The same can’t be said for the rest of the crew. Caleb, Ash, Johnny, Eric, Reed, and Jenna all look like they’ve been dragged through a gauntlet by their hair. Every last one of them is bloody, bruised, gashed, cut, and limping.
“Look!” Reed points. “Over there in the old quad. By the statue.”
Ben follows the line of his arm.
He spots Kate. Fresh blood runs down several wounds on her body. Her clothes are half torn from her body, revealing flesh that is badly abraded. She can’t seem to walk upright and limps on one leg. She looks like she got run over by a car. Hell, knowing her, she probably jumped out of the minivan while it was still moving.
He pulls ahead of the group, scrambling over debris in his haste to reach her. He pauses only long enough to dispatch any living zombies he passes on his way.
When he’s twenty yards away, he know something’s wrong. Her shoulders are slumped, her mouth drooping in a sad line.
“Kate?”
She turns, her eyes finding him as he scrambles over the last of the ruins that separates them. He drops down beside her.
He opens his mouth to speak. Before he can utter a word, Kate grabs him in an unexpected hug.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” she murmurs against his shoulder. “I knew you were too tough and grumpy to die.”
He reflexively pulls her tight, overwhelmed by relief at finding her whole. “It sounds like you did your best to end up on the wrong side of the dirt.”
“I did what had to be done.”
Of course. Kate always lays it all on the line for her kids.
She peels herself free of his arms. He’s reluctant to let her go, but drops his arms as she pushes away. The right side of her face has been scraped raw.
“Jesus is under here,” she says, a hitch in her voice.
Ben had been so consumed with worry for Kate that he hadn’t even noticed Jesus. Two-thirds of the man’s body is buried under rubble and a slab of concrete the size of a bike. His eyes are closed, his face pasty, but he’s still breathing.
That’s when Ben notices another figure. Lithe and dark-haired, she crouches beside Jesus with a plastic bottle of water. She drizzles some of it across his forehead in an attempt to wipe his face clean.
Ben blinks, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. The girl looks like Lila, except she has three automatic rifles over her shoulder, a string of grenades across her chest, and a Sig on either hip. And she’s outside.
“What the fuck?” He stares at her in shock.
Lila grimaces. “I know. About fucking time, right?”
The rest of the group arrives before Ben can form a proper response. Everyone is talking at once.
“Lila?” Eric gapes at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Where’s Jesus? Did you guys find him?”
“Lila, no way!”
“You didn’t mess around with explosives, Mama Bear.”
“Anyone seen Jesus?”
“Quiet.” Kate’s command cuts through the confusion. The grief in her eyes is thick, but she’s holding it together. “Jesus is right here. Everyone, spread out. We need to get this concrete off him.”
The mood sobers as the rest of the group finally sees Jesus. The grief hits them all at once, but Ben sees it hit Reed hardest of all. The young man’s face crumples, his usual upbeat manner squashed by the sight of his friend buried in rubble.
Reed positions himself next the concrete slab. “Come on, guys,” he barks. “On three. One, two, three—”
They heave. The giant piece of concrete is elevated on one side, revealing a body. Ben swallows at the sight of Jesus’s crushed legs. The man groans in pain, his eyes closed.
“Keep pushing,” Carter says.
They heave, tipping the chunk of cement. It thuds over, landing on yet more rubble.
“Mamita.” The voice is weak.
Ben sees the way it hits Kate. The other man’s voice goes through her like a spear, causing her body to jerk and her face to spasm.
“Jesus.” She throws herself to the ground beside him. The rest of them cluster around while she picks up one of his bloody hands. Her other hand comes up to smooth away a chunk of bloody hair.
“You okay, Mamita?” Jesus coughs, pink spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth.
“We’re all okay,” she replies, voice catching. “You’re going to be okay, Jesus. We’re going to get you out of here. We’re going to get you home. Ash is going to sew you up—”
“Mamita.” Jesus raises his free hand.
Even through all the dirt, the bites along his left arm are visible. As Ben studies him, he sees more evidence of zombie bites. Parts of Jesus’s torso bear marks, as well as the right arm Kate holds so fiercely.
“I got those fuckers,” Jesus replies. “That’s what matters.”
Someone sniffles. Ash wipes her eyes. “Eres un héroe,” she whispers.
Jesus tries to smile, but ends up coughing instead. “No te olvides de mí, bonita.”
Ash sniffs again, refusing to look away. She kneels on Jesus’s other side, clinging hard to his free hand.
“My legs hurt,” Jesus says.
“I’m so sorry, man,” Reed whispers, clustering close with Kate and Ash.
They stand around Jesus in a tight cluster. Ben forces himself to watch the life ebb out of the other man. He takes in the grief of those closest to Jesus.
Mostly, he watches Kate. This will be her first big loss, not counting Frederico. But that was different. That was a friend.
Kate’s relationship with everyone in this group is different. She sees herself as their caretaker. Their adopted mother. Jesus may not be her flesh and blood, but for Kate, that won’t lessen the grief.
Ben knows what it feels like to fail people. She’s going to feel like she’s been torn open by a meat grinder. He wants to shield her from the pain. He wishes he could take it all on himself. Instead, all he can do is watch the horror unfold.
“Take St. Roch, little brother.” Jesus drags the bloody pendant from around his neck. “He’ll look after you.”
Reed reaches for the saint with trembling fingers. His hand briefly locks around Jesus’s in a gesture of brotherhood before withdrawing with St. Roch.
“It’s time, Mamita,” Jesus whispers. “Will you do it? Before I turn? I don’t want to be one of those fuckers. Not for a second. It would be an honor to have you do it.”
Ash makes a soft wailing sound.
Kate’s arms begin to tremble. Tears spill down her cheeks. Looking into Jesus’s eyes, she nods.
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 aliv
e, 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 t
ell 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.”
Undead Ultra (Book 3): Lost Coast Page 14
