That’s when he finally saw past the blood and registered the bodies. The youthful bodies in brightly colored clothing.
Erin. Jason. Scarlet. Andy. Ted. Ginger. What’s-his-name who never shut up.
Their names scrolled through his brain in red kiosk lights. Red like the blood that matted their hair, marred their clothing, and drizzled across their skin.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” sang a voice.
Johnson. That motherfucker.
“Come join your friends, Benny.”
“What the fuck have you done?” Ben bellowed.
“I just expanded our rations,” Johnson drawled.
That’s when Ben saw Caleb. The tall, handsome African American kid from San Diego crouched behind a pillar, gun in hand. He had a clear shot at Johnson.
“Come on, Benny,” Johnson said. “You know that crew was just dead weight. All they did was take, take, take.”
“You murdered them!”
“Watch your voice, Benny. You’ll bring the zoms.”
“I’m going to make you a zom, you sick fuck.”
Johnson sighed loudly. “That’s why I didn’t ask you to join us, Benny. You pull your weight, but you’re a cranky fuck. Isn’t he, guys?”
A chorus of voices answered in the affirmative. Ben saw them. The young soldiers and the college kids who had thrown their lot in with Johnson. They clustered around him like high school bullies guarding their ringleader.
Ben counted them off in his head. Every last murderer. Every last fucker who was going to die for what they’d done.
Across the courtyard, Caleb raised his gun. Ben watched him take aim at Johnson.
Do it, he urged silently. Put that fuckhead in the grave.
But Caleb only stood there, gun raised. And stood, and stood, and stood.
With a sinking feeling, Ben realized he wasn’t going to shoot. The fucker was going to let Johnson walk.
Rage clouded his vision. Ben leapt out, a gun in each hand. He fired blindly in the direction of Johnson and his lackeys, then dove back toward the safety of the building.
Miraculously, he wasn’t hit. Sheer dumb luck. He charged back through the shattered doors and made a break for freedom. Gunfire followed him.
As he fled, the last thing he saw was Caleb, still standing behind the safety of the pillar like a coward.
1
Shift Change
BEN
The sun comes up, staining the sky a deep pink. The clouds are dark puffs of gray, promising rain sometime today.
It always rains in this fucking place. Ben is sick of it. Even if rain is one of the few things that anchors him when the flashbacks come.
Like now.
Like when the sky is a deep pink at sunrise.
The color sucks him back thirty years, when the ink of his signature was still wet on the army enlistment papers.
A similar pink sky stretched over him as his ground unit entered Kuwait to drive out Iraqi forces. He feels the vibration of grenades under his feet. His ears sting from the machine gun chatter. He feels the suffocating hot air of that desert hell.
The fear of that day sucker punches him. It fills every segment of his body, making his hands shake. He’s a fresh recruit in Kuwait all over again, wondering what the fuck he’s gotten himself into.
Ben never has been able to stomp out that old fear, no matter how old he gets or how many wars he fights in.
He grinds his teeth and tries to focus on the smell of the rain clouds. It never smelled like this in the Sandbox. Ever. Just black plumes as petroleum fields burned.
Ben stares at the clouds, willing himself to return to Arcata. Willing himself to leave the hell of Desert Storm and come back to the hell of the present apocalypse.
Gunfire fades in his ears, replaced with the soft, distant moans of zombies. The explosions from rocket launchers and grenades diminish, leaving the roof of the Creekside dorm building in Humboldt State University solid beneath his feet.
Somewhere nearby, a bird chirps.
It chirps a second time, then a third. By the time the third chirp sounds, he’s returned to the present.
His hands stop shaking. The old fear recedes, disappearing back into distant memory where it belongs.
Ben wipes sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
Fuck. That was a bad one.
He’s always dealt with flashbacks, mostly at night. It’s fine. Sleep is overrated, anyway. Shit, PTSD is practically a surrogate brother to him.
He always shoulders the shit and moves on. But this fucking zombie apocalypse keeps triggering old memories. It’s a new card surfacing from an old deck every fucking day.
He runs a hand over the familiar handle of his Sig. The weapon further grounds him, helping him focus on his mission for the day.
This is how he survives. One mission at a time. Kate tells him what to do and he does it. The work keeps him sane. One job after another, until he’s so exhausted his mind can’t help but fall into a few precious hours of dreamless sleep.
The hair on the back of his neck prickles, alerting him to an approach. Even though he’s expecting the shift change for watch, he can’t erase thirty years of paranoia learned in combat. He eases the handle of the Sig out of its holster and turns toward the hatch in the dorm rooftop, ready for anything.
A lean woman with a ponytail climbs out. Kate.
His slips the Sig back into place.
He takes advantage of the thirty seconds it takes her to climb all the way onto the roof, admiring her lean muscles.
She wears a tight tank top with a light jacket and running shorts. She’s always in those fucking shorts, even when they go out with the zombies.
He has a love-hate relationship with her shorts. When he isn’t scared to death that she’s going to get herself bitten, he can’t stop staring at them. Or more precisely, at the legs revealed by those shorts.
He’s never seen a pair of legs like Kate’s. She has leg muscles he never knew existed. Which is saying something; he’s spent his entire life with men who powerlift and do other shit meant to build muscle and decrease body fat.
She’s wearing a new pair of shorts today. He knows this not because he pays any attention to the color or the design on the various things she wears. He knows this because an extra two inches of leg is exposed above her tan line.
Honestly, he’d been pretty sure the only way her shorts could get any shorter would be if she dispensed with them altogether and started running around in her underwear. Which he wouldn’t put past her, if she thought it would serve some greater purpose. The crazy woman is always putting herself at risk for all the little shitheads she’s adopted.
“Hi.” Kate gives him a tentative smile as she emerges fully onto the rooftop. Her body is haloed by the rising sun, which accentuates those perfect leg muscles.
He stares at her. She looks so damn good.
He wants to tell her this. In truth, he’s been looking forward to this very moment for days. This exact moment of the shift change, when he knew he’d be with Kate and she wouldn’t be surrounded by one or more of the little shitheads who all adore her. A moment when he could talk to her without anyone being there to watch or eavesdrop.
The problem is, he hasn’t worked out what to say. Even though he’s had days to plan. Days to come up with some clever conversation starter.
A dent appears between Kate’s brows as she watches him watching her. “Ben? You okay?”
He wants to tell her that he’s more than okay whenever she’s around. He wants to tell her that he could watch her run for hours without getting bored. He wants to tell her she’s the craziest fucking woman he’s ever met, and when he lies in bed at night unable to sleep, he likes to recall the night he watched her take out Johnson’s entire poisonous nest with a bottle of laced brandy and three zombies. Thinking about that is more restful than sleep.
God dammit, he’d settle for any comment civil and uncomplicated. Anything f
or a chance to talk to her, to keep the conversation going.
Anything except for the words that actually come out of his mouth, which are: “Nice tan line.”
Her frown deepens, sliding from her brow down to her mouth. He hates this look, mostly because it’s the only one he can seem to get out of her when he works up the nerve to talk to her.
“I have to wear what I can find, okay? I ripped my favorite pair on that door hinge when we cleared out those zombies that congregated in the Depot. Jenna found these in a room on the third floor and they fit.”
He should explain that he didn’t mean that the way it sounded. He should explain that she looks damn fine in those shorts.
But she brought up the incident in the Depot, when she’d had a near-miss with a zombie. Just thinking about it pisses him off all over again. She risks herself too often.
“You shouldn’t wear shorts when we leave Creekside. It’s too risky. I’ve told you that before.”
“What’s risky is having to run hard and fast in jeans or stuff like that.” She gestures to his sturdy military fatigues. “It’s not the right gear for our lifestyle here.”
“I run in these just fine.” He won’t budge on the fatigues. He can’t. He was practically born in them. He never liked wearing civvies even when he was on leave. “I do your four-hour workouts like everyone else.”
She pokes a finger in the direction of his waist. “Yeah, and I know you’ve got blisters and chafing. I’ve seen the bandages. Don’t try to deny it.”
He’s torn between pleasure that she’s paid enough attention to notice the bandages and irritation that she’s seen through his bald lies regarding fatigue pants.
He learned the hard way that there’s a big difference between clothes suitable for five miles of running and clothes suitable for twenty-five miles of running. Even so, the last thing he wants to do is wear a pair of those flimsy running shorts. He made up his mind weeks ago that he’d suffer in silence and keep his fatigue pants. That’s exactly what he’s done.
She arches a brow at him. “Go ahead. Tell me those things are comfortable to run in.”
Ben knows a challenge when he sees one. He wants to point out he did agree to the fluorescent orange and yellow running shoes she picked for him. Ben has never done fluorescent. Not ever.
Those shoes make him look like a washed-out old man trying to be a Millennial. All he’s missing is ten pounds of hair gel. And maybe half a dozen piercings in odd places.
All because of the apocalypse. And Kate.
He wishes he could rewind the last sixty seconds and start over. Since he can’t, he does the next best thing; he changes the subject.
Grabbing a thermos off the small table they keep on the roof, he holds it out to Kate. “I made you coffee.”
She blinks. “When did you make me coffee?”
“Last night, before my shift.”
“Four hours ago?” Now she’s really frowning.
She thinks he’s offering her cold coffee. “This is a Yeti thermos,” he explains.
That doesn’t clear up her frown. Maybe she doesn’t know about Yeti thermoses. She barely knew the front end of a gun from the back when he met her a few months ago. Why would he assume she knows about Yetis?
“This is the best thermos on the face of the earth. A friend of mine in the service was a hunter. He went on a hunting trip every time he was on leave. He’d go out into the backcountry for days. He always took a Yeti and kept ice cream in it.”
“I’m confused. I thought we were talking about coffee?”
Ben wants to kick himself. His mouth very rarely cooperates with his brain. Especially when Kate is around. He decides to dispense with the Yeti explanation altogether.
“The coffee is still hot.” He holds it out to her like a peace offering. “The coldest time of day is always at dawn.” Which is the exact time of her shift.
“Thank you.” She takes it from him, studying his face. “That’s really sweet of you.”
He looks at her. She looks back.
He wants to share the coffee with her. That had been his original idea. Strike up a conversation and share a cup of coffee with her. He’d even brought two cups up to the roof.
Except he’s fucked things up. How’s he supposed to segue into coffee?
“Frederico and I often went running before the sun came up.” Kate’s voice is a reprieve to the awkward silence. It feels like an olive branch. “He always groused about the temperature drop at dawn.”
She doesn’t talk about Frederico very often. Ben’s listened to enough conversations at mealtimes to know he’d been her best friend. She’d lost him on her run north to find Carter.
If she’d been a soldier, he’d get out a flask and share a swig in memory of one who had fallen. But Kate isn’t a soldier and Ben doesn’t carry a flask these days. Kate keeps the alcohol they find in a special cabinet in the supply room and rations it out for special occasions. He respects her too much to make himself an exception to her rule.
But the fact that she’s sharing a little bit about her lost friend means something. Or at least, he hopes it means something. He latches onto this idea and plows ahead.
“Did you run a lot before dawn? Before the apocalypse, I mean?” He doesn’t have to feign interest. Ben is fascinated by her pre-apocalypse running life. The bits he’s gleaned over the past few months are like glimpses into the journal of an exotic explorer.
“When Carter was young, we started long runs before dawn,” Kate says. “Four or five in the morning, usually. That way I didn’t blow the whole day running and still had time with Carter and Kyle. Frederico was always at our house anyway.” A long breath escapes her as she settles into the chair he recently vacated. “I miss him.”
He isn’t sure if she’s talking about Frederico or her late husband. What he does know is that she’s talking to him, and he’s talking to her, and he hasn’t said anything idiotic in the last forty-five seconds. He’s not on a roll, but he isn’t eating his shoe, either.
He inches toward the empty chair next to her, hoping he doesn’t look like an awkward idiot. He feels like an awkward idiot.
“Here’s a coffee cup.” He hands her a mug, picking up the second one he’d brought to the roof. “Mind if I—”
“Did someone say coffee?”
Paranoid reflex kicks in. Ben drops the second mug and snatches his Sig. The porcelain shatters on the rooftop as he spins around. A handsome young man climbs into view.
Caleb. Irritation prickles up the base of his spine. Leave it to this little shit to ruin his moment with Kate.
Caleb is everything Ben is not. Young, good looking, and—most irritating of all—good with words. Whereas Ben always struggles to find ways to talk to Kate, Caleb never has trouble slipping into conversation with her. Their mutual affection rankles Ben.
“What do you want?” he snaps at the younger man.
“Good morning to you, too, old man.” Caleb takes in the ruined coffee cup. “Sorry if I startled you. I was just bringing Kate some breakfast.”
Irritation turns to seething anger. Startled? Like Ben is a jumpy recruit. He’d fought in at least two wars before Caleb was in diapers.
Ben doesn’t like many people, but there are very few he loathes. Caleb tops that short list.
“Breakfast?” Kate turns. The smile she has for Caleb is wide and genuine. Much wider than the one she had for Ben a few minutes ago.
She wouldn’t have such a ready smile for the younger man if she knew what he’d done. Of the innocent people he’d let die. Of all the blood on his hands.
“What’s cooking today?” Kate asks.
“Mmm.” Caleb slides into the empty chair—the very one Ben had been angling for. “Well, Lila is up to her usual magic in the kitchen.”
Kate coughs. It’s Caleb’s turn to grin.
Lila’s cooking is a constant topic of conversation among the residents of Creekside. Ben is the only one who doesn’t find it amusing
. The girl has shit to work with and still manages to be creative. So what if not everything tastes good? If these guys had eaten half as many MREs as he’s eaten, they’d love Lila’s cooking.
“We found some oats in the supply room,” Caleb says. “They expired before the apocalypse. Lila whipped up some powdered milk and let the oats soak overnight. They’re bland and stale so she added some jam.” Caleb pulls a small container out of his coat pocket. “They don’t taste so bad when they’re hot so I figured I’d bring them up for you.”
“Thanks. Ben made some coffee. Want some before you head back down?”
“The other cup broke.” Ben looks pointedly at the ground, knowing he’s being petty but unable to stop himself. He’s rankled by the idea of Caleb sharing the coffee he’d made to share with Kate.
“No prob,” Caleb says. “I have one.” He pulls a collapsible silicone cup out of his cargo pants.
Kate fills the cup and glances up at Ben. “Want to join us?”
Ben doesn’t want to go, but nothing good will come out of his mouth while Caleb is around.
“I have work to do before target practice later today. Enjoy your breakfast.”
You’d have to be deaf to miss the rancor in his voice. By the look on Kate’s face, it’s clear she isn’t deaf. He retreats before digging his hole any deeper, leaving the splintered remains of the coffee mug behind.
2
Caffeine
KATE
Caffeine.
Some days, there isn’t enough of it in the world.
Like today.
I down the last of the coffee, marveling that it stayed hot in the thermos for so long. I turn the black cylinder over in my hands, tracing an idle finger over the logo. YETI.
Sleep deprivation coupled with four hours of sitting on a roof in the cold morning has left me exhausted. I could have used three Yetis of coffee today.
I’m no thermos aficionado, but Ben clearly is. Why someone named a hot beverage container after the abominable snowman is beyond me. Ben did say something about Yetis being used for ice cream, so maybe that was the original intent.
Undead Ultra Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 60
