Dead Soil: A Zombie Series (34 page)

“So, can we start looking for a safe place to settle in now?” Gretchen asked as she threw her hands up and let them slap against her thighs.

Rowan saw the chance to reclaim the group as his own. He took a step forward and straightened his back so that he was almost matching Lee in height. “Yes,” he said steady with his chin thrust slightly forward. “We’re going to find ourselves a home.”

X.

Zack left early without stopping at Liam’s to check over the apartments in their building. He didn’t see the point. They hadn’t found a single body, dead or alive, since Ralph and his wife weeks ago. He spent more time out on his own, searching for Anita and supplies rather than in the comfort of his own apartment.

The place wasn’t a home anymore. It was a prison, keeping him closed off from the world and from ever finding the one person he wanted so desperately by his side through it all. He walked the woods with his sword in his hand and his heavy canvas jacket zipped up tight. He wore fingerless gloves so he wouldn’t lose his grip in the middle of an inevitable upcoming battle with the growing numbers of the undead. The hood of his jacket hung low over his head to shield his eyes. Christine had made him laugh the other day when she warned him against wearing it like that.

“It’s impairing your vision. What if you don’t see one coming?” she’d said in her motherly voice.

“Where are they hiding? In the trees?”

It was the last time he saw Christine.

As he walked aimlessly, everything exposed in the whiteness of the snow-covered ground and trees, he thought about Anita—about what she looked like. He didn’t have a picture of her so the only time he was able to remember her face, picturing the littlest details, was when he was completely alone. He didn’t want to forget her in case he never found her. The very thought drove him mad. He whacked his sword against a tree trunk as he passed by it, the only sound to penetrate the silence of the woods besides his lumbering footsteps. He turned back to his thoughts and tried to focus on the good.

He remembered the way Anita would come into the store, meandering around, picking up games and comics and putting them back down, never buying a single thing. He laughed to himself as he thought about how she always found a way to bring up a conversation so naturally with him. One time they’d even talked about breadsticks for fifteen minutes. Breadsticks! He laughed again to himself. That was the kind of hold she had on him.

He pictured the way she pinned her brown hair up into a retro fifties style, secured by the blue bandana around her head. And the outfits she wore. He let out a pleasurable sigh as he imagined her long legs in those tall red heels. The ones that matched her cherry-red, full lips. He
had
to find her. That was all there was to it. He had to.

For the first time, he let his mind think about what they would do once he actually found her. The plan was always to bring her back to the apartment to live, but how long would they be able to live there? Every day it seemed like there were less people on the Earth and more undead to take their places. The feeble wooden fences wouldn’t hold them out forever. Eventually, they would get in. And if they didn’t, then that meant they had something good and someone else would seek to take it.

He forgot about his snowy surroundings completely as he got lost in thought. Maybe they would leave Indiana all together and try somewhere new, somewhere warm where he wouldn’t have to deal with dead people while also trying to survive through a negative ten degree wind-chill. He pictured himself lying on a beach, the waves lapping at his feet, and Anita next to him in a tiny red and white bikini. His heart raced as he smiled. It was settled. They’d go to the beach. But which one? Long Beach or Miami?

A quick snap pulled him from his dreamy state back to the cold woods. He stopped dead in his tracks and raised his sword. His lungs skipped a breath. A dirty-covered, bloodied woman stood fifteen feet in front of him. He hadn’t seen her coming. He didn’t know why his heart was ready to burst from his chest as it beat against his ribcage. Killing zombies was almost second nature to him. He’d done it countless times.

The woman took several shuffling steps forward, dragging her boots along the inches of white snow to mix with the dirt underneath. He raised his sword even higher, ready to bring it down on her head once she got close enough. She stopped. Her mouth was parted and her eyes were unblinking. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was caked with mud. Her light skin was smeared with blood and guts. Zack swore he saw her eyes grow wet as she reached a hand out to him, still ten feet away.

“Zack?”

He heard the whisper escape her cracked lips, unsure if it was real. His sword was still raised over his head. He lowered it slowly as he tried to control his heavy breathing. When he saw tears fall, leaving streaks in the carnage on her face, he let his sword slip from his fingers and fall to the ground.

“Anita?” he said, more to himself than as a call to her.

He tried to move his feet, but they felt too heavy to lift. His vision blurred. Was what he saw real or was it all in his head? Had he wanted so desperately to find her that he was starting to imagine her, see her before him?

She moved forward again at a slow pace, her feet still dragging along the ground. Her arms reached forward as she closed the gap between them. Zack waited to feel the embrace he’d dreamt about for countless nights before the world fell apart and after. He’d waited so long for her.

A loud crack echoed and Anita crumpled to her knees. Halfway hidden behind one of the trees was a young man with a pistol that shook in his hands. Zack’s eyes darted back and forth between the gun and Anita until he couldn’t see through the wetness any longer. He dropped to his knees at her side and rolled her over to cradle her in his arms.

She took a slow, ragged breath as her body began to shake. “Zack,” she strained softly.

“I’m here,” he sobbed as the tears ran down his face and onto hers. “I’m here now. You can’t leave. I’ve been looking for you. I have. Every day. I finally found you. You can’t leave me now!” His voice escalated as her eyes grew distant.

He felt the full weight of her body slump against him as her head fell back onto his arm. “No, no, please, no,” he begged, pulling her closer to him.

Bright red blood stained the white snow underneath her as a pool quickly spread. Zack held her face close to his and cried into her neck. Snow crunched ahead as someone approached.

“Oh, God,” Zack heard a man gasp under his breath. He didn’t raise his face to look at him. He was afraid that if he did he would lose control and kill whoever it was that took his Anita away. “Are you…?” the man started to say as he stood over Zack.

With a gentle hand, Zack brushed Anita’s hair back from her face.

“Oh, God!” the man said again, louder. “Anita?”

Zack snapped his head up to look him in the face.

Dan Anderson stared down at Anita’s unmoving body. His lips trembled. He dropped the pistol on the ground and raised his hands to his head. No, no, no,” he repeated over and over again as he turned frantically. “No!”

Tears streamed down his dark face as he squeezed his eyes shut. “She was my friend!” he shouted. “She was my friend and I…” He broke down and collapsed to his knees, his shoulders heaving up and down as he sobbed.

Zack gently laid Anita on the ground and closed her eyes. He kissed his fingertips and placed them on her lips for a moment, sniffing back his tears to regain some semblance of control over himself. He slowly stood and looked down at the hysterical man on the ground beneath him. Deep, steady breaths seemed to work against him as they built up a roaring hatred in his heart. He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth together. His vision shook. He was going to do it. He was going to kill him.

Five other people raced forward from the trees at full speed.

“Come on! We have to get out of here,” one of them called, a tall man in a leather jacket who was leading the way. “They’re headed right for us!”

No one else waited for Dan to get up and join the group, or took the time to wonder who the other man was and what happened with the woman on the ground, except Gretchen. She came to a halt in front of them and kneeled down, placing a hand on Dan’s back. He was bent in half at the waist, his hands covering his face.

“Dan, we have to go,” she said and tugged on his arm.

He shook her off. Gretchen’s eyes darted to Zack and then back. “Dan, are you OK?” she asked, more panicked than before.

“I killed her,” she heard him whisper from behind his palms.

The anger boiled up in Zack. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He took two bounding steps toward Gretchen and Dan with his fists clenched tightly at his side.

“No!” she yelled as she sprang to her feet and shoved at his chest. “We have to go now! Please!” She yanked on Dan’s arm as he rose slowly, who put little effort in getting himself back up to his feet.

Before Gretchen stood upright again she snatched the fallen gun from the ground and tucked it into her pants next to its sister. “Let’s go!” She huffed as she dragged Dan to follow the group. His feet were lazy and clumsy causing him to stumble forward. He collapsed again and refused to get up.

Gretchen turned back to Zack and her face softened when their eyes met. She looked down at Anita “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Please, come with us.”

Zack looked down at Anita’s streaked face, her body lying in a circle of blood as her hand rested on her still chest. He heard distant moans and feet dragging on the ground. His face scrunched and he turned towards the sky to exhale a loaded sigh. The man and woman took off together. Zack bent down, picked up his sword, and jogged after them. He didn’t allow himself to look back at Anita one last time, though every ounce of his body begged him to.

XI.

The group ran for over a mile with Zack in the lead. He had burst past to the front in hopes of passing them completely, not wanting them to know where he was headed. Pushed to the breaking point, the group trailed after relentlessly. Zack would have preferred the dead.

How were these people able to keep up when they had an older, overweight woman and the man who killed Anita still crying hysterically? Even Zack had shed all the tears he could for the moment. A herd of ravenous zombies at your back will wipe your eyes bone dry real fast. When his lungs couldn’t take the strain anymore he slowed down, but didn’t stop to rest with the others, who were hunched over here and there trying to catch their breaths. He walked on.
              “Where are you going?” Gretchen called out to him.

He didn’t turn around or answer her. He didn’t know what he’d do if he did. The tears might’ve subsided, but the rage hadn’t.

“Do you have a place to stay?” she called louder. “Maybe we can come back with you?”

He stopped, facing the way towards home with his shoulders square. They rose and fell with heaving breaths, the cold air blowing from his mouth like smoke. The seething burn was rising in him again. He rounded back and came within inches of her face before anyone could stop him. He could have killed her, easily, if he had wanted to. “I don’t even know you. One of your people murdered my…” he didn’t know how to finish. “Why would I want you to come with me?”

Everyone stood staggered around as they waited for Gretchen to answer him. Her eyes never left his. She opened her mouth and then closed it again and bit her bottom lip. All she could do was toss her arms up in the air and let out a sigh. “Because you’re a good man.”

Zack laughed with his head thrown back.

“You just lost someone and you’re hurt and pissed off, but you’re still a good guy. I can tell. You could have killed me and Dan back there before the rest came, but you didn’t. You didn’t even raise a fist to him.”

“My mistake,” Zack growled.

Her head lolled to the side. “I don’t buy it.”

Zack stared down at the trampled, muddy snow. “You don’t know me or what I’ve done to survive.”

She took a step closer and he finally looked into her eyes. They were a swirling light blue and they pierced through him like two sharp icicles. It took his breath away, not because they were stunning, which they were, but because they brought about an overwhelming sense of déja vu, like he’d already looked into those eyes, but he’d never met the woman before in his life.

He stood with his hands on his hips, kicking at the snow as he looked down at the ground again. His brown eyes turned up to scan the group of people standing in front of him. He tapped his foot. It was just him, Liam, Christine, and Jerry back at the apartments. Christine couldn’t fight and Jerry’s back made him useless as hell. Eventually they’d need more people to survive. The question was, were these the right people? How was he supposed to live with that kid after he killed Anita?

But apparently he was a “good man”. He shook his head and scoffed when his eyes met Gretchen’s again. “This way.”