“Thanks to him,” Didi said with a nod to Cody.
“Not to be callous, but it’s not like you need him to keep it.”
The side of Didi’s mouth crept up into a partial smirk. “Ever been in love?”
That was the closest Gilda had ever come to hearing what she had always suspected, but sad memories of her own lovers and husbands eclipsed her shock. “Yeah.”
That smile trained right on Gilda as Didi’s fake brown eyes locked onto hers. “Then you know it’s not about need.”
Gilda knew that quite well, including the desire to stop talking about it.
Another series of flashes lit up the whole restaurant … and a gaggle of zombies trudging to the southwest along the highway.
“Didi?” she whispered.
The Death Doll glanced at Gilda, then followed her line of sight to the window. “What?”
“Holy shit, that’s a lot,” Pepe quietly blurted.
Didi shot up to her feet and rushed downstairs, tugging at something in her jacket.
Gilda followed and found the boss lady peeking out the window through her night scope next to Rachelle. Hashim appeared next to them with his shotgun aimed at the window.
“Don’t,” Rachelle whispered as she forced his barrel down. “They don’t see us yet.”
“What is it?” asked Chuck Alvarez, the former pro wrestler shielding his adopted daughter Leticia Glass.
Didi threw up her free hand to silence him. The muscular parent looked dejected. Everybody else’s eyes lingered fretfully on the dark windows.
Gilda crept to the nearest pane and peered into the darkness, but all she could see was raindrops beating the glass. A few random flashes lit the massive herd trudging obliviously through the highway.
A few people gasped, but the zombies marched on while rain and hail pelted them relentlessly.
Rachelle sighed and smiled at Hashim. “See?” she whispered. “Nothing to—”
CRACK!
The girl and the chef recoiled from the window, aiming at a zombie banging on the now fractured glass. The snarling corpse tongued at it like a choking pervert with no lips to cover its stained teeth. More splinters formed in the glass as the thing pushed in.
More flashes revealed the rest of the broken mob now heading for the restaurant and—
“Paula?” Sean shouted, then rushed for the front door.
Gilda ran to stop him. “No, don’t,” she shouted, but he kept trying to get past her.
“What the fuck’s she doin’?” Isaac snapped as he joined them.
“I got her,” Didi said as she marched past the farmer with her night scope against her eye and her sword drawn. Rachelle and Isaac promptly followed.
Gilda held Sean as she watched through the glass, just as Isaac skewered the head of the zombie against the window before joining his comrades. Come on, she prayed.
*****
The world pounded on Paula from every direction. Sleet crashed on her head, rain soaked every inch of her body, and guilt crushed everything within. Everything was wrong, and she had no idea how to fix any of it. Her son, her marriage, her home, her only friend … what didn’t she wreck anymore?
Guttural growls pierced the roaring downpour as a slew of corpses trudged toward her, tumbling over the fence yet crawling or recovering to get her.
Good. Let them come. Let this end.
The closest stared her down like a precious meal, its steps gradually speeding up as its mangled hands reached for her. It wanted her more than anything. It would take away the last of her pain without a second thought. No arguments. No guilt. Just … gone. Yes, come.
But just as it was about to plant that terminal kiss, its bony arms were suddenly bashed downward by a sharpened bat that then skewered its hungry mouth like a pig on a spit.
“Eat this, bitch,” Isaac said to it as its existence ended.
She watched the vulgar brute bash and stab more while his young partner hacked others down with her sword like breaking in a new toy. What was the point? There were so many. The plague would claim everybody, whether given by the dead or the living, so there was no point in waiting. She approached the next closest monster.
A hand grasped her arm and yanked her aside, crushing flesh and muscle like a vice as a sword cut down her next solution right in front of her. Foiled again.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” the Death Doll shouted at her over the rain. Then a nearby growl prompted her to let go and kill yet another zombie, helping Rachelle and Isaac eliminate more chances to end the pain. More—
White hot pain shot through her left cheek in a flash. Too stunned to comprehend what had just happened, she could only stare blankly as Gilda appeared before her, those white curls matted to that sassy head while those deceptively strong hands shook Paula like a madwoman.
“Paula!” the elder nurse shouted in her face. “Have you lost your mind?”
That was the question of her lifetime, wasn’t it? What was wrong with Paula Jane Birch-Herrin? Why couldn’t she keep her loved ones alive? Why couldn’t she stop people from dying? What good was she anymore? It all left her colder than the storm. She fell to her knees, splashing hard on the concrete as she wept.
Arms tried to hug and lift her, but she shoved them away. “Leave me alone,” she yelled at the obstacle that turned out to be her husband. “Just … let me die.”
Sean gawked at her like she had just quizzed him. What was so hard to understand?
Gilda grabbed her shoulders again and pulled up for dear life, even snapping at Sean to get his help. The two of them hoisted her to her feet and started dragging her back into the restaurant.
Not letting them take this away from her, she elbowed her way out of their grasp and spilled to the ground with them. She scrambled back to her feet and ran right at the mob, which had only been whittled down by half. Perfect!
“Didi,” Gilda screamed at the top of her lungs.
No. The Death Doll would have to cut Paula down to stop her from having this. Maybe that would be quicker. She ran faster. The answer was but steps away, and not even—
A hard mass crashed into her legs, spilling her back to the ground. More agony filled her as her cheek, chest, and hip smacked the pavement. Half of her body throbbed while rainwater snuck up her swollen nose.
“Fall back,” Didi shouted as she dropped her sword and scope, dug into her coat, and pulled out something red. She yanked something off of the cylindrical grenade and tossed it at the closing mob.
Paula watched helplessly as a bright light burst on the ground between the corpses, the nearest of which caught fire. The others shied away from the flame, but the burning zombies spread out in confusion and ran into the rest, and before long the entire mob was ablaze. The heavy rain fanned the flames but failed to extinguish them. One by one, each body succumbed to the damage and burned where they finally collapsed.
Didi surveyed the damage she had wrought, the opportunity she had taken away.
In a fit of rage, Paula shoved the zombie to the ground and shout-ed, “Damn you,” she screamed. “I wanted this! How could you?”
The Death Doll glared back up at her.
“You think you’re saving me?” she raged on as the zombie slowly rose to her feet. “I deserve this! It’s my fault. I got them killed. Xing, Lydia, Megan … I couldn’t stop them from dying. My own son died because of me. You might as well just kill me before I get someone else—”
Didi’s gloved hand seized Paula by the throat with such power that her heels left the ground. She gurgled in the zombie’s grasp as those cold eyes watched her squirm.
“People fuck up, Paula,” Didi scolded her. “The best you can do is learn from it, not panic the rest of the camp while I’m trying to get them across the fucking country alive.”
Paula glanced aside at all the eyes watching her, pitying her. The closest belonged to Sean.
Lightning cracked the sky open as Didi yanked her closer, revealing the horrifi
c gray shining through the dead woman’s cosmetic disguise. “You ever do anything like that again, I’ll make sure you know suffering as only I do. Capíche?”
Paula’s spine chilled worse than the weather still beating down on her. Not wanting the empty agony of a conscious zombie, she nodded.
Didi dropped her back into the puddle, collected her sword and scope, and went inside. “Put her in Isolation,” she barked at someone.
Hands collected Paula from the flooding ground and gently guided her into the restaurant. She looked piteously upon the bodies that burned in the rain. They got off light. Their suffering had ended. Hers would go on, but to what end? She had no idea what to do now, what purpose she could serve anymore, but the Death Doll apparently had plans of her own.
Now, she was trapped, a prisoner like that hateful child Cynthia.
CHAPTER 6
WAKE-UP CALL
Bob woke with a start, the zombie remains of his family roaming through the reservation fading from his eyes and leaving behind a campground and a restaurant bathed in peachy sunrise. He knew where he was, but his heart lingered in a land long since dead. He just couldn’t stop seething about it. If only he knew who to punish for it, and he didn’t dare make it any of the skittish souls riding in this convoy. They were all he had left.
Grunting drew his attention rearward, the angry kind he felt.
Didi yanked at every box and bag of clothes in sight, startling the kids awake with all the items she dropped on them.
“Didi?” he asked.
She quickly faced him, her makeup completely gone from her gray, patchwork face. “Nothing!” she yelled back.
Infant wailing erupted. Jerri rushed to comfort her three while Clarissa unbuckled and scooped up her one. Both glared at the zombie like they were ready to put her down.
“What’s the matter with you,” Clarissa growled, then muttered, “other than your face.”
Didi marched right up to Clarissa so fast, the latter fell back into her seat with her child. “All these clothes and there’s just nothing for me to wear.”
Clarissa’s eyes widened in rage. “Clothes? You’re whining about clothes?”
Didi struggled to yank her jacket off of her and held it up by both sleeves, which revealed massive rips and holes all throughout. “Do you see this? Scraps,” she said as she tossed the jacket onto the floor, then tugged at the new maroon shirt that was already thrashed. “Boneheads killed my new shirt, too, and this tiny-assed town has not one fucking clothing store in it!”
“Language, please,” Jerri hissed.
Didi threw her hands up and groaned again as she marched right off the bus.
“Didi, wait,” Bob said as he followed her off. “I noticed Denver’s coming up. I’m sure you can find new clothes in a city that big.”
“That’s not the point,” Didi whined as she walked beside the restaurant. He followed. “You know what that jacket means to me; Hell, my whole outfit.”
“Didn’t you find this shirt yesterday?”
“I need girlfriends,” she whimpered.
Bob wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but he nonetheless dared to pull her into him like he had seen girlfriends do. “I know clothes are an important part of your camouflage, like all that makeup that washed away,” he pointed out, which made her paw at her face like a dental patient trying to find her Novocained mouth, “but something tells me this isn’t really the problem.”
“Paula nearly blew it last night. The mob was just going about their business until she—” She locked eyes with him, and that angry patchwork lightened with a smile, which looked as pretty as it did terrifying. “I’m going on and on. How are you, by the way? Really.”
He shrugged. “I’ll be okay. It just hit me kind of hard, you know; seeing home like that. I should’ve known what to expect.” He shook his head to avoid falling back into the funk. Oddly enough, several bodies coming into view helped, most of them charred into heaps of barely recognizable limbs. “So, what happened last night with Paula and a mob?”
Didi ranted about a horde of zombies traipsing by until Paula walked right up to them, forcing the defenders to fight until Didi used her last incendiary grenade. Then she searched the town of Hudson for new clothing to no avail. Her attempt to respect the camp only served to waste her night vision battery, and she couldn’t remember whether or not any spares had been packed, as there weren’t any in her backpack. And now they had a potential suicide case on an already dangerous road trip, which could push his anxious passengers over the edge.
“What are we going to do with her?” he asked.
“She’s in Isolation with the newbies until I can figure it out.”
“So she can rile up those twins?”
Her mouth twisted into a sideways pucker, another in a long line of odd faces he never thought he would see on a zombie. “Better the few than the many. Besides, with the way she—”
A ruckus caught their attention, and both ran into the restaurant.
Once inside, all they saw was a bunch of eyes reviling the smaller second floor, where a lot of banging accompanied a lot more yelling. The foul language being traded made Bob glad all the kids were still on the bus.
Didi raced up the stairs with Bob, who wished he had thought to grab his shotgun. At the top, they found Rachelle anxiously shaking her sword ahead of her while Max gawked at the twins shoving and shouting at each other. Cynthia and Paula, both duct-taped to chairs, glared at the combative pair with disdain. The new hacker just typed on his laptop.
Bob found no real rhyme or reason to their debate, which ranged from whose idea it was to follow this risky party to who snored louder in the several times they woke up throughout the night. Somehow, each stupid topic looped back to the death of their mother, and neither even once noticed the undisguised zombie staring them down. It was as if they existed solely to antagonize each other.
“Please let me smack ‘em around,” Rachelle begged her mentor.
Didi touched her apprentice’s shoulder, drew a gun, and fired it at a window.
The two stopped and gawked at her. “Holy shit, what the hell happened to you?” the paler one asked. The darker one’s jaw practically touched his chest.
Didi re-holstered her pistol and stared them down for a good minute, then faced Max. “How long has this been going on?”
“All night,” the night shift guard said resentfully.
Then she marched up to Paula and Cynthia, ripping the tape off the mouth of the latter. “You two lose sleep over this?”
The beleaguered teacher kept gawking at the twins. The evil kid glowered at her captor.
Didi shrugged and slapped the tape back onto the kid’s mouth. “And, here, I was thinking of letting you at these two.”
“I’d be happy to,” Rachelle said, again raising her sword. “I could use the blunt side.”
Didi seemed amused by that, but she grinned at the window. “I’ve got a better idea.”
Bob quickly got the gist, but he wasn’t sure who to feel worse for.
*****
Didi surveyed what she could of Denver through her spyglass in the forward gun turret of the bus. The view from this distance didn’t give her much to go on, but she could tell the skyline had been altered. None of the taller buildings she remembered still stood. One or two would be understandable, but none of them?
“That was cold, man,” Isaac said beside her while peeping through binoculars, “what you did wit’ the twins.”
“I’m not a man,” she said just to spite him, then laughed to herself a little. “Of course, I’m not technically a woman anymore, either.”
“Good thing you look it, so you don’t get blown away,” he added, referencing the makeup job she had to restore after dealing with the twins.
“It may not matter either way in a city,” she mused. “Who knows what took over, right?”
“I’m thinkin’ the South may’a rose again,” he said with a bitter tone, “‘cuz I’m se
ein’ a lot of black workin’ over there.”
Didi looked again. Along the side of the highway, several dark-skinned males tossed rubble onto trucks. The odd gray-skin headed for a bite of the workers and got promptly shot down by some guy in all black leather, who pointed and shouted at the workers. “I’d hate to think of how women are treated there. It used to be nice.”
“You been here?”
“ErotiCon Eighteen,” she said with a grin. “I had to promote the fuck-flick I was shooting.”
A moment of silence passed, in which she figured he was mulling over her revelation … or maybe she had inadvertently reminded him of what he had barged in on during her sponge bath yesterday. The idea made her want to laugh, but she spared her friend the indignity.
Finally, he asked, “Wanna go around?”
After a moment to think, she shook her head. “I want to have a look. Maybe we’ll find more medical supplies there than in Kearney. I just don’t want to take the bus through it yet.”
“Count me out,” he said curtly. “I ain’t gonna end up on that work crew.”
“I wouldn’t let you,” she pledged, but a better approach came to mind. “I could use someone watching the bus, though. Keep everyone in line, solve all their problems.”
His face soured at the thoughts filling his head, and she knew she had him. Even she didn’t want to endure the camp’s stir-crazy bitching, which picked up after the twins’ exchange earlier. Otis and Max got into it over a candy bar the former had found. Jerri shouted Chuck off the bus when he woke up her babies by calling for Leticia. If Jerri was losing it, things were about to go south pretty soon.
“Why not just roll up in there in the bus?” Isaac asked.
“Whoever’s running things in there may have snipers. A smaller vehicle will draw less attention than an armored motor coach with three guns sticking out of it. Still, I would like a few volunteers to go with us.”
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