Revenence (Book 2): Dead of Winter

by M. E. Betts

  "Anthony," she said, her wet eyes imploring him, "you don't have to die right here, right now. At least come back with us for now."

  Down the way, from the front gate, metal creaked as it neared the point of giving way, well past its load-bearing capacity.

  "We don't have time to waste," Anthony snapped. "You need to do what I asked before this street--" He paused, pointing to the undead attempting to evacuate the stadium as he continued. "Is full of those."

  Phoebe sniffled, her face contorted into a combination of rage and despair. She flung herself into Anthony's arms. "All the teasing," she said, "I never meant it. You really are like a big brother to me."

  "Yeah, yeah," Anthony said, smiling and rolling his teary eyes. "I know. Just take care of yourself, and stay safe." He shifted to regard the rest of the group. "All of you. I mean it." He nodded slightly, narrowing his eyes. "Give 'em hell. And give 'em some extra for me."

  "Waht are you going to do?" Hugo asked, his voice cracking.

  "I'm going to make sure this all goes down the way it needs to," Anthony said, the sound of protesting steel behind him. "But first, I need you guys to go away. They'll bust through that gate any time now, so I don't have long. I want you guys as far away as possible when the propane tank blows." He handed his pack to Hugo, emptying his pockets. "Just leave me the sawed-off," he said, going through an outside pocket of the backpack and taking out two shells. "And these. That's all I need."

  Hugo's eyes lit up, seizing on the shells in Anthony's hand. "Are those dragon's breath?" he asked.

  Anthony nodded. "Two more in that pocket yet," he said. "You guys keep them. They're two more than I need. I'm sure you'll get the chance to put them to use."

  He motioned for the group to come closer.

  "Group hug," he said. "Then you guys need to piss off."

  Phoebe kissed him on the cheek.

  "Take this," Anthony told her, placing his snub-nose .38 into her hand.

  She pocketed the gun, then sobbed as she ran to the truck, climbing into the driver's seat without looking back.

  Daphne gave Anthony a one-armed hug, clapping him firmly on the back.

  "I don't knowhow to thank you," she said, her tone low and audible only to Anthony.

  Anthony shrugged in response. "Just try to stay alive," he said.

  "Thanks, Anthony," Hugo said, his voice cracking, as he embraced the other man in an uncommonly strong bear hug.

  "No problem, man,"Anthony said. "I'm glad I met you guys. I wish I had more time, but it is what it is." He nodded toward the front gate. "Now if you all don't mind...."

  Daphne and Hugo began to retreat toward the truck, where Phoebe waited. They took with them the guitar Anthony had found for Phoebe.

  "I'll be right behind you guys," Shari called after them, turning back toward Anthony.

  "Any chance you can spare me one final smoke?" Anthony asked her hopefully. "I'm going out blazing, right?"

  "Of course, of course," Shari gushed, fumbling for a hard cigarette case in her inner coat pocket. "It's the least I could do for you, all things considered."

  "Thanks," he said, taking the joint, which she lit for him.

  "I'm so sorry," she whispered, sliding her arms around his neck and brushing her cheek against his.

  "Don't be," Anthony told her. "There's no point. There's a lesson to be learned from all this," he said, his tone low, as he gently lifted her chin to brush lips with her. "And that lesson is to look out for landmines. Now get in the truck and go, go live."

  Shari nodded, backing away as the tears began to roll down her cheeks. She turned and ran to the truck, its engine already idling, and climbed in. She settled in the back with Daphne as Phoebe threw the truck into gear. Anthony watched as they pulled away and headed toward the radio building.

  After they were gone from his field of vision, he started for the crane outside the western wall of the stadium.

  He inhaled a deep lungful of smoke. "Alright, guys," he told the undead filling the stadium, "we're in this together now."

  He looked up as he reached the crane, noting that it should be easy enough to climb the lattice-like arm until he was directly above the tank suspended over the middle of the field. He climbed to the roof of the machine, then began his ascent up the arm. He paused at the top, hugging the latticed metal for stability as he took in the view of the small, twin-city area. Neighborhoods lay nearly obscured from an aerial perspective, overgrown with indiginous prairie weeds and saplings, some of which had grown more than twelve feet in one season. To the east, he saw the semi-tanker retreating, nearly a mile down the road, with a meager crowd of undead trailing behind.

  Anthony slid down the cable until his feet touched the propane tank, his hands protected by his leather and kevlar gloves. He took a deep breath, reaching for his sawed-off shotgun, and loaded first a deer slug, then the dragon's breath into the dual chambers. He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the sky, wanting to bask in the warm sunshine for a few final moments. From the entrance, the chain link finally began to give way, succumbing to the undead force inside the stadium. The action caused a groaning sound, followed by a jingling that snapped him into the present.

  "No time left to waste," he muttered, flicking the burning joint well into the stadium, where it began burning the nearby gas sprayed earlier by Anthony. He fired the deer slug and the incendiary round into the tank upon which he stood. A fountain of flame sprang from the hole torn by the rounds, engulfing the spot where Anthony had stood. From afar, the explosion resembled a small, nuclear mushroom cloud. In a fraction of a second, his body and his consciousness were lost to the massive, fiery blast. Disembodies pieces of the stadium, undead and Anthony rode the ensuing cloud, raining down around the stadium site and neighboring buildings, in a dramatic completion of the lost settlement's final ambition.

  Shari rode Eva eastward down University Avenue. Daphne and Hugo rode alongside her in the ATV, the sinewy muscles of Daphne's forearms flexed as she gripped the handle bars. The Professor and Phoebe were each on bicycles, their backpacks loaded to maximum capacity as they set out into the world as the newest members of the group. Phoebe rode alongside Shari as she and Hugo talked video games.

  "I'm not as into shooters," Hugo said. "I've played some of them, but there just isn't enough to do."

  "Too hard for you?" Phoebe asked, her tone antagonistic.

  "No," Hugo said. "I don't mind shooting being a part of the game, I just don't like it when that's all the game play there is to it. With shooters, it's just kinda like they're all basically the same game."

  Phoebe scoffed. "You don't understand good games."

  "I agree with him," Shari piped up, "and keep in mind, I've been gaming since you were a baby."

  "That's right," Phoebe said, "go on and gang up against me." She snorted. "I can't help it if ya'all's taste is in your--"

  "Let's just agree to disagree," the Professor interjected.

  "Don't worry," Phoebe said. "I know it seems like the discussion was getting a little heated, but we don't really mean anything by it. It's just nerd stuff."

  "Oh," the Professor said. "Thanks for explaining nerd stuff to the old man. It's not like nerds existed back in the Dark Ages that were the 1970s."

  "I can imagine the discussions," Phoebe said. "The never-ending debates on the complexity and social commentary of such classics as Pong or Frogger."

  "Me and Anthony talked about video games the other night," Shari uttered, just loudly enough to be heard by the group. They walked on in silence for several minutes.

  "Was it worth it?" Phoebe finally asked. She looked around her at her fellow travelers, her eyes imploring a response to her query.

  "Well," the Professor said after a moment of consideration, "from the account you guys gave, there's dozens of thousands fewer of them in town than there were a couple of days ago. Worth it? Too subjective a question to answer, but I think it's safe to say he made more than a dent in the undead population
of the Champaign-Urbana area."

  "Agreed," Daphne said, her tone low and her eyes locked on the road ahead. University Avenue turned into IL-150 as they reached the outskirts of town.

  "Hey, this could be a death wish for us, too," Phoebe said with a quiet laugh. "Us going out like this."

  "Yeah," Shari said, "maybe. But what was your alternative? Staying in Champaign for the rest of your lives, hoping you keep finding food, and maybe some other people somewhere down the road?"

  "I'm sure it wouldn't have been a ghost town forever," Phoebe said.

  Shari shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not," she said. "But I would bet that if the two of you had stayed, you'd have regretted it at some point. Surviving means having numbers and having a purpose."

  "So how far do you think we'll make it today?" Phoebe asked.

  "Depends," Shari said. "I think our record is forty miles, but that was before we had bicyclists in the group. How long it takes depends on too many factors. Sometimes you have to hang out somewhere longer than you wanted to if the weather's bad or there's a big group of undead coming through."

  "What's the next city in this direction?" Daphne asked.

  "Danville," the Professor replied. "Other than a few blink-and-you-miss-'em villages." He turned toward Phoebe. "What would you say, about thirty miles?"

  "Yeah," Phoebe said, "give or take."

  "Is Danville very far from the Indiana border?" Shari asked.

  "Not far," the Professor said. "Twenty-minute drive, maybe. How far over the border are we trying to go?"

  "I'm not sure, exactly," Shari said. "Far enough east to avoid the suburbs when we head north and get closer to Chicago."

  "If we do that, we'll hit the lake to the north, not Chicago ," Phoebe said. "What are we doing to do, get on a boat and cut across the bottom of the lake to the convention center?"

  Shari considered the question for a moment before she responded. "Hopefully," she said with a shrug. "I mean, ideally, yes."

  "Oh," Phoebe said with faux cheerfulness, raising her hands to do air quotes. "Hopefully and ideally. In other words, we don't have a fuckin' clue." She threw her hands up to signify her exasperation. "Great."

  "Hey Phoebe," Daphne said. "Have you ever heard how life's a journey and not a destination?"

  "I'll assume that's a rhetorical question," Phoebe muttered.

  "Just get used to the idea, that's all," Shari said. "These days, plans are made to be changed. You'll see that having one is almost useless anymore. Either we'll find a way to make it to McCormick Place,or we won't. Even in the latter case, it's still a success story if we live to tell it."

  "I'm just glad to be out of that radio building, myself," the Professor said, glancing skyward. "I almost wish it would rain. I've been showering in a mop sink for the past few months."

  "Maybe if you're lucky, we'll find somewhere to stay for the night that has running water," Shari said.

  "Have you had much luck with that so far?" the Professor asked.

  "More common than you'd think, especially out in the country," Shari replied. "A lot of the houses were built off the grid, so they'll usually have wells, cisterns, or both."

  "And the ones that have it," the Professor said, "the plumbing all seems to be in order still?"

  Shari nodded. "So far, anyway."

  "It'll be a different story after the winter," the Professor said. "Without heating or winterization, most buildings will have plumbing issues come the thaw."

  "Yeah," Phoebe said, "it's gonna be a mess."

  "Think we'll make it to Danville before nighttime?" Hugo asked.

  "Maybe," Shari said, "if luck is on our side."

  "I have a good feeling about this," the Professor said. "Somewhere outside of Danville, there's a shower with my name on it."

  It was early afternoon when they reached the outlying subdivisions of Oakwood, just outside of Danville. They stopped ahead of the first of the subdivisions for a short break, noting the wrecks ahead that blocked both lanes of 150 and spilled over into the ditches.

  "Well," Shari said as she lit up a smoke, "we can go north to 74, or we could take a back county road. I'd suggest the latter."

  Daphne glanced around at the surrounding cornfields, many with tall, healthy,thriving plants. "I'm gonna climb up," she said, pointing out a conifer, roughly 100 feet tall, in a nearby yard. "Try and get a vantage point and see what the area's like."

  "Go for it," Shari said. "I'm just gonna take five."

  "Hey, Shari," Hugo said. "Let me see your binoculars."

  "They're in the left saddlebag," Shari said. "Why? Do you see something?"

  "I don't know," Hugo said as he retrieved the binoculars and raised them to his eyes. "It looks like there's someone over there...." He turned the dial to focus on a figure about 50 yards away, near the bank of a stream.

  "You mean a person?" Phoebe asked. "That would be the first since Champaign."

  "Bummer," Hugo said, still gazing through the lenses. "I don't think it's a person--just a zombie."

  "Figures," Shari muttered.

  "It's weird, though," Hugo said. "He's not acting like any zombie I've ever seen."

  "Let me see," Shari said, taking the binoculars to look for herself. She saw an undead person, naked and badly decomposed, sitting between the stream and a field full of wildflowers that streaked the countryside with a palette of white, orange, yellow and blue. Near the periphery of the field hovered a sizeable gathering of honeybees, buzzing loudly enough for Shari to make out the sound from where she stood. She watched the unidentifiable zombie take undeniable interest in the cloud of bees, not with its dead eyes but with its intact sense of hearing. It cocked its head from side to side, its face turned toward the sound. Not only was the undead individual lacking in aggression, but in fact, it remained seated on the bank, fascinated but otherwise calm.

  "I see what you mean," Shari told Hugo. As she continued to gaze through the lenses, she saw a couple of fresher undead exit from a treeline on the side of the creek opposite the honeybees. They were running toward Shari and the group with a speed that signified that they had spotted living human beings.

  "Guys," Shari said, "I think we've been discovered." She looked back through the binoculars to see the first zombie clearly regard the other two running past on the hunt, only to refocus its attention on the honeybees hovering nearby. After a few moments, it finally began to amble after the other two.

  Shari lowered her binoculars, swinging her bow from its usual position on her back. She raised the bow, peering through its scope until she located the two faster targets. She nocked an arrow and waited until there was less than 100 yards between herself and the pair of undead aggressors. One of them started toward her head-on, and she took the opportunity to bury one of her arrows into the middle of its forehead. She nocked a second arrow, aiming at the next one. As she pulled back the string, she saw the undead woman topple into the shallow, rocky creek. The undead woman landed on her side, and Shari noticed a sharpened stick protruding from her right temple. She looked toward the evergreen in the nearby yard, where she saw Daphne, about 75 feet up, lean out and wave at her, a childlike smile lighing up her face.

  The last zombie--the reflective, calm one--ambled closer as Daphne slithered down the tree. As she crossed the road and joined the group, she saw that it was an undead man, the remains of his short hair slicked and matted down with weeks or perhaps months of filth and rot. She saw its dead eyes roll around in its skull as it contemplated its surroundings. As Shari drew an arrow from her quiver, the undead man turned to regard the slight noise. It set off in Shari's direction, ambling slightly more quickly than before. Shari drew in a breath, nocked her arrow, and let it loose on the exhale. It sailed through the air, arcing softly before striking on the descent, and entered the top of the undead man's softened skull.

  "That one was different," Hugo said. "Why was it just sitting there like that?"

  "I dunno," Shari said, shrugging. "It looked old,
though. I'm betting you'd never see a fresh one that calm."

  "Probably not," Daphne said. "First of its kind I've seen, though."

  "Does it matter?" Phoebe said. "A zombie's a zombie, isn't it?"

  "Ha," Shari said. "Says someone who hasn't had very many of them running at you full-tilt."

  "So," Daphne said, "what's the plan? Are we getting any closer to Danville, or staying put for today?"

  "Probably wouldn't be a good idea to go any deeper in here," Shari said. "We can head north or northeast from here, but we're gonna wanna find shelter within the next few hours or so, one way or another."

  "Let's get back on the road," the Professor said. "Maybe we'll find a nice, quiet farmhouse with some running water."

  "Yeah," Phoebe said, "out in the country, far from any more towns. Christ, I can smell the Oakwood already, and we're not even in town yet."

  "Sometimes a place is preceded by its smell," Shari said. "Depends how the wind is blowing, that kind of thing."

  "It doesn't even just smell like rotting meat," Phoebe said, struggling to articulate the odor. "It just smells like--"

  "Like the world's gone to shit, all around," Daphne said, scanning the horizon ahead of her as the group set off down a rural county road that led north.

  "Hmm," Phoebe said, regarding Daphne as a woman might regard an assortment of handbags in a department store display. "You're a woman of few words, aren't you? I can respect that."

  Daphne shrugged. "Okay."

  Phoebe turned to Hugo. "And you--what's up with you?" Shari glanced toward Hugo and Phoebe from the corner of her eye, one eyebrow raised. She realized that Daphne was doing the same. They had both gotten to be slightly protective of Hugo.

  "What's up with me?" Hugo repeated. "What do you mean?"

  "Well...you know," Phoebe said, Shari and Daphne watching her like a pair of hawks. "The mannerisms, the whole--well, you know. You autistic or something?"

  "Phoebe," the Professor said gently. "That's just a little bit too--"