by Kody Boye
“Hey,” he said, sliding up alongside her. “Erik take care of your hands?”
She lifted them in response. Fresh, if somewhat-dirtied bandages tipped her delicate fingers. “Who made these?” she asked, as if completely oblivious to Dakota’s previous question.
“I did.”
“You did?” she asked, looking up at him. The same twinkle remained in her eyes.
“Uh huh,” he said, leaning forward. “Oooh!”
“What?”
“I didn’t know they started to grow.”
“Yep,” Alexis said, leaning forward so her and Dakota’s head were level with one another. “They look nice.”
“Thanks.”
Alexis stood. She started to stretch her arms over her head, but stopped, grunting and dropping a hand to her stomach.
“Are you ok?” Dakota asked, alarmed.
“It’s the baby,” Alexis said. “Wanna feel?”
Dakota shook his head, not wanting to intrude on such a personal moment, but was forced to do so anyway. Alexis pressed his hand against her stomach, holding it steady while she took steady breaths in, then out.
A pressure kicked against his hand. “Feel?” she asked.
“I felt it,” he said, though wasn’t sure how to take such a thing emotionally. “How old is it?”
“Five-and-a-half months.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“I was going in to see the day this happened.”
Dakota pulled his hand away from her stomach, slid it back into his pocket and turned to look out the window, sighing as he saw the slowly-growing wave of zombies advancing upon the asylum.
“So many,” Alexis said. “What are they going to do?”
“Lure them away with dummy bullets,” Dakota said, looking up at the roof. He half-expected to hear the sound of the rifle being fired, then remembered they most likely had silencers attached to their guns. “At least, that’s what Jamie said.”
“Is he the one in charge?”
“He is now.”
“There was someone else?”
“Uh huh. The sergeant. He… uh…killed himself…yesterday morning.”
Alexis grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
“I guess it’s a good thing, in a way. His cancer was eating him alive.”
“My grandpa died from cancer,” Alexis said, stepping away from the window. “It doesn’t seem like a nice way to go.”
“No,” Dakota said. “It doesn’t.”
The two of them continued to make their way down the hall, occasionally stopping when Alexis took notice of something and wanted to examine it further. Most of these things were cracks in the walls or the occasional scar on a door, but one thing in particular Dakota took note of—a portrait, one of a man seated at a desk with a skull at his side.
“That’s creepy,” Alexis said.
I don’t know how she can find a picture creepy these days, Dakota thought. It seems useless to think that a picture’s creepy.
“Did Jamie assign you a room yet?” he decided to ask, wanting to steer them away from the picture.
“Not yet,” Alexis said. “Was he supposed to?”
“He will,” Dakota said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
By the time night came and dinner had passed, Dakota collapsed into bed, exhausted and almost unable to keep his eyes open. Nearby, Jamie stood rummaging through a wardrobe, combing through rows upon rows of shirts, suits and coats. At one point, it seemed as though he was going to start pulling them out to try them on, but he eventually pulled himself away and tore his shirt off his head.
“What were you looking for?” Dakota asked.
“A shirt,” Jamie said. “To wear to bed.”
“You don’t have to wear a shirt to bed, silly.”
“It gets cold here,” Jamie said, sliding into bed and under the covers. He leaned forward, braced a hand over the lantern, then blew it out, thrusting the room into darkness. “You ok with this?”
“I have to be now,” Dakota chuckled.
“I can relight it if you want.”
“No, it’s good, Jamie. Thank you though.”
Jamie resituated himself in the bed and wrapped an arm around Dakota’s waist, sighing as a chill blew into the room. “Damn old building,” he whispered. “Damn stupid ventilation.”
“It’s not as bad when we have each other,” Dakota said.
“No. It isn’t.”
Dakota smiled and closed his eyes.
“We’re going out tomorrow,” Jamie said.
“To do what?”
“A supply run. I want you to come with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Jamie whispered, nestling his head in Dakota’s neck. “I trust you more than anyone else here.”
Dakota wasn’t sure how to take that.
He didn’t bother to try.
Jamie adjusted the machinegun against his arm.
“I’m nervous,” Dakota said. He reached forward and brushed his hand against Jamie’s upper arm.
“I don’t blame you. I am too.”
Tightening his grip on his pistol, Dakota raised a hand to shield his eyes from the bright sun and scanned the area, looking for any stores they could possibly raid while also keeping an eye out for any zombies that may be around. What appeared to be a small supermarket lay in the distance, along with what was easily identifiable as a dentistry office, but he wasn’t sure it would be wise to raid the latter without Erik’s supervision.
“You see that?” Dakota asked, pointing.
“I see it.”
“I’m also talking about the dentist’s office.”
“I saw that too.”
“It’d probably be a good idea to bring Erik back here later.”
“I agree,” Jamie said, gesturing him along. “For now though, let’s just see if we can find anything useful. We’ll radio in Kirn and Wills if we find something.”
“You sure it was safe to leave them in charge of the jeep?” Dakota asked.
“I hope so,” Jamie sighed. “Otherwise we’re going to have a long walk back.”
An hour and three boxes of processed snacks, canned fruits and toiletries later, Dakota wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead and watched Jamie lift a portable radio from his belt and to his lips. “Kirn and Wills,” he said. “Kirn and Wills. Are you there? Over.”
“We’re here. Over,” Wills replied.
“Me and Dakota are at Patty’s Convenience Store on Barrel Street. We’ve got three boxes of food and toiletries here. Requesting pickup. Over.”
“We’re on our way,” Kirn said. “We haven’t heard in from the other two civilians, Corporal. Over.”
“Check in with them and get back to me.” Jamie set the radio down and smiled at Dakota, flashing his neat, pearly-white teeth. It didn’t take long for the radio to buzz. “Report, over.”
“They’re fine, but still looking. We dropped them off on Jenson Avenue. Over.”
“I don’t think there’s ever been much of anything over there,” Jamie shrugged, glancing at Dakota, who only shook his head in response. “Come on over here and pick us up, then we’ll go over to pick them up. Over and out.”
“Over and out,” Kirn replied.
“They did get back to them,” Dakota said, “right?”
“‘Course they did. Kirn and Wills are dumb, but they’re not stupid. They know not to mess with me.”
“This would be the perfect opportunity to do it if they did.”
“I know.” Jamie hooked the radio to his belt and stepped forward, setting both hands on Dakota’s hips. “Have I ever told you how hot you are?”
“I’m not hot,” Dakota chuckled, trying to slip out of Jamie’s grip.
“Yeah you are. Fuck, Dakota. You’ve got eyes to die for.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I never get tired of looking into them,” Jamie said, leaning forward to plant a kiss on the corner of
Dakota’s mouth. “Or kissing you.”
“Stop it,” Dakota laughed. “You’re tickling me.”
“Tickling?” Jamie grinned. “Like this?”
Dakota laughed as Jamie assaulted the curve of his neck and underarms. He stumbled back into a table and fell onto it ass-first, but somehow managed to remain upright and not fall backward.
“We really shouldn’t be screwing around like this,” Dakota smiled. “We’ll just attract unnecessary attention to ourselves.”
“Good point.” Jamie offered a hand and helped Dakota off the table, but not before planting a gentle kiss to his cheek.
A gunshot went off in the distance.
“What was that?” Dakota asked.
The radio on Jamie’s belt beeped. “Report,” Jamie said. “Over.”
“Gunshots coming from Steve and Ian’s direction. Over.”
Dakota’s heart stopped beating.
Steve, he thought. Ian.
“Hurry over here,” Jamie said, the tone in his voice rising as more gunshots continued to go off. “We don’t want them to—”
Dakota never heard the rest of Jamie’s sentence. He bolted without a second thought.
“What the hell are we gonna do?” Steve asked, bracing himself as he fired another shot into the head of a nearby zombie. “There’s got to be twenty, maybe thirty of them.”
“We’ve got full clips,” Ian grunted. He popped two shots off, swearing as one of them missed. “For the most part.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“I never said it was!”
Steve turned his head to scan the road for anywhere they could possibly take shelter. He caught sight of a candy store and grabbed Ian’s arm. “Look.”
“What?”
“The candy store.”
“That’s the stupidest fucking idea I’ve ever heard!”
“You wanna try to break into one of these banks? Or how about the parking garage, huh?”
“Just shut the fuck up and go!” Ian cried.
Steve ran.
“NO!” Jamie cried, jabbing both of his arms under Dakota’s and forcing him back against his chest. “NO, DAKOTA!”
“LET GO OF ME!” Dakota screamed, kicking the air as he was momentarily lifted off the ground before being pressed against Jamie’s chest. “LET GO!”
“You’re not running off on me.”
“They’re my fucking friends!”
“I know they are,” Jamie said, tightening his grip. “It’s ok, Dakota. Kirn and Wills are going to make their way over here, then we’re going to go pick them up.”
Dakota slipped from Jamie’s arms and bolted away.
“GET BACK HERE!” Jamie screamed. “DAKOTA! NO!”
Three streets down, three streets down, three streets down.
Dakota pumped his legs as fast as he could. Sweat running into his eyes and hair sticking to his face, he slashed a hand at his brow and jumped over an upended fire hydrant, grimacing as he landed on the street instead of on the sidewalk he’d originally been running on. The gunshots continued to go off—each like the sound of a coffin slamming into the pavement—but eventually stopped.
If anything could be worse in this situation, it had to be the silence.
NO!
He was only two streets away.
“IT’S LOCKED!” Steve screamed.
Ian shoved him out of the way. He braced his hands against the walls, lifted his leg, then slammed his foot into the door not once, but twice. The wood on the side of the door splintered and Ian kicked a third and fourth time before relinquishing his hold on the wall. Then, in a pseudo-football manner, he crouched, reared his shoulder up, and went flying into the door, which shattered inward and sent him flying three feet into the room.
Looking back over his shoulder to find the zombies slowly approaching, Steve dove over the front counter, sighing when Ian joined him a moment later. “You play football in school?” he managed to ask, laughing at the absurdity of the question.
“Used to,” Ian grunted. “Ow.”
“You’re going to feel that in the morning.”
“If there is a morning.”
“There will be,” Steve said. He lifted the radio, about to click in and report on their situation, but stopped when he heard the sounds of two men fighting. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“DAKOTA FUCKING RAN!” Jamie screamed. “THAT LITTLE FUCKING BASTARD!”
Shit, Steve thought.
When Dakota rounded the corner, he half-expected there to be ten, maybe a dozen zombies. What he wasn’t expecting, however, was the throng of two or three-dozen, all in various states of decay.
Fucking hell.
He clicked the safety off his gun and fired.
The first corpse went down without any difficulty. Most of the zombies continued toward the candy store, now obviously their destination and where Steve and Ian had to have taken shelter, but a few turned and began to make their way forward. One in particular—an elderly man with half his face charred off and most of one arm reduced to bone—stumbled forward, then broke out into a full-on sprint.
“FUCK!” Dakota screamed.
He turned, ran to the opposite side of the street, and took cover behind a car. He wasted no time in raising his gun and shooting at the man’s legs, knowing full well that he was more likely to take the creature down if he was first able to incapacitate it. The first shot struck the man in the hip, which sent him stumbling to the side in a spray of bone and blood, while the second hit him in the groin. Dakota had but one brief moment to feel a pang of unease before his next two shots struck the man near the kneecap.
The corpse went down silently.
A jeep came tearing down the road. Dakota fired three more shots before the vehicle tore around the corner and the man in the passenger seat fired a spray of machinegun bullets into the crowd.
“YOU FUCKING IDIOT!” Jamie screamed, throwing himself from the vehicle and toward the car. “YOU COULD’VE GOTTEN YOURSELF KILLED!”
Dakota fired a shot into the head of the zombie he’d just taken down. “I distracted them.”
“YOU ONLY DISTRACTED SOME OF THEM! YOU COULD’VE GOTTEN YOURSELF KILLED!”
“Don’t yell at me,” Dakota mumbled.
“WHAT?”
“I SAID DON’T FUCKING YELL AT ME!”
The roar of gunfire ceased. Steve and Ian ducked out of the candy store and began to head for the jeep.
“Thank God,” Dakota said, running forward and jumping into Steve’s arms. “You’re alive.”
“We’re ok,” Steve said, brushing tears out of Dakota’s eyes. “Ian here played sumo and broke the door down.”
“I’m not big enough to be a sumo wrestler,” Ian protested.
Dakota didn’t care. He started bawling instead.
“You’re not going out anymore,” Jamie said.
“What?”
Jamie turned, narrowing his eyes at him. “You heard me.”
“You can’t keep me here,” Dakota said. “He’s my fucking friend.”
“You ran off when I explicitly told you not to. You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“You should’ve come with me then.”
“I was waiting for backup,” Jamie growled, tightening his hand into a fist. “You’re lucky Kirn was able to haul ass like he did. I thought I was going to see you get eaten.”
“I can shoot a gun.”
“That doesn’t mean you couldn’t have been overwhelmed!”
Dakota said nothing. Jamie shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, then turned to look at the window. “You’re not going out anymore. That’s final.”
“Jamie,” Dakota said. “I just—”
“THAT’S FINAL!” Jamie roared. “Leave if you’re going to argue with me!”
“Jamie, please, don’t—”
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”
Dakota turned and left without another word.
“He fucking ye
lled at me!” Dakota cried, slamming his fist into the wall. “All I wanted to do was help you and Ian!”
“You can’t blame him for yelling at you,” Steve said, reaching forward to set a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!”
“Ok! Ok!” Steve cried, lifting both hands in the air. “God, Dakota. It’s all right.”
“No it isn’t! I was scared out of my fucking mind and he yelled at me!”
“You scared the hell out of him. You scared all of us, Dakota. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen.”
“Oh, so now you’re on his side?”
“No. I’m not.” Steve took a breath. He waited for Dakota to say something further, but nodded when he didn’t. “See? There. Take a breath, calm yourself down.”
“I am calm,” Dakota snapped.
“You’re anything but calm, bud. You look like a nuclear warhead that’s just about to explode.”
Sobbing, Dakota sat on his bed and tried as hard as he could to keep the tears from coming, but couldn’t restrain them. Between the realization that his best friend could have died and the harsh way that Jamie had spoken to him, he was surprised he wasn’t crying worse.
“It’s ok,” Steve said, wrapping his arms around Dakota.
“It’s not ok,” Dakota bawled, burying his face in Steve’s chest. “I fucked up, Steve! I fucked up!”
“Ok. So maybe you did. Let’s say you did, but that doesn’t change the fact that we all do it sometimes. You can’t beat yourself up over it.”
“I can’t help it!”
“Yes you can.” Steve pushed Dakota away from him. “Look at me, Koda. Look at me and tell me that you can’t stop crying.”
He couldn’t. Such a response stopped Dakota’s tears instantly.
“See?” Steve continued. “Me and Ian are fine.”
“I fucked up,” Dakota said, shaking his head. “Jamie’s mad at me.”
“He’ll get over it,” Steve said.
At that moment, Dakota felt guiltier than he had in his entire life.
Jamie barely looked at him at dinner. Between eating, addressing Kirn and Wills and just generally keeping to himself, his head hardly even turned in Dakota’s general direction throughout the meal. The few times their eyes happened to meet, Jamie averted his gaze almost instantly. Not only did it strike a dull pain in Dakota’s heart, it also kept him from seeing the true look in his eyes.
