by Mike Staton
Percival’s mind swam in the rain drenched hell that was the center of campus. He’d seen Sarah. He’d embraced her and she’d fallen away to the grey haze of the storm above.
The intervening minutes of that haze wove into one another until he found himself back to back with a woman, facing a growing swarm. He lined up shots, smoothly and efficiently. He dropped his magazine the moment his pistol’s slide kicked open and slapped in a fresh load of ammunition. He turned and trained his pistol on the next nearest zombie and froze.
Carlos stared back at him. The bullet wounds in his chest still oozed fresh, crimson, ichor as he lifted an arm in greeting. Percival froze, his pistol raised toward the specter, but his finger wouldn’t tense. “You’re dead…”
“Damnit, Percival.” The woman’s voice is punctuated by the sharp crack of her small rifle.
Carlos’s forehead bloomed with red that quickly devolved into brown-black, old blood. The man –zombie –fell backward to the soggy grass.
The paralysis that’d settled over Percival lifted and he spun toward the small woman next to him. He opened his mouth to shout at her for shooting an ally, but she beat him to the punch.
“No time. Door’s open. Inside. It’ll hold them long enough to thin the horde.” She didn’t wait for his response, opting to shove him through the door and into the dark interior of the dormitory.
He stumbled a step and caught himself a moment later. Something clattered next to his foot as the door leading back to the quad slammed shut and the darkness became complete. Percival spun, disoriented.
He could hear, muffled through his helmet, the frantic breaths of the woman and the clatter of bolts as they slammed home to further secure the door. He knew he should be more concerned for the small gathering of zombies outside, but he found himself fixated on figuring out who his savior was. She was familiar to him, but he couldn’t quite put his finger to her name.
She was clearly someone from the college. But remembering four-hundred or more names was nigh impossible.
Red light sprang into existence as the woman kicked on her cellophane covered flashlight. She was short, far shorter than he, with red-tinged brunette hair that bunched out around a paintball mask that sported a few Plexiglas modifications.
That bit of equipment was favored for scouting parties of the Watchmen. She wore olive-drab BDUs and a well-worn set of combat boots. She was small, petite even, but he could testify to the power in her diminutive frame.
Powerful like Sarah had been. Percival’s gaze dropped to the linoleum tiled floor.
“You’re not Sarah.” The words came unbidden to his lips. Tears blurred his view of the woman in front of him just as suddenly.
“Upstairs.” The woman scooped up his sledgehammer and thrust it into his arms. “Zombie must-a taken a bit of your common sense with its bite out of your shoulder. I didn’t realize the two were connected.”
At the mention of his shoulder, a dull, warm ache sprang into place. He didn’t remember being bitten. To be honest, he didn’t remember a lot of his trip into and through town. His first clear memory, that he didn’t associate with a dream, was the woman straddling him and slapping him into consciousness.
Percival’s head still wrung with the impact of her hand.
She’d disappeared, with her warm, red light, up the stairs. He slid his pistol back into its holster and quickly followed. She led the way up and out onto the second floor and ducked into the third door down the hallway.
He recognized the firing position before they rounded into the room. It was a place he’d fought against, arguing that the populace of Brown College needed the room for comfort; that this far into the ‘safe zone’ would waste resources to have an established firing spot.
He’d never been so glad to have lost that particular argument to Karl as now. His vision blurred again at the thought of the teacher and he sagged against the doorframe. Another soul lost to the ravages of the bitter world outside of these walls.
The woman slid comfortably into position at the window. “Sit down, shirt off. Dry down, we’ll dress your shoulder soon as I thin the crowd.”
“Won’t your gunshots just draw more?” Percival muttered as he sat down on a partially deflated, lime green beanbag chair.
“Benefit of the storm overhead is that it drowns out a lotta noise.” Her rifle spat death into the rain. “Like feeding moans… and my little .22. Bigger? Maybe, but…”
Exhaustion settled into Percival as the woman’s voice trailed off, replaced by rhythmic and steady cracks from her rifle. Her shots trailed off after a couple of minutes. He pulled his helmet off, wincing as his shoulder protested the movement. He scrubbed a damp hand across his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so tired; so beat down.
Even in the days following being shot, he’d not felt so wrung out. It was long moments before he shrugged out of his leather jacket, vaguely aware of the bite-size hole in the shoulder, and tugged his dark t-shirt off.
The latter produced a groan of pain as he let the garment wetly plop to the floor as the woman’s shots tapered to an end.
She backed out of the window, dropped a blackout curtain with the flick of a cord, and turned to him. She tugged the paintball mask off and her name immediately popped into his head.
“Katherine…” the words dreamily, drizzled out of Percival’s mouth.
“Prefer ‘Kat,’ or Miss Holter, or Corporal Holter if you’re my C.O.” She moved closer to him after wicking wet hair back from her face. She pulled a pen light from a pocket and ignited it.
Percival hissed and lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the blaringly bright and naked light. He found himself immediately blinded by the experience.
“Oh, suck it up.” Kat pulled his hand down and moved the pen light from his shoulder to the rest of him. “Holy crap. What happened to you?”
Percival opened his mouth for a moment, found that words wouldn’t come, and closed his teeth with an angry click as he looked away from her.
“Were you shot?” She bent lower, staring at his midsection. She hovered the pen light just above the bandage he still wore over the hole in his side.
Percival mutely nodded. The pains of the bullet wound and the loss of Sarah cascaded back into him as hot tears forced their way to his eyes. His vision blurred.
“I’ll check that out too.” Kat rose and dropped her hand onto his uninjured shoulder. “We’ll get you patched up. Don’t you worry about it a pinch. Think you could strip the bandages off too?”
Percival nodded once without looking her in the eye. Kat’s hand drifted from his shoulder and she disappeared from the room with nary a sound.
Percival sank forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He ignored the dull, throbbing pain in his shoulder and let the sweeping sharp pain that lanced through his heart nearly overtake him.
Soft sobs wracked his body for long moments in the dark room with nothing more than the rain and muffled zombies to keep him company. Neither was of much comfort. His thoughts drifted, near aimlessly, through faces of those he’d lost. Mixed among his traveling companions were faces of people from the campus he’d failed.
He’d likely given too much away to the militant jerks who’d cost him so much already. He hadn’t precisely broken under their inquiries, but he had revealed more than he’d intended to. The end result had, obviously, proven disastrous for Brown College.
A shaky breath whistled out between his teeth. Not everything was lost, however. Kat was still here. She’d saved him even.
He pushed himself back to sitting upright.
If she were still here, it meant there were likely other survivors as well. Brown College wasn’t nearly as dead as it seemed.
The jerk-offs who attacked his home hadn’t been as thorough as he’d feared.
Anger, white hot and lightning fast, flashed through him. Percival clenched his hands into tightly wound fists as he sucked breath through clenched teeth.
His at
tention snapped up to the door with the near silent return of Kat. She cast one glance at him and dropped her hand to her side-arm.
Percival blinked a couple times and loosened his hands back out. “I’m fine… not turned. Yet.”
But the flash of near uncontrollable rage was an early indication he’d suffered infection from the bite. He lifted his hand to scrub it across his eyes. Of course he was infected. The virus was transmitted via any bodily fluid, and most readily via bite.
It was why they were so cautious to cover every open orifice when venturing ‘in the wild.’
“Everybody gets the option, Percival.” Kat’s voice punctured his private thoughts.
His hand dropped away from his eyes and he looked at her without lifting his head. Kat hadn’t lifted her hand from her pistol, but she also hadn’t drawn it from the holster. He opened his mouth to answer her.
She cut him off. “There are others who need to see you. It’s not my place to tell you what to do, but… You’re more valuable alive for however long you’ve got.”
Percival studied the linoleum floor between his boots. She’d just confirmed that there were more people still alive from his home. He’d had a duty before getting back to tell them of the world. He still had that duty. He slowly pulled his gaze from the floor to her face. He’d turn eventually and when he did… “I could be dangerous to you and them.”
“Oh, certainly. But I’m pretty quick on the draw, and this close I’m just as accurate as with my rifle.” She stroked the grip of her pistol. “I…”
“I’d try to eat my own bullet before it came to that.” Percival let out a slow breath. He closed his eyes. “Sorry, Sarah.”
“What was that?” Kat glided to stand just before him.
“I promised Sarah I’d not do something incredibly stupid.” He gestured to the semi-circular wound that radiated warmth and pain. “Broke that promise.”
“We’ve all got our faults.” Kat dropped to her knees before him and, with incredibly gentle hands, pulled bandages from his middle.
He winced as the last one came away. “What’re your faults?”
“Clearly not a shoddy stitching job.”
“Lacking tact, obviously.” Percival leaned back and clenched his teeth as she worked at the old bullet wound and waves of fatigue and exhaustion smashed against him. “Think less of me if I passed out?”
“Only a little.”
Percival closed his eyes and lost whatever else she said to darkness and, thankfully, a dreamless unconsciousness.
* * *
Kat finished the delicate procedure for cleaning Percival’s shoulder and taped the bandage in place. The man remained out cold since he practically asked her permission to pass out, despite her not being particularly gentle with cleaning out the nasty gashes the ghoul’s teeth had left. All things considered, he’d been lucky the zombie hadn’t had time to rip a sizeable chunk out of his shoulder and rendered it useless. It sucked that he was infected, but at least he wasn’t going to immediately die from the wound. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.
As she expected, his forehead burned with a fever. No one escaped a bite without infection and the fever was the first outward sign.
She gathered up the soiled garments and bandages as she left the room. She carried them down the hall and into the final room on the right. She pitched the used items into the trashcan there and took a long moment to thoroughly clean her hands with a precious bottle of anti-viral hand cleanser. It was the sort of stuff that’d been so very common and overused before the apocalypse almost to the point of creating super-bugs.
She’d often wondered if it’d been this over reliance on germ-killers that’d led to the plague that had all but wiped out mankind.
She shook the thought out of her head and stalked back to the room with Percival resting in it. She stared at his bandaged and shirtless form for longer than she was proud of, watching him slowly breathe in the rhythm of the injured. She dragged a blanket over him, her old comforter in fact, and scratched out a quick note that she’d be back before dawn.
She backed out of the room and closed the door behind her. It was a minor miracle she’d found him. And since he was here, maybe Ian’s insistence that someone else had survived the brutal attack had merit.
Not that Percival had been present at the time of the attack, but still. She’d seen the light in his eyes when she’d mentioned others being alive. She understood that delight.
If she were able to find even one other survivor, it’d mean the world to everyone. Simply bringing Percival back would mean loads. And not just because of the potential armament he’d brought with him in the Humvee.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She couldn’t let her mind get ahead of her. She had a job to do and couldn’t let Percival’s arrival distract her from it.
Chapter 3
Kat moved down the alleyway. She cradled her .22 in a loose, but ready grip. The thunderstorm that’d announced Percival had meandered off, but the rain that came with it had stubbornly hung around and continued to drop sheets of bitterly cold water onto Prosperity Wells.
She shivered as she moved away from the southern edge of town and made her way north. The carnage lessened as she moved away. The attack had devastated the community, but it had slammed against it from a solitary direction and spread as water hitting rocks, the town slowly returned to ordinary the further from that impact she moved.
She swept her rifle along the street before she dashed across it in a low crouch. There’d been surprisingly few zombies in her trek away from campus and the heart of the town and it left her feeling on edge.
The town wasn’t meant to be so quiet. She stalked down a path and rounded the corner of the street. She froze and whipped her rifle to ready position at the sight of movement.
Kat kept her rifle trained on the corner of the building, a simple, grey brick structure—Perry’s Pizza—with its front windows boarded up. She swore she’d seen something move. Zombies didn’t skulk about, so she had her doubts as to if it were a member of the corpses. But it could have easily been another survivor, or someone left behind by the assailants to report if anyone came looking at the town.
The assholes had strung up the leadership of their blossoming community and left a pair of spots for Percival and Sarah after all. They might have known the two would be coming, or expected it, and wanted to catch him.
Or her. Maybe Sarah or Andrina were still out there somewhere. She’d not precisely had the time to grill Percival over it. She wondered, as she darted across the empty street, if he would be up to answering questions.
She hoped he hadn’t turned by the time she got back to him.
Kat shoved the thoughts away as she slunk up to the corner of the pizzeria. She paused, quickly glanced around the corner and ducked back. A shadowed form had disappeared into the former coffee shop across the street.
It’d been careful to not let the door close noisily behind it, so, it likely wasn’t a person actively running from her. She took a deep breath, dropped to her belly and ignored the dirty puddle she’d flopped into as she edged around the corner to study the building.
The once appealing Bean Hut now appeared shadowed and foreboding in her mind. The front window, as with every building on this street with large plate windows, was boarded up with a singular sheet of plywood that spanned its length. The barricade, she knew, was reinforced on the backside of the window, but from the outside it appeared to be ramshackle at best.
Haphazard at worst. It was the sort of thing they’d put up while clearing Prosperity Wells of the walking dead to keep zombies from reentering buildings they’d already cleared. It didn’t do much against active sieges or if someone wanted to pull it off.
She shifted her gaze up along the building to the roofline and didn’t see anyone standing watch.
Of course, they could be maintaining just as careful a nature as she was. The rooftop wouldn’t be the most comfortable
place to kneel for long periods of time with only your head poking above the edge, but it could spare you a lifetime of hurt. Especially if that lifetime was cut abruptly short if someone, such as herself, saw the outline and took a shot.
A thin line of light bloomed beneath the edge of the door and from around the edges of plywood. From what she could see, it wasn’t even capped with red to prevent the destruction of night vision.
Kat wicked water from the front of her mask, leaving annoying streaks in its wake, and popped into a low crouch. The light was an error she didn’t think the assailants would make. It seemed like the sort of thing some civilian would do. The Watchmen had policies about this sort of thing. Hell, her time in JROTC and ROTC had taught her a thing or two about discipline. The Colonel had drilled that into her.
He’d been the best thing to happen to her since her parents had died. His assistance and training had certainly seen her through the agonizing first few chaotic months of the apocalypse. But not everyone had that sort of resolve. She took a deep breath and duck-walked across the street and straight to the door. She took half a second to swap her weaponry around, her rifle wasn’t ideal for a potential close-quarters firefight, and slipped her earplugs in.
She closed her eyes, took two deep breaths, steeled herself for the possibility of killing someone who wasn’t already dead and settled her hand on the cold, metal handle.
* * *
Percival woke with a wracking coughing fit that left him doubled over and sore. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared into the darkness. His cotton-filled mind took far longer than he liked to pull together where he was and what had happened.
He numbly touched the fresh bandages on his shoulder and middle. The wounds beneath them ached as a dull reminder of his misfortunes.
His failures.
He squeezed his eyes closed against the darkness of the dorm room and shivered. The blanket he’d been covered by lay on the floor by the edge of the beanbag chair.
Being cold was both a good and bad thing. He hadn’t progressed to the point of not feeling the illness ravaging his body, so he wasn’t about to turn in the next five minutes. While the thought warmed him, and shredded some of the cotton filling his ears, it didn’t do much to actually warm him.