Pondering where the seeds would come from, and so whether the work was a wasted effort, Pete barely noticed that the footing beneath his feet had changed. He checked the nearest window, but like the others, it was sealed. Wood had been nailed to the outside, but through the gaps he could see more wood piled inside. Furniture, he supposed, haphazardly stacked to offer equally haphazard protection.
“Yeah, I’m changing my mind,” Pete said, rapping the wall with his fist. He turned around. “I know why I first liked this place. I think I know why you did, too. It’s because—”
Even as he spoke, the ground gave way. Pete fell through the thin glass skylight, which had been covered in a loose layer of soil above rusting chicken wire and rotting planks. But his fall was short, and broken by something soft.
“I’m okay!” he called, but a second too soon.
The object that had cushioned his impact began to squirm. Roll. Turn. Twist. Reaching out with its undead hands to claw at his webbing, his coat, his legs.
“Zombies!” he yelled, trying to roll his way free, lashing out blindly in the near darkness. Fragments of glass from the broken skylight bit into his flesh as he found his way to his knees. More slashed against his wrist. No, not glass. Fingernails belonging to a five-foot-tall, undead girl in stained dungarees.
Pete pulled his hand back and the zombie came with it, bucking her head forward to bite his forearm. He slammed his palm into her forehead. A jolt of pain shot up his arm, but he loosened the girl’s grip. Another blow, and he loosened her bite, freeing his arm. He pushed her away, and reached for his belt.
His vision was clearing and so was the air. The dust and dirt disturbed during the fall was settling, allowing the forest-filtered light to illuminate the dank subterranean chamber. And the first thing he saw was Olivia, down in the basement, only two metres away, stabbing her bayonet into a zombie’s eye.
“The rack, Pete!” she yelled. “Pete, can you hear me, the rack! Move to the rack!”
His brain cleared slower than his vision as Olivia grabbed a broken shovel, swinging the rusting and bent blade into a head already matted with blood and dirt.
There was more than one zombie in the cellar. More than three. More than he could quickly count when all he could see were blood-stained hands clawing and reaching for them.
“Pete!” Olivia yelled again, and he realised she’d been yelling for some time. Long enough for Rufus to hear. The dog leaped down through the broken hole, snarling and snapping at the zombies. The undead child dived at Rufus, clawing at his coat before the dog curled, rolled, and bounded across the room, barrelling into an old woman in an equally old leather apron.
Before Pete saw the dog get free, hands clawed at his back. He spun, raising his empty fists. Inches away, sagging jowls flapped as the undead mouth snapped. Dentures clicked as they rattled against the rotting gums. Instinctively, he punched his open palm into the jaw, wincing at the pain while the dentures flew out, pinwheeling across the room. He kicked, a wild stomp that slammed into the zombie’s leg. The bones of the old man had been brittle before he’d been infected, and cracked louder than a bullet as the zombie fell.
No, it was a bullet. Corrie had fired from the hole down which he and Olivia had fallen.
“The rack!” Olivia called again, running to the row of metal shelves leaning against the wall. Pete grabbed the other end.
“No,” Olivia said, pushing him back against the wall. “Stay there. Corrie, can you get them?”
“No worries,” Corrie said, and fired a shot.
“Aren’t we getting out of here?” Pete asked, his words a plaintive yell.
“The chains, Pete,” Olivia said, matter of fact and calm. “Don’t you see them? They’re chained. The zombies are all chained. We’re safe here. I dropped my gun. And my knife. And that shovel.”
Corrie fired as Pete reached for his belt, and drew his sidearm. He didn’t bother attaching the suppressor. As he raised his hand, his wrist sent a painful protest echoed by his back, his leg, all of which served to clear his mind as he aimed at the old woman in the leather apron. He fired, again and again until the zombie collapsed. He shifted aim to the teenager in the dungarees. He hesitated. Corrie didn’t. She fired. The zombie died.
“Are you clear?” Corrie called.
“No movement,” Olivia said. “Yeah, they’re all dead.” She picked her way over the corpses and retrieved her rifle, though she left the bayonet where it was embedded in the fallen zombie’s eye.
“Hold on,” Corrie called. “I think there’s a rope in the truck.”
“We’ll try the stairs,” Olivia called back. “Are you okay, Pete?”
“Shaken, that’s all,” he said, trying to ignore the growing ache in his wrist.
The stairs were in the cellar’s far corner, steep, old, and hugging the wall, leading to a hatch that was closed but ominously unlocked.
Slowly, with Olivia aiming her rifle upwards, Pete pushed the hatch open, but there was no one there. No one alive, nor undead.
The man, no older than Pete, was slumped in a chair, a gun on the floor, a bullet in his head.
“Why?” Pete muttered. “Why chain up the people?”
“He thought he was special,” Olivia said. “Look at his wrist. He was bitten. He realised he wasn’t. Realised he’d turn into the same thing as his family. This must have been their cabin in the woods. Their family retreat. Their vacation home. And this is where they came. Like I did, I suppose. Running from the horror, but you can’t, can you? You can’t escape something like this by running. He didn’t learn it, though. He chained them up. Downstairs. And then he was bitten. He killed himself, but he should have killed them first. He thought he was special, and then he gave up.”
“Olivia,” Pete said slowly, holding out his bleeding wrist. “I was bitten.”
“Me, too,” she said.
Chapter 33 - Last Dates
Highway 144
“Hold still while I clean the wound,” Corrie said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Pete said.
“Shut up, it might,” Corrie said.
“It won’t,” Pete said, but let his sister tie a bandage around his arm.
“No one’s special,” Olivia said.
“No,” Corrie said. “Before you say any more, no. No way.”
“You have to,” Olivia said.
“We stopped a nuclear war,” Corrie said. “We survived the outbreak. We escaped the outback. We escaped from the cartel. After all these years apart, I got to see my brother again, and then we found a way to get to the middle of a different continent to rescue the girl he loves. You can’t die like this.”
“I think Rufus is hurt,” Olivia whispered. “Can you take a look?”
She sat next to Pete, on the edge of the tow truck, where they’d retreated after leaving the cabin. “Want to go back and burn the place down?” she asked.
“Nope,” Pete said. “Not really.”
“Yeah, I don’t think it’d make me feel much better. How long do we have?”
“Eight hours, I think,” Pete said. “Or less. But no more than eight.”
“We die first, right?” Olivia asked. “That’s something. We won’t be us when we… we…”
“Yeah, no. I don’t know,” Pete said. “How’s Rufus?”
Corrie shrugged. “Needs stitches, I think. Might be able to make do with glue.”
“But he’ll be okay?” Olivia asked. “He won’t turn?”
“I don’t think so,” Corrie said.
“Good. Good,” Olivia said. “He was super-brave. He deserves to live.”
Pete sighed, biting down on the wave of despair. Everyone deserved to live.
An engine’s growl jerked him to his feet. As he stood, he found his limbs stiff. It was the first sign of his impending death. The virus spreading through his system. And the speed with which he’d responded to the sound, that was like the undead too, wasn’t it?
An APC rolled to a stop,
two spare tyres strapped to the roof just behind the machine gun mount. The judge jumped out.
“I brought you an extra spare to go with the spare,” she began, but her improvised ditty trailed to silence as she saw their expressions, the bandages, the blood. “What happened?”
“Zombies,” Olivia said slowly. “There’s a house through the trees. Someone couldn’t kill their zombie-family, so chained them in the basement. We fell in. We dealt with the zombies, though. They’re dead.”
“You were bitten?” the judge asked.
“Me and Pete,” Olivia said.
“I’m sorry,” Judge Benton said. “I truly am.”
The driver had climbed out of the armoured car, and now reached inside the cab for his rifle.
“We should go for a walk,” Benton said. “Just the three of us.”
“No,” Corrie said. “If it has to be done, it’ll be done by me.”
“It will have to be done,” the judge said. “And you don’t want this on your conscience.”
Realisation of what they were talking about hit Pete like an anvil. “I… I don’t know, Corrie,” he began.
“I do,” Corrie said. “You’re my brother. She’s… she’s family. I know what has to be done, and I’ll do it when the time comes, but it hasn’t come yet.”
The judge shrugged. “Give them the tyres,” she said to the driver. “We brought you two. There’s a fort ahead, but it’s deserted. It shouldn’t be, but everyone’s gone. We’re continuing east. Catch up, or head back to Wawa. Thank you for all you’ve done,” she added, then got back into the APC. With no more fanfare, and leaving the two spare tyres on the road, the APC reversed, and drove off.
Pete sighed. “And it was looking to be such a nice day.”
“It still is,” Olivia said. “Look, Corrie, you don’t need to wait.”
“I do,” she said. “For after, but let’s not talk about it.”
“And I don’t want to wait here,” Olivia said. “Let’s change the tyre, head to the town and find a sofa. You get sick first, don’t you? You get sick. You die. You come back. And I don’t feel sick yet. Do you, Pete?”
He shrugged, not wanting to lie. Not wanting to admit the truth.
It wasn’t a town, just a crossroads hamlet, partly burned to the ground, and ringed by a partially built palisade. Trees had been felled and stripped of their branches. The trunks had been dragged to the edge of a deep-dug trench, where a garden-excavator sat next to a flatbed on which was a small crane. The discarded branches had been dragged into dense piles on either side of the road, and then set on fire. Beyond the trench, the fires seemed to have spread to a cluster of small homes, but not to a small diner and gas station.
Corrie stopped the armoured car on the forecourt. The diner had been recently looted. The plate glass window was intact, but the kitchen was empty.
“This will do,” Olivia said, looping a chain around the fire door. She gave it a shove. “That will hold. Um… I’m going to say goodbye to you now, Corrie. Thanks for coming to rescue me. And thank you for saving Dwayne and Wayde, and Tyler and Robyn. They’re alive thanks to you, to us. Keep an eye on Rufus, and take care.”
“I can wait here,” Corrie said.
Olivia shook her head. “The plate glass window at the front looks strong, but it won’t stop a bullet fired from outside.”
Pete nodded. “You don’t need to be here for this,” he said. “Thank you. For everything. For running away. For helping me come back. Remember rule one.”
“Remember rule two,” Corrie said. “And…” She shook her head. “Strewth, Pete, this isn’t how it should end.”
“I know,” he said.
Corrie nodded, stepped forward as if to hug her brother, then turned and left.
Pete sat at a table close to the window. “This sucks,” he said.
“Yep,” Olivia said, slipping into the chair opposite. “Sorry, Pete.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” he said.
“No, I mean I’m sorry, but this has to go down as the worst date in history.”
“Ah. Yeah.” He smiled. “Yeah, very Romeo and Juliet.”
“Andrea was right,” she said. “That play has a real sad ending.”
They both sighed, met each other’s eyes, and looked away.
Pete searched for something to say. Something to discuss. But his mind just filled with an image of a gravestone. “This is depressing.”
“Tell me about it,” she said.
“And there’s not even any food here. I mean, by rights, we should get a last meal.”
“I think I’ve got a ration pack in my bag,” she said.
“Yeah, no one on death row ever asked for one of those,” he said. “I’m kinda looking at the general in a different light, you know?”
“You mean her… how she… how she shot people who were infected?”
“So people’s friends and family didn’t have to do it,” he said. “I guess, now that everyone’s been conscripted, a lot of people are serving with their family. It’s a kindness, isn’t it? Not so much for the infected, but so the living will hate her rather than themselves.”
“That’s true. And, hey, that’s something. I got to meet your family,” she said. “Corrie’s nice. I like her.”
“Your parents are dead, aren’t they?”
Olivia frowned. “That was a lie. It was simpler than the truth. My dad… I don’t know where he is, not for years. He’s probably dead. My mom is, or was, in prison. She burned down a church.”
“Oh.”
“I was seventeen. I set out on my own. There was a job at a care home that offered a room to sleep in when you worked nights. So I took that, showered and washed there. Worked every night I could, every shift. When I wasn’t working nights, I slept in my car until I could afford rent.”
“Wow. That sounds…”
“As bad as your childhood, but let’s not keep score. Everyone gets hard times, that’s what I think. Our hard times were right at the beginning, so I thought my future would be easy. Okay, cards on the table.” She spread her hands across the Formica table top. “I’ve got a confession to make.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“I was going to quit,” she said. “Technically, I hadn’t started, but I wasn’t going to work for Kempton. You had the dream job so I had to quit.”
“Why? I don’t get it.”
“Because I wanted to go out with you,” she said. “It wouldn’t have worked if I’d stayed at the carpet store and you were my boss.”
“Because of the money?”
“Not really,” she said. “But you wouldn’t have been working in South Bend. You’d have been in Detroit or Chicago or somewhere. We’d have hardly seen each other. You’d’ve been doing all these cool new things, and had all these exciting new stories to tell whenever we met. And me? I’d have been doing the exact same thing we’ve both done these last couple of years. I’d have grown resentful, and you’d have grown bored, and we’d both have gotten lonely with all that time apart. So I was going to quit, and follow you to whichever big city you went. I’d have gotten some minimum wage job doing whatever, and I’d have given our relationship a try.”
“Seriously? You’d have given everything up?”
“What did I really have in South Bend? Nicole was coming with me. We were doing a sort-of Thelma and Louise thing. Although I guess that has as sad an ending as Romeo and Juliet, and a pretty sad beginning, so maybe it’s not a good metaphor. But me following you, that wouldn’t have worked either. Not with you in the executive job, and me waiting tables. I was looking for something different, and circling the answer, but Nora had already worked it out. I would have moved down to Florida, close to her, and worked in a care home. Managing it, hopefully. Eventually.”
“Oh.” Pete ran through that. “Yeah, I don’t get it. You knew the relationship wouldn’t work, but you still wanted to give up everything to try, even though you’d already made up yo
ur mind to go down to Florida. That’s not very… I mean, it’s not like you, throwing your life away to chase after a guy.”
“Which isn’t why I was doing it,” Olivia said. “I liked you, Pete. I still do.”
“Thanks.”
She grinned. “I didn’t want any regrets,” she said. “I didn’t want to look back on us when I was old and wrinkly, on a relationship that never was, and wonder what-if. I needed… not a job, but a life. I guess, in my heart, I knew I’d end up working in a care home because it’s the job I disliked the least. And there were some parts I even enjoyed and found truly fulfilling. Nora had worked it out, so it must have been totally obvious. But I had to be sure because there would be no running away again. No changing my mind. It would be my life, my future, good and bad, forever. And so I didn’t want to spend it wistfully regretting what might have been, but which almost certainly never could.”
“I… yeah, I sort of understand,” he said. “I mean, kinda. I had a few nights where I was wondering what next. Since the promotion, I mean. I was trying not to think about it. But it was this nagging question at the end of the fantasy. I’d spent a long time dreaming of having enough money to get the nice apartment with the big TV, the decent car, and everything else, but since I’d never imagined I’d get it, I didn’t really think about what I’d do after. What else I wanted. What I needed. I was just enjoying the moment.”
“I get that,” she said.
“And it was all a lie,” Pete said. “There wasn’t a job. I mean, I don’t know what would have happened if there hadn’t been the outbreak, but I doubt I’d have ended up selling carpets for Kempton.”
Olivia laughed. “You know what? After all my planning, turns out I have one huge regret.”
“You do?”
“I love you, Pete. It’s taken the end of the world for me to realise, but I do. I really do.”
“I love you, too.”
Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News Page 27
