Neverwake

  “That is seriously disgusting,” she says to me, oblivious to the openmouthed awe with which I’m staring at her.

  “Ant. That was awesome,” I say. “George would be so impressed.”

  Ant gives me this little grin, and for the first time I can remember, she looks truly happy.

  “I didn’t take you to be the violent type,” I catch myself saying before I even wonder how she’ll take it. “I mean, not liking guns . . .” I let the thought meander.

  “There’s a difference between shooting people and bashing monsters,” she replies.

  I think of the exhilaration I felt while smashing evil statues in my cathedral dream and then my horror when Sinclair killed the guard in the jungle. “I get it,” I agree.

  “Over here!” Fergus yells. He stands at the top of a motionless escalator. “Gun shop’s on the ground floor,” he says as we follow him down the stationary metal stairs. We make a ton of noise, but there aren’t any zombies waiting for us when we get to the bottom.

  “Okay, this way.” Fergus runs toward the double glass doors opening from the department store into the mall. He points to the sign above the door. “If we get split up, we meet back here: ground floor, Penney’s. The gun shop is about halfway down the mall. Just go fast, and don’t let yourself get cornered!”

  We dart out into the mall, which has so much stuff that at first I don’t notice its undead inhabitants. There are junglelike planted areas, fountains, art displays, and working escalators running between the ground and second floors.

  But after a few seconds of taking it in, I spot the zombies. They’re milling around like in a comedy routine, with zombies riding up and down the escalators and splashing around in the fountains, but mainly just shuffling and falling over things. With the green faces and neon blood, they don’t look that scary, especially since they’re not attacking anything.

  But as a few of them get a glimpse of us, they are pulled in our direction like paper clips to magnets, and I start feeling a core of fear harden inside me. Fergus and Ant dispatch the first few before Sinclair and I even have time to catch up. But as we continue, they get closer, and our fight begins. Sinclair starts swinging his ammunitionless crossbow at them, while I do the same with my baseball bat.

  Up close they don’t look so funny. The way they bare their teeth and claw at me triggers a primal reaction that makes me want to strike. I cringe as my bat meets the first head. Maybe it’s the woman’s old-fashioned stewardess outfit and blue eyeshadow that make her still seem human to me. But I tell myself to ignore the details and, after feeling queasy on the next two, am able to block my emotions and bash heads without hesitating.

  Ant is doing so well with the golf club, you can tell she’s managed to turn off the part of her brain that usually gets freaked out. She set her own tone when she decided to think of their heads as pumpkins, and she’s going at it with a gusto that makes that makes her seem like a completely different girl.

  I overhear Fergus giving her instructions, and I realize that they’re both treating it in the same way—as a spatial exercise. Ant loves to measure things, and he’s having her look at the zombies like she would on a paper or screen, measuring the angles.

  “Your two o’clock,” he says.

  “Sixty-three degrees,” she corrects and whacks the guy in the forehead, spraying gore down the front of herself. As the monster crumbles, she’s already looking for her next geometric equation.

  Within five minutes, and with a trail of twenty slain zombies in our path, we get to the gun shop. After striking down a few stragglers in the immediate vicinity, Fergus opens the door and we all dash in. He turns the dead bolt, and we are momentarily safe. A horde of zombies that had been on their way to us begins to congregate outside the windows.

  Maybe vintage zombies aren’t as resourceful as modern-day ones, because none of them picks up a bench and throws it through a window. I mean . . . that’s what I would do in their place. Instead, they ineffectively claw at the windows.

  Fergus and Sinclair start pulling guns off the walls and lining them up on the counters. They find ammunition in the drawers and stack them next to the weapons.

  Ant watches disapprovingly. “I’m fine with my golf club.”

  “You won’t be fine with your golf club when we’re trying to run for the Wall and there are a hundred zombies in front of us,” Fergus explains. Noticing Ant’s frown, he sets down his machine gun and says, “Listen, Ant. I’m not fond of guns either. But just pretend it’s a game, like before. This time we’re in a video game and these are virtual guns.” His voice peters out as he watches her stony expression.

  “All right. Keep your golf club, and you and I will go back-to-back. Does that work? I’ll shoot in front of us, and you bash any that sneak up from behind.”

  Ant seems relieved by this plan. Fergus gives her a little smile and gets back to work.

  “Okay, Cata. Come here,” he says, and hands me a machine gun.

  “Um, I wouldn’t even begin to know how to use this,” I say.

  “Have you ever shot a gun?” he asks.

  “Of course,” I respond. “I’m from Georgia. My sister and I used to shoot cans in the backyard with our dad’s shotgun.”

  “This is easier than a shotgun,” he says. “And I’m going to set it up for you. See this string of bullets? It loads itself. All you have to do is pull the trigger and hold on tight, because it moves around a lot, like the kickback of a shotgun, but over and over.”

  “How do you know how to use a machine gun?” I ask.

  “I don’t,” Fergus says. “But I’ve played enough video games to extrapolate.”

  When he grins, there’s a playful mischief in his eyes that makes me smile back. And during this goofy exchange, something happens to my heart. Something that started back a while ago, but that I hadn’t had time or energy to notice.

  I glance over at Sinclair and find him staring at me with a sardonic grin. He is more handsome than Fergus . . . in a glamorous movie-star way. But his smile has always made me feel uncomfortable, like I’m being judged.

  Fergus has always been warm. Why hadn’t I recognized it before? I wish it had been Fergus who had kissed me in that alleyway instead. I break Sinclair’s gaze and watch Fergus efficiently loading the gun, and whatever’s happening to my heart kind of solidifies and becomes a sure thing.

  I look over to see that the windows are now full of zombies, clawing and moaning, and want to laugh at myself for having any other feelings right now besides fear and disgust. It’s like we’re in a B or even C movie, where, even though catastrophe is taking place, the characters have the time and composure to fall in love. This is neither the time nor the place.

  Sinclair clears his throat, and the moment is gone. “Okay, everyone gear up.” He has so many guns strapped to his body that he looks like a rich-boy version of Rambo. Fergus wraps a gun belt around my waist and steps back to let me buckle it. He drapes a strap over my right shoulder and another over my left, then attaches them at the back.

  “Three guns?” I ask. “Why do I need three?”

  “Because they’re going to run out of bullets, and you won’t have time to reload. So you shoot everything you’ve got in one gun, then you drop it and pick up another and start shooting again.” There’s that smile again. He knows what he’s saying sounds ridiculous. I can’t help smiling back.

  Sinclair is attempting to fit Ant with a hunting vest . . . unsuccessfully. “If you’re not going to carry a gun, at least put this on.”

  “Why do I need a bulletproof vest for zombies?” she asks, shrugging it off.

  “I doubt they’ll be able to claw or bite their way through Kevlar,” he responds. “It just gives you more of a chance to make it to the Wall.”

  This seems to make sense to her, because she shuffles it on, and then, noticing a pair of noise-reducing headphones, slips them over her ears. She grabs the golf club and practices a swing toward the grimacing faces in the wind
ow. “Smashing pumpkins,” she says a little too loudly. “I think my mom has an album called that.”

  Sinclair has managed to put a few more guns on. I’m surprised he can still walk. “Isn’t that heavy?” I ask.

  “I’m looking it as both armor and weapon. I’d like to see those zombies bite their way through this!” He gestures to the complex web of ammo belts and machine guns draped across him.

  Fergus’s setup seems more realistic. He has three guns like me, but the one he carries in his hands looks a lot heavier than Sinclair’s.

  “Okay, let’s do this thing,” he says, and it’s only from the slight strain in his voice that I can tell he’s taking this seriously. He talked Ant into seeing it as a game, but he obviously doesn’t believe his own hype.

  I look in the direction of his gaze. The things outside the window are getting scarier the longer I look at them: their rotten, dripping teeth, the missing chunks of skin leaving exposed cavities, the fervor in their movements and hunger in their eyes—a clammy, cold feeling spreads across my skin. If we take much more time preparing, I’m going to be too afraid to move.

  Fergus groups us together in front of the door. I avoid looking at the things now that there’s just a pane of glass between us. “How do we do this?” I ask.

  Sinclair lays three machine guns down on the counter next to us. “Okay, these can be our spares. We shoot these guns through the windows before going out. One each, except Ant. Empty them completely. That will clear out the zombies standing near the windows. Then pick up your primary gun and we rush out, locate the Wall, and run for it, clearing our way as we go.”

  Fergus and I nod, but Ant looks dubious. “You hide while we shoot out the windows,” he advises her. “There’s going to be a lot of flying glass.” She nods and leaves us to crouch down behind the counter.

  I set the more lightweight machine gun on the counter and pick up the heavy “spare” that Sinclair prepared for me. The three of us line up side by side and aim at the zombies, who don’t seem to even see us. They keep scratching and moaning and baring their teeth. One of them pushes its hand too hard against the glass. It falls off, smearing black blood down the window. “I don’t think I can stand much more of the gorefest,” I say, feeling light-headed.

  “Okay, go!” Sinclair says. I pull the trigger and try to hang on to the gun as I spray bullets back and forth toward the windows. It’s so loud, and there’s so much glass and blood and brains flying everywhere that I want to throw up and cry and scream all at once. I settle for screaming, pouring all of my fear and disgust and anger into a high-pitched shriek that, if we were in the real world, could without a doubt land me a role in a slasher film.

  Sinclair and Fergus are yelling too. It just seems to go together: shooting machine guns and screaming.

  As the bullets run out, and there is a lull in the commotion, the first knock of the Wall comes booming through the space, shaking the ground we stand on. We look at one another, panicked.

  Sinclair yells, “Let’s go!” and we run out of the space left where the door used to be. Sinclair and Fergus shove decomposing bodies aside to make a path for us as we crunch over the broken glass.

  I get to the middle of the mall and turn my head from side to side. “I don’t see the Wall!” I yell.

  The others look equally confused. Zombies that were out of range of our shooting begin to shuffle toward us, moaning. “It must be at one end of the mall,” Fergus says. “Since the shops curve around, we can’t see the whole thing. We have to split up. Ant and I will go down this way. Cata, you and Sinclair go down that way. As soon as you get a clear view of the end of your side, come back. We’ll meet here in the middle.”

  Fergus and Ant peel off and head toward the left. “Come on!” Sinclair yells, and, shooting as we run, we go in the direction we came from—toward Penney’s. We pass shop after shop, all empty.

  The zombies that haven’t noticed us yet are wandering around, doing weird things like sitting in a fountain and sifting through the coins that lay at the bottom. Or going through garbage cans and looking at each object like it’s the holy grail. We shoot all the rest that come near us.

  The elevator music has gotten louder, and the moaning chorus along with it is making the scene feel even more surreal. We turn a corner and spot our end of the mall. No Wall.

  “It’s got to be in the other direction,” I yell.

  “Let’s go,” says Sinclair, and we turn to run back toward the others. But he’s so loaded up with weapons that he doesn’t see a sunken garden area right in front of him. He trips over the edge and falls straight onto his face. There is a second of stunned silence before he starts cursing and trying to get up.

  I grab his arm and attempt to pull him to his feet. The guns are heavy and he stumbles over the weird plant formations. He loses his balance and falls back onto his knees.

  “Take some of those off!” I yell, and try to unbuckle the belts that are strapped across him. He’s thrashing around, and I can’t tell if he’s trying to detach the weapons or get me off of him.

  I feel something brush my back, and I turn to see a face next to mine. It looks as surprised as I do, and there is a moment of hesitation before it stretches its mouth wide open. Too fast for me to dodge, it throws its head back, lunges forward, and bites into my shoulder.

  I scream as a burning pain radiates out from where the teeth are clamped into my flesh. I instinctually swing back and smash the zombie across the side of the head with my gun. It holds on, its mouth locked on me like those fighting dogs you see in videos that don’t let go of their prey no matter how forcefully they’re pulled away by their masters.

  “Sinclair!” I scream as he staggers to his feet. He turns and sees me, and his eyes widen as he scrambles to grab a weapon. I take my gun in both hands and strike the zombie again with all my force. I feel the gun embed into its head. The jaw unlocks and the zombie falls back from me and hits the ground, the gun still planted in its skull.

  I twist my head to inspect my shoulder. I’m bleeding so heavily that I can’t tell if the thing has taken a chunk out.

  Sinclair takes his gun and sprays bullets in a circle around us, downing every zombie in the vicinity. He grabs my arm, and we stumble forward, running toward where Fergus and Ant . . . and hopefully the Wall . . . should be awaiting us. But I’ve only gone a few steps before I’m literally blinded by pain. The world seems to erupt in yellow flames. “I can’t . . .” I start to say, and then fall to my knees.

  “You have to stay conscious!” Sinclair says, and tries to help me. I feel paralyzed. I don’t have the strength to get back up, but I am locked there, determined not to fall over. He can’t support my weight, and he sets me back down on the ground.

  From behind us comes a pounding noise, and a double door with a “Personnel Only—Keep Locked” sign above it begins to buckle under the weight of some unseen force.

  “Oh my God, there are more of them coming,” I moan.

  “Cata,” Sinclair says, and his voice sounds so different that I glance up to catch his gaze. “If you don’t want to run, you don’t have to,” he says, and there is a disarming warmth in his words. “Remember what I said about dying here? I really do believe it. This could be your time. You’re close enough to death right now that it is actually a valid choice.”

  He leans in closer. “That thing got one of your arteries. You’re bleeding out. If you stay here, you’ll die. Which means you could come out on the other side. You could be with BethAnn and the others in the real world. They’re alive. I just know it. I have this feeling.”

  I look at him, and for a second I am tempted. I’m in so much pain, and I feel so weak that I don’t want to make another move. Sinking down to the ground and just lying there seems almost delicious right now. There would be comfort in giving up.

  “Are you offering to shoot me?” I ask.

  “I couldn’t shoot you,” he says. “But I could give you this.” He hands me a pistol.


  I look at it for a moment, and am so tired of running . . . of fighting to live. I raise it to my temple. Feel the barrel cold against my skin. Sinclair watches me expectantly.

  As I start to squeeze the trigger, an image of my brother and sister flashes in my mind, and I stop. I remember that I’m not only making decisions for myself. I have to do my best to survive . . . for them. I’ve got to save them. I’m the only one who can get them away from our father.

  I drop the gun and, leaning forward, start throwing up a green liquid. The pounding continues from behind the locked doors, and I hear the splintering of wood.

  I barely register the second knock of the Wall, but the ground shakes, and a chandelier detaches from the ceiling and comes crashing to the ground.

  The sound forces me into alertness. I look up to see Sinclair’s face bobbing up and down, swimming in my blurry vision. “You go ahead,” I slur. “Tell Fergus and Ant I’m here. But if you can’t come back for me . . . don’t risk your own safety.”

  We hear a shout. Two people are running toward us. I slump to the ground in relief as Ant wallops a zombie with her golf club and Fergus shoots at something near where we’re crouching.

  “You’re hurt!” says Fergus as he huddles down next to me. Just then, the locked door splinters, and zombies begin pouring through.

  “Do something,” Ant urges Fergus. “It’s your dream.”

  Fergus is puzzled for a second, then, understanding, he nods and looks toward the door. He concentrates, but nothing happens. The zombies are getting closer. And then, a few yards away from us, a red-and-white pin-striped cart with “Popcorn” written across the top in big puffy letters shudders and flies across the space. It slams into the door and cuts off the tide of undead. Sinclair and Fergus shoot the few who got through with blasts of their machine guns.

  We all stare at each other. “It worked!” Fergus says.

  “Oh man, that was awesome!” Sinclair yells, his eyes practically popping from their sockets.

  Ant just stands there like she’s working out the trajectory or velocity or whatever.