She nods, her eyes wide and frightened, but confident in everyone else
’s abilities. In my abilities. I just hope I don’t let her down.
I begin to climb, my cold fingers
struggling on the rough rope. The knots in it are a godsend, though, and make the journey easier. I hear the people up above grunting as they take my weight, and as I near the top of the hole I take one last look down below me.
Emily is there, her backpack and weapon stowed like mine, her muddy face staring up at me. Mikey and Alek stand with their captive on his knees between them, a sword at his
throat. I can see from here that Mikey is holding up the guy’s weight. Whoever it is has a large gash on his head to compete with Mikey’s. The most horrifying thing isn’t that I can tell that Mikey and Alek will quite willingly slit this person’s throat for me and Emily, or what new hell might await once I reach the top of the hole—it’s the realization that we have slept all night in a hole full of rotting deaders.
I
’m not talking about the one we killed, but the entire hole, now that I can see properly, has a layer of dead, rotting bodies in it. Bones jut out from weird angles, skulls peering up at me, and the mud that cakes us all is not mud at all—at least not all of it.
It
’s gore. Deader gore.
I tremble from head to foot, making the rope shake as I
realize all these facts in what seems like a matter of minutes but can’t be more than a few seconds. Deader in my hair, on my face—deader covering me from head to toe.
“Nina?” Mikey asks quietly.
I look at him, trying to steady my breath, trying to keep my shit together. I look at my arms, seeing not only the mud but blackened blood, rotted flesh, bits of hair and nails clinging to my clothes and skin.
“Nina?”
He says my name again.
I beg my body to stop shaking, plead with my heart to get a fucking grip and stop beating so fast. I think I
’m going to pass out as my breaths come in and out in rapid succession, making me dizzy. I look at Emily, her pretty features smeared with death. Once she realizes, she’s going to freak out—I mean totally lose her shit altogether. This thought grounds me and I grit my teeth and look away, continuing to climb out of this hole of death.
My fingers clutch the top
and I peer over it, both anxious and eager. A hand is thrust in front of me, and I take it without question and am helped to my feet, coming face to face with a man. The man seems my roughly my age, with dark hair tied back into a low ponytail. His brown eyes bore into mine in both anger and sympathy.
I snatch my hand away. “We
’ll kill him if you try anything.” I turn and look down at Emily. “Come up.”
When I turn back around
, the man and woman have picked up the rope to take the slack again. They avoid my gaze as they hold the rope steady for Emily, and I have time to take in the woman. Blonde curly hair pokes out from under a bandana that’s tied around her head. She’s slim, but clearly strong. Both the man and woman are wearing army camouflage pants and jackets, and I feel the thrill of hope.
I turn back around in time to se
e Emily’s fingers grip the side of the hole, and I reach down and help pull her up and out. She pulls her weapon out as soon as she’s standing on her own two feet.
“Did you do this?” She points
toward the hole with her machete. “Did you make this?”
“Calm down, Em,
” I coax, putting an arm around her.
She shrugs me off. “No. W
e could have died down there, and it would have been all their fault.”
“Calm the kid down and get our guy up here,” p
onytail guy says calmly, his jaw twitching. He’s not particularly big, but he doesn’t look like someone I want to mess with, either.
“I
’m not a kid, asshole!”
I snort out a laugh. “Mikey, you sending that guy up?” I call down, never taking my eyes from the army people.
“I’m sending Alek up first.”
“Better pick up the slack,
” I bite out.
They both flare their nostrils, trying to contain their temper
, but pick up the rope regardless. They grunt as they hold Alek’s weight. I should help but I don’t. I’m too cold, too worried, and too achy too do anything right now. I’m pretty much running on the last of my adrenalin. Within seconds Alek is climbing up over the side, his temper as bad as Emily’s, and I worry that it will all start to kick off between our groups before we get Mikey and the unconscious guy out of the deader hole.
“Send our guy up, now,” p
onytail guy snaps.
“Send him up
, Mikey,” I call down.
A couple of minutes pass and Mikey calls up that he
’s ready to go. The two struggle to pull him out, grunting harder than when they had pulled Alek out. As the man’s body reaches the top of the hole, the pair look at each other as if struggling to decide how best to get him out.
I go over and grip the back of his jacket
, helping to pull him up and out as they give one last pull. He lies on his back, and I deftly untie the rope from around his waist and throw it back down. Alek stands guard as I drag the man’s body away from the edge of the hole.
“Pull up our friend now,
” I say, leaning over the body.
“Is he okay?” t
he blonde asks.
I check the man
’s pulse and then the gash on his head. It’s deep but I reckon he’ll be fine. “Seems fine. Just unconscious.” I slap him lightly across his cheek to try and wake him. “Hey, wake up.”
I hear them grunting behind me, presumably as they pull out Mikey. The man stirs on the
ground but doesn’t come around right away; however, after a few more taps on his cheek, he stirs again.
“You could have killed him!”
I turn at the sound of shouting. Mikey is as gore-covered as the rest of us, but more pissed off. I don’t think he realizes what he’s covered in, or he doesn’t give a shit. Me? I want to get cleaned up of this gore before Emily realizes.
The man
on the ground murmurs something and I look back and see his eyes flutter open.
“Hey,
” I say.
“Hey.” He smiles up at me. His smile turns into a frown and then quickly changes into a grimace. “Fuck
, my head hurts.”
I smile. “Getting hit by a brick will do that to you.”
He offers a smile back. “A brick? That’s a new one. My ex liked to throw pans and the odd frying pan at me, but never bricks.”
I choke on a laugh.
I don’t want to find him funny—I want to be angry at him—but he has a certain kind of charm that I can’t ignore.
He blinks once or twice and winces.
“The fact that you haven’t tried to eat me yet suggests that you’re not a rotter,” he continues.
I consider it for a moment. “Yeah, I
’ll let you go with that assumption.”
“I
’m James.” He smiles again; his hand tentatively touches his head. “Is it bad? Will I live, doctor?”
I do laugh this time. “I
’m no doctor, but I think you’ll be fine. Well, as long as my friends don’t go ape shit and kill you all, that is.”
His brown eyes look over my shoulder. “Well, let
’s see if we can calm this situation down, then, shall we?”
I help him up slowly. “
Please.”
Th
e two groups turn to look at us as James leans on me. “Dizzy,” he whispers.
“I gotcha,
” I reply.
“
Rachel, Michael, calm down, please. I’m fine. Nothing a shot of whiskey can’t solve anyway.” He leans harder on me and closes his eyes.
Everyone has fallen
silent. “He’s going to be fine,” I say, trying to break the tension. I’m not the soft touch kind of girl, but I look at his two friends imploringly, seeing that they have guns trained on us. “He’s fine,” I repeat.
“
You a doctor now?” blondie snaps. She struts toward me, gun raised, and the commotion starts up again. “Let go of him.”
Mikey telling her to put down her gun, ponytail guy telling Mikey and Ale
k to shut the fuck up—even Emily is chiming in with her own F-bombs. It’s all very shouty and loud, and I’m so incredibly fucking tired by this point, and wish someone would call a time out on the situation.
“
I have no intention of letting James go. For one, I’m almost sure that he couldn’t take his own weight right now and would fall over. And two, he’s the only leverage we have. So back the fuck away from me,” I say as calmly as I can, but with enough edge to my voice for her to know that I’m serious.
Rach
el doesn’t move, doesn’t cock an eyebrow or come back with a snarky remark—nothing at all for me to work with. Her gun stays trained on me, and I’d be lying worse than Bill Clinton if I said I wasn’t scared.
“I
’m sorry about this,” I say to James as I pull out my machete and hold it against his throat. “I really am, but I’m not about to die today. Not like this.”
Rach
el stops moving forward but keeps her gun trained on me. “I’ll put a bullet through your brain if you don’t let him go, RIGHT NOW!” she yells, ratcheting up the tension by another ten decibels. At least I have her attention now.
“Rach
el, I’m fine. Stop this before someone gets hurt,” the man next to me pleads.
Rach
el either doesn’t hear him or doesn’t care much for his opinion, and continues to shout at me. “I said, let go of him.”
“I
’m not going to do that!” I yell back, joining in with the shouting. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, as the saying goes.
I press
the machete closer to his throat, until the blade is resting against his Adam’s apple. “Again, I’m sorry about this,” I murmur to him. “Back away, right the fuck now,” I yell at her again.
I hear Mikey and Alek shouting over the top of
the other guy—Michael, I think he was called—but I can’t make out what any of them are saying because everyone is shouting so much. What gets me is that no one seems to be concerned with attracting deaders. I take my eyes off Rachel for a second to check on the others as a scuffle breaks out between Alek and Michael. Both are strong, Alek having pure street fighting skills—skills that he probably honed while with Fallon’s crew—but ponytail guy knows his shit without a doubt and has him pinned to the ground in under a minute. Mikey swings his machete wildly and I look away, not wanting to see what will happen next. I’ve seen this too many times.
All we wanted was to get somewhere safe, somewhere warm
, is all I can think sadly. I squeeze my eyes closed at the sound of a scream.
Rach
el takes that opportunity to charge at me, her gun still raised as she squeezes the trigger, even as James shouts next to my ear. It all happens too quickly.
“No, Rach
el, don’t!” James shouts loudly, too loudly, even though I know it must hurt his head to do so. He pushes me away from him as I hear her gun fire, and I fall to the ground with a heavy thud, the air leaving my lungs and making me gasp.
“Nin
a!” I hear Emily scream my name but I don’t see anything but dirt and snow, and fuck me I can’t breathe.
Something hits my back, pushing my face further into the
ground, and I cry out and try to push up, but the weight is so heavy and my arms feel so weak. I can still hear Emily screaming, and I can hear shouting coming from both male and female, and then I hear another shot ring out.
Trees pass by me in a blur, stark of leaves and foliage, their branches crudely piercing the snow-filled sky like rotten fingers dipped in vanilla ice cream.
I think back to simpler times, to days gone by when life revolved around work, not survival. When the worst I had to worry about was paying the mortgage on time
, and if I could afford to redecorate or buy that fancy new sofa. I loved that house—all brick and white wooden paneling. A small garden, which I tended to each weekend with my husband Ben. I miss Ben, each and every day; though his face grows distant, his memory is still strong inside me. I am the reason he is dead.
Work
was my life. I never had much time for anything else, no matter how much Ben pleaded with me, no matter how many times he asked me to spend more time with him. Work was my priority—meeting deadlines, becoming the company’s star employee. That was all I thought about. Well, that and my little garden.
You don’t live to work
, Ben used to say,
you work to live
. I never saw the difference—never understood—even though I knew the saying well.
I understand now.
“He’s crashing.” A voice interrupts my thoughts, both bleak and enlightening. “Someone help me, he’s bleeding out.”
I
drift away on scattered thoughts. I understand now, because these days, I really do work to live. There is no downtime, no time for anything other than survival. Going from one drama to the next struggling for food, for clothes, for stupid, trivial things that I once took for granted.
Struggling, struggling, struggling.
“We’re gonna lose her.” The voice rings in my ears and I force my eyes to open. I only see blinding white light and burning pain, so I swiftly close them again.
Ben. He would have been good at this, this survival thing. If I wouldn
’t have killed him. Me, I’m no good at it. I’m surviving, but barely. Or am I? Is this surviving? Living like this? It doesn’t seem like much of a life that I’ve led in the years that have gone by. Maybe it would be easier to give up, to just let go of it all. All the pain, all the sorrow. Say my goodbyes and drift away…
A piercing humming aggravates every last nerve, setting my teeth on edge. It makes my brain hurt. I want it to stop.
“Nina!” A voice. I know that voice. “Nina!” I want to tell them to stop crying. It’s okay, whoever you are. I’m okay with this. I’m ready to go, ready to say my goodbyes to this world and meet Ben in the next. I’m tired. So fucking tired of it all. I can’t do this anymore.
I can feel
Ben’s hand gliding over my body. I’m lying in bed, turned on my side, and his hand is stroking up the gentle curve of my hip, across the dip of my waist and up to my shoulder. I open my eyes and smile, turning to look over my shoulder at him.
I know what you want
. I smile. Only…it’s not Ben. It’s Mikey. I smile at him and he smiles back. A simple gesture, but it offers so much comfort.
“I
’ve stopped the bleeding, I’ve got a weak pulse.” Voices, lots of voices. All talking in riddles.
“And the woman?”
“We’re doing everything we can.”
Mikey smiles at me, leaning over to kiss me. He presses my back into the bed and
I wrap my arms around his neck, and I wonder,
is this goodbye?