Until the End (10 page)

“I lied.” he says eventually, his voice quiet and low. “My sister is dead. She died the first day. Probably in the first hour.” His voice becomes constricted and he stops for a second. “When I fall asleep I see her but she’s never… she’s not herself for long. She changes, becomes one of them, and she just stares at me. She sits in front of me and stares at me with those dead white eyes. And I’m scared of her. I’m ashamed of myself, but I’m so afraid of her.”

I close my eyes and feel a single tear slip out of my eye. I can’t seem to stop them lately.

“Is she why you stayed?” I ask, trying to find a fit for this puzzle piece that’s bothered me.

“Yeah. Everyone else left the building when it first started. I think some people hid in their rooms, but I doubt they stayed long. I was waiting for… her. I was waiting for her to come back from a tour of the campus.”

I swallow then ask quietly. “Did she come back?”

“Yes.” he says, his voice all gravel. “She came back, but she didn’t make it to me. An hour after it started things had gone quiet. Then I heard this commotion downstairs and I knew someone living was being attacked. The zombie at my door, the one you eventually killed, he left to go see what was happening.”

“And it was her?” I whisper, more tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes.

“It was her. By the time I got there, she was gone.”

We stay silent for a long time and I can’t believe I’m sharing with another person like this, that I told him about my mother and that he was willing to open up to me about his sister. We’ve known each other for only a matter of days, but there’s something about facing down death and the end of the human race that builds fast friendships. Jordan is vitally important to me now and I appreciate what a blessing and a burden that is.

“I’m sorry about your sister.” I tell him, wiping my eyes.

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

I turn to look at him again and find him already watching me.

“Go to sleep, Jordan.” I say softly. “I’ll stay with you. I can’t keep the nightmares away, but I swear I won’t leave you alone with them.”

He searches my eyes and a ghost of smile tugs at his lips. “Ditto.”

I grin at him and look away before I start bawling my eyes out. I’ll never hold him to that. He has no idea what it means.

“Tell me a story.” he says, and when I glance at him in surprise, I see his eyes are closed.

“What?” I ask with a chuckle. “A bedtime story?”

“I have one in mind.”

“There once was a man from Nantucket. He had—“

“Not that one.” he scolds, opening one eye to glare at me.

“Oh.”

“Tell me about the desert.”

I freeze, unsure if he means what I think. “What are you talking about?”

“You were talking in your sleep that first day you were hurt.” he explains, crossing his arms over his chest and getting more settled. “You said my name several times and you mumbled something about the desert and doors and stars. I like the way it sounds. I want to hear the rest.”

I blush but when he closes his eyes again I relent.

“I was hating walls at the time,” He smiles, but keeps his eyes shut. “It made me think of you. I thought we should go to the desert where there are no walls and no locked doors that you can’t hide behind. We could take this hammock and put it out in the middle of nowhere, where we can see for miles and sound carries the way it does across water; uninterrupted and perfect. We’ll swing in the warm, dry desert breeze, covered in grit and sand and not caring because we know now what real troubles are and sand and grit are not them. Everything will be sweeter, prettier because we strove for it. Because we appreciate it more. The sky will be a pure, velvety black above us, strewn with more stars than we could ever count in a thousand lifetimes, and we’ll take turns wishing on shooting stars. And we’ll both sleep through the night peacefully, and wake up in the morning to cool air and the yellow, pink glow of the sun rising on another day.”

“What do we wish for?” Jordan mumbles, and I can tell he’s falling asleep.

His head drifts toward me and I lean mine over until they’re resting against each other. He burrows closer to me, pressing his body the full length of mine.

“Whatever we want.” I whisper.

As his breathing deepens and his head presses harder against mine, his muscles going lax, I know what my wish is. And it’s not what I ever thought it would be.

It’s not until a week after that evening in the hammock that trouble arrives.

I heal up well because Meredith, as I have said, is a genius. I’m released from sleeping in the kitchen after my fifth night there, when she is convinced my leg won’t rot and fall off while I sleep, and I get my first peek at the rest of what I am beginning to consider a settlement. There are fifteen people housed here, seventeen including Jordan and I, but we privately don’t count ourselves. We aren’t staying. There are three children; two girls and one boy ages seven, ten and eleven. What they do all day is a mystery to me, but I see them every night when we all go to sleep in the stock rooms.

Well, all of us but those on rotation as guards on the roof. There are always people on the roof, always patrols running and it feels pretty safe. Jordan is still antsy though. We share an air mattress in the stockroom down one of the many isles of excess goods. It’s a pretty tight space, long though narrow, but when I offered to sleep farther down to give him more room, he brushed it off and told me to come to bed. There is something very intimate about the phrasing, but when we sleep it’s always back to back. He’s still having trouble sleeping and sometimes in the night I’ll feel him jerk awake, take a few deep breaths and go rigidly still until he’s out again. On our second night like this, when he startles awake, I reach behind myself and touch his hand. We never speak a word about it, but he’s taken hold of my hand before dozing off every night since.

The front windows and doors are finally finished. Taylor, Jordan and some of the others have brought all excess shelves, tables and fixtures from around the store to help block the entrance, and even if the glass is shattered, a person or infected would have to find their way through a labyrinth of metal and wood to get inside. It may not be a perfect solution, but short of building a new wall or welding, neither of which they are currently capable of, it’s as good as we can get. At the very least, it will make entry slow and possibly painful, which gives us plenty of time to defend ourselves.

I’m holding class, the last one I plan on doing, and I feel like everyone is excelling. Even Jordan. We’ve moved up from practice tips on the arrows to more elaborate ones. I finally got my hands on the chisel point broadheads I’ve been dreaming of since day one and I’m itching for a chance to try one out on a zombie skull. I’ve made sure Jordan has some as well because when we make our exit, hopefully soon, I want to make sure he doesn’t have to rely on too much accuracy. Headshots are hard enough, getting it inside the eye is a bear.

Taylor’s walkie suddenly goes crazy about halfway into class and we all stop to listen.

“Vehicle approaching! Vehicle approaching!”

“Everyone on point! Now!” Cal shouts in response.

We all scramble to grab every last arrow and Taylor checks the clip in his gun. He looks up at me and hesitates.

“What?” I ask.

“How are you with a gun?”

“I’m better with an arrow.”

“But you can shoot a gun, right? You’ve hunted with one before.”

“Rifles, yeah. I’m a pretty good shot. Why?”

“If it’s a vehicle, they’re human and we’d be better off with more firepower on that roof.”

I sling my bow onto my back and put my hands out. “Then give me a rifle.”

All of us but the children and some of the women, including Meredith and Evey who are too valuable as nurses to risk losing, head to the rooftop. It’s raining hard but there’s not much wind so those shooting arrows will have a chance at some accuracy. There are eight of us up here, and from what I can see, six of them down there. The vehicle is actually a big flatbed truck with what looks like a large tank on the back. Four men stand around it, one with a giant hose that they are aiming at the zombies now rushing toward them. Suddenly fire erupts from the hose and the infected are incinerated. They continue to run toward the flame, toward the meat in the back of the truck, and one by one they catch fire and eventually fall dead to the ground. It takes only a matter of minutes for the twenty or so that had been dancing between here and Safeway to be laid to ashy rest.

“There go our natural defenses.” Mitch, one of the roof guards, mutters.

“Shit.” Taylor curses and runs his hand over his face. He looks at Jordan and exclaims, “Homemade flame throwers?! Seriously? What’s in them to burn that hot that fast?”

“Probably jet fuel.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Jordan smirks, but there’s no humor in it. “They must have read the manual.”

I’m not even going to ask what that means. I am too stunned by what I’m seeing. The gray, rainy afternoon is still lit up orange by the fire they continue to spread over the charred remains. I’m rethinking my theory that nothing cleanses like fire because the massive heap of melted flesh lying beside that truck looks anything but clean and pure. It’s a new entry in my Diary of Zombie Horrors, right after the one where Dee ate Sara. That’s still hanging steady at #1.

With the undead out of the way, another vehicle rolls into the parking lot. The group just doubled with the arrival of the giant snow plow. Did these people raid the city for government vehicles? I’m thinking that if I asked, Jordan and Taylor would know the definitive answer and how they would have gone about it as well, but I’m not in the mood.

The Fire Truck stays behind while the snow plow rolls toward us. When they are about halfway through the parking lot, we all raise our weapons and they halt. A man stands up in the back with his hands raised and shouts to us.

“Hey, whoa, we don’t want any trouble!” he cries, and I don’t like his tone. It’s almost mocking in its geniality. “We’re just looking for supplies!”

“Looks like you’ve got plenty!” Cal calls back. “It’s best you keep moving!”

“We need guns, that’s all! Trying to defend our families! Our children!”

“Bullshit.” I mutter, and I hear Taylor grunt in agreement.

The group is all men, and I suppose in some circles that makes sense; send the men out to search for supplies while the women hold down the fort, but looking at this crew, I don’t get a real family vibe from them. Maybe it’s the flame thrower. I don’t know.

“You plan on giving up anything in trade?!” Cal shouts, and I really hope he’s not considering doing business with these guys.

“Afraid I don’t have anything, no! We don’t have much!”

“Then I can’t help ya! You’ll need to move on elsewhere!”

There’s a tense silence and I watch as the guy on the back of the plow rubs his hand over his neck. He’s obviously talking to the guys he’s riding with, discussing their options. I don’t imagine leaving is one on the table.

“You sure you can’t share? Not even a little?!”

“We have nothing here for you! You want to protect your family, I’m protecting mine! Move along!”

“That’s a shame.”

The man is no longer shouting and I barely hear his words over the rain. He jumps down from the plow, followed by the men riding in back with him, and a couple of the men from the flat bed join them. The flat bed pulls forward, inching slowly closer to the building and the snow plow reverses, passing it on the way to the end of the parking lot.

“Oh hell!” Mitch cries and kneels down to take aim at the plow.

“Mitch, what are you doing?” Cal demands, his voice angry. “We don’t fire on the living, you know that.”

“They’re gonna ram the entrance, Cal!”

He’s right. The plow makes it to the back of the lot while the flat bed creeps along to the side, giving the plow a clean shot at the front entrance. They’re going to ram the building, bust through as much of our defenses as they can and use the flame thrower on the inside.

“If they burn the building down,” I say, mostly to myself. “They won’t get any of the gear.”

“They won’t get it if they don’t burn it down either.” Jordan replies. “They’ll kill us as we flee the burning building.”

“If they can’t have it, no one can.” Taylor says roughly.

We hear the engine of the plow rev a few times and I know it’s a last chance warning. We don’t budge. The plow is kicked into gear and it begins its slow but powerful approach at the front entrance. Mitch ignores Cal’s protests and fires on the driver of the plow. He can’t get a clean shot between the small window, the rain and the vehicles movements.

“Cease fire!” Cal cries, as pretty much all of us fire on the oncoming plow. “We do not fire on the living.”

Okay, I won’t fire on the living, Cal.

“Tires! Tires! Tires!” I scream as I lift my brand new rifle, point it at the tires and pull the trigger.

Nothing happens.

This, this right here, is why I hate guns.

“To hell with this.” I mutter and drop the rifle, letting it clatter to the ground. I half expect the disloyal thing to go off with the impact just to spite me, but it remains utterly useless.

I pull my bow off my back, notch a chisel point and wait for my shot. The plow is almost to the building and I pull back hard.

“You’re going to shoot an industrial tire with an arrow?” Taylor mutters as he waits for the shot as well, his rifle poised and ready.

Good luck to him.

“It can pierce a black bear’s skull.” I say. “I think it can handle a Michellin.”

“Now!” he shouts.

We fire at the same time and the front left tire blows. The plow veers dangerously, careening to the side, and its weight overtakes it, flipping it onto its side. It skids across the pavement, coming to a slow stop right in front of the building. The men at the end of the parking lot stare, stunned into silence. The Fire Truck peels away from the building, away from our bullets, and I can smell rubber wafting up to us on the air mixing with the sickly smell of charred flesh.

“Do we want a flame thrower?” Taylor asks, his rifle already trained on it.

“No.” Cal replies, his voice angry. “Let them go.”

Cal tells us all to stay on the roof and remain on guard for the rest of the afternoon. He’ll pull some of us down later to rest and we’ll start swapping out, but there will be double guard duty for the next few days and nights.

I glance at Jordan and he raises his eyebrows at me. I nod my head quickly and then continue scanning the roads around us, watching for movement. We’ve made an agreement, though, and I’m more than ready to honor it.

It’s time for us to get the hell out of here.

***

Jordan and I end up staying on the roof all afternoon and are sent down to sleep at the same time, just after dinner. We’ll be awakened again right before dawn to swap out with Taylor and Mitch. I’m exhausted from being on high alert all afternoon, and when we crawl into bed, I feel like I could fall right to sleep, but Jordan has other plans.

“When are we going?” he asks immediately, and I am actually surprised by the question.

“Um,” I say, searching my tired brain for an answer. “I don’t know. In a couple of days, I guess? I mean, we can’t really leave them right now, right?”

“No,” he responds, shaking his head. “They need us for the extra guard right now. I wouldn’t feel right leaving them short-handed.”

“Okay, so when Cal calls off the extra guard.”

“Or a couple of days. Whichever comes first.”

“Deal.”

“Deal. You don’t want to pinky swear on it this time?” he asks with a grin.

I chuckle and shake my head. “That was a promise. This is a deal. Two completely different things.”

“Your rules are confusing.”

“I don’t have a lot of them. Fewer than your zombie rules.”

“Doesn’t matter how many I have, you don’t follow them.”

“I do too!” I cry indignantly.

“Really?” he asks, his eyebrow cocked. “How’s your leg?”

“Oh! Too soon.”

“Sorry.” he says with a laugh. “But I told you, walls are not your friend.”

“Neither are you.” I mutter, rubbing my hand absently over the scar on my thigh.

Jordan sees it and frowns. “I really am sorry, Ali. I was only joking.”

I nod and smile faintly at him. “I know.”

His eyes are on mine, studying me.

“I was scared.” he says suddenly. “When they said over the walkie that it was you, that you were down, I was scared.”

“Me too.” I admit.

He swallows and looks away, toward the ceiling.

“When they were taking care of you, I started thinking that I should leave you here. That you’d be safer here than out there with me.”

I feel my heart sink knowing he wanted to leave me here and I understand that it’s hypocritical since I thought the exact same thing when we first showed up.

“When did you stop thinking that?”

“Today, when those trucks rolled up.”

“Wow.” I mumble. “You haven’t wanted me with you for a while.”

He turns toward me again and I look back at him, letting him see the hurt because what’s the point in masking it? I want him to know.

“I never said I didn’t want you with me. I said you’d be safer here. And until today, you know that was true.”