A brightly painted, creepy Mrs. Claus garden gnome with cherub cheeks. With an appearance similar to those of old baby dolls that lurk in the dusty clutter of an antiques store, the gnome’s eyes lit up as it began to laugh a prerecorded laugh track, triggered by their movement.
Anna exhaled, looking up at Nick with a relieved smile. In the corner of her eye, she saw John’s hurt expression and straightened her face. Chris turned and looked at everyone with a goofy grin.
“Guess there’s nobody gnome.”
One by one, everyone began to laugh, even Nick.
“Come on,” Anna said, rolling her head from side to side to release some tension. “Let’s get out of here.”
All at once, the trees began to fall in on them, pots smashing and crashing against the ground, and sharp pine needles stabbing every inch of naked flesh. A zombie elf, his jolly green costume streaked with blackened blood, burst out of the trees and lurched at Anna. And he was not alone.
The gang screamed as more zombie elves appeared, arms stretching out of the pine trees, grabbing and scratching and clawing at the survivors.
“As if elves aren’t already creepy enough!” Anna shouted in a panic. She reached out and grabbed John’s wrist. Their eyes met and all was forgiven, she turned to run, her hand slipping over his as the trees shook and fell all around them. There were only a few more feet to go, she could see the back of the warehouse, the little room where you went to pay for your tree. Just a few more steps, she told herself, shutting out the chaotic screams and rumbling moans of the elves and when she looked back over her shoulder …
He was gone.
An elf leaped out in front of her, cutting off her route of escape and sending her back into the rows of trees. She was completely alone.
“John?” She called quietly at first, doubled over, panting for breath. “John! Guys! GUYS?!”
Nothing. No one. Just the echoing screams of her friends, somewhere out of sight. As terrified as she was, there was no way she was going to be eaten by zombie elves in Rudolph’s Christmas Tree Emporium. She would impale herself on her candy cane before that happened. Without a clue what to do, she chose a direction and ran as fast as she could, her weapon swinging by her side. Skidding to a halt, Anna realized she’d hit a dead end. Before she could turn around and go back, she bumped straight into a bloodstained body. With a warrior’s cry, she closed her eyes and brandished her candy cane, ready to fight to the death, but instead of hitting a zombie’s skull, it crashed against something hard, something aluminum.
She opened one eye to see Nick holding out his baseball bat, a fresh wound on his forehead and a huge welt blooming under his right eye.
“You okay?” she asked, chest heaving with relief.
“I’m okay,” he replied, looking back over his shoulder. “But we’ve got to keep going.”
She nodded and they ran, side by side, not stopping until they hit a clearing littered with zombie body parts, Jake and Tibbsy doubled over in the middle of it all.
“Good work, you two,” Nick said, kicking a savaged leg out of his way. “Come on, let’s—”
“Nick!” Anna grabbed him and yanked him backward. Jake and Tibbsy weren’t taking a celebratory breather. They were eating Graham.
“Aw, fuck.” Nick’s eyes opened saucer-wide. “They’re my friends.”
“They were your friends,” Anna replied as Jake and Tibbsy turned, their faces covered in Graham’s blood and guts. “Don’t freeze on me, Nick.”
But for the first time, he was lost. They inched closer, no hint of humanity in their eyes.
“J-Jake,” he stuttered. “Tibbs?”
Behind them, slowly and shakily, Graham began to rise to his feet. All three had been turned. Nick raised his bat, preparing himself for the worst, but even as they crept closer and closer, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“Move,” Anna commanded, stepping in front of him and whacking Jake and Tibbsy with one heavy hit of her giant candy cane. As they staggered back into Graham, she took hold of Nick’s hand and pulled him through another line of trees, pine needles scraping at their faces, until they emerged right next to the exit.
“Guys!” Steph hissed, waving to them from the open fire exit.
“C’mon,” Nick said, hurling himself toward the door on very unsteady legs.
Anna, seeing Chris and his camera still in the tree lot, started after him.
“Wait!” She paused, turning to see nothing other than pine trees. “Where’s John?”
Nick paused, steps away from the doorway.
“Come on, Anna!” he yelled, desperate to get out of there before his friends recovered and came for him again. He couldn’t stand to see their faces transformed into something so hideous. Not that they’d been lookers in the first place, but still.
Anna shook her head.
“I’m going back for him. He wouldn’t leave me behind.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Nick muttered, taking a deep breath, ready to follow her back into the battleground just as John emerged, limping through the trees.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his face white and the tree on his sweater now covered in blood. “Move!”
Nick and Anna each grabbed an arm and yanked him out of the tree line, through the exit, and into the cold afternoon air.
Chris hovered by the doorway, filming the daring escape while Steph held the fire exit open.
“I’ve got some amazing footage,” he shouted to Steph, waving his phone in the air as he jogged backward. “Wait until you see this!”
But then he tripped. As he struggled to keep himself upright, his phone slipped out of his hands and bounced on the ground, landing on the wrong side of the fire exit.
“NO!” Anna screamed as he immediately chased after it.
There was no way he was leaving it behind. All those pictures of him and Lisa, all the footage of the last twenty-four hours, not to mention he was at level three thousand on Candy Crush. He reached out to grab the phone just as Zombie Tibbsy hurled himself at his arm, snarling through the air, mouth open, teeth gnashing.
“Not today!” Steph appeared at Chris’s side and punched the zombie in the head so hard, his jaw snapped and flew across the floor.
“You’re on a liquid diet now,” she said, helping Chris back up. “Stay off the red meat, it’s bad for your cholesterol.”
Nick held the door open until they were safely through, staring down his dead friends one last time before he slammed the door shut.
* * *
“That was so stupid,” Steph yelled at Chris, tears in her eyes and her hand throbbing.
“I know!” Chris yelled back.
He looked around, blinking at the boxes of running shoes and tennis rackets. They were in the sports shop. Before he could open his mouth to apologize, Steph barreled into him with a double-armed hug.
“Don’t scare me like that again, okay, buddy?” she said, 100 percent definitely not crying. “It’s just a phone—plastic and glass.”
“And all my photos and videos,” he replied, getting heated again. “Lisa and Gran are on here! I need it.”
Seeing the fear in his eyes, Steph exhaled and tried a smile.
“They’re alive, Chris,” she said. “We’ll find them.”
But he was too scared to be reassured.
“You don’t believe that!” he shouted as everyone turned to look. Anna didn’t think she’d ever heard Chris raise his voice before. “You think everyone’s dead. Your girlfriend, your parents. You don’t even care!”
Steph stared back at him. Her face was completely blank, but there was fire in her eyes.
“You don’t know me,” she said quietly. “You don’t know what I think.”
Hurt, she turned her back and walked away, leaving Chris alone. Ashamed of his outburst, he squeezed his phone in his hand and kicked at a toppled mannequin. It didn’t help.
* * *
John limped over to a plastic chair next to the cas
h register. He watched as Nick and Anna came in together, Anna checking the door, then locking it behind her. He looked down at his blood-covered hands and sighed.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” Anna said, raising her hand to comfort Nick.
He shrugged her off before she could even make contact.
“They should have kept up,” he replied, dropping his bat on the floor and making a beeline for a display full of shiny new ones. Anna watched as he tested out each one, swinging it around and smashing assorted tennis balls into a wall of football shirts.
“Hey, how’s the knee?” she asked, kneeling down beside John and straightening out his leg. Nick continued to test baseball bats and work through his grief by smashing up the store.
“Did you know his mates well?” John asked.
“Not really,” Anna replied, picking her words carefully. She and John had never talked about what happened between her and Nick. He had been quite clear in letting her know he didn’t approve.
Nick wasn’t the only one working out his frustrations with weapons. Steph found a box of assorted mannequin limbs and tried swinging them around, one by one. Who needed a baseball bat when you could clobber zombies to death with a plastic shin?
“John?” Anna said, almost in a whisper. He looked down at his friend, kneeling on the floor at his side.
“What if everyone is dead?”
“Then you’ll figure something out,” he replied, trying very hard to be brave. “You usually do, Anna Shepherd. It’s actually really annoying.”
“What would I do without you?” she asked, trying on a little wry smile.
“Are we good to go?” Nick asked, his eyes completely void of emotion. “Or does John need to go and change his tampon?”
He pushed over a basket full of tennis balls and stalked toward the exit, Steph and Chris at his heels, armed with new weapons. A mannequin leg for Steph, and for some inexplicable reason, Chris had chosen a tennis racquet.
“I must admit.” John winced as Anna helped him to his feet. “I can see why you found him so irresistible.”
“Shut up,” Anna ordered in a pleasant voice. “It’s confirmed, I’ve got terrible taste in boys. Brilliant taste in best friends.”
John smiled, hobbling along at her side.
“Oh, hey, do you want some genuine good news?” he asked. Anna quirked a disbelieving eyebrow. “I remember all the reindeer. You ready?”
She pushed open the shop door and took a deep breath as they emerged into the shopping center. It was too big, too open. They were far too exposed for Anna’s liking.
“Dasher, Dancer, Comet, Vixen, Cupid…” John began listing Santa’s reindeer with an enormous amount of pride in his voice.
“Cupid?” Anna questioned.
“I know, right?” John replied. “Who knew he was pulling double duty. So, Dasher, Dancer, Comet, Vixen, Cupid, Prancer, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph!”
He threw out his arms to deliver a jazz hands celebration, and as Anna opened her mouth to laugh, she saw it—the zombie hurtling toward him from behind.
The world went into slow motion. John waved his hand into range of its mouth, straight between its jaws, and Anna was powerless to stop it as the thing clamped down, tearing through John’s flesh.
21
“NO!” ANNA SCREAMED, even before John could realize what was happening. He didn’t feel the bite at first, just the sensation of someone coming from behind him, and by then it was too late.
Everything went quiet for a moment.
Anna was battering the biter away from him, still screaming, tears running down her face as John looked down at his hand. He was still stuck to the spot when he saw the teeth marks, the blood, his own flesh hanging off the bone. He’d been bitten. The simple shock of it just wouldn’t register, but deep down inside, he knew what happened next. He looked up at Anna, still pounding her candy cane into the skull of his attacker, screaming and screaming and screaming.
Until more of them appeared.
* * *
Nick, Chris, and Steph turned when they heard Anna’s anguish.
Steph clapped her hand over her mouth when she realized what was happening. Anna and John were surrounded. There were literally dozens of zombies, from out of nowhere, circling their friends and creeping closer and closer. Nick scanned for a way to get Anna to safety, but the ring of zombies was impenetrable. He clutched his baseball bat so hard, he felt his skin burn against the grip, his mouth opening and closing, even though no words managed to find a way out.
They were trapped.
* * *
John was still staring at his wound. How was it possible? Yes, he’d seen people dying all day, but him, John Wise? He wasn’t supposed to die. He was supposed to get to the school, find his mom and Anna’s dad, and wait for the army to arrive, and then, when they were on the helicopter being transported over to some isolated base in Iceland or Greenland or some other country with “land” in its name, Anna would look at him and see him in a new way. Their eyes would meet and they’d need no words, and after all this, they would finally be together.
He wasn’t supposed to die.
He looked up and saw the faces of the undead getting closer. The zombies that zeroed in around them weren’t interested in him, they only wanted her. They already knew his life was down to mere moments. And if that was the case, he was going to make them count. Without a word, he grabbed hold of Anna Shepherd, the girl next door, pinning her arms to her side.
“What are you doing?” she wailed, kicking at the closest zombie, even as he picked her up off the ground.
“Saving the life of my best friend,” he whispered into her hair.
He barged through the horde of zombies, hunching down and moving backward as though the room were on fire. And to John, it felt as though it was. His blood was already boiling, his flesh scorching on his bones. It had started. He wrapped his arms and torso protectively around Anna, protecting her with his own body, and plunged into the horde of biting zombies. As soon as he could force a gap in the ring that engulfed them, he spun on his heel, tossing Anna to safety. She tumbled to the floor at the feet of her friends, candy cane still in her hand. She looked up, just in time to meet his brown eyes as they faded away to gray.
“John!” she screamed, losing control of absolutely all that she was. “No!”
He fell back, swallowed by the horde as they punished him for saving her.
“Leave it!” Nick yelled, grabbing one of her arms to try to hold her back. Steph grabbed the other, but they were fighting a strength that not even Anna knew she had in her.
“He’s gone!”
Unable to break their grip, she turned into Nick’s chest, punching him over and over as he tried to comfort her. Chris and Steph didn’t know what to do. Chris just stared into space in disbelief. Pretending the zombies weren’t feasting on their friend felt like a disservice to John, but watching them pull him apart was just sick. Chris vomited.
Across the shopping center, Nick saw more coming. He nudged Steph, pointing to the coming invasion.
“Hey.” Steph turned back to Anna, her angry punches now nothing more than hollow sobs. “Hey, we have to go, can you hear me?”
Anna shook her head. She couldn’t leave him. She couldn’t bear it.
“Your dad is waiting,” Steph reminded her, grabbing her chin in her hand and looking her straight in the eye. “We have to get to your dad, right?”
Sucking in her breath, Anna blinked at her friend with wild eyes. She managed a nod, even if she didn’t fully understand what she was saying.
“That’s it,” Steph said, leading them all away and out toward the glowing green exit sign. Chris kept up the back while Nick wrapped an arm around Anna, half carrying her as she dragged herself away.
“He wanted you to get out of here, Anna, that’s what we’re gonna do.”
“Um, Steph?” Chris said, skipping up to the front. “I think what we might want to do is run.”
“Okay, change of plan,” she wailed. “Anna, look alive. I’m gonna need that fighting spirit of yours to get through this.”
With one last choked sob, Anna tightened her grip on the candy cane and pushed herself away from Nick’s arms. Swiping at her dirty, tear-stained face with the sleeve of her shirt, she swung her candy cane up onto her shoulder. The next thing that came within ten feet of her was going to pay for this.
* * *
Vengeance was swift but severe. Anna, Nick, Chris, and Steph started kicking and swiping and stabbing at anything that got in their way. It was a bloodbath but it wasn’t their blood that was being spilled. For the first time, the zombies began to back away from the humans, but Anna wasn’t about to let them get away that easily.
Chris ran alongside Anna, determined to protect her the way John would have wanted, but in reality it was Anna doing most of the protecting. Every time he stumbled, he forced himself up. Steph had been right, he had to try for his gran’s sake and for Lisa’s. If Nick and his friends had survived the night, there was no reason they couldn’t be safely tucked away somewhere. Turning swiftly, he thwacked a little girl zombie in the face as he ran.
Steph channeled every thought of government and corporate injustice she had fought over the last few years into the same determination as the rest of them, and she had something else. The will to survive and a mannequin leg. Maybe they were still alive for a reason, she thought as she drove the studded end of the leg through a zombie shop assistant’s forehead. John certainly hadn’t sacrificed himself so that they could fall down and die in front of a tuxedo rental joint. She had no idea what they’d discover at that school, but she was sure as shit going to get there to find out.
Nick reached out an arm to help Steph up as she stumbled over an abandoned suitcase. He gave her a tense smile before grimly battling on, one eye on Anna, the other on the attacks that came at them from every angle. It had been the worst day of his entire life, the worst day of most people’s lives, he had to guess. First his dad, then his friends, and then John? They weren’t about to sit down and braid friendship bracelets for each other, but that was brutal. And brave. He’d been a true hero. Now it was up to Nick to see it through.
Anna and the Apocalypse Page 13
