Love in the Time of Zombies

by James, Jill

  “Here, you haven’t eaten all day,” he said, pulling a squished and torn orange out of his pocket.

  I yanked it out of his hand and bit into the skin to peel it, my fingers useless for the task at the moment. The scent of the orange filled my nostrils as I ate, peel and all. All too soon I was left with nothing but sticky fingers and a hunger that hadn’t been satisfied.

  “Okay, here is what you’re going to do. The men are occupied with the putas on the east side of this place. The side where I think it was a soccer field at one time.”

  I pictured The Streets of Brentwood before it was destroyed. “Okay.”

  “The front is gone, between the zombies and your friends,” he continued. “If you go out on the west side by the highway you should only have the undead to contend with.”

  He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a voice recorder. “This will help you. I put the repel sound on there, but I could only find a few batteries, so use it sparingly.” His fingers were warm as he placed the recorder into my hands.

  “Why didn’t you put all of the sounds? When I find my friends, we could use them.”

  His brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. “No one should have that kind of power. It should be enough that you will be able to keep them away. Control is too dangerous.”

  I couldn’t say I didn’t agree, with that saying about absolute power and corruption and all. I reached for his hand. “Are you coming with me? I’m sure the group would let you in.”

  He pulled away. “I’ll get you to the edge of the mall. But I have things to do here. The time for vengeance is now.”

  A chill ran over my skin at his words. Darkness filled his gaze. Someone was going to die tonight.

  “Captain Gomez,” I started.

  “Don’t use that name,” he said. “I’m just Antonio.”

  “Antonio,” I said, taking his hand again. “Leave this place. Leave these people. Forget Peters and his men and his whore.”

  He raised his hand and I flinched as it neared. It stopped inches from my face, his hand shaking before he pulled back.

  “That is my wife you are talking about.”

  My mouth dropped open, and then I shut it with a snap. Okay. This was all so not my problem and all I wanted was to be gone. Some of the group must have escaped. There hadn’t been enough dead to be everyone.

  “I’ll wait outside the door while you change and then I’ll take you to the perimeter.”

  As he exited the room, I spotted the camo clothing he’d placed on the cot. Rushing to change, I threw my dirty, blood-splattered stuff to a far corner. The shirt was a little big, but a few rolls of the sleeves and I was good to go. I searched the dirt floor for my necklace, but not even a glimmer of silver showed. I stood up with a sigh. My last connection to my past life was gone.

  Getting out of the collapsed building and to the edge of the mall was much easier than I had imagined. The men’s yells of excitement barely echoed from the far end of the shopping mall. We reached the wall where just a short time ago I’d climbed down the rope ladder each day to go on patrol. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted it blowing in the breeze.

  Antonio reached and shook my hand. “Be safe, mujer guerrera.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked as I grabbed him in a hug.

  He kissed my forehead and handed my crossbow to me. I snatched it like a long-lost friend.

  “It means warrior woman,” he replied, stepping back.

  I slung the crossbow onto my back and grasped the recorder. “My name is Emily,” I whispered.

  “Good-bye, Emily.”

  I put my hand on my stomach. “Antonio, living well is revenge.”

  He stepped back into the shadows. “But dying well is sweeter.”

  I wanted to call out to him, but already I could hear the moans of the skinbags nearby and the catcalls of the men in the distance and his shadowy form was gone. Heading to the bypass road, I pictured the directions I’d memorized of location one and location two if we had to evacuate.

  ♦♦♦

  The echo of moans and shambling feet trickled through to Martin’s subconscious. He tossed and turned in his sleep and struggled to awake. He’d drunk too much before falling into bed beside Tanya. At least she didn’t glare at him and belittle him like the dark-haired slut.

  A whisper intruded. A shuffling of feet echoed. Adrenaline flooded his system and his eyes snapped open wide. Breath rushed from his nose and his mouth remained shut. Skin pulled as he tried to rip open his lips.

  His mouth was taped shut. Probably from the large roll in Antonio’s hands. The same hands tightened on the silver tape causing the knuckles to whiten under his deeply tanned fingers. His gaze traveled up to his captain’s face. Anger and hatred narrowed the eyes and flattened the lips tightly. A look the man hadn’t been brave enough or stupid enough to show before now.

  I should have killed him.

  He swallowed the bile rising in his throat. Vomiting would only hasten his death. A death he saw foretold in the man’s cold, dark eyes. Turning his head, he stared at his lover. His breath caught as her chest slowly rose and fell. He closed his eyes and breathed as deep as possible. The man hadn’t killed his cheating wife—yet.

  A shadow fell across the bed and he opened his eyes again. Antonio stood over him. Pulling with his arms and legs, he struggled to rise from the mattress. His ankles were taped together and a rope stretched from his feet to across the room. A glance above his head showed a similar rope held his taped hands to a pipe in the wall.

  The sound of a knife being pulled from a sheath yanked his attention back to the betrayed husband at his side.

  Antonio squatted by the mattress and used the knife to rip open Martin’s shirt, exposing his soft flesh to the blade of a sharp knife. Ignoring his muffled screams, the man sliced across his chest and belly. The cuts deep enough to be agony, but not deep enough to kill. The stench of warm blood filled the room and wetness pooled under his back.

  “Why now?” he screamed in his head. He’d been sleeping with Tanya for months. Hell, even before the influenza outbreak. Why wait ‘til now to strike?

  Antonio moved to the foot of the bed and pointed the bloodstained knife at him. The man’s soft tones barely reached his ears.

  “You had it all. A safe haven, weapons, food, and men to follow you. But that wasn’t enough. You had to have this place.” Antonio turned his hand toward the darkness.

  Moans echoed off the fallen walls, increasing in loudness. Martin’s heart raced. The now-familiar hum was gone. His gaze traveled to the corner where Antonio had set up the synthesizer and speakers. His heart stuttered to a dead stop at the sight of a pile of rubble. The equipment was destroyed, sitting there in pieces. Useless.

  His captain’s attention returned to him. “You had everything we needed to survive, but that wasn’t enough.”

  His gaze followed as Antonio walked to the other side of the bed. Tanya’s side. The woman was a princess in a deep sleep. Her dark hair cascaded over the side of the mattress, her dark, warm eyes hidden from him in her coma.

  Antonio leaned over the woman. His hand brushed hair from her face, and then the same hand covered her mouth and nose. He pressed harder. Tanya moaned and moved slightly.

  Martin struggled against his bound hands. His muffled yells couldn’t penetrate the duct tape on his face.

  Antonio glared at him, his hand never moving from his wife’s face. “You could have any woman you wanted. There were plenty of women, women willing to use their bodies for protection. But you wanted my wife. Mine.”

  Tanya’s struggles had ceased. No movement of her chest remained. Antonio moved back to the far wall, his face in the shadows. “Now I give her to you. You can be together forever.”

  Sweat poured off Martin’s body as Tanya limbs twitched and moans rose from her throat. Her eyes opened and a milky opaqueness filled them. Her jaw opened and closed and she sat up. Turning to her lover, the scent of fresh bloo
d drove her on.

  He screamed as she reached him.

  He screamed as she fed on him.

  He screamed as Antonio raised his hand, put the gun to his own head, and pulled the trigger.

  He was still screaming as the other man’s body hit the ground.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Lord is my Shepherd...

  Psalms 23:1-6 King James Bible

  I was alone.

  For the first time since all this crap started, I was alone.

  Not on a bus full of other frightened people.

  Not on a rooftop with friends and companions to this disaster.

  Not on patrol with a partner. Not with Nick. My mind flashed to his young girlfriend, Beth and the baby she carried.

  Not with Seth.

  My hand moved to my stomach. A reminder at once beautiful and dangerous, that I’d never be alone again. Staying alive was no longer just about me. Breath caught in my throat. A part of that gentle man lived on. I pressed gently. Tears welled up in my eyes. Swiping hard at the wetness, I moved across the dirt field.

  A spate of gunfire echoed from behind me and died away. The moans of the undead became fewer and far between as I cradled the recorder as gently as I would one day carry my baby. Dropping it was not an option. My aching fillings were a small piece to pay to walk in the dark untouched. Skinbags stumbled toward me, only to flee the other way as fast as their deteriorating legs and feet could carry them once they heard the hum.

  My mind scrambled for a place to wait until sunrise. Having the recorder was all fine and dandy, but the batteries wouldn’t last forever. If I could just find a place to rest without needing the sound, I could travel by daylight and only use it as needed.

  The stench of the finally dead filled my lungs as I crouched and searched the bodies for any weapons. The familiar weight of my crossbow might have filled me with more confidence if I’d had the bolts to go with it, but I’d used them all in the battle and I couldn’t see where they’d pierced bodies in the dark.

  The Moon peeked out from behind some clouds and gilded the strewn dead with a silver-edged dignity they’d certainly not had as walking skinbags. I whispered a small prayer and scrambled to find a couple of guns and a knife hopefully before the moonlight disappeared. A torn duffel bag yielded the mother lode—five handguns, a machete, and three knives, along with a heavy-duty flashlight. In daylight I could make my way to the Target group and trade for some supplies and bolts for the crossbow from their sports store—provided the sicko general hadn’t hit them before us.

  Silence filled the battlefield. A single gunshot rang out from the mall and then silence once more. No moans. No yells. No cries. No one was a winner in a zombie war.

  Only the hum below the threshold of hearing from the recorder vibrated my eardrums. I slung the duffel bag on my shoulder and strode to the blacktop road. I stood in the intersection, the breeze sweeping from the north filling my lungs with untainted air. A choice had to be made.

  I could go north toward Antioch and the Target group. I shook my head. Not in the dark. The general could have sent out patrols. They could be in command of the other shopping mall as well. Anything in that direction was too risky at night.

  I could go south down the bypass, like on patrol. Just as iffy in the dark and empty of people—live people.

  I could go west toward Mount Diablo. I’d never been that way and I didn’t like the idea of finding out what was in that direction in the dark.

  What about east? Not an option to go back past The Streets of Brentwood with possible guards at the other end, even though I couldn’t hear them anymore.

  An image flickered through my mind. A feature Nick had pointed out on that first patrol trip many months ago. Slightly southwest from the intersection was a water tank on the hillside. I’d asked what the grass-covered thing was and Nick had told me the water tank was covered with plants to hide it from the suburbanites by blending into the vegetation. Buy an expensive house and you didn’t have to see anything as utilitarian as a water tank.

  The Moon came out from behind the clouds and lighted my way under the unfinished overpass and across the rising field to the water tank. The smell of burned grass still clung to the field.

  I reached the towering water tank. No blood or guts decorated the steel stair treads. I sniffed. No stench of the undead. Listening, only the hum of the recorder throbbed in my jawbone.

  With a press of the button, I turned it off and heard... nothing. One step at a time, I climbed to the top. An empty metal expanse greeted me. Moving to the center, I set down my crossbow and the duffel bag. The small thump echoed with a metallic ring.

  Sitting with crossed legs, I faced the stairs and relaxed, taking my first deep breath in hours. My hands wandered over my still flatter than flat stomach. No cramps. No twinges.

  Over the years, I’d become an unwilling expert in watching for the first signs of losing a baby. Thinking back over all the attempts, all the costs of treatments, and a few times with Seth and I was going to have a baby.

  My thoughts didn’t turn to Carl very often these days, but they did then. Would he have been different if I’d conceived? Sometimes, it was hard to dig up memories of the before.

  Before the in vitro treatments.

  Before the accusations started.

  Before the infidelity began.

  Mostly, it hurt too much to think of his anger at my ‘fault,’ when it hadn’t been my fault at all.

  A laugh escaped and turned into tears at the memory of Bobbi’s comment of changing the stud. I scrubbed away the wetness. Seth had been so much more than a stud, a one-night stand. I could have loved him. I did love him. Him and the gift he’d left me. I wished he could know what he’d given me.

  So many years had passed since I’d been thankful for anything, that it felt unfamiliar as I got to my knees, clasped my hands together, and looked to the sky and the stars above. Haltingly, the words came back.

  “Dear Lord, in Jesus’ name I pray. Thank you for bringing Seth into my life, please take care of him. Thank you for watching over me and my baby.”

  A noise came from the stairs. The scratch of nails on the metal treads. I grabbed a knife from the duffel bag and held my breath. The sound of scraping sped up. My sweaty hands clasped the knife in front of me.

  A dog bound up the last step and ran to my side. His tail and tongue wagged in tandem as he sat up and begged with a low whine.

  I fell over on my butt, a deep sigh escaping my lips. Just a dog.

  I reached out and patted his head. “Sorry, dog. No food tonight.”

  He lied down and put his head on my lap. “I bet you were somebody’s beloved pet.” The Border collie closed his eyes and fell to sleep. I ran my fingers over his tangled fur and found a worn collar with a nametag. “At least I won’t have to call you dog.”

  “Nickie,” I whispered as I read the tag by the light of the Moon. My shaking fingers went to my lips and tears fell down my cheeks. Looking to the stars and the heavens above, my heart clenched in my chest and took my breath away. Someone was helping me. Someone was watching over me, over us.

  “Thank you. Amen.”

  ♦♦♦

  “God, you don’t have to help me, but it would be really fucking great if you didn’t get in my way,” Seth cursed for the hundredth time as the undead just kept coming. His truck would have been great right about now. Just when they’d cleared the area around a car, a horde would descend on them from nowhere.

  “We wouldn’t be doing this,” he yelled over to Miranda and Cody. “If you weren’t so damned determined to get to Brentwood, we could be safe in an apartment somewhere. With stairs.”

  He took a deep breath and plunged a machete into the face of the skinbag in front of him. After the heat of the summer they all looked alike. Like something six months in the grave, except they were walking and killing. The zombie fell and another half dozen took its place.

  “Safe is surviving. Safe isn’
t living,” Miranda yelled right back.

  Man, the girl had a mouth on her. This was the girl he remembered from his supply runs to the compound. Finding a friend her own age had helped the healing process a thousand times more than he’d been doing. Ran had become a mini-Emily. A zombie hunter extraordinaire.

  The kids stepped in close and guarded his back. They made a great team if he did say so himself. Why did they need anyone else? Cody answered his unvoiced question.

  “Security in numbers, dude. If there is a group, we should, like, join it.”

  He smiled at Cody’s surfer slang voice. His smile slipped as a once-male undead shambled up to him. The cargo shorts and skateboard-logoed shirt matched his young companion’s. With a grimace he yelled, lunged, and sent the blond-haired head flying with a swipe of his blade.

  Taking a cautious look around, he listened to blessed silence. Bending, he wiped the blood from the machete on the shirt of the fallen and put it back in the sheath.

  “Keep an eye out, guys,” he mumbled as he opened the car door and sat in the front seat. The keys were still in the ignition. A few grinding turns, and a lot of stomping the gas pedal, and the motor turned over. It purred like a kitten. The luxury car lived up to its expensive hype. Built for comfort and durability. They cruised down the middle of the street, and knocked zombies out of the way, with three-quarters of a ton of Detroit’s finest.

  Seth tuned out the kids chatter as they rambled on as only the young know how to do. Hours of talking with nothing said. His mind turned inward. Gritting his teeth, he knew if it were up to him they would be going anywhere but back to Brentwood, a town with nothing for him.

  “Okay,” Cody said over his shoulder, reaching and turning on the radio. Miranda leaned forward, a smile on her face as the young man spun the dial.

  “There hasn’t been anything on the air for months, Ran,” he managed to say just before a voice came on over the air. A shiver spiked down his spine. Like a reminder of all they had lost, a sexy DJ voice came on and spoke.