Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (14 page)

     Anthony shook his head.  "No need," he said, "but thanks for the offer.  You're welcome to keep me company if you like, though.  A second pair of eyes never hurt anything."

     "I think I'll retire for the evening, as well," Henry said, rinsing his plate in the sink.  "If you go out into the hallway," he said, turning to Shari,  "there's a room two doors down on your left.  There's a couch in there, I'll leave a blanket on it for you."

     "Thank you," Shari said.  "For everything.  I was lucky to run into you guys."

     "No problem," Henry said as he exited the room.  "Have a pleasant evening."

     "Night," Phoebe said over her shoulder, following Henry out of the room.

     "Good night," Shari called after them.  She turned to face Anthony once the sound of Henry and Phoebe's footsteps receded down the hall.  "It's just you and me," she said.

     "Yeah," Anthony said.  He stood, sipping the last of the juice from his can.  "You wanna follow me up to the roof?"

     "Sure," Shari said, rising from her chair.  "It's not like I have anything else to do, and I doubt I'll be able to sleep."  She followed him out of the room, down the hallway, and up a flight of stairs to the third floor.

     "I spend my nights up here," Anthony said, leading her up a second flight of stairs.  "Makes for a pretty good vantage point.  Most of the other buildings on this block are only one or two stories."

     "You guys were in the right place at the right time, huh?" Shari said as they stepped out onto the roof and into the cool night air.

     "I guess you could say that," Anthony muttered.  "As right as it could be, under the circumstances."  He settled down onto the floor of the roof, and Shari knelt next to him.

     "I know you were a security guard and all," she said, lighting up a smoke, "but I don't imagine you'll turn me in for smoking on campus."

     Anthony snickered.  "Only if you don't pass that my way," he said.  "Then I might have to overstep my bounds and confiscate it, too."

     "Fair enough," Shari said, grinning and exhaling as she passed it to him.  "Night shift in the apocalypse," she murmured, pausing to take in the silence enveloping the area.  The entire sky was blanketed with innumerable stars and the very visible, late summer spiral arms of the Milky Way.  "Is there anything on Earth as oppressively lonely?"

     "Not in my experience," Anthony concurred.  "And mind you, I've worked a
lot
of third shifts in my time."

     "It's like being alone in your mind," Shari whispered, twisting a lock of hair absent-mindedly.  "Like there's no one else on Earth, even when I know my friends are sleeping not too far away.  It's like living alone in a nightmare."
     "So I'm not the only one who feels that way," Anthony said.  "It's nice to have some company, though.  Makes it a lot more bearable."

     "Yeah," Shari said, sliding her hands behind her on the cool, smooth cement of the rooftop and leaning her weight back onto her arms.  "If the end of the world has taught us anything, it's that humanity--the company of our fellow human beings--is the bottom line.  It's the last thing left to fight for."

     "Yeah," Anthony said, "unless you happen to be one of those--what do you call them?  Sadists?"

     Shari nodded.  "But I don't think they count as people."

     "I just don't get it," Anthony said, shaking his head.  "There aren't a lot of people left, but resources...the world is full of resources, with only so many people to make use of them.  Weapons, food and water--there's more than enough of everything to go around."

     Shari turned to look him in the eye.  "People are the only truly precious resource left."

     "No shit," Anthony muttered in agreement.  "And I--well, I'm not proud of this, but I've taken out some sadists."

     "Don't feel too bad about it," Shari said.  "They give you no option.  If it's either you or them, and they put themselves--and you--in that situation, then well...there's only one way to respond to that.  I mean, they hunt people like us, and not the other way around."

     "True, true," Anthony said.  "It's still a shame, that's all."

     "I know it is," Shari said.  "And I lament it all the time, I really do.  All day, every day.  There just isn't much to be done about it."

     Anthony shrugged.  "I suppose you're right."

     "So," Shari said, exhaling a cloud of smoke that momentarily obscured the stars before her from her vision.  "You didn't have anyone to miss?"

     "Not really," Anthony said, "other than my parents and a couple of aunts, all back in Indiana where I grew up.  I don't really expect to make it there anytime soon, and even if I do, who knows if I'll find them, alive or not?"

     "I know how that goes," Shari said, her consciousness jerked suddenly and uncomfortably back to her failure to determine the fate of her parents. 

     "Other than that," Anthony continued, "just a few friends from around here, but I wasn't very close to any of them."

     "So you were single?" Shari asked.

     "Yeah," Anthony said, flashing Shari a shy grin.  "You, too?"

     Shari nodded.  "I was dating a guy when all this started, but I only went out with him a few times."  She paused, furrowing her brow.  "To be honest with you, I don't even remember his last name."

     Anthony snorted in mild amusement.  "I've noticed I'm forgetting all kinds of details like that...things from before, that don't really matter anymore.  I guess it's the brain's way of clearing out the useless shit, so it can soak up what it needs to survive."

     "You're probably right," Shari said.  "You ever felt like you're running on autopilot since all this?  Kinda shellshocked?"

     "All the time," Anthony said. 

     "It's like there's nothing left but animal instinct," Shari said, turning her face upward to gaze at the sky.  As she lowered her head back down, she was surprised to find Anthony's face mere inches from hers as his lips moved in toward her.  She wrapped her arms around his neck, experiencing a familiar, tingling warmth in her loins as they kissed. 
Am I really doing this now, while my friends are missing?
she thought, moaning softly as she moved closer to him.  As Anthony's tongue explored the inside of her mouth, she heard a shuffling sound coming from the roof next door to the radio building.  "Hold on," she breathed, pulling away from him.  She hurried over to the edge of the roof and surveyed the building across the narrow alley.  A beam of light from the third-story window where she had dined earlier illuminated the roof of the two-story building next door, where a shadowy figure lurked.  She narrowed her eyes, peering through the darkness as she struggled to make out what she was seeing.  As the figure entered the beam of light, she recognized him as the sadist she had seen earlier, the one who had escaped--apparently unscathed--into a crowd of zombies.

     "
Fuck!
" she hissed, retreating back toward the door that led to the inside of the building. 

     "What?" Anthony asked, confused, as he stared in the direction in which Shari had been looking.

     "There's someone over there," Shari whispered.  "He's been stalking me.  I saw him earlier today--don't you see him?"

     Anthony stared for a moment longer before he turned toward Shari.  "No," he said apologetically, with more than a hint of concern in his voice.

     Shari continued to back up toward the door, her heart racing.  "I've got to get out of here," she said, turning to flee down the stairwell.

     Shari sat until dawn, perched on the edge of the couch with her knees drawn up to her chest.  She stared out the window absently as the first sunrays of the morning lurked just below the horizon, where a thin layer of luminescent lavender blended into the star-speckled, deep blue early morning sky.  As she observed the sky, her exhausted mind wandering, she was jerked back to the present by the sound of a gun being fired in the distance.  She rushed to the window, looking for any visible sign of human life in the nearby buildings or in the streets below.  She was still scanning the area when she saw a bright flash of orange light in the sky to the north.  The light faded slightly as it floated slowly downward. 
Is that a real thing?
she thought,
Or am I exhausted to the point of hallucination?
  She continued to peer through the window, watching the light, until she heard a knock from outside the door.

     "Shari?" she heard Anthony say from behind her as he entered the room, "do you know if your friends had any signal flares?"

     "No," Shari said without shifting her gaze from the window, "I don't think either of them did.  Is that what that light is?"

     "Yeah," Anthony said, "it's a parachute flare.  I mean, don't get your hopes up, but there's a good chance it's your friends.  It's like we told you--we haven't seen living people around here for some time, until you guys showed up."

     "I don't know where they'd have gotten that thing," Shari said, pointing at the flare.  "Unless they picked it up after they left here."

     "There's a good chance they did," Anthony said.  "There's an Army surplus store north of here, not too far--probably a few blocks away."

     "You think they got it from there?" Shari asked.

     "Stands to reason," Anthony replied.  "Places like that, they carry a lot of camping and survival gear.

     Shari nodded.  "You think you can give me directions to that place?"

     "I'll do you one better and take you up there myself," Anthony said.  "I know the area a lot better than you do."

     Shari held his gaze with hers for a moment before she responded.  "If you're willing to help me out, then I'm not about to turn you down.  I'll be ready before sunup."

     It was a quarter after six when Shari opened the door of the trailer where she kept Eva.

     "Come on, girl," Shari said, leading the horse out of the trailer.  "I bet you're thirsty."  She mounted the horse and extended her hand to Anthony, who grasped her hand and awkwardly climbed up behind her.

     "I'm not too sure about this," he mumbled as they started down the street.  "It feels like I'm going to fall."

     "It's easiest if you lean with her as she moves," Shari said.  "Just relax a little."

     Anthony snorted.  "That's easy for you to say.  You're used to this, but I've never been on one of these things."

     "Don't worry," Shari said.  "It shouldn't be a very long ride, if it's as close as you say."  She spotted a pond in a park down the block.  "I'm gonna stop at that pond so she can have a drink."

     They dismounted as they reached the park, allowing the horse to drink her fill as they leaned against the back of a bench, surveying their surroundings while they waited.

     "I'm gonna have a smoke," Shari said. 

     Anthony laughed.  "You actually smoke that stuff when you're out, wandering around in this shitstorm we call life nowadays?  All types of dangerous shit just waiting to happen?"

     Shari shrugged, looking upwards into the brightening sky as she exhaled.  "I can still function when I smoke," she said, "as long as I don't overdo it.  I guess...I guess you could say I use it to help me get through the day.  But all things considered, can you really blame me?"

     "Hey," Anthony said, "if it helps keep you sane, with the way things are, then who am I to take that away from you?  Long as you don't get us both killed, I got no beef with you."

     "Can I ask you something?" Shari asked.

     "Shoot."

     "Do you think I'm crazy?  I mean, after what happened last night?"

     Anthony grimaced, jamming his hands into his pockets as he turned toward the pond.  "I don't know if I know you well enough to answer that question."

     "I'm only asking--"  She paused, rolling her eyes as she continued.  "I'm only asking because...I guess if I was going to start hallucinating, I'd at least want to know for sure that's what I'm doing."

     Anthony glanced back briefly over his shoulder as Shari.  "You're asking if I think anyone was there, on the roof?"

     "Yeah."

     He shook his head as he turned to face her.  "No.  I don't think there was."

     Shari lowered her head, looking down at her boots as she spoke.  "That sucks," she whispered.  "I don't want to be going crazy."

     Anthony shrugged.  "At least you're not the worst kind of crazy."

     "Maybe not," Shari said as she mounted Eva, "but that's not really saying a lot."  Anthony climbed up behind her, and they continued northward.  Shari's gaze moved across the horizon before her, looking for high ground.  She spotted a watertower ahead of her, to her right.  "Do you know the quickest way to get to that water tower?" she asked.

     "Keep going this way," Anthony said.  "Turn right at the next stop light."  He tensed his shoulders, then let out a loud, forceful sigh.

     Shari laughed quietly.  After a few moments of silence, she spoke up again.  "You think of it every time you see a stoplight, too?" she asked.  "Not just the stop lights, though--neon signs that don't light up anymore, the sound of traffic, airplanes, kids playing--the lawnmowers that woke us up at seven in the morning on a Saturday.  All the little things that made up such a big part of our lives.  Things we barely noticed most of the time.  And all things that don't mean shit anymore."

     Anthony nodded behind her.  "Every time I see a stop light," he muttered as Shari turned right and approached the watertower.  "So you're really planning on climbing up there?" he asked.

     "It's an invaluable vantage point," Shari said.  "It would be far from the first time lately that I've climbed one of those things.  And," she added, eyeing the platform at the top of the tower as she dismounted, "I figure with all that's going on, now's as good a time as any to lose my fear of heights." 

     She began her ascent up the ladder, looking steadily upward as she climbed.  She reached the end of the ladder, climbing onto the metal ledge that encircled the widest part of the water tower.  She sat on the ledge, leaning back against the cool metal of the wall as she gazed through her binoculars.  She didn't see much at first as she panned slowly across the area.  The next block seemed fairly clear, other than a few isolated zombies wandering the streets.  As she looked further out toward the horizon, however, she saw what appeared to be two solid blocks of undead.  In the middle of the crowd, she saw  a large, silver sheet flapping in the brisk morning air.  As she looked more closely, she realized that something had been painted onto the sheet with black paint. 

     She continued gazing through the lenses, waiting for the wind to blow the right way for her to make out what it was that had been painted onto the makeshift flag.  She glimpsed a single letter for a moment before the wind whipped the flag once into a pattern of ripples, obscuring its surface once again. 

    
S,
she thought. 
That was an S...but what else? 
She waited for almost a minute, breathing shallowly as she sat perfectly still, until the wind whipped the flag straight long enough for Shari to take in the entirety of its message. 
Shari
, someone had painted in capital letters across the top, below which was a crude skull and crossbones.  "It's them!" she said aloud, an abrupt giggle bubbling up from her and escaping her lips as she began her descent to the Earth.  "It's them," she told Anthony as she reached the bottom of the ladder.  "There's a flag out there, a homemade flag, and it says 'Shari' on it.  They're letting me know they're surrounded, but alive."

     "Surrounded?" Anthony repeated.

     "Oh, yeah," Shari said as she mounted the horse, "I forgot to mention that it looks like they're smack-dab in the middle of a herd of zombies that must have a diameter of at least two blocks."

     "Oh," Anthony said, scratching his head.  "Back to the station then, 'cause I'm gonna have to have a real big breakfast if we're going to go wading into there."