by Tracey Ward
“Rifles, yeah. I’m a pretty good shot. Why?”
“If it’s a vehicle, they’re human and we’d be better off with more firepower on that roof.”
I sling my bow onto my back and put my hands out. “Then give me a rifle.”
All of us but the children and some of the women, including Meredith and Evey who are too valuable as nurses to risk losing, head to the rooftop. It’s raining hard but there’s not much wind so those shooting arrows will have a chance at some accuracy. There are eight of us up here, and from what I can see, six of them down there. The vehicle is actually a big flatbed truck with what looks like a large tank on the back. Four men stand around it, one with a giant hose that they are aiming at the zombies now rushing toward them. Suddenly fire erupts from the hose and the infected are incinerated. They continue to run toward the flame, toward the meat in the back of the truck, and one by one they catch fire and eventually fall dead to the ground. It takes only a matter of minutes for the twenty or so that had been dancing between here and Safeway to be laid to ashy rest.
“There go our natural defenses,” Mitch, one of the roof guards, mutters.
Taylor curses and runs his hand over his face. He looks at Jordan and exclaims, “Homemade flame throwers?! Seriously? What’s in them to burn that hot that fast?”
“Probably jet fuel.”
“Wow.”
Jordan smirks, but there’s no humor in it. “They must have read the manual.”
I’m not even going to ask what that means. I am too stunned by what I’m seeing. The gray, rainy afternoon is still lit up orange by the fire they continue to spread over the charred remains. I’m rethinking my theory that nothing cleanses like fire because the massive heap of melted flesh lying beside that truck looks anything but clean and pure. It’s a new entry in my Diary of Zombie Horrors, right after the one where Dee ate Sara. That’s still hanging steady at number one.
With the undead out of the way, another vehicle rolls into the parking lot. The group just doubled with the arrival of the giant snow plow. Did these people raid the city for government vehicles? I’m thinking that if I asked, Jordan and Taylor would know the definitive answer and how they would have gone about it as well, but I’m not in the mood.
The Fire Truck stays behind while the snow plow rolls toward us. When they are about halfway through the parking lot, we all raise our weapons and they halt. A man stands up in the back with his hands raised and shouts to us.
“Hey, whoa, we don’t want any trouble!” he cries, and I don’t like his tone. It’s almost mocking in its geniality. “We’re just looking for supplies!”
“Looks like you’ve got plenty!” Cal calls back. “It’s best you keep moving!”
“We need guns, that’s all! Trying to defend our families! Our children!”
“Bull,” I mutter, and I hear Taylor grunt in agreement.
The group is all men, and I suppose in some circles that makes sense; send the men out to search for supplies while the women hold down the fort, but looking at this crew, I don’t get a real family vibe from them. Maybe it’s the flame thrower. I don’t know.
“You plan on giving up anything in trade?!” Cal shouts, and I really hope he’s not considering doing business with these guys.
“Afraid I don’t have anything, no! We don’t have much!”
“Then I can’t help ya! You’ll need to move on elsewhere!”
There’s a tense silence and I watch as the guy on the back of the plow rubs his hand over his neck. He’s obviously talking to the guys he’s riding with, discussing their options. I don’t imagine leaving is one on the table.
“You sure you can’t share? Not even a little?!”
“We have nothing here for you! You want to protect your family, I’m protecting mine! Move along!”
“That’s a shame.”
The man is no longer shouting and I barely hear his words over the rain. He jumps down from the plow, followed by the men riding in back with him, and a couple of the men from the flat bed join them. The flat bed pulls forward, inching slowly closer to the building and the snow plow reverses, passing it on the way to the end of the parking lot.
“Oh hell!” Mitch cries and kneels down to take aim at the plow.
“Mitch, what are you doing?” Cal demands, his voice angry. “We don’t fire on the living, you know that.”
“They’re gonna ram the entrance, Cal!”
He’s right. The plow makes it to the back of the lot while the flat bed creeps along to the side, giving the plow a clean shot at the front entrance. They’re going to ram the building, bust through as much of our defenses as they can and use the flame thrower on the inside.
“If they burn the building down,” I say, mostly to myself. “They won’t get any of the gear.”
“They won’t get it if they don’t burn it down either,” Jordan replies. “They’ll kill us as we flee the burning building.”
“If they can’t have it, no one can,” Taylor says roughly.
We hear the engine of the plow rev a few times and I know it’s a last chance warning. We don’t budge. The plow is kicked into gear and it begins its slow but powerful approach at the front entrance. Mitch ignores Cal’s protests and fires on the driver of the plow. He can’t get a clean shot between the small window, the rain and the vehicles movements.
“Cease fire!” Cal cries, as pretty much all of us fire on the oncoming plow. “We do not fire on the living.”
Okay, I won’t fire on the living, Cal.
“Tires! Tires! Tires!” I scream as I lift my brand new rifle, point it at the tires and pull the trigger.
Nothing happens.
This, this right here, is why I hate guns.
“To hell with this,” I mutter and drop the rifle, letting it clatter to the ground. I half expect the disloyal thing to go off with the impact just to spite me, but it remains utterly useless.
I pull my bow off my back, notch a chisel point and wait for my shot. The plow is almost to the building and I pull back hard.
“You’re going to shoot an industrial tire with an arrow?” Taylor mutters as he waits for the shot as well, his rifle poised and ready.
Good luck to him.
“It can pierce a black bear’s skull,” I say. “I think it can handle a Michellin.”
“Now!” he shouts.
We fire at the same time and the front left tire blows. The plow veers dangerously, careening to the side, and its weight overtakes it, flipping it onto its side. It skids across the pavement, coming to a slow stop right in front of the building. The men at the end of the parking lot stare, stunned into silence. The Fire Truck peels away from the building, away from our bullets, and I can smell rubber wafting up to us on the air mixing with the sickly smell of charred flesh.
“Do we want a flame thrower?” Taylor asks, his rifle already trained on it.
“No,” Cal replies, his voice angry. “Let them go.”
Cal tells us all to stay on the roof and remain on guard for the rest of the afternoon. He’ll pull some of us down later to rest and we’ll start swapping out, but there will be double guard duty for the next few days and nights.
I glance at Jordan and he raises his eyebrows at me. I nod my head quickly and then continue scanning the roads around us, watching for movement. We’ve made an agreement, though, and I’m more than ready to honor it.
It’s time for us to get the hell out of here.
***
Jordan and I end up staying on the roof all afternoon and are sent down to sleep at the same time, just after dinner. We’ll be awakened again right before dawn to swap out with Taylor and Mitch. I’m exhausted from being on high alert all afternoon, and when we crawl into bed, I feel like I could fall right to sleep, but Jordan has other plans.
“When are we going?” he asks immediately, and I am actually surprised by the question.
“Um,” I say, searching my tired brain for an answer. “I don’t know. In a c
ouple of days, I guess? I mean, we can’t really leave them right now, right?”
“No,” he responds, shaking his head. “They need us for the extra guard right now. I wouldn’t feel right leaving them short-handed.”
“Okay, so when Cal calls off the extra guard.”
“Or a couple of days. Whichever comes first.”
“Deal.”
“Deal. You don’t want to pinky swear on it this time?” he asks with a grin.
I chuckle and shake my head. “That was a promise. This is a deal. Two completely different things.”
“Your rules are confusing.”
“I don’t have a lot of them. Fewer than your zombie rules.”
“Doesn’t matter how many I have, you don’t follow them.”
“I do too!” I cry indignantly.
“Really?” he asks, his eyebrow cocked. “How’s your leg?”
“Oh! Too soon.”
“Sorry,” he says with a laugh. “But I told you, walls are not your friend.”
“Neither are you,” I mutter, rubbing my hand absently over the scar on my thigh.
Jordan sees it and frowns. “I really am sorry, Ali. I was only joking.”
I nod and smile faintly at him. “I know.”
His eyes are on mine, studying me.
“I was scared,” he says suddenly. “When they said over the walkie that it was you, that you were down, I was scared.”
“Me too,” I admit.
He swallows and looks away, toward the ceiling.
“When they were taking care of you, I started thinking that I should leave you here. That you’d be safer here than out there with me.”
I feel my heart sink knowing he wanted to leave me here and I understand that it’s hypocritical since I thought the exact same thing when we first showed up.
“When did you stop thinking that?”
“Today, when those trucks rolled up.”
“Wow,” I mumble. “You haven’t wanted me with you for a while.”
He turns toward me again and I look back at him, letting him see the hurt because what’s the point in masking it? I want him to know.
“I never said I didn’t want you with me. I said you’d be safer here. And until today, you know that was true.”
“You’re right,” I admit, because he is. I sit up slightly and prop myself up on my elbow so I’m looking down at him. “Let’s promise not to leave each other for the other person’s own good, because that’s crap. We’re both adults, we’re both survivors and we can make our own decisions, so unless that decision is that we don’t want to do this together anymore, we stick with each other.”
“You do remember that you’re the one who wanted an out initially, right?”
“I do. My reasoning was a for-your-own-good type so it’s void now.”
“And here I thought it was because you didn’t like me.”
“When have I ever acted like I didn’t like you?”
“The first day I met you,” he answers without hesitation.
“Very extenuating circumstances. You gotta give me that.”
Jordan watches me closely and asks, “What was the reason then?”
I look away from his face and focus on the protein shakes on the shelf behind his head. I’ve already kind of told him what the pills are for, but I don’t want to get into the rest of it. Not until I know what the rest of it even entails. Maybe I’ll have enough pills to make it to Corvallis and he’ll never have to know. He’ll only know this me; the healthy, happy me.
“The same reason I take the pills,” I answer him. “When they’re gone it can get… intense and I didn’t want you to have to deal with that.”
“And now?”
“Now I think you can make your own choices, and if things get too intense, I’ll understand if you choose to leave. For your sake, not for mine.”
He nods his head in agreement and holds his pinky out to me. I smile and wrap mine in his, but his face remains serious. He uses our joined hands to pull me closer until I’m leaning over him and his eyes bore into mine.
“I will not leave you. Not for anything. Not for your good, not for mine. We’re in this together until the end. I promise you that.”
I’m rendered speechless by his intensity and I simply hover over him, staring. His words mean so much to me that I’m worried the water works I shut down a week ago are coming back online. There’s no denying that he is my home. Right now, this dusty storage aisle is warm and cozy to me. Cheerful, even. If he were to leave though, it would never feel the same. That sense of home for me lies within him, not this place. We’ve both been stripped of almost everything, and the only constant we’ve had since day one is each other. I will make this promise with him because I absolutely do not want to lose him.
“I will not leave you. Not for anything. Not for your good, not for mine. We are in this together until the end. I promise you that.”
He smiles at me, squeezes my finger with his and then releases me. I fall back on the mattress and close my eyes. I’m so tired I’m not thinking straight. I’m doing and saying things I probably shouldn’t, and I wonder what all of this will look like to me in the morning. Ugh, in the morning when I’m standing guard again.
“Where do you think they are?” I ask Jordan absently. “The guys in the trucks. They can’t be staying too far away, I didn’t see any supplies.”
“They’re probably squatting in one of the mansions on the lake, trashing the place.”
“Now that’s profiling,” I protest with a yawn. “Just because they tried to rob and or kill us with stolen cars and a flame thrower, you assume the worst of them. How do you know they aren’t in one of those mansions sitting by a fire, sipping chardonnay and having a discussion about Tolstoy?”
Jordan simply stares at me and blinks emphatically once.
“Or they’re pissing off a balcony, I don’t know,” I say, defeated.
“Such a waste of all those bathrooms you dreamed of.”
“There are easily fifty of them in each of those houses! Why are they on the balcony?”
“It’s a man’s God given, natural right to piss off high platforms and write his name in the snow,” he explains patiently. “It’s in our DNA, we can’t help it. It’s like women and shoes.”
“And now that’s sexist. You are on a roll tonight, buddy. Any racist comments you feel like throwing out there? What’s your stance on black people and chicken, Jordan?”
“It’s not sexist if it’s true.”
“Well, it’s not true.”
“Really?” he exclaims and throws the sleeping bag off his body, struggling to rise in our limited space. “Exhibit A!”
“No, don’t!” I cry, grabbing for his arm and pulling him back down before he can reach the foot of the bed. “You’re not sexist, I take it back!”
He stops and sits, looking down at me. “So you acknowledge that there are brand new running shoes down there that you told me, and I quote, ‘are super cute’?”
“Yes, I do, now shut up,” I plead, pulling on his arm.
He lets me pull him back down until he’s lying on his back beside me. The triumphant smile on his face when he looks over at me is such a pain in the ass. It is equal parts adorable and smug.
“You’re still a profiler,” I say quietly. “And probably a terrible racist.”
“Probably,” he agrees.
Chapter Fourteen
I’ve called Uncle Syd several times since we’ve been here, and each time he insisted I leave immediately and get to Corvallis. He’s still threatening to come get me, especially after I told him what I had to go through to get my pills, but I intentionally keep my exact location from him so that he can’t make good on his threats. He’s happy I found more of my meds and he’s made a trip into town to make sure he has more waiting for me when I get there.
While we’ve been here, more suburbs of Portland have fallen and towns all around us are being breached as well. The new
s talks about barricades and the military making attempts to contain the spread of what they are still adamantly calling The Fever, never zombies, but I’m not sure how effective those barricades are. The infection has reached the coastline. Quaint little sea shelled towns are crumbling left and right, and it’s reaching into the mountains and heading east. Uncle Syd hasn’t seen it in Corvallis yet, but he hasn’t seen any military or CDC presence either. Jordan is convinced this means the barricades are farther south, leaving Corvallis in the infected zone, whether it’s been touched by The Fever or not.
We wait it out for four days before we tell Cal we have to leave. Jordan conjures a story about my uncle and how we might have waited too long already. It’s vaguely true. Cal nods in understanding but he’s reluctant to lose us. They’re at a critical point right now, facing their first inevitable human attack and now he’s losing two trusted members of his guard. I feel bad but we told him at the start that we wouldn’t stay and we’ve fulfilled our agreed upon tasks. Jordan has his bow and we both have our bone piercing chisel point arrows—it’s time to go.
Taylor is a hard one to say goodbye to. He’s a good guy, a great shot and I desperately want to ask him to come with us, but I know he never would. This is his home now, his family, and they need him more than we do. Also, I think Cal would shoot me himself if I tried to poach his best marksman. They try to give us packs full of supplies, but we decline furiously, knowing we probably still have our gear waiting for us back at the boathouse.
“Can’t believe you’re leaving me,” Taylor says sadly.
It’s early afternoon, we’ve just finished our last rotation and we’ll be leaving soon, right after we finish the lunch we’re eating. The rain has stopped and the sun is actually shining so we eat outside with Taylor as he patrols the rooftop.
“You say it like we’re breaking up with you,” Jordan says, biting into a cheese stick.
“You’ll find someone better,” I tell Taylor consolingly. “Someone younger. Hotter.”
“As long as she’s a good shot, I’ll be happy,” he says.
