I head butted him right in that tasteless mustache, which made him curse and made my vision go even more sparkly, though not sparkly enough to blur out the shape of the gun he pointed between my eyes.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t close them.
If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to see the flash of Norman’s signal light.
“Hey, Bossman!”
Even with a concussion, I could tell by the position of his voice that he’d left his pickup point.
Steve, Rob, and I all turned our heads to look at him, visible for only half of each second, standing on the inside of the barricade on the far side of the warehouse, perfectly framed in the gap Maria and I had widened on our side, the strobe light held under his chin like a ghost storyteller in one hand, a can of kerosene in the other. Next to him was a pile of what looked like every flammable object left in the building, every bit of wood and cardboard and burlap, along with everything remotely comforting that no one had volunteered to carry, the candles and razors and towels, all leaning right against the shelving. I couldn’t remember how much of that section of the structure was wooden, and from that distance, it was impossible to tell, but if there was any chemically possible way for the whole place to go up in flames, this was what the setup would look like.
“You want this dump?” Norman shouted, turning the kerosene over on top of the pile. “It’s yours! Leave her alone, and there might even be something left of it!”
He picked up one of the strips of shipping cardboard and held the end of it to what could only be my missing lighter.
“Shit!”
Steve dropped his grip on my collar and scrambled, finally, through the gap in the barricade and across the building’s main floor, hell bent on keeping those papery sparks away from the accelerant.
Several things went through my very fuzzy head at that moment. The clearest thing was how embarrassingly naïve it had been of me to think that Norman would agree, without a fight, to a plan that centered around sitting still and being quiet and not having a certifiably insane plan B up his sleeve.
The second clearest was about the keys.
I rolled myself up onto my hands and knees. Rob aimed down, and he could have had me, but he hesitated.
It looked like he’d only just added up how completely his friend had lost it, whatever “it” he had once had. He might even have been trying to apologize to me—I didn’t stop to make sure. I just flattened myself under the barricade and crawled as far as I could into Maria’s side before he could change his mind.
Steve didn’t take up the habit of hesitating, and I heard him fire another whole clip across the room and replace it before he’d covered half the distance.
“Careful!” Norman warned him. “You might make me lose my grip!”
I dug into my bag for my lantern once I’d crawled too deep to see, and I tried to focus on moving forward, sweeping it back and forth to look for reflections off of any sharp little bits of metal that didn’t belong, but I couldn’t help turning my head to the left to check on Norman.
He was hanging from the barricade on his side by one arm, holding the burning cardboard right over the pile with the other. Steve fired twice more, and Norman swung himself side to side and back and forth between four different levels, less subtly but much more quickly and easily than I could have.
“You are aiming for me, right?”
Rob had climbed through and was following after Steve, to help or to try to stop him I didn’t know. Ahead of me, up against a load-bearing six-pack of picture frames, I saw the little ring of keys.
Steve was shooting more slowly, and Norman was laughing his endless, manic laugh.
Bang.
“Ha! Almost broke a window that time!”
Bang.
“Oh, come on!”
Bang.
“Please, I’ve seen imperial storm troopers shoot straighter than—”
Bang.
The laughter stopped, and I looked up again in time to see the blood spreading down Norman’s chest before he fell.
It was only about ten feet to the ground, but the torch fell, too, fluttering a few feet to his left and onto the bonfire, which caught in one blinding roar.
“Shit!” Steve repeated, and he and Rob both went straight to trying to put it out with vinegar and corn syrup and kitty litter, as if any of the junk in it could possibly matter.
There were a couple of seconds when I couldn’t move. Okay, maybe four or five, crouching in the dark, trying to get my brain to accept enough data, and only enough data, to do any kind of useful processing.
The keys.
I shuffled forward the last few feet to grab them and then rolled out on the warehouse side so I could run back around through the big gap.
Steve and Rob were both too busy to waste a shot trying to stop me.
A couple of zombies had wandered in through the entrance since I’d left it, but one of them had gotten tangled in the pulley chain already, so I only had to finish the other one before taking Rob’s scooter and ducking outside. At least it reminded me to have Suprbat ready.
One eye on the next zombie and one on the next possible emergency exit, I started my circuit of the outside as planned.
I was sure Norman would have made it back to his pickup point by then if he’d had to drag himself there by one finger. He was going to turn his signal back on under the door like we’d gone over, to let me know where to slow down, and he’d open the latch from the inside to join me.
I turned the new scooter tightly around one outside corner, then two, and measured my way in my head to where I was absolutely sure his exit had to be, scattering skull fragments every few seconds along the way.
There was no artificial light coming from under it, just lots of black smoke, but there was a decent-sized rock sitting not too far away, a little smaller than a cantaloupe. It looked like it had been ripped up and thrown by a rioter not too long ago.
I stopped, stepped off the scooter, and tried to lift it.
The zombies started to converge as soon as I was in one place, screaming, drawing more in around me, and I screamed, too, with the effort of lifting the rock into one of my arms while swinging Suprbat with the other because, really, what more harm could it do?
The moment I could steal two seconds without being consumed, I smashed the rock against the door handle as hard as I could, then shifted it back to the crook of my arm so I could make up the lost time with Suprbat. I had to do that three more times before the handle finally broke so I could pull the thing open.
The rush of escaping hot air assaulted every exposed bit of me and forced me to wait a few seconds, swinging Suprbat blindly, before I could look inside.
There was nothing to see but fire. I was right behind where the kerosene had been poured. The parts of the barricade that could burn had caught, and the flames were spreading around the perimeter. A few packing crate heavy parts of the structure had already collapsed completely.
Once they burned out, it would be the easiest thing in the world to walk straight inside, but with them still blazing, there was nowhere to go from that door.
I couldn’t see Norman or his bags where they should have been waiting.
I had the wrong emergency exit.
I got back to the scooter and kept moving, and I was trying to figure out a way to do the same thing to each door, one at a time, but I’d had to ditch the rock to move on fast enough, and I kept feeling certain that I’d see the sign at the next door, the one after that, and then I’d circled almost all the way back to the front, and I knew I’d passed it by.
So I went around again. And again.
I was back searching for that rock to finally try dragging it onto the scooter with me when I saw it, a flashing, pure white, artificial light coming from under the next doorway, no orange or unpredictable flickering to it at all.
I’d only overshot by one door the first time around.
I slammed on the brakes, and when I’d
swerved in close enough, the door swung open as slowly and weakly as if someone had just tripped the latch by accident.
Norman was lying on the floor, propped up on the overloaded duffle he’d volunteered to carry, steadily drenching it in blood and clutching the crowbar like he might actually try swinging it if a target got close enough.
I could barely hear his gurgling, hiccoughing gasps over the fire.
“Hi . . . Cassie.”
First thing’s first.
I took the crowbar and cleared some temporary space around the scooter with a few wide, sweeping swings. I didn’t care if I killed all the zombies in reach just as long as I broke them badly enough to let us get past them in a hurry.
Then I tried to pull his arm over my shoulder to help him stand, but the hole in his chest made such a horrible noise, like a broken garbage disposal, that even after all the horrible things I’d heard and seen already, it actually made me drop him. I wrapped the strap of the bag around him before trying again, twisted it tight, and dragged the whole bloody, twisted mess of him onto the scooter’s footrest.
Suddenly, I was really, really glad he was so small.
It wasn’t until a shot nicked the doorframe that I remembered that Steve and Rob were still there.
And they had done this to him.
I guess Steve had given up fighting the fire by then, and he was looking pretty pissed off about it.
I climbed into the seat of the scooter, pulled Norman onto my lap, did another sweep with the crowbar to buy a few seconds, and then took it to the door hinges.
One pull, then two, and the door stopped being attached to the doorway.
Steve actually stopped to look at it for a moment when it fell, maybe realizing how hard it would be to close again, or how big the holes were that had burned in the barricade so far, before I took my last string of firecrackers and an intriguing little cylinder called a Banshee’s Orgasm, and threw them onto the nearest pile of embers.
“Have fun,” I spat at him.
Okay, I had to Mr. Rogers the fuck out of that one.
Oh.
Oops.
Whatever.
I started up the scooter and gunned it. After a few seconds, when I heard, from almost a block away, how that last firework had gotten its name, I watched the impressive horde it attracted storming the broken door in those cheap, curved rearview mirrors.
Steve and Rob still had their guns, their ill-advised weapons of choice, with plenty of bullets, and the access stairway to retreat to if they were fast and smart enough. They’d survived being abandoned to what should have been death once before, so I don’t honestly know if they or the zombies came out on top of the match I set up.
To this day, I don’t care.
“Ca-ssie.”
Norman’s breath was still coming in those painful-sounding, wet, wheezing fits. He couldn’t say a whole word all in one piece, and under the strap, his chest kept making that sick, sucking, draining sound.
I leaned forward and squeezed him between myself and the controls, telling myself it was to keep the pressure on, steering with one whole arm and defending with the other, trying not to feel the shape of the exit wound through my I Heart Utah shirt.
I’d say that has to qualify as Level Six of scooter riding.
“Prom-ise—” He cut off coughing and then tried to wipe the blood off his mouth but just ended up spreading it around.
And there I’d been, thinking I’d never have to see a terrifyingly red smile painted on him again.
“Don’t let . . . me bite . . . you . . . unless . . . I’m here . . . to . . . enjoy it.”
“I promise.” I didn’t argue to save him the trouble of more words. I knew he meant that I had to remember what to do in those critical thirty seconds after a life, but I figured promising not to let those thirty seconds start in the first place would have to be close enough. That’s what I meant.
“How . . . much?”
I looked down for the first time at the gas gauge on Rob’s scooter and measured it against the route to the meeting place and what I’d learned from the pizza scooter’s impressive but not supernatural mileage.
“More than enough,” I lied.
And then, away from the Costco, away from the guns and the fire and the extra thick hordes, listening to Norman choking on his own blood, that’s when I got scared, almost too scared—scared enough that I had to do something to stop it from taking me off the road.
“Black socks never get dirty. The longer you wear them, the blacker they get.
“Someday I think I might wash them, but something keeps telling me, ‘don’t do it yet.’”
“Not yet,” Norman choked back to me. “Not yet, not yet.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Or What I Guess
You’d Call an Epilogue
Chris, Maria, and the Harts and Defoes all settled in Sleepy Hollow, a surprisingly peaceful spot for being in New England, even in those early days of the infestation.
There was another little group of non-psychopathic survivors holed up in a diner there when we were passing through, so it was sort of like fate. Three years later, they’re all still there.
Josh and Chloe are twelve now. So far, they call each other “best friend,” like Norman and I once did, and people try not to sound like panda breeders when they talk about them.
At least they can play outside now. Zombies are only a slightly bigger danger than wild animals since the first wave mostly rotted into uselessness. There aren’t enough people left to die for their numbers to stay up, but the thirty second rule is still in effect, so it looks like they’ll never disappear completely. Not until we do.
Maria’s helping out with that. She clicked with one of the diner guys, and she’s pregnant right now with his kid. They fight a lot, but they always make up enthusiastically.
And Norman, the coolest, bravest guy I ever knew—the coolest, bravest man I know—yeah, he’s alive.
You could even say we’re living happily ever after, if by “happy” you’re not imagining anything fancier than “together and in love,” and by “ever after” you mean “until the day one of us eats from the wrong dented can of Spaghetti-Os or reaches into the wrong dark corner without a psychiatrist handy to do something life-saving with a knitting needle.”
According to Dr. Defoe (whose credentials I never fully examined while he was saving my boyfriend’s life), Hector was right all along about shoulder wounds. A few inches higher, closer to the carotid artery and the thick, bullet-fragmenting surface of the scapula, and Norman would have gotten to tell him so in person.
But what we were all wrong about was never thinking to argue about the center mass at all. Where it hit, the shot went straight through Norman’s right lung, but some impromptu surgery and a lot of antibiotics later, all it left was a couple of cool scars, a rib that can predict the weather, and a new, improved, more gravelly, and much sexier rock-and-roll scream when I can talk him into using it.
We visit Sleepy Hollow every couple of months when we’re starved for the chance to work a crowd, but mostly we travel, just the two of us—sort of an extended, unofficial honeymoon. Always to the north or south, though, never far to the west. We say it’s because we don’t want to risk the desert again, but really, we just don’t want to look backward.
I don’t want to see my home again. I don’t want to walk the USC campus and wonder what I could have learned in its classrooms. I don’t want to know if the Hollywood sign is still there. I don’t want to see if the fairytale-perfect paint has been allowed to fade on Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
Learning to live a new life is more fun.
So far, we’ve been lucky. Healthy. We’ll never feel completely safe, not the way we did in the glory days of our species, but if we’re lucky for a few more years, learn a few more tricks to tip the odds of survival in our favor (sturdy shoes prevent so many problems that they’re practically a cheat code, by the way), then maybe, maybe we’ll
follow Maria’s example and see if we can’t do our fair share to keep the party going for at least a few more generations.
That is kind of the point of writing all this down, after all, and keeping it in the deepest, safest pocket of my bag next to Peter’s contribution.
Besides, it might be a nice excuse to make the trek to see Dr. Teach and the rest of the Tulsa crowd again.
For now, I’ve got a rather impressive stretch of abandoned beachside Miami all to myself and that same coolest, bravest man (who’s getting a little impatient at the moment) waiting for me on this mansion’s back patio, watching the inviting waves.
So, until the next truly earth-shattering story I bear witness to (i.e. hopefully never), this is Cassandra Emily Fremont wishing you good luck and a happy zombie apocalypse.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks must go again to my amazing husband, Matt, for introducing me to the horror genre I now call home, and for all the support, brainstorming, and the patience and understanding that only a soul mate and fellow neurotic author could have. I wouldn’t be the author I am without you.
A giant thanks to my agent, Jennifer Mishler, for picking me out of the slush pile to take that big chance on. Thank you for your faith in me, and in my work, and for everything you do to help it succeed.
Similarly, giant, sloppy thank you kisses to head publicist D. Kirk Cunningham, executive editor Christopher Loke, and everyone else at Jolly Fish Press who works so hard to make each book a success. You guys are finny and funny and oh-so delish!
Thanks to my parents for devoting so much time and effort to my education and for teaching me my love of books and learning. Thanks, Dad, for being the best English teacher I ever had. Forgive me for all the gratuitous violence and crude colloquial language. Please enjoy the motor scooters. Thanks, Mum, for putting up with a mathematically-challenged daughter and for all the long, tantrum-filled hours spent helping me scrape through my General Ed requirements so I could study what I love.
Thanks also to my little sister, Heather, for giving me five extra vicarious years of the young adult experience. Things do get better, I swear.
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