“This had better be fucking good. I think I just pissed myself,” Tosha said.
“We need to leave. Right now,” Whopper said.
“Shit. Pull up to the doors we went in. We’ll be right out.” Tosha picked up three backpacks. “Grab as much shit as you can carry but make sure you can still shoot a weapon. I’m thinking we got scavengers looking for something good. They’re going to get something really bad.”
Bernie started laughing. “What movie have you been watching? Stallone?”
Tosha laughed and started moving. “I watched a bunch of Mark Wahlberg action movies the other night before bed. That dude is hot. Well, probably, was hot.”
“Maybe he’s outside,” April said. She’d grabbed four backpacks and saw Bernie had gotten three.
“Too hard again,” Bernie said and grinned. “But if Markie Mark is outside we’re all fighting over him.”
April reminded herself to keep her mouth shut because anything she said sounded stupid. She needed to prove herself with a gun, to Tosha, so she could stay on the team.
Maybe she’d get a chance to do it.
April ran outside, just behind Tosha, who’d stopped short in front of the open bus door.
“What’s the matter?” Tosha asked, looking around.
Whopper pointed straight ahead.
April followed where he was looking and sucked in her breath.
There was a massive horde of zombies, all standing still like an army, in straight lines. At least twenty deep. Not moving.
All staring at the bus and the women.
“I think it’s time we go,” Tosha said.
Chapter Nineteen
“How was The Tosha Suite?” Terry asked Mitch as he stood on the wall, wishing he had sunglasses and air conditioning right now.
When Mitch gave Terry a sour look, Terry put up his hands in mock defense. “Whoa, killer. Just playing around a bit. We’ve all been there.” He laughed. “Shit, we, literally, have all been there. Did she do that thing with her tongue?”
“I’m not in the mood today,” Mitch said. He was beginning to wonder if this had been a good idea. He’d spent the night sitting in a plastic chair on the balcony of the hotel staring at the darkness and listening to the waves crashing on the beach below. If he’d slept for an hour, he would be surprised.
This wasn’t like him, either. He’d dated women before. He’d even been engaged back in the day, right before he’d joined the military. But Mitch had never been stung like this, and he didn’t even know what had happened. His gut told him it was over. Tosha wasn’t like a woman you could buy roses and chocolates and loosen her up. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever met and he’d fallen for her hard.
You’ve known her for a few hours. You’re thinking with the wrong head, Mitch thought.
“Did you hear a word I said?” Terry asked and punched Mitch on the arm.
“What?” Mitch growled, getting in Terry’s face. “If you ever put your hands on me again, I will break your fingers.”
Instead of backing away Terry started laughing. “Bro, calm the fuck down. I’m on your side. Are you still thinking about the redhead? Holy shit, dude. She’s not interested in you. She’s taking her red bush to the next newcomer. You don’t get it. I can hook a good-looking guy like you up with a dozen chicks that’d die to go down on you. You into redheads only? I can help you out… because I’m your friend.”
“I just need time to think. That’s all,” Mitch said.
“I understand completely. Women will be the death of us…” Terry leaned in. “Unless The Lich Lord does it first.”
“What do you mean?” Mitch asked.
Terry shook his head. “We’ll talk later. Tonight. I’ll come up to your room and bring some beers. How’s that sound?”
“I want to be left alone. My shift ends in a couple of hours. I think I’m going to take the lunch I never finished and sit on my balcony and think. Thanks for the offer but I just need some time to reflect about my life,” Mitch said.
“Wow. Nothing personal but you sound like a fucking woman. All feelings this and feelings that. Man up. Go fuck someone. Get drunk. Laugh a little. You’re way too high-strung,” Terry said. “I’m not taking no for an answer. I’ll see you tonight and we’re going to forget about Tosha and all redheads for a few hours. I pulled some strings and you have the day off tomorrow, too. Hopefully, you’ll be sleeping off a big hangover.”
“I’m not interested,” Mitch said. He turned away, staring over the wall at the same spots he’d been watching all day. Nothing was moving. Even the sight of a bird flying by was exciting at this point.
Terry was still standing next to Mitch but he didn’t say another word.
Mitch stared at the river and the bridge and tried not to get lost in his depressing thoughts about a redhead he barely knew.
He wondered if coming inside had been a mistake. It was a thought that had kept him awake last night.
When did you become such a pussy? Tosha is bothering you more than she should. It was a day of fun. That’s it. A one night stand with a really hot woman. A memory and nothing more. Terry is right. There are a ton of eligible women in The Promised Land. They’re checking me out, too. Stop being such a bitch, Mitch thought.
He needed to focus on what was ahead instead of what was behind. He’d found a place to relax. Become a human being again instead of an extension of a rifle on the roof of the mall, waiting for something to cross within his rifle scope so he could kill it.
Reload. Kill. Reload. Kill.
It really hadn’t been much of a life. Mitch had always been a loner but even he needed some companionship. Even a female. It wasn’t going to be Tosha, though.
He had a job now. A purpose. New friends. Food and a place to sleep. Eventually he’d get his own housing. Maybe meet more friends. See if there was a library. Get some new clothes. Start to feel like he was a valuable member of this new society.
Terry had said something cryptic about The Lich Lord and Mitch had a bad feeling. While he didn’t like the fact a zombie ruled over them, so far he’d seen nothing to make him feel like a prisoner. He was expecting hanging bodies of those who spoke out against The Lich Lord or everyone being quiet, talking in whispers, standing in line for meager rations.
Everyone seemed happy, well-fed and in a good mood.
Mitch hoped he never had to run into The Lich Lord again. He’d do his job and grow his social circle. He’d do what he was told, too.
This was a much better alternative to living on the run. He could still remember all of the places he’d been to before he’d ended up in Daytona Beach, pushing steadily south ahead of the zombies. In some of the spots he’d been able to rest for a few days, find food and even meet other survivors, like the industrial park in Lithia Springs, Georgia, where over a hundred people had set up a tent camp inside a chain-link fence they swore would keep them safe.
Zombies had ripped it down with their sheer weight and Mitch knew not many had escaped from that chaos.
Before that he’d been in South Carolina, a few miles from Myrtle Beach, when he’d been able to rest in a little cottage on a golf course. The family who lived there was long gone, most of their personal items and foodstuffs with them.
Mitch had found a few pictures of the family in a drawer in the kitchen. Husband and wife with two small, smiling boys. In the bedroom he’d found a diary, shoved under the mattress, and had decided to read a bit before he fell asleep. Up to that point, he hadn’t slept in an actual bed in months.
He wished he hadn’t read it because it was obvious the husband was a terrible man.
The zombies had swept through the area in the middle of the night and he had barely escaped, hiding behind a hay baler on the side of a country road until he saw an opening to get away.
There were so many places he’d been on his run he thought might work out. A hotel in Williamsburg where a focused ex-cop wearing a pink bra over his clothes, wielding an axe in
one hand a cup of coffee in the other, had kept the zombies at bay for days until they’d finally swarmed him. He’d stepped between the retreating survivors he was protecting and dozens of zombies, fighting until he was sure everyone else had escaped. Mitch never figured out if he was crazy or a hero. Or both.
He’d sat and drank bourbon with a horror writer in Pennsylvania on his way to Amish country. He figured the Amish would be off the grid and safe. The writer told him they’d already been wiped out. The writer had bandied about so many conspiracy theories about where the zombie plague had really come from it made Mitch’s head spin.
At some point, Terry had walked away, leaving Mitch alone in his thoughts.
Mitch began pacing back and forth in his area, timing it so the people on either side of him were also doing their patrol and he didn’t have to talk to them.
A part of him hoped Terry had gotten the hint and was going to leave him alone tonight. Let him work through a few things.
Another part hoped Terry showed up with alcohol and a way to get Mitch to stop obsessing about Tosha.
Chapter Twenty
Darlene had been sitting no more than ten feet from the wall to The Promised Land, lounging on one of the roofs of the houses beyond the perimeter they’d demolish in the next day or so. She’d turned herself invisible. That was the simplest explanation for what she was doing.
She’d used her powers to refract the light and use the air around her to make it seem like she wasn’t there. As long as she didn’t move more than a stretch of her legs or arms, she couldn’t be seen.
Darlene wanted to be around actual people without scaring them or having to talk. She’d spent the day in the crawlspace of the house. Unlike vampires, who went into hiding during daylight hours to recharge and sleep in comfy coffins, Darlene had to stay awake. There was no sleep for her. All she could do is get dirty and think. And think some more.
At first she’d felt horrible, eavesdropping on people’s conversations. After a while she’d come to know some of them, even if they didn’t know who she was. Reading their minds also helped to hone her skills and find out what they really meant when they said things.
Most of the survivors manning the walls were content with their new lives. Hot meals and a bed to sleep on, as well as something to wipe their asses with, went a long way.
She wished she could be that naive. That happy about the little things she’d taken for granted. Her problem was she didn’t need the same things. Food, sleep and a bathroom break were no longer part of her daily routine.
Darlene actually smiled at the thought of her sitting on a toilet, reading a book like she used to do on her breaks working at the mall in Maine. Her father had bought her one of the cheap Kindles and she had it in her pocketbook at all times. She’d read on breaks, during lunch, and sometimes she would even sit in her car after work and read for awhile before she drove home, if it was a good part.
She hadn’t thought about her Kindle or her pocketbook in forever. She went back through her thoughts, now able to be super-focused, and remembered the day she’d left her father’s house for good to escape the zombies; she’d left it on the counter in the kitchen. The night before she’d begun cleaning it out, so her keys and wallet and cash had already been put into the smaller pocketbook she’d run with. She didn’t know what had happened to that one and she grew bored going back and finding things in her head.
Darlene was bored.
Thinking about the past made her sad, an emotion she wasn’t supposed to have anymore. She was supposed to be a zombie or maybe a vampire, like you see in the movies.
A highly intelligent being beyond mere human emotions. Yet…
Instead of dwelling on her own problems, she scanned the men and women on the wall and anyone walking around on the ground she couldn’t see but could still read, looking for something to take her mind off things. Everyone had a story, and she could sit and listen and get lost in their thoughts until the sun was going to come up.
There were the usual things to make her smile: new love and love lost, people wondering about their next meal or what movie to watch tonight. Women thinking about their makeup choices and men thinking about the woman with the big ass that just walked past them. Normal shit.
Darlene wished she had a soda and some popcorn even though she didn’t need them anymore. She could lounge on this roof and enjoy the show.
We need to take out The Lich Lord as quickly as possible, before anyone knows what happened. Before anyone even knows he’s gone…
Darlene sat up. She’d scanned so many minds so quickly she had to shuffle back to try and find who had thought about killing The Lich Lord, but the thought had passed.
Whoever was thinking of it had gone on to something else. Maybe they didn’t even know it had crossed their mind, just another random thought to pass the time.
Now she was frantically searching everyone’s thoughts until it became a jumbled mess of so much stuff she thought her own mind was shut down. She couldn’t process all of it.
The Lich Lord was on the minds of so many people, all at once, but no more than anything else. It was one of the things they thought about.
Darlene could feel the unease, though. The undercurrent of hostility towards The Lich Lord, who had saved all of these people, and yet they still knew he was a zombie and capable of anything.
Some genuinely loved him for the generosity, most were neutral towards him, but a growing number were no longer willing to be ruled by a monster.
The people were getting restless. Having such freedom again and no new zombie attacks, as well as the peace that had come over The Promised Land, was actually working against The Lich Lord. He’d taken away their one single purpose of surviving between each breath. Now, they could sing and dance and fuck and sleep without worries.
The Lich Lord had created such a safe haven the populous needed another distraction, like humans tend to do. Unfortunately, some of them had begun plotting against him.
What if they take The Lich Lord down? Darlene suddenly wondered. Would it be such a bad thing? In the grand scheme of things he was still a danger. I’m still a very big danger, too. What if the humans could rally around killing someone so important to the zombie cause? Would it bring even more survivors out of their hiding spots? This could start a revolution.
There wasn’t time for these ideas just yet. Darlene knew she’d need The Lich Lord’s help if she wanted to defeat her son. She knew there would be more zombie assassins headed her way, and it wouldn’t be one at a time. As she defeated more and more, he’d send more and more.
Her son might have the power, time and unlimited hate to keep making these killing machines with the sole purpose of destroying his mother.
Darlene put all of that aside for now. The only thing she needed to worry about was what she’d heard, the faintest glimpse of a terrible plot against The Lich Lord.
It was the top priority.
Darlene needed to get in touch with The Lich Lord and warn him of what she’d overheard. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was more than just the fantasies of a few antsy people with nothing better to do and no real outlet. Perhaps being on the run, looking over your shoulder and being attacked by zombies every ten feet hardens a person… and then it suddenly gets better. You’re surrounded by high walls and other survivors with guns and beer and electricity.
A few bored people, devising a simple plan to usurp the power, could lead to doom for everyone in The Promised Land.
Darlene didn’t know what she’d do if this was all gone. Just a pile of rubble, weeds growing through the cracks in the cement and the wall a stack of blocks on the ground.
She reached out with her mind to talk with The Lich Lord. She didn’t know what she’d say but she knew it would do no good to alarm him. While he’d evolved and changed from the monster she’d first encountered, and they had an uneasy alliance, The Lich Lord was still capable of mass murder and genocide of the human race if pushed.
There was no answer. He was blocking her and no matter how much she turned up the juice to connect with him, she couldn’t do it.
The Lich Lord was scared of something. Maybe he was also feeling the presence of something big coming sooner than later.
Darlene didn’t want to enter the compound in case she was seen. One zombie was enough for these people, and some of them were on edge already.
She decided to sit and wait near the bridge he normally exits from each night and hope she’d either get him coming or going.
Darlene hoped she wasn’t too late.
Chapter Twenty One
The Lich Lord was staring at Tosha and she didn’t like it. At all.
“How many?” he asked.
“Looks to be hundreds. Why aren’t you going out to check? It’s dark outside,” Tosha said.
“They haven’t moved a step since you spotted them? How did you initially miss them? Who’s watching the horde now?” The Lich Lord asked.
“You’re just full of questions tonight.” Tosha sighed. She’d assumed once it was night time The Lich Lord would take over. Use his magic shit to fly out there, see the mass of zombies and destroy them.
Not play Twenty Questions with her.
“I sent Bernie and April back to sit and watch once we realized they weren’t moving. I have two motorcycles stashed down the road so when the zombies start heading our way they’ll be ahead of the pack,” Tosha said.
“Are they being run by a smart zombie?” The Lich Lord asked.
“How the fuck do I know? I forgot to ask them,” Tosha said.
The Lich Lord clenched his teeth and pointed at her. “Do you forget who you’re talking to?”
“Do you forget you’re a bad ass zombie who should be out there fucking up these other zombies right now instead of talking to me?” Tosha asked. She knew she was pushing it but she couldn’t see what the delay was. She wanted to get some food and find a guy and fall asleep in front of the TV watching bad horror movies. Not dealing with this shit.
Dying Days 7 Page 10
