“Scary sick,” Travis responded, and sat next to her. He took hold of her hand and looked at her arm. “We couldn’t figure out if it was the zombie infection or not. Your scrape—I didn’t know if the blood and guts from the zombies had infected you.” Peeling back the bandage, he revealed a nicely healing wound. “We saw no signs of infection, but you were burning up and we couldn’t keep anything in you.”
Katie grimaced as she touched her hair again. “God, I’m so gross right now. None of you could have known that when I get the flu, I go down like an elephant. I always have, and that’s why I usually get the flu shot. I skipped it this year because I had a big case and just never found the time. Who knows what diseases all those dead bodies have unleashed into the air?” She shivered at the thought. Looking down, she saw she was dressed in a nightgown that was probably Nerit’s.
“The flu,” Travis said with relief. “Thank God, just the fucking everyday flu.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and ran his hands over his face.
Katie draped one arm over his broad shoulders and gave him a little hug. “I’m a tough bitch. A little bug like that can’t keep me down for long. I always bounce back.”
He scrutinized her and said, “You’re something else, you know that.”
She gave him an impish smile. “I was called the Bitch Queen of the Prosecution. That has to say something about me.”
“Tough as nails, eh?”
“Eat ’em for breakfast.” Katie grinned.
She looked fragile, but her voice was strong. She had ridden out the worst of it and was on the mend. He could tell that by the brightness in her eyes. Now that she was sitting next to him, smiling at him, he couldn’t imagine why he had thought she would leave the world so easily.
“I was really worried about you.” He took hold of her hand. It felt a little cold, the bones under her skin so very delicate. “I thought you were gone. And we need you. You’re smart, resourceful, and … and…”
“Bitchy.”
“No, very real. I feel like what I see is what you are. I like that about you. That’s why I wanted to know you better the second I met you. I knew in my heart that you were the type of person who could help all of us survive and keep us human. Not just keep us from becoming zombies, but keep us compassionate.”
“You give me way too much credit,” Katie said swiftly.
“You rode into town with a kid, a dog, and a woman who doesn’t have all her marbles, and you were all alive and not bitten. That is an amazing feat all unto itself. When Jenni told me about everything else you’ve done…” He shook his head. “To have lost you would have cost all of us.”
Katie frowned at him and said, “Stop it. I’m going to cry. And I don’t cry! Well, not until all of this went down.”
Travis laughed and his eyes sparkled with tears. “Well, I’m much more butch than you, and I cry.”
Katie rolled her eyes, then laughed, running a hand over her hair. “Ugh, my hair!” She staggered to her feet and went to the mirror on the wall. “I need a bath. Fast.”
“I would insist on you lying back down, but I don’t think that will work.”
“Absolutely not.” Katie fussed with her greasy, matted hair and threw up her hands. “Ugh!”
“Okay, you can take a shower, but I’m staying right here and you’re leaving that door open in case you fall.”
“Fine … fine…”
She stumbled a bit as she moved, and he considered helping her, but figured she wouldn’t appreciate it. Grabbing a fresh pair of jeans and a white tank top, she managed to get herself into the bathroom.
There was a gentle knock on the door and Travis opened it. Nerit stood there, with her yellowish hair falling over one shoulder and one hand holding her flannel robe shut.
“How is she?” Her voice was concerned. She saw the empty bed and heard the shower. “She’s up?”
“And lucid. And feisty. Weak as hell, but she’s okay.”
Nerit clasped her hands together. “Oh, thank goodness! I woke up fearing the worst.”
“Honestly, I almost put one between her eyes. But, luckily, she spoke. I was so convinced she was gone.”
Nerit hugged Travis and cast a look toward the open bathroom door. “I must tell Ralph!” She scurried off and Travis hesitantly walked toward the bathroom.
Maybe I’m dreaming and she died and I shot her and I’m dreaming , he thought. He saw her outline behind the shower curtain, and the tension between his shoulders lessened.
Again, for a moment, he saw a flash of Katie sitting up, eyes dead, screaming, and rushing toward him. …
But that hadn’t happened.
He felt like his emotions were seesawing back and forth and he tried to regain some balance as he waited. He stood with his back to the bathroom and hands in his pockets. He was still afraid. Afraid of what had nearly happened.
Katie finally emerged with her wet hair up on top of her head in a tiny ponytail. Damp little curls spilled over her brow. Her shoulders, poking out of the tank top, looked a little bonier than before. The men’s jeans she was wearing hung a little low on her hips and showed that she had lost weight. But despite her fragile appearance, Travis knew she was going to be okay.
“I need to talk to Jenni,” she said, ignoring his obvious examination of her appearance.
Feeling a little embarrassed and awkward, he nodded.
Taking her arm, he helped her down the hall. He knew she was feeling weak because she did not protest. They entered the small room where the CB radio was set up and a man in his forties with a wide, pleasant face looked up. He had sandy colored hair, wide shoulders and a good size beer gut.
“Hey, you made it!” He gave her an enormous grin that lit up his rather plain face.
“You’re Bill, right?”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“Good to meet you, Bill.”
“Happy to see you alive, Katie. I take it you want to call your friends?”
“Please,” Katie sat down heavily in a chair and Travis steadied her with one hand. “Then I want to eat something really bad.”
“Sure thing, give me a moment.” Bill adjusted the dials and started talking.
Katie looked up at Travis and laid her hand over his. “Thank you. For watching over me. For making sure I was okay.”
Travis flushed. “No problem.”
“… she’s up and talking,” Bill said into the microphone.
It sounded like there was a brief struggle of some kind on the other end. Then a woman’s voice said, “Katie! Katie! It’s me!”
Bill handed the mic to Katie. Travis couldn’t help but laugh a little, imagining Jenni climbing over Curtis to get to the microphone.
“And it’s me, Jenni. I’m okay. It was just the flu.”
“Oh, thank God!” Jenni broke down; her sobs were loud over the speakers. “I was so scared! We’re going to find a way to get you back in and you’ll be safe here!”
“I know, Jenni, I know. And I know you were looking after me in your own way. I felt it. We’ll come home. I promise. Soon.”
Travis could see tears in Katie’s eyes and turned away. He felt emotional and unsteady on his feet. Nerit and Ralph appeared in the doorway. Katie reached out to them, and they all held hands.
The most radiant smile he had ever seen on any woman’s face lit up Katie’s features, and he felt almost as if he were basking in it.
For the first time since the world had slid sideways into hell, he felt a moment of happiness, and it felt delicious.
CHAPTER TWELVE
1.
Dancing for the Dead
Two days later, the excitement in the fort was a tangible, electric force sweeping through all the survivors. It seemed as if everyone was drawn out into the morning sunlight to watch what had been dubbed Operation Little Doggy.
Even Old Man Watson came and sat in a plastic chair in the sun. He was their oldest survivor at ninety-three, and he had been saved only because he
was at city hall, paying his water bill, when the zombies had arrived. His arms were covered in tattoos from his navy days and he mostly sat around smiling at everyone. It took Jenni a while to realize he couldn’t hear hardly anything said to him. Then she’d gone out of her way to explain the plan to him, talking very loudly.
When she’d finished, he patted her on the head and said, “You give ’em hell, kid.”
Jenni had been the first person to sign the volunteer sheet for Operation Little Doggy. Jason was the second. They were both determined to help in the project that would bring Katie and Travis home safely with their load of guns and supplies. Everyone else in the fort was more concerned about Travis returning with the guns than they were about Katie. That annoyed Jenni, even though she understood that these people didn’t know Katie like she did. Also, the more she listened to the townsfolk talk about Travis, the more evident it was that when he moved to Ashley Oaks to work on the reconstruction of the downtown area six months before, he had caused an immediate stir. He had been part of the crew that finished the renovation of city hall.
“Movie star looks, nice as can be, volunteering down at the senior center,” Peggy said to Jenni as they washed dishes the night before—it was their turn, according to the chore list. “All the ladies, old and young, had mad crushes on him. And honestly, I don’t think he noticed. He’s nursing a broken heart. He told me his fiancée left him when he gave up his high-paying job as an architect in Houston and went back to construction.”
Jenni had absorbed that, considered it, and tucked it away for later. She had seen Travis’s subtle charisma in action and she was very much affected by it. Weirdly, she thought Katie was, too. But she had seen something in his eyes when he gazed at her, and she felt pretty confident. Time would tell, of course.
Now she stood next to Jason, clad in the same outfit she had been wearing since they left Ralph’s. It had been washed every day since her arrival and now had a softness to it that she found comforting. Jason had told Jack to stay with Old Man Watson so he wouldn’t get in the volunteers’ way, and now the German shepherd sat faithfully next to the old man, getting his ears scratched.
“Okay, the cement is mixed,” Juan said, approaching the groups of volunteers. “Just do what we told you and make it quick. We don’t want to give these zombies any ideas. Try to keep low and out of view.”
Jenni and Jason quickly scaled the ladder over the cement wall and down the other side. The hurricane fence was easy to climb over and she dropped down on the other side effortlessly, with Jason right beside her. The other members of their team, six in all, formed a bucket brigade to pass long, wicked five-foot spikes over the wall and fence.
The day before, a group of construction workers had spent hours with sledgehammers and shovels, creating deep gouges in the sidewalk that separated the fence from the line of trucks. Now, Mike helped lower the base of one of the spikes into the ground. Jenni and Jason held it in position while freshly made cement was poured into the deep hole around the bottom of the spike.
It seemed simple enough at first, but as the morning wore on, Jenni grew tired. The spikes were bits of the old wrought iron fence the construction crew had torn down. They were heavy, and after a while, her muscles ached and she was covered with sweat. But if, as Juan feared, the zombies became capable of climbing, something had to be waiting for them when they tried to drop down. The spikes were set at a slant and staggered in such a way that you had duck low and around them to get safely through. Jenni’s little team moved quickly, but work was exhausting. What made it harder was the nasty stench and sounds of the dead on the other side of the ring of trucks. Their increasingly loud moans and screeches indicated that they were stirred up, sensing warm flesh nearby.
Jason’s hair hung in wet, long strands in his eyes and he peered at her as he blew them up and out of the way. “Eh, maybe I do need a haircut.”
She giggled. They helped maneuver another spike into place.
Soon the forest of spikes was ready; all of them angled at a deadly slant to capture anyone attempting to jump down.
Finally, the volunteers clambered back into the fortress, where they were greeted with a round of applause. Juan walked toward Jenni and the rest of the crew and said, “Okay—so far, so good.”
Jenni pulled off her heavy gloves and snapped her fingers. “Piece of cake.”
“So far, Loca, but we have more to do.” He walked past her and climbed the stairs that led to a sentry post in one corner of their makeshift fortress to join Mike. He looked out over the crowd of zombies and then turned around to motion to the crane operator.
Time for phase two.
The forty-foot-long metal storage containers near the back of the fort had been rigged with chains so that they could be lifted. With a whine, the huge crane snagged the first of the units and lifted it high into the air. The container, which stood almost ten feet tall, had originally been filled with materials that were to be used during the renovation of downtown Ashley Oaks. Now it would serve another purpose. The crane arm slowly swung the now empty unit over the construction site as Mike took over directing the operator. Juan hurried to another location, to keep an eye on the shifting zombie crowd and communicate with Mike using hand signals.
Jenni joined some other people standing on a pile of cement bags to watch. Slowly, the arm swung into position and the container was carefully aligned with the road below. Juan motioned again and the container lowered slowly over the heads of the zombies reaching for it. Finally, it descended, smashing them beneath its weight. It fit almost perfectly across the road, reaching from the truck barrier to the side of the building on the other side.
The crane arm swung back as Jenni ran across the site to where Juan was. She had to get closer, to see what was going on. As she ran up the steps, the sea of zombies came into view, and she gasped.
Some were beating on the storage container that now almost completely cut off the street to the right. Most were reaching toward the people who were visible on the platform, screeching, howling, and pushing hard against the large trucks in front of them.
The crane arm swung overhead again, this time dropping large bags full of earth between the end of the storage container and the storefront it had settled in front of.
Now the road was completely blocked.
Juan turned to Jenni. “Not bad, huh?”
She grinned at him.
Tobias stood nearby, shaking his head. “We slaughter them instead of helping them.”
“What do you suggest we do, huh? Give them some vitamin C and aspirin and tell them to get some rest?” Juan gestured toward the zombies. “You really think that would work?”
Jenni noticed that the crowd was shifting slightly, almost as if they knew they were about to be trapped in a narrow space with nowhere to go. “Shit!” She watched some moving toward the area that Juan said they needed to keep clear for the second container to be lowered. Since the plan was to contain the zombies, he did not want any slipping past the perimeter. Some were looking up at the container that now dangled above them.
Jenni took off running, down the stairs, across the site, toward city hall. Rushing up the back stairs, she wasn’t sure just what she was doing until she saw the staircase to the second floor. She ran up the steps, taking two at a time, then turned down another hallway. The third floor had a small, narrow balcony that was forbidden to everyone, since it both overlooked the street and had yet to be renovated. It was probably unstable and unsafe. She ripped down the DO NOT ENTER sign, pushed open the door, and stumbled out onto the balcony.
It gave a warning creak, but held her weight.
“Hey, dead fuckers! Up here!”
The ones that were moving toward the forbidden area turned and looked straight up at her. Immediately, they screeched and reach for her. They pushed up against the truck barrier.
Jenni noticed that a few that were not paying attention so she danced along the balcony, screaming, “Over here, stupid fuc
kers! Hey, dead ass! Up here! Fine quality human flesh up here!”
Jenni waved her hands over her head and flipped off the zombies when they looked up. Seeing she had an audience, she showed them her ass, wiggled it, and made the most annoying faces she could think of. The zombies howled as she whipped them up into a frenzy.
The container was on its way down, so she ran to the end of the balcony and leaned over, getting as many zombies as she could to move directly under her.
“Hey, freaks, hey, guess what? I’m not for dinner!”
The container was dropped. There was a mighty thunk as it settled onto the road and a gush of blood and gore came from beneath it. Jenni had managed to get almost ten zombies taken out with one blow.
Laughing almost maniacally, she grabbed hold of the balcony rail and taunted the nearly completely trapped zombies to follow her away from the slight gap between the storage container and the wall of the store across the street from her. She kept taunting them until the crane arm delivered the bags of dirt that completely cut off the left-hand side of the street. The zombies were now trapped between the two barriers and the wall, leaving only the main road from the fort open. Dancing back across the balcony, Jenni laughed her ass off. The balcony gave a loud moan, and Jenni realized the show was over.
“Oh, shit!” She dived back into the building. The balcony shuddered, but stayed in place.
Jenni grinned, turned, and held her hands over her head like Nixon flashing the victory sign at the zombies and retreated into the city hall.
Behind her, the zombies moaned and groaned.
2.
Family Ties That Bind
Jason trudged across the construction site, Jack at his heels, one hand wiping the sweat off his brow. He was exhausted. He had been helping with defenses all day and his body hurt with every movement. His long bangs were soaked with sweat and he had finally borrowed a rubber band and managed to get most of his hair into a stubby ponytail. Now a few wisps fell around his face and he flicked his hand at them with annoyance.
As The World Dies Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 18
