Undead Ultra Box Set | Books 1-4

by Picott, Camille

  Ben hates every second of this agonizing moment. He knows exactly what it’s going to do to Kate, but he’s unable to protect her from it.

  When Jesus draws his knife and hands it to Kate, Ben thinks he might be sick.

  He steps forward. “I’ll do it.” Kate shouldn’t have to say goodbye to Jesus this way. Damn that fucking bastard for asking it of her.

  “No.” Kate doesn’t look at him. She only has eyes for the man dying beside her.

  She licks her lips as she raises the tip of the knife and places it against Jesus’s temple. Reed turns away, vomiting into the wreckage. Ash stays resolutely beside Jesus.

  Kate smiles down at him, smoothing back his bloody hair with one hand. “Rest easy, Jesus.”

  “See you again someday, Mamita.”

  “See you again someday,” Kate whispers.

  Then she jams the knife into his skull.

  Ben feels the killing blow all the way to his core. It punches him back to Iraq, to a day when the skies bled black from the burning oil fields. When he held a dead friend in his arms who hadn’t looked all that different from Jesus.

  He staggers, nearly crumpling under the weight of the memory.

  The world flicks back to the present. Jesus, a knife sticking out from his temple, lies dead. His face is peaceful, the corners of his mouth turned up in a contented smile. He’s gone.

  The rest of them are alive, left to carry the weight of shit and devastation.

  And then Lila starts to scream.

  24

  Double Feature

  KATE

  Reed sags to his knees next to me, head bowed and shoulders convulsing with loss. My hand still grips the knife in Jesus’s head when the scream crashes over me.

  I spin around to see a zombie latched onto the back of Lila’s leg. The slimy fucker must have crawled free when we moved the concrete slab pinning Jesus.

  Eric bellows, slashing with his knife. Caleb and Jenna crowd in, all three hacking with weapons.

  Lila staggers free. There’s blood everywhere. I don’t how much is Lila’s and how much belongs to the zom head that now rolls across debris.

  “No fucking way,” Eric cries, dragging Lila toward him. “No fucking way, Lila. Not you. Not you.” He chokes on tears.

  Lila sags into him, face pale. The back of her left calf is shredded, her blue jeans reduced to tatters.

  “It’s okay.” Her hand comes up to stroke Eric’s cheek. “It’s okay, you asshole. Stop being a pussy.”

  “It’s not fucking okay!” There’s blood smudged on Eric’s glasses. He picks Lila up, cradling her against his chest as he plops onto an exposed wedge of concrete.

  Lila. I didn’t think there was anything left in me to break after euthanizing Jesus.

  I was wrong.

  I have no words. Or rather, I have too many of them. Sorrow closes off my throat, choking off all sound.

  Jesus is gone. I lost him. I failed him. He came to me for protection and I failed him. Even worse, I failed Reed. Jesus was the closest thing he had to a brother.

  And now I’ve failed Lila. And Eric, too.

  I feel like I’ve been bombed from the inside out.

  Zombies moan in the background. Distantly, I see a handful of them tottering around in the rubble. I see hands and legs protruding from underneath crushed concrete.

  “It’s okay.” Lila continues to sooth Eric, stroking his cheek while he cradles her and sobs into her shoulder. “Seriously, Eric, pull your shit together.”

  From Lila’s tone, you’d think they were bickering in Creekside, not facing death together in a zombie war zone.

  “I can’t,” Eric sobs. “Lila, I can’t ...”

  “You can,” she replies. “You have to.” The compassion on her face as she gazes at Eric threatens to break me.

  How is it that Lila—our frightened, agoraphobic Lila—has found her strength in the face of her own death? Here she is, a pillar of strength while the rest of us are falling apart.

  Reed and Ash cry quietly over Jesus. There isn’t a dry eye to be found among any of us.

  A foot to my left, Ben stands like a statue. He’s always harbored a fatherly affection for Lila. Now, his eyes are locked on her. I can tell from the cloudy look in his eyes that this new horror has triggered his PTSD. I grasp his hand and squeeze.

  It’s a selfish gesture. I want to bring him back to the present. But more than that, I want his comfort. I think my legs would give out if I didn’t have him to hold onto.

  Lila kisses Eric’s forehead and pushes free of his arms. She has to grab onto the slab of concrete to keep herself upright. Her good leg stands in a wide pool of her own blood.

  “You’re going to be okay, Eric.” Lila’s gaze sweeps over the rest of us. “You’re all going to be okay. Honestly, I’ve been sick of all this shit for months. I’m ready to go.”

  She draws the Sig from her belt.

  The act is like a lightning bolt slamming through Ben. He jerks free of me, lunging across our lopsided circle.

  “Lila!” he bellows. He isn’t fast enough.

  The Sig fires.

  Lila falls.

  25

  Wake

  KATE

  Thirty-six hours after the alpha attack, music plays softly from an iPod in the Creekside kitchen. In the center of the living room is the small shrine Jesus had built for St. Roch. It’s nothing more than a plastic storage tub spray painted red. Inside is a candle, a vase of plastic flowers, and a picture of St. Roch Jesus had drawn with colored pencils. It wasn’t a work of art, but it wasn’t bad.

  In front of the shrine are two rocks Jenna painted. One bears Lila’s name, the other Jesus’s name. Both rocks are covered with pictures of flowers.

  In front of the shrine are things that belonged to our lost friends.

  Jesus’s leather jacket. Lila’s jar of cannabis salve. The gold St. Roch medallion. A picture of Lila and her family.

  These are all we have left of our friends. We couldn’t bring back their bodies. We’d buried them in the rubble at the foot of the statue in the quad.

  Near the shrine to our lost friends is a cardboard box filled with a collection of beer and liquor I’d squirreled away. After losing Lila and Jesus, no one seems to care we’re well on our way to blowing through half our stash in one night.

  “I’ve never been much of a drinker.” I finish this sentence by downing a shot of something brown. It tastes like shit and burns all the way down, but I don’t care.

  “Could have fooled me.” Across the table, Ben takes a shot. His eyes are bloodshot.

  “My husband was a recovering alcoholic.” I reach for the bottle and pour myself another shot. “I never drank much, you know? To support him.” As I throw back another shot, Kyle’s face swims before me.

  I said my goodbye to Kyle on my journey to Arcata. Most days, memories of him bring me happiness. Tonight, I wish he was here to hug me. I miss having someone to hold me.

  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if Kyle was here with me and Carter. Sometimes I’m glad he didn’t live to see this fucked up world.

  “You got married young,” Ben says.

  “What?” I blink at him, eyes watering from the shot. God, that stuff burns.

  “You must have gotten married young.”

  “Why do you say that?” I grasp the bottle of amber liquid, weighing the wisdom of taking another shot.

  “You don’t look old enough to have a college student for a son.”

  Yes, I definitely need another shot. “I got pregnant in college. I was nineteen.” I glance across the room to where Carter sits on the floor, Jenna between his legs. They share a bottle of warm beer between them. “Best thing that ever happened to me. I got Carter and Kyle in one fell swoop.”

  I throw back the next shot. My stomach roils. I close my eyes, hunching over the table as I struggle to steady myself against the nausea.

  Beside me, a chair scrapes against the floor. Eric sits
down next to me. His eyes are red and puffy. The smell of marijuana clings to him. He lets out a long exhalation.

  The sight of him makes something inside me crumple. “Eric—” I break off, rendered speechless by the devastation on his face.

  Eric leans sideways, head resting on my shoulder. He begins to cry. My heart breaks all over again. I put an arm around him and rest my cheek against his head.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

  “Me, too,” he whispers back. His speech is slurred, telling me just how stoned and drunk he is.

  I can’t hold back the tears. They gush from my eyes. I don’t try to stop them.

  Ben looks away and pours himself another shot. He looks as miserable as the rest of us.

  “You know,” Eric says, sniffling, “I’m pretty sure my parents and brother are dead. Even if they aren’t dead, I’ll never see them again. I know that. I’ve never once cried about it. I feel sad sometimes, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as seeing someone—as seeing Lila—” He makes a choking sound.

  I cinch my arm around him more tightly, wishing I could hug his pain away. Wishing I could turn back the clock and never tell Lila to go outside.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. It’s not enough, but it’s all I have.

  “I should have been paying attention,” he replies. “It all happened so fast.”

  I suck in a breath, willing myself to tell him the truth. “It was my fault, Eric. I’d been encouraging her to go outside. If I had just kept my mouth shut—”

  “It’s not your fault, Kate,” Ben says. “That was just plain bad luck. Nothing else.”

  Eric points a finger at Ben. “What the old guy says. He’s right.”

  I close my eyes, touched by their words. Even when the evidence says otherwise, they insist I’m blameless. Do they really believe that, or are they just being nice?

  “Hey, guys.” Jenna puts her arms around me and Eric. “Come on. We’re all going to share a memory of Jesus and Lila.”

  My head swims as I push to my feet. Eric and I steady each other, leaning together. Ben appears on my other side. I get the feeling he’s there in case I topple over.

  “I’m not that drunk,” I tell him.

  “Okay,” he replies, but he doesn’t budge from my side.

  “I have a rule,” Eric tells me as we shuffle into the living room. “I never drink and smoke pot at the same time. I sort of broke that rule tonight.”

  “That’s okay.” I give him a squeeze. “I normally don’t get drunk. Just seems stupid in the apocalypse, you know? Like I need to keep my guard up at all times. In case we all die. But tonight I think it’s okay to break rules.”

  Ben gives me a look when I say this. I can’t be certain, but if I wasn’t drunk, I would say he looks sorrowful.

  Eric and I lower ourselves into the lopsided circle on the stained carpet. Everyone else is there, all of us in various states of drunkenness.

  Jenna makes her way into the center of our would-be circle, resting the tips of her fingers on the jar of cannabis salve Lila made.

  “Lila,” she says, “you were the best damned botanist I ever knew. Rest in peace.”

  I look down and realize I have a bottle of clear liquor in one hand. I didn’t realize I’d carried it away from the table. I take a swig then pass the bottle to Eric.

  “You were one crazy chick.” Johnny raises a beer bottle in salute to the shrine. “I’ll miss you stinking up the kitchen with your concoctions.”

  “I’ll miss you telling us we’re stupid for going to the track to run,” I say. “Thanks for saving my life today.”

  “I’ll miss your cooking,” Reed says. When several people turn incredulous stares in his direction, he wrinkles his nose. “Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but you sort of sucked at cooking.” This sends a ripple of laughter around the room. “But you were really good at heating up cans. And dammit, it was sweet of you to try and find protein sources for us.” Reed’s eyes water.

  “I loved your cooking,” Ben says. “You could have given any army cook a run for his money.”

  “She brought me a bag of clothes last night,” Susan says. “And I know it might seem stupid that I would even care about clothes when my husband is unconscious from blood loss after a shark attack. But last night, it seemed like the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me.”

  “Lila never complained about sharing a room with me and Jenna at the start of the apocalypse,” Carter says. “She always knew when we needed privacy and gave it to us.”

  We go around the room, all of us sharing memories of Lila. It feels good to remember happy times with Lila. But it also compounds her loss, sinking me deeper into sadness—and into the bottle in my hands.

  After we share stories about Lila, Reed stands. A fresh joint is in his hand. “Jesus was my brother,” he slurs. “We sold drugs together. We partied together. We stole shit from the mini mart together. We went through the Taco Bell drive-through every Thursday night to get seven-layer burritos with extra sour cream.” He raises the joint in salute. In his other hand is a half-empty bottle of vodka. “I’ll miss you, brother.”

  “He was a damn good shot,” Ash says. “I never told him, but I admired him for that. And it was nice to speak Spanish with him.”

  Caleb, red-eyed and gloomy next to Ash, hunches his shoulders and tightens his knuckles around the clear bottle in his hand. His competition for Ash might be gone, but he’s as miserable as the rest of us. Instead of adding a tribute to Jesus, he takes another long drink.

  “He never complained,” I say. “It didn’t matter how long I made him run, or how much work we did. He just did whatever had to be done.” My throat tightens. “He saved our lives today. He never hesitated. He saw the danger and acted. We all owe him our lives.”

  Ben speaks up next. “He wore that dent on his forehead like a fucking badge of honor. He was loyal. That’s a rare quality.”

  A rare quality. Ben is right. Jesus had a lot of rare qualities.

  And now he’s gone. Him and Lila.

  Their loss hits me like a baseball bat. To keep myself from breaking down in front of everyone, I lock my lips around the bottle and take a long drink. The liquid burns all the way down.

  “Woah there, Kate.” Ben pries the bottle away from me.

  Anger flashes through me. “Get your own bottle.” I snatch it back.

  His eyes weigh me. He doesn’t try to take back the bottle. I feel two inches tall. I wish he would stop looking at me like he knows what I’m going through. I’m raw and wretched inside. I don’t want anyone knowing how I feel right now.

  I turn away from him and take another drink.

  26

  Sixteen

  BEN

  This isn’t so different from that night in that shitty desert town in Iraq. Or that night in the dirty bar in Pakistan. Or in the med tent in Somalia.

  Wakes are all the same.

  Besides the two shots he took with Kate, Ben elects not to drink anymore. Kate isn’t wrong about shit going sideways when everyone starts getting shitfaced. Someone needs to be sober. Gary doesn’t count since he’s still unconscious.

  Besides that, if he’s drunk, he won’t be able to look after Kate. One look into her eyes tells him she’s on the edge. She’s taken on the burden of Lila and Jesus’s deaths.

  He knows what that feels like. He carries a long list of names in his head. People he’s failed. People who have died because of him. He wishes Kate didn’t have to carry that same burden. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, most especially her.

  It’s only a matter of time before people start getting sick. It’s all a part of drowning pain.

  Susan is the first to beeline into the bathroom and puke her guts out. Reed and Johnny aren’t far behind her.

  Ash has the grace to pass out on the sofa. Eric, stoned and drunk, curls up in the fetal position on the floor and also passes out.

  “I—I think I need to lie down.” Kate
sways to her feet, blinking bloodshot eyes. One hand presses to her stomach.

  “Mom, wait, I’ll come with you.” Carter sways to his feet.

  “Yeah, I’m ready for bed,” Jenna says. She and Carter cling to each other, keeping one another upright.

  Ben rises to his feet without a word. He positions himself next to Kate. If she passes out, he’ll be there to catch her. If she starts puking, he’ll make sure she doesn’t face plant in her own vomit. He’s done that once or twice and it isn’t pleasant.

  “I don’t need an escort,” she growls at him. She takes one unsteady step toward the door.

  He ignores her, keeping himself positioned next to her.

  “Maybe we should turn tonight into sleep deprivation training,” Caleb slurs from his slouch against the wall. “I mean, we’re all up.”

  “Dude, half of us are passed out.” Carter gestures to Ash and Eric.

  “We could throw some water on them.” Caleb punctuates this with another swig from his bottle of gin. The asshole has a stomach of iron.

  “If anyone throws water on anyone else, you’ll have me to answer to,” Kate says.

  She takes another unsteady step toward the door. Then walks right into the wall.

  “Dammit.” She smacks the wall with an open palm. She hits it a second time, then a third, until she’s smacking the wall over and over with both palms. “Dammit!” she yells.

  Ben is pretty sure any intervention on his part will not be welcome. He’s grateful when Carter totters over to his mother and takes both her hands in his. She glares at him, trying to yank free. Carter is taller and stronger than Kate. He smothers her in a bear hug.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” he whispers.

  “It’s not fucking okay!” She pounds her fists on his shoulders. Her sobs disappear into his chest.

  Somehow, Carter gets her out the door. Jenna is on their heels, one hand on the wall for balance. Ben trails them, determined to see all three of them safely to their beds.

  A few steps into their dorm room, Carter staggers. “Shit, sorry, Mom—” Hand covering his mouth, he rushes toward the bathroom. He doesn’t even manage to close the door before he starts throwing up.