by D C P Fox
“I hope so, because I need to get it back.”
“Where is it?”
“The survivalists must have taken it. I can probably locate it through astral projection, though I’m not sure of that.”
Clarence shook his head. “Say you find they have the sword. They seem . . . resourceful. How are you going to get it back? You and what army?”
She smiled. “My army of zombies!”
Chapter Forty-Five
Day Ten
Marty peered into the moonlight through the back door of the supermarket. A lone house across the street was wedged between a pot shop and some other store behind a sign illegible in the darkness. Up the street, to his left, to the east, he heard and saw flashes of gunfire, from only a few blocks away.
The gunfire was closer now. Whoever was fighting the neo-Nazis was advancing. But who?
If it was the military, Marty and the others might want to join the battle, but not with only one handgun. They could all die before they even reached the good guys.
Besides, how would the military react to the swastikas on their foreheads?
Both sides of the conflict would probably consider the supermarket a strategic asset, so if they stayed there for long, they might get caught in the crossfire.
But if they hid out in that house, most likely the battle would pass by it, and then they would advance their plan based on who won.
He braved heading down the concrete steps to the street below and walked over to the corner of the loading dock to look to the west. It was as deserted as the rest of the area.
Marty still carried the handgun as he led them all across the street to hide behind the west side of the house. Janice and Alexander each carried a bag of groceries. Alexander stayed with Janice and Emily in the gloom of the moon’s shadow while Marty peered around the corner. Marty knew that entering the house was perilous.
Marty opened the screen door and then placed his left hand on the doorknob. He turned it and eased the door open, resigning himself to any fate that might befall him.
He hoped anyone who previously occupied the house had left.
There was little time to lose.
Inside the house it was dark and silent, lit only by the moonlight through the front door.
One slow step at a time, heel-to-toe, he ventured in, feeling for obstacles with his hands. He bumped something and a sharp pain erupted on his shin. He suppressed an urge to curse aloud and stopped in his tracks, waiting crucial seconds for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Looking around, he glimpsed a flashlight on the coffee table. He grabbed it, turned it on, and swept a beam of light throughout the living room, illuminating a small kitchen and a hallway down to the back of the house.
He saw no one, but someone might be in the back of the house. “Is anyone there? We mean no harm. We need to hide out during the firefight.”
No one answered.
The sound of the gunfire was louder now.
He left the house as quickly as he could, shutting off but holding onto the flashlight, and ran to where the others were, motioning for them to follow him into the house. They all filed in. Marty turned on the flashlight again and shined the light on the decrepit kitchen. “Hide in the kitchen as I check out the rest of the house,” he whispered.
“Quick, ladies, follow me,” Alexander whispered. Janice and Emily huddled on the floor of the kitchen as directed.
Marty swept through the entire house and found no one. He returned to the kitchen. “It’s all clear,” he said.
“You checked the closets?” Alexander asked.
“Of course,” Marty answered, a little indignant. “And the shower . . . Come, let’s hide out in the bedroom closet.”
They all crammed into the closet amidst hanging dresses and shirts.
Marty held onto the flashlight, shutting it off. In the blackness, he could hear Emily whimpering. He judged the gunfire was now outside the house.
The sweat of all four bodies commingled in the cramped and stifling closet. The battle raged on the street, and Marty prayed in silence that it wouldn’t find its way into the house. Emily’s whimpering stopped, replaced by a whistling sound as she exhaled. Marty was familiar with that sound.
“Emily,” Marty said. “Are you all right? Do you have asthma?”
“No.”
“No to which one?”
“No, I’m not all right. But I don’t know what asthma is.” The whistling again—just like with his asthmatic son.
Oh, shit. Well, at least she wasn’t turning into a zombie yet. Or was she?
“Emily, we need to leave the closet.”
“But you said—“. She coughed several times.
“I believe we’re safe now, don’t you Alexander?” He hoped Alexander didn’t choose now to be stupid.
He didn’t. “Yeah. Everyone out of the closet.”
They all left the closet and Marty put Emily on the bed, a grimy pillow propped up behind her. She continued to struggle to breathe, and Marty patted her down to verify that she had no inhaler with her.
“Alexander,” Marty said, “did you take an inhaler at the store?”
“No, but none of us were asthmatic.”
“Emily, I want you to relax,” Marty said. “We’re safe now. Take slow, relaxed, steady breaths. Can you do that for me? Say nothing, just nod.” They weren’t safe at all, but he needed her to relax.
She nodded. Marty could tell she was trying to relax, but it was still difficult for her.
Marty had had practice before with his son. Now was not the time to think about him, though.
Janice said, “Here Emily, drink this.” Marty shined the flashlight on an open can of cola. Janice must have gone to the kitchen, or wherever she found the can, unnoticed by him. The stimulant would help somewhat.
“Drink a gulp in between breaths, Emily,” Janice said. “Have you ever drunk a Coke before? Or Pepsi?”
She shook her head.
“Okay. It might taste bad, like medicine. And it will probably hurt your throat, but it’s very important that you drink it anyway, okay?”
She nodded and took a sip. She made a face.
“Okay, Emily, breathe slowly . . . Okay, take another drink, this time a lot more, okay?”
Janice mumbled something to Alexander, followed by footsteps leaving the bedroom.
Maybe the Coke would help in time, but for now Emily was getting worse. Someone needed to go back to the pharmacy in the supermarket. Feeling her way through the blackness of the living room, steering well clear of where she thought the coffee table was, Janice made it to the front window and peered through the curtains.
Two people in battle fatigues had assault rifles drawn. One person laid flat on the concrete landing atop the stairs, in front of the rear door of the supermarket, weapon pointing east, up the road, to Janice’s right. The other crouched behind the corner to the side of the loading dock, weapon pointing west. Gunfire flashed from that direction, the front of the battle now advancing away from them. Janice hoped to God these were military, as they were winning. Three dead bodies with shaved heads laid on the ground, one to her right, one to her left, and one in between the two armed men.
She made her way back to the bedroom. Emily’s breathing was worse, the caffeine not enough.
“Marty,” Alexander said. “We have no choice.”
“I’ll go,” Marty said.
Janice startled herself with the next words that came out of her own mouth. “No, you two stay with Emily. I’ll go.”
“You understand we’re talking about going across the street to get some asthma medication,” Marty said.
“I know,” Janice replied. She omitted the two men with the assault rifles. No sense in getting everyone upset, especially Emily.
Janice went back to the front door, opened it and yelled, “Help!” The men turned their rifles in her direction. “Don’t shoot! I’m in the house across the street! I’m unarmed! I’m coming out with my hands up!”
>
Janice trembled as she opened the door the rest of the way and emerged with her hands up, the screen behind her swinging closed with a clap. She yelled, “I’m coming forward now!”
Prepared to die, Janice walked over to the armed men, who continued to aim their assault rifles at her. A week ago, she’d have been too paralyzed with fear. Now she walked over to the men with a sense of pride that she would risk her life for another. Thinking about all this distracted her from her fear enough to approach the two men.
When she reached the middle of the street, the person next to the loading dock said, “That’s far enough.” It was a woman’s voice. She was approximately twenty feet from her. The woman stood up, and she had a name tag, illegible in the nighttime gloom.
She was thankful that these two didn’t want to kill her, at least for now. “We have no weapons, except for one handgun that I’m not carrying. There’s a little girl with severe asthma, and we need an inhaler. May I go inside and get one?”
“Who are you?” the woman asked. “What were you doing in the house?”
“There’s little time. The skinheads captured and enslaved us, but we escaped and hid out in the house.”
“So they put the swastika on your forehead?”
Oh, shit. She had forgotten about the swastika. “Yes. You do see I still have hair.” Hopefully, the hair would be enough.
“How do we know you’re not compromised by a hostile?” It was a man’s voice, coming from the landing in front of the rear door at the top of the stairs.
“Look, I’m just trying to save a little girl’s life. The longer we delay, the worse she’s getting.”
The man took out a walkie-talkie with one hand, the other still pointing the rifle. He said something that Janice didn’t make out. “Okay,” he projected. Something must have convinced him Janice was telling the truth.
Janice waited at gunpoint for what seemed like a long time. Eventually, someone emerged from the door, another person in battle fatigues. He tossed something into the street, about ten feet short of her. The woman slowly backed away, stepping over a corpse.
“Take the inhaler and get back there. I hope you understand we need to hold the store. Keep the doors locked. We’ll protect you from here as best as we can.”
Janice understood. Their protection was more than she could hope for. “Are you the military?” Janice had the temerity to ask.
“US Army—out of Peterson Air Force Base, originally Fort Carson.”
“Colorado Springs?”
“Yes. Stop asking questions and go.”
Colorado Springs. Janice felt relieved. They could finally stop running . . . if the Army took the town.
When Janice got back to the house, she felt like she’d saved the day. After two puffs from the inhaler, Emily started to breathe normally.
She felt euphoric. Way back in the day when she had become a nurse, it was a calling, something she couldn’t not do. And then she had lost that calling, and she had been miserable ever since. Now she had regained that calling, and she would do whatever she could to be that nurse, that healer, again, despite being possibly infected with the zombie pathogen. She prayed she wasn’t infected, but being able to help Emily, even in a small way, made her happy regardless.
Maybe things would turn out all right after all. As well as a zombie apocalypse can.
Chapter Forty-Six
Day Eleven
While in the safe room, Jocelyn concentrated and sensed all the draugar within the range of her power. Instinctively, she knew it was somewhere around 200 to 400 feet.
There were seventeen.
To formulate a plan, she would first have to test the limits of this newfound ability to control draugar.
She focused on the draugar and could bond with seven of them again, despite not having line of sight. But no more. Her limit was seven. If she tried to bond with an eighth, she would succeed, but one would leave the group. She could drop all draugar within the bonded group, in which case she had no bond and her tingling stopped. Then it would start again, bonding her to a group without her choosing. And, in fact, when she bonded with one draugar, she bonded with its entire group. But once bonded, she could drop any draugar she wanted from the group.
And now she understood the tingling—she felt it when bonded with draugar.
She commanded seven to go outside of range. They did as commanded, but soon they started to return. Were they trying to attack Clarence and/or herself, or were they trying to get home? Which draugar decided which home to go to? Did they remember where she and Clarence were, or if they’d attacked them at all?
The second time she ordered some to go outside of range, they didn’t come back. The mystery deepened. This pattern didn’t repeat. More draugar took two orders to not return, some one, some three.
But one thing was clear: she could maintain a “bubble” around herself of about 200 to 400 feet devoid of draugar.
She allowed seven into her range and bonded with them, and then she tried to maintain her “bubble” while still controlling those draugar. This ability would be crucial and powerful. She found if she frequently broke and re-established the bond with her seven draugar when draugar strayed into her “territory,” she could bond with new draugar for less than a second—enough to tell them to leave that territory.
In the end, she created a bubble around herself free of draugar, except for the ones she had bonded with, which she could send to anywhere within her range. This exhausted her, both mentally and physically, and required deep concentration.
She reported all this to Clarence, who asked, “What happens when you go to sleep?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” She yawned.
“Could you let me sleep some before you try that? I’d rather be awake for that test, if you don’t mind, in case it doesn’t work.”
“Oh, I understand.”
Jocelyn glanced at Clarence’s battery-powered digital alarm clock. It read 12:37 a.m. “I’ll give you four hours. I can take the next four. I desperately need a shower anyway.” Lucky for Jocelyn, Clarence had a full bathroom attached to his safe room.
More like a safe suite. It must have been nice being that wealthy.
When Jocelyn awoke, it was a little past 8:30 in the morning, and Clarence reported that the draugar outside had not tried to attack while she slept. She sensed that some draugar had migrated back into her range—but none of them were moving toward them. She ate some instant oatmeal, adding hot water which Clarence had because of plenty of town water, a propane tank, a gas stove, and lighter guns to light it with. Clarence said he’d already eaten.
She settled into a cross-legged position to start a meditation and traverse the astral plane. Starting in her Inner Temple, she asked for a doorway that would allow her to astral-travel on the material plane. Once out the door, she found herself in the safe room, looking at Clarence, his nose deep in one of those post-apocalyptic novels. She looked back and saw herself meditating, a cord attaching her astral self to her aura.
“I thought you were med—” Clarence looked up from his book and laughed. “I’m going to have to get used to this. Where are you going now?”
She Willed herself invisible. She looked down at herself, at where her cord should be, but saw nothing.
“Wow. No.”
She winked in and out of visibility a few times, getting a sense of how much effort it would take, and how quickly the transformation would take. It turned out it was not much effort at all to switch, and the time it took was a fraction of a second.
Good to know.
Jocelyn Willed herself to remain invisible while astral-projecting to where her sword was. Almost instantly, she appeared in front of the blade in the break room at Beaver Park Mark
et, facing the wall it leaned against, the familiar sounds of two people in the throes of passion behind her. She turned around. A large bear of a man fucked a woman with a buzz-cut from behind. Both wore fatigues, their pants down at their ankles.
She stifled a spontaneous laugh (that might cause a projected thought) and left the two love-birds to search the rear area of the store, wanting to understand the nature of the defense of the store and her sword. No one occupied the bathroom or refrigerated areas or the rear entrance, but in the grocery area near the break room on the floor sat two men in fatigues, two assault rifles and shotguns off to the side. They were smoking and playing cards.
“Do they realize we can hear them?” asked the man on Jocelyn’s left, the larger one of the two. The question startled Jocelyn for a moment until she realized he wasn’t speaking to her. She reminded herself that she was invisible.
“I don’t think they care much,” said the other man.
The larger man grunted. “I don’t like it. It’s too soon since their families died, or turned into zombies, or whatever.”
The smaller man shrugged. “Times like this . . . I wish I could have her.” He inhaled deeply from a hand-rolled cigarette. The way he held the smoke in, it may have been marijuana—she couldn’t tell for sure as she had no sense of smell (only sight and sound). He passed it to his friend/colleague.
The larger man inhaled and held it in, then expelled and said, “Leadership has privileges . . . still, it ain’t right.”
“You’ll feel different in a month or two.”
A chuckle. “If we last that long. We were damn lucky we were all in the training when the zombies came attacking. Did ya notice that all the ones assigned here have no family at the ranch?”
“Why d’ya think that is?”
“Too dangerous.”
There was a long pause. Jocelyn was about to leave when the larger man said, “The zombies are all around now. Why d’ya think they stopped attacking?”
