by Raymond Lee
He looked at the tablets in his hand as he wondered what demons Hal referred to, and what the man could possibly know about the madness inside his head.
“Screw you,” he whispered both to the voice in his head and the man who’d walked away from him as he dry swallowed the pills. “Not even demons could get past me to hurt Raven.”
The voice in his head laughed before fading into the numbness the pills created.
“Hey there, sexy. You come to visit little ol’ me?” Kurt licked his lips as Raven walked down the aisle. “I’ve been waiting for you to come see me.”
“And you’re still waiting because I didn’t come to see you.” Raven huffed out an irritated breath as she walked past the creep to get to the pacifiers at the end of the aisle. Part of her cursed the men for tying him to that particular column, but she couldn’t blame them. No one had thought they’d ever need to visit the baby section of the store.
“I think you’re lying. You just don’t want to admit that you want to see me because your friends won’t like it, but all you girls like the bad boy when no one’s around to see.”
Raven rolled her eyes as she grabbed pacifiers and tossed them into the little basket she carried. She grabbed a lot of them, figuring they would be more important than formula. As long as Pimjai was alive, the baby would have a steady supply of milk, but those pacifiers were their only hope of shutting the kid up around zombies if they found themselves on the run.
“Admit it. Why else would you be in the baby aisle?” He laughed for a moment but the joviality died as he strained his neck to see around the column he’d been bound to. “Wait a minute. Pacifiers? You pregnant? That Mexican peckerwood taint you?”
“Do you realize we may be the only people left alive in this whole damn state?” Raven snapped. “Are you just so full of hatred and ignorance that you can’t figure out the fact that we are the only people you may ever meet again other than the dead people crowded around this building, wanting to eat you? Does it really matter that not all of us are white, and one of us is a guy who likes guys?”
“That nasty shit ain’t natural!” Kurt straightened as she stood before him. “Men ain’t supposed to lay with other men, it’s in the bible!”
“Have you even read the bible?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. Want to know what exact passages say it ain’t right for a man to lay with another man?”
“I already know them,” Raven replied, crouching before him. “I also know the passages that explain how you’re supposed to love your neighbor and not judge them. There are a whole lot of passages and a great big old fat commandment that says thou shall not kill in there too. You seem to have forgotten that one.”
“I ain’t killed nobody.”
“No, but you were about to. I don’t care about what you believe is right and wrong, and I don’t care whether you live or die. All I care about is my group of people. They’re my family now and you don’t screw with my family.”
Kurt jerked forward but the rope tying him to the column wouldn’t allow him much movement. “You think you’re so tough, little bluebird, but I’ll get out of here eventually. You can’t keep me tied up forever. I’m the white man. I’m the king and you could be my queen.”
Raven laughed, unable to control her reaction to the man’s absurdity. “You’re no king. You’re not even much of a man.”
“That’s what I’d expect a tainted whore to say.” He looked at the pacifiers in her basket. “Breeding out more of those mixed race abominations.”
“I’m not pregnant, dumbass, and even if I was, it wouldn’t be any of your business, and people of mixed race aren’t abominations.”
“You’ve been brainwashed by them. It’s a damn shame. You were blessed to be born white, a child of God, and you just piss all over it by associating with those pieces of garbage.”
“You know what, Kurt, I am going to visit you again.” She stood before she acted on her impulse to punch him right in the nose.
“Oh yeah?” His thin lips twisted into a cocky grin. “You done teasing? Gonna admit you want this?”
“No, you ignorant waste of flesh. I’m going to bring you a geography book so you can locate all the places you’ve read about in the bible and discover that Jesus wasn’t a blue-eyed blond, and there’s not a damn thing special about you because you’re white.”
“That’s a lie the niggers want you to believe!” Kurt yelled as she left the aisle.
Damian waited for her a few aisles down where she’d left him. “What did you do to set him off?”
“Told him Jesus wasn’t white and I don’t want to be his queen.”
“His what?”
Kurt tugged at his restraints, growling with rage as the rope burned his skin. He’d been agitated since his little bluebird had visited him, mocking him with her sharp tongue. He’d been biding his time, playing nice with the men when they’d come to feed him or take him to the bathroom, even the faggot, all so they’d let him go eventually and then he’d make his move on Raven. It was an unexpected treat when she’d popped up at the end of the aisle, walking toward him like an angel out of his dirtiest dreams, but then she’d ruined it with her smartass mouth.
Of all the lies she’d spewed, one thing had given him pause. It was very possible that they were the last people in the state. He hadn’t been out there long after the virus broke out. Not one to watch the news before everything happened, he’d learned of the actual danger of the virus while at work.
The government had urged people to stay in their homes, but they hadn’t closed down everything the first few days. No one had known how epically bad the situation would get those first few days. He’d reported to work like usual, arriving just after midnight to start stocking. No one else had showed up, but he didn’t think anything of it. The world was full of pansies and if his coworkers wanted to use up their sick time staying home to avoid what he’d thought was no more than another overhyped H1N1 scare, so be it. He wouldn’t break his back picking up their slack though. He’d do his work and his work alone, then get back home to his warm bed and cold beer.
His shift had been half over when the fine hairs along the nape of his neck perked up. Two hands on a boxed vacuum cleaner he’d just shelved, he froze as he felt eyes on him.
He’d quickly turned around, expecting to catch one of his tardy coworkers sneaking up on him. Instead, he’d turned to find his manager standing a few feet away, sicker than a dog.
“You all right?” he asked, not really concerned for the black man’s health. He was just another equal opportunity affirmative action asshole who didn’t deserve the job he had, but since he was a minority and they knew how to play that race card to their best advantage, the asshole had his own office and made more money than him. He’d asked if he was all right because whatever the hell the man had, he didn’t want it.
Robert Johnson looked up at him with milky white eyes as drool spilled from his mouth.
“What the hell?”
A groaning sound came from his left and Kurt looked over to see the hot blonde cashier from second shift shuffling toward him, but she wasn’t so hot anymore. It was then that Kurt remembered someone telling him she’d married a man to get into America and he recalled what he’d heard about the virus on the radio as he’d driven to work. It had all started with Russian mail order brides.
Kurt killed both of them that night and dragged their bodies to the parking lot before jumping in his truck and flooring the gas. He hadn’t made it far before someone ran out in front of him and he tried to swerve around them, only to run over the person anyway before wrecking the truck.
It hadn’t taken him long to do the math. His apartment was farther away than Wally’s Club and well, he only had two leftover tacos and a case of beer in his refrigerator. He ran back to Wally’s Club that night and that pretty much ended his zombie adventures.
Carlos had the same idea as him not much later, and arrived with his son. Kurt allowed th
em to stay since Carlos was pretty meek and didn’t give him much trouble. Things had been fine as the three of them stayed out of each other’s way, watching movies and just hanging out, waiting for the apocalypse to end. But it hadn’t ended and with exception to the growing number of dead people they saw accumulating in the parking lot over time, they hadn’t seen another person until the night Raven and her friends arrived. By then he’d quit counting how many days had passed but it had been over a month or two, maybe three. Who knew? He’d drank a lot those first weeks and days had a tendency to run together.
All he knew was they’d been alone there for a good stretch of time with no phone service, no internet, nothing. If not for the generators they wouldn’t even have been able to pass the time watching DVDs. When the news stations went off air he’d started losing hope for a rescue. It was funny how badly he missed the news now, when he’d never even watched it before he’d found himself hiding in his place of employment.
From what he had seen while the news still aired, the situation out there in the real world was not good. People were dying by the thousands every day. The military hadn’t prepared for this type of situation and it had quickly overpowered them.
Raven very well could be the last white woman walking the face of the earth and he’d be damned if that half-breed actor was going to take her from him. White belonged with white, damn it. She may be brainwashed by all the politically correct, equal opportunity, gay loving media, but he could train her, make her see.
Besides, if he killed the others, she’d have no choice but to be his. No one wanted to live alone.
He yanked on the ropes again, receiving more pain for his effort.
It didn’t take long for Carlos to locate Cruz’s pills and grab enough for the packs, leaving enough for the actor to use while they stayed in the store through the winter. Knowing what the pills were for, he toyed with the idea of telling his son about his idol’s mental illness, but in the end nixed the idea. With the way Elijah felt about him, he’d think he was being petty, and in truth, it would be petty of him to resort to such tactics.
Besides, he shouldn’t have to resort to such an act. He was Elijah’s father and his son should respect him based on that alone.
“Like you respected your own father because of the fact he was your father?” he muttered to himself. Respect was earned. He knew that better than anyone, being the sun of a drunk who could barely make ends meet and wasn’t even there for his family emotionally. His father had never done anything to deserve his respect, and due to that, he’d done everything to be a man his own son could take pride in. He’d went to school, gotten the pharmacy degree. Not only did he work in the pharmacy, but he was the manager. He supervised other people. He was the man in charge. That was something his son could take pride in as he went to school dressed in nice clothes and expensive shoes designed by basketball players. It had never been easy getting those things for Elijah but he’d made sure his son had never went without.
He didn’t drink and he wouldn’t dare look at a woman other than his wife, and what a fine wife she was. Elijah had been born to loving parents with good morals. The boy had nothing to be ashamed of. He’d seen to that.
Until the night a group of dead people ravaged their home and killed his mother in front of his eyes because his father had failed to save her. For all his schooling and hard work, he hadn’t been prepared for that. He wasn’t a fighter. His father had been a rough man who used his hands, and he’d done everything to make sure he wasn’t his father, and in doing that, he’d failed his own son and his wife.
Carlos grabbed more items for the packs, mostly antibiotics along with general first aid and pain medicine. His hands shook and he told himself it was due to memories of that night when everything had went wrong, but that was a lie. He shook with fear at the thought of leaving the safety of these walls he’d been hiding behind since he’d lost Lupe.
Behind those walls there were no zombies and thanks to the generators and the massive grocery he’d had no need to go out into that world and face those demons that had taken everything from him. He hadn’t feared failing his son again.
What a fool he’d been, thinking his son would forgive him if he kept him alive by keeping him safe there. The moment Cruz Thomas had stepped foot into their shelter his son had seen what a true fighter looked like. No, not Cruz. Elijah could worship the ground that man walked on all he wanted, but Carlos would never see him as a hero. No, not him, but Hal. Hal was a hero. Even the woman, Raven. They took no joy in killing but they weren’t afraid of the infected. They faced them in order to bury their dead, something he hadn’t been able to do for his own wife.
The infected were crowding in on them, Raven said. They knew they were in here and they wanted in. Eventually they might make it through the barrier and then what would happen? Would he cower in fear and let the others fight to protect his son? Carlos looked at his useless hands and growled in anger. Maybe he should have been a little more like his father after all.
He grabbed a few remaining items, telling himself to suck it up and get moving. Raven wanted those backpacks filled quickly and something about her told him to do as she said. If she said something bad was coming, then it was coming. He didn’t know why he felt that way, the girl was only a few years older than his son, but that was only in years. There were many more years of wisdom behind her young eyes.
Carlos pushed his cart out of the pharmacy, stopping as the vitamin display caught his eye. He grabbed a variety of multi-vitamins, knowing they would need all the nutrients they could get if they were forced to make it on foot a while. God, he hoped it never came to that, especially in the winter.
He wrapped his fingers around a large bottle of prenatal vitamins and images flooded his mind. His beautiful Lupe, round with his child. She hated the prenatal vitamins but took them dutifully, vowing to give birth to the perfect child, and she had. He recalled her rosy cheeks, her loving eyes, the pain she’d went through during labor and the relief after she’d brought Elijah into the world. He recalled her smiles at every birthday party, her concentration as she decorated every cake, and the laughter the three had shared in good times. He saw her screaming, eyes bulged out in pain and terror as a blonde woman in a ripped dress bit out a chunk of her flesh. He dropped to his knees, crying.
He never saw the man coming up behind him.
Hal stilled, a sense of something horribly wrong overwhelming him. Some called it a sixth sense, the way he felt danger. He thought of it more as a direct line between him and God. He was given signs, warnings, and it was up to him to act on them.
“Something’s happened.”
Cruz came around the aisle, pushing the shopping cart. “What?”
“Something’s happened. Something bad. You get to Raven,” he ordered, knowing the man would go straight for her anyway, if he believed they were in danger, “and I’ll see what’s happened.”
“Wait,” Cruz called after him. “How do you know something’s happened?”
Hal pointed to his head with one hand while squeezing the other around the blade at his hip as he ran. There wasn’t time to stop and explain how he knew things, and Cruz wasn’t someone he’d want to explain it to anyway, not until the man had been thoroughly cleansed. He sensed what was inside the actor, and knew it sensed him. He’d rather not reveal himself until he could destroy what held the man captive without destroying the man himself.
Hal ran quickly, keeping his eyes open and senses on high alert as he followed the sense of danger pulling him toward the pharmacy. He quickly calculated possible outcomes. Carlos was in charge of getting medication. He could be hurt. The pharmacy was near the front of the store. The windows could have been broken, and something could have gotten in.
Images from his dream came back to him and he knew before seeing. The danger didn’t come from outside. It came from inside, with them, where it had always been.
He found Carlos unconscious, bleeding from the head, his
body sprawled across the hard floor outside the pharmacy. A bottle of prenatal vitamins rested two inches from his open hand and tears wet his cheeks.
He pressed two fingers against the man’s neck, relieved to feel his pulse. He felt Carlos’s head, probing the bump rising in the back as he scanned the immediate area. Kurt could be anywhere in the large store, waiting to pounce.
“Everyone all right?” Cruz asked, face flushed, as he ran toward the group, pushing a cart loaded with weapons and ammo.
Alarmed by his demeanor, Raven stood from where she’d been kneeling next to the twins. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” Cruz looked around. “Hal said something happened. He felt it or something. Where’s Elijah and Carlos?”
“Still getting stuff? We just got back here ourselves.”
“We should look for them, make sure they’re all right.” He turned toward Damian. “When’s the last time anyone checked on Kurt?”
“He’s secure. Raven just riled him up a bit but he’s still tied to that column.”
“What?” Cruz’s hard gaze snapped over to Raven. “You did what to him?”
“I had to go in that aisle to get pacifiers for the backpacks,” Raven explained, forcing herself not to squirm under his glare. He was not in charge of her and she wouldn’t cower, no matter how dark his eyes grew when he became angry. “He said some stuff, I said some stuff back. No big deal.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Oh, you know, he was his usual charming self and I responded the way anyone else would.”
Cruz scrubbed a hand down his face. “Damn it. How long ago was that?”
