by Jason Durman
"Sorry, Eve."
"Thank you."
The footsteps paused.
Snow fell. It landed on the heads of the watchers.
It melted a little faster as it landed on one of them. The others did not appear to notice.
He tenses. Then, he turns, watching the snow-covered rooftops.
Something flickers across his vision, too subtle for the average eye to catch. He squints. Then he turns to the others. "We should go."
The figure called Trevor nods. "See something?"
The watcher grunts. "Yeah. It might be nothing." His expression says otherwise.
He turns. "You guys go ahead," he says. "I need to check on something."
Eve steps towards the speaker. "Stick with the group, Denver. It's dangerous out there."
"I'll be fine," he says. "It's just for a sec."
Trevor shakes his head. "We're not leaving you behind."
The last figure finally moves. He puts his hand on Trevor' shoulder and nods.
"Let him stay behind," he says. "If he gets killed, then it's his own damn fault. It's not worth an argument."
Denver narrows his eyes, but otherwise declines to comment. He turns to Eve and Trevor.
"It'll just be a moment. I'll come back, I promise."
With that said, the others begin to walk (Two of them glancing back on occasion) leaving him to himself.
He watches until they're out of sight, and then turns, sprinting a little faster than should be possible for someone so encumbered by cold and exhaustion. He reaches an alleyway, darkened and foreboding, and slips into the shadows without a pause.
There's a sound of a zipper creaking, and polyester slithering.
A jacket flies from the alleyway's entrance, followed by a scarf and, finally, a torn-looking pair of gloves. A shadow, silent, seems to fly to the rooftop from a bare wall, and flit away from the passage, leaving snow to fall on the forgotten pile of winter clothes.
The shadow moves onward above.
It was swift and certain, honing onto a certain target. Sometimes it would stop and listen, or sniff, its hunched outline a silhouette against the gray winter sky. With almost effortless ease it bounds, sometimes rolling in the snow to prevent a hard landing.
Suddenly he stops and stands, unmoving. Then he growls.
It's aggressive, and laced with warning. Back off.
Silence echoes. Then, a reply. It wasn't so much a message as a declaration of mixed feelings. Anger. Aggression. Pain. Even a small lick of Fear. It was fierce and feral in the dark of the night. And, it alerted him to the source.
He crouches. He listens once more. Then, he pounces.
Two figures, both hooded, both snarling, impact in mid-air. There's a scuffle and snarl that tears through the silence of the night, like cardboard being ripped in two. Then they land, heavily, on the snow-covered roof.
Denver slashes. He bites and claws and snarls and tumbles, trying to grapple the attacker in the snowdrifts. Powder snow billows around them. Screeches rise to the air. Fabric rips. Then, scarlet blood splashes, sinking into the snow and billowing with steam.
Then, a final, guttural scream.
A figure rises from in between the drifts. He stands, breathing heavily, over the body of his vanquished foe, blood dripping from his claws.
He exhales, his breath a fog in the frozen air.
"Stay away from them," he growls to the whimpering figure below. He spits, his saliva tinged with pink, and the spittle freezing almost instantly in the snow.
Then he turns, flakes melting rapidly as they land on him, and he bounds away over the rooftops.
Six weeks.
Six weeks, by estimation, that I've been stuck in this white hell. Six weeks that have oozed by like molasses in February. Six weeks, and I haven't found a way out.
Six weeks, and I know this: It's beautiful to hear someone curse in German.
Especially when the source of said cursing is you.
"Was zur Hölle!" I heard it echo down the halls, audio courtesy of Jimmy the Dancing Janitor. I grinned.
"Zis is even vurse zan ze Gravel Wars!" The doctor threw up his red-gloved hands as he paced outside the room. It amazed me that there could be a man somewhere out there with an accent as outrageous as his. Caldwell, who was trailing behind him like some sort of obedient pitbull, raised an eyebrow.
"Gravel Wars, doctor?"
The whitecoat waved it away. "Zat doesn't matter. My point is zat I haff, in mein long and varied career, seldom seen a case as brutal as zis." He gestured towards my window. I flipped him the bird.
Unfortunately he didn't seem to notice.
"Zere haz been no development in zee last six veeks!"
"If it's been due to issue with extraction, doctor, it can be remedied-"
"Ze extraction iz not ze issue, General." The doctor paused. "It iz more ze... Fundamentals of ze treatment."
"Can you elaborate, doctor?"
He began to pace again, marching down the hall. "I von't go into detail, but most of ze medical breakthroughs I haff vorked vith in ze past few decades haff been more or less achievable with brute force. Now, ze viral particles of Rhabdovirus retrogradum are far more complex zan I vould haff conceived, even myself, considering ze telomere modifications…" his voice died away as he walked further down the hall, Caldwell following him, and leaving me alone. I didn't care to listen. My thoughts were too loud.
I didn't even bother to turn around. I knew he was there before he even was.
"It's been six weeks," Dad said. "What have you learned?"
"Let's see." I counted off on my fingers.
1. "The janitor has a weird affinity for 70's music.
2. They probably still don't know that the audio thing is fucked up and I can hear them.
3. The only way through the door is by key card access.
4. All authorized personnel have these cards with them.
5. The side exit is two halls down and a right.
6. I'm getting sick and tired of this waiting shit.
7. I still have no idea where I am.
"Satisfied?" I asked. His mustache bristled. I wasn't sure if it was a bristle of approval or not.
"Your attitude ain't changed," he said, simply. "What are ya gonna do now?"
I shrugged. "They aren't sending in any more guards after the last thing I did to them."
"If you'd been faster-"
"If," I said, bitterly. "Fuckin' annoying little word right there." He didn't reply.
I continued. "I don't dwell on the past. There's no point in it."
"Then why not change the future?"
I stared at the wall. That same, stupid white wall that hadn't changed in six goddamn weeks.
"How?"
He shrugged, in turn. "You tell me."
"Great answer," I replied. "Real analytical and insightful into the current situation. Another great revelation from Commander Sun Tzu."
He scowled. "Don't you be insultin' the general, Marzia. He invented the zoo, ya know"
"I know."
" 'S the only thing you seem to."
I felt my face flush. "Are my own thoughts mocking me now?"
"Yes."
"Wonderful. Just what I need."
"It's for a reason."
"The reason being that I like to ludicrously deprecate myself on a regular basis?"
"I'm trying to make you listen."
"To what?"
"What was the whitecoat talkin' about before he left?"
"Somethin' somethin' German cursing?"
"Further."
I racked my brain.
"Testin', extraction…" I paused. Something struck me. "Telomeres?" He mentioned it somewhere before. Wait, no. That was Gatling. Way back…
Enhanced telomere length… accelerated cell replication…
"That doesn't sound like vaccine stuff," I said, quietly. "It sounds like mutating shit." And mutating shit is never a good sign, I thought.
I looked out the window again. The hallway was empty, save for the occasional whitecoat passing through. All I heard were distant footsteps and the hum of the lights.
"Caldwell, what are you planning?
Chapter 19
Ice is worse than snow.
It bites. It's easier to slip on and harder to see, and worst of all, it doesn't smell like anything. Rain smells like water and sweetness and acid. Snow smells like metal. Ice… smells like ice. Ice smells like nothing.
And it's everywhere. Where the snow is melted on the pavement it's all dark ice. It's hard to see, and sometimes I almost slip on it. There's more of it now, and less snowdrifts.
We can see more bodies, too. All frozen, stuck to the ground and covered in ice. They look blobby and strange, not even human. I step over them.
Russ lets me wear my hood. It's not very cold, but the wind bites my face. I'm glad it's cold enough to freeze things. One night, it melted, and I couldn't smell anything but sick and death.
Now all I smell is ice, and the others. Gas, alcohol (that's the stuff Trevor drinks, I found out), gunpowder and that oily stuff Eve rubs on her cheeks to keep them from getting dry. I don't smell any rivals, and I don't hear anything, so I'm calm.
It's almost… normal.
It's been a lot of days, I think. We're never in the same place, but the days all feel the same.
Walking, walking, walking, cold and walking. All the saferooms look the same on the inside. Small and dark and square.
Sometimes there's sleeping bags and blankets. Sometimes there's food. Most of the time, there isn't.
I don't get used to the empty feeling in my stomach. It gets harder and harder to wake up every morning, because when I'm asleep I'm not hungry. I don't dream much about screaming things, or even from before- I just dream of food. Mostly MRE's.
There are squirrels, sometimes. I try not to get blood on my jacket, and they're almost too thin to be worth hunting, but they fill the emptiness with something. There aren't any birds- the bodies are too frozen for crows to eat.
There's writing on the walls of the rooms, too. Pictures. Messages. Sometimes the old ones are covered by new ones, so I can't read them. Some of them I can't read anyways, because the writing is bad, or I don't know the words. There were lots of them in the last safe room.
Thomas, I'm ok. I'm t- - - - g to make it to Ind-n-, stay - you are. I love you. ML.
They r everywhr, they ate Eds arm and his leg
WE ARE ALL SO SCREWED. DAVE YOU FUCKHEAD TRY AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE
BEFORE ITS GAME OVER. -CG
S-n and River, meet up with -e and -y-e by the gas station. W-h down stay safe. -Mal Shaun, if you can read this go to the W-nche-r, we can wait for this to all blow over.
Watch out 4 big onez they r hard 2 kill
Ellis, im going north try n find me n dave. Ke-t-
Sometimes Eve adds something in Puerto Rican, but the others mostly leave it alone. Russ doesn't look at. Trevor just shakes his head and says something about 'kids these days.' I mostly read them for practice.
Sometimes I look for something Marcy wrote, but I never find anything.
Sometimes the saferooms have nothing in them but blood. Sometimes we find a body, or an infected, weak, but still fighting.
We don't stay in those. We keep walking, until we find something else. Then we don't talk or eat much.
Now we walk, slow, so we don't fall on the ice. I listen, holding my shovel tight. I still don't have a gun, because Russ can't find one. I like the shovel, so I don't say anything.
Trevor stops in front of us, all of a sudden. Russ and Eve almost bump into him, but he stands still.
"What's the holdup?" Russ asks. His voice is low and quiet.
I think I'm going to smell fear, fear from Trevor on the wind, but it's just Russ and Eve. Trevor smells confused. And a little bit happy. Strange.
He points his finger at something ahead. "Look. The water tower. It…"
I look where he's pointing.
There's a big Thug thing on thin long stick legs, high above the ground. I've seen them before.
Sometimes we get fresh water from them, by shooting a hole in the side and taking the water that comes out.
Now there's a big crack in the bottom. Ice is sticking out, like it's water falling but it stopped and never fell all the way, and right below it-
"Holy shit," I hear Russ whisper.
There's infected. They're frozen, covered in ice like the ones on the ground, but they're standing up, and their faces are looking up at the water tower with their mouths open. The ice just coats them, like they're stuck underwater and it froze.
"They're like flippin' statues," Trevor says. "Frozen in their last moments. Lord…"
Eve just shakes her head. "They must have been looking for water."
We're all quiet. We just stare at them for a long time. The sun lights them and makes the ice sparkle, and I can see some little parts. The heads. The fingers of their hands. The little dips where their eyes
are. I wonder how long they had to stand there to get like that. If they froze and died and the water ran over them, or the water killed them by freezing them. I don't know.
We keep staring at them. Then:
"If they were looking for a drink," Eve says, slowly, "They sure as hell got one."
Russ coughs, but it might have been a laugh. I hear Trevor go snrk.
"Yeah, what if they got frozen doing something embarrassing, like picking their nose…"
"Mid-sneeze," Eve says.
"Scratching their ass," Russ says. We turn to him, eyes wide. He shrugs.
"What? It's funny."
There's silence.
Then, it's like something in me melts. Like a big lump of ice behind my eyes and in my chest warms up and flows out. I smile.
I'm thinking of an infected frozen, scratching its butt, looking like that forever, and it's funny.
I'm laughing, because it's been nothing but fear and worry and hurt for the past long time, and it's stupid. It's stupid and funny.
I hear Eve start to laugh, and Trevor too. Even Russ is snorting through his nose- it's quiet and there's ice everywhere, and there's bodies and we just can't stop laughing.
Then, after awhile, we run out of laugh. My chest hurts, but it's a good kind of hurt. It's like I'm not heavy anymore. Like if I could jump, it would be even higher than I could before.
"That," says Eve, wiping her eyes, "Felt good. I can't remember the last time I had a laugh like that."
"Before this whole circus went down, that's for sure," says Trevor.
Russ doesn't say anything. He just looks at the water tower and the ice, and he smiles. His eyes aren't as sad anymore, and his whole body is… relaxed. Not all clenched up. If he didn't smell the same, I would think he's a different person.
I like him better that way.
We don't say anything the rest of the way, but sometimes I'll hear snrk from the back, or a cough that doesn't sound like a cough.
When it's Russ and me on watch later that night, I see him look out the window of the safe room and smile a little.
And he says, really quietly, so I can't hear (But I can, and pretend I don't)
"Fuckin' zombiesicles. What are ya gonna think of next, Skip?"
Chapter 20
"It's 50 miles to Charleston, folks. The home stretch."
I look up. The sky is clear today, and I can see the sun shining in the window. Russ seems cheerful.
The room is warm, but it doesn't smell like gas. It's nice.
I think today is going to be a good day.
But I might be wrong.
Trevor is grumbling. Like he always does.
"It's not natural for it to be this darn warm in the middle of the winter," he says, looking out the window. "Where's the drafts? The snow? The morning frost?"
"Didn't you grumble about the cold?" Eve asks.
"I was used to it, at least," Trevor says. "None of this April
in January business…"
Eve just sighs. "You're just mad we had to leave Betsy behind last week, aren't you?"
"That little heater was more faithful to me than my own wife," he says, shaking his head.
Eve laughs. "Some wife."
"Yeah," he says. "I suppose it's too much to hope she got eaten by a zombie. She wouldn't have enough brains."
Even Russ snorts at that. I don't know why. I don't think infected eat brains. Heads are hard to break through.
Russ glances at the door. "You all ready to face the day?"
We nod.
"Right. Let's roll."
It's warm outside today. While I'm wearing my sweater - I never take it off - I left behind my jacket in a saferoom long ago. There's no more snow. It just… slowed down, until there was less and less. I never saw it melt. I miss it a little.
No snow means more infected. Hordes used to be rare, but now we see them a lot.
There's more of my kind, too. Leapers and Sirens, Trappers, Riders - that's what the group calls them.
We ran into a Spitter in an alleyway a while ago. It barfed green, burning-smelling stuff on the ground, and it melted my shoes and my jacket. Eve got a burn on her arm, but even though it got on my legs, the stuff didn't hurt me. I don't know why.
I don't think anyone noticed. I just have to keep being careful for another week, and I'll survive.
It looks clear for now. I still look and listen. There's nothing in the distance so far.
Wait. I hear…
Something. Something in the distance. A screaming rumble. The sound of many feet.
A horde.
Crap.
I lift my shovel, and try not to show my teeth. "Heads up." The others look to where I'm watching.
"Company?" Russ asks. I nod.
Nobody says anything. They just raise their guns, and we brace for impact.
It comes, screaming around the corner - many feet, many arms, trying to beat and tear. Many mouths, screaming.
The next bunch of minutes are all fire and smoke. I swing and swing and swing, making hit after hit.
Blood sprays. Heads roll. Bodies hit the ground. But they just keep coming.
After awhile, it slows down. Eve shoots the last one stumbling at us, and it's quiet all of a sudden.
Trevor leans over, his hand resting on his knee. "I'm getting too old for this BS," he pants.
Russ raises an eyebrow. "Age has nothing to do it. I'm 30 something years younger than you, and I'm sure as hell too old for this BS."
