Erin M. Leaf (9 page)

“
Shine the flashlight!” Lark yelled, grabbing it from Ben’s front pocket. She flicked it on and waved it at the sky.

The zombies surged close
r. Ben whipped his blade back and forth. He wasn’t even trying to behead them now, just hold them off.

“
It’s coming lower,” Lark said, sticking to him and Dillon like glue.

Against all odds, they were still moving closer to the car. Ben
allowed a burst of hope fill him as he slashed at another zombie, making it stagger back. It took two more down with it as it fell, and he backed up, trusting Dillon to handle the ones at his back. The bird had its lights on now—the glare ruined his night vision.

“
Are they landing?” Dillon yelled.

“
No,” Lark sounded outraged. “Wait, they’re lowering a basket.”

Ben took a moment to look at Dillon. His best friend knew exactly what he was thinking and nodded immediately.
“Where is it?” he asked Lark.

“
Twenty feet. Near the car,” she said, sounding so hopeful that Ben’s heart cracked. The wind from the helicopter blades pushed through the clearing.

“
Right,” he said, moving a little faster, not sure if she could hear him above the sound of the machine. “Let’s go then.”

Dillon moved with him, ever his strong partner. The zombies didn
’t seem to like the light or the wind or something, falling back as he slashed at them.

“
Here! Stop,” Lark cried, grabbing his shoulder.

He pivoted, trusting Dillon to watch for zombies. As soon as the basket dropped low enough, he picked her up and tossed her inside.
“Hang on!” he yelled, trying to fix her face in his mind. He snapped the safety harness around her before she knew what he was doing. Her blonde hair flew around her face and she looked confused and so precious he had to swallow, hard.

“
Come on!” she yelled, when he finished with the straps, holding out her hand.

She didn
’t understand that the basket could only hold one person. He shook his head and stepped back, ignoring her shocked expression. “Live, Lark.” he murmured, standing close to Dillon. “Live.”

Dillon grabbed his arm, squeezing hard. It hurt. Ben didn
’t care. Dillon knew what was happening. The basket started to rise and Lark screamed, twisting it in her anguish. “No!” She leaned, almost too far. The straps kept her from falling.

“
No! Stay in the basket!” Dillon yelled, stepping back outside of the helicopter’s light. Ben moved with him, knowing that if she saw them walk away, she’d stop fighting. She clung to the sides, hands out, but the chopper had begun to fly, even before it had gotten her inside.

“
Come on, the car’s clear, but probably not for long,” Dillon said. The basket became a small dot, then disappeared as the chopper cut its lights.

“
Fuck,” Ben said, breaking into a run. “We have no idea where they’re taking her.”

“
Does it matter?” Dillon asked, yanking open the driver’s side door. “She’s out of this hellhole.”

Ben dove into the passenger
’s side, grateful that they hadn’t really unpacked anything essential except for the tent and sleeping bags. They could always replace those. “I guess not,” he said as Dillon started the car.

Dillon drove wildly down the campground
’s gravel road. He hit one zombie head on, then a few others careened off the side. “She’s alive. That’s all that matters.”

Ben hung on as Dillon drove around a corner, dirt flying.
“I know,” he said.

“
Almost to the road,” Dillon said, unnecessarily.

Ben nodded, still remembering Lark
’s face as the basket rose. Dillon turned the car onto the paved road and gunned it, leaving the zombie killing field behind.

Chapter Eight

Lark rolled over on her cot, groaning softly as the bruise on her hip hit the metal frame. She opened her eyes
, fingers going to the locket around her neck. She thumbed over the warm metal, wishing she were anywhere but here. Wishing she were back with Ben and Dillon. The tent walls surrounding her were grey canvas and smelled faintly of mildew. She hated this place. She’d been in the refugee camp for a month and hadn’t been able to sleep through the night yet.

“
Lark? You awake?” Bethany whispered.

Lark sighed quietly, then rolled back to face one of the girls she shared the tent with.
“Yeah. You okay?”

The other girl shrugged in the dim light
at the apex of the tent. They were required to keep a small LED lamp lit at all times. Lark snorted softly to herself. The men running this place had a lot of rules and she was beginning to realize that not all of them were to keep them safe. In fact, she suspected just the opposite. Some of the people she’d met when she first arrived were gone. Where did they go? When she asked what happened to them, the soldiers ignored her, or told her to get back inside. If this was a refugee camp, there should be more people coming in, and instead folks were disappearing. She remembered an older woman, Sally, who’d helped her when she first got here. She had no idea where the woman was now. She’d vanished.

“
Keep your head down and your mouth shut while you’re here, and maybe you’ll survive,” Sally had said as she handed Lark a bowl of canned soup. “These guys don’t like when people ask questions.”

Lark had opened her mouth to ask her what she
’d meant, but the woman had given her a worried look and hurried off. The next day she couldn’t find her anywhere.

She supposed she ought to be grateful she was finally somewhere even slightly safe, but she couldn
’t bring herself to relax. Nothing here made sense. Some pseudo-military group ran the camp. She’d originally thought they were part of the National Guard, but after a few days she’d begun to realize that the men with the guns were a mix of mercenaries and military. And she’d seen Marines as well as Air Force and Army soldiers, but no officers. She worried that the zombie apocalypse had overtaken even the government.

There was no news from the rest of the world. No
reports of survivors or anything else. She had no idea if people in California or Florida were alive or dead. No radios, no Internet. The thought that the zombies had overrun everything and that there was nothing left but a few pockets of survivors unnerved her. She’d hoped to find safety when she left Pittsburgh with Olivia’s father and instead found more questions and danger.

She remembered her last view of Dillon and Ben disappearing into a mass of zombies
.
God, I don’t even know if they’re alive
, she thought, closing her eyes. She worked hard to smother the desperation that welled up whenever she thought of them, but somehow it always came back up.
They can’t be dead. I won’t accept that. If I do, what do I have to live for?
When she let herself remember them, her heart squeezed so tight in her chest she had trouble breathing. The moment the helicopter had plucked her out of the darkness still gave her nightmares, weeks later. Even Olivia’s death hadn’t hit her this hard.
They have to be dead. No one could survive that many zombies.

“
I miss my mom,” Bethany finally said, startling Lark from her dark reverie.

“Your mom would want you to be safe. You should try and get some sleep. Besides, isn’t your grandmother here? You’re not alone.” Lark closed her eyes, trying to take her own advice.
Dillon and Ben would want me to survive. I know that for certain, or they wouldn’t have put me in that basket.

Bethany made a face.
“I can’t sleep. And my grandmother is really weak. I’m afraid she won’t last much longer.” The girl’s voice shook.

Lark rubbed her face.
“Come on. Let’s go get some water.” She slid her feet into her flip-flops.

The girl sat up, her curly brown hair a disordered mess on her head from her pillow.
“We’re not supposed to do that,” she said, fear creeping into her voice.

Lark rolled her eyes.
“If you’re thirsty, what are they going to do? Keep you from drinking?”

“Maybe.”
Bethany hugged herself. “Maybe I’ll try and sleep.” She lay back down, pulling her worn blanket up to her neck.

Lark looked at her, frustrated.
Was she the only one willing to face up to the soldiers? “Okay. But I’m still going out.” She slid off the cot and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of her neck. The bruise on her hip twinged and she frowned, remembering how she’d received it. The guard hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer, and she’d had to get pushy with him. Very pushy. She’d pissed him off big time, not that she cared about his bruised feelings
or
balls. The asshole deserved her knee in his groin. No one got to take from her what she gave freely only to Dillon and Ben. She bent down and slid the blade she’d stashed under her pillow into her jeans pocket. She’d be damned if she survived the zombies only to get raped by a human.

“
Lark, you shouldn’t go,” Bethany whispered. “They’re going to get mad.”

Lark rolled her shoulders, anger
flicking through her. “That’s their problem, not mine. Just go to sleep. Or at least pretend, Bethany.” With that, she strode away, careful not to jostle the other two cots. She didn’t want anyone else to wake up. She didn’t want to feel this way, didn’t want to be here.

Once outside, she narrowed her eyes, just able to make out the soldiers guarding the fence. They
’d taken over a school and playground, of all things, turning it into a camp. The small rural elementary school housed the soldiers. Twenty or so tents marched in rows along the grassy lawn. Ten of them were occupied and the others were empty. She wasn’t sure why the place had a chain-link fence around it, but the soldiers said it kept out the zombies. After watching one of the monsters climb up the side of her dorm, Lark was skeptical.

The fence
keeps us
in
quite well,
she told herself bitterly. How many schools, especially in the country, near farmland, had fences like this?
None, that’s how many. This one was probably installed
after
the meteor hit Atlanta.

The soldiers patrolled constantly, but strangely, there weren
’t that many zombie attacks. When there were, they had enough firepower to decimate them whenever they came. Lark believed it was because this place was so isolated—no humans, no food for the zombies. She’d finally figured out that they were in the mountains of New York State, near the Catskills. She knew the zombies didn’t like the cold, and with October came killing frosts and below-zero temps at night. It would only get colder from now on. She looked down at her toes, exposed in her flip-flops, and sighed.

Those bastards
won’t even let me check the storeroom for socks and boots.
Anger trickled through her, but she controlled it. Freaking out wouldn’t help, she’d tried that already.
Been there, got the t-shirt,
she thought as she concentrated on her breathing. She couldn’t stay here any longer. Between the disappearances and the hostility of the soldiers, she
knew
there was something wrong with this place. She had to get out of here before she died. At this point, she no longer questioned her instincts. They’d saved her before.

“
You! Get back inside,” one of the soldiers patrolling inside the grounds loped over to her, face grim.

Lark straightened her shoulders.
“I need to use the bathroom.” She glanced over at the rough latrines dug along the far side of the grounds.

“
Too bad. Back inside,” he growled, poking her in the arm with his shotgun.

She lifted her chin.
“Are you telling me I can’t take a pee when I need to?” She let her voice fall into the younger-girl whine she’d perfected when she’d finally realized that there was something seriously wrong with this place. Some of the soldiers hesitated before they’d harass a girl. When she acted younger than her age, they were less aggressive.

“
We’re busting our asses to keep you kids safe, so yeah. I expect you to listen when we say get back in your damn tent,” the soldier replied, looming closer.

Lark resisted the urge to stick out her tongue at him. They
’d told her when they first brought her here that they were keeping people of the same age together, for safety. She was housed with three teen girls and she knew the tent across from them had a few boys. Another tent had more young girls. Two other tents held older women.
The whole setup smells very, very weird,
she mused, eyeing the guard warily.

“
Why are you doing this?” she asked suddenly, dropping the little girl pose. She wanted answers. “There’s no reason to police the people here. We all want to live. We could be helping you.”

He blinked, clearly surprised to hear her speaking so authoritatively.
“I have my orders,” he said tersely.

She pursed her lips.
“Hmm.”

He frowned, anger chasing across his face.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lark didn
’t answer.

He grabbed her arm and twisted it. She
’d been half-expecting something like this and didn’t cry out. She didn’t want Bethany to hear. “Let go,” she said, voice low and angry.

“
Get back in the damned tent,” he said, shaking her like a dog would a rabbit in its jaws.

He was so much bigger than her;
Lark knew she’d be feeling the effects of this altercation tomorrow. She’d have fresh bruises on her arm. She nodded curtly, hating that she had to give in, but arguing wouldn’t do her any damn good.

“Fine. I’ll go in. Let me go,” she said. He opened his hand. Lark straightened her shirt and ducked into the tent.
She would sneak out tomorrow night and see if she could find a way to escape. She’d rather face zombies on her own than die in here, at the mercy of these men.

****

“Dillon, calm down,” Ben said, pulling him by the arm away from the table.

“
This is stupid!” Dillon said, loudly enough for the three people still sitting to hear him. He let Ben tow him away.

“
You can’t do anything about it right now,” Ben said, his own anger churning its way through his stomach. “We’ll leave tonight, okay?”

Dillon yanked his arm free.
“Fuck!” He stomped down the hall. The few people inside gave the two of them a wide berth.

Ben dragged him out of the building and toward the tree line.
“We had to help them. They gave us food and saved our asses.” Ben kept a firm grip on Dillon, not letting him get away again. “We never would’ve made it this far if Jonathan hadn’t found us in Massachusetts. And we needed their intel, which they willingly gave us.”

“
I know that.” Dillon walked faster. “Believe me, I
know
we had to help them secure that warehouse, and we needed the information they had, but now it’s time to go find Lark. It’s already been a month! She probably thinks we’re dead.” He was towing Ben now, almost running. When they reached the edge of the forest outside the bustling small town, he stopped, shoulders slumping. “I can’t believe we have no idea where she is.”

“
That’s not true,” Ben said, leaning against an oak. The leaves above him were almost all brown, clinging stubbornly to the branches.

“
Rumors about a possible refugee camp do not reassure me,” Dillon said, running his hands through his hair.

His hair has gotte
n really long
, Ben noted distractedly. He willed his cock to settle the fuck down, just like he’d been willing it to for the past several weeks. Dillon was not in the mood for sex. And neither was he, not really.

“
I can’t believe we thought she’d be safe in that helicopter. We had no idea who those guys were!” Dillon’s voice lifted again.

Ben
looked around, then pulled him a little further into the trees, until they were out of sight of the bustling survivor metropolis, such as it was. They’d made it here after running into Jonathan Soldan, leader of a group of people who’d managed to make it north to Vermont. He and his sister, Jane, had fortified the outskirts of their hometown and glued together a motley crowd of survivors. There were at least a couple hundred people living here, with not enough able-bodied adults to guard everyone
and
find food. Ben and Dillon had helped them gather supplies, enough to last the winter. They’d help set up a system of checkpoints and figured out how they could watch for zombies, shorthanded as they were, but all the while Ben had been thinking:
Where’s Lark? Is she okay? We need to go find her.

“
Look, I agree. We’ll leave tonight, okay?” Ben pulled Dillon into a rough hug. “We did what we could. We have supplies now, and ammo. We’ll find her and bring her back.” He pushed down the thought of Olivia and the promise he’d made to her to take care of Lark. He still missed his daughter, but the agony of her death was fading, thank God. Her loss still ached, and he’d carry a scar in his heart for the rest of his life, but there was nothing he could do about it except go on. When it came to Lark, however, he had plans. If only he and Dillon could find her.