No Looking Back

by Kate L. Mary

  I led him to a cramped room that was lined with filing cabinets. We’d emptied the drawers and shelved the now useless files so no one would notice if they did come here, then refilled the drawers with supplies. They were locked, but we’d hidden the key under the rug and even in the semi-darkness it only took a minute to locate it.

  “Here we go,” I said once I had the filing cabinet undone.

  I pulled the drawer open, revealing the half dozen guns and boxes of ammo. In addition to that, there was an impressive supply of knives.

  “Nice,” Landon said.

  “Even better.” I knelt and unlocked the bottom drawer, pulling it open to reveal the two Kevlar vests we’d liberated from the police station.

  “Perfect,” he said in appreciation. “This is a good start. And it will give us a fighting chance.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  He looked my way, his gaze capturing mine. “I do, and you know why.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I refuse to lose you again.”

  I swallowed, but couldn’t voice how I felt.

  Instead, I said, “What do we do next? We need to stake the place out, but do we wait until morning or try to get a look at what they’re doing now while it’s still dark?”

  “I think it would be better to do it now,” Landon said.

  “I agree,” I replied even as I started to sweat.

  I pulled the vests from the drawer while Landon gathered the weapons, and we laid our supplies out side by side on a nearby table.

  “If we can get weapons into the hands of a few of your people, it will be a big help,” he said. “If not, at least we have plenty of fire power.”

  “And the element of surprise,” I added.

  “Exactly.” He turned to face me. “If things go bad out there, I want you to run. Understand?”

  “Landon, if you think I would leave you behind, you’re crazy.”

  “April,” he said firmly, “I’m serious. I’ll be too distracted to take care of myself if I know you’re in trouble. Understand?”

  “And what about me? You think I’ll be able to just run off and leave you in trouble? What if you die? How do you think I’d be able to live with myself?”

  Tears had filled my eyes and were now streaming down my cheeks. I hated it because I rarely cried, but at that moment I couldn’t control them. It was like we were breaking up all over again, and that was something I’d never gotten over.

  “Okay,” Landon said as he pulled me against him. “Okay, April. Okay.”

  He wrapped his arms around me while I sobbed, my shoulders shaking, and pressed my face against his chest.

  “Don’t leave me again,” I said.

  “I won’t.” Landon pulled back so he could look me in the eye. “I swear it.”

  Then he kissed me. His lips slammed into mine so hard it should have hurt, but instead the urgency of the kiss was like balm on a wound. It was like slipping into a warm bed after a long day. It was like coming home.

  Chapter 12

  Outside the spring air was chilly, and within five seconds goose bumps had popped up on every inch of my skin. When we’d left the settlement this afternoon, the sun had been out and warm, and the day promising with its brightness, but now my jacket was too thin and even the thick, Kevlar vest I wore didn’t help keep me warm.

  To make matters worse, my backpack was heavy, weighed down by the many guns we’d liberated from the file cabinet. I only hoped I would be able to find a way to get them to my people.

  I followed Landon across the dark and empty parking lot behind the little strip of buildings we’d just vacated, heading for the street. The night quiet reminded of old western movies where the bad guys rode into town only to find that everyone had hidden in anticipation of their arrival, and the fact that we were on our way to a possible shootout intensified it.

  Thankfully, the moon was bright, giving us enough light to make it possible to move without using the flashlight. I’d worry it would also give us away, except anyone who saw a figure moving through the darkness these days would most likely assume it was one of the dead. Hopefully, the men who raided our settlement felt secure enough behind our walls that they didn’t send someone up to take us out if they did spot us.

  “Keep close,” Landon hissed over his shoulder only a moment before turning the corner and heading down the street.

  The road in front of us crossed State Route 48, the main road that cut through town, before moving past more stores and ending at the wall we’d built to keep the zombies—and scum—out of our settlement. It was illuminated by the moonlight and looming in front of us. It consisted mainly of dumpsters, which we had moved at great pains, but there was also a hefty truck with rusted out sides and flat, rotting tires, and two other smaller vehicles. The dumpsters were tall and solid, and flush against one another, making getting even a little peek into the settlement impossible, but the cars were lower, and the truck even better. We’d shoved some old crates and things underneath to fill the gaps and keep the dead out, but it was nothing Landon and I couldn’t work around. It would be our ticket to getting a look at what was happening down there.

  We paused at the edge of the next set of buildings, beside the old five and dime store that had still been in business up until the day civilization disappeared. Yes, things in Wertz’s had cost more than they used to, but it had still been a go-to store in West Milton for a lot of locals.

  Now, sitting in the shadow of the old building, I had to force myself to think about what we were facing and not what we’d lost. It was hard, especially with Landon at my side and the ruins of our hometown surrounding us, but the lives of everyone I now called family were on the line.

  “There.” I pointed to the truck. “We can get under it and move some things around.”

  “Looks good,” Landon replied, keeping his voice low.

  He didn’t move, but instead took a moment to scan the area and listen. Like before, the night seemed terrifyingly quiet.

  At first when the world disappeared, the loss of sound had shocked me. The rumble of motors in the distance had vanished, and the roar of a plane flying over or the noise of music in the distance no longer broke up the quiet of nature. Slowly, however, I’d gotten used to the silence, and in our settlement, it had almost seemed peaceful at times.

  Outside had been another thing altogether. In town when we were scavenging or hunting, the quiet had always seemed like those few tense moments in a horror movie before the killer jumped out. The quiet was only a façade and that somewhere, maybe only one street away, the dead lurked. Waiting. Or worse, there were people just around the corner, the kind of people you wanted to avoid at all costs. The kind that had currently taken over my home.

  “Ready for this?” Landon asked, breaking the silence surrounding us and making me jump.

  I swallowed and nodded. “I’m ready.”

  He looked at me for a moment before moving, his brown eyes seeming to take all of me in with only one glance, and my scalp prickled under the scrutiny. He’d always been able to see me better than anyone else, and it seemed as if that was yet one more thing time hadn’t changed.

  “Let’s go,” he said, nodding toward the truck.

  He took off, staying low and moving fast, a dark figure cutting through the black night. I did the same, keeping only three feet behind him, my gaze alternating between him, the truck, and our surroundings.

  We reached the truck without trouble and knelt side by side, working together to move things around. It took only a moment to make a path, and then we were crawling under, flat on our stomachs, the ground beneath us cold and rough. I was stuck in that strange place that bounced back and forth between freezing and sweating. My pits were damp and my face flushed from the anticipation, but my nose and fingers were chilled and I was moments from my teeth chattering together.

  Once I was completely under the truck, I had to pull myself forward. On the street it had seemed like ther
e was more than enough room to stake out the settlement, but with the underside of the truck pressed up against my back, I now felt like I was trapped and it wasn’t a feeling I liked. Until this moment, I hadn’t considered myself claustrophobic, but with my body warming the way it was and more sweat breaking out across my skin, I was starting to rethink that.

  We reached the curb on the other side of the truck and stopped. A metal railing like the one on the side of highways had been the only barrier before we’d built our wall, and between it and the curb there was a good eight inch gap that allowed us to look down into the valley were our settlement sat.

  I pulled myself forward until my face was practically pressed into the dirt, but I barely noticed it. I was too focused on the valley below. Fires were lit in front of RVs as usual, and in the flickering light, the settlement didn’t look different from any other night. At least at first glance. There were people milling around, walking between RVs, while others sat in front of fires in groups, and the scene almost looked peaceful. Then I noticed that the people walking around were all loaded down with a hell of a lot more weapons than we usually carried. Yes, we made sure we were armed at all times just in case, but there was no reason to carry multiple guns the way these people were, and definitely no reason to have them out and ready.

  I took another look at the people around the fires. The way they were sitting close together made it look like they were trying to keep warm or just hanging out, but then I noticed the ropes. Their hands were bound in their laps. Even more disturbing was the fact that with the exception of the very old and very young, our men seemed to be missing. There were women and children, and older men like Cliff, but none of the others were anywhere in sight.

  Where the hell were they?

  “There are no men,” I hissed, being sure to keep my voice low.

  “I noticed,” Landon said. “Wherever they are, this doesn’t look good

  “How many do you count?” I asked, trying to concentrate on the men who’d taken over our settlement and not my missing people.

  Landon’s story from earlier was fresh in my mind, and I had to work hard to push those worries away so they didn’t cloud my judgment. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to lose control now.

  “Looks like there are at least a dozen of them.” Landon pointed toward the valley, toward the row of RVs, then moved his finger to the right, back to where we’d built stables. “They must have dragged off anyone they saw as a threat and locked them up. The stables are a good bet, assuming that’s what they’ve done.”

  “What else could they have done?” I asked. “All the men are gone.”

  He paused and his expression said that, like me, he was thinking about what had happened with the last group he was with. “They could be in one of the RVs. Or…”

  He didn’t finish his thought, but he didn’t have to. The memory of those earlier gunshots said it all.

  “Let’s focus on what we need to do,” Landon said, trying to keep me on track. “Does it look like everyone else in your group is outside right now?”

  I turned my focus to the people gathered in the clearing. They were split into three groups, each of them close enough to the fires that they could stay warm, but far enough away from each other that they couldn’t communicate without being heard. That didn’t mean the individual groups couldn’t talk, though. Still, there was something calculated about the way they had been divided.

  The kids were tied up with the very old and sat the closest to us, near the edge of our row of RVs. Whoever these men where, they obviously looked at this group as the least threatening, and even though they were keeping an eye on them, it was more sporadic than the other two groups. Cliff, the aging doctor of our settlement, was among them. He might not have been much to look at, but he still had some fight in him. I also thought these men where greatly underestimating him and that it might actually work in our favor.

  The group in the center of the settlement—the most heavily guarded one—consisted of all the women who regularly volunteered for guard duty or runs. The more fit, healthy, and able females in our group. At least these assholes weren’t delusional enough to think that just because someone had boobs they weren’t a threat. That was something.

  The final group was comprised of young teens and the middle-aged women in our group—like Deb. There were a few barely pubescent boys with them, but for the most part, it was females.

  The fact that they’d kept these people here while toting the men off did nothing to calm me.

  “What do you think their plan is? I mean, why tie these people up in the middle of the settlement? Why keep them in the open like this?”

  “My guess, they’re still trying to get information out of them,” Landon said. “That’s why I asked if it looked like anyone was missing. Maybe they’re questioning someone?”

  “About what,” I muttered as I scanned the groups again.

  It took a couple minutes, but I finally realized Landon was right.

  “Jessie is missing.”

  “I met her today. On the council? Outspoken?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And Max knows this? You had the council when he was here?”

  “We did. He wasn’t too fond of Jessie. She and I had to deliver the news that we were kicking him out.”

  At my side, Landon stiffened. “You kicked him out?”

  At first, I thought his tone was accusatory, but when I looked his way and saw the concern in his eyes, I knew what he meant. Max wanted to know where I was.

  “Shit. He knows people are missing and he wants to know where they are and when they’ll be back. He knows I’m out here somewhere.”

  “It’s probably why they still have the people out in the open like this. Insurance. Do you know who else was out today?” Landon asked. “Were we the only ones gone?”

  “No. A scavenging group headed out this morning, but who knows when they’ll be back. They were going deeper into the country to check out some farms and see what they could find. They could be gone for a couple days.”

  “Let’s just hope that if they do make it back, they notice something is off and keep their distance,” Landon said. “Until then, we need to get down there and get a look around.”

  “Exactly how are we going to do that? We chose this valley for a reason, because sneaking in isn’t easy.”

  “But it’s not impossible,” Landon said as he starting scooting backward. “If there’s a way in, we’re going to find it.”

  Chapter 13

  Landon had been right, but so had I. Getting down the hill and into the valley meant heading further down the street and climbing down a steep hill. It was treacherous, especially in the dark, and we had to move slowly, making sure we didn’t slip on the loose dirt and tumble down the hill. Not only could it get us hurt, but it would also alert the raiders to our presence.

  Thankfully we made it down with only a few scrapes and bruises. The heavy bag on my shoulders hadn’t made it easy, and I was starting to hate the Kevlar vest, which was now making me sweat, but somehow I managed without falling on my ass. Something I was thankful for.

  When we reached the bottom, we stayed inside the cover of trees until things seemed to be settling down for the night. First the groups of survivors were dragged inside, each group to a separate RV, and after that all but the fire in the very center of the clearing was allowed to die down. With the flickering light gone, the settlement was cloaked in shadowy darkness, making it tough to know how many people were still up and moving around. Thankfully, the assholes didn’t seem to care about keeping quiet.

  Once we were sure we could move through the darkness undetected, we left the trees. We stuck to the outskirts of the valley, moving past the old playground and picnic shelters and hugging the small groups of trees at the far edge of the settlement. In the distance, further down the valley and near the river, the stables loomed. The area surrounding them was pitch black, but the sounds of horses stomping their h
ooves or snorting echoed through the air.

  It was the sound of humans moving around that I was searching for, though, only there didn’t seem to be any. It made no sense if the rest of our group was being held here. Not only should we be able to hear something from our people—there had to be close to twenty missing men—there should be men from the raiders’ group guarding them. There was no way they would leave prisoners unwatched, and the fact that no one seemed to be around had me on edge.

  What if they weren’t being held here? What if my worst fear was true and they’d already been executed?

  “I don’t hear anything,” I hissed.

  In the darkness, Landon was little more than a silhouette, but I saw it when he shook his head and knew he was thinking the same thing.

  We reached the stable and rushed behind it where we rested, catching our breath and listening. Still, the only sounds were the horses and the rushing of the nearby river.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  Panic crept up on me and I fought against it, but it was too overwhelming. Too real. Deep down, I knew what had happened, I’d seen with my own eyes what little thought these men gave human life, but I didn’t want it to be true.

  “Stay calm.” Landon’s hand found mine in the darkness and he gave it a squeeze.

  “How can I? They’re dead and we both know it.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I thought of the gunshots we’d heard while we were inside the West Milton Inn. At the time we’d assumed they were a result of the horde reaching the men on the main road, but now I knew better. Those gunshots had been the sounds of an execution.

  “Even if it’s true,” Landon hissed, “that doesn’t change anything about what we have to do. We have to do everything in our power to save these people before the same thing happens to them. Understand?”

  I nodded because my throat was too clogged with tears to talk.