Revenence: Dead of Winter: A Zombie Novel (12 page)

     Shari climbed through the open second story window, confronted at once with the presence of a young woman, whom Shari presumed to be the one she had spoken with, and a late-middle aged man with a full, thick head of tousled, slightly overgrown hair that was solid gray. 

     "Hi," she said, "I'm Shari." 

     "You should know," the female said, her dark brown eyes fixed squarely on Shari, "that we've got a guy with his sight set on you right now, so you'd better not try pulling any brilliant little stunts.  We don't like killing, but we've done it before and we'll do it again, if need be."

     "Fair enough," Shari answered meekly, holding her arms out with her palms turned up to signify her lack of malice.  "I'm just here to trade."

     "I'm Phoebe," the young woman said.  "And this is Professor Hewett."

     The professor winced.  "I don't imagine titles like that mean very much anymore."  He smiled at Shari, his warm brown eyes twinkling briefly before a mask of weariness overtook his features again.  "You can call me Henry."

     "Nice to meet you both," Shari said.  "And I really mean that.  We haven't run into anyone alive since southern Illinois."

     "It's been awhile for us, too," Henry said, gesturing eastward.  "There used to be a settlement out there, but well...we haven't heard from them in awhile."

     Shari nodded slowly, her eyes overcast with the somber realization that the professor was most likely referencing the necropolis she had passed earlier.  "Were they in that walled-off area east of here?" she asked. 

     "Yeah," Phoebe said, her dozens of tiny braids hanging down to the small of her back, brushing the smooth, dark skin of her shoulders as she nodded.  "It was a pretty big group, a bunch of them that managed to get away when they herded everyone into the stadium."

     Shari frowned.  "When they
what
?"

     Henry nodded, his face sorrowful.  "You heard right.  It was the day after this started."

     "Easter," Phoebe said in what was almost a whisper.

     "They rounded everyone up," Henry continued, shaking his head and uttering a dark laugh.  "I don't know why--I mean, they had to have known it wasn't a local problem.  What good does a quarantine do, other than infect those who have managed to not be bitten thus far?"  He rolled his eyes.  "But anyway, me and Phoebe here, we weren't about to be corraled into that stadium with all those people, not knowing what the hell was going on, so...so we hid out in here until they were done clearing the town.  The group that got away from the stadium showed up, and they had at least a few hundred people with them.  Obviously, with that big of a group, we couldn't help them very much.  We traded a few radios with them, but not as many as they would have liked.  Other than that, we didn't have much to offer them, other than a little bit of back-and-forth over the radio here and there.  We would usually share customers...if a group stopped here first, we'd point them in the direction of the settlement, and vice versa."

     "Do you know what happened to them?" Phoebe asked.

     Shari shook her head.  "I don't know, but the smell coming from in there was unreal.  We could smell it from over half a mile away...you guys never noticed it?"  Phoebe and Henry shook their heads.  Shari shrugged.  "Must not have been downwind of it," she muttered. 
It's not something they'd forget
. 

     "The last group to come through the area and trade was a little over a month ago," Phoebe said, her gaze distant.  "They went to the settlement after they left here.  I hope they got to leave town before everything went to shit in there."  She turned in Shari's direction, snapping back into the moment.  "So what have you got that's of interest to us?"

     Shari nodded toward the messenger bag slung across her back, walking toward an empty table in the corner of the room.  She opened the bag, taking out two sawed-off shotguns and a half-dozen boxes of ammunition.  "A shotgun and some ammo," she said.  She reached into the depths of the bag, pulling out two nine-millimeter pistols.  "Two handguns," she continued, stretching the sides of the bag open to reveal the boxes of nine-millimeter rounds that filled the remainder of the bag.  "And a shit-ton of ammo for them."

     Phoebe grimaced, then conceded.  "They're only nine-millimeters, but it' better than nothing," she said.  "Besides, the shotguns won't be half-bad.  Definitely worth a radio."

     Shari frowed, then smirked slightly.  "Two radios," she said.  "That's four guns and a substantial pile of ammunition.  It's worth at least two radios and some of those medical supplies you talked about."  She and Phoebe stared one another down for the better part of thirty seconds before Phoebe buckled, sighing. 

     "Fine," she said.  "Two radios and some of our first aid stuff."

     "Deal," Shari said, taking the rest of the boxes of ammunition out of the bag. 

     Phoebe crossed the room, returning with the two hand-held ham radios and two first aid packs.  Shari rummaged through the two packs, piling up their contents on a desktop.  She took out a total of roughly two dozen bottles of various medications, including antibiotics, four large boxes of adhesive strips in varying sizes, several dozen packets of gauze, medical scissors, tweezers, and various other odds and ends. 

     "This will do nicely," she said as she began returning the items to the packs she had taken them from.  "It was a pleasure to do business with you."  She glanced nervously around her.  "You wanna give your sniper some kind of signal before I go, lest he should blow my brains out?"

     Phoebe waved her hand casually.  "He only acts if he sees some sign of hostility from you," she said.  "So don't do anything stupid, and you'll be fine."

     Shari nodded, turning back toward the open window.  "What frequency are you guys on?"

     "98.3 FM," Henry said.  "But we're not staying here for long...that's why we're trying to acquire more in the way of weaponry."

     "We want to try to make it to Chicago," Phoebe said.  "There's a huge settlement in McCormick Place, from what I've heard on the radio."

     "Is it a recording like you guys have?" Shari asked, dubious.

     "No," Phoebe said, "I've actuallly spoken to them."

     "As recently as yesterday," the professor chimed in.

     "Huh," Shari said, "I'll have to keep that in mind.  My group and I are trying to make it to Wisconsin, so...who knows?  Maybe we'll stop by there, although I must say--going into Chicago doesn't sound like an easy task."

     "That's why we're not going through the city," Phoebe said.  "We plan on going through northern Indiana, then hopefully getting on a boat from there.  McCormick Place is right on Lake Shore Drive, so if we find a boat, we can avoid going through the city at all."

     "Well," Shari said, putting one leg out the window, "best of luck."

     "You as well," the professor said.  "Thanks again for the guns and ammunition."

     "No problem," Shari said, mounting the ladder outside the window.  "I'm always glad to meet others, especially if they're not hostile."

     "Amen to that," Phoebe muttered as Shari began her descent down the ladder.

    
That could have gone a lot worse,
Shari thought as she rounded the corner, returning to the northern side of the building where she had left Daphne and Hugo.  As she looked toward the street, she frowned, the first pangs of worry crossing her consciousness as she stared at the empty street. 

    
Where are they?
  Her gaze panned down the street, from west to east, but she saw no signs of human life.  She could hear undead stumbling along in the distance to the north and east.  She furrowed her brow. 

    
I think the undead were north and west earlier, not east...Jesus, what could have happened?  I was only in there for ten minutes, tops. 
The words resonated flatly through her lonely mind, as if from the inside of a quiet car being pummeled with fat raindrops. 

     She reached the street, peering eastward as she searched for some sign of her companions.  As she began to circle the building, she wondered about the people she had met inside the radio building, pondering their intentions. 
Should I have trusted them?
she thought, edging into full-blown panic as she rounded the southwest corner, having nearly encircled the building. 

     As she neared the front entrance once again, she began to doubt that her new acquaintances were to blame for Daphne and Hugo's absence. 
Wouldn't explain where my horse went,
she thought as she raked her fingers through her hair, oblivious to the fact that she had ripped out a couple dozen strands in the process.  She turned toward the intercom beside the door, formulating an idea as she pressed the buzzer. 

     "Phoebe?" she began.  "Professor Hewett?"  After a moment, she heard Phoebe's voice in response.

     "Yeah," Phoebe said, "we noticed you're still here.  Where are your friends?"
     "I don't know," Shari said.  "I was hoping your sniper did, though."

     Phoebe scoffed.  "He didn't do anything to them."

     "No," Shari said.  "That's not what I meant.  I mean, did he happen to see where they went, or what happened to them?"

     Phoebe was silent for about twenty seconds before she responded.  "No, he said he didn't see anything," she said. 

     Shari brought her hands together, touching her lips, and gazed toward the sky, letting out an apprehensive sigh.  After the better part of minute, Phoebe spoke up again.  "So...uh, what are you gonna do?"
     Shari shook her head as she surveyed the area around her, her eyes dazed and her pupils dilated.  "I don't know," she said, barely loud enough for Phoebe to make out through the intercom.  "But I have to find them."

     "You're looking a little...rough," Phoebe said.  "You sure you're okay to go off looking for them?"

     "Time's a-wastin'," Shari mumbled as she spun on one heel and started toward the road.

     Hugo slammed the door of the trailer, locking Eva safely inside.  "We won't have to worry about her," he said matter-of-factly, "as long as she doesn't starve or die of thirst."

     "We won't be leaving her for long," Daphne said.  "We should hurry back to Shari, though.  She'll probably be done in there pretty soon."

     "Don't you think she'll be mad that we left her horse here?" Hugo asked.

     Daphne shook her head.  "She should have thought about that  before she left us with her horse while undead were closing in around us.  I don't know about you, but I didn't feel like riding around on that thing trying to evade zombies.  You and me, we can go into the radio building if we have to.  That horse, on the other hand, would've been zombie shit if we got surrounded."  She started toward the radio building, leaving Hugo standing, momentarily puzzled, behind her.

     "Do zombies shit?" he muttered to himself.  He shook himself back into the present, turning to jog down the street after Daphne.

     Shari reached into her inner jacket pocket, producing a cigarette case and lighter. 

    
I just need to relax,
she tried to convince herself. 
I'm sure there's some explanation for this.
 
I just need to keep calm, keep it cool, and I'll find them
. 

     She inhaled long and deep as she strode down the brick road in front of the radio building.  She heard the dragging and scraping of undead all around her, but from the sound of it, she was guessing they weren't very fresh.  She quickened her pace, ejecting twin plumes of smoke from her nostrils. 

     As she made her way east, she heard the unmistakably human sound of a cough coming from her left.  She stopped cold in her tracks, turning toward the sound as she produced her .357.  She ducked behind an abandoned box truck, peering through the  back window at a side street where she suspected the sound had come from. 

     "Who the fuck's there?" she demanded.  She sat for two minutes, frozen still, as she waited for the unknown survivor to reveal itself. 

     "I should warn you," she said, her arms shaking and her face sweating as she pointed her revolver in the direction of the sound, "I'll take your unwillingness to show yourself to be a sign of hostility." 

     Her threat was met with silence, other than a slight quickening of the undead as they made their way toward Shari's voice.  She crept out from behind the truck, revolver raised, and began to make her way down the narrow side street north of her.  A large group of undead was nearing the intersection about a block ahead of her, advancing from the west. 

     She cocked her head in confusion as her gaze seized on a man with jet-black hair approaching the intersection from the east, heading directly toward the cluster of zombies.  He smirked at Shari as he ambled nonchalantly down the street, hands in his pockets.  Shari frowned. 
What the fuck is he doing?
  The mystery man raised his right hand, his index finger pointed at Shari like a gun. 

     "Bang, bang!" he mouthed tauntingly as he pointed his index finger with his thumb raised, mimicking a gun, and pretended to shoot Shari twice. 

     She experienced a sickening sensation as she was faced with a sudden realization. 
Holy shit--it's that sadist from the Kentucky border.  He got away, and he's back. 
With that, he cackled and vanished behind a building on the opposite of the intersection, disappearing from Shari's view.

    
Jesus,
Shari thought as she hurried toward the intersection,
did he just commit suicide in the worst possible way? 
She saw no sign of the sadist, and she realized, much to her bewilderment, that the zombies who clogged the narrow street didn't seem to notice that a human had just mingled with them.  They only marched, steadily but slowly, in her direction.  She shook off her confoundment, realizing that the immediate task at hand was to put as much distance as possible between herself the the odorous, decaying army which was now mere meters away from her.  She turned and fled eastward, the sound of her boots echoing through the dead streets as she ran.