Abby was still out of view, with both her pistol and her KA-BAR in hand. Six combatants filled a small room, lit only by the truck’s headlights from outside. Abby knew from experience that whatever was about to happen would be brief but violent. She listened to the footfalls of Ted and the other man as they approached her, slowly gliding along the far right wall. If she was going to come out of this encounter alive, outnumbered as she was, she would need to be fast, too fast for either man to even pull a trigger.
Time slowed to an imperceptible crawl inside the dim confines of that little Kansas gas station. Abby’s heart beat like a snare drum in a Motown jazz song, and her lungs ached as she held her breath. Sweat glossed over her shaky hands, and her pupils dilated like black specks in a grey canvas as the adrenaline rush took control.
A sudden swishing sound in the dark, followed by a loud grunt, then the sound of a body hitting the floor.
Everything that happened next rushed by in a blur. As soon as the first man hit the floor, the others rushed forward, so Abby did the same. She pivoted around the corner of the magazine stand as she was standing up and fired a quick pair of bullets from her pistol.
The men in front of her had been close, no more than four feet away, so Abby didn’t even need to aim. The first round impacted the man in his chest, near the top of his collarbone, and the second ripped through his throat. He fell backwards into the Ted, forcing Ted’s shotgun down.
Abby had been moving forward the whole time, not expecting her assailants to be so close. So by the time the man in front had hit the floor, she was already on top of Ted. As he tried to reorient his shotgun, Abby shoved it aside and plunged her KA-BAR into his gut. He cried out when she twisted the blade and yanked it out, and he dropped to his knees. Abby kicked him in the chest, knocking him down on his back, then shot him once in the head.
Now out of immediate danger, Abby whirled around to see Emma tangled up with Gary. Emma had knocked his gun away and hit him in the shoulder with a throwing knife, so she seemed to have the upper hand. But then Gary hit Emma hard in her solar plexus, and she doubled over in pain.
He unsheathed a large hunting knife that had been hanging from his belt and prepared to kill Emma, but Abby rushed towards Gary. She grabbed his chin from behind and pulled him backward as she thrust her knife up and into his lower back, piercing his kidney.
Gary sucked in a breath, a sudden, raspy gasp, but no other sound came out as he slipped into shock. Abby pulled her knife free and was about to finish the job, but Emma took care of that for her. She drew her machete from her pack and swung it into Gary’s neck, nearly cutting his head completely off.
Abby and Emma stayed standing where they were for a moment as they tried to catch their breaths when they heard tires squealing outside. The driver of the truck had just watched all four of his friends die in a matter of seconds, so he threw the truck in reverse and pulled out of the tiny parking lot as quick as he could, heading back to Isaiah’s town.
“Scared the hell outta that guy, huh?” Abby said as she tried to bring her heavy, adrenaline-fueled breathing back to normal.
“Seems that way,” Emma replied as she went about collecting the two throwing knives she had made good use of. Abby wiped her KA-BAR against Gary’s shirt to clean the blood off of its blade, then returned it to its burnished leather sheath.
“Do you think they’ll try to get us again?” Abby asked.
Emma thought for a moment, and then said, “No, I don’t think so. Between the two of us, we’ve killed nine of Isaiah’s people. He may be insane, but he’s not stupid. But let’s keep our guard up all the same.”
“Right.”
Emma set about scavenging what she could from the four men they had killed, finding little more than ammunition for their guns and a couple of big winter coats. Abby didn’t help with this, but she didn’t stop Emma.
They decided to set off down the road again, but only for a short while. About a mile further west, they happened upon a small house that they quickly searched. Both of the young women were thoroughly exhausted at this point, and so they both went right to sleep in one of the bedrooms, curled up under Emma’s space blanket.
***
After that first night on the road together, things were quite peaceful for Abby and Emma. No one else followed them, so it appeared that Emma was right in saying that Isaiah would rather cut his losses instead of continuing to send people to their deaths. And a few days later, Abby and Emma finally saw their first signs of wildlife.
“Deer tracks,” Abby said, pointing at the impressions in the snow.
“Three of them, by the looks of it,” Emma added as she unslung the rifle.
“You know, I’m the one who found the rifle,” Abby said. Emma had hung onto the rifle ever since she had helped Abby escape from Isaiah’s twisted trial, and that rubbed Abby the wrong way.
“Yeah, and I’m the one who brought it out with your stuff,” Emma replied. “Do you even know how to handle this thing?”
“No, I kept it for shits and giggles,” Abby said. “Of course I can use it.”
“You were a kid when this all started, so I doubt that.”
“Fuck you, Zach taught me to shoot,” Abby replied. She didn’t like Emma’s condescending attitude and wanted to shoot her accusations down. But before she realized what she was saying, she had dropped Zach’s name.
“Who’s Zach?” Emma asked.
Abby turned her head away and shut her eyes tightly, sealing up the tears that had already started to form. After a moment, she turned back and glared at Emma. “He looked after me for a while,” she said.
“I… I’m sorry,” Emma said after a short and awkward silence.
“Don’t. I don’t need your pity,” Abby replied. “I just… I’m not a dumb kid, okay? I know how to shoot a rifle, I know how to dress wounds, and just about anything else that you can do.”
“Okay. I’m sorry I made assumptions about you,” Emma said. “That’s just what I do, I guess.”
“Join the club,” Abby said.
“Well, if we find these deer, then you show me what you’ve got with this thing,” Emma said as she handed Abby the rifle. “I’m getting tired of carrying it, anyway.”
Abby took the rifle and slung it on her shoulder. “Thanks.”
The pair veered off the road and began to follow the tracks. Abby was in the front with the rifle, and Emma followed about ten feet behind her. Judging by how the tracks were spaced out, it seemed that the small group of deer had been in no hurry and had stuck close together. They also seemed to be heading in a fairly straight line, north-north-west. Fortunately for Abby and Emma, there were was very little foliage in the surrounding fields, so they might be able to spot the deer from far away, if they got lucky.
“There!” Abby whispered to Emma. They both stopped walking and Emma looked ahead, towards where Abby was pointing. Two does and a young buck were milling about in the distance near what looked like a barn.
“Three hundred yards?” Abby asked Emma as she laid down in the snow and set up the rifle, resting it on her ruck to help steady it.
“Yeah, that looks about right,” Emma said after taking a moment to gauge the distance herself.
Abby flipped the lens covers up on the Leupold scope and peered into it, watching the deer wander about.
“Wind is coming at us. They probably won’t smell us, but it’ll affect your shot, too,” Emma whispered, finding it hard to resist coaching the much younger Abby.
“Uh-huh,” Abby replied.
The deer started to separate a bit, and Abby chose the young buck to follow with her scope. It sauntered across the open ground, moving to Abby’s left. She moved the rifle with it, keeping the crosshairs just above and behind its front legs, aiming for its heart.
She inhaled deeply through her nose, and then slowly blew it out of her mouth. She did this again, and then again, calming her breathing. Zach had taught her to do that. She flicked the safety sel
ector to ‘fire’ and set her finger on the trigger. She had never fired the rifle before, but by looking at the obvious care and money that had been put into upgrading it, Abby assumed the trigger had a steady pull and a light break.
The deer in Abby’s sights stopped moving and looked around. Abby again inhaled deeply and blew it out, gently applying pressure to the trigger. When her breath was almost gone, Abby finished pulling the trigger back and the rifle fired.
The 7.62x51mm bullet ripped through the air and, in less than one third of one second, struck its target. It smacked into the deer’s side and obliterated its heart, bouncing around its rib cage once or twice before exiting out the other side of the deer, higher and nearer its rump. The deer didn’t even have time to run in panic, it just dropped dead where it stood. The other deer forsook their companion, however, and bolted.
“Wow,” was all Emma could say.
“Told you,” Abby said with a haughty smirk as she gathered her things together.
They both stood up and began the long walk towards the deer that Abby had killed. When they got close, Emma felt an urge to ask a question that she could not resist. “So, this Zach guy, I guess he was pretty good with a gun?”
“Mhm,” Abby replied.
“Military?”
“Mhm.”
“That explains a lot. You’re a better shot with that than I am.”
That was all Emma could get out of Abby. The young girl intrigued her, and she wanted to know more about her, but she also recognized the pain in her eyes. She must have lost this Zach in a tragic way, Emma realized, so she avoided any more questions.
When they finally reached the fallen deer, both Abby and Emma stood over it for a few moments, staring at the corpse that had sunken into crimson-stained snow. “Well,” Emma said, “you killed it. So just drag it into that barn there and I’ll do the work of skinning it.”
“Ha ha… no,” Abby replied. “This thing probably weighs twice what I do. Why don’t you drag it?”
“Because I have to do the dirty work.”
“I know how to do that too. Any more excuses?”
“Yeah, how about this?” Emma remarked as she flipped Abby the bird.
Abby grinned and returned the gesture. “How about we both drag it in, and we can both skin it?”
“Oh, fine,” Emma said. “I hate carrying these things.”
“You used to be a hunter?” Abby asked as they both squatted down and prepared to grab the carcass.
“Not in the Before Times, no,” Emma said, her voice strained by the effort of dragging the deer. “But I’ve had to hunt for food ever since.”
“I’ve never had to hunt much, myself,” Abby admitted.
“Were you able to scavenge most of your shit?”
“Yeah. People deserted Chicago real quick since that was the first major outbreak site. Left a lot of stuff behind. We… Zach and I had practically the whole city to ourselves to pick through.”
Mentioning Zach was easier this time, now that the cat was already out of the bag. It actually felt good to speak his name again, almost like it kept him alive in Abby’s mind.
“That must have been nice,” Emma replied. They let go of the deer carcass and then carefully opened up the barn door with their guns drawn, looking for any danger, but the barn was empty of life.
“Yeah, sorta. But there was always zombies to worry about. Lots of them,” Abby said as they finished dragging the deer inside.
Emma walked over and closed the barn doors again while Abby took her ruck off and sat down on the corpse. “Shoo. Come on, let’s skin this thing,” Emma said as she walked back, waving her hand at Abby like she was a stray cat. Abby stuck her tongue out, but didn’t put up a fuss.
Their work was long, and once it was done they decided to loot the house next to the barn, hoping to find something they could wrap the meat in and take with them. They found a few pillowcases that would suffice and took these back into the barn. They wrapped the meat from the deer in these, and split the improvised packages between the two of them.
By the time all of this was done, it was getting late in the afternoon, and Abby and Emma both wanted to stay put for the night. They moved over into the house and set up shop in what was probably once the master bedroom, up on the second floor. The room was larger than the other bedrooms and nicely furnished, but all of the dressers and closets had been ransacked and picked clean. The beige carpet on the floor had a large, dark red stain in the corner that resembled blood, and both Abby and Emma preferred not to wonder about what had caused that. But more importantly, there was a big bed in this room with a queen-sized mattress.
“Come here,” Emma said once they had set their stuff down in the bedroom. She retrieved a tiny spool of what looked like fishing line from her pack and went out into the hall, followed by Abby. There were two more doors down the hallway that were directly across from each other. One was a bathroom, and the other a smaller bedroom. Emma knelt down in the doorway of the bathroom and started to tie the fishing wire around the doorstop affixed to the wall.
“A trip wire?” Abby asked.
“Yup. Nothing fancy, but it might give us an extra second to fight or run, if we need to,” Emma said as she handed the fishing wire to Abby. “Tie this to the doorstop in that bedroom there just like I did here.”
Abby did as she was told, stretching the wire taut. She handed the fishing wire to Emma, and they both returned to the master bedroom and closed the door behind them. Abby had the idea to barricade the door, so Emma also helped her push one of the dressers in front of the door. It was empty, and so was not very heavy, but they figured that this would be better than nothing.
Abby flopped down on the mattress, heaving a sigh of relief and closing her eyes. For the first time in a long while, she felt relatively safe and comfortable. Emma couldn’t help but smirk and join Abby, laying down next to her.
“This thing is nice,” she remarked.
“Yeah,” Abby replied as she stretched out her arms and legs.
They were quiet for almost a full minute, enjoying the comfort of their newfound bed. Then Emma said, “Okay, kid. You and I have to talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do,” Emma replied, sitting up straight. “For your own good. You’ve got deadweight inside of you, and if you keep trying to drag that around then you’ll never get your head above water. You need to let it go. That’s what I did when I lost Debbie, and I’m so much freer than I would have been if I just kept that anger bottled up.”
Abby sat up too, but she scooted away from Emma. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? You’ve had time to come to terms with your loss. It’s too soon for me.”
“And you’re gonna keep telling yourself that for as long as you live. It’ll always be too soon. Trust me on this one, Abby. If you wait too long, if you keep all your emotions and all your baggage to yourself, you’ll end up hurting yourself, or worse.”
Abby turned her back to Emma and hugged her knees to her chest. “Leave me alone,” she muttered.
Emma was quiet for some time after that. She eventually scooted over to Abby and sat behind her, wrapping her arms around her, and whispered, “When you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be here.”
They stayed that way for a while, leaning against each other and saying nothing.
Chapter Seven
Abby and Emma awoke the next morning to find that they had gone to sleep laying side by side, wrapped in each other’s arms. After awkwardly disentangling herself from Emma, Abby strode over to a window and looked outside. “Doesn’t look like there’s another soul around,” she said.
“Good,” replied Emma as she pulled her boots on. “I was thinking of getting a little fire going to cook some of the deer meat from yesterday.”
They set about undoing the tripwires they’d set the previous night and made their way downstairs and outside. Before they could start any kind of fire, they would need some wood. A thorough
search of the house and barn yielded no wood, but Emma found a long axe that would be perfect for chopping down a small tree, which she did while Abby walked a circuit around the property, keeping an eye out for threats.
Now having a supply of wood, Abby and Emma were able to get a small fire going just inside the barn. They roasted some of the venison from their packs and enjoyed a small but satisfying breakfast in silence.
“I was thinking we should start heading south,” Emma said as they were making ready to leave.
“For the winter?” Abby asked, guessing Emma’s intentions.
Emma nodded her head and said, “I’m fucking sick of the snow, and it could very well kill us. I figure we should get somewhere warm to wait out the winter, and then we can try heading west again to get to wherever America still exists.”
Abby thought this over. Emma was right about the snow, and how dangerous winter could be, and so far this year’s winter had proven to be uncommonly cold. In fact, though Abby did not know it, this season was setting records for the state of Kansas, both in temperature lows and snowfall highs. Getting out of this weather seemed the obvious, smart plan.
But Zach had recommended finding a place where the government was still in control. Even though he was gone, Zach’s advice held tremendous sway in Abby’s mind. After all, he’d been her guardian for so long and always (seemingly) knew exactly what to do. Would he brave the cold to try to reach civilization sooner or wait out the winter?
As she sat considering her options, Abby glanced outside at all the snow. A gust of wind forced its way through the partially open doors and chilled her to the bone. Emma was right, Abby concluded. They should get to a place where the sunshine could actually warm their tired bodies.
“That’s probably best,” Abby said, standing up and shouldering her pack. Emma did the same and handed Abby her rifle. Without another word they left the barn, put the rising sun to their left, and began their trek south.
His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby Page 7
