by Raymond Lee
“I haven’t seen or heard from them since before I went to prison and I don’t expect I ever will, even if all this blows over. How could they ever forgive me for getting their daughter killed when I can’t even forgive myself for getting my sister killed?”
“You didn’t shoot her,” Sky stated firmly. “Remember when you told me I couldn’t blame myself for that woman dying on the balcony? The one who yelled for me to run while I was in the car and the zombies were going to get in?”
“That’s a whole different scenario, Sky. I am to blame for my sister’s death. I accept it, and I’ve learned from it. I just don’t really like to talk about it or my family, and I don’t want you to feel afraid of me, or think I won’t keep you safe because of what happened.”
“That’s why you protect me, because you lost your sister?”
“That and because it’s the right thing to do,” he answered. “I made an incredibly stupid mistake joining the gang, but my intentions were good. I needed the money for my family. I would never make that mistake again or do the things I did.”
“You let the woman stay downstairs because it’s the right thing to do?”
He nodded. “As far as I know, she’s not a threat to your safety. I couldn’t just let a starving woman go back out into a world she was barely surviving in. You could have been her.”
“Raven could be her,” Sky thought out loud.
“Yeah.” Torres nodded. “If she’s out there hungry I pray she runs into someone who will help her out. We’ve seen some rough looking people out there, but if Sara was like them she wouldn’t be so hungry. People who are willing to do anything to survive, no matter how dirty, don’t typically starve. They’ll kill somebody and take everything they have before they go hungry. That’s why I allowed her to stay here, to give her a fighting chance, but I’m still watching her just in case.”
He stood and walked across the room to look out the window. “I put a chain on the back door but I don’t have one for the front. We’ll keep watch to make sure she doesn’t allow anyone else inside. If a week passes and no one comes for her we’ll know for sure she isn’t working with anyone else.”
“You think she could be?” Sky asked.
“My gut says no, but I prefer to err on the side of caution. Are you hungry?”
“No.” Sky couldn’t even think of eating after the image that had filled her head when Torres suggested Sara could be working with someone else. She trusted him to keep her safe, but the thought of someone infiltrating their shelter still gave her a nervous stomach.
“Then you should get some sleep, pequenuela.”
“What does that mean? Pequenuela?”
“The English translation is little girl. When I call you pequenuela I am calling you little one, as I called my sister.” His mouth turned up the slightest bit, but the hint of smile did not reach his eyes which were staring off into a memory. “You remind me of her in some ways. She was very dear to me.”
The first time she’d asked him that question he’d told her it meant he would protect her like she was his own blood and now she understood why. He’d called her his kid while talking to Sara, but she was his chance of making up for losing his sister.
“Go to sleep, honey. I promise you I won’t let any harm come to you.”
“I know.” She removed her shoes and crawled under the covers. “Torres?”
“Yeah, honey?” He remained standing at the window, his back to her as he kept watch for danger.
“Would you really kill Sara if something bad happened to me?”
“If something bad happened to you because of her, the answer would be yes. Without hesitation. I’m not a killer by nature, but I will do it to protect you. I hope that doesn’t scare you.”
Oddly, it didn’t. Sky closed her eyes and went to sleep.
“He’s back,” Sara announced from her post at the window, “but he isn’t carrying anything.”
All the hope Sky had conjured up that morning sank. It had been a month since Sara arrived and it seemed the world around them had only gotten worse. Everything around them had been picked over or taken over. Finding food was growing more difficult, avoiding zombies or bad guys without conscience was even harder. They heard Torres pounding up the stairs and then the lock tumbled on the apartment door.
“It’s time,” he said. “We can’t put it off any longer. Everything nearby is wiped out or impossible to penetrate. We have to leave or we’ll eventually die of starvation here.”
“Nothing’s holding me here,” Sara said, looking over at Sky.
Sky shrugged. It had been two months since she’d last seen Raven. There was no telling where she was at or if she’d ever see her again. “Where will we go?”
“Before the radio stopped transmitting they were talking about the military camps. Fort Huachuca is the closest to us. We might even find your sister there.”
“Raven would never go to Fort Huachuca. She knew a soldier there and she hates him.”
“She hates him enough to risk her life out here rather than go to a site guarded by the military, a place she could get food, water, and medical attention?” Torres asked, eyebrow raised.
“She said she hoped he’d step on a landmine and have his scrotum pecked apart by vultures while he could still feel it.”
“Holy shit.” Torres’s face blanched. “That’s some next level hate. What did he do to her?”
Sky shrugged. “I don’t know. What’s a scrotum?”
“The last part of my body I’d want anything pecking at.”
Boy parts, Sky concluded, wrinkling her nose.
“The more I hear about her sister the more I like her,” Sara said, grinning.
“Don’t get any ideas,” Torres told her. “Pack up. Take a few changes of clothes, some socks and underwear, and anything we have by way of medical supplies and food.”
“So is Fort Huachuca a yes or a no?” Sara asked, opening a dresser drawer to grab the clothes.
Torres looked over at Sky as he helped her bag up the food they had left. “Do you think she’d go to another military base?”
“She could have,” Sky answered, keeping her gaze on what she was doing so he couldn’t see her emotional struggle. Either Raven had died a long time ago or Raven had just left what she believed to be her body in the street like garbage. She couldn’t decide which was worse since either way she would probably never see her again.
“The military site in Lincoln is supposed to be the safest,” Torres said. “We’ll go there.”
“That’s like six states away,” Sara said.
“Four,” he corrected her, “and maybe the top corner of Arizona. I know that seems really far but if we stay on the expressway we should get there in under twenty-four hours as long as we can find gas along the way and drive in shifts. It’s not like there will be traffic.”
“From other drivers, no,” Sara said, “but do you remember them talking about zombie herds on the radio? We could get blocked off, and I know there were a lot of incidents on the expressways when this all started. We could get blocked by abandoned vehicles.”
“Then we take an off ramp and go around them,” Torres said, irritation growing in his voice. “Do you remember how bad off you were when you first came here?”
“Yeah.” Sara looked away.
“Do you want to be that hungry again?”
She shook her head. She’d gained weight in the past month, her cheeks full, her jeans and T-shirt no longer hanging off of her frame like a potato sack. “How do we know it won’t be as bad out there?”
“We don’t,” Torres answered, “but we do know it’s bad here. I was shot at today by a guy who wanted the car. The last time I went out I had to shake a tail. Who knows what would have happened if I’d led them here. We have to go somewhere and a military base sounds pretty good. If we find something along the way, we’ll claim it, but we have to go. We have to go now.”
“I knew we’d get blocked again,”
Sara muttered, hours later, as they came upon a blockade of wrecked vehicles on the I-15 that forced them to stop. “We shouldn’t have gotten back on so soon in such a populated area.”
“I’m trying to preserve gas,” Torres reminded her, putting the car in reverse. “Not to mention, it’s easier getting lost when we’re off the expressways. Reading this map is hard.” He gestured toward the map in Sara’s hands. “I miss the internet more than I miss humanity.”
“Where are we now?” Sky asked from the backseat, looking around at the buildings she could see from the interstate.
“Still in Nevada,” Sara answered. “In Vegas, to be exact. Shit, Torres, it’s going to be crawling with infected here.”
“Well, we can’t just stay on the interstate unless you want to try and walk over the blockage and see how that goes,” Torres snapped.
Sky sighed and continued watching out her window as Torres reversed them all the way back to the last off ramp, shifted into drive, and exited the interstate. He and Sara had been bickering at each other for most of the trip and Sky was starting to wish they’d just gone to Fort Huachuca. They’d bicker the whole way there too but it wouldn’t be as long of a trip. She’d decided several miles back to ignore them the best she could and focus on the scenery, despite a lot of scenery being wrecked cars and the walking dead, or undead, whatever they were. She saw a lot of neon signs on the buildings around them, but of course none were lit. They hadn’t seen any sign of power anywhere on their journey.
“It’s weird being in Vegas and not seeing a single neon sign glowing,” Sara said, seeming to read her mind. “It’s like riding through a freaking ghost town.”
“It’s like a ghost town everywhere,” Torres commented.
“Yeah, but it really hits home when it’s dark in Vegas. Oh shit.”
Sky had already noticed what Sara saw. A small herd of infected crept out from a side street, headed their way. They’d thought it was getting bad in Hollywood, but the groups of infected they’d seen together as they’d headed in the direction of Nebraska seemed far greater in number. Sky chewed her lip, praying Torres knew what he was doing and wasn’t leading them somewhere far worse than where they had been.
He swerved around a cluster of infected that had been walking aimlessly ahead of them, muttering a curse. “I know I said we should grab more gas each time we have to get off the interstate but this doesn’t look like a good place to risk getting it. I’m getting back on the interstate at the next ramp. Hopefully the blockage doesn’t stretch that far.”
“Wait.” Sara turned her head as Torres passed a sign. “Did you see that sign? There’s an air force base near here.”
“And?” he asked.
“And? It’s an air force base! It’s the military!”
“It’s not one of the sites we were told to go to,” Torres reminded her.
“Wouldn’t they still be able to help us?” Sky asked. “Aren’t they supposed to protect us like police are supposed to protect us?”
“Even if they’re not a designated rescue site they should be able to offer some assistance,” Sara said. “At the very least they could probably give us some gas.”
“Like you need more gas,” Torres said under his breath.
“I farted one time!” Sara growled. “What do you expect when we eat so many canned beans?”
Torres met Sky’s eyes in the rearview mirror and they shared a chuckle.
“Jerk,” Sara muttered.
“Sky laughed too.”
“She’s a child. She’s excused. You’re just an ass.”
“Yeah, but you like me though.”
“Only because you feed me.”
Torres grinned wide and made a right turn, swiping an infected man in the process.
“Geez, watch it!”
“What?” Torres threw her an annoyed look. “He was pretty much already dead anyway.”
“You should just let me drive now.”
“You already are,” he said. “You’re driving me nuts.”
Sky rolled her eyes. The pair bickered at each other constantly, but Sara looked at Torres like he was a hot chocolate chip cookie fresh out of the oven and for all the frustration Sara gave him, Torres liked her enough to welcome her fully into their makeshift little family.
“Maybe I should drive and you two should nap until you stop being cranky,” she suggested. This got a smile out of both of them.
“That’s almost not a bad idea,” Torres said, “except I don’t think you can see well enough over the dashboard.”
“This way.” Sara pointed toward another sign directing them to Nellis Air Force Base.
Torres made the turn and brought the Mustang to a crawl as they noticed a change in scenery. “What in the hell happened here?”
Debris heavily littered the street ahead of them. Buildings appeared burned out as far as they could see and there were notably less infected milling about, which made sense because from the looks of things they wouldn’t find many people to eat among the ruins.
“Do you think this goes all the way up to the air force base?” Sky asked as Torres parked the car next to the last untouched building.
He craned his neck over the dash and scanned the area. “I don’t know if it’s worth the risk to drive closer through all the debris. We could blow a tire.” He looked up, his eyes widened, and he opened the glove compartment, extracting a pair of binoculars.
“You’re not walking through all that!” Sara said, her voice laced with disbelief.
“I wouldn’t do anything to put Sky in harm,” Torres said, gripping the door handle. “I’m going up that fire escape and taking a better look. The two of you stay locked in the car. It’ll be all right. The infected don’t seem to be hanging around here.”
“What if you fall and hurt yourself?” Sky asked, leaning forward between the seats.
“I’m Torres. I don’t fall,” he said, then he kissed her forehead, winked, and stepped out of the vehicle. It took him two seconds from the time his door closed for him to grab the bottom rung of the fire escape next to where they were parked and ascend the side of the building like Spider-Man.
“Wow,” Sara said. “Look at those muscles go.”
“Gross,” Sky said, rolling her eyes again.
“What?” Sara asked, never taking her eyes off Torres.
“You look at him like my sister and her bandmates look at Jensen Ackles.”
“And that’s bad?”
“One of her bandmates licks his pictures.”
Sara snorted. “I can’t necessarily blame her. Jensen Ackles is very lickable. You’ll understand one day when you’re older.”
Sky made a yuck face and sat back in her seat, hoping she’d never understand the desire to lick someone’s picture no matter how old she got or how attractive they were. She watched Torres climb the fire escape to the top floor, hold the binoculars to his eyes and scan the area. He’d been scanning for about five minutes when the window next to him burst and a figure emerged.
Sky and Sara both gasped and pressed their foreheads to their windows, trying to get a better view as they watched Torres appear to struggle with the person. Sky’s heart wedged itself in her throat as she imagined Torres dying. She’d be alone again. Sure, she had Sara and knew the woman would stick with her, but Sara wasn’t Torres. She was a friend but she’d never become the family Torres had become. Torres had saved her life. Tears streamed down her face as she watched him moving in a strange dance with the figure, then he flipped the person over the railing just as a second came through the window.
By the time the body hit the ground next to them Torres was already running down the fire escape. The infected man he’d tossed over the rail splattered on the concrete, his head smashing open like a pumpkin. Sky gagged and turned her head away but managed to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged. Sara didn’t have as much luck and opened her door to vomit.
“Get in the driver’s seat and get ready
to get out of here!” Torres yelled down as multiple zombies stepped out onto the top of the fire escape and pitched over, falling to their second deaths.
“It’s raining zombies!” Sara cried as she slammed her door shut and climbed over into the driver’s seat. She turned the key in the ignition, bringing the car to life and fastened her seatbelt as quickly as she could with trembling hands, spouting out curse words the whole time.
When Torres got close enough to the sidewalk to risk it he jumped from the fire escape, dashed over, yanked open the passenger door and slid inside, narrowly avoiding getting flattened by the falling dead. “Head back to the interstate now! Go, go, go!”
Sky climbed between the front seats and scrambled onto Torres’s lap, crying uncontrollably as Sara floored the gas and made a hard turn, getting them away from the zombie shower.
“It’s all right, pequenuela. I’m all right. I promised you I’d never leave you.” He spoke the words calmly but Sky felt his heart racing under her cheek as he stroked her back and kissed the top of her head. “I’m all right. You’re all right.”
“Were you bitten or scratched?” Sara asked.
“No. Trust me, I wouldn’t have gotten back in this car with Sky if I was.”
“You fucking idiot, thinking you’re so badass and shit. You scared the hell out of us. I’d punch you but I don’t want to risk hitting the kid.” She reached out and ruffled Sky’s hair as Sky continued to sob, unable to stop. “I don’t think I’d ever be able to calm her down if something happened to you, you know.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” He continued rubbing Sky’s back, trying to soothe her but she continued crying, crying in a way she hadn’t cried since the first night she realized Raven was truly gone and she’d never see her again. He’d held her that whole night too, never complaining, even when she’d soaked through his shirt as she was doing now.
“So what did you see anyway?” Sara asked.
“There’s no air force base there anymore. From what I could tell it was blown to hell and all that debris and the burned out buildings we saw were the aftermath of whatever explosion took out that base.”
