Love at the End of Days

by Tera Shanley

  The not knowing was terror inducing. How many Deads were in there? How had they managed to lock themselves in? Would they make an ill-timed escape and come up from behind the team to catch them unaware?

  The hallways were littered with debris and broken glass. A layer of dust coated everything except well-worn trails down the middle of the floors. The air was saturated with moist rot, and a steady drip, drip, drip echoed off the walls.

  Finn had been right. Hospitals were downright creepy.

  Vanessa clicked her flashlight on and held it next to the barrel of her gun as they turned down a hallway that led away from the windowed rooms and into darkness. Steadying her breathing, she silently chanted the things she’d learned in guard training to calm her nerves. At this rate, she’d pull a Brandon and yank the weapon with her shaking hands.

  Finger beside the trigger, not on it until she was ready.

  Calm her breathing.

  Deep breath.

  Senses open.

  If she was aware enough, she’d probably hear them before she saw them.

  Walk carefully.

  Protect the guard beside her. And Brandon.

  Don’t get bit.

  She could do this.

  The only sound that came from the team was that of metal weaponry being checked and the muted scuffle of boots against the filthy floor. She thought she heard scampering footsteps behind her, but when she turned the flashlight down that hall, nothing was there. Her imagination was proving to be much scarier than the actual situation she’d found herself in. When she turned around, she met Sean’s questioning gaze and shook her head.

  The first medical supply room was empty of Deads, and they filed in before Finn shut the door behind them. Maybe they could get away with a little more noise with the extra layer of protection.

  Boxes of supplies were scattered on the tiled floor, and rows of haphazardly strewn bottles, vials, and canisters littered a wall of shelves. Brandon shimmied the empty black duffle from his back and started checking labels against the list he held clutched in his shaking hand. Sean rushed over to help while she and the others ambled around to the other cupboards and sifted through them for anything of use.

  Antibiotics had been picked clean in the first year of the outbreak, along with pain killers and vaccines against common illnesses.

  She held up a canister of single wrapped sanitary bandages in silent victory. Steven pointed to the duffle that was being filled and kept searching.

  Two miniature refrigerators sat quietly in the corner, and she gagged when she opened the first one. Someone had left their lunch in there years before, and the mold inside practically had a face. The next one yielded more success. Vials were lined in carefully labeled rows. She couldn’t even guess at the pronunciation, so she waved Brandon over. The smile on his face said they’d found something good. He took everything but two rows and shoved the tiny glass vessels into foam cushioned containers before shoving them into the bag. It wasn’t until she swung the flashlight at the slim window on the door that she saw the face. One blink and it was gone.

  Sean followed her gaze and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought I saw someone at the door.”

  “A Dead?”

  “I don’t know.” It had happened so fast. Or maybe it hadn’t happened at all.

  It was at that moment she heard the moaning, and the window shattered inward. Tiny shards of glass cut her cheeks, and she squeezed her eyes closed against the unexpected pain. Sean grabbed the back of her neck and shoved her behind him, but he couldn’t hide what was coming for them.

  “How many?” she breathed as the first Dead shoved his arm through the broken window.

  “More than our numbers, that’s for damned sure,” Keeter said, pulling a machete from a sheath behind his back.

  Overhead, the sound of running footsteps trilled against the floor of the second story. Sean ducked at the sound and glared at the ceiling. His hand still rested lightly on the back of her neck. She would’ve told him to shove off if the small gesture didn’t comfort her so much.

  “Finn?” he asked.

  “I heard it too,” his second-in-command said. “Whatever it is, it ain’t a Dead. We’re being set up.”

  Sean hissed an oath as the door splintered. “Brandon, shoulder that duffle bag now.” He searched the room and pulled the miniature refrigerators away from the wall. “Vanessa, find me a vent we can get through, a hole in the wall, anything. Finn!”

  Finn tossed him a semi-automatic, and in one smooth motion he pulled it up like it had been born a part of him. “The noise won’t matter now. Deads are making enough racket to attract all of Denver,” he called over the murmur.

  She turned and ripped viciously at the boxes stacked against the wall, desperate for any escape from the room. The walls sunk inward until she couldn’t breathe, and she panted as she threw her panic into clearing the wall. One small vent that would fit a child was behind a bookshelf, and she swallowed a sob as another splintering crack sounded from the door. The rhythmic pop, pop of calculated gunfire cleared the Deads near the window, but masses were pushing against the door, and all hell was about to break loose in here.

  Not a single place to hide. Not for any of them.

  “Vanessa,” Sean called, backing up to her. When she didn’t answer, he gripped her thigh with an impossibly strong and soothing grip. “Back Brandon into that corner. Protect him.”

  “Sean—” What did she want to say? Something hung in the air between them but what was it? Be safe? They were all about to die, and the tragedy of not enough time ached inside her bones.

  His eyes held hers for a brilliant moment before the door flung open. An endless stream of Deads poured through the open doorway like some floodgate to hell had been pried open and all of the lost and damned souls were leaking onto earth.

  Keeter threw his weight at the door to try to staunch the flow, but it only slowed them, and several of the Deads had a death grip on his shirt through the small window. The darkness lit up in a desperate smattering of gunfire. The illumination would have been deadly beautiful if the reason for such light’s existence wasn’t a last effort at survival.

  Brandon stood frozen on the outskirts of the chaos, and she grabbed his shirt and dragged him to the farthest corner. If this was her last stand, she was going down fighting that ragged fate.

  “Stay here!” she yelled.

  His eyes were round behind his glasses, and he nodded solemnly. Just as she turned and lifted her weapon, a knotted rope slapped her in the face, and she lurched back. She craned her neck, and the man who appeared through the now missing tile in the ceiling was more terrifying than the Deads. One side of his face was chiseled, worried, beautiful, while the other side was cut and gray, and his eye had the film of death over it.

  “I don’t kill women,” he said. “I didn’t know they had a woman with them until I’d already let my watchdogs out. Climb up, and I’ll save you.”

  Hearing human words come from a decaying Dead’s mouth was enough to turn her blood to ice.

  Her team was failing. Deads still trickled in. Keeter was nowhere to be seen, and they were losing ground.

  “I won’t leave without my team.” It was a desperate move that could get them all killed, but she couldn’t live with herself if she just left them here to be turned.

  The man scoffed. “No, no, no, no. I don’t share and you’re mine. No men. All men die.”

  “Then I’m not coming! I’ll die here, and it’ll be on your head. You’ll have killed a woman!” She was shrieking—but desperate times and measures.

  “Fine!” he bellowed. “Climb up, and I’ll leave the rope for them.”

  “That’s not how this is going to work. Them first.” She shoved Brandon toward the rope. God, that weenie better not have skipped out on rope climbing day in gym. “Climb.”

  “I’m not going up there with that psycho,” he said in a cracked voice.

  They were
out of time. She pressed her Glock against his temple. “Climb this damned rope, or I’ll pull the trigger.” She jerked her head toward the team. “You’re wasting their time.”

  Brandon, thank whatever powers that be, could actually climb a rope.

  “Jackson, Steven, you next!” she commanded.

  With one small, shocked glance for the rope, they started scrambling up as she took her place near Sean and popped gunfire into the undead. Keeter was twitching on the ground in front of the door, and his presence there prevented more than two coming in at once. He was turning. She swallowed the sorrow down. There was nothing that could be done to save him now. The best she could do was honor his sacrifice by living.

  “Finn, you’re up,” she said over the bellowing. Between the bottleneck and the pile of felled Deads at the doorway, the masses were slowing.

  Sean jerked a glance at the rope, and his eyes went round. “What’re you still doing here?” Stricken panic laced every word.

  “He wants me. He’ll pull the rope as soon as I’m up, and you’ll all die here. I’ve got to go last.”

  A surge of force hit the door, and Keeter opened his eyes with a groan. Click, click. Her Glock was empty, and there wasn’t enough time to reload. A Dead was already on her, and Sean was backed into the corner by two.

  Seamlessly, she pulled a knife and screamed a battle cry as she pushed the Dead against the wall and brained him. Sean was in trouble. Keeter was coming for her, but Sean was pinned on the ground by the weight of the two Deads, straining to keep their teeth away from his face, and if she didn’t help him, he was a dead man walking. She couldn’t stand the thought of him looking at her like Keeter was, so in one last burst of energy before he was upon her, she pulled a blade and launched it.

  Over and over it spun in the air until it landed with a sickening sound into the Dead closest to Sean’s neck. It fell away limply just as Keeter reached her. She rolled, but he wasn’t a clumsy Dead with decayed flesh and muscle deterioration. He was a newly turned monster with the advantages of a warm, trained body and the strength of a fighter. He grabbed her shoulders with a painful grip, like his fingers were digging through to her marrow, and he groaned in triumph as he lifted her from the floor. A foot above the air, her booted feet dangled as she thrashed and kicked to keep his teeth away from her.

  The shot came from above as Finn snipered Keeter-the-Dead from the missing ceiling tile. She toppled to the floor on top of his body and scooted away from him as fast as she could. A tremendous crash sounded from the doorway as Sean pulled over a huge medicine case. Sprinting, he sailed through the air and landed on the rope, he wasn’t even done swinging before he began an impossibly fast ascent up to the ceiling.

  The cabinet rocked dangerously, and Sean yelled, “Vanessa, move!”

  He’d bought her time, but not much.

  Her cut arm screamed as she strained to climb the knots in the ropes. Panic and fury drove her. Fear from the grasping hands that now sought her ankles and fury for what they’d done to Keeter. As long as she lived, she’d never be able to picture him as anything other than the monster who’d almost succeeded in killing her. It wasn’t fair. He’d probably fought against them for years, and now that glory had been ripped away. Grunting, she pulled herself the rest of the way through the opening and balanced hands and knees on two-by-fours that had been placed strategically as a walkway.

  She sat up, breathless, and came face to face with Sean. His eyes swirled like a stormy ocean, and his mouth twitched in the beginnings of a question.

  They’d survived.

  The clack of weaponry was deafening in the small space. “Get away from her,” a voice in the darkness echoed. “She’s mine.”

  Chapter Eight

  A HAND PULLED HER roughly back from Sean, and she was shoved forward. “That way,” the half-Dead man said, pointing his flashlight to an opening in the wall. His touch on her upper arm chilled the skin there even through the long sleeves of her thermal shirt almost as much as the cold whisper of gun metal against the back of her neck.

  “I thought you didn’t kill women,” she said.

  “I don’t have a problem with shooting them. Kneel down!” he commanded the rest of her team the moment they were through the opening. He gripped her shirt and shoved her roughly onto a couch.

  The room was an entirely different world. It wasn’t a hospital room at all, but a luxurious bedroom. How had the man brought it all here? A four-poster bed decorated the back wall with soft, gold-colored sheets, and the walls were adorned with a fashionable wall paper. A sitting area waited in the shadow of a towering bookshelf overflowing with literature. The man shut a tiny, intricately carved door over the small opening in the wall and turned a Dead eye to her.

  “What’s your name?” Sean asked as he knelt down in front of the wall with the others.

  Brandon seemed to be the only one panicking as his eyes shifted from the door and back to the man.

  “Jericho. This is my Jericho. Jerry. The walls came tumbling down. Sandman. Sandy. Sanderson. Jerry Sanderson.”

  She threw Sean a wide-eyed look as the man paced the room and scratched his head with the barrel of his pistol. Something was wrong.

  “Jerry, good. Nice to meet you. This is my team, Finn, Jackson, Steven, Brandon, and Vanessa.”

  “Vanessa. Nessa. I like that name. She’s mine now. Not your team anymore.”

  “She’s more than my team, Jerry. She’s my wife. Now you wouldn’t want to hurt another man’s wife, would you?”

  Jerry turned a half-Dead appraising glare on her, and when he smiled, the open, rotting cut on the side of his face gaped. “No marriage laws no more. She’s my wife now.”

  “You want Vanessa?” Brandon asked.

  Sean threw him a warning glance, which he promptly ignored, and Vanessa shook her head from behind Jerry.

  “If you let us go, we’ll give you Vanessa.”

  “Brandon!” Sean yelled.

  The click of the gun as Jerry aimed it at Sean cracked against the walls of the open space.

  “Listen,” Brandon said with a calming wave of his palms. “She’s yours. She cleans up pretty. You look awfully lonely here, and we can do without her. Just let us leave.”

  “You ruined everything,” Jerry said. “Do you know how long it takes to get my pets in that room? To trap them there until one of you comes along to try to steal my home from me? I’ve killed all of you, all of you. This is my Jericho.”

  “What happened to your face, Jerry?” Sean asked.

  “Turning, turning, turning, but I won’t go quietly. I’ve been fighting the monster in me.”

  Sean’s eyes swept over an assortment of vials and needles on a tray table before he dragged his gaze back up to the man’s marred face. “Were you one of the doctors who worked here? Have you been experimenting on yourself?”

  “They’re my pets—my guard dogs against people like you.”

  “Listen, we have a doctor who’s working on a vaccine who might be able to help you. Why don’t you come with us, and we’ll take you to him?” Sean asked in a calm voice.

  “No more people. People are monsters. Can’t trust people.”

  Vanessa gripped the cushion as he swung his gun from each one of her teammates to the next.

  “Who first? He said I could have her, and I want her. You can’t have her.” Again, he pulled the hammer back on the old pistol in his hands and aimed it at Sean.

  “Wait.” Impossible. It wasn’t physically possible for her to watch Sean die. She hadn’t been able to do it in the room full of Deads, and she couldn’t do it now. “I’ll stay with you if you let them go.”

  “You’ll stay with me either way,” he said with a monstrous frown.

  “Yes, yes, but if you let my friends go and I know they are all right in the world somewhere, I’ll stay here willingly. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Vanessa,” Sean warned.

  “You, shut up,” Jerry spat as he
lifted his gun to him again.

  He worried the corner of his rotting lip as he studied her. Still under his gaze, she hoped whatever he saw in her earned her this one favor.

  “Give me your gun. Now.”

  Without hesitation, she pulled her unloaded Glock and slid it across the floor to him.

  “And your knives.”

  “I lost it while fighting the Deads down below.” She lifted the edges of her shirt to prove it to him. All that remained was an empty sheath.

  His eyes turned lucid for the first time since she’d seen him poke his head out of the ceiling. “Leave, before I change my mind.”

  Brandon, that traitor, bolted for the door and threw it open before the others even stood up.

  “Can I say good-bye to my wife?” Sean asked. “Please. I’m never going to see her again. The least you can do is let me say good-bye.”

  Moments passed with only a hard and steady look from Jerry before he nodded curtly. “Make it quick.”

  Finn immediately started twenty questions with Jerry as Sean approached. His intense gaze held her like a caress, and he stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. Wrapping his arms around her until his hands tangled with the edge of her shirt, he leaned down and smiled just before he kissed her. His lips were sensuous and moved fluidly against hers until her legs felt like they wouldn’t bear weight anymore. Finn spoke loudly about the best way out of the hospital as Sean whispered, “Meet at the tunnels,” against her lips.

  His hands brushed the bare skin of her exposed back and then something cut painfully into her flesh. Warmth trickled and pooled at the waist of her cargo pants, and it wasn’t until he pulled away with a meaningful look that she realized just what he’d done. He’d given her knife back—the one she’d hurled at the Dead to save his life. Now, he was returning the favor.

  Her hands shook at the realization that if she didn’t use it, she’d become the reluctant partner of the half-monster who argued with Finn near the door.

  Okay, she mouthed.

  He’d kissed her too well. She was drunk with the taste of him, and her lips were warm and throbbing for more—for everything.