Hilary & Deacon.
“I can
’t, Deacon, I can’t go any further,” I sob, tears burning hot streaks down my dirty face.
Deacon grips my hand tighter, h
is eyes looking from me to my ever-growing bump. “You have to, baby,” he says cringing at his own bad choice of words, and continues pulling me through the forest. His words hold more meaning than just telling me to suck it up and get a move on.
His words mean that I have to hurry up, that I have to dig deep, that this responsibility
—this life growing inside of me—is ours, but it’s me that must not give up, because against all odds, this baby is coming.
The trees are still stripped bare of foliage, stark against the cold
gray sky with only the hint of blue underneath. I swallow down my rising panic as the groans of the dead echo behind us. I’m used to the call of zombies; they scare me of course, but they scare me more now that I have something to lose. My hand clutches around my bump protectively.
I stumble over a tree trunk, my shoes sliding on the damp wood. Deacon is there to catch me
, though, as always.
“Need to get you some new shoes.” He smiles affectionately.
I know he’s saying it to make me feel better, to put me at ease and stop me from panicking. I used to love shopping for shoes, and previously would never have been seen dead in these ugly, worn-down things; but beggars can’t be choosers, and if you make it to the end of the world, fancy footwear is not a priority.
“Tell me something I don
’t know,” I try to joke back, nearly choking on a mixture of tears and fake laughter.
“We
’ll get you some real pretty ones soon,” he says between panting breaths. His hands circle my waist and he lifts me over a small dip in the ground. “Promise.”
The baby kicks hard, making me gasp, and I have to pant through the pain. Deacon
steps over the gap and stares at me, his brow furrowing with worry. I put a hand up and bend over to catch my breath. I feel his strong hand lightly touching the base of my back. When the pain subsides I look back up at him and force out a smile, letting him know I’m okay.
“Promise?” I ask.
Deacon looks confused for a minute and then remembers what we were talking about and nods. “Promise.”
“What
’s the occasion?” I ask as we keep moving. “For the new shoes,” I add on. “Gotta be a reason for shoes—we don’t have the money to squander on luxury items these days.” I chuckle to hide my anxiety.
We have to get somewhere safe before nightfall. The house was overrun, there was no food left, and we were freezing to death in there. Literally freezing to death. This isn
’t any better an option for us—being on the run while being pregnant—but we had no other choice but to leave.
“Your birthday is
coming up. I’ll take you shopping for some new birthday shoes.” He smiles, but it falls from his face as quickly as it came.
My birthday. I haven
’t celebrated a birthday since the day this all started. I don’t even know when it is anymore, I just know that I blame all this on me—the apocalypse. And that’s stupid, I know, because it had nothing to do with me. But I can’t help but feel like I’m the one to blame because it all started on my happy occasion.
I lost everything that day:
my son, my daughter, all of my family and friends. Nothing will ever be the same again.
“I
’m sorry,” he says, trapped in his own grief, and I fight back the guilty tears once again.
They were
our
children, and they were
our
friends, and now they’re all gone and I’ll never stop blaming myself. My birthday seems like the focal point for when everything went wrong, even though I know that’s stupid. It wasn’t my fault, no matter how much I blame myself for it.
“It
’s okay, D,” I say through a tight throat.
He nods, but doesn
’t believe me. We’ve come to a small brown wooden fence, which opens up onto an old farming field. I can see a town in the distance, which could be either a blessing or a curse; but whatever it means, it’s better than being chased through the forest by zombies.
Deacon lifts me
up and over the fence with ease; even with his diminished weight, he’s still my big strong firefighter—he just doesn’t have any fires to put out anymore. That’s one less thing I have to worry about, I guess. I always used to fret when I knew he was on the job, working a fire and saving lives. I dread to think what would have happened if he hadn’t taken the day off to celebrate my birthday with me.
He climbs
up and over the fence, and takes my hand again as his feet splash in the mud. “Come on.”
We crouch at the tree
line, scouting the field for the zombies. Behind us, I can hear the other ones still looking for us. As long as they don’t see or smell us, we’ll be fine. I reach down and grab a handful of the sloppy mud and rub it over my face—maybe it’ll mask my scent, maybe it won’t. Deacon watches me and then does the same.
There
are one or two zombies in the field, but not many, and we might even be able to keep out of sight from them long enough to get across and to safety. Safety. Now that’s laughable. I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again. And this child growing in me definitely won’t ever be safe, not in this world.
The government is looking for a cure, but there is no cure. Dead is dead, and there is no end to that
, no stopping it. I should know: I helped start all of this.
Nina.
Sometimes being a total
smartass is a bad thing—to know all the answers and get to say
I told you so
. Today is one of those days.
“I think we
’re good here,” Nova whispers, a little less whispery than I would prefer.
I shake my head. “No, something
’s not right.”
Nova nudges me with the tip of her gun and tuts.
Rachel chuckles, seemingly feeling as relaxed about all of this as Nova.
“Dude, don
’t poke me with that thing,” I snap, and move out of her way, bumping Rachel.
“T
his is my weirdo-poking gun. I poke weirdos with it.” Nova pokes me again and grins.
“Seriously, fuck off with that
,” I snap, a little louder this time.
She shrugs. “Can
’t. It’s my gun’s job. Poking weirdos is its dream, I won’t sabotage its dream.” She pokes me again, and I yelp and move far away, practically hiding next to Michael.
“Help me out here. Y
ou can’t think that this is all okay,” I plead with Michael as Nova stretches her gun over to me again. “That’s really dangerous!” I half laugh at her as she makes a weird face at me.
“It
’s fine, there’s fuck-all in here. We totally have the run of the show.” Nova laughs and makes the same weird face again. “Now cheer up and don’t make me poke you again.”
I hold my hands up in
defense. “Okay, okay.” I hold my hands up again. I still don’t feel comfortable. I know something isn’t right here, but I don’t want to get poked by Nova’s gun again, so it’s easier to just agree with her.
Nova pulls out her cigarettes and lights one up. “Time to go shopping, ladies.” She barges past us all, purposefully pushing Michael more than me and Rachel
, and flashes him a teasing look, and I can’t help it, I have to laugh. She has the biggest balls I’ve ever known on a person. Michael scowls and we all follow her. Our guns are still ready to fire, but it’s a lazy hold at best.
As we
trail the mall, passing shop after shop filled with luxury things that I haven’t seen in too long to remember, even my nerves decide to give me a little reprieve and I can’t help but grin and feel excited at the prospect of getting new things. Like a kid in a candy store, my fingers are eager to grab and stuff items into my pockets before running home to look at my spoils. I can’t help but go through a mental checklist of items I want, compared to things that I need, and yeah, of course we need to get shit for everyone else—supplies and whatnot—but I’m allowing myself a little selfishness in all of this. I fucking deserve it.
I stop, gazing in a window at a pretty
, white summer dress with yellow daisies on it, and a ridiculously high price tag that I wouldn’t have thought twice about paying previously. Of course I don’t think anything of the price tag now, either, but for wholly different reasons. I mean, there’s jack-all point in me wearing something like that. Even when summer swings around again, what would be the point? To look pretty while killing deaders? Hmmm, I think not.
Today
’s fashion trend focuses more on the practical side rather than which celebrity is wearing what label—especially since the celebrity world blends into the undead world these days. No one gives a shit what they wear, not unless they’re wearing practically nothing. You’d be surprised how often that’s actually the case, for whatever reason.
“Pretty,
” Rachel says next to me.
I snort a laugh. “You didn
’t take me for a floral kind of girl.”
“I
’m not—wasn’t, whatever—but that would look really pretty on you, though. You should get it.” She smiles sweetly.
“What for? It
’s not practical, and it looks like it would need ironing. I didn’t like to iron pre-apocalypse—that shit ain’t happening now.” I shrug. “It is pretty, though. My husband would have liked it.”
“Mikey?” Rachel smiles, her eyes leaving the dress
, and I feel her gazing at the side of my face.
I shake my head
but don’t say anything else, and neither does Rachel. Instead we move on to the next window: a health food shop. I used to shop in these all the time—pills for this and pills for that. And what for? Never did me any good. So what if my skin was acne free and I had an inner glow? That’s not helpful at the end of the world.
“We s
hould get vitamins to take back,” Rachel says, and goes to catch up with Michael and Nova.
I didn
’t even think of that. “Yeah,” I mumble, putting a hand to the glass to get a closer look at the inside. “Good idea.”
Actually now that I think about it, there
’s lots of useful stuff in there—really useful, in fact: vitamins and supplements, nutrition shakes, creams, natural pain relief. I make it a point to stock up on everything I can from this shop.
I walk faster to catch up with the others, passing some children
’s clothing stores and a jewelry shop with smashed out windows. Some people are total idiots. Who thinks that way?
End of the world
—
oh, I know, let’s go rob a jewelry store
. Because that shit is going to be really useful to someone? Assholes.
I step over the crunching glass, the sound especially loud in
the quiet. Everyone else walks around, but not me: I’ve just traipsed my pretty self right on through the center of it. I’ll be picking this crap out of the bottoms of my boots for days. Awesome.
We round a corner, and up front I can see a wide staircase
that leads to the lower floor. I watch my feet as I walk, my mood a typical mixture of my Gemini star sign: one minute upbeat at the prospect of gaining new, clean clothes, and the next wanting to cry because of a stupid flowery dress.
I’m pathetic
.
Nova puts a hand up in the air, halting us all in our hurried steps
. She juts her chin out and I hear her taking a deep breath. I take a breath, too, smelling the problem way before we see it. My nerves jangle and tiny invisible ants crawl up my arms and back, a warning that yes, I was right, something is definitely very wrong here. I take small, quiet steps to the edge of the balcony ledge and take another look down. There’s nothing at first, and then I see them: deaders. Snarling, rotten fucking deaders. Wait, not
fucking
deaders—that would be all kinds of fucked up—but aggressive, mood-spoiling, life-destroying, rotten deaders.
I look back at the others
, who are all still frozen in place and looking at me in eagerness. I nod and point down to the lower level, and I see their shoulders visibly slump in disappointment. Disappointment that no, we didn’t catch a break, this place is infested with the dead too. I look back down. The deaders are completely oblivious to our presence. Where normally they are quite vocal, there is only the low slap of rotten bare feet on the cold granite flooring from one of them, the weird shuffling sound of clothing, and the occasional gargle of something in the back of one of their dried-out throats. I count ten, but even as I count, more come from underneath the balcony where I can’t see.
I look back at the others and show a hand, flashing it
twice to gesture ten, and then I flash my hand again with a shrug, to give them a rough idea of ten plus however many more I can’t see. Michael cricks his neck to one side, fixing a grim look on his face, and pulls out a second gun from the holster on his hip. Rachel does something similar, a snarl on her face and two long-barreled silver guns, one in each hand. Nova is grinning, and I raise my eyes in a
what the fuck
gesture, to which she smiles some more, like it’s her birthday and I’ve presented her with a giant cake. I shake my head and grip my sword, edging away from the ledge so I’m not spotted just yet.
We all back up against a
storefront—a music store at one time. “Plan?” I ask quietly.
“
Rip these fuckers a new asshole,” Nova suggests helpfully with a nod of her head.
Michael looks
toward the wide staircase that we were just approaching. “I don’t think they can climb up, so I guess we go down to them, and,” he looks at Nova, “we do more than just rip them a new asshole. Let’s take their heads.”
Rachel nods in agreement, ever the quiet one of our group. Me? I
’m not a coward, but I’d prefer to hide up here than go down there and risk possible death. But I’m outnumbered and I’m hardly going to wait up here while my friends do all the hard work, am I? As much as I’d like to.
Jesus, did I just consider them friends?
“Fine,
” I agree, with as big of a pissed off look as I can muster. It’s not a pretty sight, I’m sure, but it does nothing to change everyone’s minds. They walk forward, continuing to be as quiet as possible and I presume not ruin the element of surprise, and I roll my eyes and follow them.
My heart feels like it
’s in my throat, choking me and stopping me from taking a fulfilling breath. My muscles twitch in eagerness to swing my blade and take rotten heads from rotten bodies. Stupid fucking muscles, don’t they know what’s coming? It’s going to be a bloodbath, one way or another.
We all reach the stairs and begin to descend, crouching as low as possibl
e as we do. The staircase swings around in an arc, and as we find ourselves on the large step that provides a view over the length of the lower floor, we see what we’re up against.
Not ten
or twenty deaders, but somewhere close to fifty. And lucky fucking us, as we see them, they see us, their eyes igniting with cold, hard fury and an eagerness for a feast. They groan, moan, and hiss, gargling on their dried-up, torn-out throats, and increase their shamble toward us.
“Holy shit,
” I yelp. Yeah, I yelp, like a little puppy about to piss itself.