Love in the Time of Zombies (11 page)

Highway 4

Between Concord and Brentwood

Martin Peters slammed his fist into the man’s face.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Each crunch of bone eased his anger, until he released the man’s shirt and turned away as he slid to the ground. He glared at the rest of the huddled group in lab coats, the women crying and the men staring at the ground.

“Damn it,” he growled, striding into their midst. “I need a real doctor and I need it now.”

Four days and four doctors and still no one could tell him if Tanya would live or die. He glanced over to the tent set up in the middle of the road, Antonio’s crying carried on the silent air.

After the attack at the hospital, he’d returned to the bus to find Tanya twitching on the floor in the middle of a puddle of her own blood and his whore, Miranda, nowhere to be found. He’d dragged several men from their raping and pillaging to search. She hadn’t been found.

He clenched his fists. When he found that little bitch he’d make her wish satisfying his sexual needs was all she had to do. When he got through with her, she’d be happy to hump the zombies to escape his twisted punishments.

The first doctor had refused to help him. Martin shot him in the head and pointed the gun at the next lab coat. The second doctor had been out of her element, but she’d tried. Martin gave her to the men after Tanya started convulsing.

The third doctor had been a general practitioner and might have helped Tanya if the woman hadn’t hidden she’d been bitten and tried attack her patient. Antonio had yanked her off Tanya and thrown her out of the tent for Martin to shoot. The fourth doctor lay bleeding at his feet, finally acknowledging that he was an anesthesiologist and had no clue why Tanya wasn’t waking up yet. Martin raised his hand and shot him in the head.

He kicked the dead man and strode over to the older woman in the group. “What kind of doctor are you?” he demanded, placing his gun barrel on her forehead.

She didn’t blink. “The kind who knows that woman is going to die if we don’t release the bleeding on her brain. I can try to help her, but it might kill her too. What assurances do I have that you won’t kill me if she dies?”

He squatted down in front of her, moving the gun to her chest. “None at all.”

The woman glared into his face. “Well, I might as well try then.”

Martin held out his other hand to help her up. She ignored it and pushed herself to her feet. He stepped aside. “This way, doctor…”

“Dr. Johnson, but you can call me Gwen.” She marched up to the tent and pushed the flap back.

He followed her inside and grimaced at Antonio’s wails.
It’s my woman too, and you don’t see me carrying on, do you?

Gwen pulled a rubber band off her wrist and pulled back her long, auburn hair. She squatted by Tanya’s cot and reached out to take her pulse. “It’s fast and shallow. We need to get started right away. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I need alcohol, scissors, and a drill.”

Martin bellowed orders to his men and in short order the doctor had the things she needed. The blood left his face and his heart pounded when Gwen collected the scissors, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and a battery-powered drill like he’d had back home in his garage. His meal threatened to leave his stomach. He swallowed it back down. He was the leader, damn it.

“I don’t need you here if you’re going to throw up all over the place,” the doctor snapped at him. “But I’m going to need someone to help hold her down.”

Martin scanned the tent for Tanya’s husband, but he was already kneeling in a corner with his rosary beads wrapped around his hands.
Fat lot of good that’s going to do, Gomez. God helped those who helped themselves. If I do nothing else, I always help myself.

“What else do you need, doctor?”

“Well, in a perfect world, a hospital and sterile conditions, I’d have clamps to keep her still and an anesthesiologist to knock her out, but you just killed the only one we had. Since we don’t have any of that, we need to strap her down and immobilize her head. Without clamps, I’m thinking good, old, all-purpose Duct tape should do the job. But I’ll still need you to hold the rest of her still.”

His mouth dropped open and he stared at the petite woman in front of him.

“What, did you expect me to whine and cry when you’ll probably kill me anyway? Sorry, buddy, but I stopped crying four months ago when I had to shoot my teenage daughter in the head. At least if I die today, I’ll be able to see my Monica again.”

His face heated in a rush with shame in a way it hadn’t in more years than he cared to remember. Just as quickly, he stomped on it. He turned to the side and coughed. “If she lives, so do you.”

She sighed. “I guess in this wonderful new world, that’s all we can ask for.”

He strode to the tent opening, demanded tape and got it. Martin returned to Tanya’s cot and started taping her down. His fingers brushed against her cold, clammy skin. Only the slow up-and-down movement of her chest reassured him of her continued survival.

Kneeling by her side, he handed the tape to the doctor and waited as she ran it across Tanya’s forehead and attached it to the cot. He jumped when Gwen grabbed a handful of his lover’s dark, thick hair and the scissors. “Do you have to cut it all off?”

“I suppose at this point it doesn’t really matter.” She sectioned off a small area and cut the hair to the scalp in a three-inch square. She grabbed the bottle of Jack, poured some on the scalp and some on her hands. Picking up the drill, she coated the drill bit with more alcohol. She pressed the trigger to test the charge.

Martin jumped at the loud sound in the still, hot tent. He reached over and locked his hands onto Tanya’s arms. “Ready.”

“Okay,” the doctor announced. “There is going to be some blood. I don’t have all the tools I need here, so this is the best we’ve got.”

“Just do it,” he gritted out between his clenched jaws.

The drill whirred in the quiet. Blood spurted out of Tanya’s scalp, but not as much as he was expecting, nothing like the puddle in the bus. He felt her bones creak beneath then tightened hands he’d clamped onto her arms. The sound of the drilling seemed to go on forever. The whine dug into his brain. He saw Tanya’s eyeballs move beneath her eyelids, but she made no movement on the cot.

Finally, the noise stopped and the doctor dropped the drill to the tent floor and fell backward to her butt. She grabbed the bottle, poured some on her bloodstained hands, and then brought the bottle to her mouth. “Now, we wait,” she muttered in between gulps.

“How long?” he whispered.

“Oh, I say the next twenty-four hours will tell.” She handed the bottle to him. “No more of that. I’ll keep watch with the husband there. He is the husband, right?”

She looked at him with a question in her tired eyes. A question he had no intention of answering. He stared until she turned away. “For now,” he muttered under his breath as he stepped out of the tent.

Darkness was everywhere. They were coming to get her; she could feel them holding her down, smothering her. Pressure in her head had her screaming but no sound came out. Nothing but darkness and silence. She tried to move, but they wouldn’t let her. Her body was frozen and burning up at the same time.

“Martin, mi amor, where are you?” Tanya thought she spoke the words, but the words only echoed in her head.

“I’m right here, my love.”

Tears filled her eyes and ran down her face and she wanted to scream. It wasn’t the right voice. She hated that voice with a passion.

“Open your eyes,” he pleaded. “Come back to me.”

She fought to deny him, but her eyes opened anyway. She didn’t see Antonio sitting in front of her. She didn’t see anything at all. Darkness deeper than a moonless night stared back at her. She screamed and nothing came out. No sound at all.

“Ten days. It’s been ten whole days and nothing. Where in the hell is this zombie army?” I muttered to Michelle as we dug pit traps in front of the mall. It hadn’t rained in months and the dirt was as hard as cement after the first few inches. Sweat covered my back and trickled down between my breasts to pool at my waistband. I missed the cool breezes off the bay. I even missed the fog.

My friend leaned on the shovel she held and wiped a forearm across her brow. “You should be happy they haven’t shown up yet. Look at all we’ve accomplished.” She swept her arm out to encompass what even in my irritated mood had to acknowledge was amazing. We’d dug traps, rigged explosives to trip wires, and even in a worst-case scenario, rigged the mall to blow up with half of the supply of C-4 we had, if we were forced to fall back and leave it to the enemy. They sure as hell wouldn’t have it for long.

“You’re just grumpy because you haven’t eaten enough lately,” Michelle added as she continued to dig, the clunk of the shovel on the ground pounding in my head. “One meal a day doesn’t cut it when we’re out here digging ditches.”

I fell to work, dizzy and nauseated again. “Dinner seems to be all I can keep down anymore. I visited the doctor like you said. I don’t have the flu, Z or otherwise.”

She shot a glance my way. Her eyes warmed with relief. I knew that look. We saw it every time someone coughed and went to see the doctor. The fear that the virus had mutated again and a person wouldn’t have to die or get bitten to become a skinbag. Just another shitty problem to worry about among the ones we already had.

“I saw the scouts this morning when I was dry-heaving over the wall. Did they say anything to Jack?”

Michelle stopped digging and took off her neckerchief to wipe her face. “They went ten miles out and didn’t find anyone. Commander Canida said he didn’t want them going any further. They need to be able to beat the General and his crew back here if they spot them.”

I put my hands on my waist and leaned backward, hearing and feeling the pops along my spine. I sighed and got back to work. The sun beat down from overhead; we still had plenty of hours left to work. We couldn’t waste any time of being prepared.

Hours later, as the sun finally started to set in a fiery sky, we climbed out of our hole and helped the others put a tarp across the hole and scattered dirt, twigs, and leaves to cover it up. Not that the zombies would know the difference, but we might trap some of the humans as well. Bile rose in my throat, but I pushed it back down. We didn’t start this fight. But we damned well would finish it. They should have left us the hell alone.

Every muscle in my body ached as I dragged myself to the showers set up in one of the old restaurants in the mall. We only had cold water, along with the last of the store-supply soap, but it washed the tiredness and grime away. Running my fingers through my hair, I could tell it was growing again as the wet ends touched my shoulders.

Pulling on clean jeans and a T-shirt, I headed to drop off my clothes at the laundry and find some food. My stomach grumbled audibly to let me know it had been too long since yesterday’s dinner meal. I smiled. The thought of food didn’t have me running to the nearest garbage can to toss my cookies, so that was good.

Spotting Michelle in the chow line, I rushed over and squeezed in beside her. “I’m starving.”

“Of course you are. I told you earlier you can’t work all day with no food. Even a Power Bar would have been something.”

I shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t do any good to eat breakfast if I’m just going to toss it off the rooftop. At least I’m fine by dinner.”

I felt a bump behind me and turned to see Bobbie. “Maybe you should have Dr. Shannon give you another test.”

“She already gave me a dozen tests. I’m not sick.” I put my fingers up in the Girl Scout sign. “I swear.”

“Maybe she should have given you a pregnancy test.”

My mouth dropped open and stayed that way. Pain shot across my heart. “That is just cruel, Bobbie Roberts,” I whispered, turning around.

“You know, my husband bred racehorses,” Bobbie said to Michelle as I tried to tune her out. “Sometimes the mares just couldn’t breed. Everyone thought it was the mare’s fault, high-strung or whatever. Then they changed the stud. Before you knew it, the mare was pregnant.”

Bobbie grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face her. She stared me straight in the eye. “Sometimes all you have to do is change the stud.”

Another predawn heaving over the rooftop ledge and I went to Dr. Shannon for a pregnancy test. Heart racing a million miles an hour, I’d done the required pee and waited. Taking the test stick, I sat on the rooftop ledge by my tent and waited. I’d lost count of how many months I’d sat just like this—always waiting, always disappointed. Upset to see the anger in Carl’s face. The unfair blame always placed firmly on me. The looks from his parents that screamed I was condemning the Gray lineage to extinction.

Did I want it to say positive or not? A stupid grin broke out on my face at the idea of a baby. All those wasted fertility treatments. All those hopeless months of thinking, ‘maybe this time,’ only to get my period—yet again. But just thinking of Nick and Beth reminded me yet again of why this was an impossible time to be pregnant. But wasn’t any time an impossible time? If people waited for the ‘right’ time, there would be no babies at all.

A gasp escaped me as the test stick formed a plus sign in the little window, the sun rose behind me, and the bright rays illuminated shambling figures on the dirt fields and asphalt road as far as my eyes could see.