by Jill James
“We won’t be gone long, man. An hour or two tops. Heading toward the bridge to clear the way for tomorrow,” Cody said as they stepped through and the gate glided back closed.
Ran heard nothing but the wind rustling in the blooming trees. White petals coated the street like a layer of snow, the slightest gust sending them swirling across the pavement. She sighed. The world was still a beautiful place. Or it would be, minus the zombies and the renegades and the madmen. She sighed again. Okay, maybe not anytime soon, but it used to be.
She breathed deeply and sneezed. Nothing but pollen and everything coming to life after a long winter. No rot. No zombs. No nothing.
“I miss the sounds,” she whispered to Cody. “Planes overhead, cars whooshing by on the freeway, kids playing in the street, all that noisy, wonderful stuff.”
“Me, too.” He put his back to hers as they surveyed the area, walking slowly to the north. “But mostly the food. Ice cream, a thick, juicy steak, French fries, and junk food other than Twinkies. Although we may miss the Twinkies too, I think Dylan took the last of them with him.”
She glanced at him. Cody smiled and her world brightened. She hated to burst the Ran/Cody bubble but the moan of the skinbags at the end of the street popped her happy thoughts. Pulling her knife from the sheath on her belt, she gripped a weapon in each fist and nudged him with her shoulder.
“Three of them, due north.”
Cody’s ax blade glinted in the sunlight as he raised it. “This should be a piece of cake; they look like they are on their last legs—literally.”
He pointed to one undead missing most of his leg below the knee, threads of flesh holding it together. She grimaced and rushed to finish the job of separating its foot from its body. The skinbag fell over with a clatter of bones and the sound of a ripe melon hitting the pavement as the zomb’ finished the job of making him dead dead by cracking his skull open and letting his brains spill out in a black, stinky mess.
Ran looked up to find Cody on the ground, fighting off four zombies who’d come out of nowhere. A shambling group appeared from the gas station on the corner. Her head whipped around. They would be surrounded if she didn’t think fast. She dropped her knife and picked up Cody’s fallen ax. Yelling like a wild woman, she swung her weapon back and forth and prayed he didn’t get any contaminated blood in his mouth or eyes.
The last body fell on his chest as the head rolled across the asphalt. Ran grabbed his hand and yanked him up. His blood-soaked clothes didn’t bring any comfort. She couldn’t tell if it was the zombs or his. A sob caught in her throat and she swallowed it back down. They didn’t have time to worry about it; a group cut off their retreat back to the RV yard and another smaller group stood between them and the gas station. Handing the ax back to him, she pointed to the station and started running.
They’d have to go by the numbers and push through to the gas station. Ran took the two on her left and Cody finished up with the three on the right. Someone had tried to shore up the building in the past, as evidenced by the welded metal plates where the door used to be, the ones for the window having fell off and sat on the concrete. Cody hit the door first and pulled it open. Ran was a step behind him. She turned to help him get the heavy door shut and a bar placed across it.
They slammed the bar home as a pounding started on the other side. Metal clangs echoed in the small room, but it looked designed to hold out the horde. They hadn’t discovered the glass windows yet, but they would. She pulled a flashlight off her belt and switched it on in the murky room. A dark entryway stood to her right. She sniffed at the doorway. Musty and dusty scents filled her nose. Blocking out the pounding to her back, she listened for any sounds at all. Zombies weren’t the only dangers in the ZA.
She swept the dark car repair bay with the light, her machete held at the ready. Emptiness greeted her. No cars filled the space. A few chairs sat against the far wall beside a wooden ladder leading to the roof. A hole in the roof let light fall down the rungs, pooling on the concrete floor.
“Anything?” Cody whispered at her back.
“No one is here. But I think they stayed on the roof like the Streets of Brentwood people. We should check it out. Maybe they left something useful.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and her whole body warmed. “Maybe they left a bed.”
Her face flushed and she was glad he couldn’t see it. Having fun and joking about sex was still so new. After everything with General Peters she’d thought she’d never have anything to do with men, but Cody was different. He made her feel young and innocent again. Like the girl she could have been, without Peters happening to her. He’d made her see sex was different when there was love involved.
“You know I love you, Cody, don’t you?”
“Of course you do. I’m so lovable.”
“Don’t kid. I’m being serious. I want you to know what you mean to me.” She turned so she was looking him in the eye. “What you’ve done for me. I was broken and you fixed me.”
He reached out and wiped a tear off her cheek she hadn’t even noticed she’d cried. “You were not broken. That is giving power to that monster. He couldn’t break you. You are too strong for that. He stole something from you. He was a thief. Nothing but a stupid thief.”
“Wow,” she said on an inhale. “That is so deep for a surfer boy.”
He smiled. “I love you, Miranda Stevens. For always and forever.”
* * *
Cody took a deep breath and held it until his chest ached. He let the air out slowly as his gaze tracked Ran’s progress around the dark, empty room. The odors of gas and oil lingered in the deserted gas station. When his girlfriend started up the ladder to the roof, he strode over and followed her up the rungs to sunlight.
He went to the edge of the roof and stared southward. The solar panels of the RV yard glittered in the bright sunshine. Just another reminder that help and safety could be so close but so far away in the ZA. Pulling the walkie-talkie off his belt, he pushed the button and tried to get someone to hear him.
“RV yard. Teddy. Seth. Anyone there?”
“This is Teddy. Are you kids okay?”
“Yeah, man. We ran into a cluster at the intersection, so Miranda and I are on the gas station roof, but we’re fine. I’ll call back if we need you.”
“Don’t wait too long, Cody. We can be there in minutes.”
No way, Jose,” he said. “Stay there with the babies. I’ll let you know if we can’t escape.”
“Okay, over and out.”
“Over and out,” he finished up and turned off the walkie-talkie and attached it to his belt.
He spun around when he didn’t hear Ran’s breathing at his side. Their gazes locked when he spotted her sprawled in a hammock with a canopy. One leg draped over the side, pushing the hammock slowly, back and forth. Every inch of her sun-kissed skin was bared to him. He swallowed deeply and started whipping off his own clothing and leaving a cloth trail to her side with one stop to shut the trapdoor on the roof and slam the bolt locked. The zombs couldn’t climb the ladder, but the undead were only half of their worries.
Ran licked her lips and smiled at him. His heart pounded in his chest. His boots stuck like glue to his feet as his fingers tangled in the laces. With a groan, he ripped them off and flung them behind him as he reached Ran and the hammock.
Perspiration glistened on her long arms and legs. In another time, before the influenza, before the Z virus, she would have been a school athlete. Cross-country runner or track and field member. His erection swelled at the thought of those long legs running across a field or wrapped around his hips.
A lump formed in this throat whenever he thought of what had turned Miranda into the woman she was today. When they talked of the past, she told him of a young schoolgirl, afraid of the zombies, afraid of men, afraid of life. He shook his head. That was not his Ran. The ZA made you live for today, and who they were today was what he wanted to focus on. Not the tormented and a
bused Miranda and not the spoiled college-boy Cody whining about not finding his mother.
He slid in beside Ran and shut his mind to the scared, man-child he’d been after the Z virus hit and the dead rose. All he’d wanted to do was get home to his mom. Instead, he’d been holed up in a library for months, fighting for every scrap of food he could find and hiding at any sound he heard outside. He’d been ready to end it all when Ran and Seth showed up. One look at Miranda and Cody knew he had a reason to live for.
She snuggled in next to him, her fingers trailing over his naked body. He laughed and he stared at her as her eyebrow rose in question.
“I was just thinking about when we met and it was like a lightning bolt hit my head. Wham! She’s the one.”
She swatted his arm. “Oh, you. I looked awful back then. Skinny as a little kid and no hair on my head.”
“Don’t forget your Seth crush.” His fingers slid over her soft, brown hair, the strands tangling and twining.
She blushed as she turned and straddled his hips. “That was just a crush. This is more.”
“More,” he moaned as she slid down on him and her muscles clenched tightly.
“Much more,” she groaned as her lips found his and her hips found a rhythm he matched.
She wrapped herself around him and it wouldn’t have mattered if the entire zombie population burst through the locked hatch, he wasn’t letting go.
Chapter Twelve
Jack and Lila
Commander’s Log
Highway 680, Walnut Creek
Short of Objective
Spring, 1 AZ
We are forced to camp for the night mere blocks from destination. Heavy smoke is rising from vicinity of apartment complex where Lila is sure we will find Selena. Will find safe location for the night and hit the complex at dawn.
SHARON, WENT TO GRANDMA’S. LOVE MOM AND DAD.
The words covered the garage door in faded blue letters, the dripping paint long dried out and flaking. Jack stared at them wondering if Sharon found her parents or if the parents made it to grandma’s. If they did go, they didn’t go in the motor home in the driveway that he and Lila were using for the night.
The front door to the house had stood wide open when they’d slid down the embankment off the freeway. A quick recon with Lila glued to his back showed the house was empty and had been for months, if not longer. No squatters and no zombs.
She’d wanted to use the house until he’d explained it would be the first place renegades would check. Once in the motor home, they’d closed all the shades and settled in. The vehicle smelled neglected and musty, but it would do for the night.
The scent of tomato soup soon pushed the unused smell away. Lila moved slowly around the tiny kitchen, making as little sound as possible. He smiled. Survival skills were easy to learn when real survival was the incentive. He’d seen it enough times in Afghanistan when young soldiers realized what all those drills and endless repetition had been for back in boot camp.
They sat and sipped the soup out of mugs as the day drained away and shadows filled the RV. Lila jumped as an owl hooted nearby. He put his hand on hers and squeezed. When she squeezed back, he yanked his hand away and stood.
“I’ll do another check while you get settled. We’ll leave at dawn.”
“Jack, wait,” she said, stopping him with a look in her eyes. “It was just a kiss. It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”
He fell to his knees in front of her and grasped her arms, pulling her down to the floor with him. “What if I do want it to mean something? What does that make me? You are married to another man. I don’t have the right to want anything from you.” His voice cracked and his heart stuttered to a stop as her hand rested on his chest and she gazed at him as she had all those years ago.
“Oh, Jack,” she whispered, her hand warm on his chest. “You were too good back then and you are definitely too good for this world now.”
He reached and pulled her hand away from over his heart. It felt too damned right resting there. “If I was so good. If we were so good. Why did you leave me?”
“You said you didn’t want to know why. That it didn’t matter.” Her eyes swelled with tears and they rolled down her face.
“It does matter,” he said, taking his thumb and wiping her tears. “Everything about you and Selena matters now. I was stupid to think otherwise.”
She sat back against the couch and stared off into space. “I wanted to be with you.”
“But,” he interrupted.
“No buts. Let me get this out while you’re still willing to listen,” she said. “I wanted to be with you. I wanted to tell you we were going to have a baby. But my father did what he always did. He arranged things the way he wanted them.”
“You could have come to me,” Jack said. “We could have stood up to the old man.”
“He threatened to kill you if I didn’t let you go,” she whispered as if her father could still hear what she said and hadn’t been dead since the influenza pandemic.
He laughed and then stopped at the look on her face. “You’re serious. He threatened to kill me? Did he think he was the mafia or something? Was he going to get a hit man?”
She said nothing. That sobered him like no outpouring of words could have. The man had pulled all their strings like a puppet master and denied him the life he was supposed to have. His fists balled on his thighs. A good thing the man was already dead.
Her pale face and watery eyes hit him right in the gut. He wasn’t the only one who’d lost out. “Tell me about Selena.”
“You already know her. We were at the RV yard for months,” she said.
“No,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”
He pulled her to his side and placed her head on his shoulder. “Start at the beginning.”
“Okay,” she said. “It was the easiest pregnancy known to woman, at least that’s what my mother said. No morning sickness. The right amount of weight gain. Baby born right on time.”
He smiled and rubbed her arm. “Did she do all the baby stuff right on time too?”
She laughed. “Of course she did. Walking, talking, reading, writing. Her first word was dada.”
He tensed and Lila sat up with trembling lips and more tears. “I’m sorry.”
Jack pulled her back to his side. “Don’t be sorry. We’ll make up for lost time. We will find her.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Hours passed as Lila told him every moment of Selena’s life so far. He was surprised to hear she was a dancer, since he had worse than two left feet. His drill sergeant had yelled at him enough times during training that he’d trip over his own landmine and get himself killed. He was thrilled to hear she loved sports and played them all. He ached inside for all he’d missed and yearned for all he wanted to experience in her life. He didn’t stop Lila’s flow of words, but it didn’t escape him that her memories were peppered with ‘Juan was away on business for that and Juan was gone for that.’ The man had been given a gift that Jack would have killed for and he’d squandered it. They would fix that tomorrow.
Failure was not an option. They would find Selena and get her back.
* * *
Lila felt a smile stretch her face as she recalled every moment of her child’s life. Selena had been such an easy baby and a bright and wonderful child. No, was a wonderful child, she corrected herself silently. Her daughter was out there, and with Jack’s help, they would all be together soon.
“You should have seen her face when we took the training wheels off her bike,” she continued for Jack. “Not a wobble at all. She laughed and sped down the bike path, her long hair flying, and her legs going like a machine. I had to yell and yell to get her to turn around and come back. I was afraid she would just keep on going forever until she was out of sight.”
The tears came out of nowhere. The picture in her mind of Selena just going and going on her bike until she di
sappeared was too real. What if she didn’t get her back? What if Juan had done something with her? What if he’d killed her in spite?
She yanked herself out of Jack’s arms and started pawing through her backpack, throwing things right and left. His arms came around her and she shrugged them off.
“What are you looking for?” His hands held her arms gently.
“I have to find Selena’s picture. I know I put it in here,” she said, sobs making her voice break.
Finally, her fingers felt the edges of the tattered photo and she pulled it from the backpack. Her hand trembled as her fingertips slid over the surface of her daughter’s last school picture. She’d given into Lila’s begging and worn a dress for picture day. The peach color made her skin glow and her blonde hair shine with streaks of summer-bleached lightness.
Jack pulled her back against him and she accepted the warmth and comfort. She tried to put her fears into words for him.
“What if he killed her?”
The words hung out there as Jack’s face hardened along with his voice. “You are never to give up. You are her mother. You would know if she were dead. In here.”
His fingers touched between her breasts. It should have startled her. It should have felt sexual. But it didn’t. It felt comforting. Selena was in her heart and so was Jack.
Yes, she would know in her soul. A piece of her would die with Selena. The glow would flicker out and it hadn’t. The glow of hope and love and knowing her child was alive somewhere was still there.
Chapter Thirteen
Paul, Suz, and Josh
Paul Luther’s Log
On River Road (has a highway number, but River Road since I was a kid)
