Savannah's Only Zombie (Book 2): A New Darkness (7 page)

Jeremy tried not to roll his eyes.

“I’m not trying to bag on your religion, I just
don’t know if I understand it all the way yet, but how do you know that’s all
true?” He asked.

Josh broke eye contact with the road and smiled
at Jeremy.

“Because I once was dead and now I’m alive.”

The words sounded familiar to Jeremy. They made
him think of singing in his mother’s church.

What was that song called?

He searched his brain for the answer as Josh
turned around another corner. He lost his train of thought as Josh slammed on
the brakes. In the road in front of them was a stalled out car, with all four
doors open, and a trail of blood leading away from it.

***

The two of them stood in front of the abandoned
vehicle. Whoever owned it was now long gone, except for the small chunks of
meat left in the seats. Jeremy couldn’t take his eyes off the child booster
seat.

It looked like most of the belongings were still
there.

“Let’s take what we can use and get going,” Josh
said quietly. “They won’t be needing it.”

Jeremy nodded.

“You still have hope?” He asked.

“Yes, but I have ‘Come Lord Jesus quickly’ on
repeat in my mind right now.

A cool wind chilled the sweat that collected on
Tori’s forehead. She used her shirtsleeve to wipe away the wetness, leaving a
dark wet stain. They had been at work for what seemed like forever, but in
reality, it had only been an hour since Jeremy and Josh left. She glanced over
at the pile of wood they brought with them. It was beginning to dwindle. If
they wanted more wood, it looked like they would have to start chopping down
trees. Some of the smaller ones would make good posts.

Lexx laughed at something Chris said. The two of
them were working ten feet down from Tori.

If you call what they’re doing ‘working.’ More
like, ‘talking with an occasional hammer swing.’

As if he heard her thoughts, Lexx looked over
and grinned. Tori forced a smile back. He didn’t seem to notice her trouble and
turned back to continue his conversation with Chris. Tori let her smile fade.
She swung her hammer into the nearest nail. She had been following behind the
dynamic duo as they secured the posts and replaced them if necessary. It was
her job to reapply the crossing boards taken down and to add new ones where older
boards had fallen away. She didn’t mind the task, it wasn’t that. She didn’t
know what it was.

Get yourself together girl,
she told herself.

Lexx let out another obnoxious laugh. Tori felt
her neck muscles tighten.

“Do you two think we should maybe keep it down?”
She asked, trying not to let her tone betray her.

“Sorry babe, Chris was just telling me this
story about when Josh drove a ditch trencher off the back of a truck.
Hilarious,” Lexx said.

“Yeah, as funny as that may be, we probably
don’t want to attract any attention. We’re already making enough noise with the
hammering.”

“She makes a good point,” Chris said. “We’ll try
to keep it down. I’ll save my Josh stories for later.”

“There’s more?” Lexx asked.

“Oh, I have a whole bunch of them,” Chris said.

“Sweet.”

With that, their conversations got much quieter.
Tori put her focus back into the work in front of her. The repairs they were
making were just the first steps in the fortifying up of the perimeter. First,
they would make any needed repairs to the existing fence. It would serve as the
support for the next phase, which would be to place 4x6 pieces of plywood
around the entirety of the fence line. The slick sides of the plywood would
make it difficult for the slower zombies to climb over. The only thing Josh
worried about was if it were a large group of undead, the sheer weight of
bodies would push through the wooden structure in time. And of course, the
fence wouldn’t do much against runners. But if either of those two outcomes
happened, the plan was still the same: run.

Tori almost laughed to herself as she thought
about a pregnant woman trying to escape from the zombies. It was just
ridiculous. She understood there was nothing that could be done about the baby;
it just worried her because it was one more thing to slow them down. If it came
to having to escape, which sometimes meant having to worry about yourself, how
much could a pregnant woman do?

She thought about the Lumberjack. After she
repeatedly wanted to leave him behind, the group always decided to take him one
step further.

“We won’t leave him here.”

“No, we won’t leave him here either.”

“No, we’ll wait until he dies.”

Ben… If you had just let him die, maybe you’d
still be with us right now. And maybe we wouldn’t be here. Maybe we’d be at
your parent’s house right now.

Tori felt her eyes begin to moisten.

C’mon girl! Get yourself together!

She quickly rubbed away the forming tears and
took a deep breath. She slammed the hammer again, taking out her frustration on
the next nail. The nail bent from her unfocused hit. She used the hammer’s claw
to pull it out, and began to try and straighten it out on top of the fence
post. Once it was as straight as she could get it, she tried again to nail it
into the wood. This time, it went in without problem.

“Yeah, I did some time in the Army.”

Tori felt herself tighten again. The words
echoed in her head as if they were shouted into a cavernous ravine. Over and
over, she heard them. It was the voice that struck a nerve. It wasn’t Chris’s,
who Josh had explained earlier once served as an Army Ranger.

Meh,
she had thought at the time. Being raised by a
Marine Drill Instructor may have left her slightly biased, but Tori’s dislike
of the Army Branch was no more different from a Georgia Bulldogs fan’s hatred
of the University of Florida. It was just a deep seated rivalry that she loved
to get vocal about, especially after she had a few beers in her. Marines and
Army: same team, different styles.

But the voice she heard wasn’t from Chris.

It was Lexx.

Her mouth fell open as she listened to the man
she… she…

Liked?
She thought.
Slept with? Loved?

All the words seemed t0 collide together and the
last word ran smack dab into another nerve.

“Yeah, college wasn’t for me and the Army seemed
like a good idea at the time. Stable pay, good benefits, plus the Cold War just
ended, so we weren’t really fighting anyone. Then that dick Saddam decided to
roll into Kuwait. Anyways, I was on the ground not soon long after the start. I
don’t have to tell you what it’s like, you were over there. You know,” Lexx
said.

Chris nodded. His eyes glazed over quickly as he
went to a distant place and then returned.

“Anyways,” Lexx continued. “Turns out I’m not
too good at taking orders. Well, bullshit orders. I was the lead driver in a
Humvee convoy and I had strict orders to take us through this sketchy little
town. I don’t know if it was my gut, or maybe the looks on every civilian’s
face we passed, but something told me to take a different route. I know y’all
are all religious and whatnot, maybe it was divine intervention, who knows. I
led us around the town on an alternate route and we reached our destination
safely in one piece. Despite this, my SO was pissed. He charged me for
disobeying a direct order and that there wasn’t enough intel on the path I
took. Ha. Intel? Well, intel later showed that we were headed into an ambush.”

Lexx sighed.

“I was still discharged though, but they gave me
a honorable discharge, just because my “mistake” saved everyone in the convoy’s
lives.”

He was in the Army?
Tori thought.
Why
didn’t he tell me? He knows how I feel about the Army. He knows my father is a
Marine. Why didn’t he tell me that?

Well Tori, maybe he didn’t want to because he
did know how you felt and he didn’t want to bring it up yet,
she answered herself.
And
seeing that you’re talking to yourself right now, maybe that was a good idea on
his part.

She let her frustration out on the next few
nails. These nails gave her no hesitation and sunk straight into to the wood,
trying to avoid the fury of the hammer-wielder.

“That’s crazy,” Chris said.

“Yeah, crazy. No, crazy was coming back to find
my loving fiancé banging our landlord for rent. Not that we didn’t have money
mind you, my paychecks went into the bank just fine. She said she was lonely
and had needs, you know, basic cheating whore stuff. Hell of a homecoming.”

“Oh man, sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, so there I was: twenty one, un-engaged,
and jobless. It took a real toll on me at the time. I went from small job to
small job, never really working out wherever I went. And as far as women went,
well, it took some time to even think about serious relationships again. It was
always just quick-flings and no strings attached kinda deals. And…”

Lexx’s voice seemed to fade away in Tori’s mind
as the frustration hit new levels.

He was fucking engaged!?!

This final revelation of the man she had
feelings for had sought out and pierced through her ever-loving last nerve. She
swung the hammer again, this time with enough force to send the nail deep into
the wood and the hammer’s head splintering off and flying off into the woods.
Tori let out an exasperated breath and stormed off in the direction of the
hammer’s head.

Lexx looked at Chris with a confused look, held
up his finger motioning for one minute, and then took off after her.

***

“Hey!”

Tori ignored Lexx, who she could feel was
closing the distance between the two of them.

“Tori stop! Where are you going?”

She didn’t know where she was going. Away from
him? She felt his hand grab her right shoulder and she yanked it away from him.

“Tori! What is wrong with you?”

That made her stop. She about-faced and stared
holes into the man. Her face was flushed red; her expression set. It was clear
that she was angry, but the tears in the corner of her eyes betrayed her.

“Nothing is wrong with me Lexx,” she said with
an eerie calmness.

Lexx was unsure on how to answer that. It seemed
like a trap. He did not like traps.

“Um, what I mean to say is, what is bothering
you?” He asked, slowly and carefully.

“What is bothering me, Lexx?” She asked.

He didn’t like the way she kept using his name.
There was a hint of contempt hidden in it. Another sign of a trap.

“I… I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

She snickered.

“You want to know what’s bothering me, Lexx?”

Yep, this is a trap,
he thought.

Although there was a part of him screaming not
to do so, he slowly nodded his head.

“Well, what’s bothering me is that I don’t know
a FUCKING THING ABOUT YOU! You were in the Army? Were you ever planning on
telling me that? Oh, and you were fucking engaged? Was that ever gonna come
out?”

She paused, but not for Lexx to answer, but to
take a breath.

“And here you are, just spilling out your whole
damn life story to Chris, you two best-buds, just laughing it up and having a
grand ol’ time. And you haven’t even as hinted about any of this shit with me?
Fuck you, Lexx, fuck you!”

Lexx stood there as Tori yelled. He was slightly
concerned with the amount of noise she was making, but decided that maybe it
wasn’t the best time to bring it up. He just made sure to keep an eye out
through his peripheral for anything that might still sneak up on them. Although,
perhaps zombies were not the scariest thing he had to worry about right now.
His shoulders relaxed.

“That’s it?” He asked.

“UGH!” She huffed, pushing him in the chest with
both hands and turning to walk off again.

Why did I say that?
He wondered to himself.

“Wait, I’m sorry!” He said, grabbing her
shoulder again before she got too far away.

He spun her around and placed both hands around
her shoulders. He looked her in the eye and made a quick smile.

“I’m sorry I haven’t told you any of that stuff.
It just never came up…”

“It just doesn’t bother you,” she interrupted.
“That we don’t know anything about each other? I mean, we’ve humped like
rabbits, but I don’t even know your last name!”

She sighed, her body relaxing. Lexx moves his
hands down her arms, stopping above the elbow. He smiled.

“It’s Thompson.”

This was able to make her smile briefly, but
eyes dropped and her brow furrowed again.

“Hey,” Lexx started softly. “I understand what
you mean. It’s just that, until we got here, we haven’t had time to really stop
and talk about that kinda stuff. We’ve been on the run and more concerned with
staying alive, you know? But now that we’re here, we can actually relax a
little bit. I slept like a baby last night. It’s been awhile since I could say
that.”

“Really? Because I slept horrible last night!
Anytime I could finally relax and fall asleep, I fell back into the same damn
nightmare.”

“Nightmare? About what?” He asked.

“About you dying.”

Now it all made sense to Lexx.

“And that’s why you got so upset?

She nodded.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Shut up.”

Lexx could not help but smile.

“Look,” she continued. “I know, if that this was
in normal times, that if there weren’t zombies, I would sound like a total
basket case, and you would be smart to dump me. We’re not even a week into our
relationship (She uses “air-quotes” on the word relationship.) and I’m going
ballistic on you for not telling me about yourself? I know I sound crazy. It’s
just that, we aren’t in normal times anymore. Everyday could be our last and
time is so valuable now. Every time I would wake up from my nightmare last
night, I would look over at you and wonder, ‘How long til that side of the bed
is empty?’ I just don’t know what to think anymore Lexx.”