K. T. Swartz (17 page)

“Babe, this is May. She saved Blane,” Tommy said.

“You the one that lives here by herself?” Cherise asked. May nodded. Cherise shook her head. “Girl, you must be crazy to wanna stay here alone.”

Michael stepped between the two when May’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t we call everybody down here?”

Tommy jerked his head to the staircase. Cherise lifted an eyebrow at him but disappeared up the rope ladder. Michael turned to Tommy. “Would you give us a minute?”

The large man shrugged and disappeared into the sitting room. A fire crackled in the fireplace. May’s eyes followed the man when he left; they lingered on the fire. Michael nodded toward the back door. “Can we talk outside?”

“Do you have another coat?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then, no. It’s not safe,” she said. “But we can go in the garage if you want.”

“Sure,” he said and followed her down the hall. She led him through the dining room and into a hall that stank of zombie. He grabbed her, his hand on his gun.

She brushed him off. “It’s just my suit.”

He looked where she nodded. Hanging on several hooks in the mudroom was a black, greasy leather coat. The stench that rolled off it made his eyes water. Jeans hung beside it, with the same colors. And her boots were splotched in a bizarre pattern of black and brown. Her pack leaned against the wall, its weapons still poking out the top. Her carpenter’s belt hung on the wall as well.

“You get used to the smell,” she said and slid a clean coat on. This one had no gore on it. She zipped it all the way up and opened the back door. Michael couldn’t take his eyes off the ruined leather coat. Her cover was perfect; the smell alone overpowered her own. He remembered her shuffling steps, her uneven gate, as she walked the street, blending in and moving among the dead as if one of their own.

“You choose to stay here, don’t you? You have everything you need,” he said as she closed the door. He stopped; stared at the reinforced garage doors. Sheet metal, wooden posts, and a beat-up SUV held the doors in place against anything that tried to push its way through. He looked at her. “These aren’t the defenses of a temporary shelter. You have enough supplies to last months. How long have you been here?”

She shrugged. “August.”

Michael rocked back on his heels. She couldn’t have said more with so little. “What you’re doing is suicide. It’ll get you killed.”

She turned to a metal baker’s rack full of machine parts and chemical bottles. A cardboard box sat on the shelf close to the bottom. She dug in it for a moment, pulled out notebook after homemade notebook. Each one was labeled with a name. Without a word, she held them out to him. He took them, flipped through the one labeled ‘Parksville’.

Parksville was a tiny spot in the road, a loose collection of wooded hills and farmland spread across miles of rural Kentucky. It lay only fifteen minutes from Danville. Her notebook included population, a topographic map, a street map with red ‘x’s over each winding road, and a day to day journal. On the very last page was a drawing of a piece of property – a house with two trees in the side yard.

Michael flipped through another notebook, another town. Then another notebook and another town. Through a dozen notebooks, a dozen small towns in Central Kentucky, she’d been: cleaning them out as she went. After racking up enough kills to equal the population, she added a note that read ‘complete’ before moving on.

“You did all this by yourself?” he whispered.

She shook her head. “Not all of it.”

He just stared. After all the years of running, of hiding, of short supplies and despair at facing such overwhelming odds, he found
one
person who learned how to endure, how to handle those overwhelming odds by simply evening them. His marine training had carried him and his family this far, because he’d only ever considered the undead as enemies to be avoided. This young woman was a spy in their midst, striking at the enemy and overcoming. Succeeding too, but a great cost.

“I’m sorry,” he said. She took the notebooks back, stuck them in the box. He glanced around her fortress, her home. “I want to ask you if we can stay, at least for awhile. We can help you.”

For just an instant, fear flickered across her face. She wrapped her arms around her and looked away. Then she shook her head. “No. You can stay long enough for that kid to heal, but that’s it.”

“I understand your fears. Believe me, I carry mistakes too,” he said. “I’ve been running for so long, I thought there was no other way to deal with the undead. But you’re doing something I’ve never seen. You can probably recite the body count from all these towns in your sleep. You know the numbers. I saw what you did at Roger’s. What do you think can happen if we pass on what you’re doing here? The human race can start over again, rebuild this nation.”

She drew away from him, her arms wrapped tight around her.

“Don’t run from it,” he urged, taking her elbow. “You’ve started something that can maybe change everybody’s fear into hope. Show us how you survive, and we’ll leave, but I’m not going anywhere until you do.”

She shook her head. “Fine.”

“Thank you,” he said. Without a word, they walked inside, where everyone was waiting in the sitting room. All eyes turned to May; they stopped talking. May took a seat by the fireplace, where the orange light flickered across her features. Impassive eyes turned to the ceiling. Michael cleared his throat. “Everyone I’d like to introduce May. She’s agreed to let us stay for awhile. While we’re here, remember this isn’t our house. Don’t trash it. May, if you don’t know, is the only survivor in Danville. She’s the reason we’ve seen so few zombies around.”

He cleared his throat. “Folks, this is our chance to learn how to take back our towns. This isn’t the first one she’s cleared out, so be prepared for a lot of hard work and training, got it?”

Tony raised his hand. And then the questions started. One by one he answered them, and when he had no answer, May spoke up. The evening crept by, the sun’s rays slipping between the 2x4s. When it did, May excused herself. Her steps were light across the carpeted floor and up the ladder. Silent this whole time, Marleen watched her go, looked back at him when the woman disappeared upstairs. “Mike, are you sure this is a good idea?”

He spread his hands. “This is it, Marleen. I’ve never seen anyone do what she’s done and survive. She’s recorded everything. At an estimate, she’s wiped out over thirty thousand zombies. It’s a systematic, defensive strategy that works. And it has the potential to work on a much grander scale. With enough people and enough resources, we could take back Atlanta.”

No one said a word, only stared at him. Overhead footsteps pounded toward the stairs. May dropped down from the rope ladder with something crushed in her fist. Rigid with anger, tears in her eyes, she thrust the small, black ring box at him.

“Where are my wedding rings?” she screamed. Flipped open the box. It was empty. “
Where are they
?”

Michael stared, at a loss for words. She pulled a 9mm from her holster. He jumped back, his shoulders bumping the mantle as she swung around, stepping away from everyone so she could see them. “Who did it?”

The gun roamed across each face. Rob stabbed a finger at Tony. “Don’t look at me. He’s the one who pointed them out to everybody.”

Tony stiffened with fear. “It wasn’t me,” he protested. “I swear I didn’t take them.”

“Prove it,” Rob snapped. The gun locked onto Tony. Michael judged the distance between him and May, but she had put much between them.

The young hairdresser stared at the black muzzle. All color bled from his face. “I-I swear I don’t have them. Please, I didn’t do it. I didn’t take them.”

“Tony, do you have the rings?” Marleen asked quickly, her grip on Max tight, her eyes on May.

“
No,
” Tony wailed.

“He’s lying,” Rob snapped. “Look at him, the fucking coward.”

Tommy moved suddenly. Grabbed Rob by the collar and slammed him against the wall. Impact forced a choked gurgle from the student’s throat. “Boy, I’ve known a lot of cocky thieves in my time,” Tommy snarled softly. “And you can tell when they’re guilty, because they’re always so quick to shift blame onto somebody else.” He leaned close. “I’m only gonna say this once. Where are the rings?”

“I don’t–”

Tommy slammed him against the wall again, cutting him off. “Wrong answer.”

“Fu–”

Tommy punched him; Rob bounced off the wall and slid down it. Unfocused eyes floated in Rob’s sockets as Tommy picked him up. “I can keep this up all night, or do you want her to shoot you?”

Rob’s eyes floated toward May, who lowered her gun. Her dark eyes lacked anything Michael would call ‘emotion’. “I won’t shoot him. I’ll leave him outside.”

Rob made a strangled noise, dug in his pockets. He threw the rings at her; tiny gold bands bounced across the floor to clink softly when they touched. She knelt, scooped them up. Her fingers tightened around them. Anger set her eyes on fire. She looked at Rob. “You make me sick. Why do assholes like you survive, and the good ones die?”

May stomped out the door. Before she climbed the ladder, her glare locked onto Michael. She just looked at him, as if waiting for him to say something.

No, it wasn’t that. She was trying to decide if his word was good, if her promise was worth keeping. Then she looked away. Climbed the ladder. Marleen darted to Michael, grabbed his arms. “We can’t stay here. She’s unstable. What if she hurts Max, or one of us?”

Tommy grunted, sat down beside Cherise. “She ain’t unstable.”

Marleen turned on him, flung an arm at the hall, where May had disappeared. “Did you miss the part where she threatened us with a gun?”

“Did you miss the part where she lost her husband?” Tommy retorted. “Think about it. You’re outnumbered, and your uninvited guests stole the only thing you got left of Mike’s. What would you do?”

“That’s not the point,” Marleen snapped. “She threatened our kids.”

Liz looked down at the floor. “No, Marleen. She won’t hurt a living person. She would have shot Rob if she wanted to. Frankly, I think he deserves it–” Rob blanched– “but she’s a better person than I am. I don’t know what I’d do if somebody stole something of Arti’s.”

Arti squeezed Liz’s hand, bringing a small smile to the woman’s lips.

Marleen squeezed his arms. “Michael, please. Let’s leave.”

“Mom, I don’t wanna go,” Max said. “If we leave, she’ll be lonely.”

Marleen covered her face with a hand. Michael wrapped his arms around her. “I swear Max will be all right. We’re completely safe here. May isn’t a threat.”

Marleen pushed away. “If anything happens to him, it’ll be your fault.”

Without another word, she stomped out of the room. Michael ran a hand over his face. Arti lightly punched his arm. “Buck up, man. At least she didn’t say you can’t sleep with her.”

He snorted. “I’m sure that’s coming.”

“In that case you might want to grovel – hands and knees style,” she joked.

He smiled. “Yeah, probably. Keep an eye on Max for me?”

“Sure,” she said.

Michael headed for the hall, but stopped. Caught Rob’s gaze. “The next time something goes missing, you won’t have to wait for May to throw you out. I will.”

Rob stared as he headed out of the room. Michael climbed the rope ladder. Knocked on their bedroom door.

“If that’s Michael, I don’t want to talk,” Marleen shouted.

He opened the door. “Marleen, look, I’m sorry–”

She looked away from him when he sat down beside her on the bed. “I don’t see why we can’t just leave. We were doing fine on our own.”

“That’s the point, Marleen. ‘On our own’,” he said, lightly squeezing her knee. “What we learn here can save so many other people. Think about what’s she’s done and what
we
can do.”

She shook her head. “You’re always trying to
fix
things, Mike. But what about me? What about Max? I don’t want him growing up in a battlefield.”

“That’s why we end this now, before he grows up,” Michael said. “We can do this. I know we can.” Marleen leaned against him. Sighed. He put an arm around her. “I need you to stand beside me,” he said. “I can’t do this without you.”

She buried her face in his neck, hugged him tight. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Mike, if I were in her shoes.”

He smiled. “Go on a revenge streak and take down thirty thousand zombies?”

Her lips brushed his neck. “Don’t talk about them while I’m trying to seduce you.”

“What about guns? Can I talk about guns?” he asked.

“No,” she said, tugging his shirt over his head.

“How about car engines?”

“No,” she said and unbuttoned his jeans.

“I think the 49ers can beat the Colts, if those teams were both around,” he commented, then grunted when she shoved him onto the bed.

She straddled him. “No sports talk, but you can talk about how beautiful I am.”

He smiled. “That won’t be a problem.”