“Are you fucking insane?”
“Looks like I’ve got a story to tell,” Abby said with a grim smile.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, you do,” said Chad.
“Oh, wait. Reese!” Abby said. “We’ve gotta go get Reese, I left him in a subdivision not far from here.”
“Alright, everyone saddle up and get Abby one of the spare horses,” said Jax. “Abby, you can regale us with your tale of valor and might along the way.”
***
Reese was a very good horse indeed, and they found him exactly where Abby had left him, looking mildly inconvenienced at worst. Abby switched horses and they began their ride back.
“So what are you going to do now, Abby?” asked Jax.
“What do you mean?”
“Chicago is secured, and that’s as far as you were meant to go. I suppose you’ll head back home now?”
All eyes fell on Abby as the Raiders awaited her answer. It would seem that everyone had quite forgotten that Abby was going to leave eventually, and it had caught them by surprise. No one looked too happy about that prospect.
Abby chewed on her lip in silence for several seconds as she considered her options. She’d been struggling with this question ever since Hiamovi brought it up the other day, and she still wasn’t entirely sure what to do. She glanced over at Hiamovi, who gave her a smile that melted her heart. She loved that man so much.
And just like that, her inner debate ended.
“How could I ever leave my boys?” she said, staring right at Hiamovi.
Chapter Thirty-Five
As soon as Chicago returned to American control, Heammawihio ordered a message sent to the Cuban forces occupying the southeastern United States. They were to leave American soil and return home, leaving everything as they found it. If they did this, then normal diplomatic relations would be established and occupying American land would be considered water under the bridge. If they resisted, they had only to look at Chicago to see what the response would be.
It seemed as if a fight was the last thing anyone wanted, as the Cubans needed no second urging. They withdrew from the occupied territory and returned to their island. True to his word, Heammawihio established diplomatic ties with them for the first time in decades.
The military took what was called a ‘tactical pause’ now, allowing the troops to rest and refit. Some even obtained permission to see their families. During this time they busied themselves cleaning up major cities and trying to restore power and running water. Except in Chicago, of course.
In Chicago the fight for the city concluded quickly, even after Edmund’s surprise attack with helicopters and tanks. The American forces quickly recovered from the ambush, and the city’s loyalty to Edmund crumbled in the face of overwhelming firepower. Casualties were far higher than expected on both sides, but Heammawihio was lenient with the survivors on the opposing side. Prisoners of war were released the very next day so long as they swore allegiance to the United States and assisted in rebuilding efforts.
After two weeks, the military was on the move again, including Abby and her squad. Getting from Chicago to the East Coast turned out to be a much easier task than sweeping across the middle of the country proved to be. Almost nobody remained in the New England regions after that first brutal winter following The Crisis, most having fled to the south to warmer weather or west in a belated and futile attempt to catch up with the rest of the country (which helped explain the abundance of zombies in those Midwestern states).
Not even the zombies survived in the frigid northeast after so many years, and Abby never again saw a live zombie for the rest of her life after her fight with Edmund. She and the Raiders made it to Boston without a single incident and there awaited the rest of the military.
With America once again stretching from sea to shining sea, Heammawihio won a second term as President and immediately put his shoulder to the task of rebuilding. The capital was moved back to Washington, D.C. and the monuments there were quickly restored. Heammawihio also offered help to other nations afflicted by the zombie virus, most of whom had delayed any military attempts to retake lost lands until someone else proved it was possible first. Most requested military aid, and they received it in the form of military advisors.
It was for this very mission that Jax and Todd had volunteered. They packed their stuff and said their goodbyes just a week after the mission to retake the US ended. The entire squad stood outside the barracks building that had been their home for the last few days, waiting on the trucks that would take Jax and Todd to the airstrip.
“It’s the only life I know,” Jax said with a shrug when Abby asked him why he volunteered. Todd nodded his head in agreement. “Don’t know what I’d do with myself if I wasn’t deploying.”
“Well, don’t forget about me when you get back,” Abby said. “I expect dinner and drinks so you can tell me all about it.”
“Dinner and drinks with all of us,” said Chad. He and the rest of the squad would be staying in the States for varying reasons. Some, like Chad and Hiamovi, had enlistment contracts that would soon end while others had volunteered for other duties. The band was breaking up, and no one was particularly thrilled about it, not after all they’d been through together.
“All of you,” Jax repeated. “Don’t you worry, we’ll make it happen when we get back.”
He and Todd then went around the group, giving out hugs and bidding farewell to their brothers-in-arms one last time. Last of all they came to Abby.
“I gotta say that I’ve never been so impressed by a civilian,” said Todd.
Jax nodded his head. “You’re a true professional, Abby. I’m going to miss having you by my side and watching my back.”
Tears began to well up in Abby’s grey eyes. “I’m gonna miss you guys, all of you. This wasn’t the first military outfit I’ve belonged to, but it’s the first one I really belonged to, you know? You boys are my family now.”
“Ah Jesus,” said Chad as he drew his forearm across his eyes. “You just had to go and get me all sentimental, huh?”
Abby laughed. “Yes, Chad. You’re family to me, too. Once I figure out where the next stage of my life is gonna take place, our front door will always be open for any of you.”
She took Hiamovi’s hand as she said this, intertwining her fingers with his. “So don’t be strangers, okay?”
“Family sticks together,” Miguel said, “even when they can’t be together.”
The roar of diesel engines reached their ears. The trucks were close.
“Alright, let’s wrap this up,” Jax said. He spread his arms wide and said, “Everyone bring it in.”
The Raiders and Abby all shuffled together for a group hug, embracing each other with tearful eyes. “Y’all take care of yourselves, and each other,” Jax said. “Don’t ever fight your fights alone, and get ready for a big ass party when Todd and I return. You tracking?”
A chorus of ayes and affirmative grunts answered him.
“Always faithful,” said Jax.
“Always forward,” the others replied.
“Always,” Abby whispered.
***
Chad, Alex, and Chris all served out the remaining couple of months on their enlistment contracts and then separated from the military life, returning to families and picking up new careers. Vic was medically discharged while in Chicago, but he fell in love with the city and began working at the veterans’ hospital there. Yuri and Max both went to Quantico for different reasons: Yuri became a sniper instructor there and Max was going from an enlisted man to an officer. Mike was promoted to Gunnery Sergeant and volunteered for White House duty. Miguel re-enlisted, but this time with the Air Force so that he could join a Pararescue team.
Hiamovi also had an expiring enlistment contract, and like Chad, Alex, and Chris he chose to separate from military service. Half of the reason he enlisted in the first place had been to get away from Abby and the lost love between them. But they were married now,
so despite the brotherhood he’d gained and all the adventures he had, he decided it was time to be at Abby’s side and to follow her wherever she went.
Abby and Hiamovi moved down to Virginia for a while. They wanted to help the rebuilding efforts there, and they also wanted to remain near Heammawihio while he was still the President. With the squad scattered to different duties, he was the only family left to the young couple.
One year later, Jax and Todd returned from their overseas duty, and the whole gang was able to meet up in Chicago for a night of drinks, telling of tales, and reliving the good ol’ days. They toasted to each other’s health, fortune, and to their fallen brothers Nate and Kurtis. Never forgotten, two drinks were ordered for them and set in front of empty chairs. They left with promises of meeting again, though the unstoppable marching forward of time and the ever changing lives of each individual left the date of this future reunion in uncertainty.
But, as Abby well understood, you never know what the future holds.
Chapter Thirty-Six
*Two Years Later*
“And then he told me that he’d never been skydiving before, so falling off a building to his death was the next best thing,” Abby said quietly as she sat cross-legged on the cool, soft grass, fidgeting with a dandelion. Protruding from the ground a few feet in front of her was a long, slender piece of black plastic, and on it was a message that a terrified young girl had crudely scrawled into it with a Gerber combat knife, a message Abby had not read in nearly a decade.
“So that’s what I did. He fell, and then I had to limp all the way down a luxury hotel stairwell, hitch a ride back to camp, and get stitched up,” she said, and then she was silent for almost a minute.
“He…might have been my dad, you know,” she finally whispered. “Probably not, but there’s a chance. I mean, he was in the right place at the right time, but Texas is a big place. Plus, the guy did so many drugs he might have hallucinated the whole thing so who the hell even knows?”
“Besides,” said Abby with a sigh, “it takes more than the physical act of making a baby to be a father. You have to actually be there, taking care of your kids and guiding them. That’s what you were, Zach. So I honestly don’t even care who my ‘real’ dad was anymore. Whoever he was, he obviously never gave a damn about me, if he even knew I existed. You’re the only father I ever knew, and for all I care that makes you the only father I need.”
She continued to spin the dandelion back and forth between her fingers, still staring at the make-shift grave marker she’d made for Zach all those years ago. Hiamovi was sitting in the truck, waiting on Abby. He had joined her on this final quest for closure at the place where she failed once before.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back here,” she said. “It’s been…quite a ride, this past decade. I changed a lot, became someone that I’m not proud of and you probably would not have been proud of either, and then I found myself again. I kinda helped kick off a revolution, fought a war, and helped the new government clean out the country of zombies and all the little militia empires that had popped up, all the way back to the Atlantic coast.”
Abby stopped and looked over at the truck. Hiamovi was watching her, so she blew him a kiss. He smiled and waved at her. “Hiamovi’s a great guy,” she said, still staring at her husband, “so I decided to keep him around. You would have really liked him, Dad.”
Looking back down at the ground, she whispered, “This is…a lot harder than I thought it might be.” The last time she sat in this spot, her world had fallen utterly apart. She was only fifteen then, and she managed to put up a false bravado of confidence and security, but it was a shallow fraud. All she had done was pretend to be Zach, while in her heart she always felt scared and alone. Repressing those emotions and memories had done terrible things to her, had made her a broken and bitter soul who could fly into a rage at the mere mentioning of a name or a few notes of a familiar song.
And that’s why she’d decided to finally come back here. Even after all the progress she’d made over the last few years, coming here still felt like a necessary final step, especially since she’d already failed the last time she was near this site. Last time, the dark specter of her former self spooked her into submission. But so far, that apparition was nowhere to be seen, and Abby took that as a sign that she was finally ready to confront this awful memory from her past.
That changed in an instant.
A typhoon of old memories stormed into her mind, far more intense than she had experienced in a very long time. Everything was coming back all at once: the fear, the uncertainty, the sadness, and worst of all, the guilt. The guilt that she had been responsible for the deaths of her friends, that she had even been the reason Zach died.
She began to cry. A cold but gentle hand laid itself on her shoulder, and a soft voice spoke to her.
“I tried to save you from this, Abby.”
Abby looked up and saw her ghostly self standing next to her, but gone were the menacing eyes, the smell of sulfur, and the black aura around her. This thing now appeared as an exact copy of fifteen year-old Abby, with tears in her soft grey eyes.
“Don’t you see? Even after all these years, all it took was a single thought to bring back your guilt and self-loathing,” the young Abby said.
“I don’t hate myself anymore,” Abby insisted.
“You do, though. You just got really good at ignoring it.”
The phantom knelt next to Abby and with an icy hand turned her face towards its own. “You’ll always hate yourself for killing Dad. Sure, it seems like these days you can go months or even years without remembering it, but it’s still there. And it will always be there. I will always be there.”
“Do you think I’ve enjoyed haunting you, Abby? My very existence is torturous pain. Pain that comes from your heart.”
“You’re not real. You don’t exist.”
“I’m a part of you, Abby. Your existence necessitates mine, and your pain is amplified in me. Without me, all of this darkness I carry would go straight back to you. That’s why you can never get rid of me.”
Abby sighed and shook her head. “All I want is closure. I just want to put this whole thing behind me for good. That’s all I want.”
“Then you know what you have to do.”
The apparition placed its hand on the small of Abby’s back, where a compact handgun was concealed.
“Third time’s the charm,” the ghost said with a joyless grin. “You tried twice already because you know that this is what you have to do. You know it’s the only way you’ll find the peace you’re looking for. Quick and painless.”
“But Hiamovi…” Abby started to say.
“He’ll get over it eventually. You know he’s stronger than you.”
Abby turned to look at Hiamovi. He had turned around and was looking at something in the opposite direction.
Click.
Abby hardly even realized that she’d drawn her pistol. Tears rolled down the soft cheeks of her ghost and it smiled. “This is what you came here to do, you know that. This was always the way it had to end,” it said.
“Yeah,” Abby whispered.
“Now set us both free and we’ll go see Daddy. It’s what he’d want.”
Abby took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
“No.”
“What?”
“That’s not what Zach would want,” Abby said. She opened her eyes and stared back at the spirit beside her. “That’s not what he would want at all.”
The creature that looked like Abby licked its lips. “Well, he might not want it, but he’d know it’s for the best. Dad always knew what was best.”
“He did. He also told me to never lose hope. It was even tattooed on him. He’d be trying to stop me right now, not urging me on.”
Abby smelled a rancid odor like burnt flesh.
“It’s what you want. You know that you want this, you stupid bitch,” the phantom said.
“No, I do
n’t want this.”
A black flame melted away the grey eyes in the younger Abby’s face, and her lips contorted into a cruel scowl. “Do it!”
“No.”
The ghost no longer resembled Abby at all. It transformed into something demonic, a dark and hideous visage not seen outside of nightmares. It trembled with rage and made a horrible snarl. “Do it now!” it commanded.
Abby said nothing as she stared at the pure hatred made manifest there before her. The creature had said it came from the pain in her heart, that it was a part of her.
She stared into the black malevolence and saw memories flash before her eyes. Her mom shot over a loaf of bread, the fires at Little America, Zach kneeling on the ground with her gun to his head, Emma getting swept underneath the cold ice, Donny and Dale’s graves, killing David, the night she cheated on Hiamovi.
And there it was. Suddenly, deep inside the monstrous form of her hatred, she saw herself. A scared little girl marooned amidst a sea of horrors, one who made her share of mistakes along the way to salvation. That little girl looked up with sad grey eyes and Abby stared back at them. She knew what she had to do. She knew how to set them both free.
“I forgive you,” Abby whispered.
A piercing scream rent the air and Abby clapped her hands over her ears. The dark apparition began to crumple into itself with the sound of breaking bones and shattered teeth. In seconds it became nothing more than a black mist, a mist that sank into the ground surrounding Zach’s grave.
A flash of light. That awful smell disappeared without a trace. The screams were cut off and all was quiet again.
Abby sucked in a long and deep breath and then slowly exhaled. She relaxed her hands and holstered her handgun as her shoulders heaved from heavy breathing. She looked over her shoulder again. Hiamovi was still in the truck, seemingly unaware of anything supernatural or unusual happening.
Abby stood up and dusted off the front of her pants. “They’re gonna move you to Arlington tomorrow,” she said, looking down at Zach’s grave. “It’s where you belong. I promise to come visit you, I just don’t know how soon that will be. Hiamovi and I…we’re kinda on our honeymoon. Our real honeymoon.”
His Name Was Zach | Book 3 | Their Names Were Many Page 29
