Mail Horror Bride (One Nation Under Zombies Book 1) (24 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me they needed help?” she asked before running out of the room. Janjai heard her barrel down the stairs.

The girl was out of the house before Janjai could line up another shot, knife in hand and gun on her hip. The zombies who’d been distracted by the gunshot had returned their attention to Hal and Maura. Angela quickly started dispatching them from the outer edge of the crowd, swiping out a leg to knock them down before stabbing her blade into their heads.

The trio worked together, leaving a total of thirty bodies scattered in the street. Hal raised a hand, thanking Janjai for her help, but said nothing. They would want to make as little noise as possible as they picked up their bags and made their way back to the house.

Janjai propped the shot gun against the wall and closed the window, her first attempt at helping her group an utter failure. She’d never make it on her own.

“Where’s Maura?” Angela asked as they gathered around the kitchen table.

“I saw her carrying a bag into your bedroom,” Janjai answered, referring to the bedroom Maura and Angela shared. It was the girls’ room, with two twin beds covered in lacy pink comforters. Hal had taken the master bedroom that Hank had declared they should have, being the only married couple. Janjai didn’t want the big bed, or the reminder she’d been married to a man she couldn’t even scrounge up enough emotion to mourn. She’d taken the other bedroom, a blue one with posters of monster trucks. The twin bed suited her fine. Hal was the unspoken leader of their group. It seemed only natural for him to have the master bedroom.

“Probably more cat litter.” Angela scrunched up her nose. “Has anyone seen what she does with that stuff?”

Hal shrugged his shoulders, situating himself at the table. “She said it has lots of uses.”

“That is what she told me,” Janjai agreed. “I have not seen her use it for anything yet.”

“Well, she keeps a bag in our room and I can tell it’s been used. Kind of weird if you ask me.”

“Maybe she uses the bathroom in it,” Hal suggested.

“Gross!” Angela let the disgust show on her face as she sat down. She sighed. “Rice again?”

“No.” Janjai smiled as she lifted the lid off the pot of green beans on the table, and gestured toward several cans of Spam and another pot with peas and carrots. “You will be happy to know we are out of rice so I have started fixing the other foods available.”

“Spam! I never thought I’d be so happy to see that stuff,” Angela said, grabbing one of the cans and peeling back the tab. “We finally get to eat some meat. Well, it’s kind of meat.”

“Somebody say meat?” Maura joined them at the table.

“What do you do with all that cat litter?” Angela asked her. “You don’t use it as a toilet, do you?”

“Disgusting, Angela, and we’re at the dinner table.” Maura looked at the food. “No rice?”

“I only made rice so often because it was in a box, not canned. Also, it required more water to make. I wanted to save canned goods for travel in case we had to leave.”

“Smart,” Hal commented after swallowing a mouthful of Spam and taking a sip of the canned Ginger Ale they’d brought back from a recent scavenging mission. “And I think it’s about that time.”

“You don’t think we’re safe here any longer?” Angela asked. “We can give Janjai some more training, work on her aim.”

Janjai lowered her head, embarrassed by her uselessness during the attack earlier.

“Janjai is fine. Ideally, she shouldn’t have to shoot at all. We’ve had too many incidents around here and today’s was right outside the house. Besides, you know it isn’t right to hole up inside a house when there are others out there who could need our help.”

“Yes, because we owe others so much,” Maura murmured.

“If Hal hadn’t thought to help Hank and I, I would be dead,” Janjai reminded her.

Nobody pointed out that Angela had ended up killing Hank not long afterward. They didn’t speak of Hank, ever. They’d forgotten him like the waste of flesh he was.

“I have a sister in Colorado,” Janjai told them. “I don’t know if she is dead or alive.”

“We’re in Missouri right now,” Hal said. “We’d have to cross through Kansas to get there. I think we have enough gas and supplies for that.”

Janjai looked up, surprised. “You would go to Colorado to find my sister?”

“Why not?” He shrugged. “We don’t have any family. If she’s alive and needs help, we’ll help.”

Overcome with emotions, Janjai fought down the urge to leap across the table and hug Hal. Instead, she choked out a, “Thank you,” as she kept her head lowered and willed herself not to cry.

“I wouldn’t get too excited yet,” Maura said. “Better be braced for the worst possible outcome.”

Hal glared at Maura. “Have you no faith?”

“Yeah, I got faith,” Maura replied. “I also have ears, two eyes, and common sense. I know what’s out there. I’d rather Janjai expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised than expect a happily ever after and find her worst nightmare.”

“I also know what is out there,” Janjai said. “I keep praying for a miracle. You found me when I was in a bad place with a bad man. I believe my sister is praying as am I. The strongest prayers are those that are shared. I have always believed that.”

“We’ll pray with you,” Hal promised, shooting another glare in Maura’s direction.

“I pray we even make it to Colorado,” she grumbled. “We were supposed to be going to Nebraska. You know, to safety?”

“We have the same destination, only a new course,” Hal shot back. “We leave in the morning.”

Maura sat at the window, staring out into the night, her pack snuggled close to her chest, the only thing of her own left in this world. “I don’t know what to do, Daniel. I could stay here. There’s shelter, food, more houses to search through when I run out. I mean, this can’t last forever, right? The military is doing something, right? We just have to survive long enough for them to wipe out this virus and all the infected.”

She waited, listening for the sound of his voice to whisper on the wind.

“You’re right. I have to make it to Nebraska like you said. I guess it is safest to go in a group, even if that group has a criminal in it. Yes, I know we all have sinned. Yes, I know what I did, Daniel. I know it was wrong but you left me no choice and don’t forget it was that woman who really killed you. I lost you long before I arrived.”

“Maura?”

She turned to see Angela standing in the doorway, brow wrinkled in concern.

“Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Angela looked around the room. “Were you talking to someone?”

“Myself,” Maura said quickly. Angela was far too young to understand the concept of a love that transcended space and time, even death. “Do you need anything?”

“No.” Angela eyed her with curiosity a moment longer before crossing over to the bed she’d claimed as her own. “We leave early in the morning. Hal said to make sure you’d packed everything. Also, he said we should enjoy what might be the last comfortable night of sleep we get for a while.”

“How long have you known Hal?”

“Long enough.” Angela pulled back the pink covers and slipped into her bed. “You ask a lot of questions about him, like you don’t trust him.”

“He’s a man, Angela.”

The girl frowned. “And?”

“You can’t fully trust men. Ever.”

“Hal is a good man.”

“There’s no such thing, not really. You’ll learn the older you get, provided you’re smart enough to survive that long.”

“I don’t believe that. My dad was a good man and he trusted Hal to take care of me.”

“Well, I hope he does.”  Maura crossed over to her own bed and pulled back the covers. She doubted she’d sleep, her stomach in knots over the choices overwhelming her. Stay or go, save this foolish girl or let her stay with the criminal she trusted… She wished Daniel was more than just a voice now, wished that he stood with her. He could stand against Hal. He was a soldier. He’d know what to do to keep them safe, even if he’d failed for himself by allowing that Russian piece of trash to blind him.

“If you’re thinking of leaving us, just know you’ll be going alone. Hank wanted Janjai and I to leave with him. It didn’t go well for him.”

Maura stood at the side of the bed, frozen in place as Angela rolled over onto her side and went to sleep. A cold chill crept along her skin and she wondered if she was too late to save Angela from Hal’s criminal influence.

“Are we there yet?”

Hal frowned at Angela as she sat in the passenger seat, ignoring the book he’d given her to read over an hour ago. “That quit being funny about twenty minutes after we left. Read the book. It’ll make time pass quicker.”

“You’ve never read this book, have you?” She raised the book,
Twilight,
in her hand.

“No.”

“Didn’t think so. If you had then you would know that reading this book would not make time fly. It would make time drag on endlessly and only intensify my desire to throw myself out of this moving vehicle in hopes that the zombies would put me out of the misery of having to read another word.”

Hal laughed. “It can’t be that bad.”

“It has sparkling vampires in it. Sparkling, Hal. Like glitter.”

“Take a nap then,” he suggested, checking the rearview mirror and seeing the other women were doing just that, albeit uncomfortably.

“I’m not sleepy. Just bored.”

He opened his mouth to tell her to enjoy the scenery but a zombie chose that moment to stumble out of the woods, its arms reaching toward their vehicle, its mouth open as it made that horrible groaning sound indicating its hunger, or maybe its frustration? Anger? Hal tried not to think about that, if those monsters had feelings or were able to process any form of thought. It didn’t matter. He could slice it a dozen different ways and the situation remained the same. Infected people died and became zombies. Zombies were monsters. Zombies had to die.

“Look out!”

Hal quickly turned his attention back to the road before him to see a large buck leap from the cover of the woods to run across his path.

He turned the steering wheel hard, attempting to swerve around the large animal, but didn’t succeed. The deer jumped right in his path and froze, its gaze meeting Hal’s as the Explorer bore down on it. Time seemed to slow as the two beings shared an unspoken thought. This was going to be bad.

The vehicle hit with a thunderous boom, flipping the ten point buck over the hood as it screeched to a stop. The airbags deployed, blocking the view but Hal heard the windshield crack seconds before the thump on the roof indicated the deer was still in motion.

The loud bang it made competed with the screams from his passengers, two of which had been rudely awakened and had no clue what was happening until they saw the deer hitting the road behind them.

The Explorer died and Hal pushed against the deflating airbags, relieved to see none of the broken windshield glass had fallen on them, though it looked as if it could fall at any time. “Anybody hurt?” he asked, checking Angela.

“Yeah, the deer,” Maura replied. “You couldn’t swerve around it?”

“I tried.”

Angela’s temple was bleeding from a small scratch and she held her head, wincing as he checked her for other injuries.

“How you feeling, Ang?”

“Fantastic,” she muttered, her eyelids fluttering as if coming out of a deep sleep. “I banged my head on the passenger window.”

Hal saw the web-like crack in the glass and carefully checked her hair for glass fragments, relieved to find none. “You should be fine as long as nothing’s broken. You just can’t go to sleep anytime soon, ok?”

She nodded, then groaned. “Ouch.”

“Maura? Janjai?” He turned to check on the women in the back.

“We’re good,” Maura replied, looking out the back window. “But not for long. We have incoming.”

“How many?”

“One almost on us, and it looks like a bunch coming up the road.”

Hal quickly shoved the rest of the airbag out of the way and attempted to restart the Explorer. The engine wouldn’t turn over. He tried again, the sinking feeling in his gut intensifying as he strained to see past the glass web in front of him.

“Get this thing moving, Hal.”

“I’m trying.” He turned the key again, hoping the third was the charm. It wasn’t. He tried to pop the hood but that didn’t work either.

“How screwed are we?” Maura asked.

“We’re walking until we find another ride, unless I can fix this thing,” Hal said, checking his gun. He stepped out of the Explorer and whistled, looking at the front of the vehicle. The front end was completely smashed in, explaining why the hood release wouldn’t work. The whole thing looked like a crumpled piece of paper. “Yep, we’re walking. Angela, stay inside until I say otherwise.”

He closed the driver side door and walked toward the back of the vehicle, quickly joined by Maura and Janjai. Janjai’s hands trembled as she held a large bowie knife. Maura seemed too angry to be nervous. The hand holding her machete didn’t shake at all. Her glare could burn skin.