I closed my eyes as my empty stomach turned over and all the blood drained from my face.
“Lola?” Hunter’s footsteps echoed on the gym floor as he hurried over to me. He gently closed his hand around my upper arm, thumb rhythmically circling over the sensitive skin on the inside of my elbow. “Are you okay?”
I opened my eyes to find him standing over me, his green eyes filled with concern. “My dad,” I whispered. “Do you think…?” My throat tightened as I swallowed. I couldn’t make myself say the words out loud.
His expression grim, Hunter nodded. “It’s possible. I can’t say for sure, but I heard – I heard a man.”
You mean you heard a man screaming, I said silently. My stomach did another slow, greasy flip. If my dad had been a prisoner all this time…I couldn’t even fathom it.
Dad was a good man, but he wasn’t a strong one. He never had been. If my mom’s leaving had been enough to drive him to alcoholism, what would torture do?
Break him.
It would break him.
If he wasn’t broken already.
“We have to get them out.” Desperate, I grabbed Hunter’s t-shirt with my good hand, fingers digging into the soft cotton fabric and scrunching it into a ball. “Hunter, we have to get them out!”
“And we will. We will,” he repeated when I started to tremble. “Lola, look at me.”
His voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long, dark hallway. After losing Travis, I couldn’t lose my dad too. I just couldn’t. Before the drinkers came I would have jumped at the opportunity to walk out of our crappy apartment and never see him again, but now I would have given anything to look at his face one last time. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but he was the only parent I had left. The only one who had cared enough to stay. The only one who still remembered my birthday. Maybe he wasn’t the best dad, but I hadn’t exactly been the best daughter. It was something I planned on changing when – not if – I found him.
I took a deep breath, forcing my lungs to fill with air. When all of this was over I could fall apart, but not a second before. I could feel the pressure and the panic closing in on me. My skin felt two sizes too tight. I had an itch in the middle of my back I couldn’t reach. My chest felt hot and clammy all at the same time. But I couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. Because if I did I’d never be able to put all the pieces together again.
“I’m okay.” Needing to convince myself as well as Hunter, I made myself say it again. “I’m okay.” I darted a glance over his shoulder. Everyone was watching us, no doubt waiting to see if I was going to turn all raging bitch again. I forced myself to smile. I wasn’t used to playing nice with others, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Besides, I hadn’t exactly done all that great on my own. Sure, I wasn’t dead. Yet. But since when had not dying become the new standard of living?
Whether I admitted it or not, I needed this little group of misfits. And whether they liked it or not, they needed me. We were a family now – a seriously dysfunctional family, but that wasn’t anything new to me – and if this whole shit show had taught me anything it was that family did best when they stuck together.
“We will get them out, do you hear me? Your dad, Hayley, and all the rest. We will get them out,” Hunter said firmly, his gaze intent on mine. He sounded so convincing I almost believed him.
Almost.
“Do you have a plan?”
He hesitated. “Sort of. It’s going to be tough. The whole farm is swarming with those things. The ones who can be out in the daylight. I don’t know what to call them.”
“Drinker zombies.”
Hunter lifted a brow. “Drinker zombies?”
“That’s what attacked me,” I said, lifting my sling. “In the middle of town. I didn’t recognize her, but she was definitely from Revere. She seemed…confused. I mean, don’t get me wrong. She would have totally eaten me if I didn’t shoot her. But I think she would have felt bad about it afterwards.”
Hunter looked doubtful. “Are you saying they have a conscience? Because the drinkers–”
“The drinkers are monsters,” I said flatly. “Every single one of them.”
Even you, I thought silently when my thoughts abruptly veered to Maximus. If anything, he was worse than Angelique had been. At least I’d known she was a murdering psychopath from the beginning. But Maximus…Maximus had made me trust him. He’d made me feel things for him. And when I’d been at my most vulnerable he’d taken those feelings and crushed them into dust.
“Lola?”
“Sorry.” Realizing I’d zoned out for a second, I blinked a few times and returned to the present. “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think the drinker zombies are fully turned yet. They’re still human. Or at least a part of them is. That’s probably why they can be out in the daylight without burning to a crisp.”
“But they’re still the enemy,” Hunter said with a frown.
“Oh yeah.” I blew out a breath. “They’re still the enemy.”
Unless we can find a way to turn them back. The thought settled uneasily in the back of my mind. I wasn’t a hero or a savior or Joan of freakin’ Arc. So what did I care? Monsters were monsters. Except try as I might I couldn’t get Mrs. Sniffer’s face out of my head. I pressed my lips tightly together. If we got everyone out of the basement hell of horrors and if we didn’t all die in the process then maybe I would try to figure out a way to turn Mrs. Sniffer and the other zombie drinkers back to normal.
That was two huge ifs and a big ass maybe, but it was all I could afford to give.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked again. “We charge in, guns blazing?”
Hunter smiled wryly. “Something like that. Except we only have one gun.”
“I know where to get more.”
“Can you teach us how to shoot them?”
“Yeah. I can teach you.”
“Good. We can start bright and early tomorrow morning, but for tonight we need to lay low. I don’t think any of those zombie things saw us, but I don’t want to take any chances. And we can’t risk going at night. Not with the drinkers still around.”
“Tomorrow? We can’t wait that long. They could all be dead by tomorrow. We need to–”
“What we need,” Hunter interrupted, “is a good plan. There’s no point in running off on some half-assed rescue mission and getting ourselves killed.” His dimples flashed as his smile widened into a grin. “Someone pretty smart told me that.”
I really hated it when people used my own words against me. Like, really hated it.
“She sounds pretty dumb to me.”
“Not dumb.” Before I could pull back Hunter reached out and captured a loose tendril of hair. He lifted it off my shoulder, rubbing the glossy black curl between his thumb and index finger. “Not dumb,” he repeated, his voice dropping to a husky timbre. “Hot-headed, maybe. But that’s what I like the most about her.”
My stomach muscles clenched again, this time for an entirely different reason. Hunter was really testing my no-boys policy. In theory I knew that his sparkling green eyes and thick tousled hair and perfect dimples were nothing but trouble. Unfortunately my brain and my hormones weren’t exactly on the same page.
“Don’t do that,” I warned before I grabbed my hair and yanked it out of his grasp.
“Don’t so what?” he said innocently.
“Touch me.”
His head canted to the side as a mischievous little grin lifted the corners of his mouth. “But I like touching you.”
“This isn’t the time or the place.”
“You’re right.” He tucked his hands in the front pocket of his jeans. “But when all this is over I’m going to find the right time and it’s going be in the right place. That’s a promise.” He glanced behind him when one of the boys called his name. “Gotta go. We’re parking all the four wheelers in the bus garage behind the gym. Are you okay now?”
Was I okay? Aside from the fact that my fath
er was probably behind tortured in a dark basement and my emotions felt like they were on the mother of all roller coasters and we were being hunted by real-life freakin’ vampires then yeah, I guess I was okay.
“Sure. I’m fine. You better get going. Stevenson looks pretty impatient. By the way,” I called out when Hunter turned around and started to walk back across the gym, “Thanks for what you did back there.”
He frowned at me over his shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
Thinking he was being modest, I rolled my eyes and pointed to my sling. “You know, bandaging me up in the alley and bringing me back here. I treated you like a total bitch and you still saved my life. I owe you one, Golden Boy.”
“Lola…this is the first time I’ve seen you since you left. Not that I wouldn’t have done all that if I could have,” he said hurriedly when my smile faltered. “But we’ve been on the other side of town all day. I’m glad you’re okay, though. Really glad. And listen, all that stuff we said before…let’s just forget it, okay? Water under the bridge.”
“Water under the bridge,” I repeated numbly as he hurried away. Mind racing, I stared down at my sling and then at the clean, crisp white bandage wrapped around my knee. They weren’t a figment of my imagination or a bad dream. Someone had pulled the metal pipe out of my leg and carried me back to the gym.
But if it wasn’t Hunter…then who the hell was it?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ready, Aim, Fire
WHEN I WOKE UP THE next morning I was so stiff and sore I could barely move. Groaning, I climbed out of my sleeping bag and staggered into the shower. The water was freezing cold, but I was used to it by now. It was just one more sucky thing in a whole long list of suck.
Livy was in the stall next to me. I could hear her humming to herself as white frothy bubbles made their way from her shower into mine. There were only three stalls and they all shared one drain which meant my feet always smelled like cucumber melon whether I wanted them to or not.
I’d taken my sling off before getting into the shower, but my wrist was still pretty much useless which made everything take twice as long. Squirting a big dollop of fancy shampoo I’d stolen out of Hayley’s bag – it wasn’t as if she wasn’t going to be using it anytime soon – directly onto my scalp I rubbed it vigorously into my hair. After two days of not showering and rolling around in a dirty alley I was Gross with a capital G. Blood and dirt ran down my goose-marked skin in a slimy trail of brown and red as I scrubbed my skin clean with a loofah, hissing in pain whenever soap got into an open cut or scratch.
And to think I used to believe papercuts were the end of the world.
By the time I stepped out of the shower my teeth were chattering and my lips were tinged blue. Clumsily wrapping myself in a towel I stepped around Livy who had finished a few minutes ago and was applying her makeup in front of the middle sink. Our gazes met in the mirror but we both looked quickly away without saying anything. Holding tight to my towel I brushed past her and hobbled barefoot past the long line of lockers and metal benches. When I turned the corner I found Rose sitting cross-legged on my sleeping bag reading a book. She looked up, brushed a tuft of hair out of her eyes, and smiled.
Like Hunter, Rose had been quick to forgive me for acting like a complete and total ass. The others not so much. With the exception of Ms. Siegel politely asking me to pass the peanut butter when we’d been making sandwiches for dinner no one had spoken a word to me since I’d returned. Not that I could really blame them. If the situations were reversed I didn’t think I would have talked to me either. With time – and a little bribery – I was hoping they’d come around. Because nothing said “let’s be friends again” like giving someone a gun and teaching them how to shoot.
“How do you feel?” Rose asked.
“A little bit better.” My wrist and my knee were still swollen and bruised and two different shades of purple, but it could have been worse. A lot worse. “Do you think I should bandage my knee back up?”
Rose’s nose wrinkled as she looked at my leg. “Um, probably. You don’t want it to get infected or anything.”
Die from infection when I could have my neck snapped or all the blood drained out of my body?
No.
We wouldn’t want that.
“Want to come with me to the nurse’s office? I need to get some more tape and gauze.”
“Sure.” Setting her book aside Rose stood up, stretched, and followed me out of the locker room and across the gym. Bright morning sunlight reflected off the wooden floorboards, bouncing back up into my eyes and causing me to squint. I didn’t know exactly what time it was, but it was early. Early enough that we were the only ones in the gym.
“So,” I said conversationally once we were out in the hallway, “have you ever shot a gun before?”
“Yes,” Rose said.
I glanced at her in surprise. “Seriously?”
“My dad is – I mean he was – a big outdoorsman.” She bit her lip. “He taught me and my sister to shoot a rifle when we were only eight.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Peony,” Rose said softly. Her gaze fell to the carpet. “My mom was the one who named us after flowers. Every night when we all sat down for dinner she would always say, ‘Look at my garden. Isn’t it beautiful?’ I – I’ve been thinking that Peony might be in the farmhouse. I know it’s probably sounds silly,” she said in a rush, “but she might not have been home with my parents when – when the drinkers came.”
“Do you live in town?”
“No.” Her frizzy hair bounced off her shoulders as she shook her head. “We live…I mean…we lived in the blue house on the corner out by the old quarry. It used to be my grandparent’s house and when they died they passed it on to my mom.”
“The one with the white shutters, right?”
Rose nodded. “And the big oak tree out front. My sister loved to play in the woods behind the house even when it got dark. She had her own secret treehouse. Mom would always have to send me out to get her when it was time for dinner. But I wasn’t home the night that the drinkers came so maybe…maybe my mom didn’t go get her and maybe she stayed out in the woods and the drinkers didn’t find her until later and they brought her to the farmhouse like they did Hayley,” she said in a rush, as though saying it quickly would somehow make it true. “Do you think that’s possible?”
We both stopped outside the nurse’s office.
“Umm…” Was it better to give someone false optimism or make them face the truth? I didn’t know what the right answer was. I didn’t even know if there was a right answer. But looking at the glimmer of hope on Rose’s face I knew what I had to say. “I think anything’s possible. Just… be careful, okay? Don’t let yourself get hurt any more than you have to.”
I pushed open the door and Rose followed me inside. She waited silently by a crowded desk while I rummaged through the cabinets and piled everything I needed, including gauze, tape, scissors and some anti-bacterial cream, into the duffel bag I’d brought with me. “Okay,” I said, slinging the bag over my shoulder. “Good to go.”
“What about your family?” Rose asked as we made our way back down the hall. “You have an older sister, right?”
“How did you know that?”
She shrugged. “I remember seeing her last name on the honor roll. I think you’re the only Sanchez’s in the whole school.”
That sounded about right. While Sanchez was one of the most common surnames in Spain, it tended to stick out in Revere among the Jones’s and the Smith’s and the Brown’s.
“Yeah, I have an older sister. She lives in California with my mom and her new husband.” Had the drinkers gotten to California yet? Without access to a phone or the internet or even a radio it was impossible to know. There was a part of me that recognized I should have been more upset about my mom and my sister. I mean, there was a good chance they were both dead. But I’d gotten so good at blocking them out that
I didn’t feel anything at all. Not sadness. Not anger.
Not even hope.
“I didn’t know your parents were divorced. I’m sorry.”
It was my turn to shrug. “Don’t be. It all happened pretty quickly.”
“And your mom just moved to California?” Rose looked appalled. “What about you?”
What about me? Talk about a loaded question. It was the same thing I’d asked my mom when I realized she wasn’t coming back. And do you want to know what she said? What my mother said to me when I called her up on the phone and gathered up the courage to ask her why she’d flown all the way across the country?
It’s time I focused on myself, Lola. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. You always did better alone.
Aside from a few text messages here and there, it was one of the last times we ever spoke.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “It didn’t even bother me that much. My dad and I are better off without them, you know?”
“I guess so,” Rose said, although she didn’t sound very convinced. We walked passed the front office. Our reflections rippled across the glass, distorting our features. “Do you think what’s happening here is happening all over? Even in California?”
Well Rose was a barrel of laughs this morning. I guess she just needed someone to talk to about everything that was going on, although I didn’t know why she thought that someone should be me. She might not have picked up on it yet, but I wasn’t exactly Miss Sunshine and Rainbows.
Hope was good…to a point. But when you stretched it past that point it became dangerous.
“If it isn’t yet I think it will be soon.”
Rose’s nervous laugh echoed down the hallway. “But they can’t really take over the world.”
“Why not?” I yanked one of the gym doors towards us. “They did it here.”
AFTER SNACKING DOWN ON GRANOLA bars and cookies – the breakfast of champions – we split into two groups. Those who already knew how to shoot a gun or didn’t want to learn stayed behind to ration out our supplies while the rest of us walked the mile and a half to the elementary school. We could have taken the four wheelers, but Hunter wanted to save gas.
The Lola Chronicles (Book 2): A Day Without Dawn Page 10
