“How much longer?” Melanie asked.
“An hour—two, tops, if I keep this speed and we don’t hit any problems,” Michael replied.
“They could be okay, right? I mean, the horde could be just around the next bend for all we know,” she said, her words sounding forced and disbelieving.
“They could,” I said as I stared grimly out the window.
“We’ll be there soon. It will be fine. The horde will be slow, we’ll catch up to them. Maybe we can take them out before they even get there,” Michael replied without taking his eyes off the road, his sole concentration on stopping the truck from skidding and crashing into a tree.
“They’re not helpless. They have help. Matty is there, he can shoot. Susan is a mean shot too.” Melanie began checking her guns, though I knew it was more to keep her hands busy than anything else.
I felt the same; the restlessness that ran through my body—urging me to do something, to stop feeling so fucking helpless—was nauseating.
“They have Nina, she can fight,” I said, wishing I had taken the time to show her more with the katana. Maybe show her how to shoot. Because she was great with a knife, a katana, a machete, but her shooting skills were terrible, and that would mean she was going to be in the thick of it. Hand-to-hand fighting. I swallowed hard, feeling even worse.
“Nova is there. Nothing will happen while Nova is there,” Michael said matter-of-factly.
“And Zee, and James,” I added.
It helped. It helped a lot. Listing off the people that would be useful in the fight, thinking of the weapons that they would use, the skills required. Of course there was still a hole in it all—and that hole was us. We weren’t the superheroes of the group, but with a huge horde attack, our presence would be sorely missed. If we could get back and warn them, prepare them, they would be fine. The group had gotten lax with security; we were so far up and out of the way that it was easy to. The booby traps surrounding the place kept most of the zombies away from the fences, and the ones that did get close were easy to take out. But a huge horde would push through those small defenses easily.
“Can you not go any faster?” I asked, my voice filled with desperation.
“Hold on,” Michael replied.
The truck moved quicker; the skidding it was doing was scary as shit, but I didn’t care. The thought of Nina dying, of my friends being eaten alive, was scarier. I trusted Michael to control the truck. I trusted that he would get us there in time to help those people.
The base was a perfect place to hole up in an apocalypse—as long as there were enough people to man it. And there weren’t, not by a long shot. Every trip out left a bigger and bigger hole. If one of us never made it back, or someone was injured, it affected everyone and everything. I felt sick. Worry drenched me from the inside and soaked me to my core. I didn’t believe we were the saving grace of all plans, but we were three of the best fighters and we weren’t there.
We drove in silence for over an hour, our thoughts consumed with worry and anxiety about what we would be greeted with. I knew that both Michael and Melanie were praying as much as I was, with every mile that passed, that we would run into the horde and overtake them. That we would get to the base before the inevitable attack hit. That there would be enough time to warn our friends and get everyone to safety, or at least be prepared for the slaughter. But with each mile that passed, and no signs of the horde, our hopes dwindled more and more.
As we came around the final bend toward the base, our hearts froze and we collectively held our breaths. The horde had definitely been there. The ground was stained with dried blood and gore, the slow trudge of their collective footsteps leaving a trail of grime behind. The muddy grass on either side of the road was trampled, a shoe or two left behind from a bumbling zombie. I wound down my window, and the smell of their rot hit me. They had been here recently, or maybe they were still there.
The silence that clung thickly in the air dashed my hopes for seeing anything good as we entered the base. We stopped outside the main guard post and sadness beat at me with a heavy hand. The insides of the windows were splashed with blood, and bloodied handprints smeared across the door that swung open and banged every once in a while against the side of the small hut. I wondered who had been on guard today. Who it was that we had lost to this attack? Had they had chance to radio up to the main base and warn them before they were swarmed?
We drove further into the base, the road covered with the same telltale stains leading up to the main gate. As we came up to the main drag and saw the metal gates collapsed and lying flat against the ground, we all knew that it was over. The air wasn’t filled with gunshots or screams, the moans of zombies, or cries for help. It was silent, a slow breeze drifting across a quiet base filled with our nightmares.
Any hopes we had still clung to were crushed as we drove over the gate and pulled the truck to a stop in the center of the main square. We watched in silence as the horror that was now manifested into something real and visceral turned their heads to us, and our friends, now dead and reanimated growled and stumbled toward us.
“No,” Melanie whispered as the woman that was Susan dropped the body part she had just been gnawing on and growled, baring bloodied and broken teeth. Her gait was staggering and clumsy as she kept her gaze fixed on us. “No,” Melanie whispered again.
There weren’t many there. Certainly no horde remained, just the destruction and devastation it had left, a stark reminder that nothing and no one was ever safe. People lay twitching as they let go and died; some zombies continued to eat, and others were hungry for fresh meat.
Michael turned off the truck, the few dead growling angrily at the sound of the brakes squeaking. “Single shots. Hand-to-hand, if you can. We can’t waste anything. Once we’ve taken care of business, we search for any survivors.”
His words were clipped and authoritarian, and I stared at him in envy. How could he keep it together when everyone we knew was most likely dead? He met my gaze, and I knew. I saw myself in his expression. Because he had been through this before. And we would go through this again. And again. And again. This was our life. This was the cycle. And it was never-ending. With that thought I gritted my teeth and swallowed down my fears. These people still needed our help, even if that help was simply giving them peace.
“Let’s get to work,” I said grimly, and opened the door.
Melanie climbed out after me, and together we moved toward what was once Susan. She took care of Susan without hesitation, a single stab to the forehead to put her down. Melanie closed Susan’s lids and stood back up, her expression blank.
I listened as a shot rang out to my left, and I moved toward a body still twitching on the ground. I looked down upon Becky’s tortured face, her mouth opening and closing in pain, blood trailing lazily out of the corner. Her eyes stared up at me, clouding over even as I watched, as the virus that tore through the dead engulfed her. Her mouth closed, and then snapped back open, and a low growl erupted from her throat right before I stabbed my blade into her forehead and put her at peace.
I looked up, noticing that Michael and Melanie were each dealing with their own deaders. Those zombies seemed older, more weather-worn even from this distance, and I was grateful that they weren’t more people I knew. We were close to the hospital, and I prayed that Nina and Emily would be inside. Nina would find Emily at all costs; she wouldn’t let anything happen to her, even at her own expense.
I gulped and moved toward the door, praying to find it locked. Sweat trickled down my face and stung my eyes, and I rubbed it away with my sleeve.
My hand rested upon the cold metal handle, and I looked back to find Michael and Melanie behind me, giving me cover. I saw in their eyes that they knew what I was praying for, knew what I was hoping to find when I pressed down upon that handle. And I saw their disappointment as the handle turned easily and the door swung open.
I turned back, looking inside and smelling the familiar stench of death and decay waft out to me. My gut churned and my heart sank, but I gritted my teeth and pulled out my handgun. Because I wouldn’t let them suffer a moment longer than they needed to. But this was one job I wouldn’t be able to deal with up close. I would not be able to put these people out of their misery with a knife. There needed to be distance put between what they had become, and what I would always remember them. But I would do it.
Our footsteps were almost silent as we moved along the darkened corridor. The lights blinked on and off every once in a while, and every time my nerves tensed as I waited for something or someone to jump out of the darkness. As we reached the main room, Michael moved ahead of me.
He pushed open the main door quietly, the long, whining sound of the hinges making us all tense simultaneously. The lights continued to blink, and the starkness of the white walls reflecting against the red splashed across them was startling. As a group we pushed inside, and my heart sank and my stomach burned with loss.
What used to be Alek looked up from what he was doing, his pale and unfocused eyes a huge contrast to his dark skin. He growled and moved toward us, his fingers still wrapped around the piece of bloody meat in his palm.
Meat—it was the only way to think of it now. Not flesh or human. Not friend or foe. But meat. Because if I considered it as anything else I might just lose it. He growled again, the noise sounding pained in the silence.
I stepped forward, moving around Michael. “I’ve got this.”
I raised my gun and took a breath. I stared down the barrel, watching as my friend came closer to me, the look of hate and hunger on his face unnerving. I felt the guilt eating away at me. This was his nightmare, the one thing he feared more than anything, and I hadn’t been here to help stop it. I had convinced him to leave the Forgotten and come with me, and this was where his journey had ended. It was all my fault.
“Mikey,” Michael said cautiously as Alek got closer.
“I said I’ve got this.” My voice sounded foreign to my ears. The words were mine, but I didn’t recognize the voice. It was thick and choked, as if the words were being squeezed out of my too-tight throat. This wasn’t me; I didn’t let things like this bother me. I got on with the job.
I got things done.
Alek shambled closer, his head cocked to one side, and I saw the bite mark on his neck. The veins and muscle were shredded, a gaping hole left where something had been torn away. God, I hoped it hadn’t been Emily that had done this to him. Nothing could be worse than being killed by someone you loved, being turned into what you feared most by the thing you loved most dearly. My stomach creased, feeling like it was folding in on itself.
“Mikey, man…”
I raised my chin, put my gun away, and pulled out my knife. I stepped forward, one hand gripping Alek’s shirt, and I stared into his eyes as I plunged my knife through his forehead. The light went out immediately, his body becoming a dead weight in my arms. I pulled my knife back, ignoring the small gush of black blood that sprayed out, hitting me in the face, and I gently laid him on the ground.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him, and stood back up.
I moved toward whatever he had been eating, my eyes staring down into the bloody mess that was once Emily. It took me a minute of searching to distinguish what was what, and then I collapsed to my knees with a loud groan.
I heard Michael and Melanie quickly come up behind me, their footsteps sounding far away, and I heard their gasps. Emily’s innocent face stared up at me, one eye completely missing and the other pale, death-filled eye blinking. A quiet, breathy growl was coming from the place where a throat should have been. She was barely recognizable—her body, her face, her limbs. Her features were all but missing, just bone and gore remained; but as I stared into that one pale blinking eye and felt a hand reaching for me, grasping onto my clothing, I knew who it was.
Nina had to be dead, because she would never let anything happen to Emily-Rose.
I stood up, looking down on the young girl that Nina had protected so fiercely—the girl that Nina had risked her life for on so many occasions—and I staggered backwards, shaking my head, the knife clattering from my hands.
They were all gone. All of them.
“I’ve got this, Mikey,” I heard Melanie say, only moments before the soft growls ceased.
“How many?”
“Fifty-five so far,” I said to Zee.
We had found both Matty and Zee trapped inside Zee’s office. The door was solid metal and locked from the inside, with only a single barred window. They couldn’t get out, but equally, nothing could get in.
He shook his head sadly, his gaze falling down to his leg. We’d found the odd survivor here and there, hidden in attics and basements or locked inside buildings. There weren’t many, though. Most people had died fighting. Or running. A lot were still missing, and I hoped that meant that they had made it out alive and were on the run. Some were both lucky and unlucky—like Zee. He’d had his leg bitten into so many times it had been just a mess of pulp and bone. Lucky for him, Matty had been on hand to chop it off and stop the bleeding, leaving him with a bloody stub above the knee. He’d lost so much blood I was surprised he’d lasted, but the man was tough and he wasn’t going down without a fight.
Jessica had been trapped in the attic of her small house. Zombies were still converged inside her living room, so she hadn’t been able to get down. I noticed the small swell of her stomach, cringing at the thought of new life being born into this hateful world. I wanted to yell at her for being so irresponsible, but now wasn’t the time. I still hadn’t found Nina, and I couldn’t decide whether I felt better for not knowing, or worse.
Matty stormed into the small room, his bow slung over his back, his clothes still bloody from his amputation of Zee’s leg.
“The gate’s back up, but if that horde comes back, we’re completely screwed.” He breathed through his nose hard, and it was obvious that his next words were not ones that anyone would want to hear. “I don’t think we can stay here anymore. Not unless we get more manpower.”
“That’s not going to happen, is it?” Zee said, though he wasn’t asking a question. “So how many are alive? And how many are travel-worthy?” He pushed himself up to a sitting position, his face pulled tight in pain.
“Twelve. Two aren’t going to make it,” Matty said darkly. His eyes flitted to me and then away.
“We still have people missing—Nina, Nova, James.” I raised my chin in defiance of his silent accusation that they were all dead.
I sounded desperate and weak, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t accept that she was gone. Not yet. Nina was a survivor, and until I found her body I would continue to believe that she had made it out of this nightmare alive. I watched Zee’s face twitch, and at first I assumed it was because he was in pain. Then he caught my gaze and looked away uncomfortably and I steadied my resolve to hear the worst.
“She’s dead?” I asked quietly, my jaw grinding over and over until my teeth felt painful. “Did you see it for yourself?”
He looked back at me. “She’s not here,” he replied.
“Then where is she?”
“She and Nova…” He cleared his throat. “Take a seat, Mikey, this is going to take some explaining.” He lay back down, the effort to stay sitting up too much.
But I couldn’t sit down. My arms and legs were restless, energy bouncing through them. “Just tell me. Is she alive?” I ground out.
Matty stayed where he was, looking as frustrated as I was, and I was glad to see that this was all going to be news to him, too. I wasn’t sure how I would react if everyone was in on some huge conspiracy.
“I can’t be certain exactly where she is, but she left here with Nova and a truck full of weapons about the same time you did. She was alive the last time I saw her.” He shook his head, his features pulling tight.
The room spun as I thought about what he was saying, but I couldn’t get my words out.
“Where was she going?” Matty asked for me.
I decided right there and then that if she left because of me, because of how I had treated her, that I’d put a bullet through my head that very minute. I couldn’t live with myself if she died because I was a total screwup.
Zee took a deep breath. “This is where it gets complicated.”
“My whole fucking life is complicated, man. Now tell me.” My hand twitched on my gun. If he didn’t tell me this minute I was going to blow his damn brains out, consequences be damned.
“She went to find a pregnant woman by the name of Hilary. The woman is infected with…” he looked away, “…zombie sperm.”
“Excuse me? Did you just say zombie sperm?” I asked slowly with a humorless grunt of laughter. I looked across at Matty and saw he had the same confused-as-hell expression on his face. And that was good, because it at least meant I wasn’t the only insane person around here that had heard the words “zombie” and “sperm” in the same sentence.
Zee nodded and continued. “There’s more. We don’t know if the child growing within her is zombie or human, but Nina and Nova felt that they needed to find out before it was too late.” Zee had composed himself enough that I could sense his own dissatisfaction with everything he was telling me.
I rubbed a hand across the back of my neck. “Before it was too late?” I narrowed my eyes at him, not quite grasping what he was telling me.
Footsteps in the hallway had me turning as a woman came in. She smiled shyly and moved around the side of Zee’s bed, giving him a soft smile.
“I brought you some stronger meds,” she said, and injected them straight into his vein without even bothering to ask.
My eyes traveled down to the small swell of her stomach, and she looked up from what she was doing and defiantly met my gaze head on.
“You?” I whispered out in accusation as the pieces began to slip together.
“Yes, Rachael implanted Jessica with zombie sperm, in the hopes that she would be able to have a child. Jessica can’t have children anymore. She believed this was her only chance to have another,” Zee said uneasily. “We don’t know how the child will…be when it is born. Apparently Rachael had done this before and Nina went to find this other woman, to see what became of her and the child.” Zee’s words were strong and sure, yet his distaste for everything we were talking about was obvious.
Jessica had a hand covering her belly, and she wouldn’t look at me or anyone else in the room. Her face was pale and sickly looking and her guilt was stark, but my relief that Nina hadn’t been at the base when shit had gone down was starker, and more of a priority than this crazy bitch.
“So Nina will be back soon? She’s okay?” I wasn’t asking, I was confirming it to myself. A small smile rose on my face. She was okay. I knew it. I almost fist-bumped the air at the realization, but decided against it.
Matty’s radio crackled to life, and he pressed the button to speak. “What is it?”
“Another one’s gone. I’ve just put him . . . it, down for good,” the voice spoke back solemnly.
“I’m on my way.” Matty spoke into the radio and then tucked it back into the pocket of his cargo pants. “We’ve lost another person. I’ve got to go… Let me know if you need me, if I can help with anything,” he said, sounding uncomfortable, and turned and left.
Matty was a good kid. He was barely twenty-one, but he took everything in his stride. He was alone in this world, had been since day one of the outbreak, but he always seemed so upbeat about everything. I liked the way he fought, and I liked the way he moved on with things quickly, as if this was all perfectly normal. But of course none of this was normal.
I finally slumped into the chair behind me, feeling speechless. There was so much that needed doing around there. So many bodies to burn, so much security that needed fixing. Yet my thoughts would only think about Nina. She was crazy and reckless, a total bitch for the most part, but she was also selfless and kind-hearted. The loss of Emily would kill her—that is, if she made it back here.
“Do you know where she was going?” I asked, looking up at Zee, ignoring the stare of Jessica.
“We need you here, Mikey,” he said sternly, as if he’d read my mind.
I huffed out an annoyed and frustrated breath. “And she’s all I have left now. She might need me too.” I put my head in my hands, my thoughts conflicted.
“We need you,” he said again.
He was right, they did need me here, but I needed
her
here. I was being selfish and reckless, but goddamn it I’d never forgive myself if she didn’t make it back. If I never saw her face again. A stronger man would have listened to his conscience and stayed to help these people—people he had come to care about and see as his friends. But I was clearly not strong; I was weak, and I had to find her regardless of the consequences.
I stood up abruptly, and Zee sat up in his bed with a hiss of pain. He watched me with dark eyes, his mouth set in a grim line. He could give me the grim reaper speech all he wanted. I had made up my mind.
“I’m sorry,” I said firmly, making sure he was fully aware that I wouldn’t be swayed from this decision.
“You can’t leave us,” Jessica murmured. “We need help here.”
“I suggest you keep your mouth shut. This is all your fault,” I snapped, and I found some sick satisfaction in watching her flinch.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she brushed past me and quickly left the room.
Zee nodded, accepting that I was going to find my girl regardless of the consequences.
“Does anyone else know?” I asked curiously.
“About?” Zee didn’t meet my eye, so I waited in stony silence for his reply. He knew exactly what I was talking about, and I wasn’t about to play this game with him anymore. He looked up at me, and I realized that I didn’t see a leader anymore, but a coward. He had let Nina and Nova go on the hunt for this woman, and he had kept it all a secret so he wouldn’t be held accountable if anything went wrong. He huffed out an annoyed breath when I didn’t respond.
“You mean about Jessica and the other pregnant woman? Just one other person knows.” He spoke carefully, but he didn’t need to. I finally understood exactly what Nina had been keeping from me.
I smiled tightly. “Michael.”
Zee nodded, and I felt myself bristle with irritation. He had known all along what was going on. “Does he know that Nina went to find this other woman?” I ground out.
“No, he doesn’t.” He paused, sounding uncomfortable. “There’s something else you should probably know: Nova is his sister. Rachael was too.”
“They’re all brother and sisters?” I said in surprise, and then watched the worry flick across Zee’s face. “You don’t want him to know that Nova left with Nina, in case he wants to go find her?”
“We need him here,” Zee replied bluntly. “Just as much as we need you.”
“And what about him? Does he not deserve to know what kind of sick bitch Rachael was? Does he not deserve to try and find his only family?” Irrational anger was pumping through me, but I couldn’t stop it. There were so many secrets, people hiding things from one another, and that sort of shit was killing us all.
“Michael knew about Rachael. He was the one who told Nina that he’d leave if she told anyone else what happened. He didn’t want anyone desecrating her memory.” It was his turn to smile tightly now.
I presumed his words were meant to calm me, to quiet the raging storm that he could see building within me, but they had the opposite effect. I closed my eyes, counted to ten. Then I counted to twenty, then I counted backwards. Hell, I even counted sheep, and then I counted the angry thumping of my heart, but nothing would quiet the fury that I felt, the rage that built inside me until there was no more room and it exploded from me.
I stood up, my fists clenching and unclenching at my sides. This arrogant asshole—Michael—had destroyed the one good thing in my life, and now she had gone off on some ridiculous saints’ mission to save some woman she didn’t know. She had lost Emily, she had risked her life, and all because Michael had told her not to tell anyone about his family’s dirty little secret.
I turned and stormed out of the room, letting the door crash harshly against the wall. Somewhere in the distance I heard Zee calling me back, but fuck him, and fuck this place. The corridor was a blur as I raced down it, my anger only growing as I searched for him.
I exited the building and headed toward the hangar where he normally parked all the trucks and stored the ammo. Zee must have called on his radio, because to my left I could see Matty and another man running toward me yelling and waving their hands, but I ignored them both. I entered the hangar and saw Michael right away. He was unloading the truck we had just come back in. He looked up at me, his eyes widening as he took in my angry expression.
“You okay, man?” he called out.
But I didn’t hear what else he had to say as I charged him, knocking him flat on his back. The air left his lungs in a whoosh and I pinned him beneath me with my thighs and began planting fist after fist into his face.
“What…the…hell?” he yelled between each pound.
He bucked, trying to get me off him, and after the third attempt he managed it, throwing me to the side. He was up on his feet and kicking me in my ribs before I could stop it. I yelled out in pain as my body flew sideways and crashed into the wheel of the truck, the air leaving me in a great gust. I coughed, trying to draw air up into my lungs as he launched another kick and hit the same spot in my ribs, making me want to throw up.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He kicked again, this one going into my face, and I felt my teeth clash together and the copper taste of blood fill my mouth.