Swerving around cars and debris, I make a right and see the CVS on the opposite corner, but I can’t give away Logan and Missy’s location. Gripping the wheel with my left hand, I grab my AR from between the seats and click off the safety. I roll down the window and fire back at the one at my rear left, missing him, but he slows down.
The other picks up speed and pulls a weapon from his jacket, so I swerve and slam on my brakes, and send him diving over the hood of the Blazer. I screech to a start again and drive over him as the other one fires, taking out the back window. I floor it, then bust a right on the next street at sixty miles per hour.
The ground comes parallel with my window before they meet, and the window breaks, followed by a crunch of steel. My shoulder slams into something, and there’s excruciating pain before the sensation of being upside down. I’m a rag doll as the process repeats once more, shattering glass that pierces my face and arms, before the Blazer slams into something and stops.
Dangling from the worn-out seatbelt, dazed and in pain, I hear the motorcycle pull up. I scan the interior of the vehicle, smelling wine and fuel, and find the AR-17 stuck in the opposite floorboard. I unbuckle my seatbelt and, dropping to the side of the passenger seat, reach over to procure the weapon, then scan the various sight lines my assailant might come from.
Footsteps crunch through glass to my left. I hold my breath, pushing the butt of the rifle into my right shoulder blade, because my left arm is completely useless. As soon as I get a visual, I fire, shooting him in the jaw. When he hits the ground, still twitching, I shoot him again, once in the chest, and once more in the head. Against the urge to waste one in the dead asshole’s groin, I drop my weapon and slide down the side of the seat to the shattered window-floor.
Everywhere on my body, little pockets of fire and pain pulsate, burn. Chunks of glass in my arms, cuts on my face, and bad road rash on my shoulder. Not to mention whatever’s wrong inside of it. At least I wasn’t wearing my new jacket, though it might’ve protected my skin.
I consider taking my bag, but decide to come back for it instead. It’s somewhere in this Blazer, drenched in wine, but now’s not the time to look for it. Wouldn’t be able to carry it anyway.
When I see my most prized worldly possession—my CD player—smashed to pieces on the pavement, something inside of me dies. And that dead thing rises like the dead around me, ready to obliterate the fuckers responsible.
Something whirrs behind me. I spin around, aim and fire, blasting the hovering mini-craft from the sky. When it hits the ground, I shoot it again, and once more to an empty mag. I drop the weapon to the ground to search the interior of the Blazer, and spy a katana wedged between the back passenger side seat and the door. I stretch through the shattered side window until my fingers curl around the threaded katana grip, and then there are hands on my shoulders.
I extract the blade from its crevice and spin around, severing the corpse’s arms from her body, and pierce her through the skull. She slides from my blade, and behind her, a fresh-faced, young horde moves toward me, fast—running. Recently infected.
They’re . . . children.
With a shudder, I cut behind the Blazer and run, awkwardly, because my left arm won’t move. I take my left hand with my right, cradle my arm to my chest, and cut down an alley. Up ahead, I make out blue ladder rungs leading up the side of a building. One-handed ladder climbing doesn’t sound like the best escape plan, so I keep going.
Gideon. He taught me this to help me stay alive. As cut, bruised, and broken as I am, and even with the recent occurrences, I can still run. In fact, I’m not even tired when I look back and realize I’m alone. Not a runner in sight . . . except for me.
Twenty-Five
By the time the CVS comes into view again, the all-over pain is excruciating, and I’m starting to feel the whiplash in my neck and shoulders. I duck behind an old post office and wait for the group of undead children to shuffle past. Maybe it’s a morbid curiosity, and I’ll regret doing it, but I want to see them.
As they pass, my terror caves to compassion, and then to sorrow. One of them with white-blond hair like Corbin’s, and not much older, hobbles on a stump where his left foot is missing. I cup my hands over my mouth to stifle the gasp when I see their wounds and watch them all die at the hands of the beasts they’ve now become. A parade of the worst-possible outcome.
There’s so many of them . . . I wonder where they came from. They must’ve been hiding out somewhere together and somehow they all got infected. Poor things. The oldest among them can’t be more than sixteen.
When they finally pass, at least thirty or forty of them, I cross the street. I’ve never been happier to see a propane tank cabinet.
“Logan,” I call up to the window in a low voice. “Help me.”
“Grace?” There’s a shuffling sound, then the creaking of metal shelves as he mounts the windowsill. “What hap—oh fuck, are you okay?”
“Dislocated my shoulder, I think. I can’t climb up.”
He crouches through the window and onto the propane tank cabinet, then hops down. “Jesus. How?”
“I rolled a Blazer into a telephone pole. Two guys on motorcycles and a drone were chasing me. We drove right past here.”
“Oh shit, that was you? I heard that.” He reaches a hand to my cheek, regarding my wounds. “You’re lucky to be alive. Come on, I’ll help you up, then we’ll check out that arm.” He guides me over to the side of the cabinet and makes a cradle with linked fingers.
“Can you fix it if it’s dislocated?”
I step into his hands, and he boosts me up slowly, holds me steady until I’m able to maneuver myself onto the cabinet. “Yeah.” He hoists himself up after me, then goes through the window first to help me through. “My ma beat my ass a lot when I was younger. Got my shoulder dislocated a couple times and didn’t want the bitch to go to jail for some dumb reason. I just looked up online how to relocate the joint myself. Hurts like a bitch, but . . . it is what it is.”
He offers me his hand to help me through the window, then he pauses, glances around. “Where’s homeboy?”
“Some men took him.”
He helps me through the window, then descends the shelves to assist my climb to the ground. He grips my waist and brings me down gently until my feet touch the tile floor.
“Took him?”
I turn around, and Logan slips an arm around my waist, steadying me en route to the medicine aisle.
“Yeah, we were at that mega church—the House of Zion Praise and Worship Center?—and things were going great, when these guys just barged in. I was in the back of this huge room, in the shadows, so they didn’t see me, but I heard them talking to him. He was . . .”
“Go on,” Logan coaxes.
“Whoever they were, he used to be one of them. He escaped, I guess.”
“You guess? He didn’t tell you?”
We stop in front of the medicine aisle and Logan helps me sit, before skimming the rows of products. He plucks a few items and sets them down beside me, then skips off to the pharmacy. A few minutes later, he reappears with a bottle and a syringe.
“What’s that for?”
“It’s liquid mollioid, or ‘Molly’—a synthetic opioid similar to Morphine. It’s for those who are allergic to morphine, I think. Anyway, it’s about a two-thousand-dollar bottle. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. I think you’ve earned it.”
“Oh Goddamn, thank you.”
He chuckles to himself as he kneels to prepare the syringe. “I’m going there, too, right after you. This shit has been keeping me going. I keep telling myself that as long as I’ve got this to look forward to, I’m good. But now that I’m cracking it open for you—fuck it. There’s no way I’m not doing any, too.”
“Isn’t there plenty?”
He stops, grins. “This’ll be gone in two days with two of us here.”
“Oh, yeah?”
He nods, and my heart pounds. An opioid binge was
n’t exactly on my agenda, but . . . one shot for this immense pain won’t hurt, right?
“Lie on your back, feet together.” Logan takes off his shirt, rolls it up, and places it beneath my head. “I would say, this is going to fucking hurt, but . . .” He flicks the syringe, then pushes the plunger down slowly, expelling the air. The sight of it makes me nauseous. It certainly doesn’t bring back pleasant memories of the last time someone stuck a needle in my arm.
“But what?” I examine his slender six-pack, his tanned-cream skin.
He steadies himself at the crease in my arm before piercing it with the needle. The warmth starts there, then shoots through me as he depresses the plunger. I moan, and close my eyes as all of my pain disappears. Enter: paradise.
“But nothing. That’s what you’ll feel. I’ll wait to do mine until I get you all patched up.” He withdraws the needle, then peers down at me through two dark blue shining stars. “How’s that?”
“Better,” I whisper.
“Fuck yeah, it’s better. Just looking at you is making me jones.”
As he shuffles around with various things, I stare up at the ceiling. Waves in my peripheral vision, then I roll over onto my side, and puke. Logan rushes to my aid, holding my hair out of the way as I finish.
“The good shit does that sometimes,” he says.
“Need . . . water.” I collapse onto my back again.
“Got it.” He skips off a couple of aisles over and returns with a bottled water. I take a few gulps and hand it back to him, and he sets it aside, examining me for a minute before taking my left arm into his hands. He positions one toward the bottom and one toward the top, and in a swift motion, there’s the sensation of bone grinding against cartilage or bone, then a snap, and a release of tension. But no pain.
“See?” he says. “You would’ve been screaming right now without that shit.”
“Thank you,” I say on an exhaled breath.
“You’re welcome.” He gazes down at me for a moment before turning to grab something. “It’ll be sore for a couple weeks, but it should be fine.” He peels open a pack of gauze and unscrews the lid of a bottle of peroxide. My eyes close as a wave of euphoria engulfs me. I try to move my arm, relieved to be able to bring it to my chest.
“Shit,” Logan says. “I need to get some tweezers. You have glass in your arms.”
He rises from my side and returns a moment later. I sense his presence, feel him touching me, doctoring me, but there’s no pain, only pleasure coursing through me. It’s almost like the stuff they gave me at Riverbend, but euphoric and warm. Everything’s soft, friendly, safe, perfect . . . Damn I feel good.
I doze in and out of consciousness as he works on me, unable to piece together the shrapnel of my thoughts in a way that makes any sense. I give in to the void and let it take me away . . .
“Hey.” Logan gives me a shake. “You okay?”
I nod, eyes closed.
“I may have given you a bit too much. We’ll do less next time and see if that works for the pain.” He tosses the bloody gauze aside and grabs a washcloth. “Almost done. Gotta take care of this road rash.” He holds the towel beneath my shoulder, then pours peroxide onto my wound. I brace for pain, but it’s only cold and wet.
“That one will need a bandage,” he says. “And I put a butterfly on your cheekbone. It’s not too deep, but it was deep enough.”
He opens a large bandage and some medical tape and covers my shoulder, then sits back and regards his handiwork.
“Thank you,” I tell him again.
He nods, then offers me his hand. “Let’s get you somewhere comfortable.”
“How’s Missy?” I’m dizzy when I sit up, but it passes, and he helps me to my feet.
“She’s good. Asleep. I think she’s been waiting for you to get back. She keeps hanging out near the front, eyes on that window.”
“Aw.”
He holds me steady with an arm around my waist and leads me toward the breakroom. My wounds are regaining some sensation, though I still wouldn’t call it pain. More like a warm rush of bliss with the occasional discomfort that’s no more than the touch of a finger.
Then Logan leans into my ear and whispers, “I’ve been waiting for you, too.”
Twenty-Six
Missy breathes softly on her paper towel bed, snuggling her bear, as Logan helps me get comfortable on his. He hands me a blanket, then sits beside me to prepare a syringe. “You hurt at all?”
“No.”
“Cool.” He dips the point into the small bottle and pulls back on the plunger. His dirty blond hair sits in disarray, an unlit cigarette held at the corner of his lips.
“Can I get one of those?” I ask.
“We should wait a bit for you, I think.”
“No, a . . . cigarette.”
“Oh—yeah.” He reaches into the pocket of his stained, ripped jeans and takes out a pack of Salem Menthols and a lighter. He lights the cigarette in his mouth, then hands it to me and lights another one for himself, taking a long drag. He holds the syringe up to the lantern, a couple of thumps to the side, then a depression of the plunger until tiny droplets spurt out.
I watch as he punctures his skin, the mixture of blood in the clear liquid before both get plunged downward into the vein. Logan’s eyelids droop, and he breathes heavy as he removes the needle, setting it on the table beside him. He sways for a minute or two, then motions to the small space beside me. “Mind if I—? Promise I won’t bite.”
“Sure.” I move over the last three or four inches to the wall, leaving him about a foot of space. “How many packages of paper towels is this?”
“All of them.” He lies down beside me, though he holds himself up with his left leg because part of him hangs off the edge.
I drag on my cigarette, surprised by the long ash. “Ash tray?”
He holds out his cupped palm, and I hesitate, then flick the ash into it. With a drag of his own, he tosses the ash aside. “Goddamn. That’s some good shit, right?”
“Yeah.”
We sit in silence, finishing our cigarettes, then he takes mine from me when it’s gone and extinguishes it on the floor beside him, along with his own. He rolls over until his face is inches from my ear. “So . . . he lied to you.”
I don’t want to acknowledge the truth, but this shit might as well be truth serum.
I nod.
“No clue who the assholes were who were chasing you?”
“No,” I say, not wanting to tell him all of my secrets yet. Or maybe not being able to at the moment. “But there was a drone following me. Right after that, they appeared.”
“A drone?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen a few of them. Murray said—”
“Who’s Murray?”
My mind spins, trying to come up with something. I’m not ready for anyone else to know how deeply and truly screwed up I am.
“I traveled with him for a while,” I say. “He says there are these guys, these Suits, he calls them, and they started this whole thing as a way to control the population, but it backfired. Now they have child and women slaves—” The words catch a bubble of emotion in my throat.
“Are you serious right now? That’s craz—”
“It’s true.”
“Fuck. That’s nuts. The dudes driving the tanks around with the white vans searching for survivors?”
“Yes. And now they have drones. And since I killed . . . some of their men . . . I think they’re looking for me.”
He struggles to rise from the paper towel bed, stumbling to the side before regaining his balance.
“What are you doing?”
“Need to cover up that window. Those modern, illegal drones have long range scopes on them. They’d be able to see the whole inside of the store.” And he disappears through the doorway.
My gaze drifts to Missy. She’s a beautiful girl. And I get to see her when she wakes up. There’s one good thing that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours. Not
to mention, I’m ashamed to admit how happy I am to see Logan, too. Faced with being completely alone in a world where death is the norm now, there’s life here. I’m not alone. And that’s become more priceless than food and clean water. More of a necessity than shelter or weapons. When you’re all alone, and you’ve got no one else to fight for, what then?
The thought of it makes my insides churn with fear, still ugly beneath the narcotic glaze. I can’t lose anyone else. I have to get Gideon back, and I have to keep them safe. We’ll leave, if we have to, and look for the safe place Murray had mentioned. The idea is even ridiculous to myself. Still . . . there’ve been too many “coincidences” to rule anything out.
When Logan returns, there’s fire in him. What appears as anger at first quickly triggers my inner parts that know when a man wants to be inside of me. But he glances away just as quickly, taking a seat on the floor beside the paper towel bed. He sits with his arms propped up on his knees for a minute, then he shakes his head.
“What?” I ask. “Did you cover the window?”
“Yeah.” He’s silent for a moment before he continues. “Every once in a while I just sit back in astonishment, you know? How we got here. The way the world is now. It’s fucked. FUBAR’d.”
I think of Eve. It was one of her favorite sayings.
“Fucked up beyond all recognition, yup,” I whisper. “Bombs away.”
It seems silly to chain-smoke, considering our cigarette supply is limited. But we do anyway, until dawn, when the tile outside the lobby lights up with the first kiss of day and my whole body aches again. With pain in my face, and in my moans, Logan fixes up another shot of Molly without a sound.
I brace myself for bliss as he plunges it into my vein. The warm rush ignites an inferno, and when I moan again, closing my eyes amid the rapture, Logan kisses me. I kiss him back, riding a rollercoaster of lust and need for comfort. He’s careful as he brings himself down beside me, pressing his erection against my pelvis.
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