by J. Thorn
And our only exit was locked.
“What are you waiting for, Reagan. Let’s get the hell out of here!” Haley’s back was still to me as she faced her now empty gun at the hallway, just waiting for the rest of the Feeders to follow the sounds and find us.
“It’s locked! Damn it!”
Completely panicked, I yanked on the handled and then kicked it with my new shoe. Nothing happened. The door stayed firmly locked, stubbornly unmoving. This was definitely worst case scenario.
And not ten minutes ago I had been really excited about all that eye liner and a new pair of jeans.
This was so not how I was going out. I’d survived Quarterback-Chris, the death of my parents and almost two freaking years of living as the most depressing version of Mila Jovovich in Resident Evil ever.
“Open, damn it!” I screamed at the door, giving it another kick with my foot.
Only this time, my foot didn’t connect with anything. The door wrenched open and my body flew, following my foot, through the empty space I wasn’t expecting. I fell straight to my hands and knees in a huge pile of glass shards and broken ceramic. I felt the thick chunks of debris dig and slice through my skin immediately. My jeans would be completely irreparable after this and, with my luck, as soon as I was able to stop bleeding, I was for sure going to get gangrene.
What the hell?
“What the hell, Reagan?” Haley practically screamed at me as soon as she was through the doorway. She slammed the door behind her and braced her body against it; meanwhile, I was still doggy style in a pile of glass I was too afraid to stand up from.
The damage was going to be annoyingly excessive.
Before I could answer her though, I heard the signature click of a bullet being loaded into the chamber. More dread slithered through my body; other humans were just as deadly and dangerous as Zombies these days. And apparently we were trespassing.
“Don’t move,” a deep, masculine voice ordered in a quiet, steely tone.
“Out of the frying pan,” Haley mumbled resignedly.
“And into the fire,” I finished for her.
I would never complain about eyeliner again.
Chapter Two
“You, drop your gun and put your hands in the air,” the obviously male voice ordered Haley roughly.
Another click of a gun from behind us and I started trying to count shoes from my position on the floor. Blood pooled around my palms and knees, making the glass-littered ground sticky and wet. The stairwell was almost completely dark though, except for some kind of lamp that was shining from the top of a stairwell, it cast long, shadowy streaks of light down on us, but kept every face hidden in darkness.
I heard Haley’s gun drop to the floor with unnecessary force behind it, crashing into the glass and ceramic. “Fine,” she growled. “But, it was empty anyway.”
A snort of laughter sounded from the guy in the back and I almost smiled. God, Haley could be feisty- which was definitely a good thing when we found ourselves sandwiched between zombies and armed men that probably hadn’t gotten consensually laid since the outbreak.
“Now you,” the man addressed me. I felt more than saw his gun swing in my direction. “Stand up slowly.”
“Do I have to?” I winced, thinking about my injured hands and knees. I was putting pressure on them now, so even though there was pain, I had staunched any chance of a river of blood. If I stood up, and let my hands hang limply in the air, I would be covered in Zombie-food in no time. Mostly I was worried about being sticky for the next couple of days. Blood was a pain in the ass to scrub off, especially if there wasn’t clean water around. “I’m bleeding here.”
“You’re bleeding?” the guy asked dryly.
“I’ve been booby-trapped,” I drawled.
Haley chuckled, and nudged me with her foot. “She’s been booby-trapped.”
That made me giggle, too. Apparently, the stress of our situation was not enough to dampen our sense of humor.
“We have guns,” the guy with said gun explained unnecessarily. “This isn’t a joke.”
“But you’re not going to shoot us,” Haley argued.
“I’m not?”
“We’re hot. You’ll at least rape us first,” she explained on a hysterical giggle.
“At least,” I echoed, my laughter bouncing off the floor. “Just don’t give us herpes.”
“We’re not going to rape you!” The guy in the back defended, sounding absolutely disgusted by the idea. Well, that was a good sign.
“Are you two high?” the first gunman asked incredulously.
This only caused us to laugh harder, until a hand hit the outside of the door aggressively. We all jumped at the sound. Another fist came down on the heavy metal door, just to the left of Haley’s head. And then another. The Feeders had arrived.
“Up, now. We’ll take care of the bleeding upstairs,” I was commanded from above.
I knew I didn’t have a choice at this point. One Feeder might not be able to break down the door, but the incessant pounding would draw others and there was no telling what an entire horde of them could do.
I stood up slowly, flicking the loose pieces from my kneecaps and heels of my hand with the tips of my fingers. I couldn’t close my palms or straighten my legs completely, so I had to stand at an awkward angle, allowing the blood to run and drip from every cut.
“Those look bad, Reags,” Haley hissed, concern entrenched with every syllable. Zombies didn’t faze her; guns made her laugh, but my deep cuts were enough to get her to take this seriously. She was a good friend.
“I’ll be Ok,” I assured her.
“Let’s go,” the guy with the gun ordered before she had a chance to say anything else.
We followed the direction of his pointed gun and marched up the stairs. He pushed Haley in front of me, which was a travesty since my gun was tucked into the back of my pants. She would have known that and if she would have been behind me she could have grabbed it.
I hobbled up the stairs, still crooked at the knees. I took careful steps, gingerly holding onto Haley’s hand as we went. The stairs were just as covered with broken glass and pieces of everything else. The farther we got up the stairs, even Haley had to duck because all kinds of cookware and gardening tools were hanging from the ceiling. A human would have had to have their wits together to bob and weave these traps, but Feeders were single minded and stupid. Maybe it wouldn’t have been enough to impale them or maim them, but it would make a lot of noise if someone came running up these stairs knocking pans, rakes and shovels together.
I started to get the impression that this was a permanent settlement for these guys. A nervous tingle ran down my spine when I wondered how many of them there actually were.
In our travels, Haley and I had come across a few scattered settlements. We were always careful to scope them out first, doing due diligence with our scouting. Some settlements included women and even children; those were generally safer even while outsiders made them understandably nervous. If we weren’t carrying the disease already, we could expose them to others who were, or deplete them of their coveted water and food supply. We always tried not to take anything from settlements. If we didn’t want anything other than a place to sleep for the night, they tended to trust us more.
Other settlements were not nearly the safe-haven though. Militia type groups set up outposts all over the US in order to protect what was theirs, usually only enlisted with men. Whenever a group of just men got together it was like they lost millions of brain cells in the presence of all that testosterone. They became total cavemen, dangerous and unpredictable. They were just as deadly as Feeders, especially to women.
Especially to a couple of young virgins, traveling by themselves…
We were like the new Fountain of Youth. The white unicorn. The freaking Holy Grail.
If I wasn’t so worried about becoming a Zombie, I would have just given up the v-card months ago. Not that the Zombie gene was passed on
like an STD, but they felt very closely related. It was like, die a virgin or get herpes, and then if I got herpes I would obviously seek out the cure, because, uh… yuck, then because of the whole Zombie-itis thing I would definitely become a Feeder and the whole event would have been pointless.
Ok, that was all fiction.
I didn’t have to become a Zombie just because I had sex.
But what happened to love? And commitment? Was that all gone just because I happened to live during the Apocalypse?
I had a serious boyfriend before the world went to shit and he tried to eat me- and not in the sexy way. We planned this whole after prom experience, there would have been rose petals on the bed and whispered I love you’s. Even if he was a cheating asshole, that still sounded better than meeting up with a stranger and losing it on the dirty floor of some abandoned Wal-Mart.
Plus, who knew about safe sex these days? I didn’t exactly come prepared with baby-preventing merchandise. And I was so not filming Teen Mom Zombie Apocalypse Edition.
We passed the spotlight when we rounded the corner and were ordered up the next flight of stairs. I sighed at the thought of struggling up another set of steps, but marched on, knowing I didn’t have a choice.
“Do you need some help?” The guy in the way back asked quietly.
“Uh, I’ll be Ok,” I replied quickly. Maybe it was a sign of the times, but where the hell had that come from? I wasn’t exactly used to chivalry, and the very idea of it completely freaked me out.
“It’s just up at the top of the stairs,” the main gunman explained. I ignored the softening of his tone. I had to assume this was going to go one of two ways, Haley and I were about to made into sister wives for an entire community of vigilante men that had forgotten how to give the girl hers first, or this was an execution and they didn’t want blood and bodies anywhere near where Feeders could find a way into their hidey-hole. Neither of those options appealed to me.
At the top of the stairs, the guy from the back walked past, gun held at his side, and knocked on another heavy steel door. The door was opened and a stream of light flooded the stairwell. I blinked against the brightness my eyes weren’t used to and dipped my head.
Following Haley’s feet, I shuffled inside the third floor of the department store and heard the door slam and lock behind us. The sound of sliding, heavy furniture could be heard behind me and eventually, when my eyes adjusted, I turned around to see four cash register counters lined up in front of the exit. It wouldn’t keep out a mob of Feeders, but it would be enough to stop the lone wanderer, or even a group of ten or fifteen.
My mouth dropped as I let my gaze take in the rest of the space. These guys had commandeered the entire third floor. This was an older style department store, in what had always been a small town, so there wasn’t an escalator in the middle of the floor, but there was a set of stairs that had been built over with heavy steal pieces that had been welded together in a makeshift strong box. The elevators off to the side had been boarded up, too, with steel and metal. From a quick glance around, the only exit or entrance even accessible was the doors we just came through.
Couches and beds had been set up in sections; rooms were made from curtains hanging from the ceiling. A kitchen of sorts was also set up with a camping grill, a basin for water and several coolers that probably contained dried food. There were three other guys hanging out, guns hanging limply from their fingertips while they surveyed us with suspicious eyes.
Haley gave a flirty wave that I knew she didn’t mean. If any of these guys came near her with bad intentions she would detach their manhood from their bodies with her teeth.
“What did you find, Hendrix?” The oldest of the guys- probably mid-twenties- asked from his perch on the back of a plaid couch. He was tall, his body stretched out as he leaned against the back casually. Attractive in that I-can-totally-pull-of-the-dirty-scruffy-and-rugged-look-as-if-I-were-doing-a-magazine-cover. His facial growth was sexy as hell; his shaggy, dirty blonde hair, chopped and straight, fell around his eyebrows and collar. He was stupidly handsome for the end of the world. It wasn’t fair.
The difference between girls and boys was that boys could go days without a razor and they looked better. I went days without a razor and people started reporting Big Foot sightings. Damn the male race and their immunity to hygienic upkeep.
“Girls,” Hendrix huffed behind me. “They were shopping.”
Haley snorted at the insinuation we were just shopping for leisure. “We were stocking up on supplies,” she bit out.
“Makeup?” Hendrix scoffed pointedly at me.
“Just a little eyeliner,” I mumbled a bit dejectedly.
“Yeah?” Hendrix asked dramatically. “Is that eyeliner going to help you stop bleeding?”
“No, but you could,” I shot back quickly.
Hendrix opened his mouth to say something, but the other one cut him off with an authoritative, “She’s right. Help her get clean before the Feeders get a scent of her fresh blood.”
I flaunted a haughty look and waited for Hendrix to lead the way. In the light, I could now take him in. He was as steady here as he was downstairs, cool and completely collected. He was tall, too, at least eight inches taller than me, with a muscular but lean frame. His hair was just as shaggy as the other guys but a deeper blonde color, almost brown but not quite. His darker half-beard was more trimmed than the first guys and hid full lips that if I had to guess, were perpetually pressed into a frown. Hendrix, in the short time I had known him, was clearly never the life of any party. He was like the black hole that sucked all the fun out of the room.
Not that there was a whole lot of fun happening these days. But proverbially speaking, he was the party pooper.
He led me over to the kitchen area and directed me to sit on a tall bar stool. I glanced over at Haley who was now sitting awkwardly on one of the cashier counters that blocked the exit. She gave me a small wave and a shrug of her shoulder. So far, no raping and pillaging.
I turned my attention back to Hendrix when he gripped my hand and started to pull out one of the larger pieces of glass imbedded deep in my palm. I sucked in a sharp breath and blinked away the tears of pain.
“That’s some defense system you got down there,” I hissed through the throbbing pain. With the biggest piece of glass dislodged from my palm, Hendrix grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured it on the gushing wound. I winced at the searing pain and squinched my eyes shut. He started patting it gently with a cloth and I relaxed a little at the applied pressure.
“Most people that come through that door are invited,” he explained in his no-nonsense, rough way.
“Are they also being chased by Feeders?” I asked with as much sarcasm as I was capable of under the circumstances.
“Hold this,” he ignored my question and pressed my fingertips against the soft towel. I opened one eye to watch him pull up another bar stool and sit down. He was close to me, so that our knees were pressed into each other and he could hold my hand against his body. His longish hair fell over his eyes and he shook his head to the side to get the stray pieces out of his field of vision.
I was slightly mesmerized by his movement until he removed the towel and pulled another shard of glass out of my palm.
“These are bad,” he commented without any emotion.
“I know,” I grimaced.
“Bruce Lee,” he mumbled while pouring more alcohol into the wound.
“What?”
“You looked like Bruce Lee with your foot flying through the door,” he explained but there was absolutely no humor in his voice.
A surprised giggle bubbled up inside me and I couldn’t stop it. “You could have warned me you were going to open the door.”
“I didn’t know if you were a friend or an enemy.” He lifted his eyes from my wound to meet my stare. He had intensely blue eyes that shimmered they were so serious.
I cleared my throat, feeling exposed under his weighty gaze. “Fair
enough,” I finally squeaked out.
He worked in silence for a while, pulling pieces out carefully and then cleaning the cuts properly. When he was finished with my right hand, he bandaged it expertly and then moved on to my left.
“This is quite the set up you have here,” I commented while keeping my eyes on Haley who looked bored, still positioned on the counter. The rest of Hendrix’s band of merry men stood conferring with each other in a far corner.
“Yep,” was all he said in reply.
“Have you been here since the beginning?” I pressed. I didn’t know what these guys were going to do with us, but right now they held all the cards. We were pathetically at their mercy. I wanted as much information as I could get, even if it couldn’t help me. I had to believe Haley and I were competent enough to get out of this mess should they mean us harm.
“Nope,” Hendrix offered helpfully.
“So how long then? You have a serious utopia up here; I’m surprised there aren’t more of you.” I chewed my bottom lip thoughtfully as I took in their dried food supply to my left and the soft, comfortable beds that were curtained off into bedrooms. They also seemed to have plenty of clean water and medical supplies.
“We don’t trust outsiders,” he growled out.
“Oh, like me?” I rolled my eyes. “That works out great since I don’t trust you either.”
“You shouldn’t,” he promised quietly.
“Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.”
“It doesn’t matter; you’ll be gone in a few hours anyway.” He kept his eyes firmly on my hand while he expertly cleaned my wounds.
I gulped and then whispered so Haley couldn’t hear, “Like you’re going to kill us?”
“What?” His eyes snapped up to mine and he actually looked offended that I would think that about him. “We’re not going to kill you. We’re going to send you on your way. We don’t want you here. I already told you, we don’t trust outsiders.”
Not that I was expecting some kind of white knight declaration or anything, but even false hope would have felt great at this point. “But I’m a woman,” I pointed out obviously.
