Solstice: A Novel of the Zombie Apocalypse (24 page)

He stopped short of the corner of the building. The stink of putrid meat floated toward him, and he pulled his scarf back up over his nose. By the sound of the footfalls, there was only one Rager, which was unusual, he had learned. He raised his gun and waited. His hands shook, from cold or fear, or the need for a tumbler of bourbon.

Because of the darkness, it was impossible to see who or what approached until it was nearly within touching distance. Finally, an elderly woman lurched into view, one leg dragging behind her. Her foot had been partially severed and hung by a tendon. Stu slipped the gun back into his coat and waited a moment longer. The woman didn’t appear to be in any shape to put up much of a fight, and a gunshot might alert others. He charged the woman, instead, ramming her with his shoulder and driving her to the ground.

He rolled away from her and sprang to his feet. Amazingly, the old woman did likewise. They faced off, the woman’s blue nightie hiked up, revealing too much dead flesh, even in the darkness. She kept her weight placed firmly on the stub of her right leg. Her no-color hair had come undone, hanging in her face and making her look like a wild animal rather than the grandmother she had probably been.

She cackled and lunged at him, but he stepped aside, easily avoiding her arthritic claws.

“I’m going to eat you up, tender little boy,” she hissed, her voice like a creaking door.

“I’m tougher than I look,” Stu answered, inwardly scolding himself for his action-movie comeback.

The woman snatched at Stu’s face, and he leaned back to avoid her hand. “Why don’t you go on? I don’t have to kill you.”

“I’m dead already. Been dead since that night that didn’t end.” She wiped at her mouth with a bony wrist. “I’m hungry all the time.”

She moved closer, and Stu fingered the gun inside his coat.

“I ate my granddaughter’s heart,” she whispered. “I wear her blood on my gown. I can smell it still.”

“Go on,” Stu said. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

“I want you to shoot me, you shit!”

Stu jumped backward, biting back a scream.

“I don’t sleep anymore. All I do is crave.” She moved closer, then closer still.

Stu stepped backward. How could he be so frightened of an old woman? He pressed his back to the block wall of the market.

“I want to taste you.” She clapped her insanely perfect set of dentures together—
clap! click!
—and grabbed the front of his coat, yanking his face to hers. She threaded her gnarled fingers around his scarf and began to twist.

The soft knit tightened, and Stu was quickly fitted with a pink noose. He placed his hands over the old woman’s and tried to unwrap her fingers, but they were like steel. He lifted her and drove her small body against the wall. Her shrill laughter hurt his ears. Stu rammed her against the wall again, sending the woman’s top set of dentures from her mouth, leaving a rictus hole in her pruny face. The teeth clattered to the pavement, and Stu stepped on them, crunching them like old bones beneath his heel. He slipped and fell backward, dragging the old woman down with him in a funky cloud of rancid breath.

She tightened her grip on his scarf. His breath came shallower, and he worried he was going to black out. No matter how hard he tried, he wasn’t budging her fingers from their death grip on his scarf, so he grabbed a double handful of her thin, brittle hair. He yanked her head back until her face pointed straight up toward the black sky. Her tongue whipped around in her gaping mouth. She howled again.

Stu struggled to his feet, pulling the old woman up with him. She felt weightless in his panic, a bag of thin branches encased in a wrinkled, screaming sack.

Still barely able to breathe, he twisted her head around as though on a swivel atop her scrawny neck. Bones cracked with a sickening noise, and Stu groaned softly, nauseous, but he continued to wrench her head around until she faced the opposite direction.

She stopped howling and finally loosened her hold on Stu’s scarf.

Stu shoved her away, and she slipped to the ground where she writhed like a broken animal, gown pulled up, exposing her fish-belly white legs, her face to the sky, her chest to the pavement. Her white eyes drilled into his, and she began to spew a line of curses in what sounded like German.

Stu loosened the scarf and sucked in a long, delicious breath, waking his starved lungs. He brought his foot up and drove his heel down into the old woman’s hateful face repeatedly. She finally stopped cursing and fell motionless.

Blood covered his shoes and pants legs. For a moment, he stood doubled over, his hands planted on his knees, trying to calm himself. A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, sending him nearly off the ground in a new round of horror.

“Sorry, man. You all right?” Ken asked.

“Y-yes. I think so.”

“What happened?”

“An old lady just kicked my ass.”

Chapter 37

Folkestone, Kent, UK

The house seemed hollow without Finn’s booming voice and good-natured banter. Worse, Melanie felt cold without Tomas’s protective presence. His absence left an emptiness in her. She only prayed it would be short-lived.

She stoked the fire until it blazed, then sat beside Christopher on the floor. Together, they raced his tiny Matchbox cars along the rug.

Christopher blew between his small lips, making engine sounds. His red pickup truck rammed into Melanie’s blue Ford sedan, and he cried, “I win. You’re dead, Melanie!”

“I suppose I am,” Melanie said.

From the kitchen, Colleen called, “Melanie? Could you join me for a moment?”

“Of course,” Melanie answered, then planted a kiss on the top of Christopher’s head. “Be right back.”

The kitchen was toasty, and the rich scent of skillet brownies filled the air. “I’m still not comfortable with cooking with wood. I’ve no control over the heat.” Colleen tentatively inserted a knife into the middle of the brownies. It came out gooey with undercooked batter. “Or the lack of heat, I should say.”

“Can I help?” Melanie asked. Even in her condition, Colleen didn’t allow Melanie to help nearly enough. It didn’t take a psychology student to see why, however. Turning her kitchen over to someone else was a signal she was giving up, that the illness was winning.

“Let’s have a nip,” Colleen said. She stood on tiptoe and took two small glasses from a high cupboard. She filled both with Bailey’s Irish Cream and brought them over to the big butcher-block dinner table. “Sit down and talk to me. It’ll pass the time easier.”

Melanie sat and took a sip of the creamy liqueur. “Should you be drinking?”

“Why not? It’s not going to kill me. I’ve had this bottle for a year. The nausea that came with the chemo didn’t allow for much of anything but clear broth. And that was on good days.” She adjusted the oil lantern that sat on the table between them.

The brighter light created harsh lines on her thin face. Melanie didn’t want to stare, but it was difficult not to. She imagined the woman Colleen might have been only a year ago—plump, boisterous, equally at home in a pub or classroom. With her illness, she seemed a shell, her skin colorless, her inch-long hair a wispy gray. Her bony shoulders filled out her denim blouse no better than a clothes hanger.

“Never imagined we’d return to the eighteenth century,” Colleen said, taking a drink. “Of course, the way the world was going, perhaps it’s for the best. A clean slate and all that.”

“Maybe.” Melanie’s hand shook when she raised her glass. After a long drink, she placed the glass back on the table, then clutched her hands together nervously.

Colleen placed a cold hand on top of Melanie’s and squeezed gently. “They’ll be fine, dear. Tomas is very smart, and so is my Finn. They’ll be careful. Neither of us would have made it this long otherwise, would we?”

“I suppose not.” She thought about the cell phone that sat useless in her coat pocket. She had never been a fan of the constant ties to communication, but she missed her phone. The men hadn’t been gone very long, but just the ability to hear Tomas’s voice whenever she wanted would have brought a certain amount of calmness.

Melanie caught Colleen watching her and felt her face grow warm. She dropped her gaze to the table.

“You love him very much,” Colleen said.

“He doesn’t feel the same about me.”

“Does he know?”

Melanie shrugged. “All I know is he sees a little girl when he looks at me.”

Colleen fetched the bottle of Bailey’s and refilled their glasses. “You have to give him time. Good men often fight within their hearts over what they perceive as right and wrong.” She laughed, her eyes glistening in the lamplight. “And anyway, the world is hardly filled with romance lately, is it?”

Melanie nodded.

“But he should know,” Colleen said. “Our days are growing short. There isn’t enough time left to be coy. Do you want things to be left unsaid, if something were to happen?”

Melanie shook her head. She didn’t want to think of such things, but realistically, she knew it was inevitable. Luck would eventually run out. She only hoped they had enough luck to get them through another day.

Colleen patted Melanie’s hand again. “I know you don’t want to hear these things, Melanie. But take it from a person who knows firsthand how fragile time is. I share everything with Finn now. I must. I want him to know he’s loved. If you love Tomas, you need to open your heart and let him see. No one’s going to hold it against you.”

Melanie smiled. The woman was right. She would probably make a fool of herself, but Tomas needed to know how she felt. Many times over the past few years, she’d discussed boys, and eventually men, with Tomas. Sometimes she cried on his shoulder, but most often, she complained. Nobody had ever measured up because she always compared them to Tomas. And he never knew. She finished her drink and poured herself another.

In the other room, Christopher sang a nursery rhyme.

***

The snow lay unblemished by footprints. Nobody had been down the street in quite a while. Wind whistled between the tall, narrow houses, the sound almost mournful. Perhaps the village was mourning for all it had lost—the laughter, the work, the love. It had been a quaint place, and it reminded Tomas very much of home. Holiday decorations hung from lampposts in tatters, flapping in the breeze like raggedy banners. A hungry-looking housecat darted in front of them, stopping long enough to hiss brazenly at the horses, its silver eyes reflecting Finn’s flashlight beam, uncomfortably similar to the eyes of the Ragers. A wooden sign carrying the legend “Savills-Humphreys Estate Agents” swung from a brass post, squeaking like the door of a haunted house.

“The doctor’s office is up on the left,” Finn shouted over the wind. Snow peppered his stubbly cheeks, making him look like Father Christmas.

Tomas nodded. Despite the layers of clothing, he was stiff with cold. All he wanted was to be back at the farmhouse, in front of the fire with his son. And Melanie. The girl didn’t realize what a comfort she had become to him.

Finn pulled up in front of a row of shops, all apparently untouched since the Solstice. He dismounted clumsily, rifle in hand, and headed toward the entrance of a tiny emergency clinic. Tomas followed, an empty satchel over one shoulder and carrying the machete like a fool in a grindhouse movie. He was anxious to be out of the plain view of anyone who might be looking.

Finn tried the doorknob and found the door locked. He smashed the window with the butt of his gun. Reaching inside, he unlocked the door and shoved it open.

Tentatively, Stu followed Finn inside, both training their lights all around, afraid of what they couldn’t see, and yet afraid of what they might see.

“Let’s find those drug cabinets first,” Finn said.

Tomas split from Finn and stepped into a closet-sized examining room. Kneeling, he shined his light into a shallow cabinet and packed his satchel with bandages, gauze, antiseptic, and suture kits. He was well aware that even the smallest infection might spell the end for any of them. A nick from shaving or the slip of a lid from a can of beans could conceivably kill.

Finn called from down the narrow corridor, his voice echoing rather jovially, “Down here, Tom. I’ve hit the bloody jackpot.”

Tomas found Finn inside a small storeroom. The door to one large cabinet hung broken and attached by one wrapped hinge. Finn laughed and held up an open vial. “Check this out.”

Instead of tablets or pills, the vial contained about a dozen small, handmade cigarettes. “Is medical marijuana legal here?”

“No,” Finn said, “but I think Colleen might appreciate it. I know I do. You want to take a few?”

“Not much of a smoker. Enjoy.”

“I’m sure I will.” Finn winked. “I also found the Seconal… just in case.”

Tomas inventoried the nearby shelves and scooped bottles of antibiotics into his bag, followed by various pain medications and sleep aids. Then he glanced into the previously locked cabinet and found a bottle of barbiturates. Saying a silent prayer, he slipped the bottle into his coat. Shouldering the bag, he moved out of the claustrophobic storeroom. A low flame of panic had settled into the pit of his stomach. He felt they had been gone for hours, but when he checked his watch, it had only been just over two hours.

“We should go. The girls shouldn’t be alone for too long,” he said, his voice sharper than he intended.

“You’re right,” Finn agreed.

Bracing himself for the brutal cold, Tomas stepped out onto the pitch-dark street.

Automobiles sat abandoned, snow piled high on the roofs, hoods, and windshield. If someone was inside any of them, Tomas would never know. Leading the horses, they trekked up the street on foot. Finn grumbled about the cold and something about his ears becoming numb through his toboggan, but most of his words were taken by the wind.

A small BP service station and food mart sat on the corner about twenty meters ahead.

Finn asked, “Think we can get anything out of those pumps?”

“The pumps, no. But I can draw some out of the tanks below,” Tomas answered. “Hopefully.”