by Gillian Zane
There was no stopping now though. I hung a right and tore through lawns, almost tripping over a bike hidden in the grass. I regained my balance but there were toys strewn all over this lawn and I almost face planted over some kind of plastic slide turned over on its side. People need to keep their lawn tidy! The almost trip slowed me enough that Hannah and Murphey caught up.
I glanced behind me again, the dead were close.
Pratt must not have seen me trip, because the clatter of metal and his pain-filled scream clued me in that something bad had happened.
The three of us stopped and turned around. They were on him in seconds. He had gone down and he wasn’t getting up. There was no getting up from what was happening. There were at least twenty of them and they all fell to their knees around the fallen soldier. His screams and shouts for help were horrible, but as one we all turned and began to run.
I hated thinking this way, but they weren’t following us anymore. We had delivered dinner.
THIRTY-NINE | Kill me, you bitch
I dragged her for what felt like miles. Miles of uneven ground, high grass, constantly on the lookout for the dead. I didn’t even know where I was. I followed Rebel.
The smell alerted me first and I ground to a stop. Heather slipped from my arms like a rag doll.
Rebel, aware of me stopping, came to a halt and bent over panting.
I looked down at Heather. She was still breathing. Her skin was gray, though. Like Martinez. She looked like Martinez had looked. She looked like almost zombie Martinez. Gray skin and she smelled like death. That quick.
She was bit. Her neck was a nasty mess from one of those things. She knew she was as good as dead. I saw it when she opened her eyes and stared at me.
“Kill me.” The words might not have had sound. But her mouth worked and formed those words. The blood pumping in my ears was so loud. My heart beat a mile a minute. I couldn’t hear her words. But, I read her lips.
“Kill me, you bitch.” I heard them now. “Don’t let me turn.”
All I could do was stare down at her. There were tears streaking down her cheeks. Rebel stepped forward and I looked up and glared at him.
“Don’t even,” I hissed and he stepped back, hands raised. I knelt down next to her. I pulled out my knife.
“Murphey,” I sobbed.
“Do it,” she whispered, her voice a rattle in her throat. “Don’t be a pussy.” Her eyes closed, she was ready. I did it quick, one slice across her neck and then the next through the base of her brain stem. Hopefully it was painless.
I stood up too fast and lights began popping across my vision. I felt dizzy as if the ground was moving underneath my feet in waves. I crumbled to the ground.
FORTY | Baby
She was heavier than she looked. Must be all the gear. She protested when I grabbed her and picked her up. But she was incoherent. I had to find a place to bunker down for the night. We were near some houses; hopefully there was something viable nearby.
When she began to shiver, I readjusted and threw her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She must be really out of it. She didn’t say a thing.
I exited the interstate and went up the high embankment of the train tracks. When I got to the top, sudden clarity of where I was hit me. We were entering the “Cities of the Dead.”
Hannah squirmed on my back.
“Put me down, I’m fine,” she complained. I did as she asked and set her down on her feet. She turned and took in our surroundings. The sun was starting to go down. The red sky was bright against the white marble of the raised crypts.
“Great,” she sighed. “What the hell happened to me?”
“You fainted,” I said honestly.
“I did not faint. I don’t faint.”
“Whatever you gotta tell yourself,” I said a little more bitingly than I usually was. I was worn out. I also didn’t want to run through a bunch of crypts with zombies chasing me. I wasn’t superstitious, but this was pushing it.
“Ouch.” She looked over at me. She was still pale, but color was starting to come back to her cheeks.
“We can bunk in the funeral home. It’s probably the safest place in the city. No one would be there,” I said.
“Yeah, they’re all in the church.” She glanced uneasily at the big church that loomed to the east of us. She shivered and swayed on her feet again. I grabbed for her with the intention of helping her but she pushed my hand away. I couldn’t believe she was standing at all. I wouldn’t be able to function if I had gone through what she did. I went to her again, not caring that she didn’t want my assistance, this time she let me wrap an arm around her but she got a glare in.
“I got this, let’s go.” She pulled away from me and marched down the tracks and into the cemetery. She stumbled once, but righted herself and kept marching forward. Leaving me and my chivalry behind.
Row after row of crypts were in front of us. Each tomb was like a little house. Some even had iron fences around them. Grass and weeds poked out from the “streets” between the tombs, but it was in relatively good shape. This was one of the newer cemeteries, catering to the Lakeview and Mid-City people. The tombs showed fairly recent dates, and their facades were still glossy and glittering in the sunlight.
I trudged along with Hannah at my side until we reached the end of the row. The path of tombs led to a circular drive and a squat but expansive building that was built to resemble a house. Not one car was parked in the lot. It would be empty.
I went for the door and was relieved to find it locked. If it was still locked, there was no one in there. I used my machete to force open the door and we stepped cautiously into the building, the stale smell of decay the only indicator of safety. There was no smell of rot or body odor.
I pulled out my flashlight and shone it into the building. I had been to one funeral here, so I knew they had three or four viewing rooms, and two break rooms. I led Hannah to the left and we passed a viewing room with the coffin still in place, dead flowers surrounded the box. I hoped to God there was nothing in there.
Around the corner was a break room and to my great pleasure, a water cooler. I grabbed a tiny paper cup and filled it with water, pushing it into her hands. She gulped it back greedily and then stuck it under the dispenser for more.
We drank our fill and then I found some towels and began to clean off. She followed suit, not saying a word. I peeled off the thick layers of clothes, starting with the heavy leather jacket I had been given in place of my cut from the club. It was warm in here. I wouldn’t need it.
When I was done cleaning up, I pulled cushions off the sofas that lined the hallways and brought them to the break room and piled them on the floor. Then I shut the doors and propped a chair up against the handle just in case.
Hannah paced back and forth, digging in the cabinets, looking under tables.
“I have these.” I pulled MREs from my pack.
She nodded and came over and sat next to me. I filled one heating element with water and activated it. I placed the two meals in the cardboard packaging it came in, with the heater in the middle and sat back and waited. In those twelve minutes it took for the MRE to cook, she sat there quietly next to me. She must have used some kind of lotion or soap because she smelled like lavender again. She sat next to me so close I could feel the heat of her body against my right side.
I poured some of the drink mix in a bottle I had in my pack and shook it up. The mixes were full of vitamins and sugar. She needed to get something in her system. She was physically fit, but we had lost two of our team, had run over five miles and we were now on our own, in the middle of a cemetery and half of our supplies were in a truck miles away.
She took the bottle from me and gratefully chugged it, then took the MRE packet I handed her and began to slowly chew the contents.
I followed her lead, chewing the bland tasting meal. I didn’t know what I was eating. It tasted like sauce, whatever it was. The MREs came with a little bottle of hot sauce
, but I couldn’t find it. I must have dropped it when I pulled out the pack.
We finished our meals at about the same time and I grabbed hers from her hand, got up and put them to the side for trash. When I sat back down, I didn’t intentionally sit closer. I was close enough to touch her, though. Our legs were stretched out in front of us, separated by only inches. I had never been this aware of someone’s hand, the placement of their thigh or the shift of their head since I was a teen bracing for my first kiss.
The whole right side of my body tingled with awareness and all we did was sit there, not talking, staring at the one point of light coming from a small lantern in this dark room.
“Thank you.” She broke the silence with a pained whisper. I don’t know what she was thanking me for. It might have been for the MRE or the water, or for setting up the cushions. Maybe it was because I was respecting her need for solitude. I would probably never know, so I nodded my head as if I were wise and knew what she was talking about.
Then the toughest woman I had ever known just sort of collapsed next to me. She fell into my side, her head on my shoulder, and her body shook as silent tears ripped through her. I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her closer. She was so small, but she fit to my side perfectly. I held her tight and let her cry. I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t say meaningless platitudes like, “It’ll get better,” or “she’s in a better place,” because personally I didn’t believe either of those statements.
This world was not going to get better. There would be no happily ever afters in a world where people ate each other. Where men like me took advantage of the weak. And how could there be a God in a mess like this? How could an all-knowing God authorize something like this? If there was no God, there was no heaven, so after we closed our eyes forever, it would be blackness, or worse, reincarnation.
I couldn’t imagine being a child in this world. Might as well strap a sign on your back that says, “dinner.”
I was lost in my black thoughts when her shaking stopped and her breath evened out. She had fallen asleep. In my arms. I guess instead of being all glum, I should have paid attention to the woman that made my body tingle. The woman I had been obsessing over since she pointed a gun in my face. Baby. The nickname fit.
FORTY-ONE | In Trouble
I awoke with my back stiff and my shoulder asleep. There was something warm and soft pressed against me. I was still propped up against the wall and Baby was draped over me. When I moved to get life into my arm, she moaned in protest and moved in closer, her arm draping over my lap.
It was morning and as a typical male in his early twenties, I awoke showing off my virility. She moved again slightly, coming to and trying to figure out where she was. She looked up at me, her big blue eyes blinking away the sleep. I was so grateful I had left the lantern burning, I got to witness this moment, instead of it being lost in the darkness.
“Morning,” I said to her.
“Morning.” There went that blush again, that flare of red came to her cheeks so easily. It flamed hot when she realized where her hand was resting and what it had stimulated. She moved it quickly, but didn’t break eye contact.
I almost pulled her back when she pushed away from me and got to her knees. I almost took advantage of her grief and her confusion. Almost. I let her go, and she went to the door and moved the chair. The light washed over us. It must be late in the morning judging by the amount of light in the outside hallway.
She glanced at me, a halo of light around her as she stood in the doorway.
“I’m going to find a bathroom,” she said and all I could do was nod. I was in trouble.
FORTY-TWO | Giving In
The place was alight in the morning sun. I hadn’t seen a day this pretty in a while. New Orleans winters were generally gloomy, foggy and overcast. The humidity never left no matter how cold it got. It was the kind of cold that got into your bones and never left.
But not this morning. The sun shone brightly, the sky was a bright blue with only a few clouds to mar it. Birds flew in and out of the trees, celebrating the morning and the feel of spring creeping into the city. It was beautiful, but all I could do was stare morosely out of the glass front of the building. The day did not reflect my mood.
Murphey and I were the kind of friends that wouldn’t see each other for months and then start up the conversation right where we left off. When I left the Army, we hadn’t seen each other much. She had come to New Orleans on leave one time, but that was about it. Even though she had been stationed close, she was still living the military life and didn’t agree with me becoming a mercenary.
It didn’t matter though, she still would visit and we would pick up right where we left off. That’s why she came looking for me after Z hit. She knew I was alive. She knew I would help her. And now I had let her die. I had always been stronger in hand-to-hand, Murphey had preferred the air, going SOAR, the Special Operations Aviation Regiment, after Airborne, while I went Ranger. I shouldn’t have let her handle that on her own. I should have been there for her.
A little movie projector in my head replayed the events, reassuring me there was nothing I could have done. We were outnumbered, and I was in the shit myself.
There was nothing I could have done.
My thoughts repeated on a loop. The knife went into her neck again and I shivered.
I needed a bathroom. I wandered around the place until I found a bathroom. I stripped and cleaned up using the water in the toilet to do a bit of wipe down. I used water from my canteen to brush my teeth though, I had my priorities. Sink was for bathroom, toilet for cleaning. The world was fucked up.
I got dressed again. The day might be bright, but it was still chilly. I went to find Rebel. I had been confused when I woke up. I had woken wrapped around him. To make it worse, I had enjoyed it. I felt safe. He took care of me last night. Honestly, he had taken care of me this entire trip. I didn’t know what to think about that. I never had someone take care of me. Never. Not even my parents, when they had been around. It was weird, it was off, it was warm.
I found him standing in the hallway using the mirror in the hall and the light through the windows to shave. He was shaving his beard off using an old fashioned straight razor. The kind that folded and was used by barber shops.
I felt my entire perspective shift. I stood there staring at him like a fool, my gut twisted in knots.
“I found this in the director’s office. It was in a fancy leather case.” He held up the case and smiled. With half a beard and a big smile on his face he was ridiculous and attractive. My stomach flipped. My perspective shifted two more degrees.
Why not?
Really, why not? I had worried about what Rebel would prove to me on this mission. I shouldn’t have, because the only thing he proved was that I could trust him. That he was a good guy.
He looked back to the mirror when I didn’t say anything and continued to hack away at his beard. He was not used to using a razor of this kind, it was apparent by how he was doing it. I walked up to him and took the razor from his hand.
He looked down at me and I pushed his chin up.
“Why are you shaving your beard, Rebel?”
I placed the blade against his neck and he swallowed nervously. My mind flashed to Murphey’s neck again. And what I had done. How I had killed her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I whispered, not know if I said it for him or me. I began to shave his face. Long strokes, and I paid careful attention around his nose and chin. By the time I was done, his cheeks shone and his face was smooth.
I touched his chin and then ran my hands over his cheeks and face. I inspected my work, I had done a good job. He was almost pretty without his beard.