Exodus

by Brian P. White

  He just hoped the Death Doll remained one of them. He never wanted to see what one of her malfunctions looked like.

  *****

  Cynthia’s heart fluttered, but she couldn’t believe her eyes. He looked as magnificent as ever, standing triumphantly in the middle of the conquered block, the rotten bitch’s head squashed under his boot while the rest of her whiny minions lay dead all around him. Her leader, her love.

  “It’s alright, darlin,’” Kenny said with that disarming grin of his. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

  She desperately wanted to believe it, especially when he approached and pressed his gloriously muscled body against hers, separated only by an agonizing amount of denim. His powerful arms held her tight, yet his giant hand softly caressed her hair. His warmth excited her.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered as a tear burned in her eye.

  He backed up a step—which she instantly regretted—but kept those smooth hands on her arms. “Don’t you worry about a thing.” He released her and slowly peeled off his shirt, teasing her in just the right way. “I’m gonna take good care of you.”

  Her flesh tingled at the sight of his. Oh, how long she had waited for this moment, and she didn’t want to waste it. She reached up to her shoulder to lower the lace strap—only to find her wrists bound together with duct tape. She tried to ask what was going on, but her mouth was taped shut, too. What the hell?

  Kenny grinned teasingly at her, and the bodies all around him were now their fallen Pride of Life. “Better get used to it,” he said as the Death Doll raised its sword behind him.

  She screamed at him through the tape binding her lips—

  —and found herself taped down to the front center seat on that damned bus. She groaned through her sticky muffle, the green cuffs of her denim shirt failing to shield her wrists from her tight binding. She fought the urge to cry.

  “What’s your problem?” asked the resting bitch face next to her, the former beauty queen the others called Clarissa, who nursed her baby under a baby blanket.

  Cynthia faced forward without reply, not that she could say anything through the mountain of tape over her mouth. That was when she noticed the bus had stopped, and that four of her captors were hacking or shooting down a mob of feeders next to some old golf course. She hoped they got eaten, and that their rotten leader got torn to shreds trying to protect them.

  Her stomach rumbled. Great! Hoping these sanctimonious jerks would grant her a decent meal, she grunted through her tape.

  A few nearby people looked her way, but they quickly went back to distracting themselves with their books and their tablets. She grunted louder.

  Clarissa rolled her eyes before ripping the tape off Cynthia’s mouth, which hurt like the bitch that tore it off and snapped, “What?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  The pageant monster glared impatiently. “What do you want? The other breast? I’m busy!”

  “What’s it take to get a meal around here?”

  “Not trying to kill us would be a good start,” came from behind her before a bruised apple appeared in front of her face, held by a thick black hand. “Eat this.”

  Cynthia glared up at the ghetto chef they called Hashim. “It’s brown.”

  “So am I. You wanna complain about that?” he dared her. “Your little raid cost us most of our fresh produce, and I have a lot more deserving people to feed, so I don’t mind giving one bad apple to another.”

  Her eyes narrowed, the rest of her seething with hatred.

  Chef Black-R-Dee pressed the apple against her mouth. “I wouldn’t serve it if it wasn’t safe.”

  She stared him down, but neither he, his proffered fruit, nor her stomach budged. She begrudgingly took a bite. Its course texture diffused all of its meager sweetness. The bitter paste hit her throat with a fury that made her want to gag and she wanted to spit it out, but she needed the sustenance. She forced herself to eat it quickly.

  When she finished, the black baker took the core away and slapped the tape back over her lips, throwing her a gruff, “You’re welcome,” as he headed for the back, where the other heads of their camp were whining about where to find a new tire for their fuel tanker.

  She breathed through the disgust of eating the bad apple from that jerk-off’s hand. The last thing she wanted was to puke in her bound mouth. She needed her wits to find a chance to escape. If she could take a few out along the way, all the better.

  “She’s going to be the death of that girl,” came from that one prissy chick with a broken nose, who spent the entire trip ignoring a tall ginger that stared sadly at her like he was in the doghouse. She shook her head while staring daggers at the fray outside.

  Ginger put a hand on Priss’ shoulder. “She’ll be fine,” he dared to say to her.

  Priss shook her shoulder free of his grasp. “I’m not arguing with you again.”

  “Paula, please,” he started to say.

  Prissy Paula whipped around to look him dead in the eye. “Please?” she snapped. “How about, ‘please stand by me,’ Sean? How about, ‘please back me up when I’m trying to do the right thing?’”

  Sean gaped like an idiot. Not hard to believe.

  Paula stormed off to the back of the bus and planted herself in a rear seat near a young couple that watched her sympathetically. Or warily. The scrawny spic looked like he didn’t know what to say, and his tiny blond gal pal shifted uncomfortably in her beau’s arms. The priss threw her hands out. “What? Like I’m the problem? He’s never there for me.”

  “He’s still here, so don’t be ungrateful,” came from the braided blonde in the back, whose voice broke sourly. In the rearview, the one they called Jerri looked like an exhausted soccer mom, complete with disdain. She was also married to the one that got whipped and fed zombie blood by one of Cynthia’s cohorts.

  The priss languished in silence like she was to blame.

  A ruckus beside Cynthia caught everyone’s attention.

  It was that Cody guy, the one the Death Doll kept making ga-ga eyes at, grunting and writhing from a gunshot wound across three side seats. The old nurse Gilda tried to calm him, but she didn’t help a thing. She shouted the baker’s name at the back of the bus.

  Hashim ran up to help her hold the guy down with the ginger’s help, asking, “What’s wrong?”

  The old bag clamped her crinkly hand on Cody’s sweaty forehead. “He’s burning up.”

  “Is it the plague?” the pageant monster asked while clutching her baby away from the necrophiliac. Cynthia would’ve hoped so if she wasn’t restrained so close to him.

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t have any other wounds.” Gilda glared daggers at Cynthia, rage obscuring that mild lisp of hers. “Did Kenny lace his bullets with zombie blood?”

  Cynthia wished he did, but she wasn’t about to satisfy the old bag with an answer.

  Hashim waved it all off. “You know she’s not gonna say anything, even if she had that tape off her mouth. What was Cody thinking keeping her around?”

  The nurse looked like she agreed.

  The baker reached up front, then paused as he stared at the old Injun pouting out the windshield from the driver seat. The guy hadn’t said a word or did anything other than drive since they left that reservation. Talk about a wasted trip.

  Hashim grabbed the radio handset. “Hey, Didi, we got a problem. Cody’s really sick.”

  “Do you have enough meds?” the zombie’s fluid voice crackled back.

  “For him or for the rest of camp?” the nurse replied aloud.

  A tense silence followed, during which the fogies stared at each other with their mouths hanging open. Cynthia would’ve been happy to see everyone get sick after running out of medicine, but that would’ve meant none for her when she eventually got free.

  Then their dead leader said, “We’re going to hit town to find the tanker a new tire. God willing, we’ll find a hospital that hasn’t already been looted.”

>   “God willing,” the baker repeated into the mic.

  I’m hoping you get killed trying, Cynthia thought with a smile.

  CHAPTER 2

  PIT STOP

  Paula Herrin had no idea why she was so terrified. She barely even knew Cody Montgomery, but the former Army medic’s throes put her—and everybody else in camp—on higher alert than the whole trip so far. Perhaps it was the fear of his death severing the chain that somehow bound the Death Doll to her moral crusade of defending the living. Trusting the augmented zombie that could malfunction at any moment was hard enough, but believing the status quo would remain after losing the one who made it happen would be more difficult than anyone believing in Santa Claus after the pandemic.

  Sparse gunshots thumped above, the roof gunners blasting various zombies emerging from the dilapidated town and its unkempt golf course. With Didi and her defenders somewhere in town, and another small group raiding the nearby Heartland Surgery Center at elder nurse Gilda Hamrick’s request, the two Night Shift workers kept the dead away from the bus while keeping an eye out for either team.

  Those remaining in the retrofitted bus merely stared at Gilda, who quietly pled with Cody to hang in there after sparingly dosing him with pain meds and antibiotics. All he did was breathe as heavily as he sweated all over the three seats on which he lay. Paula prayed that wasn’t an omen of things to come.

  Young Pepe Sanchez, the camp’s new nurse-in-training, rushed back inside with his escorts. As soon as one of them shut the bus door, the former pre-med student fixed Gilda with a dejected look and a shrug.

  The veteran nurse’s head sunk, her white curls spilling over her mildly etched face.

  Pepe handed her a piece of cloth. “Here. It’s clean. I just wet it on the way back.”

  “Can’t say the weather’s all bad,” Gilda quipped as she took the cloth and clamped it onto Cody’s forehead. The camp’s co-leader sighed heavily with less distress on his face.

  A few others looked relieved as well, including the nineteen-year-old Pepe and his even younger girlfriend Dawn Maxwell when they embraced. Paula wanted to complain, but she didn’t see any point after her pleas to keep fifteen-year-old Rachelle from her defender duties fell on deaf ears. Of course, her word would mean little to anyone here while Panel member Jerri Xi was snubbing her. Paula’s future was less certain than during the two years she had spent hiding in her Ocheyedan home after losing her son.

  A clap shot through the bus in between gunshots. Everyone turned to face Hashim Roberson, who approached with a hopeful grin as he said, “I got some good news. With all the frozen meat thawing, we’ll be eating really well through tomorrow night.”

  Nobody cheered, though they didn’t look any gloomier.

  The camp’s head chef took what he could get with a nod, but his round, jovial face soon drooped. “The bad news is, after taking inventory, we’ll be rationing pretty tightly afterward until we’re set up in California.”

  Groans responded before he finished his last sentence. The two gunners, brothers Max and Otis Campbell, stepped down to join the griping. A few others threw barbs his way about why he couldn’t get more out of their stores before they were driven out.

  Paula suddenly felt even more cramped, and having her husband loom over her so closely wasn’t helping. “Please tell me it won’t take that long,” she begged.

  Hashim’s eyes narrowed at her, but he threw that smile back on his generally pleasant face. “All things considered, we’re making pretty good time, so I’m feeling lucky.”

  No one else did.

  “We can save a lot by cutting some of our losses,” said Blake Kargadorian, the Night Shift leader, who then hiked his left thumb over his good shoulder. “I mean, some of our wounded aren’t exactly going to recover.”

  Paula saw who he was indicating as she glanced behind him at Roy Wielenga, whose face had been charred by the Molotov cocktail that claimed his sight. She wanted to snap at the insensitive jerk for singling out a blind man.

  Clarissa Groenig beat her to it. “You’re not exactly a hundred percent yourself, Blake.”

  “I can work around this,” Blake said with a point at his wrapped right shoulder, “but as good as she is, Gilda can only do so much. She can’t give Roy his eyes back, can she?”

  Hashim shook his head, and Paula got the feeling it wasn’t to answer the thoughtless cretin.

  Blake submissively put his good hand out before him. “Hey, I don’t like it, either, but I’m just stating the facts, here. It’s one thing to take in stragglers who can help, but to keep—”

  “No one gets left behind.” Didi’s voice piped through the bus intercom, startling everyone. “If you were all blind, deaf, and wheelchair-bound, I’d still look after you. We protect life, remember?”

  No one looked brave enough to argue with the disembodied voice. Paula wasn’t sure if she was more impressed or terrified that the Death Doll had been listening the whole time.

  “Let me be clear, here,” Didi continued, the mild crackle of the transmission diminishing none of her firm tone. “This trip used to take two days back when drivers only had to worry about ticketed stops and engine trouble. Look where we are now. God knows how clogged the roads are up ahead, not to mention how many gangs and boneheads are waiting for us out here. The only way we get through it is together, so no more talk of leaving people behind. Capíche?”

  Blake’s mouth hung open.

  Hashim smirked triumphantly, responding with, “We hear you.”

  Nothing followed from the intercom.

  Hashim clapped his hands together. “I’ll get some steaks going. Anyone want to join me?”

  No one responded, electing instead to take their seats and continue distracting themselves.

  The camp chef simply shrugged and headed for his food stores in back while the Campbell brothers stood back up behind their guns and resumed shooting down incoming corpses.

  “Well, I’m glad that’s over,” Sean said with a big, dumb grin.

  Paula shook her head and considered enduring the cold with Hashim.

  *****

  Didi followed Rachelle closely through the dilapidated Good Samaritan Hospital, relying on her fresh-faced protégé to direct her toward any danger. Even at high noon, she could barely see anything past her three armed escorts creeping along the littered floor. Her team’s restrained breathing and footsteps echoed unanswered through the dark hallways, but she kept her guard up and her flashlight at the ready. She almost wished she could smell the place, but the process that preserved her body took that sense away. At least the scent of her living friends wouldn’t tempt her to feed more than the eternal agony in her brain already did, especially so soon after eating the maniacal Kenny Thibeault the Fourth. She could still taste his metallic sweetness on her—

  A faint noise stopped them all cold. She could’ve sworn it sounded like a giggle, then a muffled conversation.

  “Sounds like somebody’s here. We should leave,” Craig quietly suggested, his tall, brawny frame angled rearward to do just that.

  Did shrugged. “They might barter.”

  “Or ambush us,” Isaac hissed, the brows of his ruggedly handsome face high with alarm as his dark chocolate eyes scanned the whole space in seconds. “We don’t need to be takin’ no unnecessary risks.”

  “Cody’s life is necessary to me,” she replied coldly, “but we can’t exhaust all the camp’s medicine on him.” She drew her leg pistols and handed one to Rachelle. “Lead me up. Isaac, take the rear and keep your eyes open.”

  Isaac rolled his eyes as Rachelle cautiously moved ahead until they reached a staircase, which was much better lit by the broken glass walls. Several old bloodstains coated the non-slip steps like something large had been squashed here.

  Didi’s brain tingled at the thought of sampling that blood, wondering if it would coat her tongue like chocolate flakes.

  “I don’t even wanna know what happened here,” Rachelle said, which
snapped Didi out of it.

  “Me, neither,” Didi replied, then urged Rachelle up, following her pupil’s footsteps exactly. She used her flashlight in the darker space of the mezzanine to focus on shoes scaling the steps, but she couldn’t stop staring at those juicy legs meeting at a meaty—

  A shout stopped them just shy of the top. Quick, angry. Then arguing. Too far away to hear.

  “Keep going,” Didi whispered, hoping what came out wasn’t too broken by her hunger.

  Rachelle gave her a panicky look, then reluctantly moved up.

  When they reached the second floor doorway, they listened to the arguments, but Didi could only hear every other word. Stuff. Hurry. Almost. Shut. She shook her head at a puerile insult.

  “I hear two voices,” Craig said, “and I’m not sensing much cohesion.”

  “Disorganized is still dangerous,” Isaac spat quietly. “If they ain’t gettin’ along, they ain’t gonna share nothin’ wit’ us.”

  “We’re not gonna kill them for their stuff, right?” Rachelle asked uneasily.

  Didi smirked. “If they won’t play nice, we’ll leave and defend as needed. Alright?”

  Her friends nodded in relief.

  Didi eased the door open, which creaked a little. The arguing down the corridor seemed to mask the noise, as whoever it was didn’t stop laying into each other. She shut off her flashlight and proceeded in, glad to be in the lead rather than following her snack—er—young bestie.

  Sunlight poured in through a window, which had somehow crashed inward and left behind shattered glass all over the white tiles. A few bodies littered the hall, but none would be getting up; not if they could hear all the bickering.

  A quick shush stopped her in her tracks, but what followed was a reminder of the importance of keeping voices down, then a berating for paranoia. She heard two distinct voices, like Craig had said. They would be easy to—