by Lori Whitwam
He swung around, turning the tables on me. He caught me around the waist, looking down into my face. I pushed my hair back with cherry-stained fingers and tried to catch my breath.
Joy danced in Quinn’s dark eyes. How had I ever thought he was frightening? Surely I should have seen that only goodness dwelled behind that intimidating mask. I silently berated myself as every possible kind of idiot.
“Guess we should get back to work, huh?” he asked.
“Maybe. I don’t see anybody else goofing off.” As the words passed my lips, I realized I didn’t see anyone else at all. In our game, we’d found ourselves near the far side of the orchard.
Beside me, Quinn stiffened and raised a hand to indicate I should be quiet. “Damn,” he said, his brows lowering as his expression turned to one of concern.
I heard it then. Shouting. A gunshot. Another. Quinn grabbed my hand, and we ran back in the direction we’d come. As we raced through the trees, real fear set in. It soon became clear there was a group of zombies between us and the others, and the battle was underway.
I counted at least a dozen, but it was hard to tell with them repeatedly disappearing and reappearing among the trees. Some were the mottled gray-green shade of those who had turned near the start of the plague, while others appeared to be newer recruits to Team Zombie. All had filthy, blood-stained clothing and bore gruesome wounds.
I had only a small handgun, but Quinn had his machete. He never went out without it. I fired once, but I was a poor shot, and we knew it was best to kill the zombies with silent weapons to avoid attracting others.
He left me beneath one of the larger trees. “Stay here,” he said. “I can take out the ones in the rear before they realize I’m behind them.”
I started to argue, but Quinn wasn’t having it. “I can’t concentrate if I’m worried about you. Stay here and be quiet.”
I reluctantly agreed, knowing he’d be much more help than I would, and he hurried into the fray. For a man his size, he moved with astounding speed and grace, cutting down zombies with stroke after stroke of his blade.
He’d eliminated most of the zombies in his vicinity, leaving only a handful still engaging our people near the trucks. He wiped his machete on the grass, and turned to check on me. I saw him focus off to my right, and whipped my head around. At first I saw only a flash of movement through the trees, but then two zombies came into sight, moving faster than I would have expected.
Quinn ran toward them, but I wasn’t sure if he’d intercept them before they reached me. I debated climbing a tree, discarded the idea, and started to run, but then did a double-take.
One of the zombies coming toward us was Mason.
I froze, my terror so absolute it felt as if I had turned to stone. Mason’s clothing was tattered, and ragged wounds spread over his torso and arms. One cheek flapped down along his jaw, revealing his teeth in a macabre, lopsided grin. He started in my direction.
Quinn reached the other zombie first, severing his head with two powerful swings of his machete. Meanwhile, Mason was closing fast.
“Quinn!” I screamed. “That’s him! That’s Mason!” I didn’t know why I thought the zombie’s previous identity mattered, but I felt he had to know. Somehow, I was sure this reanimated Mason knew who I was, and believed we had unfinished business. I thought so, too, but not the same kind.
Quinn sprinted, raising his blade. I had my gun, but my hand was shaking so badly I didn’t dare fire. Quinn was coming from an angle behind Mason, too close, and I couldn’t risk hitting him.
I found my legs and skittered backward, before turning to run. I heard impact behind me, and knew Quinn had taken my tormentor down. I heard the guttural groan of undead vocalization, as well as Quinn’s grunts as he fought.
I had to stop, had to turn to see what was happening. I had to help if I could. Quinn leaped to his feet, raised his machete, and brought it down with all his might, cleaving Mason’s forehead.
Relief washed over me. It was over.
Behind me, I still heard fighting, but the sound had diminished. I knew they had things under control. Then it truly would be over. Wouldn’t it?
Quinn raised his head, and his expression of overwhelming sorrow nearly staggered me. I was so used to seeing combatants covered in blood that at first I didn’t realize much of what I saw on Quinn was his own. One hand hung at his side, blood dripping from a large wound on his wrist, spattering the ground in a cruel mockery of the cherries lying all around.
But far worse was the wound in the curve where his neck and shoulder met. It was huge, a whole chunk of flesh missing. Blood flowed down his broad, wonderful chest.
A zombie bite. The wrist wound could be from something else, a sharp branch or a slip of his machete, but there was no mistaking the bloody mess on his neck.
A sob clawed its way from my throat, and I ran to him. There had to be something I could do. But I knew there wasn’t.
He put out his uninjured hand, preventing me from throwing myself against him. Nobody was sure how much contamination was needed to cause someone to turn, and even as he knew his own life was lost, he was protecting mine.
“Ellen, don’t. I can’t let you.” His voice was ragged and already weakening.
I sobbed. “I know. I know! But I must be able to…There has to be something…” I frantically searched my mind for any possible solution, but there was nothing I could do for a wound like Quinn’s.
He shook his head, wincing with the effort. “There’s not.” He paused, struggling for breath. “You know what you have to do.”
The only way to be sure a bite victim wouldn’t rise and become the very creature that had killed him was with a catastrophic wound to the head.
Quinn wanted me to shoot him.
How could I? Quinn had saved me, in every way a person could save another. How could I put a bullet in his head?
“Darlin’, I need you to do this. I worked too hard to be something better.” He sank to the ground, before levering himself back with his good hand, and bracing his back against a tree trunk. “I can’t turn. You can’t let me.”
I knelt beside him, tears scalding my cheeks. I could see the spark fading from his eyes. Even as I watched, the flat, clouded gaze of an existence beyond death showed signs of emerging. “Quinn, I…”
“Shhh…Listen.” He drew a raspy breath. “You’re stronger than you think. Keep going, for yourself, for Melissa…for me. Live, love, fight, hell…save the world. You can do anything. But never, ever give up.” His voice was now barely a whisper.
“How?” I sobbed. “How can I do this? How can I do any of this?”
“Please,” he said. “I can feel it. It’s cold, moving up my neck, but it burns too.” He struggled to draw a deep breath. “Please.”
He was right. I owed him this mercy. I grasped his arm, above the bitten wrist, one area I could see was free of blood. I had to feel the solid warmth of him one more time. I just held him that way for a moment, my fingers stroking his arm, as I dug deep and dragged my buried courage to the surface.
Looking into his dimming eyes, I said, “Thank you, Quinn. For my life, and for all you did for Melissa, for Skip…Thank you for saving us.”
“It was worth it, Ellen. It was all worth it. You saved me too.” He found one last smile for me. “Now do it again.”
I wouldn’t fail him, not in this. Never taking my eyes from his, I raised my gun, placed it just behind his left ear, and pulled the trigger.
I didn’t even get to kiss him goodbye.
CHAPTER NINE
I did a lot of thinking after I killed Quinn. Violence had always been part of our world, and at the beginning of the plague we thought it had somehow become simultaneously more violent and more simple. The zombies were the monsters…except when they weren’t. It all came down to intent. I’d witnessed unimaginable horrors, and even committed some. I attacked in a blind rage, and I killed out of the purest desire to grant peace. Intent, again. If zombies wer
e capable of intent, it was only on the most primitive level. They presented a constant danger, but they attacked to feed their continued existence, not out of malice.
People, though, were a different story. Was a person’s violent act committed to protect their own life and those who depended on them? Or was it for greed, revenge, or simply because they enjoyed the toxic thrill of causing harm to others?
Unlike the zombies, you can’t tell the human monsters by looking. They could be anyone, from a student librarian, to a warehouse stock boy, a religious fanatic, or an aspiring gang leader. You had to learn to see behind the masks if you hoped to survive.
Quinn was never far from my mind. I was unfair to him in the beginning, but he never gave up on me. Maybe the violence in his life before the world changed taught him to see the intent despite the mask it wore, or maybe he learned it quickly in those early days. Either way, his unselfishness and patience saved me. He gave me the strength I needed to overcome all that had happened, and survive as a contributing member of the community.
I could have loved him, in time. Maybe I already had. I grieved that I’d never know, but it also gave me hope to think I was still capable of love. Like everyone, I wore my own mask, but I was no longer afraid to allow a select few to see what lay beneath.
I wouldn’t say I was happy, but I was getting there. I had Melissa and Skip, work that benefited all of us in the Compound, a safe place to stay, and a growing number of friends. I had a lot of work to do, and a lot of healing. Quinn had faith in me. He believed I could not only survive, but thrive. For the first time, I thought I could believe it too.
And, who knew…maybe one day I really would have it all.
Coming Spring 2015 from
Limitless Publishing
Fighting to Survive
The Dead Survive, Book Two
By Lori Whitwam
*Sneak Peek*
CHAPTER ONE
The machete slipped from my fingers, and I slumped against the chain link fence, exhausted. I swiped my forearm across my face, clearing the sting of sweat from my eyes. My vision cleared, I took grim satisfaction in the half dozen corpses strewn around me. There wasn’t as much blood as you might expect. They were dead long before I killed them.
“Nice job, Ellen,” my combat instructor, Theo, said as he handed me a canteen. I drank the lukewarm water gratefully before handing it back.
“Thanks,” I said, “but my arms feel like melted wax.”
A short laugh escaped him, and he led me from the training area to a bench outside the fence. “You’re doing great,” he said, pulling his hair from its ponytail and running his fingers through it, a few droplets of perspiration dotting his t-shirt. “You didn’t even need any backup today.”
Whenever we were training with live—well, relatively live—targets, a trio of sharpshooters always stood ready around the perimeter of the field. “I almost…” I began, but Theo interrupted me.
“Shut it, you.” He nudged me in one limp-noodle arm. “You’ve come a long way, and you know it.” His lopsided grin broke through my self-criticism, and I had to smile in return.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “Sometimes it feels like no matter how good we are, it’s not good enough, though.”
He shook his head. “You’re too hard on yourself. A year ago, you’d barely even touched a machete, and now you’re going on patrols and kicking loads of zombie ass.”
I snorted. “Yeah, once I stopped trying to use a gun.” Despite months of training, I remained a terrible shot, and eventually gave up any sort of firearm in favor of a machete. This machete, which was never far from my side.
Theo looked away to where the sharpshooters were dragging the permanently dead in the direction of the burning pit outside the fortified subdivision in which we lived. When he returned his gaze to me, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Uh huh. I never saw anybody who was more shit with a gun than you.”
“Hey,” I protested, “that wasn’t all my fault. Everybody said I wasn’t strong enough to swing a blade.”
“And you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with an arrow, either.” He seemed about to tease me further, but he glanced down at my machete, and his mood sobered. “He…” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat. “Quinn would’ve been proud.”
I felt as if the breath were being squeezed from me, and I stared at Theo, desperately wanting it to be true. “If I’d been able to do this before…before he died…” Before I killed him. “Maybe—”
Theo grabbed my wrist. Hard. “Don’t go there. We can’t play that game. Not before, not now, not fucking ever, Ellen.” He released his grip and closed his eyes, taking a moment to steady himself. “Look, Quinn was my friend. We did time together, turned our lives around together, and when shit went down, we fought and survived together. He cared about you, and he’d never for one second blame you for what happened.”
I sighed. “I know he wouldn’t. But sometimes I do.”
Quinn and Theo arrived at the Compound not long after I’d been rescued from a band of marauders. I’d been physically and emotionally shattered, and had little hope of feeling anything but despair ever again. Quinn saved me from a zombie that day, and he’d saved me in a thousand other ways in the following months. He’d given me back the ability to trust, and eventually to hope.
And then I’d killed him. There hadn’t been a choice—he was bitten—but I still felt if I’d been able to fight alongside him, instead of being kept at a safe distance, he’d still be alive.
Fingers snapping in front of my face broke through the haze of memory. “Knock it right the hell off,” Theo said, his gaze burning his words into me. “This is how things are now, and every last one of us has regrets. What matters is how you pick up and move on. And you’ve done it. You became fierce and determined, and I know you’ll never be a victim again. But that doesn’t mean you won’t have failures. Fact of life, my friend.” He gestured at my machete. “Pick that up. Pick it up like you did when he died, and don’t you feel ashamed. It’s too fucking close to self-pity.”
I looked at Quinn’s machete—mine now—then back to Theo. “I know, you’re right. But I don’t want to let anybody else down.”
He wiped his face with the hem of his shirt, his face showing signs of exhaustion, and perhaps a bit of frustration directed at me. “You didn’t let him down. You stepped up and learned to fight, and seeing you with his machete in your hand impresses the hell out of me every single time.”
I nodded, considering. I’d done it, because I had to. I had an adopted little sister, Melissa, who had been a captive with me at the hotel of horrors, and when Quinn died, I knew I’d do anything to keep her safe.
As if conjured by my thought, Melissa appeared from a side street. Her dark sable hair was knotted haphazardly on top of her head, indicating she had recently finished her shift in the communal kitchen. She speed-walked in my direction, almost missing a step off the curb in her haste.
Theo raised an eyebrow. “What’s up with her?”
“Beats me.” Two years after our captivity, Melissa was in most ways a normal seventeen-year-old, though she tended not to exhibit the drama common to other girls her age. “Let’s go find out.”
We rose, I slid my machete in the sheath on my hip, and we walked to meet Melissa at the far side of the field.
With barely a nod to Theo, she grabbed my arm. “C’mon, Ells. Gotta go.” She started to turn and pull me along with her.
I liberated my appendage. “Whoa, whoa…Where do we have to go?” I planted my feet, refusing to budge until I knew what had her so agitated.
Melissa blinked, then realization dawned in her eyes. “Oh! You haven’t heard. Duh.” She shook her head.
I saw Theo struggle, then give in to a frustrated groan. “Is she going to tell us, do you suppose?”
I shot Melissa a curious, yet pointed, look.
“Okay, okay…well, there was…I mean—”
I put both hands o
n her shoulders and waited until she met my eyes. “Honey, settle down. Start at the beginning.”
She took a deep breath, and I felt the chaotic energy around her drop a notch. “I was at the kitchen this morning, right? And two patrols came in, real serious and nervous.”
That, in itself, wasn’t unusual. Our regular patrols and scouts monitored a huge range of territory surrounding our home, keeping an eye out for zombie swarms and bands of marauders, or others who might mean us harm. It was a stressful job.
I said as much, but Melissa didn’t share my opinion. “No, I heard Marcus talking to Joseph. They found a bunch of marauders, about seventy-five miles west of here. They just reported it to the council.”
If the news involved marauders, that explained her twitchy behavior. While she’d come a long way in healing her emotional scars, even venturing outside the walls to help tend the fields we cultivated in the surrounding countryside, the terror of marauders had never fully left her.
“Seventy-five miles isn’t exactly right next door, sweetie,” Theo soothed.
Melissa wasn’t buying it. “Nope, there’s gotta be more to it, the way they hauled tail to get back here.”
She was probably right. Marcus’ patrol hadn’t been expected back for at least three more days. I remembered what she’d said when she first grabbed my arm. “But where do we have to go?”
Melissa tilted her head, as if only now realizing she hadn’t told me. “The council called the neighborhood captains for an emergency meeting, and we’re all supposed to go to our meeting spots and wait for them to come tell us what’s going on. Let’s go!” She reached for my arm again.
“If the captains are just now meeting with the council, we have time to go home and clean up first, I’d say.” I was crusty with dried sweat, dust, and a few other substances best not considered too closely. My tank top and fatigues could probably stand up on their own.
“Sounds like a plan,” Theo said, swinging his pack over his shoulder and starting off toward his house. “See you ladies at the pavilion in a bit.”
