A Little More Dead (30 page)

“Are you okay?”

He turned to find Wendy standing in the
doorway behind him.
“Yeah.”

She came closer, undoing her ponytail
and letting the wind run through her hair. “Well, that was a close one.”

Paul snorted, glancing at her when she
stopped next to him at the railing. “I can’t even die right.”

“Don’t say that.”

Her arm brushed against his as they gazed
across the sea and he couldn’t help but wonder what the weather was like under
Sophia’s willow. He hoped it was sunny and warm, like this. She deserved that
much.

“Who were you talking to back there
anyway?”

Paul gave her a frown.

“In the boat’s bedroom, you were staring
at something and then you said:
Lead who?
”

Sophia skittered through his mind. At
the time, with the incessant pounding on the bedroom door and the writhing arm
in the porthole window, she seemed so real.
So alive.
“It’s all a blur. Everything happened so fast.”

She studied him through dubious eyes, mulling
his answer over in her head. “You saw someone. Who was it?” she whispered, the
breeze quickly whisking her words away.

He stared back, for how long he didn’t
know.
“No one.”

Wendy looked down to the beach,
unconvinced. “Do you want to stay here?
With these people?”

He shrugged. “Do they want us to stay
here?”

“I don’t know but they seem nice.” She
twisted a lock of hair around a finger. “And if this place is hurricane proof…”
She blew out a breath that ruffled her lips. “Those things will never get inside.”

“If you want to stay, we’ll stay.”

She stared up into his eyes. “I think we
should try it out, at least for a while.”

“Okay.”

“We could make a stand from here.”

“Then we will.”

Her ocean blue eyes glittered beneath
the sunlight. “I’m sorry I kissed you.”

He leaned against the railing and pushed
his guilt down with both hands. Paul could see Sophia’s face again and she
wasn’t happy and he had no one to blame but himself and another temporary
moment of weakness.

Wendy set a hand on his. “I’m still shaking,”
she whispered, blinking a tear down her cheek. “I can’t stop seeing those
people
on the boat. We were so close to…”

“It’s okay to be scared.”

She nodded weakly. “Still think we’ll be
good at this?”

A faint smile crept back into the lines
of his mouth. “This is where we make our comeback, and you know everybody loves
a good comeback.”

Her laughter was music to his ears.

She grew quiet, searching his face as
seagulls swooped down and waves crashed. “We made it, didn’t we, Paul?”

He looked her in the eye. “We made it.”

“So what do we do now?”

When he spoke, conviction filled his
words like never before. “We’re going to get it all back and nothing is going
to stop us. For every one of ours they take, we’ll take a thousand of theirs. I
promise you that.” Paul’s face hardened. When there is nothing left to lose,
it’s easy to risk it all.

Wendy gripped his hand tighter. “Thank
you,” she whispered, a fond look softening her eyes.

“But first, we should probably take a
few days off and learn how to surf.” He shrugged. “In case we have to paddle
our way out of here.”

She surprised him with a big hug, her
abrupt
bubbliness
bringing laughter to his lips. They
would be okay – as okay as one can be in such tumultuous times. There was a
learning curve to this new world and they would figure it out as fast as
humanely possible. Those damn things would not win.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Startled, they turned to find Stephanie
walking out onto the balcony.

“It is,” he replied, dropping Wendy’s
hand and turning back to the ocean.

Stephanie stopped on the other side of
Paul, the smell of vanilla mixing with the salt in the air. She stared out over
the water, wind blowing her hair back like a model shoot. “We can win this war,
you know. And that’s what it is…a
war
.”
She turned to face Paul. “We would love it if you and your wife stayed on to
help us rebuild.”

“She’s not my wife,” he said too quickly,
noticing Wendy take a step back in his peripheral vision.

Stephanie’s dark eyes dropped to Paul’s
wedding ring.

He rubbed it with his thumb. “My wife
died on the way here.”

“I’m sorry, Paul,” she said softly,
placing a hand on his arm.

Much to Paul’s relief, she didn’t follow
her condolence up with a loss of her own to level the playing field. Instead,
she gazed across the glistening water and shared a comfortable silence with the
wind tugging at her hair.

“Rebuild what?” he finally asked.

Stephanie glanced at Wendy.
“Whatever we can.
For now, we have solar power, warm water,
and plenty of food and weapons.” She swept a tongue across her lips, making
them shine. “It’s a start, but we’ll never make it on our own,” she said,
nodding to the beach house. “Not with just the three of us.”

“We’ll need more. Your brother is right;
five will never be enough.”

“And we’ll find more, Paul.
Just like we found you.”

He grunted. “Hopefully not exactly like
that.”

She flashed him a pretty smile that
brightened her eyes. “We patrol the beach every day, searching for survivors
and killing stragglers. This place is fairly free of danger, and with that fence
you can sleep at night.”

Paul surveyed the expansive fence and
gate. It looked solid and he couldn’t help but wonder who used to live here.
Obviously, some rich person afraid of someone getting in. “So what?
We just wait for more survivors to find us?”

Stephanie’s eyebrows went up. “Would you
rather go to them?”

“Hell no,” Wendy answered for him. “We
don’t even know where anyone is and this place is safe.”

“And we can stay as long as we want,
Wendy,” Stephanie continued. “The houses and shops around here have everything
we need. These people spared no expense when it came to vacation time.” She thumbed
behind her. “You should see the bar downstairs. It’s ridiculous.”

Wendy put a finger to her lips. “Which
way was that again?”

Stephanie laughed. “I bet you could use
a drink after this morning.”

“Or seven.”

Paul eyeballed the handgun riding on
Stephanie’s hip. “Where’d you get the guns?”

“
A cop shop
three towns back. Place hadn’t been touched either. Think everyone
was called
into the field when all of this began and none of
them made it back. Unfortunately, most of the guns went out with them.”

Paul nodded, movement on the beach
pulling at his attention.

Stephanie followed his gaze to a lone figure
stumbling across the sand. “Straggler,” she said, grabbing a pair of large
binoculars from a patio table and bringing them to her eyes. “We usually see
two or three a day. There used to be more.” She handed the glasses to Paul.
“A lot more.”

He peered through them and rotated the
dial in the middle, bringing a skinny old man into view. Clad in only a pair of
dirty shorts, the man reached out with bony arms as he walked, like he was chasing
some invisible ghost. Long skinny legs propelled him through the sand, one
uneven step at a time, his lipless mouth opening and closing like he was
talking to someone. Paul followed his determined gaze to the right but sand and
clumps of seaweed were all he found. Maybe these things weren’t so smart after
all. Maybe mankind stood a chance. Paul started swinging back to the old timer
when something caught his eye. Jerking the binoculars to the right again, he
zoomed in on a grisly mob coming into view around the
corner of a turquoise-colored beach house. The dead were moving quickly and
heading right for the straggler. Paul twisted the dial in the middle, focusing on
the zombie in the lead. Her tattered robe was hanging wide open, flying through
the air behind her like a cape, and there was something off about her cadence.
She was skinny as a rail yet moving fast as hell across the sand and that’s
when it hit him. His heart seized inside his chest. He pulled the glasses from
his face to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.

He wasn’t.

“What is it?” Wendy asked, worry coating
her tone.

Paul put the
binocs
back to his face, confirming his sneaking suspicions. The woman wasn’t running
with the horde; she was running from them. With over a dozen of those things
hot on her heels, her bare feet kicked up sand as she tore across the beach and
screamed things he couldn’t hear. He brought her twisted face into focus as she
ran closer, breath catching in the back of his throat. She had shoulder length
brown hair with silver streaks and a thirty yard lead on the group driving her
into the open arms of the old man in shorts. The binoculars slid from Paul’s
fingers to the cement floor and broke into pieces.

“What’s wrong?” Stephanie shouted
,
straining to see what had him so spooked.

His wide eyes turned to find Wendy
staring back at him. His hands shook, blood pumping too fast through his veins
to think clearly. When he spoke, his words were barely audible over the
crashing waves. “It’s Cora,” he said, dashing down the balcony staircase and
drawing his Beretta PX4 Storm.

The End

About
the Author:

Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa,
Sean Thomas Fisher graduated from The University of Iowa and is the happy
husband of the most beautiful woman in the world. He is also the proud father
of a sweet little girl who stole his heart and refuses to give it back, which
explains his lack of compassion.

Like Sean’s
Facebook
page for future release dates, end of the world forecasts, and safe-house
locations at -
Facebook

If you are reading this, you are the
resistance...