by J. Thorn
“If I have to fight the rats, you have to fight the rats.”
Hendrix’s arms tightened around my waist as if he actually needed to restrain me. I wasn’t going to fight this girl- at least not physically. Now… pushing her into the freezer, armed with her glossy black hair and her manicured fingernails was an entirely different thing.
“What’s the problem?” Vaughan asked sounding truly confused.
Before she could get a word out of her pouty mouth I explained for her, “Tyler doesn’t want to face the rats. She wants to wait outside until we’ve done the dirty work for her.”
“Outside?” Vaughan exclaimed. “Are you crazy?”
“No, I’m not crazy!” she hissed. “You are all crazy! Why did you pick a place to stay the night with rats! I’ve already dealt with Zombies today! I haven’t had a bath in four days! You are forcing me to shoot at things and I’m hungry! So no, I don’t want to deal with rats! I’d rather take my chances with the Zombies! This never ends!”
Her voice ended on a shriek of anger. She was visibly shaking. I could make out her trembling petite form in the dark and my anger relented; but only because I could finally see how afraid she was. She had been mostly sheltered from this entire aspect of life until four days ago when all she had wanted to do was escape that awful town and her suffocating prison. I couldn’t expect her to catch on to advanced survivor tactics in the short time she’d been allowed. And I was just as disgusted and terrified of the rats as anyone, so I really could see where she was coming from.
Vaughan on the other hand….. could not.
“It never ends?” He took a step toward her and growled out his rhetorical question. “Of course it never ends! We are fighting for our lives, Tyler, not taking a vacation! Of course it never ends! How could it? And those rats?” He waved his arm behind him, gesturing toward the freezer that I would be forced to face in just minutes. “Those rats are the least of your problems if you even think about walking out that door!”
“Oh yeah?” she countered. “Who’s going to stop me?”
I waited for Vaughan to come back with something like, “I am,” or some kind of threatening response, but he never said anything. He just stared down at her while she glared defiantly up at him. His hands flexed and clenched at his sides and his breathing picked up a little. But he never answered her question. Finally, with a frustrated shouty growl he turned around and stalked off, muttering something about a, “spoiled, impossible woman.”
Tyler then turned on her heel and stomped off in the opposite direction.
I looked up at Hendrix with a furrowed brow and concerned eyes. He just smiled down at me, all goofy and big and then gave me a kiss on the forehead- another kiss on the forehead.
I was starting to be concerned that he was confused about where my lips were located.
“Come on, killer, it’s time to go play Rat Busters,” he laughed and let go of me.
“Was that another joke?” I asked trying to stifle my laughter- not at his lame attempt at humor, but at the fact that he was actually trying to be funny.
“I can be funny,” he huffed, sounding genuinely offended.
I really laughed then because he was being funny now and in my most patronizing tone I assured him, “Of course you can be.”
“Here,” Harrison pushed items into our hands as soon as we were standing with everyone else in front of the huge, walk-in freezer.
I looked down at the long item that was apparently supposed to be my weapon and stopped laughing immediately. It was a mop. He expected me to kill rats with a mop.
However, apparently a mop was one of the better weapons.
“What is this?” Hendrix demanded next to me. “A pool noodle?”
I looked over at the long foam purple noodle and burst into more laughter.
With a completely straight face, Harrison looked at his older brother and said, “You’re resourceful. You’ll make it work.”
“They must have been getting ready for summer before the infection happened,” King added helpfully. He was actually holding a pool skimmer, so his assessment couldn’t have been too far off.
“Thanks for clearing that up for me,” Hendrix growled.
“Ok, here’s the plan,” Vaughan asserted authoritatively. “I will open the freezer door and then Hendrix and I will chase everything out here. It’s your job to either kill it, or get it out of the store.”
“What kind of meal do you think we could make out of rat?” Harrison asked thoughtfully.
Everyone ignored him.
“Haley stays with Page,” Vaughan continued. “King go stand by the front door and get ready to open it. Nelson, Harrison and Reagan get ready to chase them.”
We moved into action. Haley climbed up onto the metal work table where someone had laid Page. She pushed aside a huge meat slicer and then sat casually, ready to enjoy the show and way too proud of herself for getting out of the dirty work.
Hendrix walked over to where a sink was mounted on the wall next to the freezer and exchanged his pool noodle for a big push broom. King took the pool skimmer off to the front of the store, Harrison readied his smaller sized broom to the left of the freezer. I went to stand next to him and across from Nelson and his…. I didn’t really know what it was like. Possibly something that hung from the end of racks in order to promo things? It looked sort of like a miniature ladder with hooks on the end. He was also holding a substantial knife in his hand.
I had knives too, but I didn’t plan on getting close enough to whatever came out of that freezer to use them.
Vaughan counted down with his hands- three, two…. one. He hesitated for a moment longer, exhaled a steadying breath and then flung the door open.
I immediately gagged on the stronger scent of everything rotten and frozen inside. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and tried concentrating on anything else but the smell. I could almost see the cloying green fumes escaping the rotted place, like I was living in a cartoon. My shirt helped block the smell some- but only because I was not smelling so hot these days either. I had my own rotten stench to deal with these days.
There was the sound of Hendrix and Vaughan stomping around in the dark freezer, making as much noise as they could. Then there were more sounds as their weapons struck the ground and the various places the rats could make their nest in.
Finally, there was the sound of squeaking and scurrying little feet, nails scratching against the tiled floor.
“Here we go,” I shuddered, just in time to swing my mop- brush side down- out at the rodent charging for me. I let out a shriek of terror and waved the huge creature on toward Nelson. He jumped up as it charged in his general direction but somehow shooed it toward the exit.
I didn’t have time to figure out how he was corralling it toward the entrance before three more human-sized rats bolted out of the freezer. Their eyes reflected off the little bit of light from the windows and their thick, naked pink tales swished angrily behind them. They were pissed at our forced eviction and wanted to sink their sharp, jagged teeth into something.
Like my leg.
I screamed some more and then forced myself to stop thinking about how scary they were. I needed to be brave and it was easier to find courage if I stopped dwelling on the fear.
This time I held my mop out in front of me and swatted one of the huge rodents away. He tilted and skidded on his side but righted himself soon enough.
He didn’t come back, just kept running. Hendrix appeared on the other side of me and together we somehow kept up with the rats with outstretched arms and make-shift weapons and were able to cage them through the store in somewhat of a hockey-player-passing type of manner. They were like our pucks and we were like passing them back on forth.
Hendrix and I worked with two of these and Harrison and Vaughan followed behind with two more. Plus, there was the one that Nelson had. This was what my life had been reduced to- killing Zombies point blank one minute and chasing filthy rats the next.
I remembered when my days consisted of making sure my toenail polish matched my outfit and stressing over pre-cal homework.
This was not a step forward.
I felt a tug on my shoe and looked down to see one of the rats behind me had latched on. I screamed- again. Forget being courageous! This thing could give me rabies! Or worse the black plague!
I kicked my leg back and whined out a pathetic cry for help when I heard a whistle sound through the air. Something connected with the rat behind me, knocking my foot back to the ground and making a sickening splat sound of the rat losing its well-fought life.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw Harrison standing over the now-dead rat, brains sprayed under the hard broom handle. I gagged- I couldn’t help it.
With Harrison predisposed with his prey, Vaughan’s other rat ran off in a different direction. He pursued it, while Hendrix and I did our best to herd our rat-cattle out the front door.
Just as we came into sight, King flung the door open and out went the two rats. We stopped chasing them at the door, and they scurried off into the evening. Hendrix and I jumped out of the way just in case someone else would come barreling through and then I held up my hand for a high five.
Before he could return the gesture, Harrison walked forward carrying the concaved rat by his tail. The door swung open and Tyler and Miller slipped back in the store, lowering the guns we’d given them. And just as the door closed again, there was a loud thud sound and then a shout of proud laughter. I jumped at the sound, my shoulders popping up to my shoulders in disgust and then I closed my eyes until I heard boxes falling, a shelf being knocked over, a string of curse words and then a whack so loud it sounded like a hammer on steel.
We stood stock still, all of us feeling a sense of accomplishment at the same time we were disgusted by the necessity for that brutal approach. We stayed at the front door until both Vaughan and Nelson reappeared, each carrying their bloodied trophy by their tail.
“You people are sick,” Tyler groaned.
“Because your people are so much better,” Vaughan growled as he walked by her. He wiggled his rat just as he passed by her and then smiled at her blatant disgust.
So they weren’t going to be best friends any time soon.
I left the boys to deal with the dead rats and walked back to find Haley. Page was curled up on the top of the table in a fetal position. She was pale- even with the lack of light, I could tell she was white as paper. Haley was stroking her hair, staring down at a little girl just barely recovering.
Miller had come through with the antibiotics, but Page was slow on the mend. Whatever he gave us were probably a couple years expired anyway and not what they should be. But she was improving slowly day by day.
The exploding sound of arguing erupted in the otherwise quiet store.
“Do you think Vaughan and Tyler are going to do this all night?” Haley asked on a groan.
“No,” I answered confidently. “I think after Tyler realizes we are cleaning out the freezer first, this night is going to get a whole lot worse.”
Chapter Two
We went to work on the freezer then. It seemed partly meaningless to put this much effort into a place to stay for just one night. But Haley and I had learned- and apparently the Parkers too- that freezers made great places to spend the night. They were pretty impenetrable from Zombies who had lost the basic motor functions of turning a handle, they dampened sound but didn’t block it completely and they didn’t let any kind of delicious live flesh scent drift through the air. We could all be cuddled in here and have a relatively peaceful night.
Ever since we crossed into Oklahoma the Zombie population had kicked up a few notches. Travel had been slow, what was left of our ammo depleting rapidly and no one had slept a full night through in several days. I was exhausted and desperate for a few hours of peace in a row.
I wasn’t actually certain how I was even functioning right now. I hadn’t had more than two hours of consistent sleep since before Page was sick and once that happened I spent almost forty-eight hours awake.
Adrenaline and the will to survive would get me through the tense moments and then pure stubbornness through all the rest.
Everyone else was just as bad, so it wasn’t like I could really complain. In fact, the only ones of us getting much sleep were Page and Miller. Page because she wasn’t capable of much else. And Miller because…. well, sometimes I wondered if he was narcoleptic. The kid had the most incredible ability to fall asleep whenever, wherever. And nothing could wake him up. Two days ago we had run into a pack of three Feeders and a stretch of road that was in absolute pieces, so we were forced to put them down. And the whole time- gun shots, Feeders shrieking and moaning, our screams and Vaughan’s orders- he just slept peacefully on the floor of the van. He didn’t even wake up until after we were back in the van and counting the ammo again.
It was a true talent.
One that would probably get him brutally killed, but still, a talent all the same.
Cleaning out the freezer was actually pretty easy work. We had all the cleaning supplies and rags we needed and most of the rotten food was at least in containers. We just piled it in a corner on the opposite side of the store. There were several dead Zombies lying around, it wasn’t like we were concerned with making a compost pile. And it gave the maggots more of a selection-which begged the question, could maggots be turned into Zombies?
The rat’s nest was the worst to deal with so I gladly gave that job over to the boys. King had secured the front doors, but that wouldn’t hold off a horde if we weren’t careful.
The space wasn’t very big and with all of us- except Tyler- working hard we had removed the food, wiped down the walls, pulled out the shelves, swept all of the poop out and mopped the floor in under two hours.
The light had completely vanished by now, but inside the solid walls of the freezer we were brave enough to turn on a few battery-operated camping lanterns. And by the time we rigged the door so that we wouldn’t get locked inside, our home was made.
We sat around the two small lanterns and leaned against the freshly cleaned walls. Our small cave smelled like lemon and clean and the scent was soothing. I hadn’t smelled something this “disinfected” in a long time.
Haley and Nelson passed out dinner- a solid pull-top can of tuna for everybody thanks to items the looters did not take from this particular Publix, a roll of crackers rationed between us all and blue Gatorades.
If I ate the tuna fast enough I didn’t have to taste it- because it was definitely disgusting but at least it was protein.
All in all, we were going to bed only a little bit hungry and that was a good thing.
“Is this how you always eat?” Tyler asked on a sneer from across the circle.
Haley was on my left with Page in her lap and she laughed lightly, “Not always. I haven’t had Gatorade in months.”
“And Nelson was really generous with the crackers tonight.” Harrison actually sounded genuinely thankful.
It was true though- there were more crackers a piece than usual. I wondered if someone had found more here or if we were celebrating the fact that nobody died today.
“How do you honestly expect to survive on this crap?” She was so spoiled, almost unforgivably so. Especially in the cruel world we lived in, where hardship was a part of every single moment. But, in a weird, annoying way, I kind of got her point. These were the same questions I’d asked myself for the first six months, maybe the first year. Actually, I wasn’t sure when I’d stopped believing we’d never make it and started assuming we could, that we suddenly possessed all the tools necessary to stay alive.
This life took an adjustment- physically, mentally and emotionally. She wasn’t going to get that overnight.
However…. she didn’t have to be such a bitch about it.
“We don’t have a choice,” I answered poignantly.
“I cannot believe I left The Colony for this shit,” she grumbled.
She snorted a sarcastic laugh, “Yes, my dad thought it was a throwback to like the original thirteen colonies.”
That met grunts of acknowledgment. None of us were really ready to talk about her dad or his collection of Zombies or his prison camp-esque colony.
Least of all me.
I felt Hendrix’s hand inch forward until our pinky fingers brushed against each other. Slowly he swept his up the length of mine and then back down again. The gesture was meant to comfort and it did. I leaned back so that our shoulders were only an inch apart and gave him a sweet smile. There was no reason for me to still be afraid of The Colony or anyone in it. We had escaped. We were miles away now and there was no way for anyone to really track us.
I was safe.
Well, as safe as I could be.
Still my mind fell back to Kane. Just like during every single moment of silence since we’d left that settlement. His gray eyes haunted and angry. His cleanly groomed hair. His straining muscles as he stood handcuffed to that bedroom window. And the promises in his calm, orderly tone.
Logically I knew there was no way for him to find me.
Emotionally…. my thoughts kept tripping over his threats and the determined intent on his face. He meant what he said. I knew that in the core of my soul. Whether he could actually accomplish it was a different thing…. but without a doubt, without any hesitation, I knew he would try.
And that created a well of fear in my chest that I couldn’t ignore- that I couldn’t overcome.
But I didn’t understand why.
He hadn’t hurt me. He hadn’t even really touched me. And he had done nothing but protect me.
Apart from the whole princess-locked-in-a-tower complex I picked up while I was with him, he had treated me with careful respect and never once tried to push boundaries or force me into something dangerous or harmful.
So why was I so afraid of him?
Why was I so afraid of what he wanted from me?”
“Finished with your dinner?” Hendrix asked in my ear. His words were casual but his tone was deep and sensual. I shivered a little as his hot breath floated over my ear and down the column of my throat.
