A Time to Kill Zombies

by Jill James

  “Gross,” Cody complained.

  “At least we don’t have to worry about do we shoot or not,” Ran replied, running back to the roof.

  Teddy piloted the boat up against the dock. It bumped gently. The large man grabbed another gun and started walking around to the front of the boat. The large sails cracked in the wind and half the horde diverted their attention to the new attraction on the river.

  “Fuck me,” Ran whispered as she pulled the trigger. The gun jumped in her hands but she managed to hit most of what she was aiming for. Cody was more selective as he tried to stop any skinbags from making it to the dock and then their boat.

  Ran saw Michelle out of the corner of her eye as the woman ran ammo to the shooters and exchanged guns to reload. Her arms started aching but she kept firing. One by one the men stopped shooting and the din died down.

  Bodies littered the lawn and driveway of the hotel. Some were piled two or three deep, haphazardly sprawled over each other. Ran waited for the ringing in her ears to die down. The repel sound. She didn’t hear it. She didn’t feel it.

  Did their group hold the hotel or had they been turned away, or even worse, killed by the people in there now?

  A man stood in the shadows of an upper floor window. “Boat on the river. Identify yourselves.”

  Ran looked at Teddy. “You have to give him the password.”

  “Man, it’s so stupid,” the man grumbled.

  “Identify yourselves or be shot.”

  “If they could shoot us why didn’t they shoot the zombs?” Cody said. “Lame.”

  Teddy stepped up to the railing and raised his hands to his mouth to yell. “Skinbags bite the big one.”

  A cheer went up from the rooftop of the hotel and four small heads popped up over the side.

  It took a while, but the boat group managed to get all of them plus two babies to the hotel. The boys of Rogue Vantage pelted down the stairs and jumped on Teddy.

  “Mister Teddy. You said it. You said it.” They laughed as the big man blushed and hugged them all.

  Ran searched every face. She turned to Paul. “Where’s Commander Jack?”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Jack and Lila

  Lila’s Notes:

  Outside the camp

  Summit of Mount Diablo

  Spring, 1 AZ

  Women are not the fairer sex. Our cruelty is right up there with men. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. They are lying.

  She sat in the branches, her back against the trunk. Lila stared across to the Sisterhood camp. Her jaw ached from clenching and grinding her teeth. The Sisterhood should have made friends with the Fruitful Harvest Church. Men. Women. Didn’t matter if you thought the other half of the species belonged in cages or servitude.

  The sun was high in the sky by the time she reached the outskirts of their camp. Jack told her desperation had a smell. She believed him. Finding the cages was easy. She followed the scent of despair and dying. The moans of the men mimicked the moans of the undead.

  Hiding in the bushes, she’d dug her nails into her thighs and bit her lips to stop the screams. The men were scarecrows, the rags they were allowed hanging off of their wasted bodies. Some lay nude on the ground, too out of it to care.

  She’d watched as a woman went from cage to cage, grabbing arms and shooting them up with drugs. When the woman stayed near the cages, she’d slipped away and found the tree to see down into the camp.

  Far across the compound she saw a couple of trucks take off and head down the mountain to the town below. She shimmied down the tree and left her pack at the base. Moving around the outskirts of the camp, she moved closer to the edge, finding some tents to hide behind. Clothes sat in a basket on a chair. She grabbed a baseball cap and slammed it on her head. Earlier, she’d seen all the women and girls had braids or neat pony tails down their backs. Her chopped off hair would mark her as an outsider.

  Look like you belong and you can get away with crashing any event. Her mother had told her that when she’d been a shy preteen. She threw her shoulders back, head held high, and swaggered through the camp as if she belonged there. A few nods to women passing by and they started nodding back.

  Her eyes swept the camp. Her gaze lingered on every blonde-haired little girl. She pounded her thigh with her fist. If Selena was here, she didn’t see her anywhere. But there were more people here than she’d originally thought. Many more than the fifty to sixty they’d been told. How many girls were they grabbing? A tent flap opened and a flood of school-age girls poured out. Looking from under the bill of her cap, Lila spotted one blonde girl, but she was at least a foot shorter than her daughter.

  She took a deep breath. First Jack, and then Selena. Make a plan and stick to it, but be willing to improvise. The Jack Canida School of apocalypse training. She smiled as she reached the path to the back of the camp. The stench of a multitude of unwashed bodies wafted over her. She brought her hand to her face.

  The bitch with the needles and drugs was gone. Lila moved from cage to cage. If the men noticed her, they made no sign. Their glazed eyes stared at the rustling leaves on the trees. They sat or lay on the ground lost in a drug-induced coma-state. She wanted to cry at the abuse people dumped on each other, but she didn’t have the time for tears.

  She glanced over and spotted the muted colors of camouflage. Falling to her knees beside the bars, she reached a hand through and grabbed his arm.

  “Jack,” she cried, tears blurring her vision. His eyes had sunk into his head and his face was slick with sweat. He moaned and mumbled as he turned over. Lila slapped her hand over her mouth. Someone had burned him. Where his gunshot wounds should be was charcoaled flesh. Red lines radiated from the burns.

  “I’m getting you out of there,” she gritted out.

  She searched the small tent nearby, ripping open cases and boxes. She huffed in frustration. If there were keys there, she couldn’t find them. She ran back to the cage and seized a palm-sized rock from the ground. Raising it to smash the lock, a hand latched onto her shoulder and whipped her around.

  Her cap flew off and the woman stared at her. “Who are you? You don’t belong here.”

  Lila didn’t think. She raised her hand and crashed the rock into the woman’s head. A crack resounded and her eyes rolled back in her head. The rock fell from her hand and she grabbed the woman under the arms and dragged her to the tent.

  She raised the rock once more and brought it down on the lock. It took several tries, but the lock broke and Lila ripped it off, flinging it to the ground. She looked at the line of cages. A sob built in her throat. She couldn’t save them all. Voices rose from down the path, getting louder and closer.

  “I’m sorry,” she cried as she swung open the door and grabbed Jack. Slapping his face was the last thing she wanted to do, but she’d never get his dead weight out of here without some help. He muttered and flung his hands up weakly as if to protect himself.

  “On your feet, soldier,” she yelled in his ear. She wanted to hug him as he pulled himself to his feet.

  Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, they shuffled along. She glanced back once to see the other men in his cage stumbling out. Getting into the trees undetected was as hard as she thought it would be. Getting back to her pack and then away from the camp was another thing altogether.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Selena

  Selena’s Diary

  Sisterhood of the Earth camp

  Day 413 of Woman Rule

  I’m glad. I can’t say more than that.

  They returned to chaos. Torches were aflame and women and girls were running all over the compound. Selena hopped out of the truck and Dana jumped out right next to her.

  Alaina ran up to Belinda and started blubbering, tears running down her face and her hands twisting against each other. “You have to do something.”

  “What happened?”

  Selena slid back until her body melded with the truck. Belinda with that
calm, quiet voice was scary. Dana followed her lead as they tried to be invisible.

  “The men in one of the cages escaped. Corrine was hit over the head and the men got out.”

  Belinda turned as if she could see them even though they huddled in the dark. “Girls, you are with me. I’ll show you how to be a leader.”

  They ran to keep up with her long strides. Selena stopped as they reached the cages, with one standing empty, the door swung open. She looked around the clearing. Commander Jack’s cage. How had he escaped?

  The answer lay in the broken lock Corrine placed in Belinda’s outstretched palm. It lay battered and in pieces.

  “It didn’t break itself,” the leader said, her voice deadly cold.

  “No, Leader Belinda,” Corrine stuttered, holding her head. “A woman let them out.”

  “We have a traitor in our midst,” Belinda bellowed.

  Corrine started crying and fell to the ground in a huddled ball.

  Selena smirked at the woman as Belinda kicked her and moved on. She gazed into the dark woods, but didn’t see anything or anyone. She heaved a sigh of relief. All the ties to her old life were cut and gone. This was her new life—the Sisterhood of the Earth.

  “Be safe, Commander Jack,” she whispered under her breath.

  They returned to the center of the camp. Belinda threw a torch into the giant fire pit. Alaina blew her whistle and the women and girls of the Sisterhood tumbled from their tents to line up in neat rows.

  Once everyone was present, Belinda stepped before the fire. “The Sisterhood of the Earth is pure. We are the dominant species in this world. Men are weak and brought us to the edge of destruction too many times. They thought they could play God and it has led to the undead walking the Earth. They had their chance. Now it is our turn.

  “But today, someone betrayed us. Someone turned her back on the Sisterhood and sided with the men. She has shown where her loyalties lie and it is not with us.”

  A gasp rang out from the crowd in one united breath. A cry sounded from the edge of the light from the fire.

  “I didn’t do it. I was attacked,” Corrine cried as two large women dragged her to the firepit and flung her down to the ground by Belinda’s feet.

  “Get up, Corrine. Stand like a proud woman for once in your miserable life.”

  The woman stood, swaying on her feet. Belinda grabbed a handful of her long black hair and pulled her head back. “I’ve ignored the complaints against you because you were our only doctor. The tales of you not drugging the men enough. I let it slide, since the women said it was easier to get babies that way. I let it slide that you seemed to care a little too much for the men you were in charge of, thinking it was your Hippocratic Oath. But I will not let this slide.”

  She turned the woman’s face to the fire so all could see the bruise and the drops of blood on her cheek and temple. “This woman claims she was attacked by a woman who let the men out. I say she staged the attack and did it herself. How do you find? Is she innocent or guilty?”

  “Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.” The crowd built to a roar.

  Belinda pulled the woman’s head back and drew her knife across her throat. “Sentence is passed.”

  Selena leaned forward, her hands clenching in front of her as Corrine died, turned, and died again. The two large women stepped forward and threw the corpse on the fire. Cheers rang out, none yelling louder than Selena.

  Jack and Lila

  She yelled. She cried. She begged. Finally, she got Jack halfway down the mountain to the abandoned camp she’d found on her way up. The tent was still in decent condition and a stream ran beside it. Crying, she dumped him inside it and fell to the ground. Her body ached in all new places. Her shoulders were rubbed raw from the pack and half carrying Jack.

  His moans came from the tent. She stretched. Drugs in or drugs out. It had to be drugs out. It wouldn’t do any good to put the antibiotics in and then just flush them right back out.

  She didn’t go through what she did to waste them. Digging into a side pocket on her pack she found the metal folding cup. It fit in the palm of her hand. She sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  Trudging from the stream to the tent, she lost count of the cups of water she forced on Jack. The first time he peed his pants, she’d stripped him and washed them in the stream, hanging them over a bush to dry overnight. After that, it was just easier to leave him naked. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen him naked before, they had made a child together.

  She wanted to cry at the burns on his side and back. What had those bitches used? A fireplace poker? The wound was ugly and she wept for his pain and suffering, but it seemed to have done the job. She remembered seeing Seth Ripley’s hand one time and him telling her of what Miranda did to save his life. How much had this world demanded of them? How much more would it?

  “I refuse to lose you, Jack Canida,” she told him, laying wet shirts on his heated body.

  “Selena,” he mumbled as his head tossed and turned.

  She wiped his face with a wet rag. “Yes, we will find Selena, once you are better.”

  In desperation she broke open the penicillin pills and poured them into the cup. She added water and forced it down him. The first cup was lost to his vomiting. The next stayed down for a few moments and then came back up. By the third, he held it down and rested between bouts of delirium.

  By the time the sun painted the sky in pink and gold, his face was cool to the touch. He still hadn’t woken up, but he wasn’t vomiting and holding it in, so the water must be hydrating him. She prayed it was.

  She placed her hands on his face. He was cool and the shadows had lessened around his eyes. Pinching the skin on his hands, it bounced back, although slowly. It was better than nothing.

  * * *

  “If you wanted me to wake up, why didn’t you just say so? You don’t have to torture me.” His voice came out cracked and harsh like he hadn’t used it in days.

  He opened his eyes and found Lila staring back at him. Tears filled her beautiful green eyes. “What happened?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Don’t you remember?”

  His brow furrowed as he grasped at the elusive threads of his memories. “I remember being shot.” He reached down and touched his side, hissing in pain. “That can’t be too long ago, it still hurts like a mother fucker.”

  She took his hand between hers. “You’d be surprised. What else do you remember?”

  He dug into his brain, but nothing. “It’s all scattered bits and pieces like a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box to go by.”

  She rubbed his hand. “I went for antibiotics.” A shadow passed over her face so quickly he thought he’d imagined it. “When I came back you were gone.”

  Tears trickled down her face. “I did like you told me. Get Intel. Follow the leads. I tracked you down to the Sisterhood on top of Mount Diablo. They held you prisoner.”

  A flash of being held down. Of fire against his side. Of excruciating pain. It passed. The rest was hazy and unclear. He lifted his head and found the burn on his side. Even moving hurt. In shock, he realized he was naked.

  Lila jumped up and got the blanket she’d found in the tent and covered him. “I’m sorry. I had to flush the drugs out of your system and I guess I flushed them really well.”

  “I was drugged?”

  She nodded. “Do you remember anything else?”

  He racked his brain. The image of a little blonde-haired girl slammed into him. “I saw Selena there.”

  Lila shook her head. “You must have imagined it. You were pretty drugged. I went through the whole camp. I didn’t see her anywhere.”

  He tried to sit up and started coughing. She moved closer and supported his back. “She was there. She called me Commander Jack.”

  “I told you. I looked everywhere. Don’t you think I would have grabbed her if I had seen her?”

  Jack grabbed her arms and she flinched from him, pulling out of his grip and mov
ing away. In seconds, his gaze landed on the bruise on her jaw and the bruises on her arms that he couldn’t have put there, he’d just grabbed her a second ago.

  She sat there, her arms wrapped around her body. He wanted to hold her, to tell her everything would be all right, but even his outstretched hand had her jumping until she was against the side of the tent.

  “What happened?” He tried to make his voice calm and low, but his gut already knew what she was going to say and his hands itched to hurt someone.

  “I had to get you medicine. You were dying. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Nodding, not saying a word, he feared the wrong word would send her screaming out of the tent and out of his life forever.

  “The store. The people. All dead. He said he had the medicine. It was my fault.”

  “It. Was. Not. Your. Fault.” Each word dropped like a stone in the distance between them.

  “It was,” she said, her head hanging down, her gaze on her boots. Her fingers picked at a loose thread on her jeans.

  “I was willing to go with him, to have sex with him for the medicine. We had to have it. You were going to die. I couldn’t let that happen.” Her sobs grew and she buried her face in her hands.

  “Lila.”

  Nothing.

  “Lila,” he yelled as loud as he could, his voice ending in a croak.

  She looked up with a white face and huge eyes awash with tears. His heart broke. He’d been to war, but he’d seen firsthand what war did to women. Women who were only trying to protect their homes, save their children, sometimes save their men.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, hoping she could see one-tenth of the love he felt for her in his eyes.

  She slid over and fell into his arms, her tears falling fast and hot on his chest. “I would die for you, Jack.”