The Zero Trilogy (Book 3): End of Day (12 page)

Elle felt nauseous.

The thumping continued downstairs. What were her options? She couldn’t slip out this window without finding a way to break through the glass, and that would be noisy. No. She needed to slip outside, find another window or door, and get away from this place.

The safety of the room was then a dark thing, a threat. Elle stood at the door again and
listened. She touched the handle, unlocked the bolt and turned the brass knob.

It was silent on its hinges – she was grateful for that.

She kept a firm grip on the knife as she stepped into the hall. She half-expected something to pounce on her from the hall and sink its teeth into her, but there was nothing here.

She released a breath.

Elle walked to the end of the hall and looked at the window. It, too, had been nailed shut. It seemed to be a running theme. Elle was sure that the bedrooms were all the same.

Yes, she decided. The only way out of here was through the front door.

Thump, thump, thump
.

It’s just an animal stuck under the house, Elle told herself. That’s all.

She crept to the top of the stairs. The noises were louder here. They echoed, the sound bouncing off the walls. She took one step. The stairs creaked. She froze, flushing hot.

Nothing happened.

She took another step. Another creak.

Almost there. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs. It had seemed to take hours to descend them all. She dared a deep breath to steady herself. Down here, the noise was very pronounced.

Thump, thump, thump
.

Elle headed toward the front door.

THUMP. THUMP… “LET ME OUT!”

There it was. A muffled but obviously human voice. Elle twitched. It sent a bolt of terror down to her toes. She needed to get out. Something shadowy was in this house. Something bad.

Go back, they need help
, her inner voice said.

Elle closed her eyes.

“You’re stupid,” she muttered.

She went back because Bravo would have done it. Because Bravo was always helping people, and because if she could be like anyone, it would be him. Always him.

Elle slipped through the living room, passing the sheeted furniture, following the
noises. She stopped in the kitchen. There was a door in the wall, underneath the staircase. She stared at it. It rattled and snapped on its hinges. Someone was hitting it from the inside, over and over again.

She heard a moan, then an unintelligible jumble of words.

Someone was locked inside. But why?

She was afraid to find out.

Elle placed her hand on the door. It jerked and moved, bouncing her backward.

“Hello,” she said.

Silence. Dead silence. A freeze.

“Hello,” she said again, louder. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

Quiet.

And then,

“Don’t lie to me.”

It was a man’s voice, raspy and broken.

Elle backed away from the door.

No. She wasn’t opening it. No way.

Crazy people could stay locked up in the closet for all she cared. She was getting out of here as fast as she could…

The door to the kitchen slammed open. A great, hulking shadow of a man charged inside. In the moonlight, he was little more than a mass of tangled hair and shoddy clothing – old overalls and leather boots.

“Get back in your closet!” he shrieked.

Her heart dropped into her stomach, and the icy frost of adrenaline shot its way through her veins. She gripped the knife and leaped over the small kitchen table, making a mad dash for the living room. The man tore through the house behind her, throwing himself through the air, grabbing Elle around the waist, and bringing her to the floor.

He screamed incoherent profanities as he wrestled her to the ground. Elle kicked, but he didn’t seem to feel it. She twisted her right arm from under his body weight and jammed the little knife into the soft flesh of his stomach. He screamed and clutched his abdomen. Elle rolled away. As she scrambled to her feet, sweating, he swept his hand through the air and grabbed her ankle, slamming her against the ground again.

“You don’t just LEAVE,” he was yelling. “You’re my GUEST!”

“LET ME GO!” Elle screamed, jamming the heel of her boot into his left eye. He grasped the eye in pain, blood gushing down his face. Elle sprinted for the door. It was closed. NO! Her fingers closed around the handle and she yanked it open, just as the man’s bloody hands grasped the hood of her jacket.

He yanked her backward. The air rushed out of her lungs. She gagged as the collar of the jacket tightened around her neck. The man held her against the wall, his grip tightening and tightening. Elle struggled and sputtered, her face turning a muted shade of blue.

“I’ll make a lesson out of you yet,” the man muttered.

In the clear moonlight, she could see his bloodshot eyes, his yellow, rotten teeth, and the dried bloodstains splattered across his overalls.

No
, Elle thought.
Not like this
.

Her oxygen was cut off, and her strength was failing, but she forced her arms upward – an act of sheer willpower. She shoved her thumbs
into the corners of his eyes, feeling the soft, gooey texture of his eyeballs on her skin. It didn’t sicken her. This was life or death, and she pushed harder.

He screamed and let go, tearing her hands away from his face, but his eyes were already damaged. Elle slammed her knee under his chin and struck him in the face with her boot again. She kept kicking him, over and over again, until he lay still on the floor, twitching.

She stared down at him, red with anger and terror. She walked into the living room and grabbed the knife. It was slick with blood. She wiped it on the carpet and walked into the kitchen again. This time, she approached the door with no fear. She pulled the locks off and opened it.

She stood back.

A man was hunched on the floor, trembling and covered in tears. Snot ran down his face. He wasn’t very old – maybe early twenties. His clothes were caked with mud and the closet smelled of urine.

“Get up,” Elle said simply.

The man stared at her, awestruck, and slowly wobbled to his feet. He was short, maybe a head taller than Elle was. He stumbled forward and grabbed the wall.

“What’s your name?” Elle asked.

He stared.

“Hey. I asked you a question.” She touched his shoulder. “What’s your name?”

The man turned to look at her. He was detached.

“Josiah,” he replied. “Josiah Walters.”

“I’m Elle.” She nodded toward the living room. “Who’s the man who locked you up in here?”

He shuddered, then began to cry again.

Elle felt a twinge of sympathy.

“I don’t know,” he sobbed at last. “He told me he had food and water, and that he could help me find the militias. He was nice. I listened to him – I was
so
hungry, you see? I was starving…” He remained silent for a long time before continuing. “He brought me here, hit me over the head. Locked me in the closet. I’ve been in there for days, I think.”

Elle thought about the windows upstairs – all nailed shut. The bloody zip-ties. This man was nothing more than a serial killer. Or worse. She shivered and said, “It’s over now. You’re free.”

He looked up at her.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“I already told you.” She walked into the living room. “I’m Elle.”

“Like the letter?”

“Yeah. Elle for loser.” She half-smiled. And then her smile turned to a frown, because the crazy man was moving on the floor, crawling on his stomach, toward the sound of her voice. He couldn’t see. His was bleeding everywhere. He just moved.

Elle walked into the kitchen. The back door was still standing wide open. The man had dropped something on his way in – yes, there it was. A shotgun. Elle picked it up, checked the chamber. One round. That should do it.

It was an old weapon. Simple. No safety – just a bullet, a chamber, and a trigger. She held it
up to her shoulder. It was heavy and nearly twice the size of her.

“You might not want to see this,” she said, flatly.

Josiah scrambled away, hunching in the kitchen, rocking back and forth.

Elle watched the man crawl for a few seconds.

She shot him. And she had no regrets.

Chapter Eight

Elle left the young man named Josiah Walters behind. She gave him a little food, and pointed him in the general direction of the river. And she left. She didn’t want a companion, and she was done babysitting people who couldn’t figure out how to survive on their own. She had saved his life – her work was done.

She cut through the night, swiftly. She was lucky to have escaped that house alive, she knew. It could have ended badly. The man she had shot…he could have been doing anything with the people he captured. The thought of cannibalism crossed her mind. She shuddered and shoved it away.

The apocalypse had driven many people to extreme measures, and she had heard stories. Horrible stories. The stuff of nightmares. But she would not dwell on it. She would keep walking, and she would survive, because she was not like
the rest of the world. She was a fighter, and she would kill before she was killed.

As Elle moved, she felt herself slipping back into the icy void of solitude. The mask was coming down, the cold detachment. Without Bravo by her side, she had no one to talk to, no one to share her experiences with.

In the beginning, she was good at being alone. But now that she had tasted the sweetness of companionship, losing it was all the more painful. The darkness was now darker than ever before. The shadows were more frightening. The noises of the night held crippling, unseen threats.

Elle paused.

She had reached the edge of the small farm town. She had never discovered its name, but gauged it had once been a sweet place to live. On the edge of the city, she stood in the center of an empty, asphalt road. Behind her was a small shopping center, and beyond that, the neighborhoods she had just escaped from.

Beyond her, it was open roads and empty orchards.

Such a long walk.

The wind rustled the dry, dead leaves on the trees. Elle reached to close her jacket, her fingers brushing the leather of the collar she had meant to give Bravo in Falcon Point.

She held it in her hands, staring at it for a moment.

Bravo
.

She closed her eyes, shedding two silvery tears.

Goodbye, Bravo
.

She tossed the collar into the soft dirt of the orchard.

It was done.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She turned, slowly, surveying the gray landscape behind her. It was just barely dawn, and the earth was glowing with a dusty half-light, making buildings and old, abandoned cars shift in the shadows. False movement.

On the road, directly behind her, she imagined she saw a man walking toward her. The shadowy mirage was powerful. He wore a hood – only his eyes were visible. His clothes were black. His gloves were black. Even his shoes
were black. He wore a long, red sash around his waist. And swords. He had two, glittering swords curved like crescent moons, one held in each hand.

Elle watched it. Blinked.

Had she finally gone mad? Or was it real? Was there really a man walking down the road? If so, she was in trouble. She had no weapons. She had left the shotgun in the house. There had been only one round left, and the extra weight of the big weapon would have slowed her down.

All she had was the small knife that Felix had given her.

Elle took a step forward. The man was walking closer, his footsteps steady and decisive. She called out, “What do you want?”

Silence.

He never stopped walking.

“Hey. I’m talking to you,” Elle said. “What do you
want
?”

Strange. He was dressed like a Slaver. The hood, the crescent-moon swords. She felt a cold anger surge through her body. She hated Slavers with a passion. They were the dregs of mankind.
They preyed on small children and sold them to the highest bidder.

She demanded, “What are you doing here?”

Still, no answer.

He was almost on her now. She knew she should run. She was probably faster than he was – she could run for a long time before she tired – but part of her wanted to see if he would kill her. Wouldn’t it be nice – to die. To escape from this hell-world, this pale shadow of civilization.

No. She would not give up.

Not Elle Costas.

The Slaver stopped. He held his swords, each pointed at the ground. His eyes studied her, clear and snakelike. They stood there, looking at each other, the quiet of the morning encapsulating the hollow remains of the town.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said at last.

Silence.

“You’re going to try,” Elle replied.

He brought his swords up in two swirling arcs, dancing forward. Elle rolled to the side and made a beeline for the gas station on the left of
the road. The pumps stood vacant and rusted over, coated with mud and grime. She moved quickly, with purpose. There was a broken piece of pipe near one of the pumps. She picked it up, sliding to one knee. She brought the pipe up, blocking a vicious swipe of the Slaver’s swords. Her body shook with the impact. She somersaulted backward – she couldn’t move fast enough. He was swinging his blades, forcing her to move, to jump, to run.

She sprinted around the last three pumps, the pipe still in her hand. Her breath was strained and burning. There was no fear in her. Just the will to win. She grabbed the handle of a gas pump and pulled it out, flinging it at the Slaver’s head. He stepped aside and Elle jabbed with the piping, striking him in the gut. He took a step backward. His eyes tightened.

She retreated. He lunged forward, angry.

Elle grabbed the gas hose and pulled it taut, dashing around him, tightening the hose around his waist, pulling him over. He hit the ground with a dull thud, but he was on his feet again in an instant, running after her.

Elle slid through the open doors of the empty gas station store. There were empty shelves and ransacked freezer bins inside. The cigarettes had been stolen from the glass counter.