Chapter Text
There had to be hundreds of zombies. Maybe even thousands. Or maybe it was the entire goddamn population of Rayford swimming beneath the bridge. No longer moving of their own accord, but swimming together like a giant tidal wave of death.
And it was coming right at them.
Shocked into silence by his friend’s complete and utter surrender (he once joked that Louis would only give up when hell froze over), Francis looked down at his shotgun for answers—but it was empty, held upside down like a bulky metal club. Heads still rolled, but for how long?
Beside him, Louis slumped against the side of an overturned car like a puppet with cut strings. His eyes stung with regret and they flickered back and forth between all the glowing eyes beneath them and his nearly empty rifle as if seriously considering which could give him an easier death.
“Listen. I want you to kill me before—“
“Save it.”
A Tank
(not THE TANK but A TANK holy jesus fuck)
roared and flung a truck into the bridge like it weighed nothing at all. Zoey sucked in a sharp breath, stumbled back, and looked up to see Bill standing unfazed in a flurry of glass snow, shallow red grooves etched into his face. He brought the wick of a Molotov cocktail to his lit cigarette.
“COVER ME! I GOT THIS!”
And then he was gone.
“BILL!”
“YOU HEARD THE MAN! COVER HIM!”
Francis snatched Louis’s rifle and peppered the crowd with a series of clumsy, unfocused shots, cursing up a storm. Louis nearly wailed in despair, hands twisting around each other like a pair of small, bloody animals. She wanted to grab Francis by his stupid, ugly vest and scream in his face, cover what? Bill was dead—she was sure of it! And yet beneath them she heard the rapid POP-POP-POP of machine gun fire and caught flashes of his green coat as he parted the sea of death. Didn’t they end up here because he was sick of fighting?
“NO, Francis! I’m sick of just,” she gestured angrily with her gun. “Running away! Letting people die! Dude, if you wanna hide up here like a—like a sissy, fine! Knock yourself out! But I’m going!”
Doubt flickered across his face, but Zoey didn’t stay to argue with him; she turned, ran, but stopped just short of jumping. What did Bill always tell them? Something about how it was okay to be scared as long as you took care of shit?
God, she was scared.
“Well . . . I ain’t no sissy.”
Louis stirred behind them, hanging onto the hood of the car for support, his leg wavering beneath his weight. Francis went to him.
“. . . shit, Zoey. Can’t let you go down there by yourself.”
She exchanged a solemn look with the guys. If this went south, it wouldn’t just be her life on the line.
“Okay. Here’s the plan . . .”
Zoey thought Fairfield sucked, but that was before she got a taste of what Rayford had to offer. It wasn’t the men in hard hats or the women in flouncy jazz dresses held up only by gravity (although she could do without Francis’s comments about the latter), but the sheer number of them packed within the harbor. She had planned to stay up front, mow shit down, and let the boys pick off anything that got too close.
That went to shit real fast.
Zombies descended on them from every direction, scrambling around battered cars and jumping off roofs and trampling each other into a pulp just for a taste of blood. Something yanked on her ponytail hard enough to make her eyes water. Francis slammed his forehead against a construction worker’s and reeled back, cursing.
“Shit! Why the hell’d they have to keep their hats?!”
Louis doubled over from a punch in the gut, then collapsed entirely when a trio of men in hi vis vests barreled into him.
“SHIT! Aw . . . shit, man! HELP!”
“I’m here, buddy!”
As she picked off the stragglers and drew a circle of peace around Louis and Francis, she found her focus wandering—hearing one Tank was scary enough; four of them were a stampede of bloodthirsty mutant horses, loud enough to drown out the rest of the world entirely. And they were all chasing Bill, who ran straight for the generator.
“Oh my God. He’s gonna get himself killed,” she muttered more to herself than anyone else, stumbling forward on legs made of lead while shoving a new mag into her gun. “You’re gonna be okay, Louis.” He didn’t look okay; he was pale, bleeding from the nose. But she couldn’t worry about that right now.
Her shoulder clipped the side of the chain-link fence that had sealed Bill’s doom. She ground to a stop, panting, and shouted:
“HEY!”
No response. Shit. Why did he set them on fire? She dumped her mag into one’s back; it roared in pain and turned, advancing fast—way too fast. And the others were still closing in on Bill. A car alarm chirped in her ear
(hiya, zoey! lonely? don’t worry! i’m gonna tell every zombie in a hundred mile radius all about you!)
and she cursed herself for what she was about to do. She pounded the hood with the butt of her gun and ran. Her lungs were full of fire. The soles of her worn Converse hardly ever met with the ground.
“GO! GO! GO!”
It was all the warning she could afford to give. Her breath came out in short, ragged gasps. Francis had dragged Louis under the shade of a bar’s patio and was patching him up. Louis carefully unloaded shot after shot into the parade of Tanks,
(zoey, you ever use one of these? man, this rips through stuff like it’s made of butter!)
turning flesh and bone into gristle. When the first Tank fell, it took another with it; they collapsed on the pavement in a tangle of bloody, shredded limbs. Cars flew over her like big, smoking birds—not the one with the alarm, though, because she could still hear it loud and clear, drilling into her ears with sharp, cruel precision. Another one succumbed to the flames. When she was able to climb a ledge and put some space between them, she opened fire on the last Tank. It stumbled, unable to stop what it had started in life, and collided with a car—she could not tell where the smoking metal ended and flesh began. She ran like hell, glass crunching under her Converse, and skidded to a stop in front of her friends.
“You guys okay?!”
Zoey wanted to believe that she sounded cool and in control and definitely not scared to death. Everybody was so relieved to be alive that her lie became truth.
“I’m fine,” wheezed Louis, who was so fine that he was just about to buy a beachfront property in Kansas. “But the old man—“
“He’s in there!”
Francis pointed and she understood at once. There was a thick smear of blood (and something she only later understood to be scraps of shredded fabric) going from the generator and into the warehouse, as if Bill had just been a meat crayon in the hands of a giant, angry toddler. The world dissolved into a blur of grey, featureless shapes. Her arms pumped, the left one aching fiercely, and she nearly tripped over his gun on the way in.
“BILL!”
Was he breathing? The darkness played tricks on her mind. She watched for the rise and fall of his chest—often did it at night when she was on watch, sad to say—and found nothing.
She grasped one hand in both of hers
(why are his fingers so limp stop freaking yourself out jesus christ)
and he finally opened his eyes—they were not the sharp, alert eyes she knew, but something small and helpless, like he no longer knew where he was. His cap was gone.
“Oh my God. Um. That is a lot of blood. I can help you—“
Me and what medkit? She huffed and let go of him, stumbling around the warehouse. No amount of shots, pills or bandages could fix this shit. She looked anyway.
“Zoey.”
His voice was gentle—or trying to be, anyway—but she didn’t want to hear it. The way it rattled out of his throat, all wet and bloody, made her feel like she was talking to a corpse.
“Zoey.”
She looked back at him, wide-eyed and stiff.
“You’ve gotta go now, kid. There’s still time.”
“W-What?”
A hulking, lopsided shape blacked out the rectangle of light shining on Bill. Her finger reached for the trigger and relaxed in the same moment—just the other guys.
‘’Holy Jesus!”
“Bill?!”
Zoey could barely hear them over the incessant shriek of the car alarm; what she once imagined to be a panic-inducing wail now became a thing of mockery, as if the sound itself was raking her over the coals. And louder still was the howl of a new horde.
“Bridge should be up. Get the boat. Go. Then I didn’t die for nothin’.”
Louis screamed. Fists and steel-toed workboots collided with flesh. The world swam in shades of gray again. Her rifle clicked. No mags. Empty pistol. A zombie punched her in the face. She cried out, stumbled, and went down under an endless wave of angry, snarling faces and balled fists. She couldn’t see the other guys—between shoes she saw Bill’s hand, reached for it.
zoey.
So close
zoey you need to
but so far. A boot came down hard on her fingers.
zoey you need to wake
up, Zoey!”
Zoey wished that she hadn’t. For just one night, Bill had still been alive, and she would have traded all the peanut butter in the boat for another second of it.
“Dude, I’m asleep.”
She threw a bare, sunburnt arm over her eyes.
“Okay. Guess me and Francis are just gonna have to check out this island by ourselves!”
Zoey shot up in her sleeping bag with enough force to make herself dizzy. “What island?” Her mouth felt like it was packed full of cotton and her body was on fire, aching in ways she didn’t know were possible—funny enough, that didn’t start happening until she’d had time to rest. She groaned, squinting in advance of the blinding sun.
“I don’t know, Louis. I just think it SUCKS.”
“It doesn’t suck, Francis. Look—It’s got a big-ass jungle—“
“Mosquitos. Negatory.”
“—plenty of fruit—“
“I hate fruit.”
“Uh, yeah. I can tell.”
The deck was hot under her feet. She rubbed her eyes, blinking away fuzzy color spots, and looked over the island. The center was dominated by a thick, overgrown forest. Clear blue water lapped at the rocky shores. It beat the first island they found by a mile. That one had been smaller than a semi truck; they debated if such a shitty island could even be considered an island at all. It had also been the last piece of land they’d see for a week.
Louis was the first to go. He did it slowly and carefully, balancing his weight on the handle of an axe. Most of his shirt buttons were undone and his tie danced in the gentle ocean breeze. He grinned up at them.
“I think it’s a keeper.”
Zoey was less than convinced. She never wanted to run away to some deserted island. Some of that was pure selfishness, sure—who actually wanted to live in a world without horror movies and indoor plumbing? But more than anything it made her feel like a coward. How many carriers could there be, realistically? What if they were the only ones left? What if they could have saved the world and instead they just chose to disappear?
Then I didn’t die for nothin’, rasped the corpse of Bill in her brain.
Zoey got her sneakers and came down, hands stuffed in her pockets. The water sparkled like a giant, all-encompassing crystal, and the air was clean.
“It’s fine.”
Francis landed in the sand with a grunt.
“Okay. But I ain’t swimmin’.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Over the sound of Louis laughing, getting punched, and laughing even harder, Zoey heard
(why the fuck HOW the fuck)
the cry of something familiar.
Zoey shut her eyes hard and opened them fast, blinking away the exhaustion that had consumed her for the better part of a week. Then she drew the pistol that never left her side. The color drained from Louis’s face.
“Please tell me that’s not a Witch, guys.”
Francis sniffed the air. His face scrunched up in disgust. Now they smelled the rancid undercurrent of sweet, rotted flesh on the wind.
“Yeah. And she’s close.”