Shades of Gray (8 page)

“I said it’s fine.”

“You know, I’m really getting sick of this passive-aggressive bullshit. Why don’t you just tell me what’s jumped up your ass and get it over with.”

It felt good to get it off my chest. Even though I knew what her problem was, I needed her to say it. She needed to say it, get it out in the open and stop stewing over it. All that was doing was putting tension on our friendship. She planted her hands on her hips again, something that was becoming as much a habit for her as face-rubbing was for me.

“You know what the problem is. I’ve been warning you for weeks to slow down, take a break. But you won’t listen. Why? Cause you’re a stubborn ass. I’m not mad because you’re burning out, Kase. I’m mad because you’re an asshole. How’s that? Feel better?” She was keeping her voice low, which was understandable considering it was something like three in the morning. But the anger behind the hush was apparent.

“
I’m
an asshole…”

“Yeah, a-s-s-h-o-l-e. My room is right next to yours. You don’t think I know how bad this has gotten for you? You wake me up every night screaming your head off. And why don’t you wake up the entire house? Because I jump up, run over here, and cover your face with a pillow. I used to try waking you up, but I gave up on that and just started muffling those God-awful shrieks of yours. But noooo,
I’m
full of shit. You’re
fine
. Everything is
fine
!”

Her confession surprised me. I had no idea I’d been screaming through the night, and I definitely hadn’t known about Mia’s intervention. My temper and pride cooled down immediately. I lowered my head and stared at Gus, who was looking up at me and whining as if to say, “She’s right. I haven’t slept in three weeks because of you.”

“Alright, alright,” I mumbled. She was right, I couldn’t keep fighting it. Just because I denied it didn’t mean it wasn’t true. “I’m not the only one who’s been having them, you know.” I slowly raised my face to meet her eyes. “The nightmares? My screams don’t wake
you
up every night because I don’t sleep every night. I’m awake half the damn time. Our rooms are next to each other, remember? So don’t act like I’m the only one having problems here.”

She looked shocked for a moment, as if I’d caught her at something she shouldn’t be doing. She started to shake her head, to open her mouth and deny ever yelling herself awake.

I interrupted with something I would regret later.

“Who’s Ashton?”

Her face changed from surprise to stricken in the span of about three seconds. I felt terrible for asking as soon as the words were out of my mouth, but it was too late to take them back and apologies wouldn’t help either. I had cut her too deeply with that one word, that one name. I didn’t know who he was. She had said it repeatedly during the time she’d suffered a raging infection from a gunshot wound the previous fall. At the height of her fever, Ashton was all she’d mumbled about, sometimes screaming “No” over and over. Lately she’d been waking up at night saying his name again. It didn’t happen often, just often enough I knew I wasn’t the only one having trouble letting go of the past.

“Mia…” I began. She raised a hand to quiet me.

“Just get dressed. And bring your bow.”

“What? Why?” I’d forgotten about the reason Mia was even in my room. Of course, I had just hit my best friend in the mouth.

“Why do you think? And hurry up, they need you on the wall.”

She left my room without looking back. Gus whined softly at my feet and I noticed then what I’d clearly missed during our argument. Screeching, coming from outside.

* * *

During the course of the past six months, we had determined through trial and error that the best way to handle a small group of deadheads was with bows and arrows. Unfortunately, the wall was so tall we couldn’t use other means to quietly dispatch the dead, like crowbars and ball bats, however it was just the right height to take out the targets using the only other means available to us. We had sound suppressors, though only a few and only for the rifles, which weren’t as handy at short yardages as bows. Unless a larger group or swarm ended up at our wall, we kept the silencers shelved for the rescue missions. If we’d had them for our handguns, sure, we’d have used them. We probably could have requested a few from the Guard. As it turned out, the bow thing worked pretty well, so we didn’t bother.

After jerking on my clothes and boots, I met the others outside with my compound bow in hand and a quiver of arrows slung over my shoulder. This was the messiest part of our job. Since arrows weren’t easy to come by, we always had to go outside the wall afterwards to collect them. Usually this was done in two teams: one team to yank the arrows from the zombies’ heads and thoroughly clean them with bleach as soon as possible, another team to drag the bodies a safe distance away for burning. We took every possible precaution, suiting up in gloves, facemasks, heavy leather boots and jackets in case the bastards weren’t really dead yet and decided to jump up for one more bite.

“How many?” I asked Michael, who was fastening his forearm guard to his left arm and standing with his bow propped between his legs.

“Jonah reported about sixteen. All runners,” he answered gruffly, snapping his release onto his right wrist.

My guard and release were already in place. I glanced over and noticed Mia was ready too, clenching and unclenching her hand around the riser of her bow and staring off toward the wall. I turned my eyes to it as well; Abby and Jonah were keeping their heads down, otherwise looking fine.

John joined us on the porch. “I can’t raise Waters.”

Usually if we had an “undead situation,” we radioed the Guard just to let them know what was going on. If the shit was too deep, they were supposed to back us up. So far, we hadn’t needed their assistance. It was odd, though, that they weren’t answering our call. I noticed everyone turn their eyes to the sky, looking for what, I’m not sure. Maybe the lights of a helicopter. Probably not for UFOs.

“Come on, let’s get this over with,” I said and eased past Michael and Mia.

John leaned against the banister and rubbed his sleepy eyes. I didn’t see Jake or Nancy so I assumed they were still in bed. No reason to wake up the whole house for a little group, I suppose. Especially when we only had three bows, and the three proficient in their use were already awake.

It was bitterly cold, and my breath was creating a thick fog around my face each time I exhaled. The gravel of the driveway crunched under my boots. The wind was still, which was a blessing, but the rank odor of the runners still drifted quickly through the air.

“How the hell can they sleep through this?” I said, walking to the wooden staircase off to the left of the gate and cringing with each shriek.

We had also figured out that the simple wrought-iron gate we had previously installed in the concrete wall was a huge pain in the ass. The deadheads could scream and raise all kinds of hell through it, let alone stick their arms and legs through the gaps. After some experimenting, we built an inner door made of solid, rough cut oak timbers, each about two inches thick. We had to do an extensive scout to find the materials for that (again, we wanted to be as independent of the Guard as possible), but in the end it was worth it. The heavy door was fastened to the wall using lag bolts, hinged on one side to swing inward, and three security bars were anchored, to be slid into place once the door was shut.

I topped the stairs and took a right, throwing a hand up behind me in greeting to Abby, who was stationed in the watchtower to my left, and headed toward Jonah in the right watchtower. These two stations flanked the gate. There were two more on the left and right ends of the wall, close to the river. The watchtowers were little more than platforms with roofs, enough to protect the person on duty from the weather. Inside the station itself the shooter had his own gun bench and room for a cooler or whatever else he might want to bring with him to help pass the time.

“Hey, Jonah,” I said and stepped inside, the roof giving me a false sense of cover from the zombies reaching up at me.

Granted, they were twenty feet down, but it was still unnerving as hell. Over a dozen bloody, raging mouths all crying out at the same time, hands torn from months of ripping and destroying stretched high. Maybe unnerving isn’t the word for that. Demoralizing suits that situation better I think. At least to me.

“Hope you’re gonna shut those things up. The noise is startin’ to get on my nerves,” he replied before taking a slow drag of his cigarette. I grinned; it was hard not to when talking to this guy.

“You think I’d be up at this time just to come out here and bullshit with you?”

He chuckled and rocked in his seat, having kicked his boots up onto the ledge and crossed them at the ankles. “Touché.” He gave me a lazy salute and looked past to watch Michael and Mia climb the staircase. “She still on your ass?”

I waved the question away with one hand and propped my bow in the corner. “It’s nothing to worry about. Just a disagreement between old friends.”

I shrugged the quiver off my arm, letting it fall gently next to my bow. I reached my hand out for his cigarette, took a drag once it was offered, and watched Michael set up directly above the gate. Mia was already setting up in Abby’s platform.

I turned back to Jonah. “Let’s get this party started.”

He reached for his cigarette, then relaxed back in his seat and motioned with his other hand in a “be my guest” gesture.

I picked up my bow, pulled an arrow from its quiver, nocked it, and calmed my body. I had to look over my left shoulder to watch for the signal from Michael. He was already prepared, and after looking over at Mia, he turned his head to me and nodded once. I returned it and pulled back. The slicing sound of the bow string was lost in the deafening screams of the crowd below. I didn’t need to wait for the other two to start firing; the signal had already been given. I picked my first target and sighted him in quickly. A slight caress of the release and the arrow found its home between the eyes of a man. I was glad for the noise the runners were making; it masked the sound an arrow makes as it punches through skull and brain.

Not wasting any time, I lowered my hand and grabbed another arrow. It wasn’t a competition, yet I wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. There was something about killing zombies with a bow that I never could get used to. Perhaps it was the proximity, being so close you could see every single gory detail of their bodies, smell every bit of their death, that bugged me. Either way, I nocked and released my arrows as fast as I could without getting sloppy. I had ten arrows in all, making thirty between the three of us. I missed a few times, that was to be expected. These runners moved constantly, jerking and jumping around. It’s hard to get a good bead on them with a rifle, let alone a bow.

The more we put down as a team, the more sounds we could hear that weren’t there before. Such as the arrows when they hit true. It’s a sickening sound you never get over. Add that to the fact there were children in this group of dead bastards, and I’m surprised we were able to make it to the end.

Those were the worst to shoot at. I think that goes without saying. The only way to get through a day doing what we did was to physically force yourself
not
to look at them for what they used to be. We had to trick our minds, so to speak, into thinking of them as something alien, something that had never been human. This little trick was always tested when we ran into kids. I don’t know what we would have done if they’d been younger… zombie toddlers. Zombie infants. I’m glad I never had to find out.

I stopped for a moment to stretch my arms and glanced over at the others. They were still picking shots and letting arrows fly, no doubt stopping to rest their arms as well at some point.

“How’re you holdin’ up?” Jonah asked.

I jumped at the sound of his voice; I’d actually forgotten he was there. I knew what he was getting at. The last runner was the youngest I’d ever seen (
not
a baby, thank God). I don’t know if I subconsciously left this one for last, or if it just happened to turn out that way. There was a moment where I swore the zombie kid was looking directly at me. Not in my general direction, not with hazy, dead eyes. That dead girl locked eyes with me, stopped her screaming, and simply stood. For only a moment. It was…odd.

I held the thing’s steady gaze until she started that shrieking again, then turned my head and checked on Michael. He was finishing off his targets, moving slower now than what he had in the beginning. I checked Mia; she was finished and walking along the wall toward Michael. I looked back at Jonah, feeling my insides start to shake. I didn’t want to kill that kid. I knew she wasn’t a kid anymore, she was a zombie. I
knew
that. I also knew I needed to put her out of her misery.

But the sound of the arrow ramming home...

That one detail was preventing me from nocking my last arrow. I could even hear Michael’s arrows, slamming into the skulls of his targets, the visceral rip of the gray matter as the arrow head punctured and stabbed through the back of the head.

“Kasey,” Jonah said.

He had stood from his seat and stepped over to me. I hadn’t even noticed his hand on my elbow. I realized then that I had been spacing out and very close to puking. I blinked several times, licked my lips, and looked up at him.