by Joe McKinney
“Okay, that just made up my mind. No way.” He runs a hand through his hair until he looks like he’s been electrocuted.
“Well, we need a project. Is it just me or have you noticed that Ana and Peter—”
He grins. “Um, yeah. Even Bits has noticed. She asked Ana if Peter was her prince the other day. Ana got all flustered, it was great.” He shifts on the bucket as he laughs, and I hear an ominous creak.
“Well, Ana’s not the problem. I think Peter likes her, too, but he’s treating her like a little sister-best friend. I’m going to find out why.” I push the old cans of beans to the side and stack the new ones behind them.
“You’re okay with it?”
Nelly jumps to catch a can before it crashes. He holds it and searches my face.
I shrug. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, like I’m dumb. “Some people feel it’s weird to have their ex-boyfriend dating their little sister.”
“Come on. She’s not my little sister. Plus, Peter and I should have broken up forever ago. I have no feelings except friend feelings for him.”
“Well, maybe you should save him for February for yourself, just in case I’m unavailable.”
I cuff him on the back of the head. “Shut up. You’ll come around, I just know it.”
I lean sexily against the shelf with a hand on my hip, but my hand slips and he bursts into laughter.
“I am now forced to rescind my offer, since you laughed at my sexy pose. You’ll be sorry.” I cross my arms and he grins. “Anyway, I’m going to find out what Peter thinks of Ana. It’ll give us something to do besides moving those cans of beans and putting the new ones in the back.” I point to where what looks like a thousand cans of beans sit waiting.
“Seriously?” He lets out a dramatic sigh before he moves to the shelves and starts to shuffle cans around.
Chapter 95
Halfway through the third lap between the cabin and John’s, I stop with my hands on my knees. I was not made to run. There’s a knife in my side and my lungs burn. I might be dying. Ana’s ponytail swings jauntily as she jogs in place in front of me. She’s actually smiling. I hate her.
“That’s only a mile,” she says.
“That’s about a mile more than I can usually run.” I sink to the ground. “Dying. Go on without me. Remember me always.”
She frowns and nudges me with a sneakered foot. “You are not dying. Stop being such a baby.”
Ana’s new interest has turned into an obsession. And while these past weeks have put me in the best shape of my life, I am not as driven as she. I want to be able to kill things, not be a superhero. Or be a superhero without having to run ten miles.
“I just need a minute.”
It’s soft and cool down here on the forest floor. Ana bounces on the balls of her feet. I know she wants to continue, and I’ve no intention of getting up anytime soon.
“Go ahead, Ana. I’ll see you on the way back.” She nods and starts toward John’s. “Or never.”
“I heard that!” she yells, as she hops off a tree root with a burst of speed.
I watch until she’s out of sight. Ana’s still headstrong and bossy, but now she has a vulnerability she always kept hidden. I’m trying to encourage it. It’s the main reason I’m running through the woods like an idiot, killing myself.
I kick off my sweaty sneakers and wait until the burning in my lungs subsides. I have to stay ahead of her if I’m going to escape her clutches, so I yank myself up using a low branch. I pass the shed and see Peter and James inside. They’ve been trying to figure out the solar power for days.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
They look up and smile. I like having Peter’s reaction to me be a smile instead of a scowl. It’s nice to smile back at him, too.
James pushes his hair back and sets down a manual. “Well, I think I might have an idea. Unfortunately, I know computers, which is about as helpful right now as being fluent in ancient Greek. We’re going to need a bunch of stuff, most importantly, new batteries.”
He’s being modest, though. He fixed the radio and helped John with the generator wiring. I bet we’ll have power eventually.
“We can go tomorrow,” I say. I lean against the wall to massage my legs and look at Peter to see if he’s in.
“Sure,” Peter says, his mouth quirking. “Boot camp making you sore?”
“I am not built for speed.”
It comes out before I remember its double meaning. He looks like he’s about to comment, but he must think again, because he closes his mouth and raises an amused eyebrow. Peter’s so different that I don’t think of him as the Peter I dated. I just pretend I’ve slept with his evil twin brother.
I blush and change the subject. “She’s relentless.”
Just then Ana runs past and waves. Her footsteps head around the shed, and then she’s past the window, waving again.
“She’s definitely single-minded,” he says. We watch her run into the woods.
“She can sure fill out a pair of Wal-Mart yoga pants though, eh?” He looks at me strangely but stays silent. Nelly says I have no finesse in these situations. “She’s really pretty, don’t you think?”
“Of course,” he says.
“And she’s smart and has a great sense of humor. You probably know all that, since you guys are such good friends.”
“Why do I feel like you’re trying to sell me something?”
His face is impassive, but I think I see a twinkle in his eye. James stands behind Peter, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. I glare at him.
“I’ll get started on that list for tomorrow,” James says, barely containing his mirth as he leaves.
Peter looks at me suspiciously. Nelly was right, I have no finesse. I’m going to have to get right to the point. “Well, I was thinking that you and Ana would be good together. She likes you, you know.” I grin at him.
He looks everywhere but at me. “This is weird, Cassie. My ex-girlfriend trying to set me up with her little sister. Who is also too young, by the way.”
“She’s not my sister! So we dated, now it’s done.” I put my hands on my hips. “I think you like her, Peter.”
He looks a little pinker under his tan, but it’s hard to tell. I’ve always liked teasing Peter. I can’t help it. He’s so self-assured that I have to make sure he’s a fallible human like the rest of us.
“She’s young. And what am I going to do, ask her out to dinner?”
He hasn’t denied he likes her. Now we’re getting somewhere. I make a face dismissing his argument.
“She’s twenty-five, not fourteen. I know you’re an old, old man of thirty, but I think somehow the chasm between your ages can be bridged. Plus, what might have been a big age difference three months ago doesn’t mean anything now. And a lack of restaurants hasn’t stopped people from getting together over the last gazillion years.”
He shrugs, but his eyes are thoughtful.
“And that’s the last thing I’ll say about it,” I say, and turn to go.
“Cassandra,” I hear, as I get through the door. “If that’s true, I’ll sign over every dime I have to you, if and when this is all over.”
He sounds serious, but I know when he’s amused, so I wave a hand and skip away. This is a bad idea, as my hamstrings are half their usual length. I yelp and stagger as Peter chuckles. I give him the one finger salute and limp to the house to the sound of his full-blown laughter.
Chapter 96
The parking lot of the Radio Shack’s strip mall is strewn with vehicles. It looks like someone attempted to build a barricade using metal drums in front of the nail salon; they’re lined up three deep in a semicircle under the overhang. The lot is empty, though, and anyone who used it is long gone. We haven’t traveled this far from the house yet, but Radio Shack’s our best bet for the electrical stuff we need.
James points out the window. “Hey, there’s an automotive parts store.
We can get the marine batteries there, I bet. Then we won’t have to stop again.”
The store is a big square island that sits catty-corner to the strip mall in the same parking lot. Nelly wedges a crowbar between the doors until they bend open. Everything is in place; I guess no one desired auto parts before the world ended. Rows of car and boat batteries line the shelves in the back.
“Dude, this is perfect,” James says.
We relax. There’s nothing in here, and we only saw one Lexer on the way. It would lull me into thinking they’ve died or rotted away, except that Matt in Whitefield has reported sightings of large groups of infected, walking and walking. Zeke must have made it there, because Matt’s been calling them pods, too.
“Do some of you want to bring the list to Radio Shack? You can take the truck and come back to pick me up. I’ll drag all this to the front. Peter, you know what we’re looking for as well as I do,” James says.
“Someone should stay with you,” Ana says. She turns to me. “Cass, you want to?”
I shrug. “Sure.”
I walk to the front to grab a cart and watch them drive to Radio Shack. James wanders the aisles like a kid in a candy store, throwing things on top of the batteries. He’s muttering something about some kind of controller when I see a flash of movement in the parking lot.
“James, I just saw something.”
We scuttle to the front windows. Ana throws boxes and bags into the back of the pickup while Nelly watches the lot.
“Sorry,” I say. “I saw one of the bags and didn’t know what it was.”
He pats my arm. “Better safe than sorry.”
The second cart is soon overflowing, and James is dreamy-eyed as he looks it over. “I used to build radios when I was a kid. Maybe we should go to Radio Shack, see if there’s anything else I could use.”
I wouldn’t mind going over there. I’m getting uncomfortable with having split up. My hands are sweaty in my leather gloves, and I want to load the truck and leave.
I hear the shout at the same time I see the mass of ragged forms. Nelly, Peter and Ana stand with their backs against the nail salon’s broken window, inside the ring of metal drums. The gunfire starts and the infected fall, but dozens more press forward.
Those metal drums are the only thing keeping the three of them from being overwhelmed. There’s an opening on both sides of the semicircle where the barrels don’t meet the wall, and the infected feed through them like cars in a bottleneck. Nelly attempts to move one, but they must be full; it doesn’t even budge.
James and I run into the lot and take shots from behind a car. We take out the stragglers, but not the ones closest to our friends for fear of shooting one of them. They’ve dropped their empty guns, and now they slash into the oncoming bodies one by one.
Ana screams. Her body slams against the cracked glass of the nail salon window, and she fights to right herself. I get a glimpse of hands just inside the salon, tangled and twisted in her ponytail. Nelly jabs his machete at them but has to turn and fight off the next Lexer that’s been funneled to him. Peter’s got his hands full, too. He slashes a neck and shoves the body to the side, but there’s only seconds before the next.
The cords in Ana’s neck stand out as she twists and fights. Her face is desperate, and, even worse, it’s tired. Someone has to take out the Lexers in the nail salon.
I turn to James. “I’ll get the one who has Ana.”
He nods. I reload my pistol and hand him my nine millimeter. I don’t take the time to hide; I sprint as fast as I can around the side of the building. The glass back door of the nail salon is locked. I crash my cleaver into it and bust out the jagged edges.
I step over scattered bottles of polish in the storeroom and into the front. Pedicure chairs run along the left wall, and manicure tables fill the right. There are two Lexers at the window. They’re getting in each other’s way, which may be the only reason Ana is still on the other side. There’s a spike of glass under her back, and every time she hits it she yanks up, but she won’t be able to do that forever.
I move the cleaver to my left hand and take out my revolver. I don’t see the Lexer coming at me until a second before he knocks me to the linoleum and follows me down. The air whooshes out of my lungs, and the pistol skitters across the floor.
I can’t get up. He must weigh two hundred pounds, but I manage to get the cleaver shaft under his chin. He bites the air inches above me. Clotted black strings drop off his bottom lip and pool on my chest. My biceps shake with the effort of pushing against every lunge. I can do two, maybe three, more lunges. And then that rotten, disgusting mouth will find its mark on my face or neck. It won’t matter where; I’ll be as good as dead. Pure panicky terror gives me another burst of strength. I scream with the effort as I buck under him and roll free.
I scramble back and my head slams into a footbath. For a moment it all goes black, until I feel hands grab my boot and I begin to slide. I grasp the edge of the footbath and kick as hard as I can. There’s a crack as my foot breaks his cheekbone. It knocks him down, but he immediately rises to his knees. It’s not fair, the way they feel no pain. The way they don’t stop. The way they don’t get tired, or scared, or out of breath. He hisses and reaches for me.
“No you don’t, fucker. Not today,” I hiss back.
I grip the cleaver like a battering ram and send the flat end under his chin. It slices cleanly through the vertebrae, and he crashes to the floor. My feet slip in the viscous fluid from his decapitated head, and I slide to the window where Ana blindly punches behind her. The two Lexers bite her leather-clad arms, but her armor does its job. The broken glass protects her head, and with each attempted attack they cut deep, bloodless gashes in their faces.
They haven’t noticed me. I turn my cleaver to the spike side, level it with the brain stem of the first and slam it home. I yank it out. The other lets go of Ana and starts for me. I hardly need the force I use to get it through his eye socket. Ana spins around, her face terrified and relieved, and leaps onto the barrels. A litany of curses fly from her mouth.
She stabs the spike into the top of a Lexer skull. “Mother!” She grunts and stabs into the next. “Fucker!” She flips around her blade and decapitates one.
She dances down the barrels, slamming her cleaver spike into their heads or eye sockets and ripping it out again. She reaches the end of the line on Peter’s side and then turns to Nelly’s. He holds his machete by the hilt, with the last of the infected skewered on the end. Its hair is torn out fuzz and its face is half gone, teeth exposed. Its hands struggle and flail. It’s mindless, or it’s mindful only of us, which is just as terrifying.
James, who’s been slowly advancing and killing Lexers from behind, comes up and sinks his knife into its neck with a crunch. It slides off Nelly’s machete to the ground. When I step out of the salon, Ana races into my arms. We don’t hug so much as hold each other up.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
All the fear I’ve kept at bay hits, and I swallow hard. “No, thank you. All that horrible running paid off.”
Ana barks out a laugh. We assess the damage. Lexers lie in the parking lot, but most are piled around us. We hop onto the barrels, not wanting to step on, or worse, in, the infected, and practically fly home.
***
We’ve hosed ourselves off and taken showers. Our clothes and armor soak in a cocktail of cleaners no virus could possibly survive. Ana’s waited until last to shower, and when she finally enters the living room, running a hand through her damp hair, we stop dead. Where there used to be the long chestnut colored hair that Ana painstakingly hot-ironed, there’s now chin-length hair that gets even higher in the back. Nothing’s going to get a handful of this hair. She tries to look nonchalant, but she’s nervous.
“I love it,” I say. “I really do.”
It accentuates her cheekbones and her graceful neck. She looks older, more sophisticated. She smiles, but pulls at the ends like she’s trying to lengthen t
hem as everyone murmurs agreement. Peter stares at her, and I catch his eye and tilt my chin up, telling him to say something.
He swallows. “You look gorgeous.”
Ana beams, and I realize it was his reaction she was most worried about. If his face is any indication, she’s got nothing to fear.
Penny’s mouth hangs open. “I can’t believe you cut your hair off. Don’t get me wrong, you look amazing, but I just can’t believe you…” she trails off with a shake of her head.
“I’d rather be alive than have nice hair,” Ana replies.
“Who are you and what did you do with my sister?” Penny asks. She smiles and moves forward to touch her sister’s hair in wonder.
Chapter 97
Bits picks basil leaves off the stems under Peter’s tutelage. He’s making some sort of pesto. Tomatoes, sprinkled with goat cheese, sit on a platter. His dinners are always fancy, and before he’s done we’re milling around the kitchen like begging dogs. I set the table and get out a bottle of wine we found. There isn’t much wine, but this dinner should have something special to go with it. And John’s got strawberry wine brewing in his basement.
“Smells good in there,” Nelly says, as he sniffs through the back door screen. He’s been digging, and every inch of him is covered in dirt. “Pete, maybe you’ll teach me how to cook one day.”
Peter leans toward the door and laughs. He doesn’t mind when Nelly calls him Pete now. “You’ll just slather it in barbeque sauce.”
“Damn straight,” Nelly says. “I’m a Texan.”
He leaves his mud-caked boots outside and heads for the bathroom. The table looks nice with the wine glasses, which starts me thinking.
When everyone’s seated I jump up and clap a hand over my mouth. “John, we forgot to check the tomatoes in your garden today! They were ready to burst as of yesterday.”
John looks at me calmly, obviously thinking I’m blowing this out of proportion. “Well, we’ll just leave it to tomorrow.”
