Jenni shut the door and smiled back at Curtis. “Really? I didn’t know he still talked about me since his girlfriend showed up.”
Curtis shifted in his chair uncomfortably. “Uh … well. He calls you Loca.”
Jenni wagged an eyebrow and held on, staying on the top step near the driver’s seat as the vehicle rolled forward.
Bill just chuckled good-naturedly. “Well, I think Jenni is a little girl who’s a killer shot, and if she’s loca, I can deal with that.”
Jenni smiled. “Thanks, Bill.”
Bill was always nice to her. Ever since he arrived with Katie and Travis, he had been somewhat low-key. Like Jenni and Katie, he had been an outsider to the townsfolk; it had been hard to find their niche. Only now were they starting to feel as if they were actually part of the community. Sometimes, she missed Nerit and Ralph, but she was able to talk to them every few days. She kept hoping they would come to the fort, but the Toombses were intent on staying in their own small haven.
The minibus slowly crawled down the street toward one of the residential neighborhoods bordering the downtown area. It drove past a burned-out gas station, abandoned restaurants, an old cinema that had closed its doors long ago, and a car lot that stood empty of cars. It turned at the first block of the neighborhood of small early-twentieth-century homes. Most were in good repair, but a few had fallen to the elements and leaned dangerously to one side or had collapsed altogether.
Bill drove very slowly, giving anyone who was alive enough time to come to a window or doorway. Of course, this meant the undead were hearing the steady hum of the engine as well. A few appeared at windows. Sometimes the zombies escaped; sometimes they didn’t. If they did break out, a bullet to the head settled the situation. The bus had never been swarmed.
“No one alive on this street, it looks like,” Curtis decided.
“Yeah,” Bill answered sadly. He turned a corner and they started down another block.
Jenni watched the shrubbery and the houses with equal interest. Once she had seen half a man stuck in a hedge. She’d wondered if he had tried to hide and been pulled out and eaten. So far today, she hadn’t seen any zombies outside the houses, which was a relief. There was a great fear in the fort that more swarms of zombies would converge on them. Maybe a lot of zombies would just start moving in the same direction and happen upon the town. Maybe there was a real danger of them migrating toward the living. Did it really matter? In the end, they just had to be prepared.
“That looks like a situation,” Curtis said suddenly, pointing ahead.
Two zombies were rushing across the street toward a house where four others were banging on ground-floor windows, trying to break into the structure. The front door was shattered, and it looked like a piece of furniture had been shoved up against it from inside. The second-floor window was open and a teenage girl was waving her arms at the minibus.
Bill slowed to a stop and they all stared at the scene. The zombies had not yet noticed them. They continued to assault the house, screeching at the girl who was desperately signaling the bus.
“Kill ’em all,” Jenni said after a beat.
“No choice if we’re going to rescue her,” Bill agreed.
“Take the ones on the left,” Jenni told Curtis. “I’ll get the ones on the right.”
“I’ll cover you both,” Bill added.
Curtis took a deep breath. “Okay.” He nervously fingered his service revolver, then nodded grimly and stood up. “Okay.”
Jenni opened the door and stepped out cautiously. She and Curtis took up positions near the bus so they could retreat quickly. She looked out at Bill, who had the driver’s-side window open and his gun drawn.
“Ready?”
“Sure,” Curtis said softly.
Jenni lifted her rifle and sighted the most dangerous-looking zombie, a fully intact male. She fired and he went down. Immediately, she swung toward the next target; she heard Curtis firing. A faceless woman was turning toward them. The bullet Jenni fired slammed through the woman’s forehead and sheared off the top of her head. Next to her, Curtis’s shots went a little wild as his nerves got the best of him. One of the zombies he shot fell down, one leg useless, but continued to crawl toward them.
“Shoot ’em in the head!” Jenni’s finger closed on the trigger again and another zombie fell, bits of its brain flopping out onto the sidewalk.
Curtis took a deep breath, steadied his hands, and fired quickly. This time his aim was more accurate. Jenni was relieved when his shots found their proper targets and the zombies dropped.
“Watch out! Behind you!”
Jenni whirled around to see an old woman staggering toward her. She looked like she had died recently and was not as mangled as the other zombies. To her amusement and horror, the woman had a stranglehold on a living cat. The cat had been systematically eating the woman’s arm, probably since she had died. It looked skinny and bedraggled. Jenni almost burst out laughing, but instead aimed carefully and took out the dead cat lady. The zombie’s corpse dropped to the street, still twitching, the cat squealing and trying to get free. Jenni walked over and pried the old woman’s dead and decaying fingers off the cat. The animal gave her a few swats with its claws, but only snagged her jacket. The dead fingers finally released the angry feline and it rushed off with a little house cat roar. The cat lady was the last of the zombie attackers.
“Now, that was fucked up,” Jenni said to Curtis with a grin. Her expression grew grim as she saw what emerged from the house.
The teenage girl was first, followed by a man who was probably her father. He was carrying a little girl who was almost completely wrapped in a heavy blanket. A young boy followed, along with a woman who was undoubtedly his mother. The woman was pale, gray, and sickly looking.
“Thank God! Thank God,” the man cried out. “We were hoping someone would find us. We ran out of food two days ago!”
The mother stumbled a little, and the little boy steadied her.
“My wife and daughter need immediate medical attention,” the man continued.
Curtis looked at Jenni and they both sighed.
“When were they bitten?” Jenni asked.
“What?” The man didn’t register her words. “What?”
“When were they bitten?” Curtis repeated. “They aren’t well. We can tell they were bitten.”
“Yesterday the front door was broke and two got into the house,” said the older daughter. “Daddy killed them, but they got Mom and Angie. But it’s just small bites. It was a little kid who jumped on them. Just little teeth marks.”
Curtis exhaled slowly, and Jenni looked down at her boots for a moment.
“Well, that was enough,” she said finally. “They are both as good as dead. We can’t take them with us.”
“What do you mean? You can’t leave them here!” The man’s face flushed, red and fierce. “They need a doctor!”
“There are no doctors in town,” Curtis answered in a composed tone. “And there is no cure for the bite. We can’t take them with us. It’s too dangerous.”
The little boy began to cry and cling to his mother. She looked down at him sadly. Her pale blue eyes were sunken and her cheeks hollow. Her color was very bad, and Jenni was sure she didn’t have much time left. The father backed away from the minibus, clutching his ailing youngster in his arms.
“We can’t leave them behind,” he protested.
“You have to if you want to come with us. We have a safe place where many survivors are staying. If you want to be with us, you have to leave without them,” Curtis said in his best police officer everyone stay calm voice.
Jenni considered just killing the mother outright, but it seemed too cruel. But they couldn’t waste time arguing.
“Let’s go,” she said simply.
Curtis hesitated, then nodded. “Okay.”
The teenager looked at her father desperately. “Daddy? We can’t stay here.”
The father was holding tightly
to his youngest and backing toward his wife. “We’re not leaving.”
“Yes, you are,” the woman said decisively. “I can feel it burning inside of me. Cold and hot. I’m going to die and be one of those things. Give me our daughter, Douglas.”
Douglas looked at his wife with a desperate expression on his face. “Catherine, I’m not leaving you here.”
“Give me Angie and take our kids to a safe place.”
He shook his head and looked down at his daughter. Her breathing was ragged, and she looked worse than Catherine.
“Give me Angie, Douglas!” Catherine held out her arms for her child. “Take Michelle and Ricky and go!”
The teenage girl grabbed her brother and pulled him away from their parents.
“Mom … Mom…,” he cried.
“Ricky, go with your sister,” she ordered. “Douglas, give me Angie.”
Reluctantly, he offered his wife the small, precious bundle.
“Now, go with our other kids to safety. Go!” Catherine held her daughter tightly to her, cradling her head against her shoulder. “Go!”
Jenni motioned to the kids to get on the bus, and they obeyed. They looked shell-shocked and terrified, but they moved. Curtis took Douglas’s arm and guided him to the bus. The man could not take his eyes off his wife and child.
“If we can get them to a doctor…,” he mumbled.
Curtis shoved him into the bus and climbed in after him.
Catherine stared at Jenni sadly and her grip increased on her daughter as the small form started to thrash and growl. Blood splattered across her cheek and lips as she clutched the child closer. Jenni raised the rifle, and the woman looked down at her undead daughter tearing away at her breast. She nodded, tears on her cheeks.
Jenni could hear the woman’s husband and children screaming.
“Catherine! Catherine!”
Jenni fired.
The first shot stilled the child and tore a hole through Catherine’s chest. The woman was still falling when the second bullet finished her life.
Jenni got onto the bus. The family had fallen silent. The father was clutching his children and whimpering. The two kids were near hysterics. Curtis was pale and had tears in his eyes. Bill looked calm and resigned.
Jenni closed the door and leaned against it. Tears slid down her cheeks as she thought of her dead children and once more felt the sting of their deaths. She hated the world. Hated how it stole children from parents and parents from children. She wanted never again to see a family torn apart by this plague of living death. But she knew that she would, and it made her angry.
“When we get back, I’m going to hug Jason so tight,” Jenni said softly to Bill.
He put the bus in gear for the return trip to the fort.
2.
The Quiet Before the Storm
Katie walked up the stairs to one of the platforms overlooking the new entry point. The sun was setting, but the construction crew would work hard until the last shards of light faded.
Crews had been working long hours. It was rough going and stressful. There had been a few attacks by zombies, but the guards handled them with no loss of life. As the days had passed, small raiding parties went out into the town to salvage what they could, and a trickle of survivors arrived. They were usually pale shadows of the people they had been, near starvation and severely dehydrated.
Belinda hunkered down with a stack of medical books and tried hard to make do with the supplies that had been gathered from the local drugstore and convenience store as well as the supplies they had brought in from Nerit and Ralph’s town. She urged them to raid the clinic, but Juan had explained that the clinic was packed to the gills with zombies. If they went into the clinic, it would have to be carefully planned out, and loss of life would have to be expected.
Katie rubbed the tip of her nose. Her face was healing, and now there was just a pale swath of green and purple bruising. Her lip had healed and the soreness was fading. But she still felt battered and bruised emotionally from that huge battle. The terror she had felt plus the raw energy of the kills, and shooting that man and just not giving a damn.
That still haunted her. She had killed him and not cared. At first, she wasn’t certain why she had found it so easy to pull the trigger, then but after her dream, she fully understood.
Once someone was bitten, the end result was inevitable. To put them out of their misery quickly and efficiently was not only humane, but also necessary for the safety of all.
Looking over what had been accomplished so far, Katie couldn’t help feel proud. The outline of the lock system was up. A sturdy, high wall, three feet thick, extended the length of a block and a half. They had blocked both ends of the stretch of street with the storage containers and other heavy equipment during construction. They had gone into each building to make sure it was clear. The abandoned businesses had not been incorporated into the fort due to their dilapidated condition, but the wall had been built right up against them.
Travis had explained that they planned to use the rooftops for sentry duty. Any entrances to the roofs from the buildings had been cemented over. Fire escapes had been dismantled and the parts moved into the fort. Everything that could be used was being salvaged. And now nothing and no one could get up on top of the buildings or scale the wall.
The new gates were being tested. They were heavy metal doors from an old warehouse. They had been giving the workers some trouble. A second set of gates would be going up soon inside the long, narrow entry point. Already a fence was being constructed to keep guards safe and slow down the zombies in case of infiltration.
Travis joined her and smiled. “Looking good, isn’t it?”
“Awesome, actually. It almost looks like a castle.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Travis responded with satisfaction.
“It almost feels like we’re on top of this,” she said.
“Yeah, almost.” He glanced back at the hotel and the many windows shimmering with the fading sunlight. “That’s gonna be the big victory.”
“When are we going in?”
“As soon as the entrance is done. See where they bricked up a back entrance? We’ll go in there. But if there are more zombies than we think in there, they could flood the fort as soon as we break open that wall.”
“So what are you planning?” Katie tilted her head and looked at the back end of the hotel. Her blond hair billowed around her face in the cool breeze.
“Build a small wall around the entrance area and use the old wrought iron gate as the door. When we go in, we’ll have the gate locked behind us and guards standing post,” Travis answered solemnly.
Katie sighed. “Everything we do comes with such a great risk.”
Travis leaned back against the railing. “We have a great opportunity right now to get ourselves secure before we get slammed with a fresh bunch of those things. I feel them coming, don’t you?”
“Every day,” Katie answered truthfully.
“Once the gate is fully operational, we’ll extend the search area out a few more blocks.”
“We may just lure more back here,” Katie warned him.
“I know, but I have a feeling any survivors out there are quickly running out of time.”
Katie turned her gaze toward the reinforced truck perimeter. It had been built up higher, and spikes had been planted in front of them. If there was a push to get to the trucks, the zombies in the back would end up impaling their comrades in front of them.
“We need to get into the hotel soon. Things are getting cramped in here. We’re up to a hundred survivors.”
Travis made a face. “We don’t have enough experienced construction workers, Katie.”
“Then teach the rest of us how to do it. I can probably help build that entrance to the hotel you are talking about.”
Travis studied her and laughed. “Yeah, probably.”
“Jenni is going out on rescue missions. Jason and Curtis are trying to figure out how
to make new weapons. Belinda is working hard to become a self-taught doctor. Peggy runs inventory like a general. Give me something to do, Travis.” She gave him an intense look. “Stop protecting me.”
He looked startled at her comment. “You got hurt.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty much healed.”
“I just thought…”
Katie raised an eyebrow.
Travis just stared at her. “Okay, okay, I’m trying to protect you.”
“Why?”
Rubbing his face, the tall man sighed. “Um … because … look, I need you to help me figure all this out. I can’t risk you getting … You’ve been hurt twice. … You…”
Katie held up her hand. “Okay, you’re being a total wimp right now. Out with it, Travis.”
“I don’t want to lose you to those things. Or to some dumbass who goes after you because you’re gay. Sorry if I shouldn’t be so protective, but I might as well tell you—”
Katie didn’t want to hear his next words. She quickly hugged him tightly and kissed him on the cheek. “Okay, okay. But I don’t need a big brother. I need to work. To keep busy.”
Travis blushed a little. “Yeah, well.” He seemed to consider going on, telling her the truth they were both avoiding.
“Uh-huh. No worries,” Katie said briskly, deftly avoiding looking at him. Instead she directed her attention toward the new entrance and watched the gates open and close in short jerks. “Things are getting better, but more complicated.”
“It’s the way of life,” Travis decided. He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze. “Let’s get some dinner.”
“Sounds oh so exciting,” Katie joked.
“Yeah, I hear it’s Dinty Moore beef stew night!”
“Yummy. Ah, filet mignon, I miss you so.”
“Hamburgers … God … I miss those,” Travis confessed.
They walked down to join the others for dinner.
3.
Promises
Katie glanced up from her meal—Dinty Moore beef stew and freshly baked corn bread—as a very pale and pensive Jenni sat down across from her. Travis had been called away just before he was going to sit down, so she was alone at her table.
As The World Dies Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 26
