by JJ Zep
I tried to move, to go to her, but my legs refused to carry me. I had that weird dreamlike sensation where time seems to stand still, and everything seems bent out of shape.
“Ah, here’s one of the freakoids now,” I heard Rolly say. “Don’t worry folks, it’s only the burnout.”
Ruby stood facing the field, a frail child with a braid running down her back. She didn’t raise her arms, as Justin had done, but merely stood and looked out at Rolly Pendragon and his Z army. A breeze seemed to flutter around her, ruffling the hem of her dress, and then a faint, white light, almost imperceptible seemed to pulsate around her.
“Two minutes to midnight, folks,” Rolly said, and then the light around Ruby brightened and pulsed outward and Rolly’s Humvee started to shift sideways.
“What the hell,” he said, and then he realized what was happening. “Fire!” he screamed, “Kill the motherfuckers!”
The Humvee suddenly tilted, hovered on two wheels and then was tossed sideways like a child’s toy flipping over itself again and again before coming to rest on its wheels and then imploding.
Out in the field mayhem now broke loose. The Zs poured forward engulfing the Humvees. Some of the gunners managed to fire their weapons, but most were simply overwhelmed, pulled from their vehicles and torn apart. The Zs then turned on each other, ripping and tearing and biting.
In the midst of it all, I saw Ruby collapse and it was as though the bonds that had been holding my legs were suddenly released. I dashed forward and scooped up my little girl and carried her back to the ambulance.
thirty three
“She’s going to be alright,” Joe assured me.
“Can I see her, Joe?”
He thought about that for a while and then said, “You can Chris, but with conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“Remember the conversation we had back in L.A.? Remember how I told you, you had to prepare yourself to let Ruby go?”
“I don’t think I can, Joe.”
“You can, and you must. Not just for your sake, but for hers, too.”
“But you saw how she interacted with me back there.”
“She isn’t always like that, Chris. Trust me on this. You saw what she did to Rolly Pendragon.”
“But I’m her father.”
“There’ll be days when that doesn’t matter.”
“So what now?”
“I’m going to ask you to leave it in my hands. We’ll give Ruby the very best care and attention there is. We’ll keep her safe, as much from herself as from anyone else.”
“Will I ever get to see her?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, Chris.”
Joe always had a way of reading me, and right now he drew me towards him, “Come here you big ol’ bear. It’s going to be okay, you’ll see.”
Joe held me in a hug and hard as I tried not to blubber in front of my best friend, I let go and sobbed like a child.
“You done good, Chris,” Joe said into my ear. “I can’t think of another man in the world, myself included, who could have done what you did. You found Ruby. You found her and now you know she’s safe, and with people who care about her. Nobody can ask for any more than that from you.” He continued to hold me for a while and then pushed me away and said, “Come on, let’s go see that little girl of yours.”
Joe walked me along a maze of corridors through the military hospital, eventually arriving at a ward where Ruby lay, still comatose, in a bed surrounded by drips and wires and monitors. Dr. Gish sat on a chair to one side, reading out loud from a children’s book. The doctor stopped reading when we walked in and gave me a nod.
I walked to the bed and looked down at the tiny figure of Ruby Rosita Collins, her pale face, dark hair and the gentle rise of her breathing. She was my daughter and I loved her more than anything in the world, but Joe was right. Ruby didn’t belong to me, didn’t even belong with me. Ruby was a child of a new and terrifying world. I was a child of the old world, clinging desperately on by my fingernails.
I ran a finger along Ruby’s hairline and traced it down her cheek, and that familiar low voltage thrum ran up my hand, up my arm, and through my entire body. It seemed to speak to me, not in words, but in the vibration of the universe. “It will be okay, daddy,” it said. “It will be okay.”
thirty four
I said my farewells to Joe Thursday and hitched a ride back to Yorba Linda with Sam Suchet. Sam insisted on taking me further and would have driven me all the way to Flagstaff if I hadn’t insisted that there really was no need. He eventually let me off at Victorville, with a Honda 350 off road bike to complete the journey, and a promise to keep in touch.
I arrived in Flagstaff in the early hours of the morning and made the sentry at the gate promise not to radio ahead and wake Kelly. I didn’t want to get her up in the middle of the night, and I also wasn’t ready to see her yet. It had been an emotionally draining day and I needed some time to gather my thoughts.
I cut the engine of the bike a block from Kelly’s house and let it drift the last hundred yards or so downhill. Then I lay down on the lawn in front of the house and looked up at a sky brimming with a billion stars. I thought about the road I’d traveled starting in New York on that terrible day when I’d found Rosie bleeding on the floor, ending here in a city I’d never even heard of back then.
Joe Thursday was right. I had done something extraordinary. And I say that not with conceit, but rather with a sense wonder that I’d made it, that I’d survived, that I’d found my little girl, that I’d played some small part in saving her.
These thoughts carried me into sleep and I was awakened by a large and rather affectionate Akita licking my face.
I settled down to a life in Flagstaff with Kelly, and when Kel could no longer handle living close to her mother we moved to the community at Lancaster, California. We were married a few weeks after Kelly’s twentieth birthday, and our twin boys, who we named Joe and Charlie, arrived nine months later. A couple of years later our daughter, Samantha, usually called Sam, was born.
Giuseppe too, settled down to the quiet life. He became less inclined to wander and took a fancy to a lady Akita down the block and fathered a number of litters. We adopted one of his sons, the spitting image of his old man, and named him Luigi. In his later years, G took to resting out the heat of the day under a white alder tree and we buried him there after he passed.
As the years went by, I saw less and less of Joe Thursday. Joe of course, had his hands full running the Corporation. I’d always figured Joe for a bit of a free spirit, but he did a pretty decent job organizing the corporation forces, setting up protected communities like the one at Lancaster where we lived, and dealing with the growing Z problem.
Ruby stayed with me of course, in my dreams, in my thoughts, and in the thin memories I had of our time together. I never imagined I'd see ever her again but I did, many years later.
That, however, is a story for another time.
A Note From JJ Zep
Hey, this is JJ. Thank you for purchasing and reading the Zombie D.O.A. Series I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
If you enjoyed the book (or even if you didn't) I'd love to hear your thoughts and would really appreciate it if you could leave a review at the link below.
Review The Zombie D.O.A. Series On Amazon
Thanks again
JJ Zep
Find out more about JJ. Zep, his books and upcoming projects at http://www.jjzep.com
You’ve read the series, now read the sequel…
New York holds painful memories for Chris Collins and he never intended going back there. But when his daughter is captured and is due to be thrown to the Zs in a sadistic TV extravaganza, Chris has to take action.
Now he's going back to Dead City to challenge his old nemesis Bronson Chavez, the one-time street thug who is now mayor of New York, and runs it like his private fiefdom. Only one of them will survive and Ch
ris has the odds seriously stacked against him.
The sequel to the best-selling Zombie D.O.A. series is a twisted tale with more zombie action than you can shake a stick at. It will keep you glued to your Kindle late into the night.
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