I’d grown even more insistent that we hide after the bridge came down. Every day we went to the roof to see that the hordes were continuing to stalk the island, looking for a live being to attack. Maddie wanted to go out and kill them, and she even spent a considerable amount of time picking them off from the roof. The gunshots and dead zombies only brought more zombies. The smell coming into the hotel from the bodies that lay outside our walls made it hard to stay in the building. When Maddie complained, though, I reminded her that it was her fault.
We held out for more days than I can count before we had no choice but to leave the hotel. The bodies were too much. Fortunately, most of the zombies stuck to the main roads, so we were able to sneak out the back and to the alley to the right where a row of dumpsters sat against the building next to us.
“The smoke is going to attract people to us,” Maddie said, helping me open the lid of the first dumpster.
“That’s why we’re out here so close to dusk. By the time we have these things full, it’ll be dark. Hopefully, no one will be paying attention or will see the smoke.
“Oh my God,” Maddie said at the smell coming from the dumpster. The bodies we’d put in them early on had rotted and liquefied in the heat.
Before we were done refilling the dumpster with fresh zombies, we’d both vomited more times than we’d like to admit, killed nearly twenty zombies, and had crammed the dumpsters to overflowing.
“Do you think the fire will draw more of the turned to us?” she asked.
“Probably. Stay alert. We need to stay with the fire to ensure it doesn’t get out of control.”
The smell of the burning bodies was almost as bad as the smell of them rotting.
“It can’t be safe to breathe that in,” Maddie said, wrapping another piece of cloth around her nose and mouth.
“Probably not, but we can’t let them pile up around the hotel like they are. I’m all for you killing them, don’t get me wrong. We just have to deal with the bodies when you do.”
We stayed out there until nearly one that morning, watching the blaze and throwing more bodies in when the pile was small enough. The flames didn’t summon as many of the creatures as I thought it would, and thankfully, it didn’t bring any survivors—if there were survivors—our way either. I wasn’t averse to finding more people. I simply didn’t want to meet them at night.
The next night we were able to do the same, though we stayed out until nearly two burning the bodies. Their numbers on the island remained high, as I was sure that was due to them crossing the bridge, but I felt their numbers were decreasing a bit day-by-day, and not only because Maddie was killing them.
“I’m out of bullets,” Maddie announced one afternoon after spending hours picking off the turned from the roof.
She’d been on the roof all morning, barely eating breakfast or lunch. I think she thought that if she killed enough of them, I would leave the hotel with her. She was probably right. I was feeling a bit of cabin fever coming on by that point but wasn’t about to let her know that. I was going to keep us in that hotel for as long as I could.
“Are you sure?” I asked, knowing that if she were truly out, we’d have to go for more.
“I’m sure. I’ve searched everywhere. We’re completely out,” Maddie said, disappearing into another room.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, knowing I’d need time to talk myself into going.
“We can’t wait until then. We need bullets now.”
“No, we don’t. You want the ammunition right now, but you don’t need it.”
“We’ll need them for tonight.”
“No, we won’t. We don’t use the guns at night. The knives and spears will be enough. We’ll go out in the morning. We need lighter fluid and matches anyway. And I’m sure there are other things we’re out of or low on. Start making a list.”
She gave me a dirty look but didn’t argue anymore.
Maddie woke me early the next morning. I didn’t complain. The earlier we got started, the sooner we could get back.
The alley was clear, so we snuck out of the hotel via that exit and took as many side streets as possible to the loading docks of Outdoors Living. The department store was the only one on the island with which we were familiar. If they didn’t have what Maddie needed, I didn’t know where to go.
The inside looked a bit more ramshackled than it did the last time we were there, but it appeared as if only zombies had been through because whereas there was destruction, the place was still stocked.
Quickly, we loaded our packs with the supplies we needed.
“Let’s go,” I said, motioning for Maddie to come away from a clothing rack she was searching.
“In a minute. I’m looking for a new shirt.”
“You don’t need clothes. We have what we need. Let’s get out of here.”
“I don’t want to go back to that hotel just yet.”
“I don’t want to stick around here any longer. One of those hordes could find us.”
“At some point during this apocalypse, you’re going to have to grow some balls,” she snapped, turning to me.
“Excuse me,” I said, shocked at her talking to me like that. She hadn’t given me that kind of attitude since she was about seventeen.
“You heard me. Eventually, you’re going to have to get off your fat ass and fight.”
“Don’t be a bitch. I’ve fought. I’ve killed plenty of those things.”
“Not as many as I have. Not as many as Sadie did. Not as many as you should have. All you want to do is hide out in that hotel room just like you did when we were home. You hid out in your office and wrote. No wonder David was cheating on you.”
I could do nothing more than stare at the surprised look that spread across her face. She hadn’t meant to tell me that. Anger at her, at David, and at myself flooded me. I’d had my suspicions, but having someone confirm them, made the situation real in a way it had never been. I felt as if someone had punched me in the gut.
“What?” I said, nearly snarling the words.
“Sis, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“You knew?” I asked.
“You knew?” she repeated, looking even more surprised.
“I suspected. I hadn’t found proof. How do you know? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I saw him right before graduation kissing some skinny red-head at a restaurant. I didn’t confront him. I didn’t say because I didn’t think you cared. Honestly, Mom, Dad, and I have been waiting for the two of you to come to us with the news that you were getting divorced for the last year or so.”
“You’re my sister. Even if you thought I knew, thought we were divorcing, you should have come to me.”
“Why? You’ve talked about Mom and Dad, seemed to mourn them, but David might as well not exist. I didn’t think you would care.”
“You’re a bitch. You only think about yourself. All I’ve tried to do since the shit hit the fan was keep you safe, and all you’ve wanted to do is run out in the middle of the mayhem. You don’t care about anyone but yourself. You should have come to me.”
I was doing my best not to scream at her.
“Fuck you,” she said before flipping me off and storming out of the building and right into a horde of zombies.
I heard her scream a minute later and took off running.
By the time I reached her, blood covered every inch of her, and she was shooting every creature that got near.
Chapter 13
~~~Jason~~~
—Inside the decontamination room.—
“I have to pee,” Samantha said, cutting off her story and throwing me for a loop with the abrupt change in subject. Her sister had run right into a horde of zombies, and that was where the woman had stopped telling her story. I knew the sister was dead. I’d watched Samantha kill her, but had that horde turned Maddie then or had she turned later? If I’d kept up with the timeframe correctly, their day in the department store would have been near th
e same day we found them.
I could only stare at Samantha in utter astonishment.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, “but I might wet the bed if I don’t go soon.”
Peeing wasn’t all she needed to do in the bathroom I could see, as I took in her tear-filled eyes.
“Okay. We need to stretch your legs anyway and get you walking on that bad leg a little before we get out of here.
She threw off the blankets and turned to put her feet on the floor. I helped her stand and let her lean as much of her weight on me as possible.
In the bathroom, I started to help her pull down her clothes, but she stopped me, telling me she could do that. I knew she could, but I could see she was in a lot of pain. I left her to do it on her own, though. She didn’t cry out or fall. I did hear her hiss and suck in a breath. A minute or so later, I heard her soft cries. Since she didn’t call out for me, I left her alone.
When she’d finished, I helped her walk the small area a few times before guiding her back to the bed. After getting her settled, I made us tuna and crackers and waited for her to finish her story. She didn’t.
We ate in silence. Samantha sat on the bed. I sat in a chair facing her. Once she had finished eating, I took our bowls to the sink and washed them. We’d need them for dinner.
“You’ve heard my story. Now tell me yours,” Samantha said before I could ask what happened to her sister.
Instead of answering, I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, frowning at me.
“You’re just going to leave me hanging like that?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, though her tone suggested she knew what she was doing.
“You aren’t going to tell me what happened?”
“No, not right now. I don’t want to think about that right this second. I’d rather hear your story than think about mine.”
“Okay,” I said, handing her another glass of tea. I thought about crawling into bed with her, but I feared she’d find that too intimate. That morning had been nice, and I wanted to be that close to her again. I just wasn’t sure if she would welcome it when she wasn’t having a mini-breakdown over what happened to her.
She didn’t wear a wedding ring, and she hadn’t cuddled next to me as if she were a woman who was happily married. At our age, very few people weren’t married in our world, so I found it unlikely that she wasn’t. Her husband had probably died in the outbreak. She didn’t act as if she were a woman who’d just lost her husband, though. The only person she seemed to grieve was her sister. That didn’t mean anything. Living in a zombie-filled world could harden someone’s heart fast.
The situation was precarious. Until Samantha told me if she was married or not or I got the nerve to ask, I couldn’t be crawling into bed with her except to sleep. I probably shouldn’t even do that, but I wasn’t sleeping on the cold floor.
Despite the uncomfortableness of the chair, I took a seat facing her and began talking. I told her an abbreviated version of how I got custody of my niece, how she got sick and died, and how her friend Kayla came to live with me. I told her what I knew about the bridge and about how Kayla and I found Russ. I ended my story just before I got ready to start supper by telling her how we found Tera.
~~~~~~~~~~
—After the bridge fell.—
“There’s a human on the footpath,” Russ said over his shoulder to me.
The three of us had been trapped in the apartment building a few days. We were hoping to wait out the horde, but the zombies just kept coming. Their numbers appeared to be thinning, so we expected to be able to leave in a day or two.
“Are you sure?” I said, stepping up beside him and taking the binoculars he was offering me.
“Yeah. Whoever the woman is, she’s fighting like hell against a few of the zombies. Most of the turned are in the central part of the bridge. Those close enough to smell her are trying to get to her. A few have managed to get over the divider. She’s holding her own, but I don’t know for how much longer.”
Sure enough, there was a mocha-skinned woman fighting and stabbing her way toward the island. She didn’t have any other weapons on her besides the knife—that I could see. She was only a quarter of the way across. The more she fought, the more attention she brought to herself, the more zombies tried to get to her. She’d tire herself out before she was even halfway across at that rate.
“How good are you with that Ruger?” I asked Russ.
Over the last two days, Russ had told us about his early childhood in the Alabama Territory. When the meteors hit, causing the oceans and rivers to rise, tsunamis to devastate coastlines, and every fault line on the planet to go off, Florida disappeared, as did most of Georgia. The Madrid Fault Line severed Mississippi from Arkansas and what was left of Louisiana and flooded most of the state. The remaining sections of Alabama and Mississippi merged and became one vast isolated territory called the Alabama Territory. The area stayed in the union but became its own country in too many ways. The people there remained in the survivalist mode long after most of the rest of the nation recovered and began rebuilding.
Russ’ father was from Liberty Island and had met his mother while transporting weapons and other supplies to the territory in exchange for the food the region grew. He’d fallen in love with Russ’ mother, but she’d refused to leave her home. They tried to make it work, but the strict and a bit insane rules in the Alabama Territory were too much for him. He wanted to take Russ with him, but the law was on the side of the child’s mother.
Fortunately, when Russ turned fourteen, he decided to go live with his father, and his mother couldn’t do anything about it. Russ tried to see her over the years since, tried to talk to her, but she refused to have anything to do with him. Russ claimed he never regretted the decision. The training the boy received had prepared him for our current world, and he was grateful for it, but their way of life had been too brutal for him. He wouldn’t go into too much detail on what it was like in the territory, not with Kayla within earshot.
“Pretty good. Why?” Russ asked, hefting the sleek, black, stainless steel weapon and checking the scope.
“Can you give the woman cover fire?” I asked.
He went to the edge of the roof, sighted the woman, then shook his head. “She’s too far away.”
“Can you make me a path to her?”
“I can try, but again there’s a distance issue. We’re too far from the bridge for me to do any good from up here, and I don’t want to chance going down there and drawing the zombies to me. I’ll kill as many as I can from up here or from one of the lower apartment windows, maybe lure them away from her and the footpath, but I’m not comfortable going down there with that many.”
“And I don’t want you going down there. Kayla will stay with you.”
“What are you going to do?” Kayla asked, rushing to us. She looked terrified that I was going to leave her, which was exactly what I planned to do, but hopefully only for a little while.
“I don’t know yet,” I answered truthfully, leading her away from Russ. All I knew was that I needed to get to the bridge and help that woman or she was going to die right in front of us.
“You’ll get yourself killed going out there,” Kayla said, trying to block my way to the roof door. We were nearly there, and I could hear Russ behind us shooting, killing as many of the zombies as he could.
I heard the woman scream only once. Thankfully. If she’d kept it up, she’d draw them to her faster than Russ would have been able to lure them away.
“I won’t. You stay up here. Make sure Russ has all the ammunition he needs. I’ll be back. I promise,” I said, moving her out of my way.
Kayla didn’t fight me or argue anymore. She stalked back to Russ and didn’t look back at me.
I took longer than necessary gearing up. The summer heat was going to be scorching in the layers of clothing I wore and with the face covering. I further layered myself with all the guns and knives and ot
her weapons I could carry without hindering my movements.
With Russ shooting from the west side of the roof and drawing all the zombies to that side of the building, I was able to sneak out the back door. Their numbers were fewer back there, and I could kill them easily with the Panga.
By the time I got anywhere near the bridge, the woman was nearly halfway across it. The sound of Russ’ gun was doing its job in luring the bulk of the turned off the bridge and toward the apartment building. The smell of our live bodies, though, drew the attention of the nearest ones.
I prayed Kayla wasn’t watching me through the binoculars fighting for my life. With every single one I killed, I prayed Russ would be a man and take care of her if I died or that he would take her to Jasper if he felt he couldn’t. Trying not to vomit from the smell of the rotting flesh surrounding me, I prayed that Jasper would take them both in and care for them and that he wouldn’t mourn me.
A lifetime had passed before I reached the woman. The woman had managed to make it a bit closer to our side of the bridge before a small group boxed in around her. I tried to assess the situation between dodging creatures that were determined to eat the flesh off my body. Her only options were to let the zombies have her, use her knife on herself, or try to tear down the metal fencing that separated her from the air and water on the other side of the bridge.
Either choice ended in her death. The bridge was too high up. The impact of her body hitting the water could shatter her. That might be preferable compared to what those things would do to her. If they didn’t kill her, then there was the chance she’d turn before they killed her.
We didn’t know if those things retained any memories of who they once were or not, but if they did, I didn’t wish that existence on anyone.
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