Forever Between (Between Life and Death Book 2)

by Ann Christy

We hit our pedals at the same time, working up speed as we cross the once-busy five lane main drag. A rustling train of leaves lifts behind our tires before settling again as we disturb the litter everywhere.

  The neighborhood is a mess. Fires have broken out here and there, leaving some of the houses gutted and second stories open to the sky. Most houses are boarded up, some of them using pieces of other houses to do the boarding up. There aren’t many deaders at all, so I’m guessing that those piles of bodies must consist of at least some of the people who lived here. Like other places, I can feel the emptiness, the eerie sense of disuse and abandonment in the air. If there are people here, they are well hidden and entrenched.

  It takes forever to get through the neighborhood, but aside from an inexplicable line of deaders laid out across the road—side by side, head to foot and weighted to the ground with bags of cement and topsoil—there’s not even a hint of human activity. No old smells of cooking, no trails where people might have walked through the blankets of old leaves. Nothing. All we see is that line of sluggishly moving deaders on the road and a scattering of them, all in terrible shape, tottering about the yards. If I squint my eyes, I can almost convince myself they’re just people working on their flower beds during a sunny, weekend afternoon.

  Once we get to the end of the neighborhood, there’s a large fence and an adjoining field that marks the boundary to the base. As I get closer to that fence, I feel a palpable sense of relief. Maybe it’s that the canopy of trees ends and the sky feels more open, or simply that the empty eyes of the houses are gone, but I hear Charlie’s hard exhale just behind me and know he feels the same. We hurry our bikes up into the field and toward the fence before we stop.

  “That was weird,” Charlie says. “I was so creeped out I couldn’t tell if we were being watched. I felt like the whole neighborhood was watching us. And what was up with those deaders?”

  “No clue,” I answer, wiping sweat from my face. “A warning, maybe?”

  “Of what? It’s not like we don’t know that there are deaders around, right?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. I have no clue. Give me some water.”

  We share a drink and scope out the wide field around the airstrips for the base. There’s a lot of bare ground, no trees, but it’s been overgrown by tall weeds and grass. There’s no way to see anything that might be shorter than waist height within it. That would include immobile deaders, but also any military on duty, crouched and watching for intrusion.

  Beyond the field, the flat line of one of the runways shows up clearly. It’s too far away for me to tell if it’s in good shape or being used, but it looks flat and dark gray. I’ve not heard a plane since my parents were around, but you never know.

  There are two big planes. I’m not sure what they’re called, but I know they are the sort that usually carry cargo, big-bellied and round-nosed. They’re at the far end of the runway, not far from one of the big hangars. One of the planes has its rear end flipped up into the air, but that’s as much as I can see. Details the size of a human are lost at this distance, but I don’t see any obvious movement.

  “Let’s go,” Charlie says. “I don’t like this open space.”

  I laugh, but quietly, and he asks, “What?”

  “Nothing,” I answer, but he gives me a look, so I say, “It’s just that we don’t like the neighborhoods because they’re closed in and we don’t like the open areas because they’re exposed.”

  He harrumphs, but says, “I don’t like anything except nice walls around me. And a fence around those!”

  There’s no arguing with that. I feel the same way. So, I put my feet to the pedals and we go.

  Four Months Ago - Playmates

  “Take Jon inside and hide. Go!” Emily hisses at me and grabs her crossbow.

  Charlie turns at her tone and drops the hoe in his hands when he sees her expression. Savannah follows suit, stripping off her gloves with two quick jerks of her hands and picking up her rifle. Before I can even scoop up Jon from his spot in the dirt, the three of them are tensed and ready.

  “Company,” Emily says. That word sends chills of fear through me. She wouldn’t say that for deaders, or even an in-betweener. She would just skewer it and get it over with if she could. The only things I can think of that would cause that tone would be humans or a bunch of in-betweeners. For some reason, I think it must be humans. That’s the worst possible situation.

  I grab Jon, who’s gone absolutely still at the sudden change in mood around him. It’s his way. He’s known almost since birth that silence is required when things go bad. He’s as stiff as a board when I pluck him from the ground, shedding a curtain of dirt from his lap as I lift him. We go into the warehouse where the best hiding place is. It’s inside the factory where sachets were once made.

  Jon sniffs at the scent of the sachets, which lingers even now. It’s actually quite pleasant, like a reminder of a time when things didn’t smell like decay, death or simply dissolution. It’s a bit like going into my grandmother’s house after dealing with a full week of my parents really going at each other. If I weren’t in a blind panic, it might be relaxing.

  Our hiding place is in a second story office, one that has a ladder that I can pull up after me if I have to go up on the roof. We won’t go onto the roof unless it looks like things are going south, but the supplies for a few days inside a pack are here and I could take that and Jon if I needed to. For getting down from the roof and escaping, I have a rope and plank ladder that Emily carefully made and tested for strength. It’s a thoroughly planned escape route that I hope I don’t have to take.

  There’s a kid carrier that’s just a little too small for Jon now, but I put it on and stuff him into it. He only grunts a little at the discomfort of his legs being pressed together in the too-tight fabric, then he goes silent and solemn, carefully watching my face for what comes next. What comes next is settling the loaded pack on my back. It’s actually more comfortable that way, with Jon’s weight on my front balanced by the new weight on my back.

  Then we wait. I sit on a backless stool and listen for all I’m worth at the painted over windows. Unless things get really loud—as in gunshots or people yelling near the buildings—I can’t hear anything. It doesn’t stop me from trying, though. I pick up the stop-watch—the old-fashioned kind that can be wound—wind it, and reset it to zero. If no one comes in an hour with an all-clear or I hear anything bad, I’m supposed to go to the roof.

  It’s a very long wait.

  *****

  When I hear the squeal and clang of the warehouse door opening below, my body tenses to climb the ladder almost of its own accord. Jon stiffens as well, prepared to help me by helping himself. His dirty little fists reach over my shoulders to grab the straps of the backpack and he tucks his head down under my chin. Even without speaking, he knows what to do. We’ve drilled this before, but I had just assumed he would forget like any other three year old would have. But he hasn’t and that is a terrible, terrible thing.

  My foot is just reaching for the first rung of the ladder when I hear the whistle. One short, sharp note to tell me it’s all clear. It’s the sweetest noise I’ve heard in a very long time. I sag against the ladder, bending over Jon’s head and cupping the back of his skull so he doesn’t bang it into the ladder. Before my breathing can slow and my heart quit galloping like it’s trying to break out of my chest, I hear the familiar sound of Emily’s boots on the stairs. She swings open the door with a smile on her face.

  “Sorry about the scare. We’re good and we have more company!” she exclaims. Then she takes in my hand on the ladder, the other cupping Jon’s head and the fear-sweat dripping down my face and her smile disappears.

  “Oh, Veronica. Jon, sweetie. It’s okay,” she croons, coming over and taking the weight of the backpack off my shoulders.

  I’m so stiff that I don’t know if I can release my grip on the ladder or Jon enough to let her slip the backpack from my arms. The thought of losin
g Emily—even of losing Charlie and Savannah—thoughts that ultimately meant I would be on my own with Jon, aren’t loosening their hold on me. I squeak out a noise I meant to be words, but isn’t.

  Emily steps to my side and hugs me to her with one arm while her rough palm rubs across my cheek. “Hey, hey. It’s okay now. Everything is fine. You’re okay. Just calm down.”

  I nod, but my breath starts coming faster, trying to catch up with my heart, I think. Then the wheezing starts and I can’t get enough air inside me. I’m suffocating and suddenly, the backpack and Jon hanging on my body are too much. I start to push his carrier away from my chest, wanting oxygen and the room inside my chest for more air.

  Emily tugs the backpack, finally wrenching one of my arms back to get the strap off me, then pulling the pack forcefully down the other arm. She drops it and lifts Jon, saying, “Stop, Veronica. Stop it. I’m getting him. Don’t scare him.”

  I hear her, but it doesn’t get through my blind need to breathe. Jon whimpers and Emily hugs him to her, walking away from me and bouncing him in her arms as she soothes him with soft words. When she puts him down by the door to the office, she smiles at him and I hate her for a moment. I still can’t get a breath and I’m pretty sure I’m going to pass out.

  She returns to me, getting close to my face. “You’re having a panic attack and I’m going to slap the living shit out of you if you don’t get a grip,” Emily growls at me in a low, even voice. She sends another smile over her shoulder toward Jon, who is standing at the door and crying silent tears. The smile is replaced by a glare when she turns back to me and her hand lifts, palm flat and her fingers extended in the slap position.

  I wish I could do as she asks, but the truth is, I can’t control anything at this point. I feel like I’m going to pee my pants. All I can do is bend over, hands on my knees, and try like hell to pull in some air. It whistles in like an asthmatic’s and tears drop from my eyes onto the dirty floor. Then Emily’s arms are pulling me up and into a hug. She holds me tight, telling me it’s all okay and lets me cry. It’s far better than a slap.

  *****

  When I finally get a grip on myself and manage to get Jon to believe that I’m really okay, Emily is more than ready to get back outside. While I calmed down, she told me a little bit about our new company, but she really doesn’t know much herself and I think she wants to keep an eye on them.

  It’s gone gloomy while we were in the warehouse and the bright morning of before has turned into an overcast afternoon that promises rain. Out of habit, I say, “We should check the rain barrels.”

  Emily nods and answers, “Yeah, we might want to empty and clean a couple of sets.”

  She’s obsessive about water, is always telling us that we have to be very careful to boil it all fully, to never get lax about it. I think she must have gotten sick from it or something, but she’s never said exactly what happened, if anything. Even so, she’s right. Gunk builds up in the lower barrels in our daisy-chain of them at each downspout. Just going by the way the sky looks, we’ll get a good dousing.

  I hear voices—new voices, strange voices I don’t know—inside our home warehouse once we get to the loading area we use as our courtyard. It’s weird and sends a new burst of fear through me. It’s amazing how much we can change in such a short period of time. I heard voices I’d never heard before on a daily basis in my old life and never thought a thing about it. Now, anything new automatically inspires fear.

  Charlie leads this new group outside before we get across the courtyard, so I get a good look at them before I have to speak. It makes me feel better to see Savannah trailing a little behind the group, a rifle still in her arms, though held casually.

  Good, she doesn’t trust them, I think.

  The people that have come here are in terrible shape. I can’t even believe they are walking. Two guys, both of them quite tall and looking like they were turned out from the same familial mold, are skinny and exhausted looking. A little girl not much larger than Jon is in the taller one’s arms. I can’t see much, but she has blond curls beneath the dirt. And last, there’s a woman much older than all of us, or at least she looks that way. She got dark blond hair peeking out from under a baseball cap. She’s skinny, too, and even though the cap shades her face, I can see the dark circles under her eyes from twenty feet away.

  The group straggles to a stop when they see us, whatever they were talking about ceasing as they come to a halt. The woman stares a moment, then lifts her arm to the girl’s shoulder and says something I can’t hear as she leans close to the child’s face. The little girl raises her head from the man’s shoulder and looks at us, at Jon. Then she waves. It’s a simple, innocent gesture. One child recognizing the presence of another.

  But it’s enough. I feel some of the alarm fading back and the fluttering in my stomach lowers in intensity to the kind I associate with new things, but not necessarily bad ones. Another child for Jon. Someone who can teach him how to play, to do things that other kids who weren’t born into a world where sound is the enemy and laughter can result in death know how to do. Yes, a playmate for Jon. I can handle that very well, indeed.

  Today - Ten-Hut

  As the fence around the airfield curves inward, we can make out more details on the planes and hangers. The little gray blobs we thought were landing gear from afar are revealed as piles of deaders around the landing gear. They’re immobile, I think, because not even one of them moves or notes our presence in any way. And around the hanger, there are deaders arranged like a skirt, heavy where the giant metal braces stand out further and thinner along the metal panels between them. I wonder if, at some point, the relentless licking at the metal will wear it away until the whole building collapses. Or will the deaders go still into true death first?

  The nice thing is we see no in-betweeners or humans at all. Not one. Of course, any in-betweener might have been drawn to the woods that surround this base except in this direction in order to get to the animals there.

  “That’s sort of final, isn’t it?” Charlie asks me. We’re riding side-by-side now that the neighborhood is behind us and we’re in the open area and on the access road.

  “Final?”

  “I mean, we wondered if maybe the military had somehow managed to survive out here,” he says, then nods toward the deaders around the hangar. “I guess we know now. If they did have this base under control, those wouldn’t be there, would they?”

  It would seem that way, but I wonder. I’m not quite ready to give up on my ideas yet. “What better way is there to keep away people who come here looking for help than to make the place seem overrun?” I ask, and raise my eyebrows when he looks over.

  Charlie’s a thinker and he’ll run with that suggestion.

  “Not bad,” he grins. “But you’re right. It would be effective. Whoa…”

  Charlie swerves his wheel toward me in a sudden move. I swerve in turn and almost take a tumble from my bike. I look, expecting to see a deader or something, but instead a fat rabbit takes off in a dead run from the weeds on the other side of the road, through the fence and onto the field, where it is lost from sight. The only evidence of it is a rustling of grasses which stops about thirty feet inside the fence line.

  “Rabbit? How did a big, fat rabbit survive out here?” I ask.

  What I’m really thinking is whether or not we should stop and try to get another fat rabbit. I could really go for some fresh meat. I was turned off from it for a long time, but the body wants what it wants, and the sight of fresh protein on the move sends food cravings right to the top of my thoughts.

  It must do the same for Charlie, because he asks, “You think there’s more?” Then he shakes his head and says, “No, never mind. You’re right. How did a rabbit survive out here?”

  We roll to a stop and balance there a moment, both of us considering this wonder that is a rabbit. Suburban rabbits are a fact of life, like squirrels and trash-tipping raccoons. But they are not a fact of post-n
anite life. They are a rarity on par with white tigers or black rhinos. Well, maybe not that rare—particularly not squirrels since they run up trees so fast—but rabbits are definitely not something one sees very often at all.

  “That’s suspicious,” Charlie says, eyeing the hangar, the landing gear, and their piles of deaders.

  “Uh, how? The deaders over there aren’t going to be able to chase down animals anymore. Maybe there aren’t any in-betweeners left on that side of the fence.”

  “Really? Does that even make sense to you? Think about it. If there are rabbits enough that they cross outside the fence for nibbles, then some of those deaders shouldn’t have changed into deaders at all. There should be in-betweeners out in that field if there are rabbits there,” he says, pointing to the tall grass that has no hint of human—or post-human—life in it.

  He’s right about that, but it could happen. Given time and the inability of in-betweeners to take care of themselves properly, descent into deader-hood is sort of a given at some point. And that grass is tall and would have been since that very first summer. Rabbits could have hidden in it successfully. And we don’t have a saying about “breeding like rabbits” for no reason. Re-population would have been fast.

  As we stand there, a dark-winged shape separates from the trees beyond the airstrip and flies over the other side of the field in a long, lazy arc. It’s a big shape and I know that flight. A bird of prey. A hawk.

  Charlie looks at me, and his look says that he told me so. “Well, something has been eating rabbits.”

  I nod. That’s something whoever set this scene missed. The deaders, so uniformly immobile and set at a location that makes sense, the disused look of the airstrip, the tall grass, all confirm what anyone familiar with the world now would expect of a place abandoned, but still dangerously occupied with deaders. But they couldn’t control the rabbits or the hawks. And that tells a very different story. My spirits lift and sink in equal measure.