Love at the End of Days

by Tera Shanley

  Sean picked up his pace, and she stayed back to run beside him, scanning the woods while they caught up little by little. By the time they reached the others, the looming cinder block and stone walls of the Denver colony peeked out through the trees. Dark storm clouds swirled above it, and lazy snowflakes fell from the sky. The place was haunted—there was no question about that. Now if they could just rid the place of its ghosts.

  Laney held her hand over her nose and looked positively green. One of the unfortunate side-effects to her immunity was her sensitivity to Deads. It was as if she’d jumped an evolutionary notch, and her body had learned to fight the virus as well as sense the danger coming at the same time. The rest of them didn’t have natural weapons like hers. Only metal ones.

  “I was hoping the gate would still be open from when Erhard let the Deads in last year,” Sean whispered.

  The looming wooden gates to the right were tightly shut. No such luck.

  “Finn and I will hop the walls near the gardens and try to divert the numbers to the back of the colony before we open the gates from the inside. Stay here. Stay quiet. If Deads come, and you can’t off them without ammo, you head up a tree and wait for us. No noise.” He eased Adrianna off his back, and the girl clung to Vanessa’s leg.

  “And if you don’t come back?” Laney breathed.

  Kneeling down, Sean pulled loops of climbing cable from his backpack. “If we don’t come back in an hour, Mitchell calls the shots.” He gave Vanessa one last lingering look before he jogged off behind Finn.

  That hour lasted days, and the longer time dragged, the more eerie the woods behind them became. It would only take one bawling Dead to attract others, and they’d be trapped here between teeth and a stone wall. Desperate for a plan B, she scouted the nearest trees with Adrianna’s tiny hand clenched in hers and picked the easiest ones to scurry up in a pinch. Laney seemed to be doing the same.

  An explosion rattled the woods, shaking pine needles and cones to the earth as the team ducked against the unseen danger. Well, if that wasn’t going to pull Deads from the woods, she didn’t know what would. Their timeframe had just been limited substantially.

  Jerking his head toward the gate, Mitchell led them, gun at the ready, until they stood inside the gargantuan doorway. Smoke billowed, piercing the sky and blanketing everything with the scent of ash. Minutes drifted by as they stood in the shadow of the wall. Vanessa’s body shook with adrenaline as she pressed Adrianna further into the safety of the corner.

  “Here they come,” Guist murmured. He didn’t mean Sean and Finn. The woods crawled with nightmares.

  “What do we do?” she asked, trying to suppress the panic in her voice. “Do we head for the trees?”

  “If we get up a tree, we’ll have a horde of Deads between us and the gate,” Mitchell murmured. “We’ll be cut off and trapped. Sean and Finn will get us in the gate. They have to. Stay still. Stay quiet. The smoke will mask a lot of our scent and hopefully buy us time.”

  Snaking wisps of smog crept through the trees and filled the forest until Vanessa’s eyes burned. She pulled Adrianna’s jacket over her nose and covered the child’s eyes with her hands to protect them.

  The bulk of the Deads seemed to be headed farther down the fence line where the noise had originated. One, however, was headed straight for them at a slow lope from further up in the woods. He’d pass right by them. Pressed back, she froze against Laney. The smoke was making it hard to breathe, and she stifled a cough that filled her suffocating lungs. And still he came, the unfocused Dead with the emaciated body and gaping sores. His ribs protruded to match jutting hip bones, and so sunken were his cheeks, the outline of his snaggled teeth could be seen through them. He was going to pass them right by without noticing they were there.

  As he passed, he flicked his head to the side and slowed. Snuffling air through his nostrils, he backpedaled slowly. Mitchell tensed on the other side of Laney, and as the monster approached, he hunched down and searched the shadows with film covered eyes. Closer and closer he came until Vanessa wanted to scream. Her fear smelled acrid and bitter, even to herself, and she waited for any sign to break formation from Mitchell. Come on, Sean! Where was he?

  If they moved to kill him, it would draw the attention of every Dead within sight and not enough of them had moved farther down the fence to make a fair fight yet. Laney tensed back into the smoky doorway as he sniffed at her.

  Vanessa flicked a glance down at a slow movement. Mitchell had eased a pistol up under the Dead’s jaw without the thing noticing. One wrong move and the creature would be fertilizer for the forest.

  He sniffed and snuffled at the squirming bundle strapped to Laney’s chest, but even when Soren let out a little whimper, he didn’t attack. Leaning back, the Dead gave one more unfocused look around the doorway and lumbered off.

  As one, they exhaled slowly and relaxed against each other.

  “Naaaaaaaaah!” the Dead bellowed as his face appeared around the corner.

  Eloise screamed in terror, and Mitchell put a hole in him so wide, Vanessa could see a stream of daylight through his face. They were in it now.

  “Stay here behind Laney,” Vanessa ordered Adrianna, and she pulled slightly in front with Mitchell and Guist.

  The woods erupted in the rattle of gunfire as they downed the front lines of the attack. “Sean!” she screamed.

  The number of Deads that rushed from the woods wouldn’t be held for long.

  “One shot, one Dead,” she chanted. They couldn’t afford the ammunition to miss.

  Laney’s relentless fists banged against the gate in rhythm with Vanessa’s pounding heartbeat, and beside her, Guist dropped an empty magazine and slid another one in.

  A flash of blue took the corner of her vision as Laney’s Mini-14 sent a pepper of staggering gunfire into the Deads approaching on the left. Soren cried, but the noise didn’t matter now. Every Dead within a mile knew they were here, easy pickings if only they waited until the weapons ran out. Losing ground, she backed closer to Adrianna and reloaded, only to be pushed forward by something solid. Confused, she spared a glance for the culprit, but the only thing there was the door. The door!

  “Inside!” she yelled over the noise of battle.

  Pulling Adrianna by the arm, she handed her to Sean through the opening Finn was creating with arms that strained against the weight of the wood. She stood guard as Laney and then Eloise disappeared into the colony, and with Mitchell’s head twitch as her only order, she slid in just before him and Guist.

  “Close it!” Sean barked.

  A row of handles lined the wooden doors at chest level, and she pulled as hard as she could. The others did the same, but it wasn’t moving fast enough. Deads leaked through the opening. “Vanessa,” Sean said. “Clear ’em.”

  Gladly.

  She pulled her Glock and brushed the trigger before kicking the body viciously out of the way. The door gave a little, and she did the same to the next. And the next. With a thud, the door clamped closed, and Finn and Guist rushed to put the wooden bars in place.

  A second wall that mirrored the first stretched up in front of them. “This way,” Sean said, scooping Adrianna onto his back. He loped to the left down the length of the impediment like her weight was nothing.

  Vanessa ran alongside them. “You tell us if there are any Deads behind us. Okay, sweetie? We’ll do teamwork.”

  The child clutched her tiny pocket knife. “Don’t worry, I will.”

  Sean’s arms had to be burning by the time they reached the next gate, which had been thrown closed haphazardly, but he didn’t even register the pain on his face. His steely focus was on the next barrier. He set the girl down as Finn and the others pulled on the towering gate. Teeth gritted, Sean’s eyes went wide as the door opened, and he ducked back out of the way of the first clawing arm. “They’re here,” he said with a significant look at Finn.

  “Close it back and give me a minute,” Finn said, spinning to sprint the
way they’d come.

  Vanessa threw her weight against the door with the others as Dead after Dead hurled their wasted bodies against it. Inch by inch the Deads gained ground. Finn ran a hundred yards back down the lane between primary walls and pulled the pin on a grenade. Launching it over the barrier, he yelled, “Get down!”

  Surprised by the tremendous, bone-rattling explosion, Vanessa lost her footing momentarily before she threw her body weight back at the gate. The pressure became less, and when Finn reached them, he pulled a machine gun from his back and ordered, “Open the gate!”

  Little effort was required. Vanessa stood back with the others and readied her rifle. The commotion of the blast had syphoned off some of the Deads in the back, but the ones in front had smelled them and wouldn’t be put off.

  Adrianna clung to her leg and beside her, Laney lifted her Mini-14 with a look of absolute murder for the Deads that fell out of the opening. “For Jarren,” she murmured, lighting them up.

  Welp, it was decidedly a good thing they’d fastened plugs in Soren’s little ears. Laney was a warrior, and mother or not, she didn’t hesitate to down the droves.

  With a clearing made, Sean motioned them through the final pair of gates. No turning back now. The scene inside was a slice to her innards. She’d been to the Denver colony before, and never in her wildest imaginings would she ever have pictured it like this.

  Bodies littered the entry, and piles of skeletons decorated front doorsteps of dilapidated buildings. The stink of death clung to every air molecule, and the light snowfall did nothing to warm the place up. Abandoned and uncared for, the colony had dried up into a ghost town crawling with the reanimated corpses of its inhabitants. Buildings and cabins stood lopsided, like the frames had failed, and glass was busted out of nearly every dust--laden window. Much of the colony had burned, and the charred remains of old homes dotted the ground. Roofs sagged, and doors stood open, flapping slowly in the wind with an eerie creaking soundtrack, like the bones of the undead. A great plume of smoke billowed from the back of the colony where Sean and Finn must’ve blown something up as a diversion.

  It had only been a year since the takeover, but the colony looked like it’d been abandoned the day of the outbreak. It matched all of the other sad cities and towns ravaged by the virus that ended the world.

  None of that mattered when she saw the look on Sean’s face. Sadness pooled in his eyes. Maybe he hadn’t noticed what his colony looked like in his haste to get to the gate, but in that moment, she could almost see something dying inside of him.

  “Later, Sean,” she said, pulling his arm toward the hole in the coming Deads the others were running for. “We’ll fix it later!”

  “We can’t fix them,” he said, lifting his rifle to a Dead dressed in the same guard garb she was wearing.

  Blind idiots had followed Erhard straight to their doom. She’d met the Denver colony’s second once, and he hadn’t exactly rubbed her right. Arrogant to a fault and not all right in the head, she hadn’t been overly surprised when she heard of his betrayal.

  “Monsters are coming,” Adrianna said in such an innocent voice, such hideous words sounded wrong coming from her lips.

  Vanessa hadn’t time to even aim before Sean let off a pepper of automatic weaponry across the trio of Deads running behind them. Swinging Adrianna up onto her hip, she pushed her burning legs to catch up with the others.

  “Get to the main house like we talked about. It’ll be the strongest building against the horde. It’s about two hundred fifty yards due west. That way,” Sean said, pointing across a clearing. Over the gunfire he yelled, “If we get split up, try to regroup there!”

  His rifle clicked empty, and he slid it to his back before pulling a pistol. They were using too much ammo. The snow fell harder, and the wind whipped around them in a furious embrace.

  Eloise was slowing ahead, and Guist grabbed her arm. She cried out, and he holstered his weapon and folded her into his arms. “Cover me,” he said and ran with his wife in his arms.

  Adrianna was dead weight, and she wouldn’t be able to hold onto the child for much longer as her muscles burned to numbness.

  The grappling fingers of a Dead scratched her shoulder as she blazed past, and she stifled a scream at the risk of being captured and toppling onto Adrianna. Lashing out, she backhanded the Dead with the armor that encased her forearm, and he slowed enough to allow her to pass.

  “I see it,” breathed Sean as a looming building appeared over the hill. “Go, go, go.”

  She didn’t have a gun hand anymore. Both were required for carrying Adrianna, and running weaponless beside Guist required absolute trust in her team. Mitchell, Finn, and Laney led them, with only a moment of thought for each Dead that dropped just as it was about to reach them. A behemoth crashed in front of her, and she hurdled the body, stumbling on the dismount and barely keeping her balance. Deads were all around them, desperate for a meal they probably hadn’t had in months.

  The steps to Sean’s front porch were the end of what Vanessa’s body could handle. Exhausted, she lurched up them as Mitchell pushed on the door handle.

  Nothing.

  He rattled it and muttered, “What the hell? It’s locked!”

  “They’re coming,” Vanessa sang. They didn’t have time for this. “Just kick the damned thing down!”

  “Then it won’t keep them out once we’re in!”

  Sean spared a shocked glance for the door and shoved his way past. With a thunderous knock on the door he screamed, “If anyone is alive in there, we need sanctuary!”

  There wasn’t time to get around to a back door or another opening. The undead were pouring from both directions. She shoved Adrianna up to Sean and pulled both pistols. Mitchell and Guist knelt beside her and together they battled the horde, popping round after round until the empty chamber echoed on her first gun, and then her Glock.

  Sean was yelling something behind her, and she couldn’t see her teammates anymore but if this was it—if this was her place to go, she was taking as many of those rotting bastards down with her as she could. She backed up and pulled a knife, launched it into the face of a Dead. She threw another, and another.

  Ready for the screaming banshee that leapt up onto the porch with her, she drew the gleaming weapon but froze when she saw its face.

  Leslie Bertrand. When she’d been human, she’d been a good friend.

  The hesitation cost her, and she toppled backward under the weight of Leslie-the-Dead. The knife! She pushed against the Dead’s chest with her armored arm, but couldn’t lift it further than that. The creature stretched its head toward her throat, and she scrabbled for the knife that had fallen somewhere under her. Where was the blasted thing?

  Gunfire sounded from above her, but she couldn’t see a thing through the Dead’s filthy, stringy hair surrounding her face. She was losing purchase as her exhausted arms failed, and her hand hit nothing but wooden porch deck. Gritting her teeth, she growled and turned her face to the side as she fought to keep the snapping teeth away from her throat, and just as the pain pierced her neck and cut into her flesh, the Dead flew backward and strong hands dragged her away.

  She panted as pain escaped her body through a stream of warmth down the side of her neck. Sean launched himself at the door and locked a series of deadbolts before Mitchell and Guist shoved a desk in front of the door and started stacking furniture on top of it.

  The faster her heart beat, the more warmth seeped from her body. Sean leaned against the desk for a moment like he was accepting that they’d all made it safely.

  Except they hadn’t.

  “Sean,” she said. Even to her own ears, she sounded scared.

  Slowly he turned.

  “I’m bit.”

  Chapter Twenty

  ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHOCKS of Sean’s life had been when Arden Moore opened the door for them. There were survivors from the fall of Denver, and they’d lived here all this time. That revelation was utterly eclipsed
by Vanessa’s admission.

  This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not now.

  “Sh-Shoot me,” Vanessa said. “Don’t let me be one of them.”

  Sean dropped to his knees beside her as a helpless sound wrenched itself from his throat. “No,” he whispered.

  Even in the dim light of the lanternless entryway, he could see the pool of dark growing beneath her. He could smell the iron in her blood. “Vanessa, listen to me.” Panic thrummed through his veins. “Listen! Was it a bite or the blade underneath you? I saw a blade! Was it a bite or a blade?”

  She shook her head back and forth, and tears streamed from the corners of her eyes.

  “Vanessa, please.” Emotion filled his throat until each word was thick, like the life that was flowing from her. “Please, tell me you cut your throat on the blade.”

  She opened her mouth but nothing came out.

  “Mitchell! Get me the first-aid bag.”

  “Sean,” Mitchell warned.

  “Don’t! Just give it to me.”

  Mitchell sighed loudly and dropped beside him before ripping into the pack and pulling a wad of cloth. Guist shone a beam from his flashlight onto the wound, but all he could see was red. Mitchell wiped it, time and again, trying to get a look at the wound.

  “I can’t tell. There’s just too much blood. I can’t tell.”

  His heart was being ripped from him. Desperately, he squeezed her shoulders and arms like it would bring her back. A tortured sound came from his throat as he wiped water from his eyes with the back of his forearm. “Laney?”

  “Don’t do that to her,” Mitchell warned.

  “Your blood will bring her back.”

  “But she’ll rot, Sean!” Mitchell yelled. “She’ll watch her body rot away. She’ll feel it!”

  Laney unzipped one of her cargo pockets and pulled out a small black bag. Inside were five needles filled with clear liquid. “I have something better,” she said.

  “What is it?” Guist asked from the other side of Vanessa’s body.