Waking Up Dead eodl-1

by Emma Shortt

  He shifted and turned one of the cogs. “Not quite.”

  Another cog and Jackson pushed, her arms aching. “What then?”

  “Kind of hoped we’d have more privacy,” Luke said slowly. “When I imagined it, I mean.”

  The tone of his voice told Jackson plenty and a flush traveled up her skin. Her heart race increased to the point of pain and she wondered if the zombies banging on the metal could hear it. I know what this is…

  She paused for just a second before pushing again, her voice suddenly serious. “No, don’t do this. Not now.”

  “Because it’s the end?” he asked softly.

  “Because I don’t want to think you’re doing it because it is the end.”

  Luke sighed. “You think way too little of me, Jack”

  The flush reached her hairline and Jackson swallowed, super aware that the zombies’ death groans were increasing in volume, the pounding getting louder, and the others moving frantically to find things to help them fight a war that was already lost. “I think way too much of you, and that’s why I can’t do this right now.”

  “There won’t be another time,” he said. “As much as I want to believe otherwise, you know there won’t be. When we leave here, we’re probably going to die.”

  Jackson pushed the bar free. They moved down to the final one. “I know. Seems almost like it’s past due.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Even if it’s the truth?

  He sighed. “I wish right now…”

  “What?” she asked as she pushed the bar and Luke pulled.

  “That we’d just kept traveling. We’d never have argued, we might even have reached the coast eventually. You could have sunbathed and I’d have rubbed lotion on you.”

  “And we wouldn’t be about to die.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  One final push and pull and the bar was out. It hit the floor and they moved it aside to the pile with the others before picking their weapons back up. Jackson stood up and looked around the room—at their little team. Sebastian was filling syringe after syringe with some sort of murky blue liquid. Pete and Jay were pulling out Sebastian’s cutting equipment—the thing he went through bones with. In a few seconds they would have to leave, and not a one of them didn’t know they were going to die. Not one.

  “Let me say it, Jack,” Luke said, taking her chin and pulling her face around so that her eyes met his.

  Jackson shuddered. “I can’t…”

  His thumb brushed against her lips and he sighed. “Well, I’m going to say it anyway, and you’re going to hear it, because you need to, Jack. And then, when I’m done, we’ll go out there together and face death knowing the truth.”

  “Hand in hand, is it?” she asked and she wanted it to be a quip, a way to lighten the mood, but it didn’t come out that way at all.

  “To the end, Jack,” Luke said. “Always to the end, because you know that I love you, don’t you?”

  And Jackson’s skin shivered and her heart raced and she wanted to scream to the sky, because it was all so fucking unfair. Everything! The months of traveling, of hiding, of starving—and always watching, always waiting for death. A death she expected and had readied herself for too many times. The day she’d left her apartment. The time she’d stood on that observation deck with the snow swirling around her face. Even the time when they’d driven straight through the horde. It had always been there. Always lingering on the edges. And now here, when it came to claim her at last, it gave her this. This one moment of something she’d never thought to find. Something that now she would never have.

  She swallowed around a lump and in that moment it seemed like all the lumps. Tye’s lump, and her brother’s lumps, everyone single person’s she’d ever known lifted themselves up and lodged there, desperate to burst free.

  “Luke…”

  Her voice faltered, the groans dimmed to be replaced by a roaring in her ears, and she looked into the perfect blue of his eyes, wishing she could say the words back to him. But even as she opened her mouth Jackson knew that if she spoke again the lumps would be set free, and she couldn’t let them, couldn’t even begin to give them the chance. Because that would be all it took, she realized. They’d leave her and as they did they would strip out everything she’d put in place to keep herself hard. Everything that allowed her to kill zombie after zombie.

  “I know,” Luke said and he bent forward and he placed a kiss on her forehead. “I know.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and for no more than a heartbeat they held each other as tightly as they possibly could. Jackson saying everything with that hug that she couldn’t say with her voice. And then they were pulling apart and the others were coming over with their stuff, Sebastian handing them each a syringe, and Pete pulling on the cord to charge the cutting equipment.

  “It’ll buy some time,” Sebastian said. “It’s all I can do.”

  Jackson secured the Glock in her waistband, put the syringe in her left, and held Mandy in her familiar right grip before facing the door.

  “Are we ready?” she asked.

  Luke reached out and wrapped his hand around hers and by default, Mandy’s hilt. “Ready,” he said.

  Death groans sounded around them, a continual pounding in time with her heartbeat permeated the room, and warmth raced up her arm from the feel of Luke’s hand—held so tightly to hers. How strange to think this would be the last time she’d ever get to feel it, to feel anything. That in mere moments she’d be dead at last. Nothing more than a very sick person’s meal.

  “Jack?” Luke prompted and she took a deep breath, pushing the horrific thoughts to the very back of her mind. They’d do her no good now. If anything, the thoughts would work against her. Make her slow and sloppy. She couldn’t be Jackson the bad-ass if she was filled with regrets, could she?

  She lifted Luke’s hand to her lips and placed a quick kiss on it, her way of both saying good-bye and putting her mind in fight mode. Drawing a line. Maybe the line between life and death.

  “Let’s do this then,” she said, and Jackson kicked the door open and together they went out to meet the end.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Why hadn’t he realized it would be dark? That the only light would be from a full moon and the room they had just left. Why hadn’t it fucking occurred to him?

  “To the trees,” he said to Jackson, noticing that the moonlight shone in a clear circle in the middle of them. “We’ll get to the trees and make our stand there, okay?”

  “Did you see a light—”

  “The trees,” he repeated, barely considering her words, and with her hand on his, started to sprint.

  She ran next to him, easily keeping up pace and maybe they would have had a clear go of it but the first of the zombies spotted them and it too ran, so fast Luke could barely comprehend it. It groaned and leaped at them. Pete turned around, swung forward, and took its head off in one go, the power tool cutting through it in one smooth move. More were coming now though, alerted by the groan, and Luke sped up just as one landed on his back. He let go of Jackson’s hand, shrugged it off, and lifted his ax to take the arm off. But since it was so fucking dark the farther they moved away from the room, he missed, cutting instead through its shoulder.

  “It’s too dark,” he roared. “I can’t see the bastards.”

  A swing sent him reeling back and he scrambled off the ground, just as one landed next to him, snapping its teeth. He grabbed Sebastian’s syringe from his pocket and buried it in the fucker, depressing the top only when it was so far in it’d never come back out.

  “We have to move,” Jackson shouted but he couldn’t see her. “It’s too dark to fight here.”

  “Jack?” he shouted, panic evident in his voice, but she was by him then, her arm pulling him onward.

  They ran, as fast as they could, making for the trees bordering the field, the circle of light that was their last hope. Luke could hear heavy breathing next to him an
d knew that the others, some of them at least, were still alive. But he could hear groans too, and grunts. The zombies were on their heels.

  Luke wanted to keep on running, to just go and go until he heard no more, but he knew he wouldn’t. They’d make their stand at the trees. It was the only option. The zombies were too hungry not to chase them and sooner or later one, then another of them, would falter, until none of them were left. That was unacceptable. So they sprinted until their feet were bathed in the moon’s silver glow.

  “Now,” he shouted and they all halted, breathing ragged, and lifted their weapons.

  The zombies were just yards away now, dozens of them, their faces screwed up into their usual snarls, their teeth snapping, pus oozing. The smell from their wounds warred with that of the fresh vegetation around them and something else…a smell that was familiar to him but he couldn’t remember from where…

  In that moment everything crystallized for Luke, in the way it does when it’s all it can do. He didn’t try to fight against the inevitable and he didn’t try to sweep Jackson behind him. There, in the circle of the moon’s glow, as the dozens of hungry zombies came at them, he knew exactly that this was the point his life had led him to and that at the end this was where Jackson belonged too.

  Next to him.

  Fighting.

  Until it was all over.

  Why had he tried to change that?

  He lifted his ax, freed his gun, and took a deep breath. This was it…

  The firebomb came from nowhere, because obviously there wasn’t anywhere anymore. But come it did and fell right into the middle of the horde, spitting out and throwing its flames everywhere. Luke gasped and shook his head, trying to understand what the hell he was seeing. The zombies screamed, the fire spitting between the front line and the middle, consuming their thin skin and eating them up.

  Another firebomb and then another. One after the other they rained down. Luke looked up to the trees, realizing exactly where they were coming from. And the smell… he knew what it was now… Lynx aftershave.

  “To the truck,” Jackson screamed and though Luke wanted to try and find the person who’d saved them, he knew he had to follow Jackson, to run with her, the five of them still. They sprinted around the fiery horde, up the field back to where they’d been. Escape—wondrous escape—seeming suddenly possible.

  The light of the fire illuminated everything now, and as they darted forward Luke looked behind him to see several of the zombies breaking away from the horde, only small burns on them. They’d never make it to the truck he realized. It was parked on the opposite side of the door they’d come from.

  “Back in the room,” he roared. “They’re still coming.”

  They veered in the other direction and Luke gave it everything he had, speeding up by pumping his arms. It should have been enough, but it wasn’t. Three of them, enraged by the fire, caught him before he could make it into the room, and he was overwhelmed.

  “Luke,” Jackson screamed.

  In the next instant she was pulling one off him, slicing through it with Mandy, and then Pete was there, cutting through the other, and they pulled him out from under the final one, which he shot straight through the face the moment he could reach his gun.

  They scrambled back up, ran, and finally stumbled into the room, slamming the door shut behind them, but of course they didn’t have time to rebar it and so they ran straight for the second door.

  “How many are left?” Sebastian gasped.

  “I don’t know.”

  Jay got open the second door just as the other opened. Maybe a dozen or so zombies spilled into the room and ran straight for them.

  Luke lifted his ax and swung, unable to fire his gun in such a close space for fear of hitting one of the others. It sliced through one of the large zombie’s shoulders, cleaving down until the arm came off. Pus arced and splattered him, but now he knew it was harmless Luke didn’t give a shit. He kicked the zombie aside before embedding the ax in its head—straight through skull bone.

  Another came and again his ax buried itself in the thing’s head. It hit the floor just as a groan sounded. Luke turned to see a massive female zombie coming right at him. She was huge, the biggest Luke had ever seen and he eyed her fleshy folds wondering where the hell his weapon would make a dent. “Come on then,” he roared. “You—”

  But the scream hit him then in tandem with another groan, the sound zinging throughout every cell in his body, and it was so unexpected and so alien that really Luke shouldn’t have recognized it, but of course he did. Jackson was his now. Everything about her was inexorably tied with him.

  Luke whipped around to see the woman he loved crumple against a jagged piece of metal on one of the shelving units, the zombie’s massive hands pushing her against it and saw with perfect clarity the metal slice into her face. Her perfect, pretty face.

  “Jackson, no!” he roared, and he stepped forward, forgetting about the massive female zombie.

  That lapse in attention, that minor slip up was enough for the zombie, and she launched herself on him, her mass sending them both to the floor. Luke actually heard his skull crack against the stone floor at exactly the wrong angle, and pain exploded outward, licking its way through every part of his brain. Nausea reared and blackness colored his vision. He tried to battle against it, but even as he gained a bit of ground and the explosion died just a little, another pain erupted and he heard himself roar.

  He lifted his arms to push against it, to push it away. But it was too late and as he pushed she ripped, and the pain was so intense, the wetness flooding across his body so exact that the blackness rushed back at him, like a tidal wave, and before he could even call out Jackson’s name again it swallowed him.

  And Luke knew no more.

  …

  Time slowed for Jackson when Luke roared. She pushed away from the metal shelf, so that the length embedded in her cheek was pulled out, and kicked out at the male zombie. It stumbled back and in one move she whirled around, taking Mandy with her, straight through its head. Gore arced out across them and only habit, two long years of habit, had her ducking at the last moment to avoid the spray. Its body hit the floor with a wet thud, and Jackson shouldn’t have even noticed how squishy it sounded, but her senses were on high alert—maybe because of the pain now screaming across her cheek, or maybe because of Luke. And yes, the battle raged around her, Pete fighting three or four as far as she could tell. And Sebastian holding one off by the redheaded zombie with a syringe, and Jay stuck in the carnage, but in that moment Jackson didn’t care.

  She jumped over the zombie’s prone body, brushing at the wetness dripping down her face, and almost skidded across the slick floor to where Luke lay, crumpled on his side. As if in slow motion she saw droplets of blood and pus flick up from her feet and hit the back of the huge female zombie on top of him. They dripped downward, falling onto his denim-clad legs and Jackson lifted Mandy to her highest point.

  The waking dead, once a woman, was beyond obese and maybe that should have slowed her down under any normal sort of circumstance, but it didn’t. It hadn’t. She’d gotten Luke and now she turned, teeth bared, blood dripping, emitting a death groan that hit Jackson’s ears in a perfect melody and jumped. One swing. That was all she had. Once chance, and Jackson took it. She brought the machete down with every single bit of power her arms had left in them. Screaming as she did so. It hit the zombie woman on the sweet spot. The place where the skull bone was at its thinnest, and cleaved through.

  But this was a zombie and the cleaving happened so quickly that it didn’t register immediately and it kept coming. Its weight barreled into Jackson’s diminutive frame, knocked the breath right out of her and she let out a muffled “oohh” as they both hit the floor. They skidded along it, gore soaked her back, Jackson turned her head just in time to avoid the spray of blood from the woman’s brain. The zombie growled and Jackson let go of Mandy’s hilt so that she could concentrate on lifting her knees, ev
en though the effort it took was almost too much. But Luke was there, and vulnerable, one of the others would spot him soon—who knew how many had survived the flames? With this thought in mind, Jackson gritted her teeth and pulled her knees into her body, right under the huge roll of fat hanging from the waking dead’s middle. She pulled and then she pushed. The zombie moaned and gurgled, but it was dying now, finally dying, and that was enough for Jackson to heave it from her. It collapsed backward, onto its knees, away from her and Jackson grabbed Mandy from where the machete was embedded in its head, and with the very last of her strength she sliced across the zombie’s neck. Straight through the artery, which sprayed outward, a blood and pus arc, combining with that of the brain to soak the floor around it.

  Jackson vaulted over it, ignoring the zombie’s final gurgles and twitches, ignoring everything really, and fell beside Luke. Her knees didn’t even register the puddle of blood beneath them, or the fact that the groans continued to sound around her.

  He was on his side, almost curled up, and Jackson’s entire body shook as she saw the bite marks across his shoulder. The zombie had gotten a good purchase. There was no doubt about that. Its teeth had sunk in a good inch both above and below. Two perfectly round crescents they should have been, only it had ripped, the way they always did, and all that was left now was a ragged hole about the size of half of a large orange. The hole was leaking blood. Luke’s entire upper body was covered with the stuff. Worse than that though, she could see other fluids. Fluids that weren’t his. And there was skin, rotted bits of skin and flakes of flesh.

  She pulled those zombie parts away, desperately wiping at his wound—even though it was coating her own hands and the slash across her cheek was dripping on him—because she had to clean the wound. The saliva, the zombie saliva was in there and as she frantically wiped at it Sebastian’s words came to her. It’s only about the bite because the bite holds the saliva, and the virus lives there. In the mouth fluids…