Revenence (Book 2): Dead of Winter

by M. E. Betts

  Daphne shrugged. "Maybe lying on the ground already?" she hypothesized. They heard an engine start up. Daphne rolled her eyes. "Or maybe getting away."

  The one who had been battling the two undead sadists finally succeeded in penetrating both of their skulls with his machete, but not without suffering a gaping bite on his forearm. He turned and charged in Shari and Daphne's direction. Shari raised her AK.

  "No," Daphne said, reaching into her bag for another sharpened stick, "let me." She propelled the stick into the sadist's right eye as he propelled himself in its direction. He fell facedown, pushing the stick all the way into his skull.

  Daphne took her titanium-bladed knife out of her bag. "That one's not getting up," she said, "but we'll have to double check some of the other bodies."

  They made quick work of it, Daphne plunging her knife into each skull to ensure that they were fully dead, while Shari spotted her with the .357 that had belonged to Fauna. It allowed them to check the bodies more safely, taking any weapons and ammunition, cigarettes, matches and lighters, and whatever else they thought might come in handy for their own use, or for bartering at some point. They also felt it was best to re-kill any zombies they had created, not wanting to personally add to the ever-growing undead populace. Once they were certain each corpse was permanently at rest, Daphne cut off the right ears, stashing them in her pack to dry later and add to her collection.

  "Well," Shari said when they'd counted and looted all the bodies they could find, "that's 24. Let's wash up a little while we're near the creek, then head back up to the road and see how many ATVs are left."

  They walked westward toward the road after they had bathed. Shari counted the ATVs. "Twenty-four," she said. "And twenty-four bodies. I guess they're all accounted for, except for the one that got away."

  "Unless any of them doubled up," Daphne argued. "Some of these could hold two people."

  Shari shrugged. "I guess we won't know unless we see another one come wandering through the woods. Just be careful...I mean, it's not like we weren't doing that, anyway."

  "Fair enough," Daphne said. They walked toward the cabin in silence for a moment. "So Shari...."

  "Yeah?"

  "Do you think we're going to hell for this?"

  Kandi cackled. "She really is just a child, isn't she?"

  Shari shrugged. "I really don't know, Daphne. I guess it depends on whether or not there's a hell," she said. "And since I don't know the answer to that question, I don't care to dwell on the subject."

  "Well, okay," Daphne said, "let's say there was a hell, just for the sake of argument. Do you think we're going there?"

  They reached the hitch where Eva was tied beside the cabin. Shari sank into a wooden bench facing an overgrown rose garden, lighting up a smoke before she responded. She sighed, then shook her head. "I don't like the idea of a God who would judge us that severely for what we're doing. I mean, yeah, it just so happens we put ourselves in these situations, but let's be honest...if we didn't plan it out and hunt these guys down, it'd be the other way around. They'd be hunting us, and we'd be the prey, all while trying to run from the undead. You and me, we're just taking control of the situation...we're trying to survive, just as any other animal would. We're turning the tables. And I don't consider having a survival instinct or a will to live to be a crime against humanity. I'm not just rationalizing, we both know I'm right." She smirked. "And besides, I told you--I'm no theologian. I'm really not even particulary religious. I'm not exactly full of spiritual insight."

  "I thought you were a Hindu," Daphne said.

  "No, my mom was," Shari said. "When she was younger, anyway. She was actually a lot more New Age in her later years. But me...I don't know. I wasn't really raised to believe any particular thing. My parents were hippies. I was exposed to a lot of different ideas, but never pressured to subscribe to any of them." She glanced in Daphne's direction. "I guess you can't relate to that," she said.

  "I'm not with the Andersons anymore," Daphne muttered, looking straight ahead. Shari knew that in Daphne's mind, she was back at the rural home of her former adoptive family. "I can believe whatever I want to now."

  "I suppose you can," Shari said. "And regardless of what religious views either of us may or may not have, I know we have one important thing in common."

  "What's that?"

  "The belief that all life is sacred, but innocent life is a little higher up on the list. What kind of God would argue that fact?"

  Daphne's gaze shifted defensively around her environment as she walked. "I guess you have a point."

  Shari shook her head. "Don't get me wrong, I hate doing this. I'll admit--" She glanced at Kandi. "There's a small part of me that gets off on it, but I think that's just a symptom of surviving nowadays. We don't trivialize killing other people because we think it's trivial...we do it because it's almost impossible to stay alive anymore without, at some point, killing another living, breathing human being. Are we monsters? Yeah, probably. But we're the monsters who are destroying the other monsters. We're saving innocent lives...and taking guilty ones. People are thanking us for this." She snuffed out her joint, pressing the burning end into a large, smooth rock until it stopped smoking. "So anyway, I guess we should leave as soon as the sun comes up."

  Daphne nodded. "No reason to stick around here. We got those guys' stuff."

  Shari shivered in her panties and tank top. "I don't know about you, but I'm gonna get dressed."

  Kandi snickered. "Please do, princess, your headlights may draw the attention of the revenants."

  Shari rolled her eyes. Oh, please. Nobody's as obsessed with my nipples as you apparently are, zombies included.

  Daphne nodded toward Shari's chest. "Yeah, get some clothes on. I'm afraid you'll put my eye out with one of those things." Daphne smirked sheepishly at her own joke, and Kandi howled with laughter.

  "You see, princess? Daphne can't hear me, but she and I were on the same wavelength in this instance."

  Shari ignored Kandi, picking up the items of clothing off of the bench. Her tank top and panties were nearly dry, so she left them on and got dressed. She shimmied into her kevlar jeans and put on her leather motorcycle jacket, then finger-combed her still-damp hair and gathered it into a low ponytail.

  "How long until the sun comes up?" she asked, putting on her kevlar motorcycle hood adorned with a white skull across the front. She put on Fauna's cowboy hat over the hood.

  "It'll be about half an hour before we have decent visibility," Daphne said, sliding her feet into the black and red boots that matched her dirtbike suit.

  Shari settled into the bench, taking in the sensations of the cool, pre-dawn morning. Eva, hitched five feet to Shari's left, shifted in her sleep, nickering softly. "We'll find somewhere to rest tomorrow, when there's daylight. We can take turns keeping watch, if nothing else. For now, I think I'm gonna sit and enjoy the weather. It's actually kinda nice out, now that we're dressed. I think I'll sip the rest of that coffee I made earlier. Lord knows I could use the caffeine." She leaned toward the far side of the bench to reach the thermos containing the leftover coffee. "You sure you don't want any?"

  Daphne shook her head. "No, thanks. I told you, I prefer to avoid drugs of any type. That includes caffeine."

  "I wish I had your willpower," Shari said. "I couldn't imagine giving up caffeine or...certain other things."

  "It's not willpower," Daphne said, perching on the bench beside Shari, "it's just who I am." She paused momentarily. "No offense to you, or anyone else. It's not that I think I'm too high and mighty, or anything. It's just not my thing."

  "No offense taken," Shari replied. "If ever there was a time to live and let live, it's now."

  "Yeah," Daphne said, "it's hard to imagine being in the head of a sadist. I mean, we feel worse for killing them than they do for slaughtering dozens of people at a time, people who were minding their own damn business."

  "Ruthlessness seems to be the most common survival mechanism
," Shari said. "If they keep it up, sadists will be the only ones left, impregnating young girls and women they rape. It'll go on until they've killed off even each other. And then there's the fact that they get off on the whole thing...the violence, killing when they could overpower most of the settlements and take their shit without having to kill them." She shook her head. "No, I can't imagine being in their head, and I don't suppose I want to."

  Daphne drew her knees up to her chest, placing her feet on the edge of the seat. "So what's your take on the zombies? I mean, what do you think caused it?"

  "Well," Shari replied, "I'm no more a scientist than I am a theologian, but I'll admit, I've been racking my brain trying to...hypothesize, I guess. I don't think it's a virus, since we know that it pretty much took out the whole country all at once. And while most of us survivors don't really have any way of knowing what's going on in other countries, I've heard enough over the radio from other people to have a pretty good idea that when the shit hit the fan, it hit on a global scale." She finished the last of the coffee from her thermos. "So...that being said, as far as causes go, that leaves a couple of possibilities. Radiation, for one."

  Daphne glanced at Shari. "And the other?"

  Shari shrugged. "God."

  "Or maybe both," Daphne said.

  "Or maybe both," Shari echoed, shrugging again. "I'm not going to argue the possibility. Who knows? Not you, not me, not anyone that we know of."

  "This isn't natural. Are you really telling me that you don't believe God played some part in this?"

  "No, I'm saying that I don't know. And if God were to do something like this, I would imagine him being more up-front about it. This whole thing could be independent of God entirely. I don't think an omnipotent being would hide behind something that could have happened naturally. I think God would make sure that we knew it was him, if he were to do anything."

  "It was in the bible," Daphne said.

  "Zombies? Yeah, zombies were in Revelations...but so were a lot of other things that didn't happen."

  "I guess you have a point," Daphne said. "But I just don't see how this could be scientifically explained. I'm sure you know a lot more about radiation than I do, but...I have to be honest, I just don't get it. No amount of radiation should be turning us into zombies. Is that really possible, scientifically?"

  "I have no idea," Shari said, "but then again, I'm not a radiologist. But regardless of the fact that I do believe in God, I still find it possible to look at this in a scientific context...at least until there's something, a sign or whatever you want to call it, to change my mind. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't see the point in speculating yet on whether or not God did this. I just want to survive. If God wants me to know it was him, and not just a natural event, then he's gonna have to give me a reason to come to that conclusion. And in the meantime, I'll be pondering a scientific explanation...at least when I'm not too worried about the more immediate concerns of trying to live."

  Daphne shrugged. "I guess none of us really know what's going on. I can see where you're coming from. I just can't help but worry about these things, that's all." She sighed. "Well, I guess we should get ready to head out soon."

  Shari nodded. "Yeah, crack of dawn."

  Daphne headed toward the door of the cabin. "I left one of my bags in here," she said. "Be back in a sec."

  Kandi chuckled as Daphne entered the cabin. "You know, princess, you can't blame her. It's her upbringing, really. She's haunted by a punishing, vengeful God. She can't see it any other way. She's a pagan wood sprite--critical thinking isn't exactly her forte."

  I'm aware that she's a wood sprite, Shari thought as she slung her bow and quiver across her back. I just don't feel the need to confront her with that analysis. And I think her critical thinking is just fine. She's saved my ass already a few times. I don't like to judge people...at least not people who are way more helpful than they are a hinderance. Daphne's not hurting anyone.

  Kandi sneered. "Come down from your high horse, princess. And what you mean is, not hurting anyone but sadists."

  Shari nodded slowly, her face solemn. Yeah. I guess that's what I mean. Every time I kill one, I think about the fact that they're technically people. Even if they barely qualify as human now, most people weren't born that way. They were innocent once, and that's the tragedy of human scum like sadists. Total and complete loss of innocence. I think the only way I get through it--deal with the carnage I inflict on live human beings who feel pain--is the fact that I feel a little disembodied when I'm doing it. I feel like I'm in shock or something. She glanced toward Kandi. I know, that's you doing it.

  "Somebody's got to make up for your inadequacies."

  Shari rolled her eyes. That makes the both of us, then. She gazed eastward. The sun was visible low on the horizon, glittering between the foliage of the woods surrounding the cabin, and the sky had brightened slightly. She stowed away the last of the items she had taken off of the sadists in her backpack and saddlebags. She mounted the horse and crossed the yard to Daphne, who was sitting on her ATV, sharpening a stick with her titanium knife engraved with the words, Talon of the Titans. "I'm ready when you are."

  Daphne looked up from her carving, placing the stick in her messenger bag and the knife in its sheath on her thigh. She smiled as she started the ATV. "I've been ready for a couple of minutes...and you were talking to your friend again." She started down the driveway. Shari followed her as they navigated their way back onto the road. They backtracked a quarter-mile south to where there was a break in the concrete guard rail in order to get on 24 without going back to the exit, more than a mile to their south. They generally followed major highways, but avoided actually being directly on them, simply to avoid being boxed in or cornered if they had undead both in front of them and to their rear. If they had a choice, they preferred to travel through open fields with the road in view. In this case, however, they needed to use the bridge, which was part of 24. They headed north, toward the bridge that crossed the river into Illinois. Daphne stopped as they neared the motorcycles the sadists had left behind, taking a length of rubber tubing from her trunk.

  "I could use about a half-tank," she said, preparing to siphon the remaining gas from one of the motorcycles after glancing at its gas gauge. "And he's almost full."

  Shari gazed off into the distance as Daphne refueled her ATV, her eyes losing focus as her thoughts drifted. She was only just beginning to feel the pangs of near-crippling anxiety that accompanied the uncertainty of her parents' fate. The subject had seemed so abstract back on the farm with Fauna. Now that she was actually making the journey to her childhood home, she couldn't avoid facing the possibilities any longer.

  She knew that even if her parents were still alive, there was a good chance that she would never see them again. She also knew that the odds of her parents having been bitten were fairly high. Her travels so far over the past weeks had seemed to reveal a world where only a small percentage of humanity was left alive, and the numbers were, presumably, dwindling every day as more survivors were bitten. When sadists and the careless mistakes of survivors were added with the undead into the hazardous grab bag of present-day reality on planet Earth, it became clear that the odds of survival were undoubtedly very low. Shari wasn't really expecting a happy ending, but she knew that she would feel better if she at least checked the house before she and Daphne continued their tour of the post-apocalyptic ruins of society.

  They weren't entirely sure where they were headed after they left the Carbondale area, but they had an idea that they should head north, as far north as possible, before winter. They knew the undead wouldn't be as much of a threat in a northern winter environment, since all but the freshly dead would be frozen solid.

  They figured that the earlier they got to where they were going, the more likely they were to prepare or find a safe, heated shelter where they could spend the winter. It seemed doubtful that the undead, in their rotting state, would survive a spring thaw withou
t severe decomposition of the body and brain. They hadn't thought far enough ahead to plan anything for the long-term after the spring, when the stench of the masses of undead would once again fill the air. Shari supposed the dead and undead alike would be less of a biohazard after the first year, when they were less festering and more skeletal.

  She was thrown abruptly out of her musings by the sound of a hurried tread coming from the woods behind them, and getting closer. She sighed, steeling herself for a confrontation. Daphne's eyes were already firmly fixed in the direction of the footsteps. Something about those footsteps sounds weird, Shari thought.

  "Turn around, princess," Kandi said. "Have a look." Shari turned, hand on her .357, to look behind her. She gasped, her hand leaving her revolver and relocating to her heart.

  "Don't leave me here!" a young girl exclaimed, her oversized eyes imploring first Shari, then Daphne. She had exited the woods, and stood on the road about ten feet from where Daphne sat, gassing her ATV. Shari guessed the girl was around six or seven years old. Her dark brown, waist-length hair was matted and her face and clothes were muddy.

  Shari's maternal side kicked in at once, the momentary shock of unexpectedly seeing a child having worn off. "Of course we won't leave you here!"

  "Now who the bloody hell are you, exactly?" Kandi demanded.

  "Where did you come from?" Daphne asked.

  The girl pointed in Shari and Daphne's direction, at the motorcycles. "I rode here with those people on one of those," she said. "As soon as I heard guns firing, I ran away. One of the men chased after me, but I was too fast. He couldn't find me in the woods, so I just waited." She paused momentarily, peering down toward the campsite where the sadists lay dead. "I'm glad those guys didn't come back. They scare me."

  "That makes two of us," Shari said. "What's your name?" The girl hesitated. "It's okay, I promise you...we have nothing to do with those scary guys. They're gone now."

  "Did you kill them?" the girl asked bluntly.

  Shari hesitated for a moment. "We did," she said. "But we won't hurt you."