The Phoenix Trilogy (Book 1): World On Fire (8 page)

    It
wasn't that the world outside was scaring her, or that the journey now seemed
more daunting. She knew what she was getting into, and she'd made her peace
with that.

    
It was the way Rico looked. The cheery
disposition he normally had was something Natalie had guessed was more forced
than he'd let on, but this change of character was more serious than she would
have thought. She didn't know what he had experienced, or what weight he was
carrying in his heart, but she didn't need to. Taking a page from Rico's book,
she grinned back at him.

    “
I used to work retail. Surviving customer
service through the Holidays, I'm pretty sure I've seen the worst the world has
to offer. I'm thinkin' the end of days might be a slight improvement, all
things considered.” Her sudden cavalier attitude made Rico guffaw, his old
smile plastered back on his face. Natalie chuckled, pleased that he seemed to
have returned to his usual self. He'd managed to cheer her up more than a few
times already, it seemed fitting that she should try and return the favor.

    “
Fair point, Natalie. That's a fair point.
Now, as much as I hate to do this to you, I need to hand you over to Marco.
He'll be finished scavving soon, and then I'll need to divvy his finds up for
the crew. The guy is great at sniffing out supplies but lousy at organization.”
Natalie would have laughed, if Marco hadn't taken that exact moment to
reappear. His consistency was remarkable.

    “
Aww, thanks for the compliment, cuz! That
means a lot to me.” Marco’s final hunt for supplies had been less successful
than his previous expeditions. He had returned with only a single handbag
half-filled with toiletries, but he seemed pleased with himself anyway. Rico’s
kind words were just icing on the cake.

    Unfortunately
for Rico, the bag in Marco’s hands wasn’t large enough to keep him from being
pulled into a hug. His cheeks flushed with annoyance, but his wriggling
attempts to free himself from his cousin’s grip only served to provoke Marco to
squeeze tighter.

    “
It was a compliment that I ended with an
insult, which you would have heard if you paid any attention. Now would you get
the Hell off me?” Rico’s tone was insincere, but his younger cousin wore an
exaggerated look of heartbreak nonetheless. Shoving Marco back a step, they exchanged
a pair of amused smirks. Natalie shook her head at the two of them, trying
unsuccessfully to hide the growing smile on her own face.

    They
were clearly family, regardless of the little problems they had with each other
from time to time. It had been a long while since she'd seen normal people be
together. As much as she felt warmed by the thought, her heart was tense.

    Having
somebody to love meant having somebody to lose. Before everything fell apart,
that was fine.
T
he bet was usually
a
safe
enough
one
to make. But now, when
death literally lurked behind every corner, it just seemed like a liability.
Natalie's thoughts cleared up just in time to catch the last of the cousins'
conversation.

    “...are
so full of crap. Now shut up and get out of my way, we've both got work to do.”
To her surprise, it was actually Rico who had spoken. Both men were smiling at
each other, clearly accustomed to this good-natured ribbing. Alas, with those
words came time for Marco's teaching. Natalie braced herself for the worst.

    “
Why do you look like you're about to throw
up?” Marco cocked an eyebrow at her, and Rico snorted at him as he started
shuffling through supplies on a nearby counter.

    “
You really asking? Because I've got about
a half dozen reasons for why you make people sick.” Rico
chuckled to himself, and Marco pursed his lips with a knowing nod.

    “
Yeup, alright, I walked into that. Forget
I asked.” Clearing his throat, Marco did his best to adopt a more professional
stance.

    “
Listen up, Nat. I'm going to give you a
crash course in hand signals. It might not seem important now, but talking is
going to be kept to a minimum out there. First thing is about rooms.” Stepping
away from the table, he gestured for Natalie to follow him to the entrance to
the den.

    “
If we're clearing rooms, we have a
protocol that the point-man is supposed to follow.” Marco paused, as if
suddenly remembering something important.

    “
Do you, uh, know what I'm sayin'?
Clearing, point-man, all that?” He glanced back at Natalie as he spoke, his
forehead wrinkled in thought. To her credit, she wasn't completely ignorant of
tactics. Admittedly, she'd picked up most of it from video games, but knowledge
is knowledge.

    “
Clearing is making sure the room is safe,
point-man is the person who is leading the group into each place.” His question
had been a fair one, but his look of surprise as she answered annoyed her. That
he seemed a little impressed only got more on her nerves.

    “
Not bad, for a girl! Not bad at all.” He
turned to look back into the den, and missed Natalie gritting her teeth as he
did. A flash of violent pictures flew through her mind. She knew she didn't
care for Marco, but this was a completely separate kind of intense dislike.
Placating herself, she settled on fantasizing about punching the smirk clean
off of his face. The thought was cathartic.

    “
First thing we do is identify what we're
dealing with. That pretty much falls under one of three categories. One finger
pointing down is a human, two pointing down is a zombie that's upright, and
four down is a zombie that's crawling. Pretty easy so far, yeah?” He stopped at
the look of confusion on Natalie's face. With an entirely too confident grin,
he relaxed against the wall.

    “
Does my student need me to clarify
something for her?” Natalie's fantasy now involved pushing him in front of a
bus. She snickered at the thought. A girl can dream, after all. Better ask him
her question and be done with all of this as soon as possible.

    “
You have a whole other signal for them
crawling? That seems a little weird to me. I wouldn’t have guessed it was
necessary.” Natalie could understand humans and zombies being separate, but
crawling versus standing was an interesting distinction to make.

    “
Ah, right. I forget that you don't have a
lot of experience with these things.” Marco tapped his chin briefly before
grunting a huff of impatience at having to switch tracks in his education.
Natalie’s face twitched as she refrained from growling at the man.

    The
bus in her mind was now on fire, and hurtling toward a pit filled with angry
bees. It was a completely juvenile way of handling her frustration, but as her
heart sighed with slight relief, she decided she’d take whatever reprieve she
could find. Marco continued to blunder forward, unaware of his effect on the
young woman.

    “You
know that they have to eat in order to keep moving. If they don't find food,
their muscles start eating themselves, same as us. The kicker is that they can
control what gets used up first.” Natalie fixed Marco with a look of
uncertainty as he spoke, and he returned it with an uncharacteristically grim
nod.

    “I
know. That's a pretty convenient design for it to happen by accident, right?”
With a heavy sigh, Marco rubbed his palm over his eyes. All of this sounded
bad. As much as Natalie had appreciated the company of the men so far, she had
to admit that the world seemed like a better place before they had started
telling her more about it.

    It
was a silly thought, of course. Nothing about what was happening outside had
been good, but before it at least seemed like it might have been an accident.
Now, it was hard to deny the likelihood that all of this was very intentional.
Somehow, that made it worse. Natalie was pulled from her reverie as Marco
cleared his
throat
.

    “Not
important right now, and besides, I haven't gotten to the fun part.” The smile
on his face warned Natalie that this was going to be anything but fun.

    “So!
The
blighters
can choose what parts they burn up
first if they aren't able to get energy from an, ahem, 'outside source.'
Obviously, their arms and legs are both vital to hunting, but their torso? Not
so much. The end result is they wind up without enough muscle in their core to
hold themselves upright.” A
look
of disgust passed over
Marco's face.

    Apparently
he'd had some experience with these creatures. Considering that the undead were
horrifying to begin with, Natalie took it as a bad sign that the crawling
variety were even worse.

    “
The reason we have different signals for
them is because you wouldn't expect to aim that low, otherwise. You walk into a
room, you're looking five, six feet off the ground. These fuckers sit closer to
two or three, and they're just as fast as normal. It might not seem like much,
but the time it takes to correct where you're aiming could make the difference
between life and death.” Marco's voice dropped off, his words lingering in the
air as he seemed to be momentarily lost in thought. It wasn't hard for Natalie
to guess what was on his mind.

    
Considering what he did for a living these
days, if you could call it that, it was likely he had seen people die. Adding
to that his obvious disgust and rage, the picture became clearer. He probably
learned about the crawlers the hard way, at somebody else's expense. Natalie
felt bad for him, even if he was an ass. The most she could think to do was to
simply press on.

    “
So, it's one finger down for humans, two
for walkers and four for crawlers. Since you said it is fingers down for identifying,
I'm going to guess it is fingers up for quantifying?” Her words snapped Marco
out of whatever memory he was reliving. Judging by the look of mischief
suddenly splayed out on his face, Natalie wondered if she should have stayed
quiet.

    “
'Quantifying?' Is that college talk for
'number of bad guys?'” He laughed and shook his head dismissively. For her
part, Natalie felt a small tinge of relief that he was back to normal. The
feeling didn't last.

    “
Jeez, Nat. Yeah. You guessed right, little
Miss Educated. Fingers down for telling what we're dealing with, fingers up for
how many there are.” Before Natalie could snap back at him, he flashed two more
signs.

    “
This means the room seems safe,” Marco
brought his thumb and pointer finger together to form a circle while keeping
the rest of his fingers raised, “and this means we're going in for a fight.” At
that, he clenched his fingers into a fist. Again, Natalie's face showed
uncertainty, and Marco let out a heavy sigh.

    “
Come on, sunshine. Keep up. Really.” He
clicked his tongue, and shook his head as Natalie felt a very impressive vein
begin to pulsate in her neck. A string
of entirely
unladylike words flooded her mind, but she got the feeling he was prodding her
for a reaction. It might be simpler to keep this as professional as possible.
If she was lucky, he might leave her alone. Calming her voice as best she
could, she tried to ignore the growing urge to resort to violence.

    “
It's about the clenched fist thing.
Doesn't that mean 'stop'? Or that you're supposed to hold your position?”
Natalie didn't know a lot about signals and the like, it was true. Even so, she
was pretty confident about this one. Judging by the light blush on Marco's
face, she suspected she was right.

    “
Well, sure, some people might do that. But
we do a fist for combat, and hand up with fingers straight and together is
stop.” He shifted uncomfortably in his spot, clearly trying to regain his
composure. Natalie smirked, savoring the moment until he recovered. She had to
admit that it was satisfying to see him off-balance.

    “
Look, whatever. It doesn't matter who does
what. You just need to know what we do, and now you know.  Everything else
is pretty self-explanatory. Nod if you understand, shake your head if you
don't, and if all else fails you can mime it out.” Marco's impatience peaked,
and he turned to walk back toward Rico in the kitchen. Apparently, he was done
helping. Natalie almost moved to stop him.

    Considering
the dangerous scenario she was walking into, Marco's casual dismissal of
learning more signs for communication left a sour taste in her mouth. She could
wing it with the best of them, but it wasn't exactly her first choice. She bit
her lip, feeling a surge of nervous tension begin to flood her system.

    
Rico could help her. Or BJ. Both men felt
trustworthy to Natalie, and she doubted either would let her down in an
emergency. Marco was a different story, but two out of three wasn't bad. She
was used to less.

    
Following after Marco into the kitchen,
Natalie realized that Rico was finished with the supplies. There were two packs
sitting on the counter while Rico wore another on his back. He smiled at her as
she approached, his eyebrows rising up in a look of mischievous glee.