The Dead Survive (5 page)

“No!” I gasped, panicked. I didn’t want to even think about it. I went out on the fortified front porch, slamming the heavy, reinforced door. It took a lot of effort, but my anger allowed me to produce a nice, satisfying thud. I stayed out there, watching the neighborhood activity and thinking, but no way was I going back in there.

Quinn joined me on the porch about forty minutes later. “I have the books sorted,” he told me, leaning on the railing a good six feet from where I perched.

I debated moving further away, but decided it would be due to bitchiness, not fear, so I stayed put. “Okay, thanks.” My t-shirt suddenly felt too small, as if it were squeezing my chest and making it hard to breathe. “Were any of the books worth keeping?”

He nodded. “Yeah, most of ’em are good for something or other. I made three piles.” He moved as if to seat himself closer to me on the rail, but then seemed to think better of it. “The ones on the desk are the best, most up-to-date ones, and for vehicles you’re likely to find around here. The stack under the desk are more specialized or a little older. Too good to throw away, though. The ones I put in the chair by the door, they can go. Too old or for vehicles you won’t bother to mess with even if you find any. Not a lot of use for two-seater sports cars these days.”

I was glad he was finished. Being in his presence was too stressful. I knew I was supposed to say something, and ran through my mental end-of-the-world etiquette file. Oh, right. “Well, thanks, Quinn.” His name felt strangely savory on my tongue. Then I realized I had to say something else. “Um, hey, I’m sorry about…”

“No, Ellen.” His voice wasn’t any louder, but it was quite adamant. He did not want to hear an apology. “You have nothin’ to be sorry for. We’ve all got scars we’re working on, and I won’t blame you for showing yours sometimes.” This time he did take a few steps closer, and I didn’t run. He leaned toward me, not dangerously close, but enough for me to hear when he dropped his voice even further and said, “But don’t you blame me for my scars, either. It hurts sometimes, people assuming you’re something you’re not.”

With that, he stepped off the porch and turned in the direction of the house he and his friends shared. I hung my head, somehow ashamed. He was right, I knew. If I hadn’t learned anything else since the world fell apart, it was I couldn’t judge people by how they appeared, at least not entirely. I certainly didn’t want anyone to judge me by the broken, terrified, drunken wreck I was when I arrived here. I sat in somber reflection, reentering the house only after he had crossed the street and vanished from sight.

CHAPTER SIX

I tried again to avoid Quinn, but I was conflicted. He made me nervous, as all men did, but this nervousness felt different. It wasn’t fight or flight waiting for something to set it off. It was more intrigue, and a roiling confusion in the pit of my stomach.

I saw him during his shifts on the wall, or hauling wood when I was working in the gardens. Whenever he seemed about to approach me, I fled. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. In the time before, Mason would have been a harmless character on the periphery of my life, zombies would never exist, and Quinn would have been the monster who murdered me in my bed. But everything was inside out now, and I no longer knew what was real.

Melissa still hadn’t spoken. I wondered if she’d had emotional problems even before being captured, but doubted it. I’d heard whispers from some of the other former captives that her mother had been killed the same day she was taken. I wondered if her mother’s dying cries were the only reason Mason had known her name.

She performed simple tasks around the house we shared with a few other women, and I tried to spend as much time with her as possible. There were some books left in one of the bedrooms, and I read her
Anne of Green Gables
and
Island of the Blue Dolphins
. The latter had some interesting parallels to our own survival situation. She no longer looked quite as haunted, but she still couldn’t bear to be in the presence of men, and her silence dragged on.

One night, I was heading home after organizing a new stash of books on herbal remedies, and I passed by the gardens. Melissa rarely went out, but our housemate, Bethany, had apparently decided they needed some fresh air. I saw Bethany on the far side of the garden, talking to a man, while Melissa stood with her back against a storage shed, three teenage boys in a semi-circle in front of her, like a pimply pack of wolves. Her arms were drawn to her chest, her head down, and she was clearly terrified.

“Get away from her, you little bastards!” I shouted, starting off in their direction. I could hear their taunts, things like “retarded” and “dumb” and “only good for one thing.” When I heard that last comment, a red haze clouded my vision, and I began to run. Before I could reach her, though, two of the boys were scrambling away, and the third was hoisted off the ground by a very large, very strong hand. Quinn.

I skidded to a stop on the loose dirt, frightened by the scene before me. Quinn held the struggling boy, looking like some dark avenging angel. The wildness brimming in his eyes chilled my blood. He held his adolescent prisoner by the collar, almost strangling him. His other hand was clenched in a massive, potentially deadly fist. I went to Melissa and put an arm around her before turning my attention back to Quinn. “What are you doing?” I demanded. “Let him go.”

Quinn continued to give the kid his death-glare for a moment before turning to me. With a deep breath, he lowered the red-faced idiot to his feet, but didn’t release him. “Did you hear what he said? And he was scaring her.”

“You’re scaring all of us right now.”

Quinn bent toward the boy’s ear, and I heard the deep rumble of his voice. He was undoubtedly saying things starting with “If I ever catch you near her again…” and then detailing several very painful consequences. I decided I didn’t want to know the specifics. I was glad the situation had been resolved without bloodshed, but I was worried about Melissa.

When her tormentor scrambled away, Quinn turned toward Melissa. “You should stay back,” I told him. “She’s still afraid to have men too close to her. I don’t know what Bethany was thinking, leaving her alone like that.” I caught the negligent housemate’s eye across the yard and gave her the evil eye. She looked away, obviously aware it was a bad time to try to explain herself to me.

Quinn stopped a couple of yards from the quivering teenage girl. He kept his focus to one side of her, much as I had that first awful morning at the hotel when I told her I was only going to clean her wounds. “It’s okay, Melissa. I won’t hurt you. Did those boys do anything to you?”

She didn’t answer, as I’d known she wouldn’t.

“I appreciate your help, Quinn, but I should get her home now.”

“I hate that she’s scared of me.”

“It’s not you. It’s not anything you did.”

“I know, but…” His voice caught, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t see the shimmer of tears in his eyes. “Before, I had a sister just a little bit older than her.”

Looking at the two of them, I saw how that could be. Their dark hair and high cheekbones were similar, though Melissa’s eyes were a soft gray to Quinn’s nearly black ones.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’ve all lost so much.” I thought again of Matt, and Skip, and my unsuccessful attempts to reach my parents. So close to the epicenter of the outbreak, I had little hope they were still alive.

“I looked for her before I came here, but I never found her. Our house was torn up, looted, so I went to our gran’s place, but nobody was there. The barn was burned, and the cows were all gone.” He glanced at Melissa, who was listening intently.

“Maybe she’s okay,” I said. “Maybe she found a place like this.” Hope was one of the few things people could offer one another these days.

He gave a small shrug. “Maybe. I sure hope so.” He paused, leaning against the shed, then continued. “Our dad drank a lot. When he’d get bad, especially the last year before he left, Sabrina would hide in her room, curled up with a blanket between the bed and the wall. He’d be downstairs, yelling and throwing stuff around, taking a swing at Mama if she was around, but she usually made herself scarce when he got that way. I’m not a little guy.” He smiled ruefully. “And I wasn’t back then, either, but fighting him only made it worse. Unless I was ready to kill him, which I could never bring myself to do, we just had to wait till he passed out. Sabrina would cry for hours after, and I only knew one way to calm her down.”

“What was that?”

He didn’t answer right away. “Take her home. I need to talk to somebody, but I’d like to come by later. I have an idea.”

I started to argue, but Quinn strode purposefully across the yard and around the corner of the house, out of sight.

I took Melissa home, followed shortly by a very apologetic Bethany. I waved off her rapid-fire explanations, not really caring why she’d done what she’d done.

“I know, I know, Bethany.” I reached under the kitchen counter for a pot to boil some potatoes on our propane cook stove. I thought I still had a few eggs in the cupboard, and some wild onions. Dinner.

Bethany anticipated my menu plan and retrieved the eggs, along with a can of Spam. For some reason, Melissa really liked Spam. “I was just talking to Todd, and…”

I interrupted. “I know you need to get out sometimes when you’re not working. You need to have friends and some kind of life. We all do.” Not that I had the faintest idea how to go about it. I put the pot back and exchanged it for a skillet. I’d fry the potatoes and onions with the Spam. Our other two roommates were on guard duty this evening, so this would be plenty for the three of us. “And I guess I’ve been leaving Melissa alone too much. But she’s okay here by herself, Beth, if it’s not for too long. All I ask is if you do take her with you, please don’t leave her alone, okay?”

Bethany nodded and gave Melissa a hug and a murmured apology, and we set about preparing our meal.

After dinner, I was reading to Melissa in her room when a knock sounded at the door. I opened it to find Quinn holding a battered guitar case. I hesitated; no men had been to this house, at least not since I’d been here. Then I shook it off. He hadn’t waited for me to agree to his visit tonight, but I’d known he’d come. It was okay. I could do this.

I stepped to the side and motioned for him to enter, which he did with a small smile. “I’m guessing you didn’t run away from home, and that’s not an oddly-shaped suitcase.” I congratulated myself for forming a full sentence that wasn’t quite as lame as it could have been.

Quinn’s posture relaxed a little, as if he’d been unsure of his welcome, which I guessed he’d had a right to be. “Two of the guys in the house next to mine had guitars, so I asked to borrow one. I had to promise to scavenge some new strings next time I’m out, but it’ll be worth it if it makes Melissa feel better.” He stepped past me into the living room. I followed, and it felt as if the oxygen level in the space had dropped sharply since I’d passed through it a few moments ago.

“Okay,” I said, “but not in her room. Out here where there’s more space.”

He sat on the couch, and I went to get Melissa, whispering a quick explanation to Bethany along the way.

We returned to find Quinn had taken the acoustic guitar from its case and was in the process of tuning it. At first, Melissa stood across the room, but soon moved to the opposite end of the couch as he strummed softly on the old guitar. Once it was tuned to his satisfaction, he began to play, the instrument balanced on his knee.

I recognized a few 60s folk songs and country ballads, but it wasn’t until he began to sing that I saw Melissa respond. It took me a moment to identify “Imagine,” John Lennon’s soulful plea for peace, and my first reaction was shock that someone so imposing could play something so gentle and beautiful. Then I chastised myself, looking at Quinn through newly-opened eyes.

Melissa was looking at him, really
seeing
him, as his thick hands moved over the fret board and strummed the strings, making the guitar seem impossibly fragile. I silently implored him to keep playing.

He started the song again, and Melissa inched closer. By the time he’d played the song a third time, singing along softly, she was sitting right next to him, her head lightly resting below his right shoulder as his fingers plied a makeshift pick over the strings. When he got to the final chorus, I realized Melissa was singing, barely more than a whisper, but singing along with him.

I was flabbergasted. This might be the scariest-looking man in the Compound, and she’d just seen him on the verge of beating the hell out of another person. Yet he’d gotten more of a reaction from her than anyone else since we’d been freed from the hotel. I supposed the fact that his anger had been in her defense made a difference, even if it had been frightening at the time. I needed to think about that later.

He played a while longer, and sometimes Melissa sang along in her small, sweet voice. I let the tears flow down my cheeks without shame. When he rose to leave, I followed him to the door.

“I don’t know what to say.” I glanced back toward the living room, where Melissa hummed softly to herself. “It’s like a miracle.”

Quinn smiled sadly. “I don’t know about that. I just know if Sabrina is still alive somewhere, scared, I hope someone is singing to her.”

I didn’t think about it, but I leaned into his strong chest and lifted my arms to rest my hands at the back of his neck. I felt him tense for an instant, before his arms wrapped loosely around my waist. My heart raced, being so close to him, to anyone, and I whispered, “Thank you.”

I felt his lips brush over the top of my head, and then he was gone. I took Melissa back to her room and read to her until she fell asleep.