The Company of Death

by Elisa Hansen

  “Carlos.”

  “I know you think I’m like schizophrenic, but I swear to God, it was an omen.” He took a shaky breath. “About tonight.”

  Tonight? Tonight. They never attacked communes after dark; Daisy was right about that part. But Ramon had a plan. A plan with bombs. A bomb plan. A sneak attack surprise plan. Right? Emily was the only one out there, and those guys didn’t catch her going down the hill for the radio. They would have done something if they saw. Ramon knew what he was doing.

  She shook the “but what if” out of her head and leveled her gaze at Carlos.

  “Do you seriously think this mindset is going to help you out there? Help us?”

  “There is no help,” he whispered.

  Ohmygod! She had to laugh, but it came out too high and thin. She forced her a voice an octave lower to make up for it. “You’ve got to snap out of this.”

  His face had gone chalky in the shadowy green LED glow. When he spoke, an eerie calm infused his words. “Death is coming for me.”

  Emily ignored the trembling that crept into her hands, told herself it was a result of trying very hard not to roll her eyes.

  But what if…

  The trickle of bile rising in her throat proved harder to ignore.

  She bit it back and put down the gun to take Carlos by the shoulders. “Look,” she said as evenly as she could manage. “I overheard the plan. We have the element of surprise. It’s just a bomb toss run. It’s going to be fine.”

  He twisted from her and pulled the gun into his lap like a security blanket.

  “Fine!” She threw up her hands and pushed to her feet. “You just want…” She huffed out a breath. Drama for drama’s sake. “Whatever.”

  Gathering up her things, she stalked to the door. “Omens aren’t a thing,” she said before she left. “You need to grow up, dude. It’s either do, or don’t. Be, or not be. And you only have yourself to blame if you let your head get in the way. Death doesn’t ‘come for you.’ You’re the one with the gun. Tonight, we’re the ones bringing death with us.”

  She waited a minute for him to turn to her, to say something, anything. Even to tell her how cheesy that sounded. But he didn’t, so she let the door fall shut behind her.

  Omens weren’t real. The bomb plan was real.

  The element of surprise was real.

  Where the hell was Ramon?

  After dropping her pack against the gallery wall with the others, straps out, Emily returned to the supply room. The door stood open, and Big Joe and New Guy Number Three packed supplies into crates while joking in soft tones. She didn’t feel bad for not remembering this new guy’s name. Ever since he implied the Pinay blood in her veins gave a reason he and Emily should hook up, she lost all interest in getting to know him. She made a quick round of the rest of the museum, but Ramon was nowhere to be found.

  Outside, she squinted at the sun inching toward the mountains. She made herself take a few long, slow breaths of dry air to steady her racing heart.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Daisy leaned against the gate at the guard post, cleaning her fingernails with a pocketknife.

  Emily jumped. “Huh?”

  “You look spooked.”

  She blinked away the sunspots and tucked her hair behind her ear. She shook her head. “Carlos.”

  Daisy snorted and mimed shooting herself in the head.

  Emily forced a commiserative chuckle. “Seen Ramon?”

  “Oooh, and why would you be wanting to know?”

  She clenched her teeth. “Thanks.” She brushed past Daisy, through the gate.

  “Hey cutie,” she called after Emily. “I’m locking up as soon as everyone’s up from town.”

  “I’ll be right back,” she mumbled, not caring if Daisy heard her. “I’m just going to the…” Where was she going? She didn’t even know what she’d say to Ramon when she found him. Carlos has a bad feeling? We should give up the mission and flee into the desert?

  Did Ramon believe in omens?

  Or, maybe just you should stay behind. Call the shots from the hill. Just in case. What do we do if you go down? No one else is smart enough to lead us. Daisy would drive us into the dust. We can’t lose you like— I can’t lose you like—

  Emily gritted her teeth and focused on the cliff path. Sometimes she found Ramon up on the east road above the ravine, staring out at the desert. She wasn’t sure why; it wasn’t a good lookout spot. She respected his privacy, though, the lost look in his eyes too much to ever ask.

  But when she reached the smashed-through guardrail at the road’s hairpin curve, only the deserted cliff greeted her. She shook off a shudder as she leaned against the last jagged inches of railing beside the gap. Spooked? Carlos was ridiculous. Self-destructing or something, maybe he needed help. But dreams were just dreams. A shadow with bones? No such thing. Sparkly magic cyborg implant eyes or not, no way did Carlos literally see Death Itself appear when Alaric fell.

  Emily stiffened, her fingers clamping onto the railing as she remembered something. Sherice. She had ocular implants too, didn’t she? And last night, Sherice said… But no, Sherice was a deluded drama queen. Everyone knew that. Of course she would decide she knew what Carlos meant for the sake of the attention it got her.

  And she dared call Emily morbid. She tried to laugh at the thought, but it didn’t feel natural. Not natural at all.

  She swung her legs over to perch on the railing. The shadow of death was not a thing. Everyone with implants would know about it, if so. Though, really, just everyone who witnessed the literal moment of death. And who knew what people were seeing out there now in the cut-off world? Though it was probably just some kind of glitch, if anything, right? The implants making them see phantom shadows?

  Emily blinked. Of course!

  That thought made so much sense, she relaxed into a slouch and let out a sigh. The high wind whipped her loose hair in a way that quickly got on her nerves, but she didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.

  She should tell Ramon about dropping the radio. She really should. But the last thing she wanted was another reason for him to be disappointed in her. That’s what happens when you don’t get enough sleep, when you go out for your shift too early, he would say. She got sloppy. We keep to the schedule for a reason.

  And telling him wouldn’t change anything. She hadn’t been seen, but he would doubt that, and he didn’t need that stress tonight. His bomb plan was solid. Maybe she would tell him afterward. When they holed up at that ranger station. They could laugh about it then.

  She watched her long shadow soften into the dusky colors blooming in the craggy abyss below. She liked this place. And not just because Ramon liked it. She picked burrs off the black canvas on her thighs and flicked them over the cliff. The last remnants, she hoped, of her pathetic scramble through the brush. If only she could so easily flick away the tiny voice of paranoia that things hadn’t ended so consequence-free as they seemed.

  Twining her boot over the bottom bar of the railing, she leaned to stare at the mangled wreck of the car in the pit. It reminded her of her mom’s old white Buick. But even as she imagined how this one must have careened off the road, smashed through the guardrail, and plummeted the forty feet below, she could not bring herself to picture her mom at the wheel. Not quite.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tried harder.

  Footsteps on the gritty road behind her. Emily’s gun was drawn before she finished twisting around.

  She froze, then sighed. “Oh, it’s you.” She sank back onto the railing, a smile blossoming before she could help it.

  Ramon frowned back at her. “You were looking for me?”

  “I…” She took a deep breath. It was good to see him. The instinct to apologize for yesterday bubbled up irrationally. Her resolve hadn’t moved an inch, so why the yearning to say I’m sorry? But maybe if she could explain, make him understand where she was coming from, tell him why the way he described her made it all wor
se. Maybe… “Ray—”

  “What are you doing up here?” He hooked his thumb through the strap of the rifle slung across his back and peered past her. “You can’t even see the factory from this side of the hill.”

  “I know.” Emily tucked a dancing piece of hair behind her ear. He’d cut her off like he knew exactly what she was about to say and did not want to hear it. Both a relief and disappointment. But now was probably not the time, anyway. Her gaze fell to her holster as she slid the gun into it. “I was just…” Thinking about you. “It’s safe up here.” She shrugged after a minute. Out of sight of the factory, and a steep incline between them and the lingering scraps of the shuffling horde in town. “They always stay on the south side.”

  “Not always.”

  Emily held her tongue and studied Ramon’s profile in the dimming light. So easy to forget he was two years younger than her. His eyebrow scar wrinkled. Another frown.

  “And you know it.” He pulled his eyes from the changing colors in the sky and met hers. “Or you wouldn’t have jumped when you heard me.”

  She pressed her lips together in a thin smile and shook her head. “Just a little nervous.” Not untrue, and it made about as much sense as any way she could explain herself. “That’s all.”

  “About tonight?” The wrinkle cut his scar deeper. “It’s going to be a routine flush.”

  “I know.” Except, part of the routine of routine flushes was that they happened midday. But midday was long gone, and if they didn’t attack now, they’d be dead by morning. And sure, let Ramon think tonight was the real thing pricking at her nerves.

  “I need you strong, Em. This is the first time for the guys we picked up in La Jolla. They can’t see you spooked. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yeah, of course.” For him. For the team. “Routine flush. Bombs, right? We won’t even see any of them.”

  “And they don’t know we’re up here.”

  Right.

  “So, when do we move?” Emily’s shadow stretched far over the cliff, and all that remained of the fiery glow in the tufty sunset desert below crumbled into grayscale. Emily’s pulse quickened as she realized how near night crept.

  “We move at ten minutes past full dark.”

  Her fingers tightened on the edge of the railing. “Full dark?” What if vampires came streaming out of the factory as soon as they woke? Maybe Daisy wasn’t so off-base after all.

  “Dark will give us cover on the hill from their guards. And they always feed first thing when they wake up, yeah? That’s our window. It’s the best chance we’ve got.”

  She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t think of a better plan. “And Sherice hasn’t seen any other humans since she took over watch? No hostages?”

  Ramon shook his head. “But either way, our grenades won’t hit those farm trucks. They haven’t unloaded anything except the boxes you counted. Eleven human guards. We’re not even outnumbered.”

  Numbers wouldn’t matter when those boxes opened. Emily pressed her lips tight.

  “We’ll do our best to take the guards alive,” Ramon added as if to reassure her.

  Take them? She bit her tongue to keep from wrinkling her nose at the thought of having to deal with containing vampire-loving guards. What would they do with them? Her team wouldn’t be able to drop them at a turnover station until after the Amargosa mission.

  Be merciful, she reprimanded herself.

  She started to nod but paused as the explosions to come echoed prematurely in her brain. “What if the noise attracts the swarm from town while we’re out in the open down there?” Or even just one. One flesh-eater—one zombie, one bite, and the chain reaction could be unstoppable.

  “What happened to ‘they always stay on the south side’?” Ramon asked.

  “Well, not always.”

  And then he smiled at her. And it felt like a hundred pounds lifted off her chest. She had to return it.

  “We’ll be down and back too fast for them to get far.” He moved closer to her at the railing. “They don’t call them the slow ones for nothing.”

  She gave him a grim smirk and thanked the universe once more that they only had to deal with the slow ones out here. They hadn’t encountered any of the fast ones since the day they lost Michele. None of them knew why some zombies were slow and some fast and why the types stuck together. Some people tossed around theories about them naturally getting slower with time, but it was as plausible as guessing the fast ones had high-fiber diets. Most of them were slow, never coming after you faster than a tennis-balled walker-wielding geriatric. But some, maybe ten percent, were fast. Run-you-to-the-end-of-your-life fast with stamina to put perpetual motion to shame.

  “You know.” Ramon’s gaze slipped out over the cliff. “This is where I would do it.”

  Emily looked from the jutting rocks to meet his eyes. “Do what?”

  “If they were coming for me. If there was no escape. If I knew they would get me.”

  Her gaze dipped back into the abyss, and gooseflesh rose beneath her sleeves. “Here? Why here?”

  He blinked into space, his lips tight under his mustache. Then he shrugged. “Maybe it’s stupid.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I get it. Believe me.” In the gathering twilight, with the ragged shadows, the cliffs struck her as especially hellish.

  “Something about staring Death straight in the face, you know? Come at me, bro.” He put a hand on the railing, an inch from her hip, and glowered past the rocks. “And diving into his arms. As the swarm comes over the hill after you, and they just see you go, giving them the finger.”

  Emily watched the emotions knit his brow. She told herself he was being metaphorical, but after Carlos, the image he described made her nerves spike. “I didn’t know you thought about it so much.”

  He blinked at her. “Don’t you?”

  As a matter of fact… She gave him a small smile and glanced back to the rocks below. “But what if the fall didn’t kill you?”

  His dark eyes got darker as he pressed his lips together, and Emily wondered if the same grisly imaginings of lying broken and starving at the bottom of the cliff cycled through his mind. And then they’d find you down there. They always found you.

  Ramon shrugged. “Would suck.” Releasing the railing, he stepped back. “Shooting yourself doesn’t always work either.”

  As he let out a soft laugh, the sound of it distracted Emily too much to point out it depended how you shot. “Well,” she said after a moment, “they’re not going to get you. So it doesn’t matter.” Saying it aloud made it true.

  He shook his head and met her eyes. “Not tonight anyhow.”

  It wasn’t her imagination; there was something in the way he studied her. Like she confused him, like he wanted to push her away and bring her closer at the same time. It made an excited flutter swell in her chest.

  “Come on,” he said, turning from her. “Everyone should be ready by now. Let’s do this.”

  Releasing a breath, Emily slid off the railing to follow him up the road. She watched the rifle bounce gently against his back and couldn’t help smiling at how the gravel made half as much noise under his boots than hers even though he was twice her weight. She softened her tread until it matched his.

  At the fence, she paused. “Hey, Ray?”

  “Yeah?” He looked sideways at her as he undid the lock, his fingers moving on autopilot. “You know, you’re the only one who calls me that.”

  She smiled as she studied his profile, then glanced past him to the compound. She cleared her throat and shook her head. “Nothing.” There would be time for talking about themselves later. Right now, she had an entire team to face.

  He pulled off the chain and passed through, not bothering to relock it. Emily tucked her hair behind her ears and followed him.

  Yes, her nerves thrummed. But together, they could do this. If she couldn’t prove herself to him—to everyone—tonight, then she didn’t deserve to be there anymore.


  7

  Plan B

  The stuffy air inside the museum mingled with an essence of burnt beans. Emily followed Ramon to the supply room. Everyone crammed inside lifted their faces up at once, breaking off whispered conversations. Ramon ignored most of them and turned to confer in low tones with Big Joe, who sorted hand bombs into two sacks. After a moment, everyone resumed stuffing packs and prepping weapons. Could Ramon feel all their eyes on his back?

  “Hey, Emmers.” Rosa’s soft voice made Emily pull her own eyes away to glance down at her. Rosa smiled, but the usual dimples in her round cheeks didn’t appear. “You missed meal.”

  “Yeah. I was…” She shook her head.

  “I got some almonds. You want?”

  Of course Rosa would have snacks. Eternal mom instincts. But Emily was too keyed up for food. Her eyes found Ramon again as he spoke to the three new guys. In their ill-fitting stealth gear inherited from former unlucky recruits, they looked so young and naïve. This would be their first time. Emily steeled what remained of her nerves into determination and returned Rosa’s smile. “Thanks though. I’m not hungry.”

  Daisy snorted from where she slouched against the cabinet on Rosa’s other side. “Really?” Her yellow ponytail was tied tight enough to give Emily’s scalp sympathy pain. “Imagine that.” She nibbled on her thumbnail, her eyes fixed on Ramon’s movements across the room.

  Other Joe crossed in front of her, and Daisy pushed away from the cabinet to smack his ass. Hard. “Move it, tasty cheeks. You’re blocking my view.”

  Emily bit back the insult her brain retorted and focused on Ramon as he rapped his knife handle against the table. The room stilled.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ve got a little over twenty minutes until moonrise. Sherice, anything else we should know?”

  Sherice finished punching a fluffy jacket into a too-full backpack. She yanked the zipper closed, then shook her stubbly head. “The trucks are parked on the other side of the big building, but they haven’t done anything to try to hide them. So, yeah, they don’t know we’re up here. Humans with them are definitely guards, not slaves. Real manly-man macho dickhead tough guys.”