Fight (NOLA Zombie Book 2) (10 page)

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m an idiot, I have a bit of downtime on a stinky boat and I get all Old Man and the Sea.” She stood up and left me alone, sitting on the little bench that ran along the stern of the boat. It was a beautiful day for boating. And if it was any other place in time, I might have enjoyed our little cruise, but it wasn’t, and my eyes constantly roved the shore looking for any hints of danger. Hyperaware, ever vigilant and on the alert. The deck was stacked against us in this new world, but we didn’t have to expect a bad hand before we even looked at the cards.
 

I tore my eyes away from the shore and watched my fellow survivors. Baby had pulled out one of her knives and was sharpening it, working at her blade like it was one of her demons. Romeo was at the wheel, his back tight, his head moving back and forth as he scanned the area looking for our target. I was surprised to find that Lani had taken up position next to him and her eyes kept drifting to him. I had tried to shield her from the men of the compound who could be a little rough around the edges. I didn’t think she would be able to handle them with everything she had been through. But there she was, staring at Romeo with a small smile on her face.

He was pretty and nice to look at, so I couldn’t fault Lani in her appreciation, but Romeo was probably more broken than any of us. I watched as he looked over at Lani and saw that she was watching him. He didn’t even try to smile back or be nice. He just scowled and went back to his steering. Rough around the edges was putting it mildly.

Hurt crossed Lani’s face and I hoped that was the end of her fascination with Romeo. That path wasn’t one I would recommend for anyone, especially a little broken bird like Lani.
 

“That one looks good!” Baby shouted and pointed toward a large camp that jutted out into the marsh. There was a long pier that stuck out from the camp and a dock that held two recreational boats. The two boats didn’t bode well.

“They might be occupied. You don’t leave your boat at the camp. There is no other way out.” I stood and walked up next to Romeo.
 

“We should probably check it out, if there are people living there it might be nice to get a bearing on their status,” Romeo said.

“Status?” Lani asked.

“Friend or foe,” he said flatly.

“What if they’re a foe?” she asked quietly.

“Hopefully, we have more weapons than them,” Baby joked and I saw Lani turn white.

“Do you have a horn on this thing? Signal that we are pulling up and see if anyone comes out.”
 
Romeo did as I bid and a loud booming horn resonated from our vessel. No one came out of the camp as we docked.
 

“We’ll be completely exposed on that pier if they are inside and aren’t friendly.”
 
Baby looked unsure now.

“We either give this one a try or we move on to the next one,” I suggested.

“I’m up for this one,” Romeo stated. “If we leave this one and don’t know about its status, it’ll eat at me. I don’t like leaving an unknown at my back.”

“Fine, we go in fast, cross the pier, stay low. Lani, stay on the boat until we signal an all clear.” I said.

“I think I should go first,” Baby suggested. “I’m the fastest and a smaller target. If nothing happens, you guys can follow.”

“That works, stay small. Don’t die.” I squeezed her shoulder and she gave me a goofy grin that told me she loved this shit.

We all disembarked and I watched as Baby crossed the pier, fast and low. She made it to the front door in only a few seconds and nothing attacked her or fired upon her. She motioned with her hand for us to follow and we copied her moves, heading down the pier at a fast clip.
 

I didn’t think there was anyone with the wits to answer the door, but I knocked on the front door anyway.

“Hello, anyone home?” I called. There was no answer. I jiggled the handle. It was unlocked. Why not? You couldn’t just walk up to this camp, there was no reason for a lock.
 

As usual the smell was the first thing that alerted me to something dead in the house. But it wasn’t the smell of zombie rot. This was different. This was real death.

The camp was dark and musty, but it looked like it would be a nice place to hangout if someone would just open a window and let the nasty out. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I wanted to run and get back on the boat, but I made myself stand firm.
 

Two of them greeted us, as if they had planned for someone to visit. They both sat on the sofa, their faces semi-intact, distorted from a single gun shot to their heads. They were badly decomposed. Humid air does wonders for breaking down a body, but I could tell it was a woman and a man by the way they were dressed. He still clutched the pistol in his hand.
 
His other hand gripped the woman’s hand beside him. I wonder if he did it for her, or if she went first and then he went. There was no gun by her, so they obviously didn’t go at the same time.
 

They could have at least tried. They had a great place here.They might have survived. They could have scrounged for food, lived off the fish they would catch from their pier. Why would they throw away their lives like this?

Romeo walked up to the two bodies and took the gun from the man’s hand, then he took a blanket that was thrown over the back of a chair and draped the dead couple with it.
 

“I hope they found their peace,” he mumbled and then turned promptly and began inspecting the property.

We found a few canned goods, flashlights, fishing poles and crab nets, along with a good bit of small tidbits like can openers and notebooks that were always needed at the compound. One of the rooms held two twin beds and a dresser, which we grabbed for Baby and Lani.
 

In another room, we found a shitload of alcohol that was quickly packed up and moved out. The bathroom also produced needles, a ton of medications, everything from blood pressure medicine to pain pills and a prescription for Glucophage, which I recognized as something diabetics took to make their muscles absorb the insulin better. That explained the needles that I found and the reason they would have chosen to take their lives. If one of them was diabetic, it was only a matter of time. Modern medicine was the reason someone with diabetes could survive, and their medication, the insulin that was injected into them needed to be refrigerated or at least kept in a cool place. Even if a person raided every pharmacy in the vicinity to get their hands on insulin, it would lose effectiveness within a month.
 

I packed up the needles and all the medication and met everyone on the pier. It was a good haul.

“Thanks for the supplies,” I whispered and shut the door on the two people under the blanket. I don’t know what was worse, finding them like this or if they would have turned.

THIRTEEN

Supply Run Salaciousness

Another day, another hunt for supplies, this was my life. At least now I got to go home and curl up next to Zach. It made things a little more bearable. Our usual Wednesday supply run was a large team of six. We were going to split up in teams of two and hit a strip mall that had a variety of stores. Each of us would take a shopping cart and we would fill it up and bring it back to the trucks, then run back in and get more until the trucks were hopefully filled.
 
Post-Z Supermarket Sweep, or whatever that lame-ass 90s show was called.
 

Zach and I went in quick. Our target was an urban clothing store. Our goal was tees, boots and jeans. The door was wide open and the store looked looted, but from what I could tell the looters had gone for the expensive shoes and jewelry at the back of the store. Gotta have priorities.
 

We banged on the door to attract the attention of any zombies inside. Nothing came moaning out from behind clothing racks, so we pushed in. We each went at it, pushing the carts down the aisles and throwing in clothes that were good to work in and sturdy enough to protect from a bite.
 

“There isn’t much here. It’s all novelty. Let’s check the back and then move on to the next store,” I told Zach.
 

Zach took point and pushed through the door. We both came alert from the smell, but we had very little time to prepare because they were immediately on us. Someone must have locked a group of them in here. Just our luck.
 

They would have been young. They were dressed in trendy styles, probably shopping on the weekend. The first one I noticed was a boy, no more than fifteen from his small size and clothes. He was a mess, half his head looked caved in and his jaw was unhinged and hung loosely from his face. Zach dispatched him quickly with a blade to the forehead, pushing him hard and onto the other two to buy us some time.
 

Where the fourth came from I couldn’t tell, but it was on me in an instant. I took the fall like a big girl and brought it down on top of me, keeping it off of me with my legs. One of the other zombies got away from Zach and fell forward, joining me and my new friend on the floor. The weight of the two zombies was almost too much to take and I was trying not to hyperventilate from the smell and the fact that I had two snarling former humans dripping gore and blood onto me, their rotting faces so far gone I could see bone.
 

I managed to slip my tomahawk out of its holster, but I didn’t have enough room to swing, so I used the end spike and forced it through the first one’s skull.
 
It was hard to get it through the skull, so I had to really work it in there. They make it look so easy in the movies. My blade was damn sharp, too, fucking lying movie pricks. Something else they don’t show in the movies, head wounds bleed a lot even on zombies. The blood from the wound exploded all over me. I shut my eyes and mouth so I wouldn’t ingest the liquid. The body of the zombie collapsed on top of me and I used my legs to force it off of me, but the second zombie was making things a lot harder as it was still pushing and grabbing for me. I kicked out again and this time got enough momentum to force it a few feet back and I scrambled to my feet, rushing the zombie and impaling it right through the side of the head.
 

When I tried to move toward Zach to help him, something snagged me and I couldn’t move. My jeans were caught on something. I looked down to see that they were caught on some kind of shelving system and no matter how much I yanked it wasn’t coming off. It would take a bit of finesse to pull it off the hook, and I didn’t have time for finesse. I slipped a knife out of my pocket and sliced down my jeans, yanking them off. It took me two strides to get to Zach and slam the tomahawk into the zombie’s head that had him from behind. Now that he had use of his arms, he took out the one in front of him and then swung around to assess me. Corpses littered the floor.
 

“Bites, scratches?” He looked me up and down raising an eyebrow at my state of undress.

“No, you?” I asked taking in his rustled attire.
 

“No, c’mere.” He pulled me into his arms and held me tight. “You were amazing.”

“So were you.” I pulled away from him and dug into my pack, pulling out wet wipes and quickly began cleaning him up.
 
He grabbed a few of his own and began reciprocating. It didn’t take much for us to start cleaning parts of our bodies that didn’t need to be cleaned. He pressed me against the wall and kissed me. Our brush with death fueled our passion.
 

“I can never lose you, Alexis,” he whispered as he ripped my panties away. I fumbled with the buckle of his belt and his zipper until he was hard and in my hand. He pulled my legs around him until he was bracing me against the wall and entering me, taking me in a desperate pace of heated coupling.
 

We were in a storeroom, in some busted up strip mall, zombies milling about in the streets waiting to eat us and I couldn’t have been more content.
 

“Never, Alexis, I love you, I can’t…” His thrusts became hurried and I shushed him with a kiss.

We joined together, our bodies synced to each other, programmed to bring maximum pleasure. Our orgasms rocked over us at the same time. We came shivering in release, our mouths buried in each other’s necks to hush the shouts of pleasure. I was seeing little black dots in my peripheral vision when he placed me back on my feet and kissed me gently.
 

“I meant that, it wasn’t just some sexual stimulated confession. Alexis, I love you.” He pulled back and looked into my eyes, his face earnest and expecting a response. I didn’t know what to say. I knew I looked like a fool just standing there, but I didn’t want to tell him I loved him back and regret it the moment after. I had been aware that Zach’s feelings for me were deep, I hadn’t realized how deep. And I might even have strong feelings for him, but could I say that out loud? Confirm it? Jinx it? Love was just another way for us to get hurt.
 
One day Zach would be taken from me, probably sooner than later. We were one bite away from the big end. I was barely hanging on from my earlier abandonment. I don’t know if I could live through actually watching the man I loved die. If I didn’t say it, if I didn’t confirm it, then it wouldn’t matter as much. I couldn’t say it back and he understood. He kissed me and threw his big arms around me as if he was reassuring me that everything would be okay. I didn’t know if it ever would.

FOURTEEN

Lover

The ride back to base was a quiet one. We were all wiped. It was a tough run. There had been a lot of Zs around the mall and it always took a lot out of you, the killing and stabbing. Fit to make a girl’s arms sore in the morning.
 

“I got you something,” Zach leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“What?” I said, confused.
When would he have had the time to grab something for me?
 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little brown and black fluffy thing and set it on my thigh, which was now covered in jeans that were way too big for me. It was a tiny stuffed German Shepherd.