Writing on the Wall (7 page)

When he pulls away, his hands still in my hair and on my skin, his breathing is ragged. I, on the other hand, have stopped breathing entirely.

“Watch for me.” he says roughly.

“What?”

He holds my face firmly in front of his, so close I can feel his breath on my skin. He locks eyes with me and repeats, “Watch for me. Keep your eyes open.”

“I will.” I whisper.

“Good.” He lets go of my face and squeezes my hand briefly. “Be safe.”

“You too.”

He smiles at me one last time before he goes.

Then I’m alone again.

Chapter Seven

“Crenshaw!” I whisper loudly into the wilderness.

I’m standing in the thickest section of trees in the park turned forest, scanning the brush. I have to be careful because Crenshaw is a shifty old man who loves setting traps. Traps for food, traps for zombies, traps for people. I think the people traps are his favorite. Yep, there’s a makeshift rope running up the inside of a tree. I’d bet my last sip of water that it’s connected to a loop in the underbrush. I am not taking another step.

“Crenshaw!”

“I’m here.” a disembodied voice calls from within the trees. He emerges from the shadows looking like Merlin if he’d fallen on hard times and got really into pot. He even has a staff, for God’s sake. “What do you need of me, Athena?”

Yeah, he calls me Athena, like the goddess of war. Years ago he said Joss was too mousey, that I was a survivor and deserved a survivor’s name. He toyed with calling me Xena for a bit but I refused to respond to it. By the time we got to Athena, I just didn’t care anymore.

“Nothing, I’m fine. I came to warn you that there’s been an outbreak in the Colonies. I’ve seen a lot more wraiths recently.”

Wraiths, yes. That’s what I said. I’ve entered into Mordor here.

“Ah, it was inevitable.” he rasps. “The gates of Hell were bound to spring open again eventually. How many have escaped so far?”

“I’m not sure. I overhead some men talking and they’ve spotted at least fifty in the area, probably more.”

“You were in the company of men?”

“No, not really. I was in the park and I overheard them.”

“And they didn’t see you?” he asks skeptically. He’s a crazy old bird but he’s sharp. Irritatingly so.

“One of them might have known I was there.” I admit grudgingly.

“Be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Be doubly careful.” he says, striking his staff on the ground twice for emphasis.

“Ok, yes. I’ll be triple careful.”

“You’re sure you don’t need anything of me? Tea? Food?” I shake my head, smiling at his generosity. “Water?”

Suddenly I’m reminded of Ryan’s warning.

“Don’t go to the watering holes.” I blurt out.

He scowls at me, looking offended by the idea. “I never do. Why would I?”

“I don’t know, but don’t go there. The men also said that the holes are dangerous. That the Colonies are doing a lot of roundups there.”

He watches me in silence for an uncomfortably long time, his face entirely devoid of emotion.

“These men,” he finally says slowly. “They said an awful lot, didn’t they?”

I shrug, trying to look unconcerned. “They were chatty.”

“All of this while you were in earshot.”

“Chatty and stupid.”

“No one alive today is stupid, Athena.”

I roll my eyes, getting tired of the interrogation or accusation. Whatever this is, it’s wearing on me. People in general are wearing on me and I think I’ve had
way
too much interaction recently. I need to detox.

“What do you want me to say? What do you want from me?” I ask, letting my frustration show.

“I want you to be careful.”

“And I said I would. I will be. I always am.”

“What is more dangerous than the wraiths?” He asks it like a condescending school teacher and I have to suppress a groan. I’ve heard this lecture a million times.

“Snakes?”

“Athena.”

“People. Living, breathing, thieving people.”

“Remember it well.” he warns. Then he steps back, blending into the shadows. It’s very theatrical and I wonder if he practices when I’m not around.

“You try and watch out for people.” I grumble, heading for the exit. I’m wondering how giving him a heads up ended with me being scolded. I want out of the woods, out of the park, out of the whole city. Out of this mess entirely.

I’m debating what to do about dinner tonight and which water supply to tap when it happens. An early warning system goes off. From a tree about a block and a half down, a massive flock of birds takes to the sky. Aside from the beating of their wings they don’t make a sound. No cawing. No screeching. They’re not freaking out over the dead, so what are they running from? It’s something human or another animal. If it’s an animal, it’s big. Threatening. If it’s human, they’re not used to treading softly and only one type of person nowadays hasn’t finely honed their creeping skills. They don’t have to. They live behind fences and walls and sleep on mattresses and sheets and wash their hair with real soap, not with some beige bar made in Merlin’s Magical Shop of Wonders in the woods.

Colonists.

I hide myself deep in the bushes, close to where I was hiding with Ryan. As my breathes come in short and painful I feel so far removed from Crenshaw’s Athena or Ryan’s bitch Joss. Now I’m Jocelyn, eight years old and terrified, hiding behind a tree again while evil closes in on me. I can pretend to be as tough as I want, but the person who knows the truth is the only one who matters; me. I know every single day how scared I really am. How tired, how angry, how lonely. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or if I work my ass off to make sure there is no ‘anyone else’ around to see it. It’s still true. I’m still scared.

I don’t have to wait long for the silent, silver electric car to come rolling by at a ridiculously slow speed. Most roads are cracked, sprouting weeds and grass or filled with stripped out cars and debris, but there’s a trail cleared that winds through the area. It’s something some of the gangs have done or maybe the Colonists did it? I’m not sure. Either way, areas on this trail are the marketplace for the crews who are willing to barter with one another. The morning after a new moon you can find them gathering at random locations along this road to trade goods and act like morons together. I’ve obviously
never attended but I’ve watched from the roof before and, if I’m being honest, I’ve watched with a little envy. Most of the Lost Boys get along, laughing and shouting together. Like friends.

But now the roads are empty and silent, barely a sound coming from the ridiculously small, shiny car gliding through this derelict world. It doesn’t belong here.
They
don’t belong here. The sight of a car, something that was once so common place and now so nauseatingly strange, sends chills down my spine. I feel cold sweat break out over my clammy skin and I remind myself to breath evenly.

They can’t hear me. They can’t see me. They don’t know I’m here. They will not take me.

I try to tell myself to calm down. I doubt they’re doing a roundup right now, not without their vans with the doors that lock from the outside. It’s not really a good time anyway, not for anybody. All of us in the wild, those with any sense at least, are holed up in our homes waiting to see just how bad this latest outbreak is going to get. If any sense of responsibility still existed in the world, the Colonists would be out here to kill these things off once and for all. Clean up their mess. But there isn’t and that’s not why they’re here. They’re here to make a point. To let us know that not all of them have fallen, not everyone in their golden city is infected. To warn us not to come looting.

You better believe that if they ever did fail entirely those of us in the wild would descend upon their stocks like vultures. I dream about it at night when I’m not having nightmares about crawlers eating my legs. I don’t wish them ill, I’m not hoping they all die, I just want to take their stuff. Is that bad? I don’t even know anymore. This type of moral questioning wasn’t covered in
The Breakfast Club.
I fear the structure of my upbringing is noticeably lacking.

***

The next week is a bear. My life, already more than a little stressful, gets way worse. The biggest, most notable source of my anxiety is the fact that I haven’t moved. I can’t. The zombie threat is back and bigger than it has been in years leaving me thinking that the numbers Ryan’s friend quoted were conservative. There are definitely more than fifty dead bloating the ranks out there. In the middle of the night I can hear the groaning outside breaking the silence I hadn’t realized I’d grown accustomed to. This is the old days, the early days. The bad days.

My other problem is the Colonists. They’re everywhere. The trucks and vans are out patrolling the streets and blaring over the loudspeakers again, something they haven’t done in a long time. They play up the threat of the dead, telling us the only place to be safe from this latest outbreak is in their compounds. Are we idiots out here? They must think so, because we all know where the fresh dead came from and the idea that we’d be safer where the infection found footing again is laughable. It’s also infuriating.

“Fuck you!”

I freeze, shocked by the unfamiliar sound of human life outside my windows. I can feel pins and needles prickling under my skin as I run to the window, sticking to the shadows cast by the late afternoon sun. From this height I can see the street a block over, looking down over the lower buildings to the east. The Colonist trucks are there. Three of them.

I watch as Lost Boys run at the vehicles, weapons raised. There are at least ten of them, a decent gathering, but I worry. Word is, if Crenshaw’s sources are good, that the Colonists still have guns, though I’ve never seen or heard them used. The Lost Boys attack, swinging weapons that look long, dark and deadly. I hear indiscernible shouts, words lost in the wind or the distance. Or in rage. Maybe they never meant anything other than anger.

The Colonists are spilling out of the vehicles to defend themselves and I wonder if they have anyone locked inside. They collide with the gang and the shouts intensify. The clang of metal against metal, screams of pain and more curses carry over otherwise silent streets and up to my fractured window. I watch carefully, trying to make out the shape of the men. The color of their hair. I’m holding the softened, rotted wood of the window frame with white knuckles and I’m wondering, worrying, if Ryan is with them.

There’s a flash of orange light. Fire. The Lost Boys have lit a torch. Or I think it’s a torch until it flies through the air and lands at the rear tire of the trail vehicle. It explodes into an inferno, crawling up the side of the van like a spider, spinning a web of heat and smoke behind it. More cries ring out from both sides and the men disentangle themselves from each other as the fire becomes the true threat to everyone. The gang retreats, quickly gathering a fallen member from the ground and dragging him away. A trail of red mars the ground behind him, appearing especially bright and red over a patch of yellow, dry grass.

The fire is coming for it. It consumes everything, devouring the van and burning brightly over nearly the entire surface. The Colonists pile into their remaining two vehicles and quickly pull away, leaving the fallen van to burn itself out. Within the space of three minutes the confrontation is over. The only signs it ever took place are fire and red grass, both of which are burning away, flaming out. They leave behind only a pillar of dark smoke in the sky and a black stain on the ground. And I wonder again, as I watch it all burn, if they had anyone locked inside.

Chapter Eight

The fight has me freaked. I wait it out another two days after that but eventually I absolutely have to leave the building for more food and water. It hasn’t rained in days and my emergency bucket is dry. I’m also a little worried about Crenshaw being down at ground level with all of this going on. He’s much more at risk than I am and I know I need to make a kill or go fishing in the bay and bring him some meat soon because he won’t do it himself.

Gathering an empty jug for water, my knife and ASP, I curse myself for never learning to use a bow and arrow. It’d be nice to shoot a meal instead of chasing it down, tackling it and slitting its throat. Have you ever chased a wild rabbit? How ‘bout a squirrel? No, you haven’t because it’s exhausting and nearly futile. But it’s also necessary. I’ve been trapped in this apartment with nothing but carrots, potatoes and tomatoes for over a week and I’m not a vegetarian. Not at heart.

When I step outside into the unseasonably warm winter sun, my hands are slick with sweat. I’m nervous. This is dangerous, more so than it has been for years and I wonder if I’ve still got the skills to survive this world. What if I’ve gone soft? What if I can’t handle as many dead as I used to? How fast can I run these days?

My thoughts and doubts are stopped in their tracks along with my feet when I round the corner. I’m shocked. Stunned. Afraid. Excited.

There across the street on the side of a building just a block and a half from my home is writing on a wall.

Welcome to the new age.

My shoulders fall, relief coursing through me. Surprising me. It’s Ryan, it has to be. Who else would know those lyrics? I wonder if he knows I didn’t move or if it was wishful thinking. A shot in the dark to see if he gets a reaction. To see if I forgive him and trust him enough to stay. I didn’t think I knew the answer to either of those questions, but the fact that I’m still here is answer enough. It’d be dangerous for me to move right now with the rise in the number of dead and the Colonists out going door to door like they’re selling religion, but it’d still be possible. It’d suck, but if I really felt threatened, I’d have done it. But I haven’t.

What’s really important here, what makes me heave a shaky sigh of relief, is that he’s alive. He’s unhurt.

Or is he?

I’ve been in my home for over a week. I have no way of knowing when this message was written. Was it before or after the confrontation I saw two days ago? I can’t know, not with certainty. So it means nothing. And it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t mean anything anyway. He’s not my concern. What I need to worry about right now is not some vague message scrawled out in brick dust, something that will wash away with the first heavy rain. My worries are more substantial and far more urgent.

I put the message out of my mind, get my head in the game and move on.

Three hours later, Crenshaw and I have lunch. It’s a mangy little rabbit that ran me all over hell and back, but I got him in the end. Crenshaw, in a very rare show of friendship, asks me to stay and eat with him. He has a system for smoking the meat, making it not only delicious but also keeping a low profile while cooking. Even though I’m worried he’ll get a visit from one of the Lost Boys while I’m here, I take the chance for a shot at a good, hot meal. Also, and I keep this to myself, I don’t mind the idea of the company so much either.

“You look as a true warrior, Athena.” he says, pulling his robe more tightly around himself as he leans down to stoke the fire. It’s a real robe, like a bathrobe. There are sailboats on it. Blue ones.

My hands and clothes are soaked in blood from killing and skinning the rabbit. I’m tired, scratched up from branches, bushes and bunny claws and I’m sure I look more nuts than anything else. Does that make me a warrior? I doubt it. I think I’d have to be afraid of a lot less to be classified as one.

“Really? I was thinking I needed a bath.”

He snorts at me. “Your generation is obsessed with cleanliness. Do you think even the Kings and Queens in medieval court were so thoroughly bathed? I assure you, they were not.”

“I don’t know, Cren.” I say doubtfully, looking down at myself. “I think I’ve gone beyond royalty filth and moved into cavewoman status.”

“It’s good for you.”

I smile and take a seat at his table. “You’re the doctor.”

He ignores me as he cooks and I enjoy the feeling of not being alone but being left alone. It’s a strangely wonderful sensation. It’s cozy here in this earth and mud hut that’s he built. It’s small, my leg is pressing against his cot tucked in the far corner, and it’s incredibly dark inside, but it fits him. Outside this sparse living quarter is his real home; his garden. It’s all hidden deep in the brush and trees of the park but it’s expansive as well. If he asked me to go out and get him something from it, I wouldn’t know where to begin. It all looks like a jungle to me but to him it’s perfectly clear.

He brings me a plate with my smoked rabbit on it and sits across from me.

“Have you seen your friend lately?” he asks casually.

I stiffen. “I don’t have friends, remember?”

“Athena.”

I groan. “Don’t do that. Don’t scold me. I talked to him once. It’s no big deal and it’s not a friendship.”

He chews thoughtfully. “If you speak to him again—“

“I’m never going to see him again.” I interrupt. I immediately wish I hadn’t. Crenshaw stares down his nose at me and I cave. “I’m sorry, please continue.”

He clears his throat. “If you speak to him again, be wary but cordial.”

My rabbit slips through my fingers and plops on my plate. “Cordial? You want me to be nice to him? Since when?”

“Since the wraiths outnumber us again.”

“I don’t know that they outnumber us.” I say doubtfully.

“Since the Colonists walk these woods.”

I drop my meat again, this time intentionally. “They’ve been here? Near you?”

He watches me calmly. “Not near enough to see, but near enough for me to hear. Do not worry for me.”

“Crenshaw—“

“I said do no worry, Athena. I have shrouded my home. I will remain unseen.”

“Shrouded it with what? A spell?”

He frowns at me, looking at me like I’ve gone mad. “With camouflage.”

“Right, sorry.”

Sometimes I forget that Crenshaw’s crazy is selective. He’ll be telling me one minute to burn sage to ward off evil spirits and the next he’ll be asking if I remember the football Thanksgiving episode of Friends. It’s hit or miss. More often miss.

Eventually I say goodbye to Master Gandalf and carefully pick my way out of his neck of the woods. I’m full of good food, sedated by whatever incense he was burning in that hut and my day is only half done. Now the hard part. I have to climb to the top of one of my buildings and get fresh water.

This is dangerous for two—wait, no three… I guess actually four—it’s dangerous for a whole lot of reasons, let’s just go with that. Colonists, zombies, Lost Boys, bears. Yes! I have seen a bear before and I cannot tell you how scary that was. He was huge and hungry and fast. I only got away because I climb way better than he could. I ended up sleeping in an unfamiliar building out on the fire escape until he got bored or hungry and finally left.

I decide to minimize my danger factor since I’m already tired from Elmer Fuddin’ it after that rabbit and I go to my closest water source. It’s five blocks away and to the south, the opposite direction of Ryan’s home.
At least I know I’m walking away from one threat I’d like to hide from. The walk there shows me how flooded the world really is. It’s one thing to see it from up high and it’s another entirely to get down in it. Every corner I round seems to bring me nearly face to face with a Risen. I’m able to carefully avoid them, eventually going to the rooftops to do so, but that’s dangerous and kind of lazy on my part. I just want to get my water and go home when what I should be doing is putting them down and eliminating the problem for Future Joss. Making Future Joss’s life easier with less zombies to face on a daily basis. But that’s Future Joss’s issue and right now Present Joss isn’t feeling it.

Selfishness, especially my own, is what makes this place so hard to survive.

When I get to the building I have a choice to make. Go inside and take the stairs or climb the fire escape. The fire escape of course sounds like the better option because I won’t have to be inside a building that for all I know could be crawling with Risen. It’s the smart choice on paper. But when you look at the situation more closely, mainly at the bolts securing the fire escape to the building, you see the flaws in the plan. It’s been many moons, many winters, many rain storms since this thing was deemed safe by the local fire inspector and I know for a fact that it’s hanging on by a thread. As I stand here on the sidewalk examining it, feeling more exposed by the second, I see the structure shift in the wind. I’m not setting foot on that.

Inside it is.

My skin crawls at the thought and I have to take several deep breaths to psyche myself up for this. Once I’m inside, I’m all stealth and speed. I don’t need to be a hero here. I’m not looking to hunt zombies tonight and help decrease the surplus population, no matter how much Future Joss will bitch about it. What I need to do is get in and get out without contact – living or otherwise.

But what I need, what I want and what I get have rarely lined up.

That Cabbage Patch Doll with the blood in her blond hair? I wanted a brunette.

I also wanted my parents to live past New Years.

Do you see the pattern here?

What I see is a Risen at the end of the hall by the door to the stairs. The
only
door to the stairs.

“Great.” I mutter, pulling out the ASP with my left hand and unsheathing my knife with my right.

I’m right handed and my preferred weapon here is the ASP. So why am I holding it in my weak hand? Because it doesn’t need me to be strong. Not really. It doesn’t need me to be accurate either. All it needs is a target and a little momentum and that thing will crush bone under its steel tip like it’s nothin’. Like cracking a walnut. Ryan was right to be jealous. This thing is amazing and I sleep with it like a toddler with a teddy bear.

A brisk breeze flutters through the smashed door behind me and carries down the hall. Almost instantly the hunchback female with a serious skin condition is aware of me.
She begins the slow shamble down the long hall toward me and I think about waiting for her, making her come to me and maybe even drawing her out into the street before engaging her. But the day is waning, light will be scarce soon and I’m not about to be caught out in the wild after hours.

I move down the hall slowly, checking doors as I go and keeping my eyes on her progress. When my beauty queen with the gray skin sloughing off her bones moans into range, I kneel down and swing out, aiming for her shin. It cracks, breaking the bone and dropping her to the ground. Once she’s down, I quickly kick her over on her side, making her temple more accessible. I could have hit her in the head when she was up, but it wouldn’t have ended her and it would only have either made a mess of her face or been a waste of energy. The top of the human skull, the only section I have clean access to in this tight hallway, is incredibly strong. The temple and the face, not as much.

She grabs at my leg, clawing at the denim and moaning. Her big dead eyes are looking right at me and it’s that more than anything else that gives me chills. How is she looking at me with those things? What does she even see?

“Nothing.” I growl, growing angry at her constant moaning and greedy hands. “You don’t see anything.”

I swing the ASP down hard, making contact with her cheek bone. It explodes in a rush of black and gray. A tooth pops out of her mouth and skitters across the floor behind me. I bring the baton down again, this time closer to her ear and I must catch the temple a little because she stops moving. But I don’t. I keep swinging the baton because I can. Because I want her gone. I want all semblance of a human face to be beaten into the floor and stripped from this body because it’s not real anymore. It’s not human and it shouldn’t look like one. No one should come through here, see her finally, perfectly, wholly dead and think how sad it is.

When my arm grows tired and I’m sufficiently grossed out by the softness of what I’m now beating, I stop. I’m breathing heavy and I’m tired. I’m tired of a lot of things. I need to get upstairs, get my water and get home. I’ll clean myself up and watch a movie, something I haven’t done in a week. Not since Ryan rode the bike. I don’t know why I haven’t, but tonight for some reason I really desperately want to.

I take off at a sprint, ignoring the rest of the doors in the hallway. I don’t have enough time, patience or daylight to mind them all. It’s risky but not as risky as being out at night. This building is only six stories. I’m rounding the corner on the stairs heading up to the fifth floor, breathing deep and even, searching for my calm again, when I trip. I fly forward, my momentum thrusting me up the stairs and onto the fifth floor landing. I watch with horrified interest as my ASP, my greatest, most loyal friend, flies down the hall without me.

“Ah, hell.” I groan.

There’s another groan behind me and I scurry quickly up the last two stairs I’m still sprawled out over. When I spin around to look behind me I want to scream. It’s a crawler. A no leg having, teeth at your toes, scare the bejeezus out of me crawler. I hate these things. I hate them for the very situation that I’m in right now – they come out of nowhere. Taking a zombie down on purpose in order to end them the way I just did, that’s one thing. But Risen like this guy who slither across the earth at your feet like a snake, that’s messed up.