The Company of Death

by Elisa Hansen

  All too late.

  28

  Shotgun

  Don’t shoot her. Don’t shoot her.

  How the heck could Scott shoot anything when she blended right in with all of them? He tried to track her half-purple hair through the bodies, but it was too dark, and the spinning orange light only made it worse. His eyes couldn’t keep up, couldn’t adjust, and everything looked black when it circled away. Was that her? She was going the wrong way! No—there she went. What the heck was she doing? Drawing them away from Carol? The entire back half of the crowd zeroed in on Emily like a school of piranhas.

  Oh. Well, shit.

  Scott aimed at the pile of bodies that swallowed Emily’s. Did he have enough cartridges to unbury her? He already used his last slug, only buckshot left.

  His chest was jerking, his shoulders heaving. Impossible to aim straight. This was a stupid plan. His breath came in gasps. “Stupid, stupid zombie girl.”

  His hands worked without his brain. Shoot, shoot, load. Shoot, shoot, load. It didn’t matter if his aim was shit. The crowd crushed so thick, he hit something every time. Some went down. Some didn’t even notice.

  Again. Again. Orange, black, orange, black, orange, black.

  His fingertips scraped the bottom of one pocket, then the other. Tucked under the slippery shape of Carol’s ancillary, he found his very last cartridge.

  Oh.

  Scott didn’t remember sitting down. Someone was calling his name. The cartridge rocked in his palm like a gold-capped Vienna sausage. He should load it, shouldn’t he? But the gun felt so heavy across his knees.

  “Scott! Get back!”

  He blinked at Carol. She was waving frantically. His gaze shifted to the edge of the dock.

  Hands. That was a lot of hands.

  “They’re climbing on each other!”

  Scott staggered to his feet and backed to the rolling door. “Carol.” He swallowed past the thick clot in his throat.

  We can do it, he’d said. Let’s just go. We’ll drive to New York. He had a super zombie-killing robot, after all. He’d be fine. For months, he waited alone with Carol at the deserted Curisa. One hundred sixteen days. The airship never came back. He wanted to believe Nick made it to Manhattan. With Carol, he could make it too. They had weapons, they had food, they had everything they needed.

  They didn’t even make it through Utah.

  What a waste Scott’s life had been. Not even a waste. What could he have done with it? What was he supposed to do? What was anyone ever supposed to do? Survive, live. What did that even mean? Try to make a difference? Like his hero brother? Look what happened to him. If you don’t try, you can’t fail. If you don’t care, you can’t get hurt. How could he have regrets when it all meant nothing?

  Scott’s fingers moved, steady and cold as he slid the cartridge into the gun and pressed it closed.

  “Carol.”

  Her head owl-turned to him while her hands and feet worked on the zombies on the ladder. Her eye lights shone green, night vision. Nick had taken the 360 camera out of the back of her LS head. To make her “more human.” Nick loved her so much.

  “Keep going.” His hoarse voice creaked. “Finish charging. Fill up the other cans, take the truck.”

  “Scott, what are you doing?”

  He sank to his knees, braced the end of the gun against the metal floor between them, lifted his chin over the barrel.

  “Scott!”

  He swallowed again. “She’s waiting for you, Carol.” Without him, she would have no trouble driving across the country. She and Nick would be together again.

  “Scott, put down the shotgun.”

  And then what? Count the minutes until they climbed up and ate him alive? When he looked at her, the expression on her silicone face confused him. So visceral, so distraught.

  “Scott, please!”

  Couldn’t she see the probability of him living through this was zero? He had to do it before his numb fingers started shaking too much to manage the trigger.

  “Please!”

  Carol cared because Nick cared, because he was Nick’s brother. Because Nick would prefer him alive. And she loved Nick more than anything. That’s why she stayed with him. Why she programed her own mission objective to protect him. For Nick. All for Nick.

  Scott had never loved anyone like that. Not his parents, not Nick, not Jade. He never let himself. His vision misted over as he stared across at Carol.

  Orange, black, orange.

  Orange streaked the sky that evening one hundred sixteen days ago when he chased the second airship down the runway, the swarm snapping at his heels. Late again, and he had no one to blame but himself that time. Everyone else was already aboard. He leapt for the speeding ship’s open door but lost his grip on the edge as the wheels left the ground. When his body slammed to the tarmac, it was Carol who jumped down after him. Scott saw Nick lean out as the ship climbed the murky sky, heard her scream his name. Or was it Carol’s? Impossible to tell over the roar of the engines and the snarling closing in around him. And then small hands pulled Nick inside, and he could see nothing else but silver limbs crouched over him. Tortured howls drowned out the fading engine as Carol mowed the zombies down. She fought them off, gathered him up, and ran him back to the safety of the abandoned facility.

  “Scott.” Her voice snapped him back to the present. His name came out of her mouth like her heart was breaking. And she didn’t even have a heart.

  “Sorry,” he rasped. Not for what he was about to do, but for everything before. She did care, she did. Because she chose to care. Was that all that really mattered? It had just been easier to assume it couldn’t be authentic. Easier. But Nick made her with that capacity. Carol drove so he could sleep, pushed him so he could thrive, annoyed him so he could feel real. She chose to be his friend when he had no one else in the world.

  If Carol were made capable of crying, she looked like she would be. How could he leave her now? It felt like two hands of bone crushed Scott’s heart. His artificial sister. She tried so hard.

  “Thanks,” he whispered.

  Closing his eyes, he nestled his chin onto the shotgun’s barrel. His numb fingers moved like twigs to find the trigger. Snowman hands. Even the air around him felt arctic. When did that happen? Well, it fit. Death was near. But unlike the icicles of terror Scott felt the night before, this cold was welcoming, soothing.

  It was his time.

  His heart drumrolled in his ears. Carol was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her over it. It didn’t matter. They were words for another life. Scott’s time had come. He was ready.

  Take me.

  So cold. So right.

  He took a long, deep breath. His last.

  His finger tucked against the trigger.

  And then, just like that, an inhuman grip wrenched the gun from his hands. Scott gasped and fell against the door. When his eyes flew open, blackness consumed him.

  29

  Gambit

  How long since the muffled shotgun explosions ceased to make their way through the pile of bodies pressing Emily to the ground? How long would the groans and undead screaming be the only sounds she heard?

  Undeath is immortality.

  Forever, then.

  They weren’t trying to eat her. She figured that out as her panic petered into despair. They knew she wasn’t food. But they also knew she presented a threat, and they planned to keep her down. That intention thrummed clear. How?

  Zombie hive mind thing.

  God…

  Anything, anything to get up again. But only live bait would distract them. And Scott was out of bullets up there. What had she done?

  Fucking idiot.

  Cringing back what would have been tears if she could shed them anymore, Emily worked her hands over her head and curled tight under the pummeling mass. Each time the weight shifted and stupid hope teased a chance to break through, pressure from another angle replaced it.

  She managed to t
wist onto her side, but when she opened her eyes, a zombie’s face hovered inches from hers, its jaw working, teeth clicking.

  Not an it. A her.

  “Rosa,” Emily breathed.

  Too dark to see details, but the soft profile proved too familiar to be anyone else.

  “I’m so sorry. Please…”

  Could she see Emily?

  Another shift in the weight, bodies rolling over them. Emily groaned. Who else joined their pile? Where was Ramon? She didn’t see him in the truck or in the crowd. He was destroyed, wasn’t he? And the rest of her team… Gone… But she already knew that. The face before her wasn’t Rosa anymore. It was Emily’s fault. Her fault, Snakeman’s fault, the commune’s fault, the universe’s fault.

  “Rosy.”

  Nothing.

  “What do I do?”

  If their places switched, would Rosa be lying there feeling guilty? Shame wouldn’t help Emily or anyone. If she ever got out of this, Emily couldn’t let shame, pride, standards—stupid ideals that meant nothing—get in her way ever again.

  “Rosy,” she whispered. “I wish I could do everything over.”

  A gunshot boomed overhead.

  The groaning swelled, and the pile shifted. Rosa’s face disappeared behind a tumble of shoulders and limbs. Emily pushed up but jerked as a hand gripped her arm. A hand too hard to be one of theirs. Painfully tight, she felt the jolt even through her sleeve. Before she could react, it pulled her through a sudden hole in the pile with bewildering strength.

  Air! She didn’t need it, but god, she’d missed it. She gasped a choking lungful as her feet gained purchase on solid ground. The hand on her arm was joined by another around her waist, and she found herself tight against Death’s statuey side.

  “You—”

  The crowd pressed in on them, but before her reeling mind had a chance to catch up, the savage faces melted into an incomprehensible blur. When her vision stilled again, she stood once more above them all on the safety of the loading dock.

  Death released her before she was ready for it, and she fell to her knees. Pins and needles popped over her entire body, and buzzing erupted in her ears. Too, too much like the night she un-died.

  For a long minute, she could do nothing but stare at her blotchy fingers knotted against the dusty diamond plate floor. It shuddered with each thud of the pounding mass below. Emily squeezed her eyes shut and pushed to sit on her heels, rubbing at the stinging scratches on her cheek and neck. New holes shredded her pants, but it didn’t feel like she was missing any pieces. Nothing important anyway. She looked for Scott, and her eyes found him crumpled in the dock’s corner behind Carol, his skin clammy, almost green. He was turning his shotgun over and over in his hands and staring at where his bags lay invisible beyond the swarm.

  And Death…

  Emily’s neck creaked as she looked over her shoulder. His back was to her, but the blue glow of his device’s screen haloed his cloak, clashing with the spinning orange light. Her throat felt full of sand. She turned back to Scott. Scared puppy, Scott.

  “You’re empty, aren’t you?” she asked.

  Scott jerked as if waking from a trance. His eyes narrowed into offended slits, his chin jutting like she’d insulted his manhood. Instead of answering, he glowered down at his gun, his hand running along its length. His lips set in a grim line as if coming to a decision, then he got up and faced the swarm.

  What was he…?

  He took a deep breath, stepped around the gas jug, knelt at the dock’s edge, flipped the gun around, and bashed at the skulls below.

  The crowd’s attention immediately shifted from Carol at the ladder, and they jumped for Scott, grabbing the ledge, swiping at his gun. He pounded back the hands, smashed in the teeth.

  “You fool!” Death’s voice rang over the groans. He swept past Emily and snatched the gun on Scott’s next upward swing.

  “Let go!” Scott yelped.

  Death pulled the gun back, dragging Scott with it away from the edge.

  Releasing the barrel, Scott stumbled and fell against the wall. “Stop doing that!”

  The gun clattered to the floor at Death’s side. “You risk your life.”

  “What do you care?” Scott stammered. “If you’re not going to help, leave me alone.”

  What do you care? Phantom tingles pricked Emily’s flesh. She asked the very same thing yesterday when Death yanked a gun out of her hand too.

  Death swept an arm over the crowd. “Do you think I want them to have you?”

  Ah. There it was. Of course. Idiot.

  Did Death think pulling her from the zombie pile would make her forget what he admitted in the truck? For all Emily knew, he let these zombies out of the semi himself. She was positive that door was still locked. She felt her insides clench to steel.

  “He doesn’t care.” She pushed to her feet and picked up the shotgun, stalking past Death to return it to Scott. She’d stalled long enough. She wasn’t going to let Scott be suckered in like she was. “He’s just saving you for himself. That’s why he’s following us. Scott, the only reason he’s here is because he is waiting for you to die.”

  “What?” Scott gaped at her. “But. What?” He shook his head, his arms twining around the gun. “Then why did he stop me from killing myself?”

  “What?” The steel inside Emily poofed into sawdust. “He—what? When?”

  “Just now. Right before he dove down there and rescued you.”

  He stopped Scott? Emily twisted to look at Death. He leaned against the rolling door, poking at his screen thing like they weren’t surrounded by attacking undead, like Carol wasn’t still tearing into them one by one, like he didn’t give a damn about anything in the world.

  Seriously, what the hell?

  His face lifted, but he stilled when he met Emily’s stare. The screen changed colors in his hands.

  “Stay behind me,” Carol said to Scott.

  “How much power do you have left?” he asked her.

  When Emily didn’t hear an answer, she turned around. Carol was pulling at the jaw of a zombie climbing over her lap. It wasn’t ripping off like the ones before.

  “She’s fading,” she whispered.

  “The fuel!” Scott jumped from behind Carol and rushed to the jug.

  “What?”

  “Let’s— We can splash it over them! Set them on fire.”

  Yes! If they soaked the ones in front and lit them up, then it could spread to the back when they pressed forward. But wait. “I left my matches in my other pants,” Emily said. The ones she didn’t have. “I hope you’ve got some.”

  Scott shook his head. “But Carol, your laser. Do you have enough power for just one shot?”

  She fell silent for a calculating moment. “If I draw from everything.”

  “Okay!”

  “But then I’ll shut down.”

  “If it works, that’s okay. Once they’re all burnt, I’ll get you back to the charging station and—”

  “But will it work?” Emily interrupted.

  “Probably not.”

  They both turned to follow Death’s voice.

  “She wasn’t asking you,” Scott snapped.

  Emily frowned, not wanting to listen either, but Death’s doubt increased her own. If they risked it and lost Carol, that would be it for Scott. But what other option did they have?

  “Why don’t you do something then!” Scott pushed away from the jug and waved his gun at Death. “Huh? You had no problem down there a minute ago.”

  Death shook his head, tucked his screen away. “They are undead. I have no power over them.”

  “Emily’s undead! You pulled her out of there like it was nothing.”

  “She wished to be pulled out. She allowed me to do it. They will not allow me to affect them.”

  “Scott, stay back.” Carol knocked another zombie off the ladder.

  “Well, can you get the bags?” he snapped. “You have power over bags, don’t you?”
>
  “The bags?”

  “The bags!”

  “Do you mean these bags?” A man’s voice rose from the yard. Emily’s head snapped to look over the crowd. It took her a moment, but then she saw him, standing atop the forklift as if he were there the whole time. Not at man at all. A goddamn vampire.

  And not just any vampire.

  The night on Suncrest Hill came flooding back to her. It was the same vampire she witnessed running from the other factory. The one who gave her the idiotic hope her team had the upper hand. She would have recognized that obnoxious pasty smirk and ridiculously arched eyebrow anywhere.

  He held Scott’s backpack aloft in one hand and the duffel bag in the other, as if he might open his fingers at any moment and drop them into the writhing mass on either side of the forklift. His pale hair wisped, unnaturally elevated, as if full of static electricity. When the orange light spun over him, it looked aflame, like a halo from hell. It glinted off of a belt buckle between the flaps of his long dark coat, pooled in the glossiness of his shoes.

  Emily clenched her fists at her sides.

  “You!” Scott sprang from his corner.

  The vampire smiled. “Me.”

  “What do you want?” Carol gave a particularly violent kick to the zombie before her.

  Emily imagined her hitting the vampire square in the face with her last laser blast. Would it be worth losing her? It just might.

  “Why, it’s nice to see you again as well, Carol, my dear. Fine weather we’re having tonight.”

  The zombies around the forklift lifted their faces to search for the source of the voice.

  Scott aimed his gun at the vampire. “Give me my bags.”