Phoenix (33 page)

Maybe
she
is
dreaming
.

Mort went inside and found Brad already
asleep, so he set the cup on the stand next to the bed, crawled
into his own, and tried to relax. Sleep was out of the question for
the rest of the night.

* * *

"I spy, with my little eye… something…" Her
eyes searched the room. Back and forth. Back and forth. Brad
watched her, waiting to see where her eyes would land. Finally they
widened and she said, "Something brown!"

"Boots."

"Come on!" Izzy elbowed him. "How do you
always guess?"

He laughed. "How can you always pick the same
things over and over?"

"Cheater."

"How can you cheat at this game?"

She tapped his forehead, maybe a little
harder than was necessary. "Uh, duh, hello? Precog!"

He swatted her hand away. "No, I don’t dream
of this game. And if I
did
, I’d win more often than I
do."

"I’m not sure how that’d be possible since
you win every single game we play already."

"Maybe you just suck at it."

"I don’t suck. You cheat."

"Sore loser."

She elbowed him again. Hard.

"Stop that!" He rubbed his ribs.

"When are we going to tell them?"

He sighed. They lay next to each other on
their backs, in the living room, and stared up at the ceiling. This
was one game of many they’d taken up during days where it was
simply too cold to be outside for long and there were only so many
chores to be done in the house. That left for a very long and
boring day.

"I’m guessing we should do it soon."

She sighed back. "Yeah. I mean, it’s not
going to happen tomorrow or anything, but the sooner we tell them
the sooner we can get ready and prepare. Maybe do some work to the
barrier, make it higher or something. I’m thinking we could—"

"Izzy."

"What?"

"Breathe."

She inhaled and went on flapping her gums.
Brad just smiled and listened. The nature of her voice was pleasant
and excited, all the time, and it made for an odd backdrop to his
thoughts. He was thinking about his dream. Not
dreams
,
plural, like everyone was assuming. Even Izzy was having multiple
precognitions almost every night now. It started after he and Adams
had killed and burned the dead. Clearing out where they’d be
living, making it safer for everyone, had thrown him right back
into Hell. He didn’t try fooling himself. He remembered very
clearly the last time this had happened. It was before the world
had ended, before the dead started walking, before he began seeing
shit even when he was awake.

His dreams had predicted all of that, and it
had happened. Now his dream was predicting something else. He’d
shared this with the only other person he felt he could just then,
and she’d confirmed his fears. Izzy’s were a little less bloody and
involved different people, but the zombie problem was the same.

Brad knew the dream would stop after it
happened in real life. This added a whole new dimension to the
weight he’d been carrying around. He would almost rather lose his
mind than lose Kasey, again.

Almost
. She could be a real asshole
sometimes.

Did his relief have to come at the cost of
her life? And he was only
assuming
she died. Maybe Brad knew
better than to do that.

It’s
Kasey
,
after
all
.
She’s
too
damn
mean
to
die
.

"Izzy! Your water’s hot," Mort yelled from
the kitchen.

"Coming!" she answered, right in Brad’s right
ear. To him she whispered, "Better talk to Mort about it.
Okay?"

Brad, wincing and rubbing his ear, nodded. "I
know. I will."

"Okay."

She pushed herself up and trotted into the
kitchen. They’d been heating water on the gas stove to wash up
with. He listened to her footsteps and then the bathroom door slam
when she kicked it shut, then got to his feet and went to break the
bad news.

* * *

Rakburn shot up in bed. It was that time of
night that was so dark and quiet it was disorienting. For a moment
he wasn’t sure where he was. The room in which he slept was small;
it had once been a walk-in closet. There were no windows. His
shaking hands searched around on the floor next to his mattress and
found the battery-powered lantern. He switched it on and
remembered. He blew out a breath and fell back on the pillow.

She’s
alive
.

Just before waking, he’d been dreaming of
her. Along with that came a very sharp presence. It was her
"signature." Even though it had been a long time since he’d felt
that, he would know it anywhere. He blinked a few times and stared
up at the ceiling rafters. It was already beginning to fade. She
was close, but at the same time far enough away that he couldn’t
latch onto her location. The signals transmitted by the walking
dead were interfering.

Maybe she was on her way to the Fort. This
was a strong place, a safe place, with a considerable population.
Obviously she had been delayed, or else she’d been here when
Rakburn arrived. He had assumed at first that perhaps she’d been
killed, though he understood there could be several explanations
for her absence. Now he knew she was alive, and close enough he was
able to pick up a strong but fleeting signal from her.

He turned off the light and closed his eyes,
but didn’t sleep. He planned. Rakburn was carving out a life for
himself at the Fort and he was hesitant to leave. But he had walked
away from PhoenTek because he had decided blood was indeed thicker
than water, and this was no different. He could walk away from the
Fort. He had responsibilities to both and would, most likely, live
long enough to regret cutting himself off from the two groups. What
was it he had told Sam?

Priorities and loyalties.

He would wait a few weeks. If she failed to
show, he would go out and look for her.

* * *

A stiff breeze blew rebel locks of hair into
Adams’ eyes. He passed an impatient hand over his face and brushed
them away. He and Brad stood on the roof of the Dollar General
looking out over the perimeter.

"That’s not going to work."

"Then you should have said so before we
finished
it," Brad mumbled.

"You didn’t ask."

"What? Yes I did! I specifically remember
saying, ‘Eight-Ball, do you think this will work?’ and you said
yes!"

"You didn’t ask if it would work. You asked
if I
thought
it would work. And I thought it would, so
obviously the answer was yes. How many times do I have to tell you
that phrasing matters?"

"Your ability is the biggest pain in the ass
ever. In the history of the world."

Adams tipped his head. "It is that."

"Well, we’re not redoing it." Brad pointed to
the dead treetops the pair had pulled from the woods. They’d
positioned them outside, along the vehicles. Brad figured they’d
create enough of an obstacle to stop something from climbing over
the cars and getting in.

"No," Adams said. "
I’ll
redo it after
it fails."

"Is it seriously going to fail?"

"Yes."

Brad swore and covered his face. "Will it
work part of the time?"

"Yes." Adams’ eyes widened. "Well, shit. How
about that. Guess it’s not a complete failure."

"If it fails, we’ll be dead. So suck it."
Brad stomped over to the access door and disappeared.

Adams chuckled. "Crybaby."

Movement caught his eye. Mort and Izzy were
entering the abandoned house next door. A few seconds later, they
emerged from the back door and walked toward the woods. They
carried empty jugs.

"Water run," Adams muttered. It was times
like this he wished for a rifle. While it was still cold and they
didn’t have to worry yet about the dead attacking when going out to
the creek for water, they all knew it was only a matter of time
before it became a problem. If they had rifles, someone could stand
on the roof as Adams did now and pick off any corpses before they
got too close to whoever was outside.

Maybe
we
need
to
go
on
a
run
,
try
to
find
one
.

He was surprised there hadn’t been a single
rifle in the entire village. Shotguns and handguns, yes, but no
rifles. Then again, they were all surprised they hadn’t run across
more corpses trapped inside the houses than what they had. Maybe
the people living here before had gathered up some supplies and
their
rifles
and gotten the hell out of dodge. He chuckled
again and went back down into the store. The stairwell and access
door had been a recent find and was something they added into one
of the emergency plans they’d thought up over the winter. Plan A
was nothing more than loading up the Expedition and fleeing by way
of a garage they’d knocked the back wall out of. The door of the
single-stall opened onto the street outside the barrier, and using
the chainsaw and some elbow grease, he and Brad had opened up the
back end so the door could be raised and they could drive straight
through. Plan B was pretty simple as well. The group would grab
their bug-out bags and run to the Dollar General roof.

Neither plan had been thoroughly thought
through, but each dealt with an immediate threat. Whatever happened
next was a bridge they’d cross when they came to it.

As far as the threat went, Adams wasn’t sure
how much of it he believed. He hadn’t picked up on anything new
from the dead when asked direct questions about them. Adams felt
that if a change was occurring to the degree that Brad and Izzy had
implied, he’d at least be able to tell them
something
. Mort
said it didn’t matter, that if the precogs agreed and said it was a
threat, it needed to be dealt with regardless of validity. So Adams
had gone along with Brad’s crazy idea of piling treetops in front
of the cars and trucks, the point being to throw up as much of an
obstruction as they could to keep the new threat out.

* * *

Valentine’s Day was the first of a five-day
stretch of unseasonably warm weather. Since the last weather report
was four months ago and neither Izzy nor Brad had foreseen this in
their dreams, they’d really had no way of knowing they needed to
prepare for a temporary thaw.

Brad stood at the ledge of the Dollar
General’s roof and watched one zombie in particular. The warm air,
aided by the sun, was melting the light layer of snow that covered
the ground in most spots. He wished that someone had had the
foresight to scoop up a bunch of the white stuff before it was
gone. They could have at least drank
that
until it was safe
to travel to the creek again.

The corpse he had his eyes on stood out in
the middle of a patch of nothing between the village and the woods.
It had been there all winter, usually covered in snow. The top of
its head, the bridge of its nose, the cheekbones, shoulders, arms
that were frozen in a semi-outstretched position, always dusted
with white. Brad saw the thing out there every day. He made a point
to look at it whenever he checked the perimeter, walked the
barrier, made a water run, dumped the bathroom bucket, and anytime
he kept watch on the store’s roof.

Its left arm hung at its side now. It hadn’t
been like that yesterday.

Brad stared hard at the corpse, trying to see
any other differences. This far away, anything else would be hard
to make out, and he didn’t have binoculars.

Put
that
on
the
list
of
crap
we
need
but
still
don’t
have
.

He squeezed his eyes shut, brought up his
danger radar, then opened them again. His lids blinked and sent out
ripples. Brad knew there was a threat out there. He was looking
right at it. But on his radar, the single blip that was popping up
jumped around.

"That confirms it. Dead threat, dot glitches
around all over the damn place. Living threat, dot stays
still."

Later that same day, just before supper, Brad
ran up to the roof to check again. Both the thing’s arms were down
and it had taken a few steps forward.

The next morning, a crowd of corpses were
tangled up in the treetops on the west barrier. Adams found them
during perimeter check. It was then decided it was too dangerous
for outside inspections and someone would have to go to the store
roof and take a look around until the weather turned again. Each
time they stepped outside, Brad and Izzy expected to see what their
dreams had shown them. They were not disappointed to see otherwise.
In fact, the newly thawed dead moved even slower than they had
before winter.

Brad tested his radar again. He stood on the
barrier, looking down at the dead in the trees, and blinked. For
every one there was a blip, and the blips lurched and jerked
around. The lines of the screen were starting to short out again,
too, but that didn’t surprise Brad since he was standing so close
to a crowd of interferers.

Brad and Adams sharpened half a dozen broom
and mop handles taken from the store and kept these in different
spots along the inside of the barrier. From the hood of a vehicle,
or wherever they could get the closest without actually going
outside, they’d stab at the faces of the dead that were piling up
in the trees. They decided they’d wait until it got cold again
before going out and burning the bodies.

When the warm weather finally broke, the gas
stove stopped working. Mort started using the top of the wood stove
to heat their food. He didn’t worry that it wasn’t hot enough to
cook anything raw since their supplies by this time consisted
solely of canned goods. They added a camping stove to the list of
things they needed to find the next time they went out. That "next
time" seemed to be something they kept putting off and their list
was getting very long.