Forever Between (Between Life and Death Book 2) (16 page)

“In a weird way, it makes sense,” he says, almost to himself.

“What does?”

“His whole minimum population thing. I can almost see what he’s talking about,” he says in a tone that sounds almost embarrassed that he’s agreeing with the good doctor.

I swing around on the narrow windowsill so that I’m facing the room again. It shifts me to a new spot and the cold of the granite, or whatever stone it is, seeps through my jeans and makes me shiver. “You’re not serious! You can’t possibly agree with what he’s doing here. That would make you just as bat-poo crazy as he is!”

“I’m not saying that, but…well, I guess I feel sorry for him. It really is the only way he can do anything to help at all, so he does it,” Charlie says and shrugs.

No words of response come to my mind, so I make a rude noise that sort of sums up my feelings and turn back to the window, finding my warmed-up spot again.

Charlie sighs, gets up and unrolls his sleeping bag onto one of the beds. I watch him in the reflection in the window and I see him glance my way, but he doesn’t say another word to me. He just climbs in and rolls to his side facing away from me. Eventually, the darkness and the silence make me tired, and I feel myself falling asleep with my face pressed against the cold window that shows me nothing but darkness.

Two Months Ago - Better Off Dead

This entire thing is such a bad idea that I hardly know how to express it in words. Savannah and Gregory, our two crack shots, have stationed themselves on two different roofs overlooking the grassy square of the college. Both buildings—the science building and the business building—are taller than the lookout tower, but because they are huge buildings, they’re really impossible to clear entirely of their population of deaders. Matt is going to be my buffer, and I can feel him behind me at a second story window inside one of the old dorms. Charlie is back at the warehouse with Emily and the kids, so this is all the protection I have. These three people and our paltry weapons are all I can depend on for my safety.

Of course, I am the bait. Of course.

At the far end of the square is the tower. It isn’t really square at all, but rather a long rectangle broken by brick paths, benches, and trees. The tower is also not a true tower, but rather the top of the opera house. It’s a small building, but beautiful. This is an old southern college, so you bet they have an opera house. I hear the acoustics are great.

I take a deep breath and look over my shoulder at Matt in the window. He nods and hefts his crossbow a little as if to reassure me that he will take down anything that comes at me. That part of the dorm building is cleared—for the most part anyway—so the plan is that he’ll move down the hallway as I walk so that he can keep me within range of his crossbow. The college has been partially cleared by successive waves of inhabitants, including us when we searched various buildings, but new in-betweeners show up here constantly. Either it’s the squirrels and raccoons that infest the trees and buildings that draw them in, or there’s a part of them that remembers the college and that memory brings them. Perhaps it’s an impulse, like whatever makes some in-betweeners return to their homes. Maybe it’s like what Sam did when he stayed close to our apartment after he turned.

My part in this little play of ours is quite simple. I’ll take this bike cart and roll it until I’m in sight of the tower, accidentally tip it and drag the whole scene out until I draw some attention. When someone comes out, I’ll run, drawing them after me. If we can’t get them all, we want to get enough of them to make the others nervous, make them try to leave. All we need is to get them out in the open. Savannah and Gregory will finish them quickly. But, it’s liable to be noisy if they have to resort to the guns, and we’ll have to be quick.

I’m hoping they can do it with crossbows. I’m the one out in the open after all.

My palm is sweaty on the handle of the cart even though it’s chilly out, so I wipe my hands on my jeans and take one more deep breath. Savannah put my hair in pigtails high on either side of my head, just to make it very clear that I’m a girl even from a distance, so I tug the ends to squeeze the hair bands more tightly to my head. It’s time to go.

In my imagination, every rustling leaf is a deader and every swirl of the old litter on the ground is an in-betweener. Every chirp of a squirrel means imminent danger, and I flinch when a bird alights on the branches of a tree as I approach. I steer clear of the benches with their piles of deaders heaped around the metal bases. Most of them are truly dead, their heads gone entirely or simply smashed to bits, but new ones show up and join the piles all the time, so there are some that are still very animated.

I have two huge, and very sharp knives, strapped to my waist and a poker—in this case a broom handle with a butcher’s knife attached to the end—so I can take care of any that move if I need to. But I’m supposed to appear harmless if at all possible, and going to town on a deader isn’t exactly the right image.

Before I get past the first set of old dorm buildings, a deader makes my harmless guise impossible to maintain. This one is missing a leg from the knee down, but is surprisingly mobile and crawling toward me at a good clip. The deader has no eyes, like most of them, but his head is cocked to the side and I know it can hear me just fine.

I pause, my heart jumping up into my throat as it always does when I find myself facing a deader with a little pep still inside them. There’s a tree, flush with early spring leaves, between me and the tower so I pull one of the knives from my waist and jam it with all the force I can muster into the eye socket of the deader. Underhand stabbing is never as good as overhand, sort of like when pitching for speed and force in baseball, but I make my forward motion count, and hear the satisfying—but slightly nauseating—sound of the eye socket crunching and the squish of my blade scrambling it’s moist brain.

I pull the blade out quickly to avoid the inevitable gush of goo that will follow from the hole I just made. The deader begins to stutter-jerk, still in a crawling position, but no longer moving forward. There’s no time to waste, so I hold the knife in both hands right above the deader’s neck and use every bit of force I can muster to bring it down on the back of his neck, aiming for a spot between the knobs of bone showing through the thin, blue-ish skin. It goes in like it should, and I jerk the blade back and forth, widening the gap until I hear the crack of his neck bones separating.

The little, “There we go!” of victory that comes out of me is entirely beyond my control. A few more quick slices and the head is mostly off. I don’t have time to smash it up and I feel bad for the deader. It will take forever for the head to finally go inanimate if I leave it like that, and if Emily is right, and there is something of the person left inside even when they go into deader-hood, it must be hell. But I’ve got an appointment to keep.

As weird as it sounds, the encounter has buoyed my spirits. Maybe it’s because I took care of something and didn’t flinch even though I was by myself. Maybe it’s because Matt felt so comfortable with my ability to handle it that he didn’t even fire a bolt. Whatever it is, I’m far more confident. I’m a fast runner and I can do this.

I grip the cart and keep on marching. As soon as the tower is in full sight, I can tell it’s occupied by at least one person, possibly as many as three. There’s a dark shape visible between the railings in the cupola at the top and I feel eyes on me almost immediately.

Keeping my head down, eyes looking up only in quick glances to avoid suspicion, I take a few more steps. When I judge the distance right, I let the converted bike cart unbalance and tip over, spilling a tempting array of canned goods that are easily recognizable as food across the grass.

As arranged, I call out, “Oh, dang-it!” I use a higher voice register than my normal one, which sounds fake and little-girlish to my ears, but everyone else says sounds just right.

A faint banging noise—two short bangs far too precise to be natural—reaches my ears and I smile at the ground.
Bingo, baby.
A few birds fly out of the two trees flanking the opera house steps so I know I’m about to have some company. My leg muscles bunch in readiness for what comes next and I adjust my crouch a little while I continue to pick up cans.

From the corner of my eye I catch the glint of sunlight on glass. There’s someone standing up in the tower now, what could only be a rifle scope lifted to its head.
Oh, no,
I think.
Please keep looking at me, not the buildings.
Flashes of movement behind the glass near the doors to the opera house let me know it’s almost time for action.

It’s harder than I thought it would be to ignore the door opening at the opera house. But it’s only one man and he doesn’t look at all dangerous. Slight, balding, and wearing a perfectly normal coat over a sweatshirt, he looks like someone’s father who works at a bank.

Smart
, I think, and have to suppress a smile.
Get the harmless looking one to make contact.

Whatever fear I had before is gone without a trace now. More birds rise into the air in the gap between the opera house and the next building, and I get a momentary glimpse of two shapes hurrying across the gap. So, they’re going to circle and come up from behind me. Nice. That alone makes any doubt that I may have harbored that these aren’t bad guys vanish. Even if by some miracle they aren’t the ones who took Gloria, these are not the actions of non-bad guys.

I give the shooters a bit of a hint and raise my left hand to my ponytail, our sign for which way I see movement if any. Then I look up at the opera house and the diminutive man standing there. He waves tentatively when he sees my face, as if perhaps I might be the scary one in this encounter. It’s all very friendly looking and completely natural. Meeting new people is a scary business and he combines just the right amount of timidity with greeting in that wave.

Again, according to plan, I leave the cart and take off running back the way I came, but not too fast. Even if they don’t come out after me any further, they’ll come and get the lovely loot I left behind. And at least two of them have already started out, going around the back of the building where Savannah waits on the roof with her array of weapons. I’m counting on it not ending well for them.

I glance behind me and see the small man, his hand no longer raised in a wave, quickly taking the steps down the front of the opera house. He’s apparently not suspicious and going for the cart and the canned goods.

From somewhere, I hear a muffled sound, sort of like a yell cut off before it can really get going. Back at the tree where the deader’s head is still snapping its jaws at the air, I stop and get behind the trunk, peeking back the way I came.

I can’t see the glint of the rifle scope anymore, but there’s still a faint shadow to be seen in the tower. The man from the steps is almost at my abandoned cart, to all appearances unaware of anything alarming going on. He looks up, almost like he can hear my thoughts from where he is. He’s too far for me to see his eyes, just as he’s too far away to see mine, but I can tell he’s scanning the trees and benches between us and looking for me. I duck behind the tree trunk and count to ten before peeking out once more. He’s lost interest in me with food so close by and is mere steps away from the cart.

The crack of a shot comes so suddenly that I let out a yell. The man at the cart seems to fall forward in slow motion, far slower than the shots that follow. I know they’re coming from both directions, both buildings, and I can only hope they’re focusing on the man—or men—in the tower. I have no idea where these men might have stashed Gloria, but it’s a safe bet that if she can, she’ll try to get away once things go bad for her captors. I can’t see her letting a chance like that go to waste.

Of course, that’s only if she still
can
do anything, and we have no way of knowing if she’s even alive.

I keep my eyes on the opera house long after the shots stop, but nothing happens except that the man who fell on the cart gets back up. He’s jerky and I can see from where I’m at that the front of his sweatshirt is covered in a new, dark stain. While I watch, he picks up a can from the ground and holds it, something in his posture telling me that he’s considering it and trying to figure out why he thinks it’s food. It’s just how new in-betweeners operate.

Next we’ll need to do the hardest part. Killing them is one thing, but it isn’t final if they’re infected. And really, who isn’t infected with nanites at this point if they’ve been tussling with deaders to any extent. And these guys, if they’re willing to grab a woman, have surely been tussling aplenty.

Now, we’re faced with however many freshly turned in-betweeners. And we can’t just kill them again either. We need them. We’re going to need test subjects if I’m going to help Emily. She was insistent about it and I don’t know where else we’d get fresh ones, especially ones so clearly deserving of anything that might happen to them.

And there’s also the issue of Gloria. No one aside from Emily really believes me about Sam, about him being able to talk, but we agreed that we should try to keep one of them alive—and if not alive, then alive again as an in-betweener—in case we can’t find Gloria. Any chance at getting information can’t be ignored. It works for me. I’ll use whatever reasons they’ll agree with to keep these in-betweeners so that I can help Emily.

I remain motionless behind the tree, waiting. Matt comes up behind me, hissing my name so I don’t go after him with the knife or poker. He’s got an armful of dog catchers, their handles wrapped in old fabric so that they don’t clatter. At this point, our plan is a little nebulous. After all, we didn’t—and still don’t—know how many of them there might be or how many received their just desserts. For the most part, the plan at this point is to try to rope them up and not get killed and eaten. That’s pretty much it.

We wait to see what else might happen. We have no way of knowing if they’re all dead, or dead-ish, or if there might be more of them waiting for us to show ourselves. Long minutes pass. The little guy at the canned goods has lost interest in the cans and has moved on to the leaves skittering across the ground. He lunges at whichever ones seem most life-like with every breath of the breeze. It’s almost funny.