“I wasn’t watching her...” he lied, dragging out the word ‘her’ as if the lithe, toned and tanned woman were well below his standards—she a mutt and he the star quarterback. In reality, a puddle of mental drool an inch deep had pooled around his boots on the Formica floor.
“I’m calling bullshit, Wilson,” Sasha blurted.
He stared daggers. “Language, Sash.”
Busting his balls in new and different ways was a constantly evolving talent in which Sasha took great pride. The frequency and tone had gotten worse since their mom had gone missing the day Washington D.C. fell to the dead. He didn’t understand her. Most kids her age found pleasure in reading. Some even enjoyed lusting over the long dead and gone boy bands. Sasha—she just enjoyed fucking with him. He had to hand it to the fourteen-year-old; she had a knack for getting under his skin. And when she found a chink in his armor—which happened often because there were many—the needling and jabbing and prodding usually commenced until either his Irish temper made an appearance and he made an ass of himself, or he disengaged from the conversation silently, seething. Either way Sasha usually won.
She’s coming this way, he thought to himself. He dabbed a paper napkin across his brow and then wiped his palms on his khaki cargo shorts.
Then in that sing-song voice, Sasha said, “What’s a matter Casanova... you nervous?”
The room seemed to contract and then expand, like it was alive, and the steady thrum of the generators and the whooshing hood system in the kitchen was the sound of its breathing. He gripped the table to steady himself, then shot her an icy glare. Then his mom’s voice entered his head, recounting the advice she had given him the day he went for that first Fast Burger interview. “Remember to be confident. Be in control of the situation at all times. And Wilson,” she had said, “be yourself.” The memory of her face and her soothing voice smothered the looming anxiety attack. The events of that day seemed to have happened years ago. In reality, only months had passed since interview day. And only weeks had passed since Z day. How he would apply Mom’s advice here and now, with the girl ten feet away and closing fast, he had no idea. But he did have a strong suspicion he was about to find out.
“Here she comes,” Sasha chided.
“Shhh!” he said as he hunched his shoulders, trying to make himself smaller—to disappear altogether.
She stopped behind him. “What’s the matter Red... got a flat?” Her husky voice made him jump, nearly stopped his jack-rabbiting heart.
“Who, me?” he stammered.
“You were the one shushing,” she answered.
Silence.
“May I join?” she asked. “’Cause everyone else in here’s a dinosaur.”
Sasha continued to chew her food and motioned to the bench next to her with the spoon.
Wilson gaped at the new arrival, who smelled like sunshine—or a dryer sheet, he couldn’t decide. At any rate, his mom’s posthumous advice disappeared the moment the girl had spoken, leaving him with a choice to make: run—or as Sasha had so eloquently put it—“grow a pair and wing it.” He chose the latter.
The breakfast rush was now in full swing all around them.
“You shoulda been here the other day. They had Pop-Tarts,” Sasha said, breaking the ice. She raised her eyebrows an inch and went on, “Freakin’ cherry Pop-Tarts... thought I was in heaven.”
New Girl placed her tray next to Sasha, and then took a seat on the bench directly across from Wilson, who had a lock on her like a cat on a canary.
“Taryn,” she said, extending her hand across the table.
After a few quick swipes against the cool fabric of his khakis, he reciprocated with a clammy offering of his own.
“My name’s Wilson,” he stammered. He motioned to his sister with a flourish and an upturned palm. Instantly he felt silly. “And she is...”
“My name is Sasha,” she said, flashing the brunette a toothy grin. Then, after extending her pale freckled hand, she added, “Wilson should have stopped talking for me when I was like... three or four. But I’m not surprised ‘cause he’s been doing it my whole life.” Sasha punctuated the statement by delivering her brother a look that said, You owe me or I will ruin this for you.
While Sasha and Taryn exchanged pleasantries, Wilson caught himself staring at the skulls and dragons and various dangerous looking things inked up and down the young woman’s arms. Full sleeves, he thought. His mind reeled, wondering where the artwork stopped—or whether it continued on under the fabric of her form-fitting black tank. He was smitten, and it showed.
Sasha pushed her tray forward, leaned back in her chair and twirled a long scarlet lock with one hand. Clearly she was enjoying seeing Mister I’m in charge now that Mom isn’t here squirming under the Klieg lights of life.
Suddenly at a loss for words, Wilson picked at the bowl full of spackle. He studied the wall above the entry where someone had painted a blue badge. A unit insignia he guessed. On it was a white creature with the body of a horse, the head of a dragon and wings like a Pegasus. Written in blue, on a curled herald at the bottom of the shield, were the words: Master of Space. And though he hadn’t paid too much attention to mythology in school, he had a hunch that the thing might be a Griffin.
Taryn stared across the table and addressed Wilson directly. “Kinda the tall, dark, and quiet type, huh? Only the dark part... not so much.” She smiled and laughed at her own joke.
“With skin like this, SPF two thousand doesn’t cut it,” he said. That was easier than you thought, Wilson, is what he didn’t. Before his mojo disappeared, and while he had a scant amount of forward momentum going in this —talking to girls thing—he recounted their journey from the Viscount in Denver to the gates of Schriever.
Seeing an opportunity to bring Casanova down a notch, Sasha elaborated on their stop in Castle Rock and all of the gory details of her run in with Sam the undead butcher and her involvement in Operation Arm Removal.
With a fresh trace of pink painting his cheeks, Wilson downplayed his adverse reaction to the dead appendage clutching his red mane, but didn’t waste the opportunity to talk up his skill at driving, which he credited for getting them all to Schriever in one piece. Strangely enough, neither he nor Sasha mentioned Pug’s murderous spree or the dominos that had fallen since. Sasha, he guessed, didn’t want to expend the energy. His motive was different. He didn’t want to spoil this moment by dredging it all up. Two days was two days, he thought. Soon he would forget about the past and get on with living. He just wanted to heed Mom’s advice and be himself.
Sounding neither repulsed nor impressed by the epic tale, Taryn quietly said, “Sounds like you two ran the gauntlet.”
“Now that you know our story, how did you end up here?” Sasha probed.
Taryn looked up and fixed her gaze on the redheaded teen.
On the receiving end of a look she couldn’t interpret, Sasha squirmed. She was beginning to regret prying into the new girl’s business. But Wilson was her brother, she reminded herself, and it was her job to evaluate anyone he had eyes for—whether he liked it or not.
Taryn regarded the people around her. The place was hopping now. Then her thoughts raced back to Grand Junction Airport, Dickless and the others who had died after the planes brought the plague. Some were her friends—most were not. She needed a diversion, a second to decide if she wanted to spill her guts here in front of strangers, or choose a more appropriate time and place to recount her week and a half in hell.
“I totally understand if you don’t want to talk about it. And I’m really sorry if anything I said upset you,” Sasha said. What have you got to hide, Miss Tattoo? a silent voice in her head whispered.
Taryn stood up abruptly, looked toward the kitchen, but said nothing.
You blew it, Wilson, the condescending naysayer in his head told him.
Silently Taryn policed her trash, piled it on the tray, and walked towards the garbage cans. And as she retreated Wilson watched, trying his be
st not to look at her rear end. He failed miserably.
Once Wilson was certain Taryn was out of earshot, he unloaded. “Thanks a lot Sasha. I had something good going there until you had to go all graphic about you and the zombie butcher. And you definitely didn’t need to tell her all about that zombie hand stuck in my hair. Think about it Sash... if you were in her shoes would you want anything to do with me after hearing that kinda stuff?”
Touché, Sasha thought. Then, subconsciously, she reached down to massage her bare ankle which still bore the yellow-green bruising caused by the big zombie’s death grip.
An uncomfortable silence ensued between her and Wilson as she observed Taryn dump her tray into a bus tub and then proceed to weave her way through the tables and chairs on her way back to where they all were sitting together. Sasha turned her full attention across the table. “Wilson... you need to grow a pair and ask her out.”
Unsure of how to process the accusation that he was a freaking eunuch, he tilted his head back and stared at the acoustic ceiling tiles. Next, the Griffin painting received more scrutiny from him. Finally, as he gazed off into the distance, through the row of small rectangular windows near the ceiling, he broke his silence. “Where do you propose I take her, a drive-in movie? Colorado Springs Fast Burger store number 65?” he asked, his voice a near whisper and his head on a swivel anticipating Taryn’s return.
“She is vulnerable, Wilson. Strike while the iron is hot.”
“You’re fourteen, Sasha... where in the heck did you hear that saying?”
“The Young and the Restless.”
“Figures.”
The same sweet smell accompanied Taryn when she returned. Definitely not dryer sheets, thought Wilson as the same heady feeling overwhelmed him. He pulled it together, and as absurd as his sister’s advice had seemed, he was a nanosecond from asking her out and proving that he had a pair…
“So you want to show me around?” Taryn asked, beating him to the punch. She stood next to him, waiting for an answer. Close enough that her bare thigh brushed his elbow, sending a wave of current through his body. If this were a comedy on the big screen, he thought, her character would have been tapping an imaginary watch. But this wasn’t a comedy, and Wilson’s heart knew it, even if his imagination didn’t.
He sat there feeling the warmth of her touch and paused for a half a beat, crafting in his head an eloquent way to say yes—but this time Sasha beat him to the punch. Shit, he thought. Good thing he wasn’t a fighter, because with all of the openings he was missing he’d have been knocked out cold by now.
“We can both show—”
“Not you, little miss,” Taryn snapped. “Just your brother and me. My story is rated NC-17.”
Sasha glared, but kept her brother’s best interests in heart and saved her comments for later.
Ignoring his sister’s hurt feelings, Wilson rose. He took a calming breath, then looked into Taryn’s dark eyes. “I’d be happy to do you—” He chuckled nervously at the little Freudian slip. “Let me try that again. I’d be happy to show you around.” And wondering what the rest of the afternoon had in store, he followed his new friend out into the waiting daylight.
Chapter 9
Outbreak - Day 15
Yoder, Colorado
Cade made a fist and pounded violently on the locked door, putting all of his hundred and eighty pounds behind each blow. He gave the occupants a five count to respond, and when the store remained quiet, reared back and planted a solid kick below the door handle. To his amazement, nothing happened, save for the painful resonance that shot through his size nine Danners and shivered up his right leg. Undeterred, he tested the jamb by putting his shoulder against the decades-old hardwood and leaning in. Sensing a little give, he decided to once again attempt the Danner method of entry.
Boots soles scuffing the sidewalk, he took a short hop and leaned into the kick, this time with a healthy dose of follow through behind it. Two things happened at once: the window sandwiched behind the plywood sheet exploded, depositing a thousand tiny glass kernels out the bottom slot-machine style. Then, the jamb splintered from the impact and the door flung inward, sending the brass bell atop the door jangling. Quickly he reached up and silenced the old-world precursor to the oft used photo-electric eye, and then he paused for a moment to retrieve his tactical flash light from a cargo pocket. His head moving on a swivel and his other senses on full alert, he thumbed it on and entered the hardware store.
The air inside was warm and reeked of death with an underlying trace of fertilizer and lawn chemicals. Disturbed by the violent entry, golden dust motes danced by his face. He stepped out and into the alcove, took two deep cleansing breaths, and then looked east through the slice of daylight beside the Ford, then west, and then east once again for good measure. Nothing moved in downtown Yoder.
After padding over the remains of the destroyed window, he reentered Abe’s with the Glock’s tubular suppressor leading the way. Keeping his eyes scanning his flanks and the aisles ahead, he nudged the door closed with his right elbow. Anybody here? he thought as he lowered his breathing and strained to hear anything moving among the shadowy aisles. Nothing.
He pointed the flashlight down the nearest aisle, and with two-hundred lumens lancing the dark, set out to fill his shopping list.
After treading through the paint section, he came to a T and paused in front of a wall that held hundreds of metallic key blanks and dozens of colorful fobs to attach them to. He snatched one that caught his attention and stuffed it in his pocket. He had no idea where the impulse came from, but the blue and white Ford oval would be more practical than the gaudy bling currently weighing down his pants.
Feeling the soft give of worn boards underfoot, he padded deeper into the store. As he heel-and-toed his way past a display complete with fake plastic grass and a couple of lawnmowers and rototillers, the air suddenly grew warmer and the scent of carrion grew stronger—nearly overwhelming him. He stopped instantly and listened intently. Nothing moved. Except for the steady beating of his heart, there was silence. His Suunto told him he’d been inside for two minutes. Time to move. He didn’t want to allow the dead enough time to amass outside.
Black pistol in a two-handed grip, he transited a few more aisles, and where his eyes tracked so did the Glock. Instantly his hackles arose and he froze in mid-stride. The lingering stench had become so concentrated that he could almost feel it. Though there wasn’t a superstitious bone in his body, and he knew the sensation was but a figment of his imagination, it still seemed like he had walked into a viscous wall of death. He likened the sensation that caused his skin to crawl to some kind of inbred prehistoric survival mechanism similar to the fight or flight instinct. Similar, he guessed, to the tactic employed by department stores whereby they secretly pumped in pleasant scents like fresh baked cookies, lavender, or jasmine, all in order to subliminally affect their customers’ spending habits. Only this pong didn’t affect the pleasure center of his brain, it made him want to bolt to the street and inhale another fresh lungful of Colorado air, not bust out the credit card and start buying shit.
Breathing only through his mouth, he pushed deeper into the gloom. As he neared what he guessed had to be the rear of the retail part of the store, he noticed a sound that had become very familiar over the last couple of weeks. For somewhere in the dark, the livewire buzzing of hundreds of insects foreshadowed the scene he stumbled upon next.
His flashlight beam caught the pair of tan work boots first and then he walked the cone of light to the left, revealing the rest of the corpse which he supposed had been there for a week or more. Stretched across the skull, and pulling his eyes to slits, the older man’s skin had gone tight. It looked unnatural, waxen-like. The body, belonging to the man Cade assumed was Abe, was prone on the floor and covered by a busy black carpet of common houseflies. Abe’s blood had long ago dried black. That he had eaten the barrel of the dull gray semi-automatic still gripped in his hand was clearly evident.
His front teeth and lips had been shredded by the blast and peppering the milky white of his chin and cheeks, a constellation of black powder burns. The epilogue to Abe’s sad story was revealed as Cade flicked the light up the far wall. Remnants of gray matter and splintered skull and hair had become embedded in the drywall where the blast from the .45 had scattered them. The owner’s presence helped explain the gore orgy out front, and Cade knew from experience that once a pack of Zs had cornered some fresh meat they rarely gave up until their hunger was sated—or they died again trying. He eyed the AR-15 and pair of semi-automatic pistols lying near the man’s body, knowing full well they were the reason his store still stood while the ones nearby fell. The thought brought back a vivid memory from Cade’s youth—glued to CNN, watching Korean shop owners protecting their turf from the mayhem that spread throughout Los Angeles immediately after the Rodney King verdict had been announced. In his mind’s eye he could almost picture Abe upstairs, rifle poking between the curtains, fending off the living by any means necessary, and then watching helplessly as the reanimated corpses moaned and growled, announcing their hunger-fueled need to get inside. To get at the meat the primeval part of their brains told them was holed up behind the brick, mortar, and plywood.
Cade knew the feeling of being completely surrounded, dangerously low on ammunition, all hope ebbing. Abe must have been feeling like those Koreans, he reasoned—stuck between Desperation Avenue and Hopeless Drive, out of ammo and with no officers from Rampart Division dispatching to save him—at least Abe had spared one for himself.
With no chance of a working cure to Omega or a way to reproduce Fuentes’s antiserum on the immediate horizon, Cade had decided unequivocally that before he became one of them, putting a bullet in his brain would be his final act on earth.
Allegiance Page 6
