DeadBorn (22 page)

I follow her into the building and down the stairs with a pile of boards in my hands. Holly carries the hammer and the nails and together, we check the locks on the doors and start to board them up. There are two here at the bottom of the stairs, one made of wood that leads into the gift shop and another, metal door that leads outside to the front patio, right next to a pair of water fountains. This is the one that Holly's most worried about since there's a square window in the center of it. Right now, it's covered with a Roman shade, but I know that if I were to open it up, I'd be staring straight at the mummies' shrouded faces.

“
We have to be able to hold out,” she says with a few nails stuck between her lips. I reach over and pluck one out, using my zombie arm to hammer it into the door frame. “She wants to sweat us out and convince us to run.” I finish with the board and step back, wiping an arm across my forehead. “Galen, I don't know why, but … in my dream last night, you were dead again. I think she hates you most of all.” I nod, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to respond to that. I think for a moment and try to take a page from Martin's book. Humor never did seem to work all that well for him, but I might as well give it a try.

“
Aren't all mothers a little distrustful of their daughters' boyfriends?” Holly doesn't laugh, but she does wrap her arms around my waist and press a kiss to my chest. I squeeze her as tight as I can and we stand there in anxious silence. I feel like we're standing on a beach, waiting for a tsunami to crash down and take us both out. It's there above us now, a wall of water that's covered our faces in shadow and blocked out the sun, but it hasn't hit, not yet. It's just sitting there, quivering, waiting. It definitely amps up the fear factor.

“
My mother wasn't,” Holly says and this is the first time she's mentioned her parents since we left her house. “My
real
mother.” And then she cries and I let her because I know she needs this. If she's going to stand up to Patricia and be strong, she has to let this out and at least for the moment, let it go. Grieving can come later, when we're safe and sound and tucked into a warm bed together with nothing outside our windows but the night sky. “She really liked you, you know. My dad, too.”

“
I know,” I whisper quietly and am surprised to find that I'm shedding a few tears of my own. “I liked them, too.” I hold her for as long as she'll let me and only stop when she declares that we've got to batten down the hatches.

“
Come on,” Holly says as she takes my hand pulls me up the stairs. “I'm going to need your help with this.” She takes me over to the row of metal filing cabinets and helps me reposition them in the front of the steps, effectively blocking off the stairwell. After that, Holly moves around the room hiding weapons in various places. “I don't know where she'll appear or when, but I've got to be prepared,” she tells me. “Patricia can't suspect a thing.”

I help her for awhile and when there's nothing left to do, we go back out on the roof and find Dawson and Valerie waiting for us. There's a whole slew of fresh bodies on the ground, twitching and writhing in the parking lot turned graveyard, but it hasn't made a difference, the horde has already increased in size, and that's just what I can see. Beneath us, I hear moaning and scratching and pounding. The dead are at our gates, ready to break through and sweep over us like a plague. I swallow hard and pick up a gun.

“
Do you think Valerie and I could go inside for a moment?” Dawson asks, perfectly serious. I think I know what he plans on doing, and I can understand why. Things do not look good for us right now. There's a very good chance that we could all die. I look over at Holly for confirmation and she nods, a naughty smile plastered over her lips like a mask. Inside, she's terrified, but on the outside, she's dying to make fun of the newly formed couple.

“
Go,” she tells them as a horrible sputtering breaks the drone of moaning below us. A fire face appears soon after, lumbering out from behind the barn, a fresh heart beating behind the white bones of its ribcage. Valerie hesitates when she sees this, but Holly pushes them away with a forced chuckle. “Go, enjoy yourselves,” she says and only when they're gone does she pinch her brow and frown.

“
We don't have any water,” I say unnecessarily, wondering what we're going to do about the fire face. If it burns the building down, we're screwed. I don't say any of that out loud however. I'm sure Holly is well aware of how helpless we are, trapped on the roof with nothing but a handful of bullets to get us through the day. She doesn't respond and at first, I wonder if her confidence is waning, but then her lip quirks up like she's amused.

“
Just watch.”

As soon as the fire face gets within range of the lopers and the bone bags, the closest ones to him turn like a flock of birds and go raging across the parking lot. It isn't long before they're covered in magma, burning and melting like candle wax. I pull my shirt up over my face to stanch the smell and watch as Holly steps as close to the edge of the roof as she can get. She waits for the fire face to storm across the pavement, slaughtering zombies as it goes. Once it's in range, Holly fires the gun and the beating heart explodes in a burst of blood, like a macabre firework. The demon slumps to the ground and its skin hardens, becomes completely solid like rock. Moments later, it starts to drift away in the wind, nothing but a bit of warm ash.

Holly then turns her gun to some of the mummies and smiles.

“
I think Dawson was onto something,” she tells me and fires off three shots into the chest of one of the creatures. When she glances back at me, beautiful golden hair wafting around her face and blue eyes bright, I smile back. “If we can get some more demons over here, we can pin them against Patricia's zombies and start a miniature war. What do you say?”

I don't say anything, just nod my head and marvel at the girl who never gives up, no matter the circumstances. She's a fighter, my Holly.

***

Fifty-Six Hours And Eleven Minutes After …

When Dawson and Valerie come back, fresh faced and just this side of happy, they're shocked to find the damage that Holly's done.

“
Holy shit!” Dawson exclaims as he stumbles towards the edge and finds himself being steadied by Valerie's sure hands. “How did you … ” Here he pauses and I can see that for once, he's at a loss for words. There aren't many DeadBorn left now, most of them killed by fire faces and ooze spitters, two of which are still stalking the edges of the parking lot, suspicious at the lumps of darkened ash that used to be demons. It's weird to say this, but I think they're surprised to see their brethren dead. Guess they're not so invincible after all.

“
Don't get too excited,” Holly says as she grabs for her father's revolver and checks the chamber. There are three rounds inside it, two in the double barrel shotgun, and a full magazine in the pistol that she hid inside the building. Other than that, we're out of ammo. When Holly tells this to Valerie, her face falls completely.

“
Aw fuck,” Valerie whispers as she runs a hand over her face and gazes down at the ooze spitters. They're creeping forward now, testing Holly with careful steps. I wish they had an Achilles' heel like the fire faces, but if they do, we haven't seen it yet. “What do we do now?”

Holly walks back to the wall and the spot where we've set up a seating area. The candy bag's out here now along with some water bottles and a few cans of soda that we found when Holly was hiding the weapons in the office. She sits down, puts the shotgun across her lap and says, “We wait.”

***

Sixty Hours After …

The ooze spitter that I've been practicing on looks kind of like a porcupine now with arrows sticking out of its body every which way. Or a pin cushion maybe. Yeah, I like that. A pincushion.

“
Anchor the bow,” Valerie instructs as she pushes my right leg forward with her boot. I've got my feet too far apart again. “You're not a gymnast, Galen, stop doing the splits.” I correct myself quickly and try to focus. “Use your shoulders, not your arms.” Valerie reaches out and touches my wrist gently but firmly. “And stop tapping the release.”

“
Sorry,” I say as I still the fingers on my right hand and let them rest gently against the bit of metal that's attached to my hand with a strap. I've never shot a bow before, but it's actually kind of fun. Well, as fun as anything can be with impending doom crouching over it, just waiting to pounce.

“
Okay,” Valerie says as the two ooze spitters start to tear apart a fresh wave of zombies. This group's bigger than the last, giving me some hope that maybe they'll be able to take down the two demons. If the ooze spitters actually get a chance to come at us, they could take down the whole building or at the very least, the doors. “You look good. You can shoot whenever you're ready.” I take aim and hope that when the arrow flies, that at the very least it hits
something
in the crowd. Most of the arrows that are actually in the ooze spitter's body are from Holly and Valerie. Dawson refuses to participate.

I press the release and the metal clip opens, releasing the string and sending the arrow into a mummy's face. Holly cheers and comes up behind me for a hug. I squeeze her back and act like that's where I was aiming all along, but Valerie knows better.

“
Lucky shot,” she says as she takes the bow from me and readies her own arrow. Our goal right now is to shoot the ooze spitter in as many places as we can until we find something that kills it. We've decided as a group that we might as well give it a try. After all, if we don't figure something out, then the arrows are useless anyway. Plus, we're having fun doing it. It's a nice bonus, something to pass the time while we do exactly what Holly says and wait.

A new smell has ridden into us on the wind, one that sits on our tongues and makes us gag occasionally. It's a fresher smell, like newly butchered meat. Holly thinks it's Patricia's main horde, made up from people in the city. I think that's as good a guess as any and take her word for it. In the distance there's a sound, like the rustling of a thousand trees, a shuffling that tells us that they're coming. It's only a matter of time. What she's thrown at us thus far, that's nothing. Holly says we're in the eye of the storm and that when Patricia hits the refuge, the dead will surge around us, followed by the vultures that are feeding off of it: the demons.

I look up at the sky, at the sun that hasn't set yet, but in a few hours will, right about the time Holly thinks they'll get here. Zombies, demons, and darkness. Not a good combination.

“
Are you sure you don't want to learn to shoot?” Valerie asks and I can see that she's trying to get Dawson out of his thoughts. He's so deep into them that it looks like he's drowning. He shakes his head.

“
No thanks,” he tells her in the nicest voice I've ever heard him use. Valerie sighs and her and Holly take up parallel stances, loosing arrow after arrow into the rotten flesh of the two DeadBorn. Pustules burst and shower the surrounding lopers with gunk, but they don't care. None of them do. They're all too busy ripping at each other's faces and biting and screaming. They never stop, not even for a second. The sound's made all the worse by the water hags who seem jealous that they can't leave the lake, crowding together at the crest of the hill and swinging their arms around like animatronics in a haunted house.

I ignore them as I've done for the past several hours and move over to sit next to Dawson. He doesn't pay me any attention, eyes locked on Valerie's face, memorizing details with his gaze. It's a sad thing, really. He doesn't think we're going to live through the night, I can tell.

“
Want to play a game?” I ask him and he drags his eyes away long enough to glare at me.

“
No.” He looks angry, but underneath that expression, I see sadness.

“
Are you sure? It's really easy. I make up a theme and then we take turns answering. Single sentences only, as fast as you can.” Dawson blinks at me and licks his upper lick unconsciously. It's scabbed over now and swollen, just like his eye.

“
How do you determine a winner?” he asks and I have to think for a second because when Holly and I play, we don't care about stuff like that. Dawson though, Dawson does. I decide in advance that no matter what happens, I'm going to let him win. He'll feel better that way.

“
Whoever stops first, loses, but the answers have to be genuine. You can't just make anything up.” Dawson nods briskly.

“
Fine,” he says. “You won't see me cheating. I can win fair and square. Pick a theme then and make sure that it isn't fucking stupid. If it is then I'm not playing.”

“
What I want to do after the apocalypse,” I say and Dawson opens his mouth to protest. “I want to marry Holly.” Dawson's eyes flicker with the briefest hint of a challenge.

“
I want to fuck Valerie in a bed.”

“
Nice,” she calls over her shoulder, but I can see she's smiling.

“
I want to have four kids, preferably girls.” Holly whoops, and at first, I think it's because of something she's shot, but when she turns around and throws me a thumbs-up, I can see that she likes what she's hearing.

“
I want to have two kids, preferably boys.”

“
I want to order pizza and sprinkle chocolate chips on the top.”

“
I want to bury my parents' bodies.”

I pause, unable to think of a thing to say. After a moment, Dawson lets out an
aha
and points at me.

“
You lose,” he says with a grin. I smile back at him and am glad to see him break out a can of soda. He pops the top and guzzles it, the perfect victory drink. Holly comes over and kisses the top of my head.