by Emma Shortt
Luke settled back on the couch and scowled. “They smelled food, they attacked. Like a shark or something, they didn’t seem to think about anything else. I remember once, I watched one almost lose an entire hand bashing through brick to get to the people on the other side, but the door was right there and he could easily have got through the wood—it didn’t make any sense.”
“I saw plenty of that too.”
“Only things are different now.” He pointed to the wound on his stomach. “I had one motherfucker chasing me and God, he was fast. Like really fast. I had zero weapons left, a pounding headache, and I was beyond tired, so the only thing I could think to do was find somewhere to hide. Somewhere with a locked door. It was stupid of me really. I should have just turned and fought.”
Luke paused and Jackson could tell the memory still haunted him. She didn’t blame him. She had more than the one mental barrier keeping things shut away in her head. Geez, in her old life she’d go bankrupt from the hours of therapy she’d need to get anywhere close to normal again. But then normal was relative now wasn’t it?
“But anyway,” Luke continued. “I found a building and locked myself in. I figured I’d have five, maybe ten minutes at most before he broke the door down and my plan was to get out the other side. Before I even had a chance though, it broke the lock and turned the mechanism! I couldn’t fucking believe it.”
“It turned a lock?” Jackson was shocked and it took her a moment to get her head around Luke’s words. She’d never heard of a zombie displaying such intelligence. “Maybe it was an accident?” she suggested. “It didn’t know what it was doing and the mechanism just happened to turn?”
Luke shook his head. “No. It had this gleam in its eye, like it knew exactly what it had done. It was calculated. And it was so fast! It had pinned me down before I could even move.”
“Christ…”
“Stuck one of its rancid fingers in my stomach. Honestly, Jackson, it was like it was playing with me.”
“How did you get away?”
“A paperweight, would you believe? The desk in there had some sort of quartz thing and I used it, literally with the last of my strength, to smash its head in.”
Jackson scowled at the picture Luke’s words created and tried to get her head around the idea. “So, they really are becoming smarter? And more of them are—not just random ones.”
“I’d put money on it, if that still existed.”
“What does that mean for us?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’m really not.”
She looked upward, toward the mansion Luke said was above, and felt her stomach sink. “If the zombies can turn locks, then surely they’ll find a way into the bunker?”
“They don’t know where the trapdoors are, and there’s no way they can get in through the walls.”
“But…” Jackson tried to get her thoughts in order. She’d always known the dead awoke changed. Biologically and mentally. But hadn’t part of her always questioned things others, in the beginning, had seemed to ignore? Like why did they come back to the last place they’d been? Why did family members hunt down others? And why did they sometimes eat in a way that seemed to prolong the pain and terror? This idea of intelligence bothered her, but it wasn’t as hard to accept as she might have thought.
“From what I saw with my own eyes earlier and from what you’ve just told me, they seem to have discovered some basic skills. What’s to stop them watching us and following us through that door.” She gestured to the entrance they’d used.
Luke frowned. “They don’t have the patience to follow someone.”
“They didn’t use to plan shit out either, but now they do.”
She shuddered and ran a hand through her short, damp hair. God, she missed her long black hair, but long hair in this world was the equivalent of shouting, “grab it, pull my scalp off.” Another shudder and she rested her hand back on her lap, her mind a whirr of thoughts.
“Those doors are metal too,” Luke said. “And the zombies don’t know where they are.”
“Not yet, but you know, as well as I do, that doors are always the weak point. If enough of them pound on it for long enough… How long since you checked the other one, the one that leads to the basement?”
“Not for a while,” Luke admitted.
“Then maybe—”
He frowned and then nodded slowly. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll go check the other door.”
…
Jackson’s green-eyed gaze followed Luke as he made his way back through the living space to the basement door. He made an effort to look cheery and awake as he left the room, despite the fact his chest throbbed, his head pounded, and he wanted nothing more than to collapse on his bed.
Trouble was he didn’t want Jackson thinking he wasn’t up to the job of making sure they were both safe. Especially considering the fact that she’d practically saved him in the pool room. He knew, of course, why it was important for her to see him as a rescuer. Had known the moment his gaze had fixed on her purple panties, and if not then, certainly when he’d met her very green eyes.
He ran his fingers along the entrance. It was still perfectly intact, the thick metal as sturdy as ever—just as he’d known it would be. He considered unlocking it and checking the ladder up to the trapdoor but was fairly certain that he’d find nothing amiss. The zombies had yet to find it, despite the fact that they’d haunted the rooms above for the last month. His own stupidity, of course. He deeply regretted giving in to the urge to see what was in the building above.
Idiot.
When he returned to the living space, Jackson was bent down lacing up her boots. He paused for just a moment to feast his eyes on her, and despite his extreme tiredness felt his groin stir. Part of him was extremely pleased to note his libido was working as well as ever. The other part remembered Tye and rallied against it. Why the hell couldn’t he have ended up with a single woman? One who’d be glad to cuddle up on the cold nights? Life was so fucking unfair.
She stood and smiled and Luke’s heart stuttered. “I’m gonna go check out that store.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. I can’t leave it any longer.”
Luke sighed inwardly and opened the drawer of his cabinet. “We may have killed off a few packs, but there are others, Jackson. There’s at least a few hundred of them, maybe even a couple of thousand, around here. They’ll come looking for us soon enough.”
Jackson nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“We could end up running into them.” He paused for a moment. “And we’re both pretty beat.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Luke,” she said. “I don’t expect you to come with me.”
He snorted. “You’re probably worse off than me. When did you last sleep?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. A while ago, but I never needed much sleep even when the world was normal. Five or six hours at most. I’m not on my chinstrap yet.”
Luke started, because Jackson’s military slang made him think immediately of Pete, one of his friends from the old world. He’d been an army man, though Luke never knew exactly what he’d done, and swore that four hours of shut-eye a night was enough for any man to get by on. Pete wasn’t around very often. His job kept him away, but Luke had met Pete’s wife—now the zombie Lily—on several occasions. They’d holed up together along with several other survivors in the local police station a few weeks after everything had started going wrong. But, of course, the zombies had found them.
Pete had been awake for more than thirty hours and had insisted he was fine to head outside with Luke and two others to take down the pack before they could find their way inside. But despite his words, it’s not chinstrap time yet, the tiredness had taken its toll and Pete had gotten sloppy. The dead had gotten in through the door Pete had been guarding, and Luke had watched through the front bolted door, unable to do a goddamn thing, as one had taken a sizeable chunk out of Lily’s neck. She’d died immediately, only to
awake minutes later—faster than any zombie he’d ever seen.
Luke’s stomach clenched as he remembered the calculating gleam in her eyes when he’d seen her earlier. He didn’t realize she’d been around all this time, busy eating his fellow survivors. Which was stupid. He should have. The zombies tended to stay where they had lived, probably because it didn’t occur to them to go anywhere else. He wondered again where Pete was now, the last he’d seen of him he had been holding Lily down as she had tried to rip a piece of his face off…
“You don’t have to come,” Jackson repeated, and Luke shook off thoughts of Pete’s whereabouts and that he’d probably killed the Lily zombie with his last grenade.
“Of course I do. You’ll never make it back here alive.”
“You think?”
He remembered her bad-assness and laughed, then realized she hadn’t said she wouldn’t be coming back… “Okay, you might, but I have no intention of leaving you to face them alone. You say you’re good, but that fight in the pool room must have taken a lot out of you.”
She shook her head. “It didn’t take everything, and I have to be sure Tye’s not waiting for me.”
He could understand that. Jealousy aside, of course he could, and though Luke wanted nothing more than to sleep for thirty hours straight, there was no question whether he’d go with her. He’d only just found her, hadn’t he? And if Tye was alive, well hell, he’d invite them both to stay. Their Texas plan was ridiculous and he had more than enough for everyone for a good while yet. The guy was probably decent. He’d hung with Jackson after all, and she seemed as straight as an arrow. And if he’s dead? Luke was unwilling to even think about that yet.
“At least if I look, I’ll be sure,” she added. “Then it’ll just be a question of heading back to the interstate. He’ll wait there for me.”
Luke took three grenades—his last three grenades—and a Glock out of the drawer, before passing them across to Jackson. He’d deal with the whole interstate thing later. “You know how to use these?”
“The Glock 19? Yeah. I learned years ago, long before the zombie invasion. I had my own until about three months ago. Lost it somewhere in Ohio. Gotta love the lack of a safety.” She shifted and eyed the grenades. “You keep those.”
“Check your gun.”
She did, her movement swift and efficient, before giving him a nod.
“Luke, I’m sorry to drag you out again, especially as you went to save him the first time. I just want you to know I appreciate it.”
He pocketed the grenades himself and reloaded his own guns. Unlike Jackson, he hadn’t known how to check a gun over until the waking dead had arrived. He’d never even held one before then. Pete had actually shown him when they had holed up in the police station.
“I get it,” he reassured her. “Of course I do. He’s your boyfriend—of course you need to be sure.”
Jackson paused in her gun prep and gaped. “What?”
“Tye. Your boyfriend, yeah?”
She smiled then and let out a long, slow laugh. “Ermm, no, he’s not. Tye’s a buddy, almost like a brother, nothing more.”
“What?”
“We’re friends,” she said. “There’s nothing like that between us. There never has been. We just didn’t click that way.”
Suddenly Luke didn’t feel quite so tired anymore.
Chapter Eleven
The Barbie brothel was not only a ruin, it was deserted. Not a person in sight, dead or alive. Well there were parts, quite a few in fact. Severed arms, a leg, and what looked suspiciously like a shrunken penis. Jackson tiptoed around them and the charred remains of a bunch of clothes, Glock in her hand, Mandy wrapped in a tee and strapped to her waist with one of Luke’s belts.
She looked all over, past the serving counter and the rooms that had once been changing areas and were now smoldering heaps of wood. When she saw nothing she started to look through the body parts. They were mostly burned, the bits that weren’t mottled and vile, weeping pus and gore. None of them were strong and healthy or the amazing café-au-lait color of Tye.
He was not here and she sighed unsteadily, because part of her was starting to question if Tye really had made it out of this one. The only way to be sure was to head to the interstate, the very clear route they both had to get down south, and if he wasn’t there…
Jackson scowled to dispel the tight feeling in her chest as she gathered some unburned jeans and a sweater, the possibility of getting to the interstate and not finding Tye weighing heavily on her shoulders. And though she had enough depressing thoughts, her mind abruptly filled with the image of Jayne, another companion from the early months. They’d met while hunting for food in a deserted Wal-Mart and had hit it off immediately. Why wouldn’t they? Neither had seen another person for weeks at that point. But the waking dead had found them late at night while Jayne was on watch. The poor girl’s bloodcurdling scream had been the only thing that had awoken Jackson from a too-brief sleep and had allowed her to not only shoot her dying friend, but to make a run for it. The image of Jayne’s missing arms, zombies lapping up the gushing blood, not to mention the back of her brain exploding outward, was placed immediately behind its own never-to-be-removed barrier. She’d given a mental good-bye then. She did not want to have to give one to Tye too.
“You okay?” Luke whispered.
Jackson picked up a pair of uncharred pink fluffy socks, appliquéd with skulls and crossbones—how apt—and nodded. “Yeah.”
“She’s not here,” Luke said, and Jackson grabbed a woolen hat to add to her pile. She stuffed all the clothes in her pack, bar the hat, which she put on, and swung it back on. It was getting heavy now and that was a problem. Weighing oneself down with goods was a stupid idea. You couldn’t fight properly if you had extra pounds on your back, and yet she needed her precious food resources, not to mention the other things.
“Huh?”
“No sign of her.”
For one moment she thought Luke was referring to Jayne and she looked at him, puzzled. “Who isn’t?”
“The zombie Lily.”
“Oh. Well, no, there aren’t any of them here. I picked up on that with us being alive and all.”
“I meant the pieces.” Luke gestured to the limbs lining the floor. “I can’t see her head or anything.”
“Maybe she got fried, or she got away?”
“But then why wasn’t she with the others when they attacked?”
Jackson shrugged. “I dunno, but now’s not the time to be wondering about zombie whereabouts.” She pulled Mandy free of the tee, hooking it on her waistband opposite the Glock, so that a weapon would be ready for each hand. “Tye’s not here either so there’s no point in us hanging around.”
She turned toward the entrance but halted the moment a flash of red caught her eye. It was patch of leather, and it was very familiar to her. Jackson gasped as she hurried over to it, bending down amidst the rubble to pull it free. The patch was attached to a pack, a black one. It had been poorly applied because the person who owned the pack hadn’t had much to work with at the time, but even later, when other bags were available, he’d stuck with this one.
His lucky pack.
Her heart thudded as she laid the Glock on the floor, unzipped it, and checked the contents. A lighter. A flask. A pack of purification tablets. “No…”
“What is it?”
Jackson swallowed past the lump in her throat, barely able to get the words out. “This is Tye’s pack.”
Luke walked over and bent next to her. “Maybe he dropped it?”
She shook her head. “He would never have left this behind. No way. These things are our life. Our survival totally depends on them.”
“Jackson…”
“No matter what he would have come back for this. He’s completely vulnerable without it.”
“Then…”
She swallowed again, the grit in the air making her throat hurt. If Tye hadn’t come back for his pack, it cou
ld only mean one thing, and her chest ached as she imagined it. “He can’t be dead,” she whispered. “Not Tye.”
“We can try the interstate,” Luke said. “Come up with a plan.”
Jackson nodded, mainly because she did not know what else to do, because she did not want to believe what was rapidly becoming reality. She lifted Tye’s pack and hooked it around her arm. But Luke stepped forward and took it from her, shrugging it on without so much of a word.
The streets were as deserted as the shop, apart from the massive amounts of rubbish and abandoned cars, and, of course, the ever-present blood splatters. Jackson looked down at her feet and was unsurprised to see bits of gore all over her boots, flecks of ash stuck to them.
Luke was right next to her as they made their way down the sidewalk, his eyes watchful, his stance protective. She could see he was tired, and then some, but he’d put himself out yet again just to accompany her. And it occurred to her then—because it hadn’t really, not before—how lucky she was to have met him, and she resolved to concentrate on that rather than worry over Tye’s disappearance.
She often did that—concentrated on the good rather than remembering the bad. As a strategy it worked. As a way to stay even nominally sane, not so much. The bad stuff just licked at the edges…but still…she eyed Luke again. Not only did he have food, clean water, and shower gel, but he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. In the real world, aka pre-dead people rising, she’d have accepted a date from him in a New York minute, assuming they’d ever met, or he’d even looked in her direction. Jackson was not oblivious to the difference in terms of their attractiveness. Luke was one of those guys she’d always sighed over but never actually got to date. Of course, the pool was significantly smaller now and besides she was different too. Not the same girl at all. Who knew how different her dating prospects would have been if she’d been this Jackson in the sans-zombie world?
