of her handgun. A Dead lay between two overgrown shrubs. Like a m
oth to blue flame, she was drawn to the emaciated creature.

  Clack. Clack. Clack.

  His eyes were closed, but the soft snapping of his teeth sounded from the landscaping. His fingertips twitched in rhythm to the noise. Sean brushed her elbow and jerked his head toward the opened doors.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she whispered.

  “He’s dying. Starving.”

  “Oh.” The Dead looked pitiful. “Do we put him out of his misery?”

  “No. He’ll die on his own in a few months.”

  A few months in this state? Sean started to move off, but she snatched a knife from her belt before she could change her mind. With a grunt, she thrust the blade down at the Dead’s temple, and just before it pierced him, his filmy eyes opened. Stifling a shriek, she stayed her course, and when his body was limp, the blade was wiped across a tuft of grass and returned to its sheath.

  Sean stood watching with his eyebrows furrowed. “You can’t spare pity for Deads, Vanessa. It’s a waste. They won’t appreciate the sentiment, and they won’t hesitate even a second before eating you.”

  “I didn’t do it for the Dead. I did it for the person he used to be.”

  His expression softened, and she followed the others through the hospital doors. Inside, Brandon discussed the most likely places for the items on the list, and Steven, Jackson, and Keeter made sure the area was secure. Silently, they moved through the dark hallways. Dim light streamed through open windows and created stripes across the dingy tile floors. Each room had to be checked for wandering Deads, and Vanessa stopped when she came to a slowly jiggling door handle protecting a closed door. Sean put his finger over his lips and twitched his head to keep going.