LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (57 page)

It was on the move, having displaced and started down the hill at full, furious speed. Its mulching attachment was tearing through the rear ranks, sending bodies and body parts flying to the sides, blood spilling on the ground and spraying into the air. Leaning to the side, I lowered Kate long enough to pull my rife up and start shooting from the hip.
 

It would be a race.
 

The herd was enveloping us, and it was now my gun and machete versus the speed of the Grinder.

Bullets couldn’t leave the barrel fast enough. Line up the shot, fire. Line up the shot, fire. Faces and arms and hands were on us and near us and around us. Too close, too many.

I fired again. And again. And again. Then it clicked empty.

I switched to the machete as Kate’s body fell limp against mine. Heads came off, bodies pressed in. Somewhere in the melee, Kate’s hand found my pistol. She was firing. Staying alive. Buying several more seconds.

Then, like the hand of God, the mulching attachment was over our heads. Instantly, I pulled Kate forward, shouldering two more zeds into the machine and throwing her bloody body to the top of the metal vehicle. I yelled once as a set of jagged teeth found my leg, then turned quickly, lopping off the head and arm of the closest creature and then jumping to the relative safety of the elevated machine.

“Go!” I screamed, gesturing back to the mill with one hand as I caught the eye of the driver and smiled with love.

Who else could it have been?

Ky nodded once seriously, eyes wandering worriedly to Kate’s prone form as she reversed, the thick treads carving a path through the assembled creatures. The mulching attachment flipped to the front as we reversed, and the remnants of the herd, now behind us again, mostly continued toward the retreating convoy as they slipped the gate and backed into the street among a cacophony of gunfire.

I leaned back against the cab of the vehicle and pulled Kate close to me. She sat up straight, her eyes on mine and glistening with tears of pain.

“Now we can keep going,” she said softly. “We’re done with this bullshit.”
 

I laughed and kissed her bloody forehead, even as I saw a flash of movement near the overrun humvee.
 

A body was standing behind the driver’s door. It hadn’t been there before.
 

Then, a single shot.
 

A shot that was louder for its importance.
 

A shot that was faster for its evil.
 

A shot that should never have come.
 

Then the body wasn’t there any more. Overcome by the herd of creatures still swarming around it, Starr’s final moments were painful and loud. Her screams followed us as we reversed. I watched in satisfaction as her evil was consumed by evil.
 

It was the smallest of groans that alerted me. Turning to Kate, I felt the tears spring to my eyes, and a sense of helpless loss overcome me.
 

A small, neatly made hole had been carved with surgical precision between her breasts. The soft curve of her chest had been violated by Starr’s last living act.
 

That last spit of vengeance as Starr died. The last bullet of an insane woman, displacing her agony and pain, and finding a target in the woman I loved.

Blood began to pulse from the wound as Kate looked up at me, eyes clouding even in that moment.
 

A small bubble of crimson formed at the corner of her mouth. I grabbed her by her shoulders and laid her on the cold metal of the machine, even as we arrived at the mill.
 

My hands were moving, flailing, trying to stop the tide. To stop her from leaving me forever.

Inside the cabin, Ky was already springing to the door, shots erupting from Rhi and Ethans’ positions as they took out the remaining stragglers.

“No, no, no,” I said frantically, pulling at her shirt, exposing the wound. It pulsed weakly with the last few beats of her heart as her eyes found mine and as her hand found my head, pulling it forward.
 

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t. Stop.”
 

I shook my head as tears fell on her body. I cried as she kept my gaze, forever strong. Forever committed.

“She’s out there. I know it.” Her voice was an agonized forced breath. “You will find her.”
 

I nodded and kissed her lips, tasting the copper of her blood.

My voice felt as if it were dredged from the very bottom of a pit of ultimate despair. “I will. I swear to you.”
 

Her hand, still, somehow, so soft, clenched around my own. Then, beneath me, her body went limp.
 

And around me, the world went cold.

The noise of the convoy had faded into the chaos, the remaining dead following the larger, more attractive targets.
 

Rhi and Ethan were down with us now, dispatching the lingering dead quietly, in the hopes that the herd—now numbering slightly over a hundred—would not turn from their slow ambulation away from the mill.
 

Bodies and blood surrounded us. Everywhere I looked, the marks of destruction and death adorned the landscape. Body parts, blood spatter, dead bodies. Writhing forms, without arms or legs.
 

And underneath my hand, the still form of the woman I loved.
 

The silence was deafening.

Had I been present, I would have heard Ky’s weeping next to me, her tears splashing against the driveway.

Had I been present, I would have heard my sobs, felt the coldness creeping into me from my extremities, felt the world closing in.

But I was numb and absent. It couldn’t be possible. I stared at her form, the single bullet hole that had ended everything. I still held my hand against it, as if that single act of applying pressure was everything. As if my hand in place was forestalling the inevitable.
 

And perhaps it was. Perhaps it was keeping me from accepting what was.

Kate’s eyes were closed, now, and she looked peaceful.
 

Nothing about this was right. How could she die? How, with the power of our cursed immunity coursing through our veins, could it be endured? Death was not for us, I wanted to shout.
 

Rhi’s voice shattered my darkness.
 

“Incoming!” her voice was urgent but as quiet as she could make it without calling more creatures to us.

I ignored her, uncaring.

“They’re human,” said Ethan, trying to get my attention. “Probably part of that convoy.” He strode forward, still limping on his bad leg, rifle held high.

I spared a glance for the newest arrivals and paused, mind suddenly whirling and confused.

Two people walked carefully up the bloodied driveway, picking their way across the battlefield of undead. Both held their hands up, carefully approaching.

The first was a large man, nearly six and a half feet tall if I had to wager a guess. His head was shaved, likely to conceal the pattern baldness on the very top. He was well-muscled, but older—maybe in his mid-forties—and it showed. On the upper left hand side of his dark blue shirt, the tarnished remains of a badge sat proudly, glimmering in the faint light.
 

But he caught my attention for a mere moment.
 

It was the young woman with him, whose face looked both worried and relieved as she approached. Likely as she took in the other young woman, as distraught as she was, and understanding that people were safe here.
 

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I was drawn to her face. As if it were familiar. As if I knew this girl, somehow.

“That’s far enough,” said Ethan, as the two approached, now both within ten feet of where we sat clustered around the rear of the Grinder. “What’s your business here? You part of that convoy?”

Ky wiped her eyes and dropped down from the Grinder, looking at both and shaking her head.
 

“No, I don’t recognize her, and him…well, he wouldn’t have survived that group.”
 

“We followed the sound of gunfire. We knew it had to be human, and we were running on fumes, heading out of Vancouver. Well, what was left of it anyway.” The man spoke slowly, but carefully, as if aware that he would need to justify their arrival somehow.

But it was the girl’s reaction that I just happened to be watching, as she scanned the scene while the man was speaking.
 

As Ky moved from the Grinder, the newly arrived young woman’s eyes casually swept the machine, taking in the death and destruction around it with a horrified grimace, and then passing by Kate’s body.
 

Suddenly, her eyes swept back, her face dissolving into a mix of surprise, fear, and despair.
 

That’s how I knew her, I realized.
 

I wanted to laugh and cry and shake my fist at the heavens. There was nothing good or just in this world.
 

Not anymore.
 

I didn’t know this girl.
 

I recognized her.

Because she had her mother’s eyes.

###

Note from the author:

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Thanks for reading, and remember: we all think we’re going to be the ones to survive the apocalypse.
 

Statistically, most of us are wrong.
 

So, as you’re hoarding MRE’s and ammunition, just know that your loser neighbor and the hippie down the road thank you for your efforts. ‘Cause odds are? They’re the ones that will pull through, and they’ll enjoy the fruits of your labor while they’re watching your DVDs on your couch.

My plan? Go first. Avoid the rush.
 

Who needs the hassle, anyway?