APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (45 page)

             
Annie entered the bathroom and leaned against the door frame. “You look beautiful, you know that don’t you?”

             
Juanita shrugged. “Whatever.”

             
“There are good men out there ‘Nita. You’ll find one, I promise.”

             
“Like Hito, you mean?” Juanita asked. Annie had painted a rich tapestry of detail about the dark Asian man who had saved her and could have had his own way with her had he wanted, but had treated both her and Shere so well.

             
“Yes, like Hito.”

             
“But he picked Shere over you," reminded Juanita. Annie had confided her observations of Hito and Shere to her little friend.

             
Annie had not been unaware of the mutually growing feelings between Shere and Hito, but hearing it still hurt. “Even still, he was a good man.”

             
“Maybe…” Juanita said, not convinced.

             
“He helped you and our other sisters escape, didn’t he?” reminded the tall blonde.

             
Juanita stepped into her thick canvas pants and cinched the belt tight. “But you didn’t think he’d take us in.”

             
“No, he has some serious trust issues.”

             
Juanita bloused her boots and strapped on plastic knee pads and shin guards. “Sounds like he has some mental issues, if you ask me,” Juanita said, pulling a t-shirt on over her head. “You want to find him again even though he is in love with that Shere chick, right?”

             
“We need more people.”

             
“Yeah, I know we do.”

             
“So you’ll go with me?” Annie asked hopefully, she made no effort to hide her emotions which was one of the reasons Juanita liked the tall blonde so much. Annie might lie, but her face never did, if you knew how to read it.

             
“I’m getting geared up, aren’t I?” muttered Nita.

             
Annie bent down and quickly squeezed her friend. “Thank you, Nita.”

             
“Yeah, yeah… go get your gear gathered up.”

             
“I already did.”

             
“I hope he’s worth the risk,” said the Latina.

             
“They both are. Shere is one of the toughest and sweetest people I’ve ever met.”

             
“That’s good, maybe she can take up your slack,” Juanita said strapping on her side arm, a 380 auto, on her hip.

             
Annie didn’t take offense, she was used to her friend’s remarks and she knew that ‘Nita didn’t really mean them. It was all part of her defense mechanism.

             
“Lets’ go then,” Juanita said grabbing her Mini-14 that stood in the corner.

             
                                  
Chapter 53 - Reunions Are Bittersweet

Dixton
, Ohio 

              The sewers had been mainly uninhabited. There had been only one dead man trapped in its dark confines, unable to use the ladder to escape and Shere had easily dispatched of it. The two made their way into the caged in garden center of the do-it-yourself store and entered the large building without drawing attention to them. They had commandeered a small scissor-lift and skulked silently across the metal roof. From their new position they could make out the forms of the Riley, or as Hito called him ‘Bandana’ and his remaining cohort. Hito and Shere bedded down for the night and quietly watched the stars, lying side by side. Since the power grid had gone down the stars appeared bright and countless even in town. Shere curled up at Hito’s side trying to settle into sleep by listening to the steady beating of his heart.

             
“Anxious to get him aren’t you?” he whispered. She nodded against his chest. Hito didn’t press her. He knew she had her reasons and that was enough for him, besides, she would tell him when and if she felt like it. He had his own secrets and knew that they were safest if you didn’t acknowledge that they were a secret.

             
From below the dead serenaded them with a choral dirge.

             
“Sleep if you can. We’ll get him tomorrow.”

             
Shere’s mind took a long time to wind down. There were too many memories, too many ghosts in the graveyard of her past, but eventually sleep claimed her and her dreams claimed the man in the bandana.

              She woke with a disturbing premonition, startling Hito awake.

             
“What’s wrong?” he asked alarmed. He wiped the sleep grit from his eyes and glanced around him.

             
“I don’t know…something,” she said urgently

             
“It’s quiet.”

             
“Too quiet,” she agreed.

             
The dead were silent. The dead were never silent, except for the ones that had no throats. She peered around the air conditioning unit and didn’t see anyone on the other roof. She crawled to the edge and looked down. The dead were gone, but so were the living that she so much wanted to reintroduce herself to. She caught movement from the corner of her eye and grabbed the binoculars. She thumbed the adjustment and focused in on the tree line. She could just see Dwight Riley, alone and making a limping escape into the woods. What had happened to the other survivor was of no concern to the Marine. Behind Riley were maybe a hundred of the dead. “Dammit!” she cried in frustration

             
“What is it, Shere?”

             
“It’s
him
. He’s getting away. We have to get to him before the dead do!”

             
Hito jumped to his feet and grabbed their packs and rifles. They ran across the roof to the lift.

              Hito saw blood on the trampled blades of grass and drops of it swirling in puddles of murky brown water, but he didn’t need to track him by blood. The pack of dead had left a wide, worn path through the muddy field.

             
“We can’t go through them to get to him. We’ll have to flank him,” Shere said.

             
“It might be best to split up. I’ll take left you take right?”

             
She nodded. She knew that tactic of divide and conquer was in favor of the indivisible force. She knew it wasn’t the wisest choice and neither of them wanted to do it, but their odds of cutting off whatever path he’d taken was doubled by doing so. She exhaled and then looked at Hito with tears brimming in her eyes; by force of will alone they did not fall.

             
“I love you, Hito,” she said, then immediately took off running to the right and angling away from the beaten down trail. Hito began to run to the left. He mentally kicked himself for not returning the words and he swore to himself that he would make up for it when their paths again converged.

              The woods cast long shadows like the arms of secret regret clawing at them as they navigated the dense woods. Here and there rays of light shone through the canopy of firs, oaks and walnuts illuminating, darkening, illuminating and darkening, creating a strobe effect that their eyes could barely adjust to.

             
Hito came to a barb wire fence and easily vaulted over it.
Good,
he thought
even though
the dead are ungodly strong they aren’t very agile.
Even the easiest of obstacles for the living posed a serious challenge for the dead. For some reason the fence reminded him of that movie of the same name. She had looked amazing in it, but because of reasons too many to calculate, it had been one turd of a movie. When he remembered the actress he instantly thought of Annie. He liked her, maybe even loved her, however he was never
in love
with her and he knew that he should never have had sex with her. From the start it had been Shere that he had wanted for his own. Annie had pressed him though, and she had known that his flesh would be weak. He didn’t believe that there had been any malicious intent in her actions, no ulterior motives, but he still regretted it. He knew that Annie had mistaken the sex they had shared as love. He also knew that he was to blame for Annie leaving, and he couldn’t find it in his heart to blame her any longer. He hoped that life had found her well.

             
He snapped himself from his reverie and refocused his attention on the task at hand. About a hundred feet past the fence he could hear the dead screeching to his right and he hurried onward for another hundred feet. When the dead herded together in packs, for some reason, it reminded him of seeing the Fat Albert Gang running in their cartoon and even though the reality of it wasn’t funny, still a boyish grin crossed his lips.

             
He decided that he was now clear of the pack by about a hundred yards and knew that it would take them quite a bit of time to cover that same distance so he veered right to intercept Bandana.

             
He could still hear the dead but he hoped that most of them were still entangled in the barbed wire fence. How long it would hold them before they simply powered through it was anyone’s guess, but he knew it wouldn’t be long.

             
Soon he found the blood trail, but there was still no sign of Shere. He couldn’t let the man get away or she would never forgive him; that much he knew, so he continued on without her. When he caught him he would restrain the man until she arrived, then Shere could do whatever struck her fancy.

             
He tracked the blood to the far end of a clearing in the woods where it abruptly stopped. A frown creased his brown; the footprints and trampled underbrush had also ended.

             
As he turned to reexamine the trail behind him, Hito was blindsided and he heard a gunshot at the same moment. The shot had not been Shere’s M4; he had heard that often enough to rule it out.

             
Then it struck him. Shere’s camouflaged nemesis had doubled back on his trail and had lured him into an ambush.

             
He hit the wet ground of the forest floor with a body straddling his. He pushed the form from off of him and the body fell heavily onto the wet earth. He scrambled to his knees, reaching for one of his 9mms. His eyes widened.

             
“Annie?”

             
She looked up at him smiling weakly with blood pouring from a hole in her neck. “Hito…”

             
Hito knelt at her side and pressed against the wound. “He’s behind…you…” Annie said, and blood spilled from her mouth with each word. She coughed as some of the blood ran down her throat and it sprayed a red mist across his face.

             
He snapped his head around and saw Bandana approaching him slowly with an AK-47 pointed at him from his hip, his bandana had dropped from his face and hung in a bunch at his throat. Hito knew that he was dead to rights and he felt a hand touch his leg. “I’m sorry…I left…” she gurgled on the blood, “my…sisters…” she managed to say and Hito looked back at Annie.

             
Hito felt tears stinging his eyes. He questioned himself as to why he hadn’t helped Annie with her sisters. “It was my fault, Annie, not yours,” Hito said and ran the back of his fingers across her cheek.

             
“Awww… that’s so sweet…” said the Bandana. His words were cut off by the sound of a woman’s blood curdling scream. The sound was full of anguish and rage and a blind hatred. From his periphery, Hito saw a small woman emerge from the undergrowth spraying semi-automatic gunfire.

             
Bandana knelt in a firing position and fired and Hito heard the girl cry out in pain. He seized the opportunity of the well-timed distraction and drew out the ‘Twins’, aimed quickly and fired off four rounds, not taking any chances. Only one round hit Bandana; it caught him in the left thigh that was supporting him in his kneeling position. Riley yelled in pain as he toppled backward and sprayed a long burst of automatic gunfire in a long arc upward as he did.

             
From behind Riley, Hito saw Shere appear through the foliage, crashing through the heavy underbrush. She raised her M4 and slammed the butt stock against Riley’s skull that made a dull clunking sound.