Blood of the Dead: A Zombie Novel (Undead World Trilogy, Book One) (32 page)

Des was down there, somewhere inside that rooftop entrance, broken, bloody, beaten. She had to fight to keep the mental image of his blood-soaked face and torn flesh from invading her mind. Was he completely gone or was he one of them now? She would never know.

August hadn’t said anything since she had pulled Joe inside the chopper. Instead the old man sat in the pilot seat, hands on the cyclic and collective, eyes fixed forward. Joe sat in the seat beside her, hunched over his legs, forearms resting on his knees, head down. She didn’t have to see his face to know he was grieving, too, and that a million thoughts of failure were piercing his heart.

Des. The goofy kid with brown hair and a skinny frame.

Des. The young man she had known the longest throughout all this mess, the one person she could count on if she ever needed an ear, a terrible joke or just a cup of milk.

Des. Self-proclaimed zombie wrangler, at first only in video games but then in real life.

Des. Her hero.

He had been there for her in the early days, back when the rain first poured and the world went to hell. They had met online, both frequenting the same message board, each leaving messages like “Is anybody out there?” or “Who else is left?”

ZW1. Zombie wrangler.

Yeah, you are,
she thought. She wiped the tears from her eyes and buried her face in her hands. She half-expected Joe to reach over and offer some sort of condolence, but instead she was left to sit there alone and think about the one who had laid down his life for her.

Des had been the only person she had really confided in after the rain.

One night, he had come over to her place to help her install some extra RAM into her PC. Once the task was completed, he was about to go but she had asked him to stay. She didn’t know why, at first. Perhaps because the weeks of lonely nights were finally getting to her. Perhaps it was because she was getting tired of no longer being able to
hear
a human voice and only
read
them on a computer screen.

Perhaps because all she needed was a friend.

He stayed. She’d never forget the way he sat on her couch, legs drawn up, hands folded around his shins, thumbs twiddling. She wasn’t surprised when later, during the one and only night they got drunk together, he told her that he thought she had wanted him to stay over for sex. It had been the last thing on her mind, at the time, but she couldn’t blame the poor kid. It was a lonely world and the gentle caress of human touch was something folks hardly came by. Chat on the message boards had it that none of the girls wanted to risk the chance of getting pregnant and bringing a baby into this mess. As far as everyone was concerned, they were the last generation.

But it had been on that night, as he sat there on her couch, expecting her to come on to him, that she had poured out her heart and told him the story of how she lost her family. The haunting images of her sister, her blood-soaked face and rain-slicked skin. She had been standing across the room at the time, pacing, sobbing, hands shaking. She’d never forget the way he stood from the couch and slowly came over to her, extended his arms and drew her in. His embrace had been warm and sweet and for that night she found shelter in his small frame.

He only said two words that whole night: “I understand.” That was it. He never went into detail about how he lost his own family or what happened to them. Even the next day when she asked him if he wanted to talk about it, he simply sat there at her kitchen table, smiled, shook his head and said, “It’s okay.”

For a time she worried about him, thought that he was bottling it all up inside and that one day, given the right trigger, he’d explode and break down. That never happened. But she could see it though, the pain, lurking there behind his green eyes. Even after the few times she prodded him and asked him to open up, Des resolutely refused. Said that he missed them but had accepted they were gone. His only regret, he said, was that he was unable to join them. That, despite his gratefulness at still being alive, a part of him wished the undead had taken him away from a life of always falling short, of being the brunt of jokes, of utterly low self-esteem. Billie supposed that was why he often said the wrong thing or made inopportune jokes. It was his way of dealing with the pain whether he knew it or not.

Billie glanced out the window. Downtown Winnipeg was far away, a mere blur on the horizon against a misty gray and brown sky that hung over the earth like a blanket of death.

36

The Storm

But Des was still gone. If he or even Joe and Billie had stayed, none of them would be flying now, high and away from the city. There hadn’t been time to stop and try and save Des. Sure, an effort could have been made. Perhaps even a heroic effort. But no one would have been left to remember them. Heroes were nothing without the memories of those who were there and lived to tell about it.

As he flew, August’s heart ached and his mind drifted back to that night when he pulled the gun on his family. A choice had to be made then just like now.

But You still let it happen, didn’t You?
Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re in control. You know everything. We’re supposed to just simply trust You and call it good. Well, I’m sorry. That’s fine in sermons and in commentaries, but this is real life. How can You possibly expect a human being
—
and, yeah, believe me, I know where I stand
—
how can You possibly expect a human being to look at a world ravaged by the depths of hell and simply say, “God is in control?”
Grimacing, he squeezed the cyclic and collective. “Nonsense,” he whispered.
I can talk the talk, that’s for sure. But walking it out is easier said than done. You even said as much about that Yourself.

He had promised himself that, for now, he’d keep God at arms length. Let Him come to him. Still, he couldn’t help but vent it out mentally. There was no other way to try and come to terms with what just happened, and there was no way Joe or Billie would understand where he was coming from. To them, life was life. No God. No devil. Just life.

An ache swept through his heart.
Now I wish I knew differently.

The way Des looked at him after he glanced over his shoulder that one final time, that look of fear and shocked abandonment behind the grim expression of determination—it reminded him of Eleanor, the one who was dead even before he squeezed that trigger back at the cabin. Her blood-caked lips opened up and her gaunt cheeks seemed to sink into her face beneath white eyes that, for an instant, seemed to recognize him. There had been pleading in those eyes, a simple begging for one last chance before he let her go. Eyes that read nothing but bewilderment at the man who had forty-one years before swore to love her in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, till death would they part. Who could have known death would come like it did?

No, not death,
August thought.
Death is when your body can no longer endure what’s been handed to it. Doesn’t matter how it comes. An accident, cancer, heart attack or simple old age. Death is when you finally raise your hands, let go, and say, “I’ve had enough.”

He punched the side of his seat. He felt the two in the rear seats stir, their eyes resting on him, but he didn’t care. He knew they knew what was going on. Though he hadn’t known the lad all that long, Des had begun to grow on him.

You just let him die, no problem. And where is he now? Did he know You? Or did he descend to the depths of the earth? Or is he one of
them?

Eleanor. The kids. Jon junior, Bella, Finch, Katie and Stewart. All gone.

Just like Des.

How much longer until Joe and Billie would be gone, too, and he’d be alone once again? To care for them . . . . He didn’t want that responsibility. Not now. He already had a family. And they were dead.

A sharp dagger pierced August’s heart. He checked the gauge again. Sure enough, it was on empty. “Looks like Somebody is on our side.”

* * * *

Doesn’t matter,
he concluded.
As long as we find safe ground and have a chance to regroup, we can figure out what our next move is.

He glanced over at Billie. She sat with one leg up on the seat, bended at the knee, her forehead resting against the palm of her hand. She was no doubt thinking about Des.

I should have saved him. But there were just too many of them. I didn’t really know him, but that doesn’t matter. Never knew anyone else I helped get away from those things.
His heart sank.
April would hate me right now.
He wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, but April always had a way of bringing out the best in him, helping him reach deep down and dig out his full potential. It was one of the things that he loved about her: her ability to make him feel like he mattered. And now he felt he had let her down. That, wherever she was, she was somehow counting on him to make right the wrong that had been her death by preserving the lives of as many as he encountered.

“I miss you,” he whispered.

He imagined her saying the same thing to him. Even though their relationship had been left up in the air and she had gone back to Dan, he knew he had impacted her, had pulled her out of the drudgery of “just another day.”

If I could do things over again, April, I would. I would have called. Would have gone back to your apartment. Would have found you somehow. Maybe then we could have faced this together instead of . . .
Her blood-soaked face filled his mind. He glanced out the window to banish it from view and stroked the X-09, which was now back in its holster, through his coat.

“We’re not. At least, according to this thing.” August tapped his index finger against the altimeter. They were only at about five thousand feet.

“Then where’s this cloud coming from?”

“Hey, where did everything go?” Billie asked, dropping her foot off the seat and sitting up straight.

“I don’t know,” August said. “We were just flying along and the air started to get hazy. I didn’t think anything of it. Maybe a really low-hanging cloud or something. But it got thicker.”

“Go lower,” Joe said.

August worked the controls and Joe felt the helicopter begin to descend.

But the cloud wasn’t going anywhere. Its light gray began to dim and soon deep gray washed over with a light charcoal embraced them.

It had been so long since Joe had seen anything like it. For the past year, the sky had been washed over in misty gray dotted with brown.