She shook her head sharply, trying to focus on anything else but the desire to bite into the flesh of whoever—
“Quit worrying, asshole,” one of the two said. “With that mob wandering around downstairs, we’d hear someone coming.”
She wasn’t hungry anymore. She was worried for her friends.
She turned to warn them, but—as if on cue—they slipped in and quietly closed the door behind them. “We’ve got a big problem,” Craig whispered.
“I heard,” Didi replied, then tucked her pistol away and drew her sword. “Whoever’s in there should probably know, too.”
Isaac flinched like he just saw her in a clown costume. “Who gives a shit about them? We need to get our own asses outta here.”
Didi almost snapped at his selfishness, but she waved him off and hurried down the hall, following the voices still arguing over caution and spoils. While passing double doors in the middle of the corridor, she spotted shadows crossing the dull light upon its slits of glass. Without waiting for backup, she shoved the doors open.
In a small waiting room with upturned couches piled against the door of a windowed reception desk, two men carrying open boxes stopped dead in their tracks; one skinny black guy and one meaty—pudgy—white one. They stared back at her like they had just been caught robbing a bank. She began to wonder just how bad her eyes were getting, because while they were each a different color, they had the same height, facial structure, and scowls from their almond-shaped green eyes. Maybe one got covered in mud or soot?
“Hey,” the pudgy one snapped, “we were here first.”
“Shut up, asshole,” the skinny one hissed. “She’s got guns and a fucking sword.”
“She’s by herself, asshole. Grow some guts,” Pudgy said bravely. Then he cursed as he quickly dropped his loot and threw up his hands when her companions busted in.
Skinny dropped his box as he raised his hands. “You and your big mouth.”
“They’re coming up the stairs,” Rachelle whispered urgently as Isaac and Craig braced themselves against the doors. Then she beheld the two men. “Who are you guys?”
“The ones who were here first,” Pudgy groused.
Slender popped Pudgy in the arm. “Stop it.”
Pudgy slugged back. “Hey, we get to live, too.”
“Y’all won’t live long if you don’t shut the fuck up,” Isaac said as he shoved a nearby crutch through the door handles and braced himself against the middle.
Pudgy frowned at the noise, then at Didi. “Great! You led them to us. Didn’t you see them coming in?”
“Obviously not if they got this far,” Slender said.
“Don’t even start on me. It wasn’t my idea to come here today.”
“Well, we’re out of every damn thing,” Slender yelled back, “and nobody would help us.”
“I keep telling you they don’t want to stop for—”
“What?” Slender said as he got in Pudgy’s face. “Say it. I dare you.”
“I was going to say an asshole like you, but if you want me to come up with more honest answers, I can.”
And they continued like that for half a minute while the groans and labored footfalls in the hallway grew louder, closing right in on them. Didi had had enough of this. “HEY!” she shouted, which silenced the fussing men. “How about introductions before we get swarmed?”
Slender apologized, introduced himself as Alan Hoover, and identified his pudgy white brother Aaron. “People called us the A-Twins.”
“Y’all are twins?” Isaac asked skeptically.
“Yeah. Same mother, same time. That means twins,” Pudgy Aaron snapped. “She was white, he was black, and we’re the result. Anything else you want to know or have a problem with?”
Isaac sneered at them but didn’t respond.
“You from here or get stuck here?” Rachelle asked.
“Born and raised,” Aaron said, then sneered at his brother, “some more than others.”
Slender Alan waved him off. “We’ve been holed up at the airport for longer than we can remember, living off of squirrels and ducks for the last—”
“Which I caught,” Aaron proclaimed.
Alan smacked his brother’s arm and forced a pathetic grin at Didi. “There’s nothing left for us here. We can’t find a car that works anymore, and we’re not about to—”
“Hey, you’re Baby Dahl,” Aaron blurted, his gaping maw quivering like he was about to cream his faded jeans.
Why am I surprised? Didi thought, keeping her eyes fixed on the bickering strangers.
Alan rapped his brother’s arm. “That’s not Baby Dahl. She’s … bigger,” he added with a coconut-carrying gesture.
Aaron shoved back. “Ever heard of a reduction, asshole?” It was almost sweet.
“Oh, you wish a porn star’s gonna find us in the middle of—”
Didi caught their attention with a high-pitched yoo-hoo. They stared blankly back at her. “Yes, I was Baby Dahl. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you screw me … in any way. And speaking of anyway, we’ve got a mob of boneheads coming right for us, so I’ve got better things to do than be disrespected, and I’d rather just find some good stuff and get the hell out of here, if it’s alright with you.”
The odd siblings peered behind her as the first round of rotten hands smacked the doors. They glanced at each other, then nodded submissively.
“Good. Now, since this is your town, maybe you can think of a way out of this mess?”
“Not unless you’ve got some rope,” Alan answered. Aaron just leered at her.
Didi assessed the twins, who looked desperate but somehow harmless. Of course, not every dangerous person left in the world was obvious.
Still, after wiping out two zombie mobs today, she and her crew happened to need something. “That airport have a working shower?”
They regarded her like she was nuts. Then Aaron said, “We’ve still got running water.”
“Good.” Didi turned. “Get behind the desk.”
“What’s the plan?” Rachelle asked while Isaac and the twins eyed the mess blocking the door to the reception area.
“You hide, they seek, I lead them out. Kosher?”
Rachelle nodded and started clearing the door with Craig and Isaac. The twins just gawked at her like a mental patient. “You’re gonna do what?” Alan asked.
A few more knocks on the door made Aaron antsier. “Just shut up and help, asshole.”
Didi shook her head at the squabbling twins while they helped the other three clear the door. This childish pair was going to be a problem if she didn’t rein them in somehow.
The crutch broke the second the receptionist door shut, and the boneheads flooded in, looking about the worst possible rot they could be and still move. Praying that meant none could still smell, she gave her gawking friends—and others—a glance to make sure they were safe, and simply walked right through the mob that barely noticed her.
After passing the unfortunate wretches, she started banging her sword against the walls. The entire mob followed her out like fabled rats to the piper. She turned on her flashlight to ensure she didn’t trip over anything in the stairway and out the broken glass walls.
She stopped in the empty parking lot and quietly watched the entire procession march away, their remaining senses searching for what made all that noise. She would’ve laughed if she wasn’t facing the same fate.
After a few minutes, her friends joined her with the mismatched twins in tow.
“And you doubted me,” she playfully chided them.
The twins regarded her like a priceless statue that cured cancer or something. “How did you do that?” Slender asked.
She shrugged with a grin. “I’m special that way.”
Her friends smirked behind the awestricken A-Twins, and she ate it up like … well, she didn’t want to go there. She was too pleased with her performance.
CHAPTER 3
LOUD MOUTHS TO FEED
Didi laughed. “I thought I did pretty well with the last one.”
“I wish I could do it that way without getting eaten,” Rachelle muttered as she headed back for her shoes, then froze in her tracks, and not just from the cold.
With that frayed t-shirt discarded on the concrete floor, her top-less mentor scrubbed her leather pants like nothing was wrong, even though everything visible on her body screamed otherwise. Her rough, grayish skin confirmed the dangers of not staying clean in this world. The sewn wounds throughout her stuffed neck and torso reflected all she had endured since her suicide, and the dual Y-shaped stitches where her augmented breasts used to be revealed the method. Beautiful as she could be, the Death Doll was a walk-ing warning more horrific than any zombie Rachelle had ever seen.
Didi caught her gawking and smirked. “Be happy with what you’ve got.”
Rachelle couldn’t help but glance down at her slightly budding chest. “I can’t believe you actually did that.”
“Yeah, well, hopefully this dissuades you from suicide … and elective surgery.”
Rachelle scoffed. “Definitely.”
“Good,” Didi said with a nod and started toweling off her pants, “or else I’d have to preserve you so I can repeatedly kick your ass. Take it from me: having big tits is not as much fun as they make it sound. I mean, finding clothes that fit, the negative attention, the backaches…” She shook her head and set down her shirt. “What was I thinking?”
Rachelle wanted to leave well enough alone, but she just had to know. “Why did you do it?”
“I wanted to marry rich,” Didi replied with a smirk. “If I’d have known—”
“No, I mean,” Rachelle hated to say it, but, “why did you kill yourself?”
Didi’s smile vanished. She stared at the floor for a long moment before grabbing and scrubbing her tattered jacket. “Fourth of July, the first one after the plague, I had become the sex slave of one Chris ‘Skull Splitter’ Murphy, who turned out to be Kenny’s brother-in-law.”
Rachelle still reeled from that news.
“He threw this big party for his gang with fireworks he’d grabbed from somewhere, and he made me their celebratory feast, so to speak.”
Rachelle shuddered. She had already let one boy with empty promises use her. She couldn’t imagine enduring several by force. She would rather die first.
“They stripped me of every last ounce of dignity, dumped me in the owner’s box, and went back to partying. I found a screwdriver and waited to stab Murphy’s eyes out the next time he walked through the door. Hell, I didn’t care who came in; they were all guilty.” She zoned out for another moment before continuing. “It was a long party, so I started thinking about how my life had come to that point: touring, porn, dancing … all because I got a boob job so I could marry rich.” She shook her head. “I stared at those beautiful monsters like they were diseased or something and I … just … stabbed them.”
Rachelle cringed from a phantom sting in her chest, feeling like a wimp for complaining how tight her bras were getting. Not exactly an issue now, but still.
A brief laugh escaped Didi. “I remember the silicone blobbing out like I was bleeding Jell-O.”
“Ew.”
“Then I yanked out the shells and chucked them across the room. I got light-headed and passed out. And that,” she added like a game show host, “is how Dollia ‘Baby Dahl’ Whitford left this mortal coil.”
All Rachelle could say was, “I’m sorry you went through that.”
Didi shrugged. “If I had respected myself more, I wouldn’t have. Although, sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I hadn’t—”
Isaac barged in and insisted, “Please tell me we can leave these two—” The big man froze at the sight of Didi’s chest, then walked right back out with wide eyes, muttering, “Aw, man, I did not need to see that shit.”
When the door closed, Didi and Rachelle looked at each other and laughed.
“Seriously, though,” her mentor said as she grabbed the maroon blouse she had found in the luggage bin, “I had a crappy life, but that shouldn’t dissuade you from living yours.”
Rachelle flinched.
“You said you were too busy for dating. I say don’t let your job be an excuse. You’re not the only one defending this camp, you know,” Didi added with a wink, which knocked out her right contact lens again. She fixed it and went for her now clean jacket.
Rachelle wanted to argue, but the agenda Didi seemed to be on—and that quick wit of hers—wouldn’t be defeated. She didn’t want to talk or think about this subject anymore, but she knew it was far from over.
*****
Isaac rubbed his defiled eyes as hard as he could going back into the stale hangar office, desperately trying to remove the image of Didi’s hacked-off tits from his brain before it permanently scarred him. And he thought seeing her true face was scary.
The mismatched twins were still bitching while they packed up all their stuff on the pale blue carpet. The space was so small, he was surprised these two touchy brothers didn’t kill each other. He dreaded to think they had started out as triplets or something.
“This is a very bad idea,” the skinny black one whined.
The white one with the thick beer gut threw his hands out around him. “I don’t see any better ideas driving by. Besides, these guys got rid of the dead meat for us. Maybe they’re not so bad. In fact, some of them look pretty damn good, like that hot-assed sword swinger.”
Isaac tried hard not to puke.
The skinny brother looked at his sibling like he just smoked a joint in a face-muncher’s ass. “Don’t you remember those truckers saying what the Death Doll did in Chicago?”
The big one shrugged. “She seems cool. Don’t be such a pussy.”
“I’m a pussy for being cautious?”
“On top of everything else that makes you a pussy, yes.”
The more these A-Twins argued, the more Isaac wanted to leave them behind. Too bad it wasn’t up to him. The price of a bath bought these assholes a ride and, therefore, the rest of the camp some serious migraines to come.
“Right?” one of them said, which forced Isaac to stop tuning them out.
“Whatever, man. Just hurry up,” he insisted.
“But that Death Doll is safe, right?” Alan asked. No, Aaron. Beer gut.
If you don’t piss her off enough to bite you, Isaac thought, but he told them, “Follow her rules, y’all be fine.”
“What rules?” the black one asked defensively, like he had better options.
“Respect each other, pull your weight, and leave all other decisions to Didi, Cody, and the Panel. The way you two fight, though, I don’t know.” Isaac couldn’t help wondering what these two even had to offer the camp. Despite wanting them to shut up, he asked, “What’d y’all do before the plague?”
“Please don’t get him started,” the skinny one said, but the glare Isaac gave them showed he wasn’t playing around. “Aaron used to be an athlete until he busted his knee.”
“Jimmy Bannister busted my knee,” the tubby one grumbled with his fist in the air, “and I still owe him—”
“The last thing he did was coach football at Kearney Catholic.”
“What about you?” Isaac interrupted, nodding at Aaron. No, Alan. The white one was Aaron. Fucking twins, whatever color they were.
“He was a big-shot
tax attorney in Lincoln,” Aaron said as he closed up his bag. “He made bank helping rich people cheat Uncle Sam, but he was still too cheap to buy a plane ticket home when our mom got sick.”
Alan rolled his eyes. “One, asshole, you were closer, so stop blaming me for that. Two, all the airports shut down. Three, it was the plague, so getting home faster wouldn’t have done shit, not that—four—I knew that at the time. And, five, why do you have to be such an asshole?”
“I learned from my big brother.”
“By two minutes, you asshole.”
“SHUT UP!” Isaac roared, finally reaching his limit. No wonder Didi was so into the whole respect thing. “I swear if y’all keep this shit up all the way to California, I’m-a tie your asses to the ladder on the tanker so nobody has to listen to you two bitches going at each other!”
“Well said,” Didi said from the doorway, thankfully all dressed and grinning with her little minion. The mutilated image returned in full force, which Isaac had to shake off. “You ride with us, you do so with the utmost respect, and that includes each other.”
Alan shrugged. “We’ve been fighting since the cradle. I’m afraid we may never stop.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll be on your own,” Didi proclaimed, adding a resolute grin that finally shut the twins right the hell up.
Burn! Isaac thought gratefully.
*****
“This is Aaron and Alan Hoover,” the pale chick known as Didi—and, for some reason, the Death Doll—cheerfully said while pointing out each twin in front of over fifty people shivering in front of the huge black bus. “Gentlemen, welcome aboard Moses.”
Aaron flinched. “Moses? What, are you some kind of Bible thumpers?”
The cheer on her face quickly vanished, and the way everyone gawked at him screamed of the boundary he had crossed. Alan gave his usual don’t-screw-this-up glare. Asshole.
Aaron threw his hands up to make peace. “Hey, that’s cool.”
Exodus Page 3
