She held them out to me. “Here you go. There’s socks as well.”
I thanked her and put on the socks and sneakers then stood and walked around in them. They were pretty comfortable.
“We had to get rid of your boots—they were pretty messed up— but I got your size before we burned them.”
“Thank you.”
I grabbed the jacket and slipped it on. It was loose, a little baggy, but it would keep the worst of the fall chill out.
“So, you ready to get back out into the big, bad world?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
Inside, I was screaming. I needed space, I needed to breathe. The air in the makeshift hospital couldn’t still smell of blood, but it seemed like it to me. Every breath I took had an iron tang lingering just beneath the surface of the stronger smell of disinfectant. The blood taunted the shadow like a child throwing stones at a guard dog behind a fence. I needed to get out before the dog broke loose.
“Right, then; follow me.”
It was cool outside. I took a deep breath. The air was crisp and clean. I traced its path into my lungs, consciously imagining it erasing the smell of blood and disinfectant.
There were a few clouds in the sky, just splashes of white, but darker and heavier ones were building off in the distance. If they were heading this way, they’d bring more rain with them.
Melissa let me savor the fresh air for a moment then said, “Let me officially welcome you to Sanctuary—your home away from post-apocalyptic home.”
She swept her left arm to the side. “On your left, you’ll find the main gate. The sole way in and out of Sanctuary, officially, at least. The gate is guarded day and night by barely trained civilian forces. You can rest assured that if the living dead do come knocking, the dedicated men and women of Sanctuary will deal with them swiftly and decisively. At least until they get bitten or run away.”
I could see the guards Melissa was talking about—four people standing on scaffolding platforms on either side of a sliding metal gate. They had rifles hanging from their shoulders or leaned against the wall, and one of them was scanning the area beyond the gate with a pair of binoculars.
The walls either side of the gate were stone and far more solid than Hope’s makeshift barricades. If they continued all around the town, they would provide plenty of protection. Two white trucks were parked alongside a house near the gate, and there was a man sitting on the hood of one of them, smoking.
The guard with the binoculars shouted down to a woman standing at ground level. She pulled aside a bar resting across the gate and rolled it open. Three men slipped in through the gap. They were carrying something, rabbits by the look of it. One of them helped the woman close the gate again. He said something to her that made her laugh and shake her head.
Melissa swept her other arm out and continued. “To your right is the main square—the hub of this thriving metropolis. There you’ll find the town hall, home to the many social activities we provide here in Sanctuary. It is also the site of our interminably boring town meetings, should you have difficulty sleeping.
“Beside the town hall, you’ll find our general store. Food, water, and other supplies are freely available and are all covered by our all-inclusive barter economy. There are many opportunities to help your fellow Sanctuarians, but should you have difficulty deciding how best your many skills might benefit the community, please let your host know, and she’ll be happy to assist. I’m your host, by the way.”
“I take it tour guide isn’t your only contribution to Sanctuary’s all-inclusive barter economy?”
Melissa smiled, and her eyes sparkled in the fall sunlight. “You are correct. I’m also the town mechanic, manager and operator of the Sanctuary Transit Authority, and executive director of the town’s social committee.”
Visions of town hall dances, picnics, and bingo flashed through my head, filling me with a quiet, cold dread.
Melissa began walking along the street, and I followed her.
“Beyond the town square, you’ll find our residential district. As we’re in the middle of the off-season at the moment, there’s still plenty of accommodation available, so we’ll have no difficulty providing you with a spacious new home. All the buildings are tastefully decorated and come complete with the usual modern conveniences, although cable and Internet service is currently unavailable. Many of them feature spectacular mountain views. Again, our barter economy covers general maintenance and all utility bills.”
“That sounds… great.”
Melissa laughed. “You’ll like it here, I promise,” she said, dropping the tour guide shtick.
The buildings around us were mostly houses, and the majority were boarded up. The wood hadn’t been in place long enough for the elements to take their toll. There were a couple of buildings that had been opened.
One was now a workshop. The bus we’d retrieved sat outside. The hood was up, and a plastic toolbox sat beside it. There was a motorcycle nearby as well, seemingly intact. I couldn’t see inside the other building, but as we passed, someone came out carrying a heavy winter coat.
“It’s our clothing store,” Melissa said. “You’ll want to stop by and find a few clothes soon. There’s plenty to choose from. We have the latest in post-apocalyptic fashion.”
The man carrying the coat smiled and waved at us. “Hi, Mel. Hi, new guy.”
“Hi, Luther, this is Marcus.”
Luther and I nodded to each other.
“How’s Jayla?” Melissa said.
Luther grinned. “Much better, thanks.” He raised the coat. “She’s feeling the cold, though.”
“Say hi to her for me.”
“Will do.”
Melissa waved again, and Luther hurried off down the street.
She watched him go with a slight smile on her face. “Luther and his wife were two of the first people Allison saved. The first patrol she sent out found them trapped in an RV. Jayla is pregnant.”
My mind stumbled over that. “What kind of person would want to bring up a child in this world?”
“One who hasn’t given up on the human race.”
I didn’t reply. The idea that someone might believe mankind still had a future still seemed impossible to me. True, there must be pockets of resistance all across the world, but it was ludicrous to believe that we could somehow recover from a disaster of this magnitude. The sheer volume of living dead alone would surely present an insurmountable problem.
Melissa punched me gently in the arm. “Don’t be such a Donny Downer.”
I half smiled, but before I could reply, Melissa’s face lit up.
“Ah, come on. You need to meet the woman who shot you.”
She led me toward a man and a woman working at the edge of the town square. They were using shovels to transfer earth from a nearby wheelbarrow into a ragged crack in the ground. Half of it seemed to be falling through the split and disappearing.
Julie looked terrified the moment she saw me. She was a short, mousy woman who, under different circumstances, would have looked right at home behind the counter at a library. She saw us approaching, and her eyes grew wide.
“Hey, Julie,” Melissa said, “this is Marcus. You know, the cute guy you almost killed.”
Julie carefully laid down her shovel and wiped her hands on her jeans before taking a few tentative steps toward me. She was trying to smile, but behind her glasses, her eyes were full of concern, and her forehead was crushed into a frown.
“Hello, Marcus.” Her voice was quiet, but I caught a slight Texan drawl. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were one of those things.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “It was an easy mistake to make.”
“But I feel so terrible. I have nightmares about it. I could have killed you.”
Behind her, the man working on the hole gave a derisive snort.
I smiled, but Julie’s concerned frown stayed in place. “Honestly, you don’t need to worry.”
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The three of us stood in awkward silence for several long seconds. Then the man gave a none-too-subtle cough. Julie started.
“Well,” Melissa said, “we’ll let you get on.”
Julie nodded gratefully, apologized to me again, and then grabbed her shovel and returned to work.
As we walked away, I said, “She went back to Hope on her own?”
“Good God, no. There were a couple of the guys with her. She insisted on going back, and Allison thought it would be good for her. She was keeping watch while the others checked for survivors. You were lucky it wasn’t Simon that shot at you. He doesn’t miss very often.”
The town square was actually a circle of grass with a large tree in the middle, surrounded by half a dozen large buildings, including the town hall and the general store Melissa had mentioned. There were people dotted around the square, standing in small groups or sitting on benches. I spotted Parker outside the town hall, chatting amiably to two men, cigarette in hand.
A young couple sat beneath the tree. The man was leaning against the trunk, his arms draped lovingly around the woman sitting with her back against his chest. He kissed her cheek, and again I thought of Melissa’s conviction that mankind would recover from the outbreak.
One of the men with Parker said something that made the others laugh, and the two men broke away. Parker saw me with Melissa and walked over to us. She was smiling and making an effort to look unconcerned, but the worry I’d seen in her face when Erica had died was still there, just beneath the surface.
“How are you finding our little Sanctuary?”
“It seems very… relaxed.”
Her smile deepened as she looked around the square. “People feel safe here. They are safe. We’ve taken the first step along the road to recovery.”
“Marcus is even more skeptical than Captain Harwood,” Melissa said.
Parker’s smile dropped a little at the name.
“It just seems… premature,” I said. “You’ve only been here a few days, and already you’re planning on repopulating the planet.”
“I told you,” Melissa said, “he’s all doom and gloom.”
Parker looked at me earnestly, some of the confidence I’d seen in her face back in Hope returning. “There are more places like Sanctuary; there must be. We’ll find them, and together we’ll build a future. It won’t be easy—no one’s saying it will—but we can come back from this.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I liked the new world. It had brought me a peace I’d never thought I’d find. The idea that someday we might end up back where we were before all this made me sick to my stomach.
Something caught Parker’s attention over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, I need to deal with something. Melissa, Marcus can stay in 634 Second Street for the time being.”
Without waiting for Melissa’s reply, Parker walked away toward the general store. A woman stood outside, talking to a man wearing an apron. It was the mother of the boy Harwood had shot, Mercy. She was waving her arms, and her voice was growing louder by the second. And angrier. The man she was berating was holding up his hands, trying to placate her. When he saw Parker, he relaxed a little.
Parker put her hands around Mercy’s shoulders and led her gently away from the store, speaking quietly to her as they walked.
“That’s the woman whose son was killed,” I said.
“Yes. She’s struggling. She tried to kill herself when the swarm attacked Hope, but Simon saved her.”
I wondered if Mercy might have been better off if Simon had let her die.
“Come on,” said Melissa, her voice perky. “Let’s get you settled in.”
Chapter 33
Home Sweet Home
Number 634 was a small two-story building at the end of Second Street, near the wall. Its canary-yellow paint was fresh enough that it almost shone in the sunlight, but up close I could see the wear and tear. The paint was scuffed and flaking away in places. A couple of the boards beneath one of the front windows hung at an angle, and a fine crack arced across one corner of the other. There was a split in the front door as though someone had tried to kick it in.
Inside, the decoration was clean and simple. A long brown rug in the hallway, laminated wood flooring in the living room, cracked linoleum in the kitchen. The furniture was well-worn, the covers on the sofa and armchairs frayed, the dining room table covered in scratches.
The two bedrooms upstairs were much the same. Whatever personal possessions might have been left behind had been removed, and all that remained were a selection of novels on a bookshelf in the main bedroom and an empty vase on the chest of drawers in the smaller one. Someone had stocked the bathroom with toiletries, and two gray towels hung from the rack on the wall.
“Will it do?” Melissa said as we stood in the master bedroom.
I nodded, but my attention was directed out of the window. I could see over the wall and into the town beyond. Sanctuary was part of a bigger residential district. There were another eight or nine blocks before the town gave way to the forest again.
The houses outside its walls were smaller and built closer together, cheaper copies of Sanctuary’s housing. They looked deserted. They were a lot more dilapidated than the one we were in. Doors had been broken off, windows smashed. One of the bigger houses had been gutted by fire. Debris lay scattered across the road here and there, and an abandoned SUV stood half on the road, half on the sidewalk. The driver’s door was open. A couple more cars sat farther off in the distance.
There were no zombies that I could see.
“Marcus?”
I pulled my gaze back to Melissa. “Huh?”
“I said I guess I’ll leave you to it.”
I looked around the room. “Right, okay.”
Melissa shook her head, the corner of her mouth curled up into a smile. “There’s some food in the cupboards, but we eat together at the town hall in the evening. It’s one of Allison’s rules.”
I nodded but didn’t speak.
She smiled and shook her head again then turned and headed back downstairs.
I waited until I heard the front door close and then went back to looking out across the wall. It was about twelve feet high. Getting over it wouldn’t be easy, but it was by no means impossible. I wondered if that was why Parker had chosen this house. Maybe she’d put me close to the wall as a test.
If so, it was a test I wasn’t sure I’d pass. The open streets beckoned to me even as the shadow reminded me that I was safer in Sanctuary. And that there would be opportunities here. Opportunities I hadn’t had for a long time.
I stayed in the house for as long as I could before being inside became too overwhelming and I had to get out. It was still light outside, one of those crisp fall days that lull you into a false sense of security, ready for winter to come along and knock you on your back.
Instead of returning to the town square, I followed the wall, heading clockwise around the perimeter. I felt hemmed in. Melissa had said the gate was officially the only way in, implying there were other, unsanctioned ways to get in and out of the town. I wondered if Harwood knew there were undefended weaknesses. It seemed unlikely. If he did, he’d have them guarded or blocked off.
The wall was white brick held together with gray mortar and topped with a triangular cap, also white. It was solidly built. There was no sign of any damage, at least not here. I walked softly, listening for sounds of zombies from the other side of the wall, but the only noises I heard were the occasional shouts from someone inside Sanctuary.
A grassy strip ran along the inside of the wall like a great green moat encircling a castle. There were a few bare flower beds, too, and at one point, I passed a clump of tall conifers. Beyond the grass lay Sanctuary’s homes. Most were similar in style to mine, varying only slightly in size and shape. There were signs of occupation in some of them—fresh flowers in the windows, a tool kit outside a rear door.
I only saw one person. A man in his mid-thirties wa
s standing at a sink, washing something. When he saw me, he gave me a broad smile and nodded. I returned the gesture but quickly looked away and spent the next couple of minutes hoping he hadn’t taken my reaction as an invitation to come out to talk. I needed time to myself, to decide what I was going to do next—leave or stay.
Sanctuary did provide at least some safety. I could find a way to contribute. Maybe I could keep the shadow in check. Or I could use the abandoned buildings outside the town’s borders. The idea of going back to hiding my true self sent a shiver down my spine.
Deep in thought, I followed the wall all the way around to the main gate. The four guards were still on their platforms, chatting idly. When they noticed me, they greeted me and then went back to their discussion.
The gate was wide enough for two cars to get through side by side. Its wrought iron looked original, but sheets of chain-link fence were attached to the bars to add another layer of protection. Rubber wheels were bolted to the bottom to allow the two halves to roll open, but for now it was secured with a horizontal bar fitted with a heavy chain and a padlock.
The woman I’d seen opening the gate earlier had gone, replaced by a young man in loose-fitting khakis and a heavy sweater. He was sitting on a stool, reading a book. He was white, but his hair hung in grimy dreadlocks.
He looked up as I approached. “Yo, bro, you feelin’ better?”
There was amusement in his voice, and the look on his face was one you’d give a teenager recovering from a hangover rather than someone who’d been beaten up and thrown down a cliff. I took an instant dislike to him. The shadow gave me a glimpse of his guilt. It grew in thick, obsidian spikes from his chest and back. Splinters dotted his face, and his right hand was a twisted mass of black crystal.
“Yes, thank you.”
I started to walk away, but the young man didn’t take the hint.
“Hold up, bro. We need to introduce ourselves, formal like.”
I considered just ignoring him, but for the time being I was stuck in Sanctuary. I had to play nice. He shoved the paperback into the back pocket of his jeans with one hand and reached out to shake my hand with the other.
Serial Killer Z: Volume One Page 43
