It was too noisy. I couldn’t hear anything.
“She said she would keep them out of there.” Nelson sounded as if he were convincing himself as much as me.
Vaughan looked back at us. “It’s her one job. She’d better keep them out of there.”
I shrugged. He was right. She promised that she could. The whole plan hinged on whether or not she could keep most of these people at the front of the building. That didn’t disguise the obvious fact that Vaughan was very worried about her and covering it with his surly attitude.
“She thought maybe four or five would stay behind,” Vaughan continued. “Try not to kill them.”
His last words really hit me hard. This had been routine before. This had been… maybe a little more difficult than slaughtering a bunch of mindless Zombies, but we had a goal and we were working toward it.
With Vaughan’s reminders that these were still men, men that we might have to kill, lives we would have to end… the entire mission took on a new light.
I didn’t know if I could kill another human being. I didn’t know if I had the capacity to pull the trigger and end a life. I was barely morally aligned with killing Feeders and that was only because I thought I was doing them a favor.
My hands felt shaky and clumsy with the thought of it.
Nelson moved to the door and Vaughan counted off…
I guess I was about to find out.
The next few minutes happened in a blur of motion. I couldn’t quite grasp one clear picture; rather they all ran together in muted colors and pops of sound.
There were three armed men inside the tiered room and five civilians. Vaughan dove at the closest guy, tackling him back into a wooden desk in the corner. Behind the desk was one of the civilians who jumped on Vaughan as soon he landed.
Nelson flew in the opposite direction and went for the other guy’s legs. He managed to tackle him to the ground and the guy’s gun went flying. That left the third guy for me.
I raised my gun and pointed at his head.
He did the same.
There was no way I could overpower him by tackling him, or using any kind of physical force. The guy had at least seventy-five pounds on me. Even though the little weight I did carry was tightly packed with muscle, I needed to be rational over enthusiastic. I didn’t have much of an option other than this stand-off.
Out of my peripheral vision I could watch the rest of the action. All of the rapid movement and tension might freak other people out, but this was where my overactive brain came in handy. It absorbed everything, from the bystanders to the good punch Vaughan just gave his guy in the now-broken nose. I filed everything into appropriate categories and analyzed the next move each of us should make.
“Don’t take another step or I will shoot him in the jugular,” I threatened a seventy-something old man in worn overalls and a ratty, plaid button-down. His bald head shined in the glow of the many candles and the expression on his face told me everything I needed to know.
He jumped when he realized I noticed him, although how in the world he thought I could miss his trollish body was beyond me. “You’re not going to shoot nobody, Darling,” the toothless man crooned in a thick southern drawl.
I moved my gun up and down in a straight line along the chest path of the guy in front of me. “Do you believe I’m not going to shoot you?”
At that exact moment and as if to accentuate my point, Nelson hit his guy in the face so hard he pummeled back three feet. His body lay unmoving and limp.
Nelson hopped to his feet, pulled out his weapon and had it cocked and ready at the back of my guy’s head. “Answer the question. Do you believe she’s not going to shoot you?”
The guy held his gun steady. I held my gun steady. Nelson held his gun steady.
The old farmer… did not stay steady.
He jumped down the tiered band steps, flying farther than any man that size should be able to. Nelson jumped backwards but the old man caught his leg as he landed on his rotund belly. Nelson’s arms flailed in the air but he was going down, he couldn’t catch himself at that point.
I wanted to watch and make sure he held onto his gun but the man in front of me jerked his shoulder and knew that I couldn’t.
Nelson had managed to hit the bad guy I was in a stand-off with when he swung his arms wide and knocked the guy off balance. He was righted by now and pulling the trigger. I dropped to the floor on a very, very lucky guess that he was aiming for my chest or head and felt the air whoosh over my head.
Before the bullet could find purchase behind me or he could fire another shot, I pulled my trigger and hit him once in the knee cap. Bang.
The room was dimly lit with only candles and a lantern to provide light, but I still saw the bone, cartilage and muscle explode out of his jeans. He dropped to his other knee, unable to support his body weight anymore and lifted his gun for round-two.
He was a trooper.
I prepared myself mentally to go for his shoulder.
It turned out that I wasn’t ready to kill someone. Critically maim them, sure, no problem. But I couldn’t be directly responsible for their death.
My bullet never left my weapon though. Another shot rang out from behind him and blood and flesh ruptured from the back of his head. I crouched there, staring at the man who fell to the side completely devoid of life.
Blood splatter misted over my hands and clothes. My brain stopped processing things at super-speed, stopped the ability to make sense of things completely.
I slowly stood up as an eerie silence settled on the room. The gun shots had been loud, an eruption of blasting sound in my ears. Now there was just the silence after the storm.
Nelson crawled to his feet, away from the old man who clutched at his chest and wheezed short breaths in and out of his gaping mouth. We stared down at the old man, both of us unsure what to do or how to act.
He was an enemy that had tried to get us killed. But he was also a human being.
“Heart attack,” I said dumbly. “I mean, it looks like a heart attack.”
Vaughan had finally subdued his guy and the civilian; I didn’t know if either was by fist or by bullet. In my racing head I couldn’t remember if there had been more than those three gunshots. It seemed like maybe that was a possibility but all I could do now was thank God that it hadn’t been Vaughan.
“Does anyone know CPR?” I asked the stunned onlookers; three of them remained. Nobody replied. I had to shout my question over the increased roaring from the Feeders in the hall. Their bloodthirsty moaning had peaked to a shrieking volume with all this bloodshed in here and I knew we only had a minute before Matthias and his men came to investigate.
“Miller’s supposed to be back there,” I pointed to a hallway that led off the front of the room. Nelson looked back and forth between Vaughan and me helplessly. “Go with him,” I ordered. “And hurry. If no one’s back there then come back to me and let Vaughan handle it.”
Nelson nodded but his expression seemed a little concerned. Probably for good reason.
“None of you know CPR?” I threw my hands up helplessly. I knew the basics. It had been three years since I took a course, but I could probably figure it out. Except… I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to touch that guy. I didn’t want to offer him a second chance when he had been so willing to sabotage me.
A female hand rose timidly from a few rows up. A fragile creature walked down the elongated steps with as much fear as I felt. She couldn’t have been much older than me with light hair and big eyes. The finer details of her features were lost in the candlelight, but I knew that she was very pretty.
“I know CPR,” she repeated.
“Can you help him?”
She nodded once and slinked to her knees with her back facing the remaining civilians. Only two other men remained and they were as old as the man on the floor having a heart attack. They didn’t look in any hurry to try the same stunt he pulled.
She stretched out her arms
and clasped them together with her fingers interlocked and her open palm pressing into the back of her other hand. I watched her ready herself while the dying man gasped for breath and cringed in pain.
She settled her hands over his mouth, squeezed his nose shut with two of her fingers and held tightly while he flopped around.
I squatted in front of her. I thought maybe she was confused.
That was the opposite of CPR.
“Um, Sweetie, that’s not how you save a life,” I spoke as low as I could over the din of raucous Feeders.
“I know that,” she panted when the effort to keep the man still took some strength on her part. Her haunted eyes flashed up to mine and I saw something I hoped to never experience in my life. “He owns me,” she explained. “He owns me. And he beats me. And he… No matter how hard I fight him, he…”
I put my hand on the top of her head, giving an awkward blessing. She didn’t have to say anything more. I got it.
“Won’t Matthias just give you to someone else?” My words were as gentle as they could be but the cruel truth of them still cut deep.
She flinched but kept her hands in place. The heart-attack victim settled, his jerking and thrashing stopped altogether. I kept my gun pointed at the other civilians.
Facts. These were facts.
I needed to focus on facts.
My head reeled and my spirit revolted at the idea of all this evil… all this death… at this poor girl who lived an abused and traumatic life. My very soul felt sick.
So I made everything into a statistic and filed it neatly away.
I would deal with the emotional distress later. Much, much later.
“You can come with us,” I promised her. “If you want out, you can come with us.”
“Do you live on the road?” A new fear lit her big eyes when she looked back at me; this one lived nearer to the surface. This was the fear that kept her here, kept her with a man three times her age that would rape her and beat her.
I shook my head quickly. “We have a compound. We’re safe.”
She looked uncertainly over her shoulder at the men watching us intently. “Clothes? This is all I have.”
“We have everything,” I promised. The sound of glass shattering ricocheted through the large room and shook my intentions a little. “But you need to know, that if you betray us… if you defect and come back here or sell information to Matthias or Kane ever again… we will kill you.”
She blanched but didn’t argue.
I couldn’t tell if I was actually saving her or if I was inviting trouble to the compound. So, I stood up and towered over her. In my meanest, most serious voice I repeated, “I meant that. We will kill you.”
“O-o-o-okay,” she stuttered.
Then I felt bad. So I did what any normal, unhinged, Batman-like girl would do, I smiled at her. “You’ll love it there. I promise no one will beat you. And we’ll teach you how to shoot a gun so you’ll be able to deal with your… other problems. Should they ever arise again.”
“Thank you,” she told me with glossy eyes.
Nelson and Vaughan emerged from the hallway carrying an unconscious and shirtless Miller. “Don’t thank me yet. We still have to get out of this place.”
Chapter Four
“She’s coming with us,” I told Vaughan and Nelson in a tone that dared them to argue.
Nelson’s eyes squinted at her in the bad lighting and he raised a questioning brow. Vaughan held Miller, who was way too big to be carried like a baby, and huffed impatiently.
Vaughan adjusted Miller and said, “We don’t have time for this. You know we can’t trust her.”
“That,” I gestured wildly at the now dead, overweight farmer, “is who Matthias gave her to. She said he owned her.”
“And you believe her?” Nelson asked gently. “Hales, you don’t even know her name.”
“Madison,” she supplied quickly. “My name is Madison.”
The boys shuffled their feet and looked altogether reluctant to agree to my plan.
“We used to trust people,” I reminded them. “You used to trust people. You gave Reagan and me a chance. You took in Tyler and Miller. This girl needs you. She really needs you guys. Use your Super Parker Powers for good this time.”
Nelson let out a slow breath, “She’s right.”
“You’re only saying that because she’s your girlfriend!” Vaughan looked at the door and back at me. Our gazes locked and I dared him to go against me. I was right. He knew I was right. He just wanted to be stubborn at the worst possible moment.
I supposed the same thing could be said about me though…
Finally, he broke away and leveled Madison with a glare. “If you can keep up, you can ride with us. If you can’t… well, then…”
“She gets it!” I promised. I stared at her and gave a look that said, You better get this and you better keep up.
She nodded frantically, “Okay, yeah, okay, I can keep up.”
“Then let’s get the hell out,” Vaughan grumbled, adjusting Miller once again. Miller moaned in his arms but did not wake up.
I looked back at the two guys who had yet to move and kept my gun trained on them until we were at the door. Vaughan pulled the door open and fired three times. Nelson joined his brother and shot off twice more.
I kept Madison huddled into my side and my gun trained on the two stooges in the cheap seats. She was tiny. Like, I felt short compared to Reagan and all the boys, but this girl was little.
I really hoped she could keep up with us.
Plus, she’d just killed someone in cold blood.
Oh, good grief, what did I just do?
“Clear,” Vaughan shouted over his shoulder while the Feeders in their cages went ballistic.
I kept Madison glued to my side and did not look back down the hallway. Our feet slipped in a pool of blood but I pushed Madison on, refusing to look down at the puddle beneath our feet.
Madison let out a whimper of disgust and it wasn’t until we were running on dry tile that I heard the slap of her flip flops. Okay, I would have groaned, too, if I had someone else’s blood all over my feet.
We sprinted around the corner and avoided the grasping clutches of the Zombies. They were frenzied and manic, tripping with the need for flesh. The spilled blood teased their senses and called to their addiction. They were weakened and emaciated and yet they shook the bars of their small cages with collective ferocity.
Madison trembled next to me and I couldn’t help but feel her fear. We were almost to the storage room, and if we could get through the window and into the forest we might actually have a fighting chance.
Kane was awake when we pushed into the small storage space. He had knocked his chair over and was writhing around on the floor. He had almost gotten his gag all the way off. He looked up at us with so much hatred and revenge I cringed back into Madison and used her to protect me.
Earlier I had spoken with the rational, sane side of Kane.
This was his Mr. Hyde. This was the monster that came out and caused havoc and destruction. This was the crazed maniac that would kidnap my best friend and hold her hostage until he had enough of her, until he got his fill.
And then what would he do? When his attention wandered and he found a new obsession… what would he do to Reagan then?
Vaughan passed Miller off to Nelson and broke the shelving unit in half letting the cleaning products and other miscellaneous stored items fall down on top of Kane. He grunted as the heavier items hit him in the head but we mostly ignored him.
Madison stood there staring at him with a gaping mouth. “He’s going to kill you,” she whispered to me.
“Who, him?” I shrugged her off. “He’s kind of always trying to kill us.”
Vaughan climbed up and peered through the open half-window. He watched for a while and then awkwardly climbed through, hands in front of his face. I heard his body hit the ground on the other side, but in the next moment he jumped up so we cou
ld see that he was alright.
“You!” he spit, gesturing for Madison.
She tentatively climbed the shelf and I boosted her up from her bum, so Vaughan could catch her. Nelson climbed up next and passed Miller through the window to Vaughan. This took a considerable amount of time since Miller was still out cold.
Kane thrashed and screamed into his gag, furious that we would take his brother. More of the gag fell of his mouth and with muffled words he looked straight at me and swore, “Your retribution is coming tonight.”
Then Nelson hit him in the head and knocked him out again.
Nelson crouched on the shelf and grinned at me. “That’s better.”
I bounced forward and kissed him quickly on his dirt-covered, salty-from-sweat lips. “I’m glad you didn’t die.” We both looked up at the window simultaneously, and I added, “Yet.”
“I’m glad you haven’t died yet either.” His deep blue eyes bored into mine and he held me there at that moment. We seemed to transcend time and space, to float into our own reality altogether. It was he and I and no Zombies and no Colony of people trying to kill us. We existed with each other in a place where we only felt safe. Where we could just love and be loved.
Kane moaned and ruined the whole falling-deeper-in-love moment.
Goddamnit, Kane!
Just kidding, we needed to get going, anyway.
“Nelson, let’s go!” Apparently Vaughan felt the same way.
Nelson helped boost me out the window, his hands perfectly familiar on how to grip my ass. He pushed me through the small hole and Vaughan was there to catch me. My stomach rubbed along the metal frame and ripped my shirt further.
Reagan and I were going to have to go shopping in the storage boxes soon. We killed as many articles of clothing as we did Zombies.
I landed in a soft thud on the ground next to Miller. He groaned at the disturbance next to him and his eyes fluttered open. I lay still so he could see who I was and hoped that he remembered me.