EAT SLAY LOVE

by Jesse Petersen

  “Yeah, I think we can manage that,” I chuckled. “Contact us when you have more information on where we should go.”

  “Yeah, are you in Kathleen’s camp? Outside the northeast platform?”

  Now Kathleen stepped up and quickly gave my dad some coordinates, I’m guessing to the camp we were at.

  “Great. We’ll see you soon, Chickadee.”

  Kathleen laughed as she handed the receiver back over to me. “I think he’s talking to you.”

  I nodded as I took it back. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll wait for your call with the details. Can’t wait to be home!”

  My dad signed off and I set the receiver back on the machine and snapped it off as I stared at David.

  “We did it,” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “We can say that after we get across the Wall and into the regular world.”

  Kathleen nodded. “Yeah, he’s right. It’s going to be hard. Your dad didn’t say it, but we haven’t been able to get anyone across in over a month and a half. The security is brutal.”

  “So we might not be able to get in?” I repeated.

  Dave shook his head and the scary thing was, he actually looked defeated. We’d spent so much time debating this place, thinking about it, now that we were here, it wasn’t exactly what we’d planned.

  “Come on, you two!” McCray snapped.

  Everyone turned to look at him. He pushed back from the table and leaned over it like a weird general about to lead his troops into battle.

  “Did the Americans give up when they took over Vietnam?” he asked.

  I wrinkled my brow. “Um—”

  “And when Lead Tongue got lost on the way to Rockfest ’99, did we give up?”

  Dave blinked. “I have no idea. Um… no?”

  “No. We drove around until we found some groupies who told us the way. Also gave us wicked good hand jobs. So you can’t give up now!” McCray said, wrapping his knuckles on the table with force. “We’ve got to find a way to get this cure past the Wall. Who’s with me?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer; he just turned and ran from the main room of the bunker and out of our sight. We all watched him go.

  “Um, what’s down that hall?” Dave finally asked.

  Kathleen was shaking her head. “Just barracks.”

  “Good,” Nicole sighed. “He’ll probably forget what he was doing when he gets in there and take a nap. But his point is a good one. We can’t give up. What you guys have is just too important.”

  Kathleen sat down in the place McCray had vacated. “So is it really a cure?”

  I nodded. “It stopped David from turning into a zombie. And the man who made it…”

  I trailed off as I thought of the madman who had all but convinced me to take his side against Dave’s.

  “Well, he was pretty strenuous that he’d used it on other zombies with similar results.”

  Kathleen rubbed her eyes. “Then we have to get you and it across the border as soon as possible. You three stay here, eat as much as you’d like, and take a nap in our barracks if you can. You’re going to need the rest. I’ll work on the specifics from our side of the Wall.”

  I stared at her as she got up and motioned her people to move out with her. Apparently she hadn’t been lying. We weren’t prisoners here.

  “Hey, why are you doing this?” I asked as she reached the exit. “I mean, you don’t know us. We could be totally full of shit.”

  Kathleen turned toward us and shrugged. “I’d rather help you and find out you were full of shit later than not do it and lose a chance to end this madness.” She smiled. “Plus, I don’t think you’re full of shit. McCray may be, but you aren’t. See you later.”

  Then they all left and the three of us were alone.

  “So what do we do?” I asked.

  Nicole shrugged. “Well, you two can nap if you want, but I’m going to take a look around.” She dug into the bag she’d carried in and grabbed her camera. “And get some shots. If we do get smuggled across the border, the video I’ve taken will be worth millions.”

  She smiled and then went in the direction that Kathleen and her people had gone. Which left me and Dave.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand and practically dragging me toward the barracks. “You haven’t slept for twenty-four hours. And it sounds like we’re going to need the rest in the next twenty-four.”

  I followed him. In the barracks, it turned out Nicole was right. McCray was already completely passed out, sprawled across a cot in the corner. I took another. Dave picked the one beside mine and lay so that he faced me.

  “How did you know I didn’t sleep?” I asked as exhaustion overtook me.

  He laughed. “I guess I’m just that good. Sleep well.”

  And I did. Until all hell broke loose.

  Remember to care for yourself while you’re caring for others. Otherwise, you might get shot or something.

  When the shouting started, I was dead asleep. Not undead asleep; just put the guns down and breathe, okay?

  The yelling echoing from the not-so-distant distance roused me and the smell of cordite from guns firing filled my nostrils with acrid warning. I was fully awake in less than a second.

  Old habits. If you don’t wake on a hair trigger in the apocalypse, you pretty much go zombie the first or second night because you didn’t hear your front door being broken down by a shambling mob of the living dead. Oops, should have invested in that alarm system, I guess.

  I sat up but found myself in complete darkness. And not “someone took pity on me and turned off the lights so I could sleep better” darkness; I mean total pitch blackness that could only mean every light in the bunker was out. And that meant that at some point something or someone had taken out the generators that supplied the dim, bluish light in the compound. This was one of the disadvantages to being underground.

  That and the worms. Gross.

  “Dave?” I whispered into the darkness, but there was no response. “David?” I repeated.

  Still nothing and now my heart started to pound. Dave had an even sharper “wakey-wakey” response than I did. And it had only been made more intense by his zombie-cure experience. Seriously, the sound of the breeze against a solitary leaf would sometimes wake him up. So the fact that he hadn’t said my name and tried to bring me around was a little bit freaky.

  I found the edge of the cot and slid my feet to the floor. I was still wearing my boots (in a zombie apocalypse, sleep with your boots on… just another handy-dandy hint). I felt around on the ground with my feet, but he wasn’t down there, crouched and at the ready or even incapacitated in some unknown way.

  I did manage to find the foot of his cot and reached out to it. I felt rumpled blankets, a really flat pillow, but otherwise…

  Empty.

  “David?” I asked again, this time louder.

  Shit, where was he? And why did I feel so foggy and have such a screwed-up taste in my mouth? Like Rainbow Brite barfed in there, a combination of sweet and dead cat.

  I wanted to run from the room to find my husband, but I knew better. That would only lead to falling down, open wounds, broken bones, infection (regular or zombie) and possible death. So I had to calm down, think rationally, and just stay cool.

  I got up and felt around with my hands and feet as I inched my way toward the hallway. I went toward the sounds of activity—and there were plenty. And the closer I got, the more intense and desperate they sounded.

  Shit was clearly going down.

  “Get a light, get a light,” I heard someone yelling. It was a familiar voice, too. “He’s been shot.”

  I froze and then all thoughts of calm fled my mind. It was Nicole’s voice talking. And she sounded panicked, like it was someone she knew who was hurt.

  David. David!

  I stopped worrying about stubbing my toe or breaking my arm and bolted through the dirt hallway. About halfway down someone managed to get a light into the bunker and I could finall
y follow that back into the main room where we’d eaten just a few hours before.

  A crowd stood around the table, jostling one another as they tried to help or even just see what was happening.

  “Give me something to clean this wound!” another voice barked out. It was Kathleen.

  “How badly is he hurt?” I burst out as I elbowed my way through the group.

  I expected to see my husband laid out on the table, fighting for his life. But it wasn’t David.

  It was McCray. His leather jacket had been torn off and his black button-down shirt, stripped open so that it gaped and revealed a skinny white chest. And a hole the size of a quarter right in the gut.

  “Sarah,” Nicole breathed and yanked me into an expected hug. “Thank God you’re awake. That stuff wore off.”

  “Stuff?” I repeated as I pulled from her arms and watched as a few of the rebels worked on McCray. He moaned painfully and a couple of others moved to hold him down. “What are you talking about? What happened?”

  Kathleen glanced up at me and then went back to her work.

  “We were ambushed by troops.” She shook her head as she put pressure on the wound to try to stop the bleeding. “I knew they were trying to tap into our signals. I told Carter that a dozen times. They must have heard the coordinates I gave your father. They slipped in and gassed the compound.”

  I staggered back. “Gassed?”

  “I’m sorry I have to concentrate,” Kathleen snapped. “He’s losing a lot of blood.”

  I stared. McCray was pale and he looked at me with wide, glassy eyes.

  “Oh shit,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” Nicole said as she dragged me away from table so that the others could do their work.

  “Where’s David?” I asked her.

  She turned her face away and every fiber and nerve in my body went totally numb. I grabbed for her arms out of pure instinct and shook her hard.

  “Where is David?” I repeated, louder.

  Kathleen was the one who answered. “They took him.”

  Her tone was clipped and no nonsense; she never even looked up from McCray.

  Nicole caught me as my knees buckled and I nearly went down on the floor in a heap.

  “Breathe,” she ordered me in a no-nonsense tone. “We think that’s why they didn’t just kill everyone. If they did overhear our coordinates, they probably also overheard everything you told your parents about Dave and your cure and all that. We think they stormed the camp and knocked everyone out so that they could find you and Dave. Then they probably intended to kill everyone else, only…”

  She trailed off and tears filled her eyes.

  “What?” I almost screamed.

  “Turns out one side effect of being a total junkie is that McCray isn’t all that affected by knock-out gas. Shit, it’s like smelling flowers to him. So he didn’t go down and he…” She blinked a few times and her eyes cleared. “Apparently he fought back to keep them from taking you guys. They shot him in the fight before they just bolted out of here with David.”

  I staggered from her supporting arms and spun back toward McCray, laying on that table. He looked at me.

  “Sorry… it… didn’t work out… so well,” he croaked. His accent was even heavier when he was, you know, totally dying.

  I moved to his side and grabbed for his hand. “You tried to save us,” I whispered. “Shit man, that’s way more than most people try to do in zombie hell. Thank you.”

  Kathleen sighed and backed away. “That’s the best I can do with what we have. The bleeding is stopped but…”

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the rocker. “But?”

  “I can’t get the bullet out. He needs a real doctor with real equipment.” Kathleen shook her head. “We’ve got to get him over the Wall.”

  I rubbed my eyes. I had to shake off my fears and my freak-outs and pull it together. I had to get a plan.

  “Okay. Have we heard from my dad yet?” I asked as I cleared my head the best I could.

  Kathleen nodded. “Right after we all woke up and realized what had happened, he called through. We switched to a different frequency since our security had obviously been compromised, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that didn’t work this time any better than it did last time.”

  “So he knows our situation?” I asked. She nodded. “And how much is he freaking out?”

  “Your dad? Well, he’s not much of a freaking-out kind of guy,” Kathleen said with a shadow of a smile. “But he’s not happy that we were ambushed or that David’s been taken. Relieved that you’re okay.”

  I shook my head. Okay was relative. Without David, I wasn’t sure it was possible anymore.

  “So in the midst of all this, did he tell you if he worked out a way to get us across the Wall?” I asked.

  Again Kathleen nodded. “Yeah, they have a plan to get you guys through to the other side with your cure. He didn’t want to give me too many details since we had no idea anymore who was listening, even with the new frequency. We’re supposed to meet them at a rendezvous spot in two hours. A place along the Wall that has the fewest guards.”

  I glanced at McCray. “Can he make it that long?”

  Kathleen shrugged and cast a furtive glance at the rocker. “I-I think so, but who knows.” Her gaze slipped downward. “I’m not a doctor.”

  I tilted my head. “What are you?”

  “Huh?”

  “What were you?” I corrected myself.

  She smiled. It was a nice smile. “I was a high school math teacher.”

  “Well, you did a fucking amazing job, math teacher,” I said.

  She smiled, but I saw the strain that being the leader of a rebel faction put on her. Fortunately, chaos tends to bring out the best in some people. I hoped it would in me. David needed my best.

  I turned away and looked around the room. A couple of Kathleen’s people were monitoring McCray, but the rest stood in small groups. There were fewer than twenty of them in total and that included the addition of our little band of misfits. Not exactly a big force to fight the freakin’ army. I was going to have to use mind power, not brute force on this one.

  “So what do we know about the operation that took David?”

  One of the men in the group stared at me. “What do you mean, what do we know?”

  I shrugged. “You guys have been battling it out with these people in some kind of cold war for months, right?”

  Kathleen nodded. “Sometimes hot, but mostly cold since they stopped coming out and shooting at us on a regular basis, yes.”

  I shrugged. “Then I know you have information about them and the way they operate.”

  “Some,” one of the men admitted slowly.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Some” was better than nothing. “I need to find out where they could possibly be going with David. Across the Wall right away, or do they have some kind of holding area on this side?”

  Kathleen stared at me. “W-Well, there’s a barracks they keep here in the red zone. It’s the only military compound outside the Wall. I would guess they’ll take him there for interrogation, maybe even decontamination and then decide if they’re going to take him inside.”

  I nodded, though my mind was racing with thoughts of what “decontamination” might entail. Especially for a person who had been bitten and cured.

  “Okay. Any educated guesses about how long he’ll be held at this facility?” I was met with a small sea of blank expressions and I clenched my fists at my sides in utter frustration. “Come on, people. This isn’t that hard. You must know these things? What kind of rebel alliance are you? This is your Death Star! Help me blow it the hell up!”

  The same guy who had answered me first shook his head. “I’ve seen them hold people there as little as three hours and as long as twenty-four.”

  “And how long has it been since he was taken?”

  The same guy shrugged. “Almost an hour.”

  “Great, thanks, er�
��,” I said with a nod toward him.

  “Rick,” he supplied, though his tone was more question than answer.

  “Rick. Thanks.” Now I turned toward Nicole. “I need you to do something for me.”

  She tilted her head. “What?”

  Carefully I slipped my hand under my T-shirt and found the vial of cure I had been carrying for over a month now. For the first time, I slipped it from around my neck and held it out to the very same reporter I had not trusted less than twenty-four hours before. But things were different now.

  Everything was different.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” she asked, backing away like she feared the stuff would burn her face off or something.

  I shut my eyes and tried to keep my voice calm.

  “This has to get across the border. And so does McCray or he’ll die. So I need for you to take them both there and meet my dad.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kathleen interrupted as she stepped up next to Nicole and both of them stared at me like I was a crazy lady just released from Asylum Island (it’s like Candyland, only prettier).

  “Yeah,” Nicole said. “You are going to the rendezvous point with me, so you can hold on to that freaky purple shit yourself!”

  “No,” I said softly and grabbed her hand to shove the liquid into her palm. She closed her fingers around it with a bit of urging from me. Okay, so I squashed her fingers until she had no choice. “I’m not.”

  “You have lost your fucking mind,” Kathleen said with a roll of her eyes. “Of course you’re going.”

  “I’m not.”

  I looked at McCray from the corner of my eye. He had listed into unconsciousness and that was probably for the best considering how painful that gut shot had to be. Even our coked-up rocker had limits, it seemed.

  I shut my eyes and tried not to think of my husband’s limits and if they were being pushed further than McCray’s.

  “I’m going after David.”

  See the beauty all around you. Like in night-vision goggles, a fully loaded AK-47, and a souped-up SUV.