Love at the End of Days

by Tera Shanley

  “Dr. Mackey gave me some of the first rounds of vaccine, just in case. They haven’t been tested on humans though. We don’t know any of the side effects yet or even if it will work after she’s been bitten,” Laney warned.

  Sean could almost feel Vanessa fading beneath his fingertips. Before he could change his mind, he snatched one of the syringes, pulled the cap off with his teeth and jammed it into Vanessa’s shoulder. The vaccine emptied into her body, but she didn’t even respond to the prick. Her eyes were closed and her skin pale.

  “She’s bleeding too much,” he said. “Hand me a needle and sutures. Hurry!”

  “Your hands are shaking too badly,” Mitchell said softly. “I need room to work. Guist, keep that light right here.”

  Sean backed up until his shoulder blades hit the wall, and then he slid down it while the team worked to staunch the bleeding. Laney led Adrianna to another room, and as much as a hug from his daughter would’ve done him good at the moment, she’d done him a favor. Adrianna didn’t need to see either one of them like this.

  “Vanessa?” Eloise said in a shaky voice. “Vanessa, honey, you have to come back to us.” Matched tears streaked down her freckled cheeks in the thin light that streamed through the boarded up windows. Her lips trembled as she fluttered her hands uselessly over Vanessa’s limp body, and he looked away. He’d lose it if he took on anyone else’s grief.

  It should’ve been him. Again and again, she’d put herself in danger for precious extra seconds so they could all get to safety. It should’ve been him lying cold on the wooden floors of his old home. Rocking back, he slammed his head against the wall to try to stop the pain in his mind.

  In a whisper as quiet as a breeze, Guist said, “I can’t find her pulse.”

  “Check again,” Mitchell muttered as he looped another suture.

  “I’ve checked every spot I know and there’s nothing. I’m sorry.”

  The words were a blow to his gut. It was like he’d swallowed a tiny grenade the moment he’d fallen in love with her, and now the pin had somehow jerked free.

  He glared at the door that stood in between him and the horde that had killed his chance at happiness.

  “Sean,” Finn warned. His second-in-command, the ever logical voice of reason.

  With a growl he stood and stalked into the next room, one where he was alone among a myriad of stacked boxes, dust covered books, and office supplies. A room where no one was watching him to gauge his reaction.

  The devil took him, and he roared against the restraint of loss. A metal stack of shelves stretched to the ceiling, and desperate to get to the brick underneath, he flung it behind him. He threw punch after punch after bloody punch at the unforgiving stones that were as cold as his soul, and as unmoving as he wished his heart to be. As emotionless as he wanted his mind.

  He glared at the boarded window before he checked his ammunition. Finn could probably hear him reloading his weapons, but who cared? He sure didn’t.

  “Give me your radio,” he said to Finn when he came back out.

  “You’re emotional right now.”

  “Give me your radio. Now.”

  Finn slapped the radio into the palm of his hand with a disgusted look. “You have a daughter.”

  “And I’m about to save her,” he gritted out through clenched teeth. “Are you with me, or not.”

  “I think we should wait.”

  “Wait for what? Until I’m all better, Finn? We’ll starve to death way before then. Are you going to cover me, or am I going this alone?”

  Finn didn’t move for an entire minute. Not a single muscle twitched on his face until finally he nodded. “I’ve always got your back.”

  “This way.”

  Sean took the stairs to his room two at a time. The window creaked open, and he climbed out onto the roof where an overhang gave shadow to overgrown landscaping. “Snipe from here,” he told Finn. When he hit the ground, he rolled and knifed a Dead who’d wandered to the back and seen him. He waited for Finn to lower himself to the roof and pop the scope cover off his rifle.

  Sean didn’t run. So focused was the red fury in his veins that he didn’t panic or bolt. He just unleashed his weapons on anything that moved in front of him. A scraggly, old, bald cypress sat in the middle of his backyard, and he turned Finn’s radio on and set it in a hollow place between the gnarled roots. He cranked it up just as the Deads from the front of the house began to migrate to the back. The pepper of Finn’s gunfire was constant, and he slid his rifle in front of him to mow down the numbers that stood between him and the house. With a burst of speed, he rocketed up the ivy hanger that covered the wall and slid back through the window. Ripping box after box out of his closet, he pulled out a battery-operated tape player that had meant something to him a million years ago and shoved his own radio against the speaker. With one last significant look at Finn, he jammed his finger against the play button, and the lyrics to “Highway to Hell” rang out.

  Shoving the radio and walkie-talkie under the mattress to muffle the sound, he crouched by the window as Finn’s radio blared out the chorus from the yard below. Finn’s face was an open book of shock.

  Deads came from all over, throwing themselves in a frenzied pile over the radio that sat protected by the roots of the earth. Sean pulled a grenade, Finn did the same, and carefully they climbed out onto the roof.

  “We’re doing this?” Finn asked.

  “Hell yeah.”

  “What if the house falls?”

  “She’ll hold. On my count.”

  They pulled the pins and held the striker lever down.

  “One.”

  The pile of Deads grew and grew as the monsters threw themselves onto the noise.

  “Two.”

  Deads writhed and snapped their jaws for a chance at whatever made that sound.

  “Three.”

  Twin bombs rocketed through the air, sailing with a slow motion grace until they landed in the horde. Finn flung himself through the window, and Sean followed just as the explosion filled the colony and rattled the bones of the house.

  Vanessa lay in a grave. A shovel full of dirt had been thrown over her face, and the black soil caked her lips. She wanted to cry out, to tell the groundskeeper to stop burying her, because she was alive, but nothing worked right. The hole had to be deeper than six feet. Even standing on someone’s shoulders, she’d never be able to escape the damp earth that promised to drag her down and down until she couldn’t breathe or see. Until she didn’t exist anymore.

  Eloise poked her freckled face over the edge of her tomb. “I’m so mad at you for scaring me like that.”

  Vanessa tried to frown, but her eyebrow only managed to twitch. Improvement though.

  “I mean, you’ve pissed me off to no end over the years, but this time was the worst.”

  Eloise was the meanest angel ever. And also the only heavily pregnant angel she’d ever heard of. Now, she didn’t have much firsthand experience with heaven, but she was pretty sure getting knocked up was illegal or at least frowned upon there.

  When she tried to spit the grave dirt from her lips, something soft fell against her cheek. Slowly, she lifted her hand to tug on a pink stuffed rabbit in a floral smock. Not the soil of her tomb she’d imagined then. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her head.

  “Adrianna thought you needed Bunny for protection in case you woke up scared. Now if that isn’t love, it doesn’t exist on this earth anymore because that child adores that stuffed animal. And after the horrid day she’s had and the terrible things she’s seen, she went right to bed without it so that toy could keep you safe.”

  So she’d been dreaming of being buried alive. Or perhaps hallucinating. “What happened?” she croaked, fighting a dizzy spell as she sat up.

  “You died, I think. Or you came really close to it. We still can’t really tell if you slit your own throat on one of your knives or if you got bitten by a Dead, but the boys couldn’t find your pulse for the
longest time. You ask my opinion, I think you cut yourself trying to get away from those teeth.”

  “And I’d do it again. Her breath was awful.”

  “Laney! Vanessa’s awake. Be a doll and bring her some water?”

  The sloshing of the canteen was the most beautiful melody she’d ever heard. The torn and stitched flesh of her neck pulled with every drag of cool water, but she didn’t care. Laney had rocketed herself up to “tolerable” and at that moment, the woman could’ve blown glitter in her face and whispered, “You’re welcome,” and she would’ve thanked her through a big, dumb, happy grin.

  “Where’s Sean?”

  Eloise shot Laney a dark look and then cleared her throat and scooted her chair closer. “He thinks you’re dead.”

  “Well, go get him and tell him I’m not.”

  “I would, if he were here. Unfortunately he took your passing a little hard and destroyed a storage room directly before he went bat-poop-crazy and bombed, like, a hundred Deads in the backyard.”

  “He tore up a storage room for me?” That was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done. “Okay, so he killed a bunch of Deads, and then where did he go?”

  “I didn’t say he killed them. Just bombed them from the upstairs window like a one-man wrecking crew.”

  “Two-man,” Laney corrected as she leaned against the doorframe.

  “Right. Finn, the idiot, has basically backed every kamikaze plan Sean had from the moment Guist couldn’t find your pulse to—well, we don’t really know where they are now.”

  “So he didn’t kill the Deads?”

  “Oh, he did eventually. The grenades only managed to mutilate most of them, so he walked out there like he was Clint Eastwood and had all the time in the world, and he put every last one out of their misery. Didn’t waste any ammunition either. And Finn stood there picking off the others that came for Sean, and eventually Guist and Mitchell joined the little hunting party. Except, when our boys came back in, it was without Sean and Finn. We haven’t seen them since.”

  “How long ago did they leave?”

  Eloise sighed and sagged against the bed. “Six hours.”

  “Six hours! Eloise, they could be hurt or trapped. We have to help them.”

  “You’re in no condition to do anything, and neither am I, and neither is Laney. We’ve got two babies to take care of, and Mitchell and Guist will go after them at first light if they aren’t back yet. Sean said there were way too many Deads compared to what he remembered, so there must be a wall down. They went off to fix it and sometimes that kind of work can take a long time.”

  “In the dead of night? While this place is crawling with nightwalkers? They’re just going to rebuild a freaking wall?”

  “Hey, I wasn’t the one who came up with that little gem of a plan. That was your crazy man’s death wish. I joke you not, he and Finn tossed a couple of grenades right by the house. See that crack in the plaster?” She pointed to a divot that climbed the wall like ivy. “There’s at least one to match in every room of the house. Scared the devil right out of us.”

  “They’re likely treed,” Laney said quietly. “I don’t think they were bitten because I haven’t seen them milling around the house, and Sean would come back here for you and Adrianna if he were turned.”

  “That’s…disturbing.”

  “They can’t help it. Anyone they had attachments to as a human, they want to eat as a Dead. It’s the virus wanting to spread. It’s sharing with loved ones,” she said through a humorless smile.

  “Aw, how sweet. That makes more sense of why Leslie tried so hard to take a love nip at my neck then.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Yeah, we traveled together for a while with a few more kids our age at the end of the first year after the outbreak. She was really nice. You know, before she let herself go and started snacking on people. Why do I feel so dizzy?”

  “You lost your blood. No really, it’s still sitting in a giant puddle in the other room. That and I’m pretty sure you have a concussion from the RV wreck earlier. You really needed a transfusion, but we don’t have the know-how or equipment. Or maybe it’s a side effect of the vaccine. Sean gave it to you when we couldn’t tell if you were bitten or not.”

  “Huh. So I guess it works.”

  “Don’t know. If you were knifed, it still isn’t tested, and there’s no way to tell if you suffered the bite and lived, so Dr. Mackey will just have to try it on a more controlled group.”

  “Is your sense of smell stronger?” Laney asked.

  She inhaled long and deep. “I don’t think so.”

  “You can’t smell Deads?”

  “Not in this room. Why?”

  “I always wondered if the people who take my vaccine will get the same extra kick to their senses. I can smell Deads clear as day in here. Their smell has coated everything in this colony.”

  “Maybe if you take the vaccine and get the immunity, and then get bitten?” Vanessa offered.

  “Maybe.”

  A tiny cry sounded from the other room, and Laney disappeared from the doorway like an apparition into thin air.

  Vanessa pressed her head back into the musty pillow. “What if he’s hurt out there, El?”

  “He’s with Finn. And he’s Sean Daniels. If anyone can get himself out of whatever jam he’s got into, it’s him.” She threw a look at the door and leaned forward, lowering her voice to a raspy whisper. “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “We aren’t alone in this house.”

  A chill crept up her skin like she was slowly sinking into mountain stream water. “Who else is here?”

  “You know how the door was locked and Sean was banging on it, yelling for someone to let us in? Well, someone did.”

  “Survivors?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call them that. There’s thirteen of them, and they’ve been living all this time in here but we can’t find a bit of food.”

  She swallowed the bile that threatened to gag her. “You think they’ve been gnawing on each other?”

  “I don’t want to think that, but whatever they’ve been through the last year, it took the human right out of them. They aren’t right, Vanessa. We gave them some provisions and barred them into the auditorium until we can figure out what to do with them, but for now I think its best you sleep with your weapons close by.”

  “Where’s Adrianna sleeping?”

  “In the next room. Mitchell and Guist are taking turns watching for the creepers in case they try to sneak around front.”

  “Can you get one of the boys to carry her on in here to sleep with me? I don’t feel right being separated from her with all that’s happening.”

  Squeezing her hand, Eloise nodded. “Sure. Be back in a jiff.”

  Cannibals? They were no better than Deads if they were eating other people. Maybe they were worse because even Deads didn’t eat their own.

  “Sean, where are you?” she whispered.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “ANGUISH TRUMPS INSTINCT,” Finn said as they walked through the back door of the house and slid the furniture back into place.

  The Deads in the backyard would have to be disposed of, and soon, but right then, more pressing matters pushed them further into danger. Erhard had hired someone to let Deads in the year before, but not this many. There were way too many walking corpses he didn’t recognize from his colony, and he’d made a point to know everyone he was protecting. These Deads were strangers.

  “Finn, I think a fence is down.”

  Shoving a recliner in front of the load, Finn sighed. “I think you’re right.”

  “My gut says it’s the outer west wall that had taken damage before the colony fell. It was only a matter of time, and I think they’re leaking in from there through the inner gate we left open.”

  “Your gut is compromised, Daniels.”

  “No, it’s not,” a quiet voice said from the corner of the room.

 
Arden Moore had been a guard for the colony before it fell. Robust, easy-natured, and diligent in his duties, he’d been a man Sean had depended on to follow orders and protect the gates. Now he’d wasted to nothing. Ragged, filthy clothing hung from his withered body, and his face was so emaciated, it had taken Sean a moment to recognize the man when he’d let them in the front door earlier. He stood with his back resting against the wall, and slouched as if he hadn’t the energy to do much more.

  “There’s been a steady trail of them in and out of here since you and your team showed up. Ones we don’t recognize, and we make it a point to know the Deads running around this place.”

  “Why didn’t you kill the ones inside the gates before we showed up?”

  “No resources. We ran out of ammo the first week, and between us all, we only have knives, which we’re too weak to use with any real results. We’ve just been waiting for someone to come along and get us out of Denver. You won’t be able to do that if this place fills up with Deads.”

  “Okay,” Finn said. “If the new Deads didn’t show up until we came in here, then Sean’s right. A section of the outer wall must be down, and they’re getting through the open gate.”

  “Yep,” he drawled slowly. “We’ve learned a few tricks about getting around the colony without drawing too much attention if you’d like the help. I need something from you in return though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My people are on their last legs. We could use any food you could spare, and maybe a couple weapons too.”

  “Food, we can do. You and your people have been through hell and back, and the least we can do is get some energy in you. You’ll need it to escape this place when we’re ready to get you out. Weapons I can’t do. My team is low on ammunition as it is, and knives are going to be useless to you. We’ll have to wait until we get you to Dead Run River to get you set up with the things you lack.”

  Arden nodded. “Appreciate it. I’ll go get Shay. She’s the best one of us at sneaking around the colony. She’ll get you to the gate and bring you back safe.”

  The survivors had converted the auditorium into a one-roomed house. For the life of him, Sean couldn’t understand why they’d prefer to sleep on camping cots to sleeping in the beds that sat abandoned in his and Adrianna’s old rooms, but maybe they needed to sleep near each other to feel safe. There was no telling what they’d seen and gone through together. A year inside the gates of hell would likely have given them a bond stronger than anyone else on earth could possibly understand. Regret and guilt pulled at him. If he had been more, he could’ve found a way to get them all out. If the scouts over the past twelve months had seen any sign of life in these gates, he would’ve moved mountains to extract the survivors. He hadn’t known, but maybe he should’ve looked harder.