Hellifax (17 page)

If that happens
, his mind stated clinically,
we’ll both be well and truly fucked
.

He opened his mouth and moaned, only half aware he was doing it. The zombie ahead of him stopped and turned around, and he saw it wasn’t Amy; it was some hideous caricature of a face, and more zombies were gathering around its shoulders like a dark wall, damming him in. The lead gimp came for him, its lips smeared at the corners like a drowned clown’s grin. Scott halted in his tracks and bent over for his gun, his fingers slipping on the textured metal grip. The zombie moved in a blur, startling him with its speed, and butted its chest against him. It raised its face and Scott saw the clearest blue eyes glaring at him, seemingly screaming at him to hold it together, to hold it in because if he
lost
it, they were both dead. They would be pulled apart in seconds. He tried to move away, but the thing grabbed him, and that almost made him shriek.

Then it was pulling away, taking him by the wrist and walking as if it had both knees blown out. Scott let himself be led, feeling an ocean of undead eyes watch with an unspoken query. They jostled him. Zombies crawled blindly at his feet and attempted to trip him. His vision became a wall of grey-blue faces, black skin tags, and parted, hungry mouths.

A house rose up before them. They inched their way toward the door, when Scott really wanted to sprint. Every muscle and fiber in his body wanted him to take off, but the zombie leading him dictated their pace. They crossed the magically elongating distance as if they were dragging granite blocks behind them, and
that
wait almost set him off.

Finally, after what felt like a year, they reached the front steps.

The zombie with the human eyes pulled him inside and nudged the door, allowing it to swing most of the way shut before finally pushing it closed with a click. Then the creature whirled on him and shoved him up against the wall. Scott grabbed the front of its clothing and snarled. The zombie clutched his wrist, twisted it somehow, and bent him over almost effortlessly. A surprised, breathless wheeze of pain broke from his lips. A foot crashed into the back of his knee, dropping him to the floor, and suddenly the deadhead before him was a head taller.

“Shut
up
, you bastard,” a husky whisper urged. “Shut up or I swear to
God
I’ll leave you here.”

Scott’s eyes clinched shut. Two years of holding it together and suddenly the wheels on his wagon didn’t just drop off, they
flew
. His hearing went offline, leaving only a flat buzz that hummed shrilly deep inside his skull. He panted and moaned the weak wail of a kid left on a dock, watching the family boat pull away with everyone on it except
him
. He set his jaw, held on to the gimp with the woman’s voice, and waited for the teeth. Images of his wife and child flashed through his mind to be replaced by this
thing
that smelled like rotting meat and shit. And Jesus! Oh, Jesus Christ! It finally had him! Finally had him at its mercy and any moment now…

Scott froze, paralyzed with fright, as if the mother of all black widows had just injected him with enough venom to blow off the top of his head.

He whimpered and waited for the teeth.

Instead, anaconda arms wrapped around his head in slow, murderous motions and drew him in and held on. Not crushing, but just… pressing against him, firmly. Warmly. The zombie held on to him like that until his breath subsided; until he realized that it wasn’t biting him; until he relaxed in its arms; until he remembered that the thing had a name and it was Amy. He listened as the off-the-air whine in his ears resumed picking up real sound, and the moans were behind the closed door, in the street.

Far away.

And after a while, tears welled up in his eyes and he hugged her back.

They stayed upstairs in the empty house for the rest of the day. Amy had led him to the master bedroom after stripping off his clothes, then heaped him onto a queen-size bed with a red satin comforter. She rolled the blanket around him like a bloody California roll, said something comforting, and left the room. Scott heard her moving things around and he wanted to help, but his limbs had gone boneless, and his voice didn’t seem to want to work. He closed his eyes instead and fell into an exhausted sleep where he dreamed fleetingly of the Mountain Man, on a sofa, nursing a bottle of Captain Morgan.

You fucked up
, Gus informed him with a drunken smile. Booze didn’t lie.

Shame flooded Scott. He’d jeopardized not only his life, but hers as well. So much for his mental toughness.

Fucked up big time,
Gus droned on.

Scott had nothing to say to that.

But I think it’ll be okay.

You think?
Scott asked, suddenly hopeful.

Sure thing, Chico
.

Scott sighed.
My fucking name
isn’t
Chico
.

That set the Mountain Man laughing. Scott joined in, feeling better. He felt a hand across his mouth and opened his eyes to see an intense, round face peering at him.

“Hi,” he said, but it came out as a mouse fart.

Amy frowned at the muffled squeal. “You back?” she asked.

Scott nodded.

“You aren’t going to freak out again?”

That made him take a deep breath through his nose. Amy removed her hand, her blue eyes dark and hard like sharp rocks. She backed off and returned to the wooden chair she’d been sitting in beside the bed. Dull squeaks pierced the air as she sat down. Scott heard her sigh.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered after a while.

Amy said nothing.

“I lost it out there. I… you didn’t have to save my ass like that, but you did. I owe you one. Bigtime.”

He heard a sigh from Amy’s dark form near the bed. “Don’t worry about it.”

But Scott did. He felt the terrible, gnawing shame of letting her down, and he didn’t even know her, but he knew he needed to redeem himself in her eyes.

“Hope you don’t mind, I ate some of that beef stew in your backpack,” Amy said.

Scott had to think about what exactly he had with him. Then he remembered. “What’s mine is yours, now.”

“Where’d you get that, anyway?”

“The stew?”

“Yeah.”

“From a friend.”

“He got any more?”

Scott smiled in the dark. “Yeah. Tons.”

Amy grunted and folded her hands on her lap.

Scott cleared his throat. “I thought you were a deadhead out there. Thought you were going to bite me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many gimps before, so close, clustered together like that. Crawling on the… on the ground. All around. I froze. Everything just got to me all at once. Something just snapped.”

He stopped then and thought about what else to say. In the end, he softly said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied quietly. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

“I’ll try.”

Amy said nothing. Outside, the morbid chorus of the undying seemed distant and oh so cold. Scott listened to it for a while, feeling the contrast of the bed’s warmth. No matter what it was like outside, there was perhaps nothing so grounding as the comfort of a warm bed.

“We stay here for the night?” Scott asked her.

“I don’t think you’re in any condition to go anywhere. Do you?”

“No… What about your friends?”

“They aren’t going anywhere.” She seemed pretty certain about that.

“Really?”

“Yeah. That stew was really good,” she said.

“Did you eat it all?”

“No, only half. Hard to eat when Moe’s around.”

“I hear that.”

“Never touched it when the world was still the world. Called it dog food.” Amy sighed in the dark. “Never again.”

“Funny, eh?” Scott agreed. “That, and the little things you miss. Go easy on it, ’cause once it’s gone, you’ll miss it.”

“You know what I miss?”

“What?”

“Q-tips.”

Scott felt his forehead crease. “Q-tips?”

“Yeah. I used to love cleaning my ears. Still do, I mean, but it’s not like I can do it every day, anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I
can
.” Amy backed up. “It’s just that, sooner or later, they’ll be all gone. And you know what?”

“Hm?”

“When the world was falling apart, I bet I went something like three months before I cleaned out my ears. Something, eh? And when I finally did, it was as gross as it sounds.”

“Does sound gross.”

“It was. Needed an ear pick.”

“Ew.”

The dead called out from outside, but Scott didn’t care. They were outside, and he was fine. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

Amy appeared to think. “First, we’ll see how you’re doing.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Silence. “Then we’ll see if we can make it down the street out there. Continue toward Barrington and make our way to the casino.”

“Casino? There’s a casino in Halifax?”

“There was. Once. Now it’s next to home plate.”

“Your boys are there?”

“Yep.”

“How many?”

“You’ll see.”

“They anything like you?”

“No,” Amy said quietly. “I’m special.”

Scott almost said,
You certainly are,
but he didn’t, realizing that it came close to actually flirting. Flirting with a stranger in a dark room while recovering from losing his mind, and with zombies outside in the cold, didn’t appeal to him. So he stopped right there.

“Get some sleep,” Amy said as if sensing his thoughts. “I’ll keep watch. When you can’t sleep anymore, it’ll be your shift. Fair enough?”

“Yes.”

“G’night, then.”

“You’ll be okay?” Scott asked and was immediately thankful for the dark. He felt his cheeks burn with embarrassment.

Amy didn’t answer right away, but she turned ever so slightly in his direction. “Course I’ll be okay,” she said without any trace of annoyance. “Told you, I’m special.”

Certainly are
, Scott thought a second time. With that, he stopped talking.

And eventually tumbled into sleep.

In the morning, he woke up to find Amy already awake and moving. It didn’t surprise him. In the short time he’d known her, he recognized that there was very little Amy couldn’t do, and if there was something, she’d work around it somehow. A person had to respect that. Up until yesterday, Scott had thought he was the same way. The memory of losing his composure in front of her still burned in his craw and set him shaking.

“You okay?” she asked when she came in from the hallway.

“Yeah,” he answered, tossing off the bedcovers. “Yeah. Breakfast?”

“Sure. Whad’ya got?”

From his pack, he pulled out a can of cold ravioli in meat sauce, opened it, and offered it to her while she pulled up a chair.

“Thanks,” she said. She left the room and came back with a spoon from her pack. He sat at a nearby desk.

“Where’d you sleep last night?” he asked.

“Next room.”

“Ah.”

“They got nice beds in this place,” she commented.

“You got any water?”

“Yeah, in the bag,” she said, taking a bite and nodding. “Good. Actually had a case of this. The last can went about a week ago.”

“We’ll need to get more water soon,” Scott stated, studying the bedroom.

“Not going to be easy,” Amy said as she chewed. “But I know a place along the way. We actually have a bunch of bottled water at the base downtown. MREs as well.”

“Those the ready-to-eat meals?”

Amy nodded. “After stuff like this, a chicken MRE is like Christmas dinner.”

Scott bet it was. “You said you guys were looking for ammo here. One of the reasons you came to Halifax. What were the others?”

“Find other people. Strength in numbers and all that.”

“City’s a bad spot, though. I mean, by now most people are either out or long dead.”

“Leaving all this wonderful stuff,” Amy said. She pushed hair out of her eyes and studied the inside of the can, looking for the next chunk. “The city still offers a lot. It’s just getting it is all. When we realized we could disguise ourselves to blend in, it seemed the way to go. Get searching, get what we were looking for, and then get out. One trip.”

“People and ammo,” Scott stated, looking at the bedroom’s only window, hearing the dull, constant wail of the dead outside.

“And seeds.”

“What?”

“Seeds. Fruit and vegetables. Most of the farmland still has stuff growing in it, but it’s wild and weedy. And there’s Moe. We were looking for a Home Hardware depot with a gardener’s section, or anyplace else. I found one a few klicks away from where I spotted you and found a bunch of packets.”

“You know anything about that?”

“Got a degree in agriculture.”

“Thought you were a Poly-Sci grad.”

“And agriculture,” she stated, handing him the leftovers. “Thanks.”

Scott took the can and dug into the remaining half. Freaking out left a person with an appetite. “You’re welcome. Does it have to be a Home Hardware? I mean, I passed a Superstore on the way in.”

“I think I know the one. I was in it the morning just before I spotted you. Actually camped out on a sofa up in the manager’s office the night before. Nothing there, though.”

“You got everything you were looking for in one stop?”

“Pretty much. Onions, carrots, some broccoli. A few others. I got a few packets of each. More than enough to get us started. But if I spot any other groceries or the like, I’ll still check it out. Never know what you’ll find.”

“And the seeds are still good?”

“Oh, yeah. Most seeds are good for a few years, but the germination rates get lower as time goes on. I think we’ll be fine. Some won’t be any good at all, though. Like, say, parsnips.”

Scott didn’t really like parsnips anyway. “What happens when you’re all finished with everything?”

“We move out. Been here almost two weeks as it is, looking for stuff. The Forces left a bunch of canned goods and MREs back at the base. Lots of supplies, but we can’t stay here, obviously. Moe’s too strong.”

“Where are you headed after Halifax?”

“We have a safe place to start over.” Amy glanced at him, her bangs falling over her face. “You interested?”