Until the End (7 page)

“I’m not even in the same tax bracket as that guy’s gardener.” I say, pointing at a jaw dropping four story home.

“You are now.” Jordan says as he absently swings his bat in his hands.

He’s fairly calm suddenly, especially considering we’re out in the open and could be attacked at any moment. We’re waiting to find a car to steal or borrow, whatever you want to call it now, but these people did not appear to flee. Maybe they were chauffeured out, possibly by helicopter. I’m guessing, though, that they are locked up tight in their fortresses of solitude burning Benjamins to stay warm.

I’m worried I might be a little prejudice against the wealthy.

“Look at that one! I bet they have a bathroom for every bedroom and a few more just for the hell of it.”

“Heads up.” Jordan says quietly. “Incoming.”

Ahead of us there are two shamblers coming up from a side street. It’s two women, both in fancy running gear, and I imagine they were taken by surprise on an evening run yesterday because they are not fresh at all.

“I’ve got the one on the left.” Jordan says bringing his bat high. He catches my eye and smirks. “Or is it stage right?”

“Shut up.” I chuckle. “I’ve got the one on the right. My right
and
yours. See how they’re the same?”

“You think you can hit the temple this time?”

“I’d have to swing around to the side.” I glance at him quickly, uncertain. “It’ll leave you wide open.”

“That’s alright. I got this. Just don’t shoot me.”

“No promises.”

We split up, swinging around the pair, and I have to force myself to ignore Jordan in my peripheral and assume he’s okay. If I’m going to hit this chick’s temple, I need to focus. I quickly run alongside them and freak out a little because they both focus in on Jordan since he’s moving closer to them. Taking a deep breath I line up my shot, breath out slowly and release.

I’m off. I strike her in the head, and if she were human it would have hurt like the devil, but for an infected it’s just annoying. She doesn’t even look away from Jordan who raises his bat and takes a swing that cracks against the other woman’s head. She goes down but still groans and writhes. Their attention is focused on Jordan and the one I beaned in the head with my arrow doesn’t see me coming. I’m nervous about how close she is to him, so I swing my bow over my shoulder, unhook my wide hunting blade and stab it home, directly where I aimed my arrow. I don’t miss this time. As she drops to the ground, I yank the knife back and bring it out of her skull with a sickening grinding sound that had to be skull on blade.

As Jordan takes a couple more kill swings down onto the other woman’s head, I wipe my blade off and put it back in its home on my thigh. When he’s done, Jordan spins his bat around his hand in a way that tells me he’s handled one for years, probably played baseball all through high school, and it’s a little hot. The only thing holding it back is the brain matter that flies off it and sprays in an arc through the air. That’s a little disgusting.

Jordan leans down and retrieves my arrow from the pavement where it landed after harmlessly bouncing off the woman’s thick skull.

“Couldn’t get a good shot?”

“I was nervous about them converging on you.” I admit. “I rushed it.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

“So can I, but you worry about me.”

He’s silent for a long time as we walk up the street, a little more alert now, but finally he says quietly, “I know you can, Alissa.”

The plan for the moment is to find a place near the water but on the far western side of the lake, closest to I-5 and the sporting goods store. We’ll stay the night there and hit the store early in the morning then hopefully be back at the boat by early afternoon. That’s the preferred, perfect plan. What’s not in the plan, however, is where exactly we’re staying for the night.

“You know what’s in the bathrooms in that house?” I ask Jordan, pointing wildly to entire bank full of huge homes.

“Cocaine?”

“A shower. Still equipped with warm, running water.” I say longingly.

I refuse to let up about the house ban. It’s too much, in my humble opinion, but I didn’t see Dawn of the Dead so what do I know? “Don’t you wish you could have a warm shower, Jordan? I do. We could go in just for that. I’ll stand guard for you, you stand guard for me.”

He chuckles, but still refuses to look at the houses. “I scrub your back, you scrub mine?”

“If it means I can take a hot shower, you can scrub anything of mine you want.” I stop walking, a furious blush exploding on my already sun pinked cheeks. My hand goes over my mouth and I stare at him wide eyed. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah.” he says smiling, enjoying my discomfort. “Wow.”

“I feel like I went too far.”

“I don’t know, I’m kind of warming up to the whole four walls of a house idea.”

“The world has been over for barely a day and I’m already selling my body.”

He bumps my shoulder with his. “Hey, we work with what we’ve got and you have a lot of currency.”

I frown, confused, and look sideways at him. “What does that even mean?”

He’s frowning too, his face as confused as mine. “I don’t really know.”

“What was it supposed to mean? Cause it sounds like you’re saying I have a lot of body to sell. Did you call me fat? A fat prostitute?”

“Okay, yeah. It absolutely did not come out the way it was meant to.”

I wait for him to tell me what it was supposed to mean but he keeps walking silently. I want to let it go but I can’t.

“What was it sup—“

“It meant you’re beautiful.” he blurts out, interrupting me.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We walk in silence for a long time, several blocks of shower and cocaine sheltering houses passing by.

“Hey, Jordan.”

“Yeah?”

I hesitate, but then smile up at him as the first fat drops of rain begin to fall on us.

“You’re quite a chubby whore yourself.”

It’s not a bad compromise. There is a roof as I requested. There is not, however, a shower. There are four walls as Jordan explicitly said he did not want but there is also no floor, not really, so it all evens out. The boathouse is also bigger than my apartment. It’s honestly a two boat garage and both spots are taken by gleaming, glorious speed boats that make me ache for summer time. I wonder if I’ll BBQ on a dock again. Maybe I’ll never again watch fireworks over a lake like this on the 4
th
of July. Was that really my last candy bar? Probably not, I have more in my bag, but it’s still depressing. There are so many questions that are unanswerable right now. I wonder how much of our society will break down and disappear. What pieces will we cling to and what will be cast aside immediately in order to save our own skins? Are we already at the every man for himself level or is human decency and a sense of community still holding strong? Jordan’s plan is good and it’s kept us safe and alive, but I wonder what’s been happening in these buildings, in these streets, as we’ve been alone on the river.

I use my phone to look up the news, but it’s the same as before. They don’t mention The Fever spreading and I haven’t heard from my uncle, so I assume it’s still contained to Portland and Vancouver.

We end up sleeping stretched out on sun chairs using beach towels as blankets, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof. It should be soothing but it’s a little off putting because it drowns out any other sounds from outside. Sounds of groaning or shuffling. I sleep fitfully seeing as I’m cold and a little freaked out. Several times when I open my eyes to roll over or check to make sure there’s not an undead standing over me drooling, I see Jordan wide awake. I wonder if he slept at all. I ask him as much in the morning as we’re eating breakfast and he shrugs the question off.

“I slept enough.” he says evasively.

I frown at him but don’t push. I feel bad for the four walls I forced on him but I can’t imagine we’d have felt any safer being out in the open in the woods.

“Want to share my apple?” I ask brightly, changing the subject. “It’s the last one…”

“Sure.” he says with a smile that plummets into a grimace when I pull out my knife. “But not if you’re going to cut it with that.”

“Why wouldn’t I use my—Oh my God, that’s right!” I cry sheathing the knife quickly. “Sorry. We’ll pass it back and forth taking bites?”

Jordan is eyeing the apple like its already contaminated, but he nods. We strike out into the wet, gray morning leaving our packs behind. We have nothing but our weapons with us for easier, faster travel and also because we have no idea what we’ll encounter along the way. If we come across other looters, we don’t want to run the risk of them cleaning us out at gunpoint. Leaving our packs made me nervous seeing as the last of my dwindling drugs are in there, but when Jordan stepped outside to empty his bladder, I pocketed what I have left and popped one in my mouth. I have two left, just two, and it scares me more than the infected.

It’s a long walk into town but we do it quietly and quickly. We see quite a few infected as we go but we don’t engage them unless they are in our path, and even then Jordan asks me to take them down silently if I can. I’m getting better at the eye socket shot, discerning the cadence of their gait and adjusting accordingly. It’s good practice and I even stop a few times to show Jordan how it’s done. I offer to let him shoot but he declines, afraid he’ll lose one of our precious few arrows.

When we’re nearly to the sporting goods store, when we can see it in the distance across the parking lot, we hear it. The mass shuffling and groaning of a horde. They’re close; just across the parking lot near the Safeway at the end of the shopping center, and my mutinous brain latches on to the fact that Safeway would have a pharmacy that could have my meds.

“Hey.” Jordan whispers low and touches my arm. “You ready? We’ll have to run.”

I stare into his blue, blue eyes, so bright and earnest, and I almost tell him. I almost tell him to run
from
me because I have so much baggage I will weigh us both down six feet into the ground if he doesn’t get away. I’m thinking about abandoning him right now and running like crazy for that pharmacy on the off chance I will find one pill that will give me one more day. Just one. I’ve been so scared of these new things like the dead rising and a guy seeing me,
really
seeing me, that I’m forgetting the most terrifying thing in the entire world is actually me. My mind and the lies it tells, and the thought of leaving this insanity for that one is crushing down upon me. I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to leave here. This reality is deadly and dangerous but it is a paradise compared to what awaits me on the other side. What awaits me if I don’t walk away from those blue, blue eyes right now.

“Ali.” he says, sensing my hesitation. His hand moves from my arm to my shoulder and he squeezes it gently. “Are you alright? We don’t have to do this.”

I blink hard.

“Yes we do.”

I take off at a dead run, my bow cast over my shoulder where Jordan’s hand had held me. I hear him fall in behind me, and there’s the pounding of our feet on the pavement, the rush of blood and wind in my ears and it’s all I can hear. I don’t hear the infected, I don’t see them in my peripheral. I’m running hard, as though I’m trying to hurt myself. Punish myself. Get the hell away from myself, though I’ll never outrun this.

Two pills left.

Two…pills left.

Two… pills… left.

I make it to the door and slam against it hard, not even bothering to slow myself down, and it hurts and it’s good. I need to wake up and focus or I may as well just shoot Jordan now and get it over with. He comes up behind me but slows himself down like a normal person does and huffs and puffs.

“Shit, you’re fast.” he breathes.

I shake my head and want to tell him that normally, no, I’m not. I hurt from running so hard and my breath is burning in my lungs, but I keep quiet because there’s no explaining what’s wrong with me right now.

“O- open.” I manage to say, pointing at the door.

The automatic open function on the doors must be disengaged, and if I had enough sense at the moment, I would realize what that means.

“Yeah.” Jordan grabs onto the sliding door, trying to wedge his fingers between the two halves and nods at me to do the same, but neither of us can get in.

The doors are jammed or locked; either way we’re screwed. The infected are bearing down on us now and we have a quick choice to make. Cut and run or circle around and hope to find another door in the back to open. Jordan’s too cautious, he’ll never go for it, so I’m prepping my body to sprint again when suddenly the doors slide open easily. We look at each other in surprise for a split second and then run in. We’re met with a second set of doors which remain closed, and just as we’re trying to pull them open, the outer doors slide closed as well. Jordan bangs on the outer door, tries again to pry it open, but then quickly jumps back when he sees the infected start to pile up outside. He has his bat raised, ready for the outer door to unleash the swarm on us, when he backs into me. He glances at me then grabs my hand and pulls me behind his body, pinning me between him and the inner door. Outside, the infected claw and bang against the glass like moths at a light bulb.

I glance behind us to see that the store is pitch black and deserted and I wonder how the door opened in the first place, but I pray that it doesn’t do it again. I look around for something big enough and heavy enough to smash the glass on the inner door, but there’s nothing. Nothing but us and a dwindling air supply and the nightmare soundtrack piping in from outside.

We’re trapped.

I lean forward and rest my forehead wearily against Jordan’s shoulder, feeling his tense muscles and the rapid in and out of his breathing and I know I’ve killed him.

“I’m sorry.” I whisper, tears stinging my eyes.

I knew I would be the death of him. I’m a curse, a jinx, a plague upon anyone who stands too close and I’m so achingly sorry that I’ve brought this on him. He’s a hero,
my
hero. A knight in shining armor and I’ve led him straight into the dragon’s keep. He should have saved someone else. Someone worth saving. He should have ignored my cries and saved himself, and if I could go back and change anything, it would be running from Dee. It would be crying out and fighting the inevitable because at least if I had died alone in that apartment, Jordan would still have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it into tomorrow.

He doesn’t respond to my apology other than to squeeze my hand still held in his.

There’s a banging on the door behind me and I nearly jump out of my skin from fright. Jordan and I spin around, his arm circling around my stomach and pulling me in close till my back is flush with his front, and we stare into the store. The lights are still off but someone is wearing a headlamp and fumbling with the top of the sliding doors. He stops for a moment, leans his face to the crack between them and shouts to us.

“Drop your weapons!”

It’s such a cop movie cliché thing to say that I’m not sure I heard him right. I turn my head to look at Jordan but he doesn’t take his eyes off the bobbing headlamp.

“Drop our weapons?” I whisper to him.

Jordan shakes his head minutely.

“It’s either that,” the guy shouts. “Or I open the other door and you can leave the way you came in! Your choice!”

Jordan swears under his breath and releases his hold on my waist. His bat clatters to the ground and his hands go in the air reluctantly. I follow suit, though I gently lay my bow, arrows and knife down. The guy fiddles with the top of the door again and they swing open. I glance nervously over my shoulder, worried the other doors will come open too, but they stay tightly closed.

“Come in. Slowly.”

We lower our hands and cautiously step through the doors. It’s so dark in here compared to outside and the guy’s headlamp is blinding me, leaving spots in front of my eyes whenever I look away. I can’t see anything but him and the press of undead on the door outside.

“Follow me. And just so you know, there are guns drawn on you, so move slow.”

Our tour guide swings around to face forward and the headlamp is finally out of my eyes. I have to follow the guy’s silhouette against the illumination of his lamp to figure out where we’re going, and I have that uncomfortable sense of infinity you get when in a dark, unfamiliar place. I have no idea what’s ahead of or behind me and the threat of others here with guns on us feels very probable.

There’s a noise behind us and Jordan and I swing around to see a shadow with what looks like a green glow stick dangling from its neck. It’s scurrying into the darkness with what could only be our weapons, because when I look at the now closed doors, I can’t see our gear on the floor where we dropped it. I’m nervous about what we’ve stumbled into and I almost cry out when I hear Jordan grunt and there’s a crash. I reach out to where he had last been and latch onto this upper arm with both hands.

“What happened?” I whisper fiercely, my fingers digging into his flesh.

“I tripped, it’s fine.”

“Keep up!” Headlamp shouts at us.

I slide my hand down Jordan’s arm until I find his hand and I clasp it firmly in mine. I’m hoping to keep either of us from stumbling again, and if I can be honest, the dark has me more than a little freaked out. It reminds me of trying to sleep with my hallucinations and I can think
of just about a million awful things that could pop out at me at any second. I audibly sigh when Jordan twines his fingers through mine and grips me more tightly.

We are led for what feels like miles, but what was probably halfway across the store, until we reach a door glowing around the edges with light and emblazoned with bold red words:

EMPLOYEES ONLY

Our guide enters a code into a keypad on the door and there’s a click. He swings the door open and turns off his headlamp as light pours out from a beige hallway and spills around our feet.

“Follow me.” he says again, and leads us down the hall, past closed doors and what looks like a small break room until we reach a larger office with a wipe board and a dormant television set. As we enter the room, I glance at the door to read its label. We’re in a training room. There’s a long table surrounded by orange plastic chairs and we’re told to sit, taking places side by side and facing the door.

Our guide, an older man probably in his sixties with a graying mustache, closes the door, locks it and leaves us without a word. Jordan and I sit in silence, taking in our surroundings, which really doesn’t take long considering the room is all table, wipe board and uncomfortable chairs.

“This was a mistake.” I say suddenly, looking down at my hands. “It was my mistake and I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Jordan says evenly, and I wonder if he’s angry and containing it or if he really doesn’t blame me. I look sideways at him, my face pinched in remorse and he chuckles a little at my expression. “It really is alright, Ali. Don’t worry about it.”

“Aren’t you worried? Because I am.”

“Yeah,” he admits lightly. “A little, but we didn’t get eaten. That’s a good thing. And they didn’t shoot us, which is another good thing.”