CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“We’ve been looking for the enemy for some time now. We’ve finally found him. We’re surrounded. That simplifies things.”
—Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell
“Chesty” Puller, USMC
The trick to any plan where there are multiple fail points is to make sure there are plans in place for when, not if, said plan goes sideways. My idiotic and stupid plan? Ride through Clifton Forge, shooting shamblers and trying not to get caught by King Dale or his men, and cause as much chaos as humanly possible. Lots of fail points, true. But with plenty of ammunition and a pissed-off old man doing his best to become a rotating turret up top, the BearCat acted as a mobile fail-safe against those points.
Fortunately, what I’d thought would be the hardest part was quickly turning into the easiest. While we were dashing about the small town like a trio of lunatics, Kayla was helping the governor, her husband and children, and the surviving makeshift security team sneak north on U.S. 220 to take the right split before Clifton Forge, so they could link up with I-64. If it all went to plan. It might be argued the crazy chase around downtown Clifton Forge was a waste of fuel, true, but we needed to get the sick child up on the mountain as soon as possible.
With us causing chaos in town, we hoped that not a single person remained behind at the small roadblock King Dale had built at the Rainbow Gap. If they’d all left, then it would be cake. If not, Rafe had said he would “handle it.” Which was more terrifying than watching a chonky bear crush a shambler.
Plus, Sister Ann had sort of destroyed the roadblock when we’d plowed through. With what looked like all of King Dale’s men trying to stop us, the route to I-64 should be clear. The SUV should be making quick use of it. Granted, they’d have to deal with the remains of the second makeshift barricades King Dale had managed to create when they got closer to Covington, but if the twins had done their job right like they said—and I doubted they’d let me down, since they had permission to use as much Tannerite as needed to blow something up—then there was a path wide enough to drive through by now.
Hopefully the crater wasn’t too deep. I shoved the thought from my mind. One problem at a time, Maddie.
“Turtle One, this is Rabbit, copy. Coast is clear. Move it, over.” Sister Ann said after picking up the radio.
“Turtles are through the snare. Heading home now,” Kayla’s voice came back quickly. Sister Ann nodded approvingly. Kayla had been watching us from nearby when we first broke through the barrier.
“Copy, Turtles. Rabbit is . . . en route. See you at home, girls. Rabbit out.” She set the radio back before half-turning in her seat. “Temple? You okay back there?”
During our stop, Temple stopped firing and had slumped down into the back. Either the shamblers were running around chasing someone else for a change, or they simply were all dead. I was willing to bet on the former. There was no way, given how packed that first holding pen had been, that we’d got them all. We weren’t carrying that much ammo.
Nobody was carrying that much ammo.
“I’m good,” he said in a strained voice as he bent over and tried to reload another fresh clip into the Garand. His skin had a faint gray tint to it and his face was pained. His free hand was rubbing his left shoulder a bit in between shaky breaths. It was clear the old guy was struggling. However, there was some satisfaction in his eye. “Feels good, you know? Shooting them. Like I’m getting a little bit of my son back.”
“I understand,” I told him. Sister Ann pursed her lips but didn’t say anything. I understood what the look was for, but Temple didn’t. Or perhaps he hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t spent nearly as much time with Sister Ann as we had. Since I’d been elected leader of this crazy expedition, I continued. “The point isn’t to enjoy killing the shamblers, as tempting as it is. It’s to not feel bad about it after.”
“That’s mighty philosophical of you, young lady,” Temple wheezed as he continued to rub his shoulder. It was not the one he’d been shooting with. “Don’t enjoy the killing, but don’t feel bad about it. Kind of like hunting deer, I guess. I enjoy the hunt, but the actual killing? It’s just shooting a deer. I can appreciate a good shot, but nobody enjoys the gutting and cleaning. But it must be done. Treat it like it’s just a job, though. Nothing else.”
It sounded about what I had been trying to say. At least, judging by Sister Ann’s expression, it was enough. She gave me an encouraging nod.
“You know . . . Officer Atkins said there were two holding pens, right?” I asked, looking back at Temple. He gave me a funny look before nodding once. “We only knocked down the gate at the amphitheater. Where’s the other one? The armory?”
“That is a very good question,” Sister Ann said. She motioned toward my window. “Shambler, three o’clock.”
Pivoting in my seat, I leaned back and gave myself enough room to swing the AR up and out. The shambler was thin as a rail and moving very, very slowly. Lining up the green dot, I took aim and put a single round into its head.
“Temple?” Sister Ann asked calmly as I dispatched the shambler. “You seem to know Clifton Forge fairly well. Do you know where the armory is at?”
“Not too far from here,” he responded without hesitation. “Head up the road a bit, hang a right at the school of the arts. It’s next to Smith Creek and has the old Clifton Forge High School right there. It’ll be on the right-hand side. Can’t miss it.”
“High school?” I asked, confused. “I thought everyone in town went to Alleghany?”
“Back in my day, Covington–Clifton Forge was the football rivalry,” Temple explained. “It was closed down because they didn’t have enough students. Alleghany was built instead, for all the county kids. Covington kids stayed at Covington.”
“But is it a good place to build a pen, like the one at the amphitheater?” Sister Ann asked. Temple nodded slowly.
“Easy to block in, isolated, has access to water . . . yeah, if someone wanted to keep their zombies penned up, that’d be a decent enough place.” Temple’s voice was wavering just a bit. He was looking a little worse for wear. “Makes more sense than the amphitheater, at least.”
“That means we have to turn around,” Sister Ann said. “Back past the library and into the maelstrom.”
There was almost no hesitation in my voice. “Then back into the maelstrom it is. Those pens shouldn’t exist. It’s not right to force people to go into them and fight shamblers. Or to torture the shamblers like that. Kill them, and move on with your life.”
“I agree with the little lady,” Temple wheezed. He continued to rub his shoulder. His forehead was covered in sweat. “It ain’t right.”
“Are you okay?” I asked him. He nodded.
“Little too much excitement. Hard to breathe when I shoot too much.”
“Okayyy,” I dragged the last syllable out before mentally shrugging. Screw it. He was still down to fight. There was no way I was going to tell this man he couldn’t help anymore. He was willing to give his all, and for what? A hope and a prayer? No, there had to be more than simple vengeance here. A random thought came to mind and I was talking before I even knew the words were coming out. “Into the maelstrom once more, dear friend. Not for gold, vengeance, or glory, but for those helpless few who need us the most.”
“Gambling may be a sin, but Sister Margaret owes me twenty bucks when we meet up in Heaven,” Sister Ann muttered. I shot her a confused look. “She said you’d turn into a mathematician, if given the right motivation. I bet you would become a voracious reader and read just about anything for fun. Maybe even become a writer one day.”
“She bet . . . wait . . . math? I freaking hate math!”
“It must have seemed a reasonable bet at the time, all things considered. You hated reading, too.”
“Is that why you had me chronicling the early days of the Fall?” I asked, half-turning in my seat to glare at her. “Because you thought I’d be a writer? What kind of career prospect is that?”
“Well, most writers are either dead or a shambler now, so . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.
“Yeah, but . . . okay.” She had a valid point. If not for Sister Ann pushing The Hobbit on me when I’d first arrived, I probably would have never read for fun. And the likelihood of writers surviving the zombie apocalypse was pretty slim. “Wait . . . you gave me your copy of The Hobbit on a bet? And practically forced me to read The Silmarillion? Dang it. By the way, I’m not quoting Aragorn before we ride into battle.”
“Théoden would have been more fitting for you . . .” Sister Ann mused.
“Ladies? I hate to interrupt your discussion on the finer points of classic literature versus mathematics, but I think I see some more of them zombies coming our way.” Temple coughed before pointing back into town. “A whole passel of them.”
“Can’t believe Sister Margaret thought I’d be a math nerd,” I muttered as Sister Ann shifted the massive BearCat into reverse. She pushed down hard on the gas pedal and the tires squealed just a bit before grabbing the road. The vehicle lurched backward, then gained speed. She quickly pulled the wheel left while smoothly shifting gears and hitting the brakes, executing a perfect J-turn.
“Temple? Up top, if you will. Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” Sister Ann said as the BearCat lumbered forward. The shamblers swarmed, so Sister Ann did her best to keep from running them over. Temple popped back up into the turret but didn’t start shooting. The shamblers must have been too close now, below his line of fire. “Madison?”
“On it,” I called out and leaned partly out the window. Two shamblers had grabbed onto the side of the BearCat at the rear and were making decent progress trying to climb on board. We couldn’t have that. Taking careful aim, I shot the first one right between the eyes. It tumbled off the moving vehicle. The second howled when it saw me and tried to figure out a way to get up where we were at. It would have been hilarious if not for the fact that the shambler was most definitely trying to eat my face off. Two quick shots and the shambler was gone, no longer a problem.
Pulling myself back inside, I glanced over at Sister Ann. She was concentrating on the upcoming turn, passing the truck we’d run off the road previously. None of King Dale’s men had remained. There weren’t any shamblers alive here, either.
“Most of them on your side?” I asked her, leaning across the center console.
“Four, maybe five,” she replied.
I grunted. “Temple? Targets left. You got eyes on them?”
Nothing. Muttering under my breath, I climbed across the console and practically ended up in Sister Ann’s lap. The interior of the BearCat wasn’t that big, and if I hadn’t been so small to begin with there would have been no way for me to pull this off.
“Don’t get your brass on me,” Sister Ann warned as I sprawled out across her.
“Like I can prevent that, ma’am,” I told her as I spotted a tight cluster of shamblers fifteen yards away and moving toward us with purpose. Temple should have had an angle on them. Why wasn’t he firing? It didn’t matter. They were my responsibility now. “Ears.”
“Hold on,” Sister Ann and brought the BearCat to a stop. She leaned back as far as she could and covered her ears with her hands. “Okay, go.”
Why shamblers liked to bunch together when approaching a potentially hostile metal monster—probably what the BearCat looked like to their rabid minds—was something scientists would probably want to look into later once the last of the shamblers had been killed off. In the meantime, it made shooting them much easier.
On a basic level, they had to know they were being shot at. However, they didn’t seem to care. Those that didn’t die immediately charged us, howling in that horrid pitch while bleeding everywhere from their wounds. These aggressive types all wanted one thing: to kill the big metal thing hurting them. With their speed and in my prone position, it wasn’t the easiest to shoot with accuracy. More than a few rounds missed, but fortunately I had enough to spare. Changing out a magazine in this position would have been next to impossible.
“Clear left!” I called out and Sister Ann removed her fingers from her ears. Mine were ringing but the hearing protection was dampening most of the gunshots. Thankfully. Otherwise, I would probably be deaf by the time I turned twenty.
“Eject your mag, then clear your chamber. Roll up the passenger window, then see what’s wrong with Temple,” Sister Ann told me as I pulled myself off her lap. I followed the instructions and was surprised to see that I only had one round left. How had I lost count? One of the first lessons Sister Ann had drilled into me—after keeping my finger off the trigger unless I was about to fire—was to keep track of my ammo count.
It didn’t take long to manually roll up the BearCat’s window, but it was a pain. Why it didn’t have powered windows like every other car these days was something I’d never understand. Once it was up, I double-checked the lock. It was set, so no shambler—or any of King Dale’s men, for that matter—could slip inside.
It wouldn’t be easy crawling into the back with Baby in hand, so I left the AR in the shotgun rack before making my way into the back of the vehicle. It took some effort to manuever around the empty gas cans and ammo crate we’d brought for Temple and me, but eventually I managed to squeeze fully into the back.
Temple wasn’t up in the turret. Nor was he in one of the seats, reloading his beloved Garand. It took me a moment to find him. But when I did, I really wished I hadn’t.
“Oh, Temple.” I sighed softly as I spotted his still form. Sometime during our dash back into the maelstrom he’d slipped out of the BearCat’s turret, laid down between the two rows of seats, and died quietly without making a fuss. His great, big heart had simply been unable to take it anymore.
He’d said his time was near. Many times, actually. He repeated it over and over again, and every time he said that everything after the brain cancer was borrowed time. He hadn’t known what for until he’d had to take care of his grandchildren. I hadn’t believed it but apparently he’d known. I gently closed his eyes and tried not to cry. Unfortunately, real life wasn’t like the movies, and his eyelids refused to stay shut, and they slowly opened until his unseeing eyes were staring right at me once again.
“Temple . . . that is a little creepy, dude,” I muttered, then hiccupped and sniffled before whispering a silent prayer for him. Even dead he seemed to have his sense of humor. On the plus side, at least he’d died exacting some sort of revenge for the death of his family. Looking away, I understood finally why they used to put coins on the eyes of the dead—besides paying the Ferryman, at least. I placed a hand over his heart, just to make sure. There was nothing there. “We’ll take care of your grandbabies, sir. I swear on it.”
“Is he . . . ?” Sister Ann asked from the driver’s seat.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And the world loses another good man,” she stated and shifted the BearCat back into gear. There was a resignation in her voice I’d never heard before. It was disheartening and, for a moment, a hole in my stomach seemed to open and all my hope died in it. If Sister Ann was giving up, then what chance did we have? “Poor man. His grandchildren will be loved and cherished by all, and his memory will be honored. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.”
“Amen,” I repeated quietly. I knew the Requiem aeternam, thanks to the sisters who had, once upon a time before the end of the world, taught at St. Dominic’s. But hearing Sister Ann say it instead of my mangling of the prayer felt good for the soul. Her Latin was both effortless and flawless.
“Madison, do you want to—”
“There’s still the other pen, ma’am,” I interrupted, knowing what she was going to ask me before she’d even begun the question. There was no way we could head back now. I steeled myself. Even though I knew what was necessary, there was nothing more I wanted than to head back to campus, curl up in a ball, and sleep for ten days. “Temple was right. We can’t let it stand. Those shamblers need to be put out of their misery.”
There was nothing more I could do for Temple. Covering him with one of the spare blankets we’d brought for Governor Lenity-Jones, I moved back to the front seat. Sister Ann was staring straight ahead, her fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly. There were tears in her eyes. I didn’t understand. We’d lost hundreds of students and teachers since the Pacific Flu outbreak, and I’d never seen her cry. Not even once. She’d always been our rock, the one person who was stoic through thick and thin. Nothing got to her.
“Ma’am?” I asked, almost hesitant. This was not something I knew how to handle. She’d never taught me how to comfort the one responsible for everyone else’s well-being.
“I’m sorry,” Sister Ann said and wiped her eyes.
“Why?” I asked, confused. “What for?”
She sniffled once and smiled. It was slight, but it was there. “You’re right. What for, indeed?”
“You told me it’s okay to cry for ourselves,” I reminded her. “You said that when all this chaos and madness began, remember? It’s always okay to cry for ourselves.”
“I did.”
“And we never apologize for our tears,” I told her emphatically. “Your words.”
“For a girl who I believed never listened to anyone, you seem to have picked up a lot of good advice somewhere along the line.”
“Well . . . I had an excellent teacher.”
The street was oddly quiet. For a town filled with shamblers running around, it seemed rather sedate. The larger of the two trucks that had been chasing us since the Ranbow Gap blockade hadn’t followed when we’d turned down Commercial. With Temple gone and neither Sister Ann nor I knowing our way around Clifton Forge well enough, I was on the lookout for any sort of side street where they could pop out and sideswipe us.
While there were plenty of streets a truck that size could fit through on the driver’s side, there was nothing interesting to be seen except for dark, empty homes. No streets for old King Dale to ambush us from there, though I could see one coming up.
“On the right,” I warned Sister Ann. She slowed the vehicle down and kept us in the center of the road as we approached it. Once I saw no signs of a truck, I exhaled the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Looking past the street corner I spotted a large, three-story building farther up the road. Almost all of its windows were boarded up and the main doorway was bricked up. There was a flagpole sitting in the middle of a weed-filled parking lot. “Wait. Is that a school?”
It was. There weren’t any signs out in front but every horror movie I’d seen where they featured a haunted, abandoned school looked just like this one—complete with the police tape covering a broken window with a keep out sign hanging in front of it.
Sister Ann slowly turned onto the street. On the left side across the parking lot there was a smaller building I hadn’t seen originally. It looked more like some sort of gymnasium. After a few seconds I realized that this little dilapidated building had to be the armory Temple had spoken of.
Looking around, I couldn’t see any sign of a pen to hold shamblers in. There was a baseball field up behind the abandoned school but, not seeing the usual press of bodies against the fence like down at the amphitheater, it was easy to dismiss it as a holding pen. There simply wasn’t any room down here for an outdoor area to keep the shamblers safely contained.
So where were they?
“No shamblers,” I pointed out after another quick look around. “Weird.”
“They’re here,” she said in a quiet voice. “You’re just not looking at the right spot.”
“Huh?”
She jerked her chin toward the front door of the armory. “There.”
I followed the direction she indicated and blinked, confused. There was nothing but the front doors to the armory. Then I saw a flash of—what? A face? Watching the doors intently, a few seconds later I was rewarded with the unwashed, filthy face of a shambler—only this one was not clawing and chewing on the door to come out and attack us. This one looked . . . frightened?
Suddenly it clicked. I’d spent months tracking one of these shamblers around campus, to no avail. “These are those other shamblers. The betas.”
“But what use are they to him?” Sister Ann mused.
“Who cares? Let’s bust them out, too. He can chase them all over and deal with them.”
“Maddie . . .” Sister Ann stopped, then sighed. “I miss the surety of youth sometimes.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked. “They’re penned up. We let them out, and he’s gotta deal with them. Or they run around until they die off. This is . . . not right.”
“But is it any worse than releasing captive rabbits out into the wild? Pet bunnies?”
“Bunnies aren’t dangerous,” I reminded her.
“And they are?” she asked me, looking back at the wild eyes of the beta shamblers locked inside the armory. I looked away, confused. There were times when living with a nun drove me insane. Her moral compass was something I would never truly grasp. “You know they can be dangerous.”
“When cornered . . .” I allowed, albeit grudgingly. Motioning toward the doors, I struggled to find the right words before continuing. “They’re trapped in there . . . we don’t know why, right? What if he’s . . . I don’t know . . . doing ‘stuff’ to them?”
Sister Ann sighed again. This was the worst possible time to be having a philosophical discussion about shamblers, yet here we were. “Madison, sometimes—”
I never got to hear the last bit of what she was going to say. Something large and heavy slammed into us. The back end of the BearCat was violently thrown to the side. Metal screeched as it ground against metal, and my head smacked into the metal doorframe as I found myself momentarily out of my seat. Sister Ann was thrown into the center console at the same time. The heavy shocks of the BearCat absorbed us landing back on the ground, though we bounced a few times before settling it. Faintly, I could hear the sound of a car horn over the loud ringing sound in my head.
Reaching up to touch my scalp, it came away wet. It took me a moment to realize that it was blood. My blood, to be precise. My head swam and I felt like I was still flying through the air. Struggling to get my bearings, I noticed that the front doors of the armory were much closer now than they had been before. And getting closer every second. It took me a moment to realize that the big armored vehicle was still in gear, and Sister Ann was no longer in control.
It was the gentlest tap in the history of car accidents, but 9,000 pounds of American steel against flimsy metal doors with a chain link and a cheap lock keeping them shut meant for a very short contest of strength. The doors buckled in under the gentle but constant pressure of the BearCat’s expanded brush guard and suddenly, the doors collapsed. I stared stupidly as our vehicle kept trying to go through the doorframe before it dawned on me that one of us needed to either hit the brakes or put it in reverse.
Reaching over, I threw the shifter up as far as I could. While the gears in the drive shaft didn’t necessarily grind like my dad’s used to when he was shifting into second, it was clear the BearCat was not designed for such a rapid transition from drive to reverse. Sluggishly it began to back out, creating a large opening in the doorway as it moved away from the armory.
“Are you okay?” I asked Sister Ann, who was slumped over in her seat, clutching her ribs. She wheezed something under her breath. “Sister?”
“O-okay,” she managed, staying hunched. She was having a lot of trouble breathing. She was definitely hurt far worse than I had been. There was no other way to explain it but that her breathing sounded . . . wet. “Ribs.”
The BearCat suddenly dropped lower in the rear. Looking back, I could see that the back door was still intact. Temple was wedged between the seats still, looking comfortably asleep. If I hadn’t known any better I could have believed it. With the exception of the boxes tossed about, the interior looked decent. There was no way for me to check out the rest of the damage from whatever had hit us without getting out—which I was not about to do.
The beta shamblers, sensing their freedom, were running out of the armory and scattering in all directions. Somewhere I could hear shouting, and someone was shooting a very loud handgun. I could hear a car horn continuously going off nearby. Confused, I leaned out the window to see what was going on behind us.
It was the big truck that I’d thought we lost during our initial thunder run through town. The entire front end of it was smashed and steam was coming out of the engine. Or maybe smoke, it was hard to tell. One of the wheels had fallen off and rolled away someplace. There was only one person in the back standing against the few shamblers that came close to him, and he was making short work of them with that monstrous handgun of his. His driver looked worse for wear but was moving inside the truck.
King Dale. I ground my teeth and grabbed Baby from the rack. I was about to go out and confront him, but Sister Ann laid a hand on my arm.
“Wait . . .” she hissed and put the BearCat in park. She made a pained noise once she was able to lower her arm. Another shambler, a small female who looked frighteningly familiar for some reason, shot out of the armory and disappeared around the side of the building. “Dangerous.”
Sister Ann was right, of course. Going out there now while King Dale was shooting every single shambler he could see was a recipe for being shot myself.
His face was a bloodied mess. He had a nasty cut on his forehead and more blood was trickling from his nose. There was no way to tell whether he hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt when he ran the truck into us, or if this was his reward for wearing a seatbelt and he was simply lucky to be alive. I couldn’t just get out and ask him. Well, I could, but random acts of gunfire.
Concussions are weird like that.
He paused shooting, probably to reload. It wasn’t likely one of the beta shamblers had gotten him. This was our chance to make a break for it, only I wasn’t sure just how bad the damage to our rear end was. Was there a flat tire? Had the rear been so badly damaged that we couldn’t drive out of there? Was the truck blocking our only way out? To answer any of those questions, I’d have to poke my head up out of the turret or get out . . . and risk getting shot by the self-proclaimed King of Appalachia.
Or worse, eaten by a shambler.
Neither option appealed, but there really wasn’t a choice because Sister Ann made the decision for us.
She opened the door and slid out of the driver’s side, clutching her ribs with one hand. Moving slowly, she began to limp toward the rear of the vehicle. Not knowing what else to do, I quickly slung Baby across my chest and followed suit, making certain I closed my door after getting out. The last thing I wanted was for some shambler to think the BearCat was a great new home.
King Dale saw me as soon as I rounded the rear of the armored vehicle. Clearly, he’d already spotted Sister Ann. Knowing she was never armed, though, he wasn’t really looking to exact violence on her. I knew this because the moment he recognized me he was raising that massive hand cannon and preparing to end my life. I started to raise Baby up, though it was clear he had the drop on me. The injured driver of the truck, meanwhile, had stumbled around the front and aimed his AR at me as well. The likelihood of my survival was pretty low.
“Stop!” Sister Ann commanded, then doubled over and groaned. She spit on the ground before standing back upright. Looking down, I noticed that it was all blood. I started toward her but Dale moved the barrel of his gun my direction. I froze, unsure. My desire to help Sister Ann almost outweighed my own survival instincts. She gave me a small head shake before raising a single hand toward him. “Stop. Please. No more. In the name of God, sir. Please.”
“God?” Dale all but spat at that. He motioned at the ruined doors of the armory. “You think God exists here?”
“He does,” she whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear. Coughing once and wincing, she straightened her back as much as she could and raised her voice. “He most definitely does.”
“He has to,” I added, since Sister Ann looked pale and ready to pass out. She needed to get back to campus and see Dr. Brittany. “You saying God can’t be here means you put limits on God. That’s . . . wrong.”
He snorted. “I ain’t got time for a philosophical discussion with a murderer.”
Ouch. That hurt. “I didn’t want to kill him!”
“Sure you didn’t,” he snarled back. He gestured at Baby. “You just bring it along because it’s like a fashion accessory or something.”
“Shamblers, you idiot!” I shouted back. “I carry it because of the freaking zombie apocalypse we’re living in!”
“Please, stop,” Sister Ann called out again as she moved between us. She shot me a look before trying to calm King Dale down. “Stop. There are so few lives left. We can’t . . .”
“You can’t keep these things locked up like this,” I said, looking at Sister Ann to see if she was okay. She clearly wasn’t. “It’s not right! Just kill them and be done with it! This . . . this isn’t right!”
“Kill them? Like you do? Kill them all? Going to shoot them in cold blood like you did with my brother?” King Dale nearly roared.
I froze at that. The man who’d grabbed Ulla had been his brother? Oh, crap. No wonder the man hated us—no, he hated me. In his eyes I’d gunned his brother down when he’d been behind, alone. Probably believed I shot him in the back or something, I don’t know. Had King Dale gone back and grabbed the body and decided on his own what had gone down? We never went back to double-check to see if it was still there. Nobody had wanted to go that way again. Especially me.
There wasn’t any part of the world I knew of where shooting someone’s brother instantly triggered a blood feud. Here? In hillbilly central? If not for the zombie apocalypse, I’d probably already be dead. Or at least have half of the town out for my blood.
“I didn’t mean to!” I protested, looking at Sister Ann for help. Unfortunately, she was doubled over again, her face deathly pale.
“You didn’t mean to shoot my brother multiple times?” King Dale screamed at me. The barrel of his pistol looked huge from my point of view, and it was pointed directly at me now. Oddly enough, the driver with the AR felt like an afterthought. Still, I hesitated to bring Baby up. Neither man might shoot. I definitely did not want to shoot either of them. Killing shamblers was one thing. I’d already taken a man’s life. That was not something I wanted to repeat.
“He tried to grab one of the girls I swore to protect!”
“Bullshit!” King Dale choked back a sob. “He’d changed! He swore he was different now! He promised! He was my brother!”
“He grabbed Ulla! She’s a little girl who had to watch her sister get torn to shreds by a shambler!” I fairly screamed back at him. My temper was starting to rise, which was never a good thing. It made my skin flushed and my freckles stand out even more. Plus, I tended to rant when I became angry. “She can’t talk now! She only does sign language! Your brother tried to take her from me!”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move toward King Dale. At first I thought it was one of his men but the recognized the shambler. It was the small female I’d chased around campus a few times. Somehow King Dale or his men had snatched her up sometime since I’d last seen her.
She was sniffing the air, almost like a threatened animal would, and moving slowly but steadily closer. This was unlike any other behavior I’d seen this shambler make before. It wasn’t quite moving like one of the aggressive ones would, but it also was not running away like a timid rabbit. No, this was new behavior altogether.
The shambler was quietly stalking Appalachia Rex, and he had no idea.
The urge to remain quiet was a powerful one. Let the shambler do the deed for me so I could grab Sister Ann and get us both back to campus, and safety. It would be clean, though not merciful. Not that he’d earned a merciful death. No one would be the wiser. After all, someone like King Dale surely deserved that sort of karmic justice, right? Nobody would blame me even if they did ever learn the truth.
No. That’s not who I was, not who I wanted to become. I was better than that. There might be some things in this world I would be willing to do—apparently killing a man to protect a child was one of them—but there was no way I would stay quiet and let someone die at the hands of a shambler.
“Dale? There’s a shambler stalking you,” I told him in as calm of a voice as I could manage. The shambler was creeping forward cautiously still, but its eyes were locked onto his back. It was barely twenty feet away now, and like a cautious predator unsure of its prey, the shambler paused every few steps to almost test the air. Slowly I began to raise Baby. “To your right, my left.”
“Boss?” the driver wheezed. “I’m hurtin’, boss.”
He laughed at me and cocked the hammer back dramatically.
“I ain’t falling for that!” He laughed—no, cackled, actually. The man was clearly teetering on the edge of sanity and was quickly losing his balance. “That’s the oldest trick in the book! I turn to look, there’s nothing there, and you shoot me!”
“I’m not playing around!”
I was torn. Part of me—an admittedly large part—wanted the shambler to attack. However, the words of Sister Ann rang in my head still. Noninfected life was precious to us now. So very few of us remained. Less than three percent of the world population survived. Less than that after everyone lost power and were thrown back to the Dark Ages, maybe.
As crazy as King Dale might seem, we’d have to be neighbors again when this was all over. A reckoning might happen but that wasn’t up to us, but to the courts—if we ever got them back, that is. This man, and those who followed him, might be doing things wrong, but that didn’t necessarily make them bad.
Except for the shambler holding pens. Keeping them penned up like animals was cruel. They were still people, in a twisted sort of way. Even if there was no cure, mercifully killing them was a far better option than imprisonment and cannibalism.
But all of this meant I had to save King Dale. I had to try.
Everything happened at once. I brought Baby up and took aim just to his left as the shambler lunged for him. The driver shouted and fired right as I did. Dale, caught off guard by my movements, hesitated just long enough for me to draw a bead on it. Sister Ann had somehow moved to my right despite her injuries, twisting and crying out. Taking a half second to make sure I had the shot, I squeezed off a round right as she latched onto his arm.
King Dale shrieked in either pain or fear, I’m not sure which. The giant revolver, which had been pointed directly at my chest, shifted away slightly when he was hit by the shambler. He fired and thankfully missed me by a mile. The driver screamed and fell to the ground as Dale’s round punched into his stomach.
Appalachia Rex was a mess. Blood was pouring down his arm from the nasty bite but I could see that my aim had been true. There was a neat hole in the beta’s shoulder. The only problem was, the shambler was merely wounded.
He pushed the shambler off, giving me just enough space for a better shot. This time I squeezed off two rounds, with both striking it in the upper chest. The shambler, tiny to begin with, staggered back from the impacts. The beta whined like a wounded dog before dropping to the ground, bleeding profusely.
“Shit!” Dale said, staring in my direction. The blood dripping from the bite had reached his hand already. The shambler had bit him deep. “Shit shit shit!”
For a moment, I thought he was going to shoot me. The odds of him surviving a bite from a shambler and not turning into one were slim to none. Blood transmission, they said, was always fatal. One way or the other. So why not take out the girl who’d been responsible for killing his brother? In a twisted sort of way, it made sense.
Only . . . he wasn’t looking at his wound or the gun. Or even toward me, actually. Confused, I turned slightly to follow his gaze.
There was Sister Ann on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound. She’d taken it for me when the driver had panicked and fired. I couldn’t think coherently. The one person left in this crazy, broken world who actually gave a damn was lying on the ground, dead.
I don’t remember screaming or running over to her, of setting Baby down on the ground to try and stop the steady flow of blood coming from the bullet hole in her chest. The CPR was rough but serviceable, but it had no effect on her. I was robbed of her, not being allowed any final words of wisdom thanks to some jackass hillbilly. The shot had been perfect, killing her almost instantly.
She’d died as she’d lived—serenely.
It was pure bullshit. Sister Ann couldn’t die. This was some horrid sick joke God was playing on me, on all of the survivors at the school. There was no way she could leave us like this. Not at the hands of some wannabe tinpot dictator who was a dead man anyway thanks to some random shambler I hadn’t managed to kill months before when given the chance.
My throat was raw. It took me a second to realize I’d screamed long and hard when I saw her. The muscles on my arm were burning but I didn’t know why. In my chest, my heart felt as if something was squeezing it tightly, trying to crush it in an icy grip. It hurt to breathe. Turning my face to the side, I promptly threw up. The act made me feel even worse.
All the while, King Dale said nothing. He simply stood there, mute. He was crying. Like I cared about his feelings. Not now. Not ever again. There would be no mercy for him, no. I was going to find great satisfaction in killing the murderous bastard.
There was no memory of picking Baby back up, turning, and aiming. It was simply a blink, and everything changed. I had Baby shifted right and trained on his chest before I even knew what I was doing.
I never understood before when someone said that their soul hurt when they lost a loved one, that a part of them was gone and there was no filling the gap. The sensation was simply something I’d never really understood. How could I? Before St. Dominic’s and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, I’d been a selfish, petty little girl. It was they who’d showed me how to be more.
It was Sister Ann who guided me to become what I was now.
“No . . . I didn’t . . . wait . . . no! I didn’t!” Dale screamed as tears ran freely down his face. I swallowed, throat suddenly dry.
It would be so easy. The voice whispered from the depths of that dark part of me I’d always known about, and had willingly embraced a long time ago. A gentle squeeze of the trigger and I would have vengeance. Sister Ann would be avenged. The rage and hatred I felt was pure. There was nothing wrong with it. Hell, she’d told me it was okay when I’d shot that man to protect Ulla. What was one more death on this fucked-up day anyway?
No.
I didn’t so much hear as feel the voice deep in my wounded heart. A balm on my soul, the voice whispered again. No. A simple, singular word that carried weight many times heavier than the slew of hate the other voice in my head had been raging at me. The last remnants of a good woman were still in me, the woman she’d intended for me to become. I wasn’t gone quite yet. The darkness hadn’t claimed me fully. I would never be that girl again. No, Sister Ann wouldn’t let me. Not before, not ever.
The dark and evil voice inside me wailed. Sister Ann’s love squashed it. Madison Coryell, president of the student council, remained.
I nodded slowly at him. A strange sense of calm came over me. For the first time in my life, I understood what Sister Ann meant about finding my inner peace. There was no other way to explain it.
“I didn’t mean to!” King Dale was still protesting. “I never intended . . . I didn’t . . . set out to be the villain!”
“You’re definitely not the hero.”
There was a weight on my hands. A light one, but definitely noticeable. Gentle and insistent. Exhaustion? It had to be. It was pushing the barrel of Baby downward. I really wanted to keep it up and pointed at his chest, but the weight was growing to be too much. Was the adrenaline of our insane chase finally wearing off? Made sense. It’d been a long, crazy pursuit.
The weight continued to carry Baby down. There was no strength left in my arms to keep it up. I was done. Dale still had his revolver, but it was down and at his hip. If he brought it up to shoot me, I was pretty sure he could put a round into me before I did anything.
“Your brother was trying to hurt one of the girls,” I reminded him. My voice came out surprisingly gentle, which startled me a little. “I didn’t know who he was, only that he was trying to hurt someone I swore to protect.”
“You think I don’t know that!” King Dale sobbed. Maybe this was the first person he’d ever killed? I know what it did to me. How would the murder of someone who had looked at him as leader, king even, affect an already damaged soul? “He just . . . Damn it!”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The worst thing about it was, I actually meant it.
His breaths came in small hitches as he struggled to regain his composure. “You’re not sorry for shooting him, though. I can tell.”
“No. I’m not. But I’m not shooting anyone else. Human, I mean. Shamblers don’t count.”
“No, I guess they don’t.” Dale half-turned and looked around at the wreckage. I did as well. The town was in rough shape, and though some of the blame could be laid at our feet, it was clear that a lot of the ruin had occurred since the Fall. Dale heaved a great sigh and wiped the tears from his face. Blood from the shambler’s nasty bite was trickling slowly but steadily down his arm. “So much energy into building the wrong things. I wasn’t rebuilding society, was I? No. I failed them. Failed my brother. What a . . . fucked-up world we live in. That I created here. Take care of your girls. Just like the nun would have wanted. You hear me, girl?”
“I’ve never done anything else.”
“No,” he looked at me, truly looked, for the first time. I could see the confusion in his eyes, and the sadness. There was a hurt there that had affected him to his very core.
Many people have traumatic events that shape who they become. We use those as either a crutch, or motivation. Spite is one hell of a motivator, but the past is as well. Blaming things on the past to excuse what we did in the present is cowardly, yet we do it. Every day. Dale had simply taken whatever trauma he’d suffered in the past and used it to excuse everything he did.
Dale coughed and rubbed his face with his empty hand. He looked like hell. I was willing to bet I didn’t look much better. Not after the rolling gunfight we’d been in with all those shamblers. “Ain’t gonna be no Kingdom of Appalachia. Not now.”
“Not now, no.” I affirmed this with a nod. “Governor’s back in power. We’ve got a president again, too. America is hurt, but we’re not dead yet.”
“Well . . . shit.”
“Language.”
He chuckled at that. It was soft, but it was earnest. “You, too?”
“Sister Ann guided me through the worst of times,” I told him. “Why risk ticking her off now that she can see everything? Besides, I still haven’t worked off my demerits yet.”
Now he did laugh. I don’t know why, but it was both good to hear it, and terrifying. Perhaps it was scary to watch the harsh façade he’d portrayed for the past six months crumble away? Something about it was off, though I couldn’t say what exactly. In better times, Dale might have been a good man. But these weren’t better times, and it would take much to change this. Him and his friends had made certain of that.
“You’re a smart girl. I wish . . . no. I knew how everything would end. To say otherwise would be lying. Lied to my brother. About him. I knew he was broken. Lied to myself about what he was trying to do. Damn. Blamed everyone but the person whose fault it really was. What happened? What the hell happened to me? Shit. Long live the king or some bullshit, I guess,” Dale said wearily before bringing the revolver up and placing the barrel against his chin. There was no hesitation as he pulled the trigger.
There are no words to describe what went through my mind at that moment. The only thing I could really do was watch the body drop to the ground, my brain not really processing everything. It was as if my brain had decided to short-circuit at that very moment and was doing a hard reboot.
I stared at King Dale’s still form for a long minute, not really comprehending what I’d just witnessed.
“To rule over a kingdom of ash and ruin,” I murmured as a warm breeze brushed the hair from my face. Legacies were important to people. Older people, I mean. What people remember about them, and how they are perceived. Their successes and failures measured, and later seen as they stood the test of time. Sister Ann’s was set in stone. Unassailable. When God made her, He shattered the mold.
Appalachia Rex? For King Dale, his legacy would not be a good one. There was no way to sugarcoat it. He’d been a man driven to incredible things because of his need to protect—or at least what he’d probably thought would keep people safe.
I understood him. Not completely, but enough. The darkness did not have qualms about who it attacked, only that it won. It was insidious, infecting our thoughts and minds, corrupting what was good, making even the sweetest memory turn to ash with bitter regret.
I shook my head and turned my face into the breeze. It felt good, wholesome. The stench of unwashed bodies and rot was gone. Momentarily, true. But not now. There were no shamblers in sight. Turning away from the mess of King Dale, I set Baby in the back of the BearCat—which surprisingly hadn’t been much too damaged by the impact of Appalachia Rex’s truck—and knelt down next to Sister Ann.
It took some doing but I managed. Sister Ann, while heavier than I was, still wasn’t more than Lucia. Lifting her while being gentle and respectful while keeping an eye out for any rogue shambler was the challenge. After lots of struggling, I finally got her inside. Once her and Temple were situated in the back, I covered them each with the emergency blankets. There wasn’t much else I could do for either of them except make them comfortable.
Could the dead find comfort after the fact?
I had no answer to that. Climbing into the front seat, I checked the fuel gauge. Even with the crazy antics of driving all around Clifton Forge, I still had over half a tank of gas left. Plenty to reach the mountain. The doors were locked and the engine turned over without missing a beat. Slowly, I eased the BearCat out from beneath the destroyed fencing and turned back onto the street. I knew Commercial would take me eventually to Ridgeway, and out of town.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I don’t really know who I was whispering to. The dead don’t speak, but they might be able to listen to a girl who wasn’t sure if she was ready to be what Sister Ann said I needed to become.