Dark Paths: Apocalypse Riders (5 page)

She found that she
wanted
to believe him. His words and his tone were reassuring, his very presence made her feel safe, irrational as it was - he was a stranger. A gang member. President of the gang, at that.
And I don’t need protecting,
she reminded herself.
No one on foot could have escaped that swarm without help. But otherwise, I can keep myself safe just fine.
Fingers still tangled in her hair, she found herself twisting the wild strands into braids, one on either side of her head - it had been whipping her in the face whenever they hit an errant gust of wind. Call lit another cigarette and let her mull in silence.
I can’t let him think I’m easy prey if he decides to turn on me. I can’t let
anyone
think it.
She finished tying the ends of the braids and pulled them outwards, trying to get a good look at them.

“Sloppy,” she said with a regretful sigh. “You don’t have a mirror, do you?”

He shook his head. “Don’t matter. You’d look pretty no matter what you do with it.”

The idiot smile and the warm blush that spread across her cheeks were involuntary. She tried to fight it off but it was too late. Call’s face split in an echoing grin. “Goddamn,” he said, shaking his head. He stamped out his cigarette and turned back to his bike. “Let’s get moving, girly. Still got a lot of road to cover.”

◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙

She had her chance to show him what she could do soon enough - sooner than she’d hoped, exhausted as she was. He pulled to an abrupt stop in the late afternoon - she couldn’t see what was ahead, but she knew. She could tell through the tension in his back. “Corpses,” she said.

“Yeah. From the sides, too. Shit.” He pulled his gun. “We’ll just have to burst through ‘em. Get ready to kick.”

“Kick? I’ll fall off!” She pulled her shotgun free and slid from the back of the bike. “I’ll take care of it.”

“The hell you will,” he growled and tried to grab her, but she dodged aside. Sure enough, there was a group of corpses blocking the road ahead of them. She heard the familiar shuffling sound and spotted movement off to her right, but she judged them far enough away to wait on dealing with them. First, the ones straight ahead. She strode ahead of the bike and inhaled deeply, exhaled quickly, focusing on the group in front of her.

Call shouted her name but she ignored him. She was a calm island in the sea of chaos around them. She was focused. She took one more step forward and cocked the shotgun.

Take aim. Take a breath.
She squeezed the trigger. The corpse’s head burst like an overripe melon, gore and black and rotten blood hitting the ground moments after the body dropped.
One more.
She quickly recovered from the kick and took one more step forward.
Breath. Fire.
She held out her arm and dropped the gun as she pulled a revolver free from the holster on her other side.
Step forward. Aim.
She shot a third corpse down.
Half turn.
She shot another.
Pivot back.
Another fell before it could get close.
Behind.
She fired three more times, dropping a group of three corpses about to lurch out of the woods in Call’s direction.
One more bullet.
She turned back to face the road ahead and killed one more. Again, she reached out and dropped the gun away from her feet as she pulled a second gun free, another revolver from her other side.
Six more.

Call was smart enough not to try to approach her. She heard him firing rapidly and turned back in his direction. “Calm. Breath and aim,” she said to herself, exhaling a slow breath, holding her focus. She aimed beyond him where more corpses had appeared from the woods. They were further away and she had to take longer to prepare to fire. But she dropped all four of them, one after another. Call’s wild firing took out the fifth.

“I’m out,” he called to her, stuffing his gun back in his pants. He pulled a knife.

But Lia was ahead of him. She shot two more to Call’s right, pivoted as she dropped the empty weapon and pulled her final gun, her pistol, from the back of her pants. Twelve more bullets. But only one corpse was left. She put a bullet in its head and tucked the gun away.

Call was gaping when she turned back to him. The road was littered with dead corpses in a circle around them and the bike. “Holy shit,” he said, staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. “Wow. Is it wrong if I’m really turned on right now?”

She flinched but his crass words brought her back to the present, back to earth. “Don’t say that.”

He laughed, incredulous. “You’re like a goddamn whirlwind of destruction, but that offends you.” He laughed again. “Fair enough.”

She sank to the ground in the middle of her guns and pulled some extra ammo from her pockets. “We should go,” Call said, “Reload somewhere safer.”

“And if we run into more of them first?” she asked. “You always reload immediately.” She moved quickly and efficiently - she knew which bullets were in which pockets, knew exactly how to load each weapon in the quickest way possible. She was done and rising to her feet in a matter of moments, shotgun resting over her shoulder.

“See?” she said, “No time at all.” He looked a little pale. “Are you okay?”

“Here I was thinking I needed to make you feel safe,” he said, shoulders shaking with mirthless laughter. “But
you’re
the dangerous one. I’m the one that should be scared, not you.”

She couldn’t help smirking. “I’m only dangerous at a distance, Call.”

“Well then get yourself over here before I drive off shrieking like a little girl,” he said, tucking his own gun away. “Fuck.”

They barely spoke that night - after all the adrenaline of her escape the night before, the neverending flight on the back of Call’s motorcycle, shooting the corpses on the road, she was drained beyond the use of words. He found them a safe place on the roof of a gas station shop. “Not one of our rest stops,” he explained, “But we’ll be secure enough. The dead can’t navigate stairs so good.” She was asleep with her head on her pack before he’d finished barricading the door just to be extra cautious.

He shook her boot to wake her in the morning. “Got a lot of miles to cover,” he said as she sat up. His expression was darker; he avoided meeting her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did something happen?”

His shoulders slumped as he put some jars and dirty socks back in his bag. He cleared his throat. “Didn’t sleep so good.”

Bad dreams.
She helped him carry the bags back down the stairs to where he’d hidden the motorcycle in silence. Nightmares were familiar enough to her, too, and often it was better to just not talk at all, to just wait and let them fade. Her heart ached for him, though - she hated to see anyone sad or upset or in pain.
I shouldn’t feel like this, I’ve known him for less than forty-eight hours. This could still turn out to be a bad situation for me.
Still, with everything that had happened, she was starting to feel like she knew him.
Silly, stupid girl!

Soon they were on the road, putting more miles between her and the farm, between her and the survivors, whoever they may be. She yawned against his back; though she’d slept like a dead thing, she was still exhausted. Too much worry, too many emotions warring in her head.
I wonder if people died from just being worn out.
At least she could shoot - she imagined she’d feel that much worse if she was afraid for her life at every turn.
Probably should be anyway.

Call pulled the bike to a stop in the middle of nowhere in the mid-afternoon. The forests had given way to fields again, and there was no movement anywhere aside from the birds. “I’ll bet your still tired.”

How’d he know?
It felt like no amount of sleep would be enough. “I’m okay.”

“Let’s park for a bit anyway. I’ll build a fire, cook up something hot for once.” He climbed off without waiting for an answer.

He quickly got a little campfire going just off the road using some sticks he’d apparently been carrying in one of his bags, some newspaper scraps, and a lighter. She watched him work, appreciating his efficiency. They’d built plenty of campfires on the farm - especially when the weather was nice. Sometimes they’d sit around it to eat their evening meals if Father Speer was in a more informal mood. He’d even let the girls whisper and giggle amongst themselves… she shook the thought away.
May as well fish for a little more information.

“What’s your gang like?” she asked.

“Club,” he said, “We were a club before the dead started walking and we still are.”

“Sorry. Didn’t know the difference.”

“We ain’t into any illegal shit,” he said. “I mean, now I guess there
are
no laws. But we have our own.”

“Like what?”

“The usual,” he shrugged, “Same old laws we followed in civilized society, ‘cept now we’re forced into more violence. Rival gangs, roving madmen. The apocalypse allowed some real pieces of shit to grab a little power and go hog wild.” He retrieved a can of baked beans from his bag and worked with his little can opener to peel off the lid as he spoke. “We try real hard not to kill the living, mind you, but sometimes they don’t leave you much choice. My guys have cleaned up after a whole bunch of rotten bastards. We’ve got a nice community going now. People we’ve saved, people who’ve found us.” He put the can right on the fire.

She had to suppress a smile - she wasn’t really paying attention to his words. Instead she was focused on the way that he spoke - rough around the edges, peppered with curses, with a slight southern accent. It wasn’t at all like Father Speer’s way of speaking, making everything sound like a declaration, full of flowery phrases meant to awe and impress. Call just spoke like Call. Like a man that wasn’t trying to be something more than he was.

“And wherever you’re all staying, it’s safe?” she asked.

“Yeah. Our compound. We’ve got this, like, office complex. I guess it used to be some kinda business center. Got some doctor’s offices and stuff. It was already all fenced in so we just settled there and we keep strengthening that fence with junk we find and well, we’ve got plenty of space. You’ll see.”

She sat on the ground across the fire from him, spoon drawn. Wearing a thick work glove, he pulled the can from the flames and set it aside between them.
He was right,
she thought as she dug in,
It is nice to have something hot.
They shared the can in silence, with Lia stealing glances at Call when she thought he wasn’t looking. He raised an amused eyebrow when he caught her.

“Tell me about your friends,” Call prompted. “How’d a bunch of pretty young girls end up on that farm? Did y’all know each other before the corpses walked?”

“No,” she whispered. She stared into the fire as she searched for an explanation that didn’t sound creepy. She didn’t want to make Father Speer sound crazy, even if he was, a little. “The minister and his son took us each in when we stumbled across the farmhouse.”

His eyes narrowed. “Only you young things, though.”

“I’m not that young,” she said, eyes flashing. “I mean, I’m only twenty. But I’m not a child.”

“Just seems suspicious to me,” Call said, lighting another cigarette.

“Father Speer was a good man,” she said, and corrected herself, “Is. He
is
a good man.”

“Yeah. Gathering himself a harem. Nice guy.”

Her eyes shot wide open. “We weren’t his harem! He only let virgins stay, he wasn’t gathering a bunch of girls to have
sex
with.” She clapped her hands over her mouth.
I said too much. Way too much. Why did I do that?

“Doesn’t sound much better,” Call said, poking the fire with a stick. “So he’s a religious nutter. Are you?”

“No,” she said softly. “I don’t know.” She sighed. “I guess I’m not. I wasn’t very
good
, that’s for sure.”

He smirked. “Little rulebreaker, were you?”

“I tried not to be. I tried to do everything right.” She shook her head and muttered, “Maybe I
am
a nutter.”