Dying Days (22 page)

“Why didn’t he say anything?”

“I think he was just happy to see you still alive. It was obvious that you had no symptoms.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” Darlene covered her ankle with her hand. “Not yet. I still have nightmares.”

“Fair enough.”

Darlene turned to John and grinned. “I thought you said you were a cop.”

John hesitated. “I am.”

“A mall cop?”

“It’s still a cop.”

Darlene laughed. “And all this time I thought I was being protected by this hardcore police officer. I put my life in the hands of a guy who chases skateboarders from the parking lot.”

“Ouch.”

“The guy who gets a discount in the food court.”

“Stop,” John said and tried not to laugh. “You call me mean.”

“The guy who drives around the parking lot at nine-fifteen at night to make sure the makeup girls and stock boys get to their car safely.”

“You’re killing me. What did you do for a living?”

“I was a makeup girl in a mall.”

“Not funny.”

Darlene slapped the deck. “I wish I were joking.”

Chapter Seventeen

Darlene, John and a dozen others moved quickly down A1A, clearing a path through the zombies coming from the south. Bridgette Charland, fourteen and preferring to be called Bri, carried John’s extra arrows slung over her shoulders. It was obvious to everyone that she had a massive crush on him.

Six hours ago a broken CB radio transmission had announced from one of the southern safe spots near Daytona Beach that a flood of refugees were coming east and north from Orlando. The city, twice the size of St. Augustine, had collapsed under its own weight and with so many zombie attacks.

“There’s a spiked pit to the left,” someone called out. They were entering Flagler Beach and the junction of Route 100. At some point this had been a central point for survivors. Now it was desolate. Traps and ditches had been built to either side of the road and the beach littered with fencing, makeshift walls and abandoned cars.

While the group took a quick break and no undead were in the immediate vicinity, Darlene accompanied three men inside a restaurant called the Golden Lion, its wind-faded sign a regal lion. The bar area was covered in sand, as the glass partitions had been destroyed. The kitchen yielded nothing worth taking, the food stores emptied.

Darlene went slowly up the stairs to the top deck of the place. She imagined how beautiful this would have been in times past, with the drinks and good food, company, the wind blowing in your hair and the smell of the surf and sand. She stared at the beach, covered in debris, and imagined sunbathers, children frolicking in the waves, lifeguards in their chairs, some Jimmy Buffet music playing from a small radio.

“John says we’re ready to head out.” Bri stood at the head of the stairs. She looked so young, too young to be out here in danger. Darlene supposed there was nothing but danger, no matter where you were. She wanted to say something soothing to the girl. She couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be condescending to the teen.

They went back out into the street and got back into formation. Darlene took the sweep to the far right with her machete while John was to the left, arrow notched. So far the zombies had been light, with months of fortifying the few bridges that remained to the peninsula. Farther south, near Ormond Beach and Daytona Beach it would be a different story unless an unknown group of survivors had staked a claim there.

“Just up ahead is where our reach stops. There’s a state park around a bend and we were able to pull a group of RV’s into the road and build a wall. The beach in that spot has also been fenced in, and the park has a natural rock wall that we added to. After that it could get messy,” Eric White said. He was an older man that used to be in construction and had built quite a bit of the traps and walls in this area. His long, white ponytail dripped down his back, sweat running off onto his shirtless chest. He carried a hand crossbow that he was quite proud of, having found it in a junk pile and fashioned it back to working condition. Darlene thought someone had once said that Eric had been a consultant on one of those antique restoration reality television shows. She could see that. Eric took the time to explain in great detail everything he was doing and to what purpose.

It was slow moving with having to rely on close-quarters fighting for the most part. You couldn’t shoot a gun out here in the open, where it would carry for miles and draw in hundreds of the undead. Darlene was glad that John had finally stopped insisting that she use a bow and arrow, especially since the last time four days ago when she shot so wide that she’d almost hit an onlooker. She gripped her trusted machete and scanned the buildings and lots for enemies.

A zombie lumbered from Martin’s restaurant, crashing through the mangled front door. Someone put an arrow between its eyes. Darlene didn’t give it a second glance. She had ceased to even wonder whether or not they were male or female, young or old.

In the movies the zombies wore ironic uniforms like bloody nurses, hacked up lawyers and mutilated military men still wearing their helmets. Out here it was too hard to discern what profession they had been when alive. Their clothing was dirty, ripped and drab, covered in gore and dark stains.

Eric ran past her with a large meat cleaver in hand to cut off the zombie’s head. Darlene just kept moving, trying her best to smell the salty air instead of the rot and decay. Her heels crunched through a bloodstained path and she looked away and made pretend it was the crunch of seashells underfoot.

A flock of seabirds cruised by on an updraft and they all stopped and watched as the creatures flew out of sight.

“I’d love to know where they’re hiding,” John said and everyone laughed.

The mood shifted as soon as they got around the bend and the RV’s came into view. The wall stood twelve feet high in places, wood haphazardly nailed to the sides of the RVs to hook them together, cement and debris poured into the cracks between them.

Cars had been wedged in the gaps as well, with glass and rotting upholstery strewn across the street. Darlene looked away when she realized that body parts were also present.

“What’s that noise?” someone asked as they got closer.

“They’re on the other side.” Eric ran ahead, scaling the steps of an RV and getting onto the roof in a single move. “Fuck,” he managed.

Darlene and John got onto the top of another RV, helping others up. Whoever had put this together had done it smartly: the roofs had been reinforced with plywood and strips of steel and beams for support. Several rusting lawn chairs were bolted to the tops, a wind-ravaged plastic cooler on each roof.

The undead stood, thirty deep in places, trying to push forward. They could see more heading from the dunes on both sides and straight down A1A.

“Time to clear a path,” John said and let loose with a volley of arrows.

Darlene could only stand off to the side and marvel at the proficiency of the bowmen in their group. She imagined that this is what the Middle Ages must have been like, with archers facing down the hordes of Mongols and Saxons. Something like that. She was never too clear on her ancient history, and supposed it didn’t really matter now.

“This isn’t working,” John finally admitted. While there were two score undead lying motionless, another five score had wandered up and were waiting their turn. Bri was already digging into the second quiver of arrows and there were a handful of undead still up, arrow shafts jutting from shoulders, necks and chests.

“I’m going down,” Darlene said and drew her machete again.

“I don’t think so.” John stared at Darlene.

“Please, daddy, please?” she said sarcastically before slipping down onto the small hood of the RV and dropping between three zombies. She quickly dispatched them and kicked away, giving her some room to move.

“Good idea,” Eric said and drew his meat cleaver.

John, shaking his head, went back to firing arrows, working as close to Darlene as he could without accidentally hitting her again.

Eric and Darlene went back to back, the bodies piling up at their feet. Soon a gap was cleared, allowing the bowmen to shoot down the road as the zombies approached.

“Let’s move onto the other side,” John said. The group climbed down. “Darlene,” John called.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t do that again.”

“Do what?” Darlene asked. She didn’t bother to stop and talk to him, working her way forward as she spied another foe.

John ran and caught up with her. He put a hand on her shoulder. “That was stupid to jump down and you know it.”

“You even said yourself that it wasn’t working. I thought I’d either take the fight to them or wait until they rotted and hit the ground.”

“Don’t do that again,” he repeated.

“Are you going to send me to my room now?”

Eric stepped in between them. “Can you two wait until we get back to do this? We have some company ahead.”

“Fine,” John and Darlene both said.

“You two need to get a room,” Eric said with a laugh.

Chapter Eighteen

The road ahead was desolate, the pounding waves to their left and hulking, silent condominiums to their right. The nearest condo, its windows destroyed and doors flung open, looked ready to crash into the dirty swimming pool. A mangled corpse on a lounge recliner still took in the sun.

Darlene wondered how much longer she could go on like this. Running from the dead, going meal to meal and wondering if it would be her last, meeting the living and watching them die around her and then try to kill her. Was it all worth it anymore? Her stomach growled in answer. Even though she’d been eating better since joining this group, her weight was still down and her strength not what it once was. She felt like she was running out of time.

A zombie stumbled out from the dunes and was quickly dispatched with minimal effort from Eric.

Will I ever get back home? Is home still Maine, or is home wherever I stop? Is Maine still
there
at this point?
Darlene felt a headache coming on and decided to live in the moment, as if that were possible. Shutting out the bad thoughts and the hopeful thoughts was sometimes just as hard as living this nightmare day to day.

John edged up to Darlene as they paced. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Darlene smiled at him.

She knew she’d confused him and he stopped walking. “Huh?” he finally managed.

Darlene looked away from him. “You have to know that I care about you.”

“I care about you, too.”

She looked at him and dropped her smile. “You know that I
care
about you.”

It was his turn to smile. “And I care about you.”

“Are you this stupid?”

He stepped closer to her. “Right now, with everything going on… let’s just get through today.”

“How do we know there’s going to be a tomorrow, John?”

He shrugged. “I guess we don’t. But we have to try.” John looked away at the ocean. “If I give up hope that my family is out there, somewhere, alive, what do I have?”

“You have this moment, you have people around you, surrounding you, that care for you now.”

“You want to return to Maine. What if you found out Maine had fallen completely and there was nothing left there for you?”

“I’d either drop or I’d keep going. You can’t base every action and every move on a what-if. You still need to get by. What if you found out she was gone, do you think she’d be happy to know that you then gave up? I think she’d want you to be happy and survive.”

“I don’t want to stop searching for her.”

“Who said to?”

“It’s just…”

“Getting involved with me, with anyone, doesn’t mean you love her less or forgot about her. It just means you’re living in the moment.” Darlene leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

“I really care about you.” John grabbed and hugged her, burying his face in her shoulder.

Darlene held him tightly as he sobbed. When Eric turned to investigate she waved him off and he nodded, moving away with the group.