Writing on the Wall (8 page)

He’s coming for me now, reaching up and pulling himself with that incredible, undeterred by pain zombie strength that he has. He’s on the landing with me before I can think to move and then his hand is on my ankle. I kick at his face with my free foot, making contact with his nose and breaking it violently. It makes a sick, satisfying
crunch
sound, but it doesn’t stop him. I pull myself backwards, reaching for the ASP with desperate fingers. He’s climbing my leg now. His hand is on my knee, bringing his face level with my foot and I have the terrifying thought that he’ll bite it through the worn material of my tennis shoe.

I finally grip the base of the baton and bring it around, crashing it into his forearm. I repeat the process and he finally lets me go because he has to. The bone is broken. I crabwalk away from him without thinking and end up in a room. It looks like it used to be an office of some kind and I back into a heavy metal desk that refuses to move, to give me room to escape. I’m trapped. And he’s coming, pulling himself into the room after me using his one functioning arm and groaning incessantly.

I quickly lash out with my foot, swinging the heavy wood door closed on his face. He’s too far into the room, though, and I only succeed in slamming it against his skull. It bounces back at me as he continues to groan. Feeling frustrated, angry and scared, I kick again. The door smacks him in the skull, pinning his head between it and the frame. I kick again and again and again, beating his head between the two sections of wood. I’m kicking over and over, hoping it’s enough and that eventually I’ll hit that sweet spot on his temple just wrong, just hard enough to kill and he’ll go down for good.

Kick, crunch! Kick, crunch! Kick, crunch!

There’s a heavy crack and I know I’ve gotten my wish. I kick one last time and let the door swing back at me after it makes mushy contact with what’s left of his head. I don’t look at the mess I’ve made. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before but I do want to be able to eat later and actually enjoy it so I stand up slowly on shaking legs and step quickly over what’s left of the guy.

Today, I have emphatically decided, is for suck.

And it’s not over. This day is never ending. I still haven’t scored my water and I just worked up quite a thirst with my leg workout back there. I take a moment to calm down, to breathe easy and remind myself to be careful when what I really want to do is run through this building as fast as I can, get my water from the roof and run back out again. Time efficient, but deadly. So I don’t do it.

Turns out I needn’t have worried. I make it to the roof without further incident but when I arrive, my heart sinks. The door, which I normally keep latched firmly, is thrown wide open. Someone has been here. I pass through the opening slowly, scanning the open space and hoping against hope that I don’t run into the living.

I luck out. There’s only a Risen. She’s wandering around aimlessly on the far side of the roof opposite my rain system. I’m tired and grumpy so I ignore her and her pencil skirt office attire for now. Maybe I won’t have to engage her at all.

I move quickly to my rain barrels which are actually Rubbermaid rectangular storage containers, the kind people used to put holiday decorations in and shove in a dark corner of their garage 90% of the year. Now they sit attached to a series gutters I ripped off the sides of buildings and secured to each other so they run side by side, creating several long lines of water collection that feed down into a pasta strainers I fit in the lid of each tub. They keep leaves and other debris out, including frogs, but I’ll still have to boil
it when I get home just to be sure there’s no bacteria. Or I would have to do that, if there were any water in the tubs.

They’ve cleaned me out. Whoever the bastards were, they took my entire water supply from this roof. I throw the lid off each tub even though I can tell from just nudging them with my foot that they’re empty. Every last one of them.

“Dammit!” I shout.

All of that for nothing. The zombie in the hall, the crawler in the door, this one coming at me now here on the roof. All of it. All for nothing. I risked everything and now I’m going home empty handed.

I kick each tub across the roof and watch as one trips and tumbles over the edge. It stuns me for half a second, just long enough to think it’s a bad thing, and then I flip a switch and think it’s the best thing ever. I grab the gutter work and launch it over the edge as well, chuckling when I hear it clatter loudly to the ground. I’m breathing quickly and feeling crazy. I’m so angry, something I haven’t felt in forever. I got a taste of it when Ryan dropped into my world and blew it up, but this is different. This is frustration and rage. It’s pent up for miles and I don’t know what to do with it. What I should do, healthy or not, is stow it. Now is not the time for this.

I drop the other gutter fixture I was holding in my hand and let it fall carelessly to the rough rooftop. Watching the Risen girl come at me, I can’t bring the numb. I can’t find the calm that I strove for on the way up here and barely managed. I need it to do this right, to make sure I survive and keep my head on straight, but it just won’t come. I back up as she stalks me slowly and clumsily. I let her walk me to the brink. The backs of my legs hit the lip that rises above the edge by just a few feet, just enough to trip a person and send them tumbling down to their death. It’s a dangerous feature and I wonder how that ever made it in the pearly white, disinfected, overly sanitized safety net world that existed ten years ago.

Look out! Coffee is hot!

Knives are sharp!

This End Up, numbnuts!

This woman is older than me by at least twenty years and deader by about four. She didn’t make it. All of her warning labels were gone and the world was too much for her to figure out on her own.

Beware: Zombies bite!

I’m not ashamed to say I feel superior to this chick. She has years of experience on me but I survived and she didn’t. She may have had a 401K, a husband and an Audi, but at least I still have a heartbeat. One that’s thrumming wildly in my chest as my breath comes hot, hard and fast into my lungs.

It’s all of these emotions, all these things I’ve forgotten and gotten on without that are now literally bursting through me, seeping from my pores and smothering me from the inside out. There’s so much, too much.

And it’s gotta go somewhere.

When Corporate Kelly makes her big move and lunges for me, I drop down to the ground on my knees and spring forward. I tackled her at the thighs, standing up when I make contact and lifting her bony body onto my shoulder. Then I push on her knees and flip her forward, over my back and over the edge. I send her off the roof face first to kiss the pavement below. And I turn and watch it happen. I wait for the impact and when the
smack!
echoes back up to me, I throw my arms in the air, signaling a touchdown.

If that move doesn’t get me the Heisman then justice is dead.

I’m still pissed about my water, or lack of, when I get back to my neighborhood. I’ve still got some rabbit, though, and some veggies that I can eat raw instead of boiling. And I still have a home to go back to, so that’s a plus. I haven’t been ratted out yet just as I dared to instill a little faith in humanity again. Of course that’s over now that humanity stole my stuff, mainly my life sustaining resource. But that’s okay, because Ryan’s different and I actually choose to believe that.

It’s then that I decide I need to know if he’s alive.

I make a detour home that takes me longer but it also takes me by the wall. I look at his message for a moment, wondering what to say back. I think of a hundred things that I immediately cast off as stupid, lame, boring, too obscure or too suggestive.

And then it starts to rain. There’s no prelude to it, no soft pitter patter of tiny first drops leading the way. No, it downpours from moment one, soaking me to the bone in a
matter of seconds. On the bright side, my rain bucket upstairs will be full in no time and I will have fresh water. On the dark side, the one that seethes inside my soul and throws zombies off rooftops as part of a stress management system, I’m reminded yet again that my adventure was all for nothing. I nearly died multiple times and all for not. It’s not a new thing in my life, I’m just painfully aware of it right now. As I am painfully aware of a lot of things lately.

Finally inspired, I pick up the brick on the ground, cross out a part of his message and write one word of my own. It’s not pretty and it’s not poetic, but it is honest.

Welcome to
the new ag
e
blow
s
.

When I wake up in the morning I still can’t find the calm. The numb. The tap out I need in order to be the me that survives. It’s troubling and I blame Ryan. One more thing on the poor guy’s shoulders, I know, but credit where credit is due. This is his fault. I thought about telling him as much last night on the wall.

You gave me the sickness.

I don’t know a lot but I know enough to know that sounds dirty. I don’t know how he’d take it, I’m not sure what types of books he’s been reading, but I doubt it would have been interpreted as I meant it.

I give it another day before I decide I feel enough like myself to be trusted in the outside world. I spend my time indoors watching
The Breakfast Club
and letting myself laugh audibly. It feels weird but I like it. And when the credits roll I’m still smiling because I noticed something about this movie that I’ve never noticed before, even after countless watchings: I can relate.

I am a brain.

An athlete.

A basket case.

A princess.

A criminal.

And when I step outside and cruise past the wall, expecting to find it washed clean of our small scribblings, I notice something else.

I’m no longer alone.

Put down a Z in your name today.

Bringing you a better world, one kill at a time.

Chapter Nine

I’m scared of spiders. I scream like a girl.

I’m scared of clowns. I’m glad they’re all dead.

What about a crawler clown?

You’re the devil. I’ll have nightmares for months.

I could come stay with you. Keep the clowns away…

Stay away from me, dipshit. I have spiders and I know how to use them.

I’m the King of the Dipshits!

We’re writing almost every day now and I feel like it’s getting dangerous. It’s dangerous for us to develop a routine that the Colonists can track. It’s dangerous to leave these messages in my neighborhood that anyone can see. It’s dangerous to have him sneaking here to write them because eventually someone will see him do it. It’s dangerous to have my back turned, unguarded, as I write stupid things to a guy I’ve only met once and should have walked away from at the start.

But I didn’t and everything has changed because of it.

I’m crouched down under a tree, waiting like a snake in the grass for a bird to leave her nest so I can steal her eggs, when I hear him. His voice rings out, echoing
through the park and resonating in my ears. It startles both me and the bird, alerting it to threats in the area and I lose all hope of scoring those eggs today. That boy cannot help but mess up my world.

It’s been a month since the night I met Ryan and I’m surprised that I recognize his voice immediately. He’s in the far side of the park, near where we ran into his friend Bray, and I crane my neck to look for him. What I see first is a tall, thin blond guy a few years older than I am. He’s somewhere in his twenties with a weathered face and sharp eyes. I sink back down low, scurrying silently into a patch of tall grass and ferns. I’m hiding from him. I don’t realize it until I’ve already done it, but I’m glad because his eyes make me nervous. I watch through the patchy green blur of leaves and blades as he moves languidly through the brush, barely rustling it as he walks. Beside him is another unfamiliar face, an older man with dark hair, probably somewhere in his forties. He’s moving with far less care, almost crashing through the grass and chuckling with his head bent down. He’s laughing with Ryan.

I can see him now. He’s slightly behind the other two, walking farthest from me near a bank of trees. He passes in and out of shadows under the canopy of the foliage, the sunlight shining on his dark hair, brightening it then losing it to blackness. When he glances my way, looking at the older man beside him, he’s smiling broadly.

I feel a small pang. An itch in my chest that I can’t understand and I can’t scratch.

They keep thundering through the forest; Ryan, the older man and the lithe footed guy with the freaky eyes. I follow them. This, I acknowledge, is stupid. But I’m seventeen and I’ve never done a stupid thing in my adult life. I figure I’m long past due. Besides, that pang in my chest will not be denied.

Eventually the tall blond holds up his hand, says something inaudible to the other two and they quickly scatter. They fan out and create a triangle around a small area of low lying grass just at the edge of the trees. In under a minute I can’t see or hear any of them. It makes me sick to my stomach to see it because I realize I could come walking through this area and cruise right past all of them, never knowing they were there. Not until it’s too late. Suddenly I wonder if I haven’t done that already. Do they already know about me? Have I been spotted before?

My hands are clammy and my heart begins skipping painfully in my chest.

Odds are I have been. I’m stealthy, clever and quick, but there are a lot of eyes in this area, it seems. It’s unrealistic to believe I’ve gone unnoticed by all of them. I sit and fret about this until my legs go numb, but I don’t move. I can’t move, not until they’re gone. I’ve gotten myself into this situation and now I have to wait it out. They’re obviously hunting and their patience is impressive and annoying. I wish they’d get bored and move on already.

Then I see what they’re waiting for. Moving into the clearing slowly and with great caution is a buck. He’s tall and broad. A big, hulking, powerful package of meat and deliciousness that has my mouth watering just looking at him. I’ve seen old advertisements in decrepit, broke down fast food joints and I know what used to make people drool. It was the end product. The final presentation of a piece of meat after countless ugly, messy and thoroughly disturbing things happened to it all at the hands of someone or something else. Tell me the phrase ‘mechanically separated chicken’ doesn’t send a chill down your spine. I read it on a bag of dry dog food once (yes, I ate the dog food) and I almost gagged at the thought. Not on the dog food, though. That was tasty.

What I’m saying is, my idea of delicious is so much broader than it used to be. It’s
more big picture and the big picture right now is an 8 point buck with a body full of finger lickin’ good.

I wait anxiously as the buck saunters into the clearing, munching on grass and occasionally surveying his surroundings. I’m surprised he doesn’t smell the Lost Boys sitting so close by or hear one breathing. The fact that none of them have coughed, yawned or even swallowed too loudly is amazing to me. I guess because I don’t see them hiding from others the way I do, all I see them do is walk through the world like they own the place, I assume they aren’t any good at sneaking. But today I stand, or sit with dead legs, corrected.

Suddenly the blond guy is up and on top of the buck. It happens so fast and is so unexpected I actually gasp. The buck is just as startled as I am. Probably more so. He goes to run but the guy has a hold on him and they both stumble slightly. Ryan and the older guy jump up and grab onto the buck as well. The thing puts up a hell of a fight, ducking his head down and using his sharp horns to keep the men at bay. Ryan takes a point to the arm and I watch as red blood blossoms on his shirt. He doesn’t slow down though and I’m not even sure he can feel it through the adrenaline. They struggle with the buck, almost losing it at one point before the older guy grabs on to the thing’s hind legs above the knee. He’s taking hooved feet to the shins which I know will bruise for days but he holds on. There are shouts and cries, grunts and panic, but then it all goes silent. The buck collapses to the ground and I look around in surprise, wondering what did it.

Until I see the blood. It’s fanning out over the green grass making it look shiny and wet like it just rained. Only it’s red. Vibrant and angry red. And there’s the sharp eyed guy standing in front of it, dripping red knife in hand, blood splatter across his shirt, neck and face, and he’s grinning. He’s grinning down at the expired animal at his feet and the light in his eyes and the knife in his hand make my blood run cold.

***

I don’t tell Ryan that I saw him. I don’t tell Crenshaw either. Ryan would be excited, Crenshaw would be mad and at this point I don’t even know how I feel about it so I keep it to myself. I’m good at that.

What I do tell both of them is that I’ve seen a lot of Colonists lately. The zombies are still in full force but I’m getting used to that again. They’ve always been there, it seems. An omnipresent threat that I can put in the back of my mind and deal with on auto pilot. They’re dumb and predictable and I don’t even have to kill them if they see me. If I’m tired or loaded down with supplies, I have no problem evading a Risen and letting them keep on shuffling. All it takes most of the time is crossing the street and crisis averted. Zombies were a big problem in the beginning when everyone and their mother was becoming one, but now with the humanity herd thinned down to those of us who can survive it and the number of people in the area outnumbering the zombies, I don’t worry about it nearly as much. Probably not as much as I should.

But right now my biggest worry is the Colonists and their recruitment tactics. It’s been a month since the rise in the zombie population thanks to the loss of one of their Colonies. After the fight and fire I saw in the street they stopped with the helping hand routine and went back to rounding people up like strays. I’ve warned Crenshaw, though he met the news with his usual disinterest and sage, wizardly advice:

“Luck favors the prepared.” he intoned, swaying his staff back and forth like the swinging pendulum of a clock. I’m pretty sure he meant to hypnotize me. “Keep thy blade and wits sharp.”

Spoken like a fortune cookie from Frodo’s kitchen.

I left a message for Ryan the other day warning him as well.

Colonists are the new plague.

Watch your back.

Don’t I know
it.

Do you nee

His message is cut off and my heart slams to a halt. That’s all he wrote. He must have been interrupted, but by what? A Risen? A Colonist? Another Lost Boy? There are so many possibilities of what could have gone wrong that I feel helpless trying to figure out what happened to him. And I am not the helpless type. It actually occurs to me to go to his gang. It’s ridiculous and so stupid, but I seriously consider it. I can watch from afar for a little while, see if I can see him coming and going. And if I can’t? I don’t know. I don’t know what I’ll do then. This is the second time I’ve been worried for his life in a very short amount of time and I wonder what exactly it is I’m doing here. And for what? A little conversation on a wall and the memory of broad shoulders and brown eyes? Yeah, I feel less lonely and I feel a lot more of a lot of other things I’d forgotten existed, but to what end? How many of my old rules am I gonna break over this? And where does it stop? When I’m dead? It makes me sick just thinking about it but I can’t let this go. I can’t let him go.

I’m hurrying past the wall, heading toward his part of town, when warm hands reach out from the shadows of a darkened doorway and yank me back. I don’t scream. I don’t panic. I’m conditioned well beyond all of that. As I’m falling backward, my back slamming into someone else’s front, I reach for my knife. I’m spinning it deftly in my hand just as an arm encircles my waist and a hand covers my mouth. That’s fine. That’s good, waste that constraint to smother a cry for help I never intended to loose. All the more room for me to swing out my arm, bring it back hard and drive my blade deep inside my captors gut. He’ll bleed out for hours from a wound like that. That is, if the zombies don’t scent him first.

“Joss.” he breathes in my ear.

I halt my arm just in time, just as the tip of my knife is pressing into his flesh.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Ryan says quickly, feeling the prick of my knife. “Jesus, Joss, don’t stab me.”

“Dunf creen ab vee.” I growl against his hand. I’m breathing hard through my nose, my adrenaline spiked and coursing like lightning through my veins. I can feel his chest rising and falling against my back. It’s slow and even.

“I know, I’m sorry I grabbed you.” he apologizes in a whisper, somehow understanding my angry muffle speak. “If I let you go, will you scream?”

“I erfer seen.”

“No,” he chuckles softly. “I guess you wouldn’t. I’m letting go. Please don’t stab me.”

He releases me in one quick motion like he’s releasing a wild animal. His hands go up in defense and he takes a step back when I round on him, knife still ready in my hand.

“If I was going to stab you, you’d already be dead. Or dying.” I say, my voice tense but quiet.

He smiles. “I believe it.”

“What are you doing here? Why did you grab me?”

“I heard a Colonist truck coming by a little while ago.”

My eyes shoot to the street, scanning what I can see of it. As far as I can tell it’s clear.

“It’s gone.” Ryan assures me. “I was writing you a message when I heard it so I hid in here. Even after it left, though, I was worried it could come back. I was worried you’d be writing back to me when it did.”

“So you waited for me?”

“Yeah.”

“That was stupid.”

He snorts, shaking his head. “You’re welcome.”

“You’re staying out in the open for too long. What if a Risen wandered by? You have that cut on your arm and—“

“How do you know about that?”

I stop and berate myself for being the stupid one.

“I was there. In the woods. I saw you guys take the buck down.”

He grins at me looking proud. “You saw that? Pretty good, right?”

I shrug, looking away. “You got hurt doing it, so it wasn’t that impressive.”

“You’re cold. And jealous. Trent’s an amazing hunter. You should dream of having half his skills.”

“Which one was Trent? The tall guy?”

“Yeah. He’s our main lookout. He’s usually parked in the crow’s nest but we pull him out for hunting now and then because he’s just so freakishly good at it. He hears and sees everything.”

“Yeah, I believe it.” I mutter, remembering his eyes and feeling uncomfortable all of the sudden. Feeling watched.

“So, hey, my message wasn’t finished. I was going to ask if you need anything. Are you doing okay?”

I frown at him. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, obviously, but it doesn’t mean I can’t help you out. You helped me.”