by Dana Fredsti
“The key,” he continued—proving that he wasn’t a mind reader—“is that if you want to increase your odds of surviving, don’t go back for the cat.”
“Well, no shit.” Tony looked scornful. “Who the hell would be that stupid?”
Lots of people, I thought.
“You know that,” Gabriel replied, “but you’re going to be dealing with survivors who won’t have your rational instincts. In order to keep them alive, you may have to use force.”
“Like this chick,” Tony continued, pointing at the screen. “I mean, they just said in the last scene that the deadheads aren’t interested in eating anything but people, right?”
“True,” Gabriel said, “but she’s exhibiting an emotional reaction, not a rational one.” I didn’t like his tone. “That sort of emotion-based response can get you and your teammates killed.”
“Heaven forefend that anyone have an emotional reaction,” I muttered loudly enough for him to hear. I had the satisfaction of seeing the muscles in his jaw clench.
Score one for me.
Lil raised a hand, looking tentative. Gabriel nodded toward her.
“Is it really true the zombies aren’t interested in eating animals,” she asked. “Just people?”
“At this juncture, the evidence points to a definite preference for humans,” he replied, either missing or ignoring the edge in her voice. “But lacking an immediately available food source, they may eat any warm-blooded creature. We just don’t know for certain.”
With that, he resumed the film.
As we watched the rest of the movie, he cut in a couple more times to bestow upon us some nugget of wisdom we were supposed to appreciate. As far as I could tell, it was all bullshit. Finally, the last of the survivors were eaten, and the credits rolled.
I snuck a sideways glance at Lil as she tried her best to wipe tears from her eyes before they trickled down her face. I didn’t have to be a psychic to know what was wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
* * *
Lil managed to hold it together for another hour of cinematic games, but the minute we got back to our room she lost it.
Tears came out with loud, gut-wrenching sobs. She cried for so long and so hard, I thought she was going to make herself sick. I sat with her—handing her tissues as needed and pressing a cold washcloth to the back of her neck—until she had cried herself out.
This wasn’t the first time, but it was the worst I had seen her.
“I can’t do this, Ashley.” Lil looked at me, eyes puffy, reddened wells of pain. “All I can think about is my babies. They’re probably out of food and think I’ve abandoned them and—”
Tears started welling up again. I took the washcloth and gently blotted her face.
“Look,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “You told me before that you’d just bought a bag of food, right? Well, it would take them a while to go through that. And if your roommate left the toilet seat up, they’ve got water.”
“But what if some of those things got into the apartment?”
I thought about that.
“They’re cats. Cats are better than any other animal at running and hiding. Zombies are only so smart, right? So even if they did get in, the odds are your boys are fine.”
She wasn’t buying it.
“But sooner or later, they’re gonna run out of food.” She blew her nose again. I handed her a glass of water; she had to be dehydrated about now. “Ashley, all I can think about is them all alone and wondering where I went. I just can’t stand it.”
That’s it, I thought. And it all came together. What the hell.
“So let’s go get ’em.” I said. The words were out of my mouth before I knew it.
“But you heard Gabriel.” Lil said miserably. “If you want to live, don’t go back for the cat.”
Yeah, like that bastard’s gonna tell me what I should do. Not fucking likely. I hunkered down in front of her chair and took her hands in mine.
“You know what?” I said. “Fuck him. People risk their lives all the time to go after animals in burning houses, floods—all kinds of disasters. Because if they didn’t try, they’d never forgive themselves.
“If they don’t try, then it’s the kind of thing that’ll eat a person alive from the inside out.” I’m not sure who I was convincing—her or me. Not that it mattered.
Lil bit her lip.
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do.” And I really did, too. “I’m not gonna let that happen to you. So if you want to go after... Binkey and Noodle?”
“Doodle.”
God help me.
“If you want to go after Binkey and Doodle, I’m with you,” I said.
More than once now I’d seen her take glee in killing ghouls, reveling in the blood and gore. But for only the second time since I met her, Lil’s face brightened with something like genuine hope.
“Really?” she said.
I nodded.
“Yup. The rule should be, if you want to live with yourself, go back for the cat.”
Lil looked excited and horrified at the same time.
“Gabriel’s gonna be so pissed if he finds out,” she said, and a part of her sounded thrilled at the prospect. I had to laugh.
“That’s just an added bonus,” I said. “And there are so many things worse than having Gabriel pissed off at us.”
Like getting eaten alive, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud.
“If we’re careful, he won’t find out,” I lied. “And if he does find out, what’s he gonna do, spank us?”
An unexpectedly mischievous look flashed over Lil’s face.
“I dunno, that might be kind of fun.”
Damn, girl. I really hoped Lil was joking, and at that moment I was glad I hadn’t confided in her. So I tsk-tsk’d and shook my head.
“Lil, I am shocked and appalled,” I said, and I shot her a look. “Not that I necessarily disagree with you.”
She grinned, but the glee disappeared almost immediately.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Have you seen Alien?”
“No.”
“Again I am shocked and appalled,” I said. “But all you need to remember is that both Ripley and the cat survive.”
You’d think it would be difficult to sneak out of a secured facility in the middle of the night, especially armed with M-4s, a pickaxe, and a couple of wicked sharp blades. But Lil and I walked right out the front door of Patterson Hall without a peep.
Simone hadn’t been exaggerating how short-handed we were. And our teams must have done a brilliant job of clearing the campus, because we only saw two soldiers walking the perimeter, and no zombies at all. Once we left the safety of Big Red, however, we’d be dealing with god knows how many hungry ghouls, and soldiers whose orders were “shoot to kill.”
We stuck to the shadows, hugging the sides of buildings and using trees and bushes as cover until we reached the foam barricade—what I called Mount Gillette—where it butted up against the parking lot in back of the gymnasium. There again, the snipers were few and far between, forced to patrol the barrier in broad sections.
So it was just a matter of waiting until a lone soldier moved to the next section down. Once he was out of sight we clambered up to the top of a big-ass SUV.
“We can jump from here,” I whispered.
“What about the razor wire?”
I shrugged.
“How far can you jump?” I asked. “Think you can make it?”
Lil thought for a moment, then nodded.
“What about when we come back?” she asked.
I pulled a pair of wire cutters out of my belt pouch.
“Last resort, though,” I said. “I’m hoping we can snag some heavyweight gloves at a hardware store, to pull it out of the way, but if not, we’ve got these.” I shoved the cutters back in the pouch.
“Gabriel’s really gonna kill us if we screw with the barrica
de.”
I couldn’t argue with that. But there was no way I was going to back out at this point.
“Last resort, I promise.”
We waited for a few minutes, listening intently. When we were convinced that there was no one around, I smacked Lil on the arm.
“This is it,” I hissed. “Let’s go.”
The foam barricade was about six feet tall and five feet wide at the base, tapering to three feet at the top.
Easy enough.
Glancing around once last time, I jumped from the SUV onto the hardened foam, my boots finding easy traction on its rubbery surface. Lil joined me a few seconds later, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet like a kid on a trampoline.
“This stuff is awesome.” She gave another experimental bounce.
I shook my head impatiently.
“We can play on it later,” I said. “Let’s just do this.”
There looked to be about two feet between the foam and the razor-wire slinky, which itself was about four feet tall and maybe three feet wide.
Beyond that I saw movement, and once my eyes adjusted I spotted at least a few dozen zombies staggering through a field toward the parking lot. A few more were closer, but a bunch of unmoving bodies attested to the skill of our sharpshooters.
“I’ve always hated the standing broad jump,” I muttered, trying not to think what would happen if either of us got hung up on the razor wire.
Lil nodded solemnly.
“If we miss, it’s gonna hurt,” she agreed. “A lot.”
I took a deep breath.
“Then we won’t miss.” I flexed my knees once, twice. Swung my arms back and forth a few times, then positioned myself at the very edge of the wall, Lil standing next to me. “Remember, think forward, not upward.
“Ready?” I hissed.
She nodded.
“One. Two.” We bent our knees and swung our arms on each count.
“Three...”
“Go!”
We flew through the air together, arms pinwheeling to give us more forward momentum, like a half-assed version of Butch and Sundance. I landed on the ground with a bone-jarring thud, hitting feet first with bent knees. My teeth snapped together and I felt the shock through my entire body.
But I cleared the Slinky of Doom.
So did Lil, who landed right next to me.
Straightening up, I held out a hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Let’s go get those cats of yours.” We took off into town, running as fast as we could. I knew we could avoid the zombies, but it would really suck to be shot by our own people.
Almost immediately I realized I’d forgotten my nose plugs.
A fleshy female, wearing the tattered remnants of criminally tight jeans and a tank top several sizes too small, staggered towards us. She stunk.
I mean, we’re talking ripe, señor.
Oh, crap.
I glanced over at Lil, whose expression said that she shared my pain.
“I won’t puke if you won’t,” I said.
She nodded.
“Can I kill it?” she asked eagerly.
“Be my guest.”
Lil raised her pickaxe and slammed the pointy end down into the zombie’s head before it could take another step. Then, placing one booted foot against the zom’s shoulder, she gave a heave and extracted her axe with an unpleasant suction sound. The smell seemed even worse after that.
“That really stinks,” I said.
She nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s get the hell outta here.”
We reached the cover of the trees, and headed in the direction of the road. The only light was an ambient gleam from the kliegs and a little bit of moonlight filtering through the trees, but we had no trouble seeing in the gloom. We ran as quickly as the terrain allowed, pine needles and leaves crunching under our feet.
Otherwise it was eerily quiet, no crickets, birds, animals or any other noises at all. I didn’t share my observation with Lil. But more than ever, I hoped her cats were okay.
We reached the road, a cracked and weathered stretch of asphalt connecting Big Red to Redwood Grove, long overdue for maintenance. Cars sat off to the side, doors flung open and ominous dark stains splattered on the seats and the road. Several had broken windows, bits of cloth and what looked like shredded flesh caught on the jagged edges.
Whatever happened here had not ended well for whoever had been in those vehicles.
We stuck close to the tree line along the side of the road, jogging at a steady pace now. For the most part we ignored any zombies we spotted lurching along toward campus. If any posed an immediate threat, either Lil or I took them down with sword or pickaxe—or in one case, both.
Synchronized slaying, the sport of champions.
“Do you think there are any survivors out here?” Lil asked as we neared our destination. It didn’t take a genius to figure that she was thinking about her mom.
“Sure,” I replied. “We had survivors in the dorms, so there’s no reason to think people couldn’t hole up in a safe spot off campus. A lot of the older houses have attics and crawl spaces.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Lil fell quiet as the first cluster of buildings became visible a few hundred yards down and across the road.
Redwood Grove had one main street running in and out of town, with the rest of the streets laid out in your basic grid. You’d have to really work hard to get lost there.
Normally the lights from town would have lit the sky above it, but a lot of them were out. Not all of them, however—some streetlights, probably on automatic timers, still gave a comforting glow, and it looked like a few buildings had lights burning in windows.
Closest to the college were the fraternity and sorority houses, big old Victorians with the Greek letters either hanging from banners or on signs in front of the buildings. Normally they’d be well-lit, music blasting from the windows.
Now the windows were dark and the silence downright eerie. Alpha Chi Kappa’s front door stood wide open, the entryway a black throat leading inside. My enhanced night vision showed splotches of dark liquid on the porch.
I didn’t look too closely at what lay scattered about on the lawn next to an aluminum keg. Time enough for that when we came back in the daylight to search for survivors.
The sound of shuffling feet caught my attention. I grabbed Lil by the shoulder and held a finger up to my mouth. We hunkered down behind a Prius as a lone zombie made its way unsteadily out of the nearest house. It might have been a frat boy, drunk-off-his-ass, but the blood on its L.L. Bean flannel shirt said otherwise.
Lil and I stayed hidden behind the car until the zombie lurched out of sight, then resumed our careful journey toward the town’s business district.
I still wasn’t sure exactly how we were gonna get two freaked-out felines back to Big Red. We could always try to find a car with keys in it, although driving up to the barricade wouldn’t exactly contribute to the stealth part of the mission. If there was any way of getting back in without letting Gabriel discover that we’d been gone, I was determined to take it.
We cut through several front and back yards to save time. The quiet continued to spook me. No dogs barking, no babies crying. No sounds of insects or cars or televisions... nothing.
“Where are they?” Lil whispered as we crept through past a swing set in the backyard of a Craftsman bungalow. “The zombies, I mean.”
I shrugged, stepping over an overturned tricycle.
“Maybe headed up to Big Red because of all the noise up there,” I offered as I edged through a narrow side-yard leading to the front of the bungalow. “Maybe they’ve eaten everything there is to eat. Or maybe—”
I stopped short, words drying up in my mouth.
We’d reached the front of the house, a chain-link gate separating us from the yard, which faced out onto the main drag.
I swallowed once, then twice.
“Or maybe they’re
all hanging out on Maple Street.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
* * *
Lil and I crouched down behind the gate, peering out between the gaps at what had to be the majority of the zombie population of Redwood Grove.
“Where’s your mom’s store?” I whispered.
Lil pointed to the right, where a seemingly nonstop parade of shamblers was headed.
“Pretty much dead center of town,” she said.
I snorted and she shot me an apologetic look.
“I know, but seriously, the store’s in the Courtyard.”
That explained it. The Courtyard was a little shopping center made up of individual cottages ringing an enclosed patio with a rose garden in the center. The overall affect was “quaint” with a capital “Q.”
I shook my head, getting my brain back on track.
“This is gonna be tricky,” I muttered. “Odds are those things are all over the patio.”
“There’s a back entrance off an alley.” Lil patted one of her many pockets. “I’ve got the keys that’ll get us in either way.”
I nodded slowly.
“So the real trick is to get down there without every zom in town seeing us.”
We decided to backtrack a few blocks and cross over to the other side of Maple Street where it dead-ended into Oak, which ran perpendicular to Maple. Oak had the public library, the high school and a couple of small shops on it, and it didn’t seem to be zombie central like Maple Street. Guess no one wanted to read or go to class in the afterlife.
Slackers.
Better for Lil and me. We dashed down Oak and across the end of Maple Street, heading for the alley that ran the length of the business district. Dumpsters and trashcans lined the way, giving us plenty of cover.
“How many blocks?” I hissed as we made our way as quietly and quickly as possible.
“Maybe four or five?” Lil guessed. “It’s in-between Aspen and Beech. I don’t usually take the alley.”
“Get your keys out now,” I suggested. “Just in case, y’know?”
“Good idea. Hang on a sec.” We paused next to a wickedly stinky dumpster so Lil could fish the keys out of a pocket. One thing I’ll say for military fashion, you never run out of pockets.
