by Zack Archer
We moved to exit the house and Sharla stopped us. She gestured for the others to gather around.
“I just wanted to reiterate how thankful we are that you decided to undertake this mission,” she said.
“What choice did we have?” Raven asked.
“The point is you could have walked away and you didn’t. And I don’t think it’s because of the money.”
Raven smirked and Sharla continued. “I really don’t believe that. I think that each of you knows that we’re doing something real here. Something important. And you want to be a part of it because if and when we find that antidote we’re going to be able to turn things around.”
“You really believe that?” Lexie asked.
Sharla nodded, fixing a look on her. “I lost my husband of eighteen years and my only child, a little girl, three nights after the bad things began. I’m not asking for sympathy because each of us has our own story. I tell you this because I was in a very dark place and could’ve stepped away from the light, but I didn’t. I knew I still had a purpose to serve. I knew there was a reason that I lived while others had died. This is it. This is something each of us will be remembered for.”
Silenced filled the space and then everyone smiled and nodded. Lexie was the first one to hug Sharla, then Scarlett, and pretty soon even Deb joined in. I stood at a distance, feeling something I hadn’t felt in a long time. Pride.
Although it was winter and they probably hadn’t been tended to in many months, the estate grounds were still beautiful. We strolled past the gardens, which were filled with aboveground planting beds, ornate pottery that once held herbs, various hardscape paths, and several large fountains.
We also passed the frozen pools and then hopped over a stone wall that concealed a gravel boulevard that headed west, bisecting stands of apple trees and fruit bushes that lay between the house, the shed, and the dense woods. Given the weather, the branches of the trees were barren, but the ground was still lumpy from the blighted, rotten fruit.
“Everything’s dead around here,” Raven said. “Even the fruit.”
I closed my eyes and stood under one of the trees. “Hear that?”
“I don’t hear anything, Dekko.”
“Exactly. Ain’t it beautiful?”
She scrunched up her nose. “I’ve been a city girl for most of my life. Silence is death.”
“Hold that thought,” I said, leveling my right cannon in the direction of the shed. There was some wood stacked outside, but the door was closed so we crept forward. I tried to mentally raise my HUD and Slade, but couldn’t connect so I peered into the shed.
“Just the way I like it,” I said. “Empty.”
I opened the door to reveal a dusty space with walls covered in all manner of tools: clippers, shears, rakes, hoes, shovels, you name it.
We inspected the wood outside and found that it was moldering, covered in fungus and crumbling upon touch. “Punk wood” was what my old man had called it and it was worthless if you wanted to start a fire.
“I know where there’s some wood,” I said.
Raven grinned and I pointed toward the woods, fighting to power up my HUD so that I could get my bearings, but it was still down. I tried to raise Slade, but he was unavailable too, probably taking a lunch break.
Raven and I walked side-by-side through a depression that cut through the trees. Raven began collecting kindling, small sticks that could be used to start a fire, while I grabbed as many larger pieces of wood as I could.
For a moment we were able to see, through a gap in the woods, the far-off area where the security guys were refueling the helicopters.
“Guess I’m not the last man on Earth after all,” I said.
She smiled. “I barely noticed ‘em.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “I’ve never been attracted to those kinds of guys. Y’know, the ruggedly handsome ones. I prefer a guy like you.”
“If that was supposed to make me feel good, mission definitely not accomplished.”
“I always liked funny guys.”
“I am totally funny.”
“Who’ve also got something in the six inches that matters.”
“You’re talking about brains, right? The six inches between your ears? Please tell me that’s what you’re talking about.”
She was silent, squinting at something. I followed her gaze and spotted it fluttering in the breeze, maybe two hundred feet away. A swatch of fabric, the torn edge of… Was that a tent?
I set off toward it and Raven followed. Twenty paces later, we stood in the middle of a crude campground. There were seven tents, one wooden shack, dozens of sleeping bags and blankets, various personal items, and plastic wrappers that once held food.
“What is this place?” Raven asked.
“Looks like a campsite.”
“I can see that.”
“A deserted campsite.”
“Where’d everybody go?”
I shrugged. We poked around the tents, perusing the discarded food containers, clothes, bottles of beer and soda.
I found a few kid’s books, including a copy of one of those Llama Llama books, a rusted set of forks and knives, a broken flashlight, rolls of waterlogged toilet paper, even some cat food and tins of dog food.
“Check it,” Raven said.
Glancing over, I saw that she was holding up what looked like an enormous severed penis. She threw it at me. The damned thing landed in my lap and I yelped and juggled it.
“It ain’t real, Dekko,” she said, laughing.
I stared down at the footlong dildo and blushed. “When did you take a mold from me?” I asked.
She smiled. “Dream on.”
“You believe that,” I said. “End of the world, and someone’s thinking about sex.”
“Why wouldn’t they be? It’s a basic need, isn’t it?”
“Like eating and drinking?”
She nodded and moved over next to me. “Real-talk time, Dekko.”
“I love real talk.”
“At the end of the day, you’re kinda like that dildo. You serve a purpose,” she said.
“That’s awfully sweet of you...”
“You help bring up our collective release. You satisfy our urges.”
“What?”
“You’ve got a dick and you’re not half bad at using it.” She reached down, grabbed my dick, and squeezed it.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Hoping that you’ll satisfy one of my urges.”
I smiled, and a look came over her. There was hunger in her eyes, and I knew she was horny and couldn’t wait anymore. She took my hand and we retreated to the only place that offered some privacy. The shack.
Extending my leg, I pushed the door in with my boot and waited. Nothing stirred inside the space, which was spartan and small. There was a shelf, a bench, and a cot inside. Having unfastened my cannons during my sexytimes session with Lucy, I was able to do it faster this time.
Standing in front of Raven, I ran my hand over her body and squeezed her breasts. She moaned and squeezed my balls.
“People can say what they want,” she whispered as we kissed, “but women aren’t any different than men. Sometimes we just need to fuck.”
My mouth was suddenly very dry. “You’ve got a potty mouth.”
“Let’s put it to good use.”
We embraced. Her warm mouth was all over me. I kissed her neck and made my way down, helping her out of her shirt so that I could draw circles around her nipples with my tongue. She moaned and turned around, and I pulled her pants down.
“Smack my ass,” she said.
I did, twice, then pulled off my shirt as she eagerly helped me disrobe. My underwear was the last thing to go, my pole springing to attention.
She gripped the base of my cock and began to stroke me slowly from bottom to top and back again. God, she was good at that.
I tapped her head and she leaned back on the wooden bench, grabbed th
e edges, and spread her legs apart. I entered her slowly, feeling the tight grasp of her silky notch.
“We don’t have much time,” she whispered.
I placed my hand over her and began rhythmically pumping her, moving back and forth with increasing speed. She bit her lip and reached down to finger herself as I worked myself into a lather.
“Harder!” she shouted. “Harder!”
I was only too eager to oblige, positioning myself so I could pound her. She was screaming and grabbing my shoulders, pulling me into her.
She stood, and I turned her around. I bent over and kissed the back of her neck, reaching around to cup her breasts. I rubbed circles around her rock-hard nipples and then fell into a rhythm, deeply stroking her doggy-style.
I could feel her contracting her vaginal muscles and I held out as long as I could, but eventually I felt the old familiar feeling.
“I’m coming,” she said as I smacked her ass cheek with my good hand while continuing to thrust into her.
A guttural moan slipped from her mouth and my strokes reached a fevered pitch. I drove myself into her, my member rock-hard and ready to erupt. I groaned and pulled out of her as she spun around and kissed me hard, biting my lip while jerking me off. I came all over the wooden bench, a half dozen spurts of hot seed. We both stood there, sweaty in the afterglow.
“Jesus, I needed that,” she said.
Me too, I wanted to add, but I was all out of breath.
Clothes on, cannons refastened, and refreshed by the quickie, we exited the shack, gathered up our firewood and headed back to the house. We lost track of the depression halfway back and meandered down a deer path through the trees and brush.
“This way?” I asked, pointing.
She shrugged and jumped up onto a fallen tree. “We just need to keep going straight.”
“What are you going to do with your share of the money?” I asked.
“Build my own castle.”
I laughed and she stared at me. “I’m serious, Nick. I always wanted to be a princess and everybody knows a princess needs a castle.”
“A princess? You?”
She smacked me. “Yes, me. I wasn’t always the bodacious muchacha you see before you. We didn’t have much money when I was growing up. One of the few toys I had was this hand-me-down from my brother. A little plastic castle complete with a moat and a tiny stone spire. When you move around a lot you crave security, routine, so I used to imagine myself inside that spire, safe and sound. Nobody can get you when you live in a castle.”
I nodded and she jabbed a finger in my side. “What about you, mister? What’s your dream?”
“I’m kinda living it right now with you and the gals. Aside from the whole zombie stuff of course.”
She laughed and I stopped because something winked off to my left. Turning, I caught sight of it again. I rubbed my chin. “Did you see that?”
“What?”
I pointed. “That.”
We waited. Nothing happened for several seconds, and then there was another blink. A red light.
“Why the hell is there a red light in the woods?” Raven asked.
We slowly moved forward, stepping over the fallen tree and jumping the brook. Squinting, I reached out and parted a section of shrubbery, only it wasn’t shrubbery at all, but some manmade material. Camouflaged webbing.
“Give me a hand.”
“Maybe we should go back,” Raven said.
“Without checking this out?”
Raven muttered something in Spanish under her breath. She stepped forward, grabbed a section of the webbing, and yanked it back to reveal an oval-shaped section of metal wedged into the stone and earth. What looked like a doorway into the side of the hill.
Raven stepped back as if to admire the door and froze.
I motioned to the webbing. “You gonna help me with the rest of it, or what?”
“Um, there’s a problem.”
“What?”
She pointed to the ground.
I saw that she’d stepped on a partially-concealed circle of metal.
“Fuck. Is it a mine, Dekko?”
“Mine?”
“Yeah. The kind of thing that goes boom. Hello.”
I had no goddamn idea. “Don’t move.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
Sucking in a breath, I knelt and leaned down. I was no expert in land mines, but the metal had no markings of any kind on the outside, which I took to be a good sign. “It doesn’t say anything.”
“Would you expect it to?” she asked.
“Don’t they normally have something on it that says to face it toward the enemy or something like that?”
“How do you know?”
“I’m pretty sure I saw that on Call of Duty.”
She pursed her lips and visibly deflated. “Great. Now we’re relying on video games for guidance.”
I placed my head on the ground and inched out a finger.
“Don’t be an idiot, Dekko.”
“I can’t help it. I come from a long line of them.”
Index finger extended, I touched the dirt at the edge of the sphere and brushed it aside. There was a sizable gap under it, so I dug a little more. In a few seconds, I’d tunneled out the edge around the sphere.
“What do you see?” Raven asked.
“Not much. It’s pretty narrow.”
“If there were explosives it would be big, right?”
I looked up and smiled. “My thoughts exactly.”
“What do we do?”
“We don’t do anything. You need to step back.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“We’ll get to enjoy eternity together. Think about that, Raven. Eternity with me. Don’t tell me that’s not super tempting.”
She rolled her eyes and swallowed hard. I could tell she was scared, but she wasn’t the type to show it. After making the sign of the cross, she closed her eyes and lifted her foot. Nothing. Not a damn thing happened.
“Ha!” I shouted, pumping a fist. “Told you.”
WHAM!
Something slammed down, jolting us.
It was a sheet of metal, a grill maybe four feet by two feet, that slid back to reveal a lozenge of glass that was positioned on the metal door at roughly eye-level.
“What is that?” I asked.
Raven shrugged. “I’m just glad to be in one piece.”
The clouds parted, and a few fingers of sunlight kissed the glass. Something moved on the other side or, more accurately, something blinked.
Then another thing did, then two more.
What were those things? Eyes?
A lot of eyes.
12
“Jesus, look at that—”
I stepped back and felt my foot press down on another of the metal spheres. This time, the sphere triggered something larger that was hidden in the woods. There was a puff of smoke, and I heard locks and chains disengaging and things spinning. It was as if some vast, unseen clockwork was powering up.
“That ain’t good,” Raven said under her breath.
More hidden mechanisms shuddered and ground together as the door whispered inward to expose the interior space of the…what? What was it? An underground bunker? Nobody mentioned an underground bunker, but there it was and there they were. I could see them. People, or what had once been people. Some of them were clothed and others were either naked or partially garbed. Their skin was the color of blue cheese and the demonic light common to all zombies danced in their shriveled, blackened eye sockets.
“Remember how we wondered where everyone was?” I said.
Raven nodded as her mouth dropped open.
“Here they are.”
Indeed, my gut told me that the staff from back at the house, the folks from the campsite, everyone who’d once called the place home was inside the bunker. They’d evidently come here to take shelter but something had gone wrong, terribly wrong, and now all of them were infected.
; “What do we do?” Raven asked.
“Run like hell!”
We tore off through the woods as the zombies spilled out of their underground lair. Their moans filled the air and I stopped and looked back. There were five or six dozen of the ghouls, maybe a few more.
She raised her weapon and I pushed the barrel down. “Can’t take the risk.”
“Why not?”
“Gunshots might draw others in.”
She nodded and we darted out of the treeline, hauling ass toward the main house.
We entered the house, out of breath, to see the others sprawled in the living room, feet up, chilling out.
“Where’s the wood?” Deb asked.
I stopped, hands on my hips, fighting to catch my wind. “We didn’t find any wood.”
“We found something else,” Raven said.
“What?”
I pointed, and the others moved toward one of the windows at the front of the house. The zombies had emerged from the woods and were visible now.
“Good job, Nick,” Hollis said. “Way to lead them right up to the old front door.”
“There aren’t that many of them,” Lucy said.
“What if there are more of them?” Layla asked.
Lucy reached for her staff and threw it over a shoulder. “The refueling will be done in twenty minutes. If there are more of those things, we need to hold them here and buy the others some time.”
We filtered out of the house and took up positions on the other side of the pool.
“I count sixty,” Lexie said.
“Sixty-five,” said Lucy. “And I’m pretty sure we can take all of them without firing a shot.”
She hoisted her staff and ran forward. I followed along with Scarlett and Layla. Lucy was like an angel of death as she sprang forward and whipped her staff around, opening up the zombies’ throats.
Heads fell from shoulders and the ground was soon streaked with black blood.
More of the zombies stagger-ran toward us and I dropped them with metal darts from my cannons. Those that slipped past were cut down by Scarlett’s phaser and Layla’s wickedly sharp Yojimbo blades that were powerful enough to slice through zombie skulls like a knife cutting through smoke.
