Shattered World (Broken World Book 2) (10 page)

Instead I look ahead and try to find the sedan. It’s barely visible. Only the smooth, black top peeks out of the mass of dead. It’s so surrounded that it’s moving at a snail’s pace now. The undead pound on the windows, and as I watch, a few climb onto the hood, making their way to the windshield. It won’t be long before they manage to break the windows.

I pull myself back inside the car and shut the moon roof. “We have to do something. They’re right on top of the sedan!”

Axl swears again and turns the wheel. He keeps swearing as he maneuvers around the truck, accelerating through the mass of bodies. It’s slow going, though. Even in this big vehicle. The dead bump against us, leaving trails of black ooze on the windows. They bang against the doors like they’re trying to get in. It’s unreal how many there are.

We pull up beside Winston in the Sam’s truck. His expression is tense when he looks down at me. I wave, and for some reason it feels final. My chest tightens as we pull past and move up behind the sedan. I have a strong suspicion that I just said goodbye to Winston.

My throat is thick. “What’s the plan?”

“Gonna try and draw them away.” Axl’s voice is so tense it doesn’t sound anything like him.

A sick feeling enters my stomach. What we’re doing is going to be the end of us.

I could slap myself. I’m such an idiot! Why the hell didn’t I sleep with Axl when I had the opportunity? How many chances at happiness have I had in this life? Just that one, and I let it slip away. We could have had one amazing night before everything went to shit again. Just one. It’s like I’m my own worst enemy.

“Are we signing our own death warrant by doing this?” I say between clenched teeth.

He gives me a tense smile. His knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel so tight. “Does it matter?”

I laugh as tears come to my eyes. God, we are so much alike. “Not really. Those kids deserve a shot more than I do.”

His jaw tightens as he finally moves up beside the sedan. I glance at Trey, and our eyes meet. Hopefully he knows to just leave, to get the kids out of here safely. He nods. Of course he understands. My stomach contracts, and his face blurs. I give him a little wave as Axl pulls ahead.

Axl moves off to the side of the road and slows down, then puts the car in park next to the Paris casino. There’s a road up ahead. If we can distract the bodies long enough, Trey and Winston will be able to pull off the main strip and out of the city. Hopefully they make it, and we aren’t sacrificing ourselves for nothing.

“Here goes nothin’,” Axl says, echoing my thoughts.

He leans down and fools with the wires under the steering wheel. The dead bang against the car, but even more have surrounded the sedan. I dig my nails into my legs while I wait for Axl to do whatever he has planned. He grunts, and a few sparks fly. My entire body jerks when the deafening sound of the alarm rings through the car.

The world around us explodes. The bodies go crazy and converge on the Explorer, banging on it with their hands, their bodies, their faces. They leave thick smears of black on the windows as they desperately try to get in. The door handle rattles, and some even climb on top of the car.

They’re wild and frantic. It’s so terrifying that for a moment I can’t remember exactly why we decided to do this. My heart pounds and I cover my ears, trying to block out the sounds of the hammering and the alarm. Trying to keep the terror at bay. All I want to do is run, but there’s nowhere to go. The realization that we’re stuck hits me so hard I start to shake.

Then the sedan drives off. It turns the corner with the truck close behind it, and I relax just a little. They’re going to make it. Nathan and his wife, their daughter. Two other little boys who have years ahead of them. Trey can get back to Parvarti and Winston to his daughter. They will have food and safety. That’s why we chose to commit suicide in this horrifying way.

Axl pries my hands away from my ears and pulls me against his chest. He wraps his arms around me as the pounding continues. He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. All I can do is watch silently as the truck pulls out of sight.

After a few minutes, he turns the alarm off, but the damage is already done. They know we’re in here, and they won’t give up until they’ve broken in. A crack starts at the corner of the windshield and travels across. Then another. A dead man hurls himself against the glass and pounds his fists. Hundreds of cracks fan out across the windshield in a frightening web pattern, and I have to stifle the urge to scream. It’s safety glass, so it doesn’t give. At least not yet.

“I won’t let them get us.” Axl’s lips brush against my head, and strands of hair fall into my face. They tickle my nose, but I can’t find the motivation to move them aside.

I nod and swallow against the lump in my throat. He doesn’t mean he won’t let them get in, because we both know there’s nothing we can do about that now. Surprisingly though, I’m okay with it. A bullet to the brain sounds a lot better than being ripped apart by the undead.

The glass behind us shatters. Axl’s arms loosen. We both turn to see the first body pull itself through the back window. He’s so thin he resembles a skeleton, and the skin on his face and scalp is ripped to shreds. His face is streaked in black goo. He howls at us as he pulls himself forward. His fingers are black, and two are missing. More pull themselves through the opening behind him. They’re crawling over one another as they try to get at us. Their high-pitched screams and rancid smell are even more intense in the small space. And more terrifying.

My hand shakes as I pull out my gun and face the screaming bodies. Axl pulls the trigger first, and the gunshot is so loud that it makes my ears ring. He takes the closest one out, and I aim for the one behind it. Black liquid sprays the inside of the car when my bullet pierces his skull, coating everything in its rancid scent. I gag when bile rises in my throat, but I have to swallow it down as more and more bodies find the opening and pull themselves in. Crawling over their fallen brethren. Reaching out to us with decaying hands.

We continue to fire, but no matter how many we take down, more find their way in. I blink and clear my throat and focus on the dead. But nothing I do can stop the tears that stream down my cheeks.

“Save one bullet,” Axl yells over the screams and pounding of the dead.

His words are like a knife in my stomach. A dose of reality. We are really and truly screwed. I pause to check my ammo anyway, because he’s right. I need to save one if I don’t want to end up being eaten alive. My hands shake when I pull out the clip. Four bullets left.

Three for the undead and one for me.

“I’m down to four,” I say as I take out another. “Three.”

Axl fires twice in quick succession, taking out two more. “I got two.”

He fires one last time, then puts the gun down. Seeing the gun in his lap is so final that a sob forces its way out of me. My whole body shakes. I take my time with my final shots. Partly because my hands are unsteady and partly because the bodies are moving slower than before. They’ve piled up. New ones have trouble getting through the back. They’ve stopped pounding on the other windows and are now focused on just the one small opening.

My hand trembles so much when I fire my last shot that I’m surprised it hits something. It rips through the temple of a putrid man. His head explodes, and the car vibrates. Or maybe that’s my body. I lower my gun. This is it. I have nothing left. Not even my knife, because I lost it in the store. We have more weapons, but they’re in the back of the car where they do us no good at all.

One body makes his way toward us. A chubby man who was almost bald in life. His scalp is torn now, probably from the broken glass of the back window. Black goo seeps from the wounds, flowing down his face. Into his eyes and mouth. He moans and grabs at us, stopping every few inches to reach toward us before moving forward again. My heart pounds and my body quivers. This is the end.

Axl pulls me against him. His eyes look stormier than the clouds that follow a tornado, and my own eyes are filled with tears, making his face blurry. I wipe them away so I can focus on him in my final moments.

“Shoulda slept with you last night,” he says.

My heart leaps, then twists painfully. I start crying all over again. “I was thinking the same thing.” I can barely get the words out between sobs, but I
need
him to know.

He lets me go and raises his gun, pointing it at his head. “You ready?”

I nod and lift my own gun. Trying to block out the moans coming from the back of the car and the smell of decay surrounding us. Trying to focus only on him. “On three?”

He nods, and his Adam’s apple bobs like he’s trying to swallow down the tears. “One.”

“Two,” I say between sobs.

He opens his mouth, and my body trembles. My finger moves to the trigger. Do I close my eyes or focus on him? His lips move again before I’ve had time to decide, and he must say three, but the word is cut off by an explosion so loud it vibrates through the car.

10

MY HEART STUTTERS AND MY finger twitches on the trigger. Axl’s eyes hold mine. We’re both frozen with our guns held to our heads. My breathing slows, and I blink. Am I going nuts, or has the pounding on the car lessened?

Another explosion rips through the air, followed closely by a third. The car shakes again. My hand drops to my side just as Axl lowers his gun. The pounding has stopped almost completely now.

“Are they leaving?” I ask, trying to get a glimpse of the Strip through the black goo smeared across the shattered windshield.

Axl shakes his head. The dead man crawling toward us moans. Without blinking, Axl rips out his knife and slashes it toward the body. The blade strikes the man in the side of the head, and the body collapses.

Axl pulls the knife out and wipes it on the seat. “It’s quiet.”

“You think Winston or Trey did that? Blew something up to try and draw them away from us?”

“It’s a good guess. I know I woulda done somethin’ to help out if the situation was reversed.” His eyes dart to the back of the car, but no other bodies have crawled inside. He takes a deep breath and says, “I’m gonna check it out.”

He reaches for the button to open the moon roof, and my heart pounds. We might be okay. I exhale and say a silent prayer as he pulls himself through the window. Religion has never really been my thing, but if there’s ever a time to ask God for a break, this has to be it.

Axl ducks back inside the car seconds later. His face is still tense, and I can’t read his expression. My heart pounds, and I grab his arm. My nails dig into his flesh. “What?”

He shakes me off and starts gathering his things. “There are still a few ‘round, but there ain’t many. There’s a fire one street over and they’ve hauled ass in that direction.”

“What do we do? We can’t drive this thing. We can’t even see out the window.”

Axl reaches back and rips his pack out from under a few bodies. He shoves his things inside. It’s covered in the rank, black liquid. “Get your shit. We’re makin’ a run for it.”

I do my best to ignore my pounding heart as I throw my pack over my shoulder. It doesn’t work. Where the hell does Axl plan on going? I’m all for getting out of this car, but the uncertainty scares the shit out of me.

He presses a button on the door, and the locks click. “Ready?”

I take a deep breath and shove the door open, stumbling down and running around the front of the car. The Strip is amazingly empty considering how full it was just a few minutes ago. There are still a few bodies milling around nearby, and masses in the distance, but it seems like most of the dead that were trying to get to us a few minutes ago have headed toward the fire. There’s a huge, black pillar of smoke floating up toward the sky in the distance.

I reach the other side, and Axl grabs my hand. He pulls me toward the front door of a casino as the few bodies still lingering around shuffle our way. A replica of the Eiffel Tower looms over us, blocking out the sun. It’s the Paris Casino.

We dodge a rotting cocktail waitress as we duck inside. The interior is dark, and the outline of slot machines lined up throughout the room reminds me of headstones in a cemetery. In the distance, something moans, but it isn’t close.

“Where are we going?” I ask as he pulls me through the dark.

We dodge slot machines and stools that have toppled over, not slowing for even a second. A body lurches toward us and Axl swipes at it without pausing. The blade cuts into its skull, and the dead man hits the ground right at my feet, almost tripping me. I manage to jump over it at the last second.

“Stairs,” Axl says between breaths.

The stairwell is right in front of us, and the green sign above it still glows despite the lack of electricity. It must run on batteries.

Axl shoves the door open and rushes into the stairwell. The door slams behind us, and he drops my hand. I can hear him fumble around in the dark, but I’m not sure what he’s doing until he flips the flashlight on and shines it up the stairs. We don’t need it to know the stairwell is clear, though. The air lacks the stench of decay everything else in the world now seems to have.

I lean against the wall and take a few slow, deep breaths. “Do you have a plan?”

Axl nods, but he’s breathing heavily. It takes him a few seconds to gather himself. “Roof,” he finally says.

Is he nuts? “Roof? That’s your plan?”

He grabs my hand and pulls me with him as he starts up the stairs. “Gotta get a better look at what’s goin’ on out there. Try an’ figure out where to go from here.”

It makes sense. Just taking off down the Strip is a bad idea and not something I even want to attempt. At least from the roof we’ll be able to see if there’s a car we can use and the best way to approach it.

When we reach the end of the staircase, Axl shoves the door open. We burst out onto the roof, and the sun almost blinds me. We’re not all the way at the top, though. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust because it’s so bright. So much brighter than the Strip, thanks to the sunlight reflecting off the shimmering water of a pool.

Axl chuckles and drops my hand. He brushes the sweaty hair off his forehead. “Didn’t expect that.”

I laugh too, and even though it feels out-of-place it eases something inside me. Dread maybe? “No kidding. I had no idea there was a pool up here.”

I exhale and slump against the wall. The wind blows and the sun beats down on my head like it’s trying to burn me alive. My skin is moist, and even though the air on the roof is clear, all I can smell is death. It’s like the stench has coated my skin and seeped into my pores. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to smell anything else.

“What now?” I ask.

“Let’s get this door blocked off just in case, then do a quick sweep of the area. Make sure nothin’ else is up here.”

“I only have one bullet and I lost my knife at Sam’s.”

Axl curses and pulls his backpack off. “Think I got an extra knife.”

He digs for it while I nervously study our surroundings. There’s nothing moving, and it’s amazingly quiet up here. Still, I won’t be able to relax until I’m armed again. There are cabanas and a few other structures on the other side of the courtyard where dead things could be lurking.

Thankfully, Axl finds me a knife. He hands it to me, and I tuck it in my sheath. It’s smaller than the one I lost, which isn’t great, but it’s better than nothing. One bullet isn’t going to get me far when a horde charges us.

We get busy trying to find things to pile against the door. Unfortunately, there’s nothing but chairs and a few small tables on the roof. It won’t really keep anyone out, but if someone—or something—opens the door, we’ll know. It will give us some warning at least.

Once that’s done, we head to the other side of the roof and check out the cabanas. There’s nothing moving around, living or dead, but the cabanas do have small refrigerators stocked with bottles of water.

“Let’s load up,” I say, pulling off my pack. I hold it open while Axl piles them in. The water is hot, but water is water.

Getting to the edge of the roof so we can look over isn’t easy. The cabanas are in the way, with very little space between them. Beyond that, the edge of the building is lined with shrubs. It’s a tight fit, and the branches scrap against my arms when I squeeze back, but we manage to make it. When I look over, my heart sinks. The fire has just about died out at this point—and from up here we can see that it was a gas station—and the bodies seem to be heading back toward the Strip. Why they’re gravitating this way is beyond me. Maybe there’s something leftover in their brains that tells them the Strip is the place to be, or maybe there’s some noise down there that we can’t hear from this high up. Either way, we’re screwed.

I can’t look anymore, so I leave Axl to check out the area while I head to the bar. It’s full of booze, but not much food. I find a jar of green olives and shove those in my bag. Something red on another shelf catches my eye, and I almost giggle like a schoolgirl when I pick up two jars of maraschino cherries. My stomach growls, and for some reason the thought of having the cherries to eat makes me feel better. One last treat before we meet our final end, or something like that.

I shove the cherries in my bag and head for the pool. The water is slightly murky since the electricity has been off for a while now, but it still looks nice. And sparkling. Probably cool. My skin itches to be clean. I’m sweaty and my clothes stick to me in places I don’t even want to think about. I didn’t pack much, so I don’t have any clean clothes. A dip in the pool sounds amazing, though.

Axl walks over and plops down in the lounge chair next to me. He doesn’t look happy. Great.

“See anything?”

“Whole lotta shit.”

“No cars? No way out?”

He shakes his head, and my heart sinks all the way down to my stomach. “Now what?”

“Well, seems like we got two options. First, try an’ make a run for it. Hope that we can distract ‘em somehow and find a car.”

Sounds like an excellent way to get ourselves killed. “Or?”

“Sit tight.” He puts his hands behind his head like he’s out relaxing by the pool, not hiding from flesh-eating undead.

I have the sudden urge to hurl. “What’s that going to do?”

“We’re pretty secure up here. We got water, probably a little food in that bar over there.” I pull the jar of cherries out of my bag, and he grins. “If we wait it out a day or so, Angus’ll come lookin’ for us. No way he’d leave us out here.”

Axl’s right. Angus is a prick who doesn’t care about many things other than himself, but there’s one thing he just might care about a tiny bit more than his own ass. That’s Axl.

I exhale slowly and focus on the water in front of me. Waiting it out sounds like a good plan. No way will Angus walk away from his brother. No way. “Yeah. That’s the way to go.” I put the cherries back in my bag and drop it to the ground next to Axl. Then I flash him a big smile and tilt my head toward the pool. “Is it bad to worry about being filthy in the middle of all this?”

“Naw. Only natural. Go ‘head, jump in.”

There’s still a little uncertainty in me, though. It isn’t easy to relax when there are bodies walking the Earth, but Axl knows what he’s talking about. The roof does seem secure. The stairwell was empty, and I can’t think of a single reason the undead would come up here looking for food. Not when they’ve had such good luck down on the Strip.

Plus, the water looks so nice and being clean would feel so good.

I’m going for it.

I pull my shirt over my head, and Axl sits up straighter. The way his gray eyes follow my every move makes my legs quiver. My bra is soaked with sweat, so it comes off next. I undo the hook, then slide the straps down. Axl’s lips twitch. The filthy bra falls to the ground, and my shorts go next. I pull them down nice and slow. Finally, my experience as a stripper comes in handy at the end of the world. I leave my underwear on. Red and lacy, there’s barely anything to them anyway. Axl purses his lips, but I just smile.

My eyes move to the water. I’m already imagining how nice it’s going to feel on my skin. “You going to get in?”

“I’m just gonna sit here an’ enjoy the view.”

I glance over my shoulder. Axl’s grin stretches from ear to ear. He reminds me of a little boy in a toy store. It’s cute, and it makes my stomach do a little flip-flop.

“You need it,” I say. “You’re dirty.”

He winks at me and smiles even bigger. “You got no idea.”

I laugh, then throw myself into the pool. The water swallows me whole. My eyes are squeezed shut and my lungs are full of air, and I stay under. It feels amazing. Like a hot bath at the end of a really hard day. I stay down until my lungs burn for relief, then blow the air out as I swim up. I dip my head back just as I break the surface. The water runs down over my face and back. It isn’t particularly clean and I don’t have any soap, but my skin already feels less grimy.

I swim to a more shallow area, where the water only comes up to my waist. The sun is warm against my skin, and I can almost imagine I’m on vacation as I scoop up handfuls of water and scrub my face and arms, making sure all the dirt and stench of death is washed off.

Axl doesn’t take his gray eyes off me for a second. They caress me from six feet away as he takes in every move I make, every curve of my body.

“You really should get in.” I run my hand down my chest, and Axl squirms in his chair. I have several reasons for wanting him in here, only one of which is getting him clean.

He slips off his shoes, then stands up. My pulse quickens when he pulls his shirt over his head. His muscled chest is filthy and covered in little beads of sweat, but that only makes my heart beat faster. His eyes hold mine as he unzips his pants, and my throat tightens when they fall to the ground. He’s wearing nothing but boxers that sit low on his hips. My eyes trace every muscle, then move down, stopping on his happy trail peeking out from the top of his boxers.

Axl heads down the stairs and into the pool. My body is already on fire, and my heart beats like a jackhammer. He’s as laid-back as always, though. He dives under and swims across the pool, resurfacing about ten feet away from me. The water glistens on the plains of his muscled chest, and my heart skips a beat. I’m on a roof with Axl, possibly stuck here for the night, and we are both almost naked. I’ve come a long way from ten minutes ago when I thought we were about to die.