Siege (4 page)

As the gunshot echoed away into the distance, the surviving humans all stared down at the small, sad figure. One by one, their gazes shifted toward him.

“Name is Rune. Just passing through,” he said. The battle appeared to be over, but he was not sticking around for any grand finale.

“Good to see you, you sonofabitch,” a gruff, familiar voice called out. His gaze was drawn to the top of the van where an older woman with waist length hair dressed in a gypsy skirt and flowing blouse was being helped down by none other than his buddy, Dale.

“I’ll be damned,” Rune exclaimed. “What the hell happened at the rescue center?”

“Got overrun when some people decided to try to get supplies from the grocery store. They brought a whole mess of them down on us. The doors didn’t hold,” Dale answered. He acknowledged Rune with a short nod of his head, then helped the Indian couple down.

“Okay, people. Let’s get off this road and to the fort!” an older, grizzled man called out. “We’ll check you for bites and if you’re clean, you can come to the fort to stay.”

“That was our destination before it all went to hell,” Dale answered grimly.

“Let’s move. The longer we stay here, the more likely we’ll get more of the damn zombies on our asses. C’mon! Let’s go.”

The pretty woman with the black hair was standing nearby, her head down. She was staring at the little girl she had hurled away to save herself.

Around him, people began talking again, hustling the newcomers from the van toward the vehicles rumbling behind the bike. The Indian woman was howling in agony as she was led away by a woman with red hair. Her husband looked stricken, but was mute as he carried the other small child with him. Rune wanted to feel for them, but he had seen too much to indulge in compassion. It was a fucked up world and fucked up things happened in it.

The witchy older woman that Rune remembered being named Maddie Goode, covered the little girl with her shawl before an older man took her arm and escorted her toward a waiting bus.

“Good to see you, Rune,” she said as she walked past his bike.

“And you, Maddie,” he answered.

Dale lumbered toward him, waving off the young man with blond hair that was motioning him toward the bus. “Heading to the fort?”

“Yeah. Need to find a place to crash before the ice storm hits.” He shook Dale’s hand firmly, their leather gloves creaking.

“Been a helluva day. The other van went off the road, and our driver stopped to check it out. Next thing you know, we’re overrun and the driver is dead with the keys in his damn pocket. Next time, I’m driving.”

“You’re going to the fort?” It was the gorgeous woman who spoke. Rune felt a little flutter in his belly as he looked toward her. Her pale skin was splattered with blood, the ax in her hand still dripping. “Yeah.”

“Can I ride along?”

“Sure.”

The woman slid the ax into the sheath on her back and slung herself onto the bike behind him. Her fingers gripped his leather jacket and she sat in silence. In his mirrors, he could see she was still staring at the little girl.

“See you at the fort,” Dale said, clapping him on the shoulder and winking before walking toward the anxiously waiting people from the fort.

“Hold on,” Rune said to the woman, glancing at her over his shoulder. She didn’t answer as she kept staring at the tiny form. The young man who had yelled at Rune earlier grabbed the kid by her ankle and dragged her off the road. Finally, the woman looked away.

Rune gunned the engine and the Harley continued toward the fort. He was strangely entranced by the silent creature behind him. She was beautiful, but grim. Her eyes were large and haunted, but the set of her jaw and lips told him she was a fighter. He wanted to say something to her, but he knew that it would be empty words. She was in her own head, dealing with her own shit.

As they rode, the woman let down her long hair with one hand and closed her eyes as the wind streamed through it. The tension around her jaw alleviated a bit and Rune tried hard not to keep glancing at his mirrors to look at her. He could feel her slowly relaxing and was pretty sure the ride was doing her some good. He found riding to be spiritual and wasn’t surprised to see she did too.

The trip to Ashley Oaks was uneventful and free of anymore of the shambling dead. He was impressed by the high walls surrounding the old hotel, newspaper building and city hall. He was even more impressed with the gated entry. As he passed through the two different gates, he looked up to see sentries on the walls watching with interest. Behind him, the pretty creature smeared in blood was silent, but slightly smiling. He could almost believe she was a ghost, but he had seen enough of those to know she was flesh and blood. It was tough being a medium when the world was full of the dead, but he was slowly getting used to it. The final gate opened and the bike roared into a busy paddock. The woman pointed, and he directed the rumbling bike over to the empty spot. She slid off the bike and patted his shoulder lightly.

“Thanks, dude. I needed that.”

“No prob. Name’s Rune,” he said, extending his hand to her.

“Jenni,” she answered, shaking it briefly. With her dark hair shifting around her and her face splattered in blood, she looked fierce. “Also known as La Loca.”

“Loca is good,” Rune decided, giving her a rakish grin.

“Sometimes,” she answered, winking and walking off.

He watched as she headed over to where people were cleaning off spears, machetes, hatchets and other weapons. A small building had steam rising out of it, and Rune guessed that was where they were cleaning off the zombie gore. Halfway there, Jenni leaped onto the back of a tall, lean Hispanic cowboy. With a grin, the cowboy carried her over to the rest of the returning team.

Rune sighed. Of course a fine woman like that was taken.

“Okay. Who the hell are you? And what’s in the bag?” It was the old codger with the grizzled face.

“Rune.” He opened the bag to show the old guy the grenades. “And a whole lot of hurt.”

The man chuckled. “Name’s Ed. Welcome to the fort.”

“Just staying until the storm blows over. Then I gotta move on.” Rune shifted the bag.

“You sure?”

“Gotta keep moving,” Rune answered. He could see the ghosts around him, faint shimmering things. “Gotta keep moving ahead of the dead.”

Ed looked at him strangely.

“There ain’t no rest for the wicked, man,” Rune joked. Or mediums, he thought. Ghosts were everywhere, just like zombies.

“You can’t escape the dead in this world,” Ed finally said. “You’re welcome to stay if you like.”

“Thanks, man. I’ll think about it.” Rune shifted his bag of grenades.

“Like I said, we’ll see how it goes.” The man who could see the dead looked around, studying the fort, seeing the flickering of spirits all around him. “We’ll see how it goes.”

3. Promises and Shadows

Juan grimaced at the stink coming off the woman he loved. She was hanging on his back, covered in drying blood and gore and reeked of death. She seemed immune to it, having been out in the deadlands all afternoon, but he had been in the nice and tidy dead-free zone of the fort. It amazed him that he had been used to the stench of the dead when they had been under siege in the first days. It was strange how humans acclimated to things like that. But once the dead throngs were cleared out and clean fresh breezes filled the fort, the smell of the dead was again sharp and repellent.

“You ruined my jacket, Loca,” he grumbled, trudging toward the clean up area.

“It’s ugly anyway,” she assured him. “Besides, I’m tired. Spoil me.”

“As if I have a choice,” Juan drawled, grinning and grimacing at the same time. “What did you do this time to get so messy?”

“Up close and personal decapitations of the zombie kind. I went whackywhacky with my trusty ax.”

“You’re supposed to shoot them before they get too close.” He felt his stomach coil up at the thought of her fighting with the ravenous dead.

“Yeah, well, sometimes runners see it a different way.”

“Shit! Running zombies?”

“Fresh and fast. I think another van of survivors ended up a buffet.”

Jenni sighed, laying her head against his shoulder.

He tried hard not to be angry with her. Sometimes it was damn hard. She had a tendency to act first, think later. Her rabid hatred of the undead often spurred her to insane acts of heroics.

“I just wish you didn’t take so many chances,” he said at last.

“Well, zombies need to be killed or they munch on us.” Her voice was soft, almost petulant. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

“You mean a loca going loca,” Juan corrected.

“It works, doesn’t it? Zombies die. I come home to you.”

“I just worry.”

“I’m not going to die without a fight,” Jenni assured him.

“I don’t want you to die.”

“I’m not gonna!”

“Says the loca.”

They reached the fenced in area where the weapons were being cleaned and where Charlotte was attending to any wounded. A bite was deadly. Everyone knew that, but they had two instances where someone had tried to hide their wound only to turn after entering the paddock. It was frustrating to have to implement additional measures to keep the fort safe, but they had no choice. Two armed guards stood watch as Charlotte finished bandaging up a newcomer. A pistol was tucked into the holster on her hip as an extra precaution.

Juan plopped Jenni down onto a lawn chair and stared down at her bloody appearance. “Seriously, you couldn’t shoot them in the head before they reached you?”

“Well, I was trying, but they were kinda fast. And then it just got all crazy.” A dark and frightening emotion shadowed her expression and then it disappeared.

With a sigh, Juan sat next to her, taking off his cowboy hat. Slouching down in his chair, he pondered demanding to know what had happened out there. Jenni had her moments when it was clear that the grief she felt over the loss of her children was overwhelming her, but he could not say anything when this happened. His beloved tended not to speak of the past at all. Occasionally a snippet or two of information would leak out about her life as an abused trophy wife and mother, but it was never on purpose. It was always worse when she saw something out in the deadlands that reminded her of her children, but she had been handling those situations better of late.

Jenni flipped her hair over one shoulder and stared at him. He had a feeling she knew he was holding his tongue.

“What?” He finally said.

“It was a kid. She got bit. The new guy on the bike had to kill her. I saw the light go out of her eyes. I saw the hunger come into them.”

His eyebrows flew up.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Jenni continued. “The life goes out. It was so clear. I could see it. Like a curtain falling over her spark. Then bam. Here comes the hungry zombie.” Shaking her head, she pulled the ax off her back and tossed it onto the ground.

“Fucking scary, huh?” Juan muttered.

Nodding mutely, Jenni slumped down in the chair. Nearby, Charlotte was examining the older, Indian woman. Jenni motioned toward them. “It was her grandkid. It sucked.” Jenni thought for a long moment, swinging her legs back and forth. “I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Juan was silent, knowing better than to say a word. It could shut her up and cut him off if he said the wrong thing.

“I don’t want you or anyone else to see the light go out in my eyes and the crazy hungry zombie look come into them.”

“Jenni, that’s not gonna-”

“You can’t say that!” Jenni pointed at him, her voice vehement. “You cannot say that! You don’t know. None of us know. Bob died today. I’m sure he didn’t go out there thinking he was gonna bite it.”

“Okay, okay. You’re right. None of us can know. You just gotta be extra careful when you go out there.”

“I want a bullet right here-” Jenni pointed to her forehead. “-if it ever goes down that way. I want it fast. I don’t want to be one of those things. I don’t want the light in my eyes to go out and for the hungry zombie to take over.”

Juan stared into her dark, luminous eyes, tinged with the Jenni madness that made him crazy for her and love her more than he thought possible. The mere thought of her not being next to him made his throat tighten with emotion. He didn’t know what to say, and she seemed to be waiting for words to soothe her. At last, he managed to say, “Okay,” his voice cracking slightly.

Nodding, satisfied, Jenni curled up in her chair. She looked so small and so delicate, the blood splatter and the reek of the dead couldn’t keep him away. He grabbed her arm and tugged her firmly out of her chair and onto his lap. Holding her close, he nuzzled her cheek. Her body melded into his and she made a small, happy sound that made him smile.

1. The Boring Things In Life

“How many boxes?” Peggy’s voice droned.

Katie quickly counted the boxes of ammunition, her fingers lightly touching each stack. “Fifty.”

“Damn,” Peggy muttered. She shoved her brown hair back from her frowning face and made a notation on her clipboard.

The two women were in the storage room used for the ammunition stock. In recent days, a fresh batch of zombies had appeared out of the Texas Hill Country. There was speculation that they were from one of the fort’s neighboring towns. A few of the zombies had been somewhat recognizable as former friends or business acquaintances. Nerit had ordered the horde destroyed, and a good chunk of ammunition had been used up.

“We still got a lot in these other boxes,” Katie reminded her.

“Yeah, but if they don’t find fresh supplies, we better learn to make our own bullets soon,” Peggy responded.

Katie nodded, her hand gently rubbing her swelling belly. In the days before the zombie uprising, she had never imagined being pregnant. It was something her wife, Lydia, and she had discussed a few times, but adoption had always been seen as the route to go. Now, time was more precious and not to be squandered. Death was everywhere as the living struggled to maintain a foothold on the world.