The groans were minimal, and generally coming from the random heads littered across the road—the ones that were still in their eternal torment, that hadn’t had a bullet or blade through their brain and so continued to hunger on, despite their lack of bodies (and as such, stomachs to fill with flesh). It didn’t seem to bother them. In fact, they kept on in much their usual way despite their lack of torso. It was both deeply disturbing and hilarious.
Nova had reloaded in the seconds it took for me to dispose of the last deader, and she now had both her guns trained on the men in front of us.
“It’s okay, ladies, no need for any more killing today. We just thought you might need a little help is all,” the first man drawled out. He watched us beneath the peak of his filthy red cap, his jaw twitching beneath a long beard. He lowered his gun, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Certainly not Nova.
“Well, thank you for your assistance, you can be on your way now,” she said calmly.
Her words were steady, but I swear to God I could hear her heartbeat pounding furiously in her chest. I still had my machete in my hands, and that wasn’t much good in a fight from this distance, but there also wasn’t much I could do about it now. I also realized that with all the swinging and stabbing actions, despite it not being my fighting arm, my shoulder wound had eventually opened up, and I was seeping hot, sticky blood down my front and back.
“Looks like your friend there could use some help,” red cap man said with a nod of his head toward me. “You all right there? Did a zed take a bite out of you?”
“Not today,” I replied with as much calm as I could muster from my shaky vocal cords. And really, his words were appropriate—considering a deader had taken a bite out of me yesterday.
“Looks real bad from here,” one of the other men said, and he must have thought I was as dumb as a bunch of rocks if he thought I’d missed the small grin on his face and the shifty look he’d given to his friends.
“Well, it’s not so bad from over here, so you can get going now,” Nova said.
We were at a stalemate, I realized. They weren’t leaving without us, and we weren’t leaving with them. Bodies were going to fall, hearts would stop beating, and blood was going to flow. This was the part I hated the most. Man against man. Why did we have to kill each other when there were already so many other things trying to kill us? Couldn’t we just work as one happy freaking family, for God’s sake?
“I think you should come back with us. We have people that can look after you, treat that wound,” red cap man said, his finger on the trigger of his gun making it painfully obvious that this actually wasn’t a question, but an order.
Well he was shit out of luck, because neither Nova nor I were very good at taking orders.
“What do you think, Nina? Do you want to go with these kind men and get all fixed up?” she asked, a playful lilt to her words while she kept her eyes fixed on her prize. And by “prize” I mean the bearded dude that was about to get his head blown apart the moment he made his move.
“No, ma’am, I’m just fine right here,” I replied tartly.
I wasn’t okay. Not even a little bit. Ignoring the fact that my shoulder was now bleeding heavily again and coating me in blood, I was about a minute away from turning psycho on their asses. Fear had worked its way through me and was now a tiger waiting to be unleashed. I was ready to unload my own special brand of crazy if they as much as
tried
to take me.
Because I would not—could not—go with them. Not only would they make my last days on earth very painful ones, but I would never get to see Emily again. I would never get to say how proud I was of her resilience, and how truly sorry I was for being such a total bitch to her when we first met…and for most of the time after that. I would also never get to tell Mikey that I loved him and explain what had happened with Rachael. I wouldn’t get to say a proper goodbye to him or Emily. And that couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t allow it to. I had to make amends.
The third man—a slim white guy with shaggy hair that clung to his neck like a second collar—grinned, and I knew it was time. I cleared my throat and breathed, readying myself to run behind the truck as quickly as I could. I needed a gun, or close contact with my machete, and right then I had neither.
“We’ve got this, darlin’,” Nova said quietly. And just like that I felt strong and ready.
A gunshot sounded out, making me jump into action, and I ran to the truck, dragging Nova with me. She fired several times as I pulled her away, until finally we were crouched beside our truck and a final gunshot rang out.
Nova quickly looked around the side of the truck and then moved over to me, and I glanced over at her and shook my head.
“You’re smiling,” I noted as calmly as I could.
I dropped to my belly and peeked underneath, not quite sure about what I was seeing—other than lots of dead zombies and someone walking around.
Nova lay down next to me, still grinning. “What are we looking at?”
I turned to her with my best
“what the actual fuck” look. “Were you hit? Did you bang your head? I’m looking for the three men that were just shooting at us, asshole,” I snapped, my voice rising when I knew I should have been keeping quiet.
“They weren’t shooting at us, Nina,” she replied with a grin.
I looked back under the truck, but all I could see was the bodies on the ground, a mass of limbs, both rotten and not, and someone walking in between them. The feet stopped and a second later another shot rang out and a zombie body shook from the force of the bullet entering its skull.
“Well who were they shooting at then?” I whisper-shouted, pulling out my gun.
I was a terrible shot, but maybe I could shoot a foot from here. That would definitely give me an advantage.
“They’re dead,” Nova said with a chuckle, and sat up. “That was your boy out there.” She stood up, and like an asshole she pointed at me and laughed. “You look ridiculous—get your ass up of the ground.”
I looked from her to the feet coming toward me, and then back to her before slowly standing. The footsteps came with a soft crunch of gravel underfoot, and then he was there.
Mikey.
His face as handsome as I remembered it and his gun poised. There was a small curve to his full lips as he took me in and his dark eyes soaked me up.
“Where there’s trouble, there’s Nina,” he said playfully, but his words were thick with emotion.
“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth,” Nova laughed, and threw her arms around him. “You took your time,” she mumbled against his neck.
I continued to stare in shock and amazement, and he, despite Nova having thrown herself at him, was still staring at me. She finally pulled back, slapped his cheek playfully, and flounced away, leaving Mikey and me alone.
My mouth opened, and then closed again. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, now that it came down to it, so I said nothing. I stared, and the more I stared the more embarrassed I got by my own silence. It was Mikey who finally broke the silence.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I squeezed out through my tight throat.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Aren’t I always?”
He chuckled. “Yeah.”
Mikey took a hesitant step forward, one hand moving to the back of his neck, where he rubbed along his hairline—a gesture so familiar to me that my heart panged at the sight of it. I had missed him—his movements, his voice, his kind eyes that didn’t stare at me like I was a horrible person. His beard was longer, his shoulders ever so slightly broader. He’d been working out more in our separation and it was paying off. Back at the base there was always something to do, but when your job was done, you were left with time on your hands.
“What are you doing here?” I asked incredulously.
The words came out harsh and mean, and I rushed to correct myself, because besides the fact that he’d just saved my life—again—I was ridiculously happy to see him, and the sappy female side of me, hoped that he had come for me.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just in shock, I guess.”
“I was just passing, saw there was trouble, and like the good Samaritan that I am, I stopped to help. I didn’t even know it was you until Nova stood up,” he said with amusement.
“Oh,” I replied, my heart sinking.
“Nina?”
“What?”
“I was joking.” He smiled at me.
“Oh!”
“I came for you, Nina.”
Without another thought, I rushed forward and threw myself at him. I ignored the sarcastic eye-roll I wanted to give myself for being such a chick about it, and I ignored the pain in my shoulder and stomach, because the song playing in my heart just then was so much more important to listen to.
Vomit! Okay, okay, it’s sappy, but it was my sappy, and I needed it—wanted it—and was grasping at it with both hands, desperate for more of it. So freaking sue me.
“I’ve missed you so much.” He spoke against my neck, and I almost sobbed with relief at those words.
Holy shit, I was a walking, talking female cliché, but right then I didn’t care. All I cared about was that he was here, he had come for me, despite everything that had happened, he cared enough to come and find me.
For the first time in so many years—since Ben had died—I finally felt that someone truly cared about me. Tears escaped my eyes no matter how much I tried to stem them, and I eventually relented and sobbed against his neck, needing him so desperately—needing his arms to support me, his kisses to make me feel whole again, and his words to soothe my broken soul.
His hands moved to my face and he pulled me away from his neck, giving himself just enough room to press his mouth against mine. He kissed me hungrily, as if we’d never kissed before, and I kissed him back with just as much ferocity, devouring his kisses and feeling constantly hungry for more of them and more of him. I would never have my fill of him, or such a profound feeling of relief like the one I had right then.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled against his mouth.
And I was. I was sorry that I hadn’t told him the truth, that I hadn’t trusted him to keep that truth to himself, and I was sorry that I had been too stubborn to realize it. Trust went both ways, and while I had been deliriously angry with the fact that he hadn’t trusted me, I equally hadn’t trusted him.
“No, don’t apologize, that’s my job. I was a total dick to you. I know that, I know I ruined what we had. That’s on me.”
I shook my head, but he pulled away and looked carefully into my face, his eyes burning with intensity.
“None of us are perfect in this world, we’re both far from it, but when you find someone worth dying for, you have to believe that they’re worth living for too. You are worth living and dying for, and I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
“I’m sorry too.” I blinked away the tears and smiled at him. “I have so much to tell you. I want to tell you everything.”
“I know it all—Rachael, the baby, everything. You were doing the right thing, I know that, and again, I’m so sorry.” He pressed another rough kiss against my mouth and I clung to him with both hands. “God damn, woman, you’ve been driving me crazy. It’s like you’re living in my head. Everywhere I turned you were there—or at least the ghost of you.” He laughed, but I could hear the strain in his laugh, and feel how desperately he meant those words and needed me to understand them. “I’ve been such an asshole.” He shook his head and pulled me close again, his beard scratching against my neck once more.
“It was both of us,” I relented. “Not just you and not just me.”
I felt him nod. “Fine, I’ll meet you halfway,” he chuckled. “You never let up, do you?”
“Never,” I replied, and hugged him tightly, my fingers digging into his sides. “Never.”
Mikey took my hand and led me around to the front of the truck. We found Nova picking through the dead. It took the term pickpocketing to a whole new level, but it was a necessary task. She grabbed discarded weapons and anything useful from any of the many pockets, and looked up at us with a huge grin.
“You two good now?” she asked, checking one of the men’s guns for bullets. “Because I can’t stand any more of her sulky bullshit.”
“I was not sulking.” I turned to Mikey. “Seriously, I was not sulking.”
“Yeah, we’re good.” He looked down at me with a soft smile that reached all the way up to his eyes, and then his face dropped into something darker. I could see the tension in his features.
“What is it? What’s happened?” I asked numbly, my gut filling with dread.
Nova came toward us, looking as worried as I felt. “Spit it out, Mikey,” she barked out bluntly.
“The base was attacked,” he said just as abruptly, the words sounding painful to him.
“The Forgotten!” I snarled angrily. “They found us.”
I had put them to the back of mind, refusing to think about Fallon and the evil scum he worked with. But suddenly it felt like my ignorance had gotten everyone killed. Because Alek had told me and Mikey that Fallon wouldn’t stop looking for us. We had been warned and we had ignored the warning. We had hoped that we had escaped him, that we had put enough distance between us the Forgotten and, but we had been wrong.
Mikey shook his head quickly. “No, it wasn’t them.”
“Fallon?” I asked.
“No, it was the dead. A huge horde, by the looks of it.” He swallowed loudly and looked away, taking a deep breath before looking back at me. “Nina, I don’t know how to say this.”
My world froze, my heart pausing on a beat as I waited in anticipation. He watched me, choosing his words as carefully as possible, and I knew it was bad—so bad that he couldn’t say the treacherous words that he knew would break my heart. He shook his head, his nostrils flaring, and he opened his mouth to speak.
“So don’t,” I said abruptly, my eyes like fire. “Don’t say it, don’t tell me. Please.”
Because I knew, I could see it in his face. I could already hear it in his tone. And it would break me, break every single part of me and everything I was. I couldn’t face it—his words, the pain I knew they would bring me.
“Please, Mikey,” I pleaded, my chest feeling tight and painful. I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to run away from him and his words. He offered me no comfort now, because I knew he was about to crush me with his words.
Mikey shook his head and looked forlornly to the floor. “She’s gone, Nina. I’m so sorry,” he whispered, his words getting stuck in his throat. Because he knew that he had to say them, no matter how much I begged him not to, because if he didn’t I would never accept it, I would never truly believe that she could be gone and I wouldn’t get to see her ever again.
The words left his mouth and I heard them. Hell, I even felt them. Like tiny splinters, they cut me—small shards of fine yet deadly glass embedding themselves in my skin, burying deep inside my flesh and tearing me apart from the inside out. I heard his words and I saw his own pain, telling me that Alek was gone also, but I’d left, I’d checked out. I couldn’t think about what he was saying. I couldn’t think of the sweet girl that was now dead. The woman that she would never get to become, the future that she would no longer have. And the things that she would never experience.
Mikey’s arms were around me before I collapsed to my knees, and he pulled me up against his body even while I thumped manically against his chest, blaming him for my loss, for her death, and for the fact that the world just sucked so much ass right then.
I cried, I wailed, and I sobbed. I ached because of the hole that her loss had already left inside of me. It made no sense that I’d never see her face or hear her sweet voice again. And then there was the crushing, soul-destroying guilt that I hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye to her when I came on this stupid, pointless journey with Nova. That was what burned through every part of me. I could never make it up to her.
Somewhere in the fog I heard Nova asking about others from the base—her friends, Michael—and then I heard her join me in my misery at the loss of so many people. She’d lost just as much as me, perhaps more. She had lived with these people for months, grown close to them, defended and protected them, and now they were gone.
I looked up sluggishly through my tear-soaked lashes and saw her pull out her gun and march over to the deaders on the ground. It was senseless and pointless since they were already dead, but wasn’t that the beauty of pain—that there was no understanding of it, no making sense of the way it ate you up like acid and ruined everything, blending it all into one giant blur of throbbing pain?
She shot at the deaders on the ground, turning them to rotten mush with each bullet. It was a waste of ammo and would draw more deaders to us—she knew it, and I knew it—but pain wasn’t reasonable. It didn’t let you think logically, it just was. And I understood it, and I felt her pain, and if I could find the strength, I would have done the same. I would hack and chop and stab and slice away at the dead, because the need to kill and destroy these things—these things that so freely take the lives of our loved ones—was suddenly so mind-consuming that I could hardly breathe from it.
Nova stopped abruptly and dropped to her knees, landing in the pile of sludge and gore that was once a deader. A deader that was once a human being just like her or me, but was now so very far removed from that. As she began to cry I finally found my strength and quickly went to her, falling to my knees in front of her shaking body. We leaned into one another, holding each other close as we cried, letting our misery add kindling to our already raging anger. Because someone, or something, would have to pay for our losses.
*
I hiccupped through another angry, retching sob and took a long swallow of water from my bottle before taking a steadying breath. I felt dehydrated from all the crying, but it was needed, and I couldn’t have stopped myself even if I had wanted to. A part of me realized that it wasn’t just Emily-Rose I was crying over, though of course her loss was the greatest loss of all. But it was the years that had gone by, the hurt that had been building up inside me. My body was overflowing with pain, but I felt ready now to take on whatever I needed to, to get her some retribution. To get some vengeance for Emily.
Nova was carefully patching my bite back up, since all my machete-swinging awesomeness had torn it back open. It stung to hell and back, and I could see how worried Mikey was about it. After all, we had both been witness to what bites did to people. I guess we just had to be grateful that the zombie virus was brought on by death and not fluid transference. And Nova had adamantly insisted that despite my crying like a baby over how much she was hurting me, it was not life-threatening.
“So, who else is left?” Nova asked sluggishly, her words sounding rough and raw in her dry throat.
I held my water bottle out to her and she poured a little over her hands to wash them clean of my blood before rubbing them along the rough ground.
“Zee, but he’s in really bad shape—no saying if he’ll actually survive. Michael and Melanie were with me, so they’re okay. Matty and Jessica…” Mikey looked up at me as Jessica’s name fell from his lips. “Did you find anything out? About the other woman?”
A deep shudder wracked my body and I shook my head. “No, it was all pointless. She died, and…and…” I squeezed my eyes shut, the words feeling too traumatic and dirty to leave my treacherous lips.
Mikey reached for my hand, giving it a squeeze of comfort, but it brought none.
“They were both zombies by the time we got there,” Nova explained darkly, and I listened as she lit another cigarette. She didn’t bother to explain whether she meant Hilary and Deacon or Hilary and the baby, and I didn’t care to explain either.
“Fuck,” Mikey muttered. “Fuck!” he repeated, harsher this time. “How long has Jessica got?” he asked.
“Not long. We need to get back to her as soon as we can,” Nova said.
I opened my eyes and looked over to her. “And then what?”
“Then we get that thing out of her.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, staring at me as the smoke left her lips. “We get it out of her anyway we can,” she said, enforcing the situation that we both knew must happen. “I won’t let what happened to Hilary happen to Jessica.”
“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer…”
Mikey jumped to his feet and pulled out his gun. In all the stress of the last hour I had completely forgotten about the crazy pants.
I grabbed his leg. “It’s okay, she’s okay. Well, she’s not
okay
, but she’s not a threat anyways.” I quirked an eyebrow.
Joan jumped down from the truck and danced over to us, and Nova snorted out a dry, humorless laugh.
“Someone needs to actually get her ‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer’ to shut her skinny ass up,” she bit out, sounding almost angry.
I got up as she came closer and I offered her some small semblance of a smile. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do, and given that my world had just crumbled, I was surprised I managed anything at all. “Hey, Crazy Pants, how are you doing?”
“I’m doing wonderful!” She twirled around in a circle happily, and I couldn’t stop the small laugh that escaped my cracked lips.
She’d slept through everything—the attack of the deaders, the killing of the men, and the misery of us finding out we’d lost our loved ones. Her happiness seemed so out of place, yet it was welcome. Because I felt like I was drowning in unhappiness, it was engulfing me and pulling me under, and I could see the same thing happening to Nova.
“So, tell me, what’s for breakfast?” Joan looked over at Mikey and whistled through her gums, because, well, there weren’t a lot of teeth left in her mouth anymore. “Well, hello there, young man.” She licked her lips and winked.
Mikey looked to me, his eyes wide in horror. “Nina?”
Nova laughed, a small sound that slowly built in a full-on crescendo. I joined her, and soon even Crazy Pants was joining in, though I was almost certain she had no idea what she was laughing about, but she laughed as if we were at a stand-up comedy show. Mikey was the only one who didn’t laugh, instead choosing to look plain confused by the mass hysteria that had taken hold of the crazy women in this little group. I didn’t even know why we were laughing, and as my laugh began to tail off, I let out another choking sob.
I got a grip on myself finally and introduced them. “Mikey, this is Joan, also known as Crazy Pants. Crazy Pants, this is Mikey.”
“And is he…you know…single?” she asked from the side of her mouth as if he wasn’t standing right in front of her and listening to everything that she was saying.
I smirked and looked at Mikey. “No, he’s not. He’s with me.”
Mikey smiled back at me, and then I turned back to Joan.
“Besides, your husband would not be a happy man if you went and hooked up with someone new, now, would he?” Never mind the fact that her husband was dead…
Her eyes glistened mischievously. “No, he wouldn’t. Real shame though.”
“Is she for real?” Mikey asked with a bemused smile.
I smiled affectionately at her. “Yeah, she’s for real.”
Nova stood up. “We need to get our shit together and get going back to base. They’re going to need some help securing the place. We’re taking this truck, right?” she said, gesturing to the men’s truck.
“Damn straight we are. It’s the least they can do,” I replied.
“We’re not going back to the base. It’s too badly compromised,” Mikey said, and I think both Nova and I breathed out a sigh of relief at that. I was glad to see that I wasn’t the only emotional wreck around there.
“Where are we going then?” Nova asked with a tight frown.
“We’re going to the mall,” he said, his grin wide and his dimples showing.
“The mall?” both Nova and I said in unison.
“Yeah. Instead of continuing to go back and forth for supplies, we’re going to stay there. Everyone is already on their way there. Or at least they were getting their shit together to leave and head there when I left to find you.” He smiled happily, and I guessed that the mall must have been Mikey’s idea.
“I still don’t see why we can’t go back to the base,” Nova said, though I knew she was relieved about it.
Mikey’s smile dropped and he swallowed. “The base is too big for us to manage. There aren’t enough of us now to keep watch. The gates were pulled down, and there were a lot of breaches.” He paused before continuing. “Besides, I don’t think anyone could stomach staying there now.”
Now
that
I could understand and get behind. I wasn’t sure the mall was a much better option than the base. I mean that was, after all, where Rachael had tried to kill me and I’d discovered the level of crazy I had been traveling with. But I knew it would be so much worse on Nova.
“Is that wise? Will it be safe enough?” I asked, but I didn’t know why I bothered with the question, because it wouldn’t have been decided upon if they didn’t believe it to be safe. So I asked the real question I was pondering: “Nova, are you cool with this?”