Z-Burbia 7: Sisters of the Apocalypse (23 page)

The truck shakes then starts rolling. We're all tossed this way and that. Kids are screaming and I'm screaming and Jack is screaming. Everyone is screaming. My head hits one of the walls and I feel blood start pouring from my scalp. I probably just brained myself on a hammer or something. Ow.

Then the sound of the blast finally reaches us. Even inside the truck it's like someone fired the Barrett right by my ears. I know I'm still screaming and others are screaming, but I can't hear shit.

The truck stops rolling and we all end up in a pile on top of each other. I want to push the kids off me, but my arms just don't want to work. Nothing wants to work. I can feel myself get fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy…

Shit…

Chapter Twenty-Four

Crying. I think.

I hear crying and it sounds like it's a long ways away, but some part of my brainpan tells me it ain't. I slowly open my eyes, wince and cry out, and close my eyes again. Lots of pain in my head. Brainpan ain't happy with me right now.

More crying then some shouts. Muffled, hard to make out.

A hand grabs my shoulder, my bad shoulder, and I force my eyes open, ready to kill the dirty Z that wants a piece of Elsbeth. But it ain't no dirty Z. It's a sister.

"El? El, talk to me," Marcie says.

Why the hell is Marcie here? Marcie wasn't here before. She was supposed to be with the women at the prison. The sisters that are with me are…

"Audrey!" I yell, my voice all cottony in my ears. "Antoinette!"

"They're good," Marcie says as she and a few other women help get me from the broken truck.

And I mean it is broken.

Everything is at weird angles and I realize that truck has pretty much collapsed on itself. The side panels and top are a lot closer together than they are supposed to be. Marcie gets me out onto the road and I realize it's night time. But I also realize I can still see pretty well.

Might have something to do with the horizon being nothing but fire. It looks like the earth is glowing.

"That's going to burn for a while," Marcie says to me. "Everything from there to Albuquerque is ablaze. There must have been munitions buried and stored all over the place. That blast scorched the land, but then the land started exploding over and over. We watched it happen as we came for you all."

"Thanks," I say.

That's all I can say. It's all my brainpan will let me say. Marcie helps me walk around the broken truck to the waiting convoy a few yards up the road. Women are standing guard with rifles, ready to take out any Zs that come at us, but they don't have much work to do since it looks like the nuke blast took care of the herd.

Every single inch of ground is coated in goop. Some of the goop I recognize as body parts, but most of it is just goop. Bloody, yucky goop. Goop, goop, goop.

Which we slip in a lot on our way to the waiting trucks.

I hear my name being called and I see Jack standing by a truck holding a boy in his arms. The boy is sniffling and his chest is hitching like he's just had a hard cry, which I suppose he sure as shit has. The boy looks an awful lot like Jack. I try to smile, but the boy sees me and starts crying again, is I guess my smile don't look too happy.

"Yeah, don't do that," Marcie says, her mouth close to my ear so I can hear her clearly. "You ain't looking too pretty right now."

"I ain't feeling too pretty right now," I say and wince. I can't even nail down why I'm wincing. It all hurts.

Marcie gets me loaded into the back of one of the farm trucks and I collapse onto the cool metal. Everything is so hot and feverish. Not just me, but everything. It's like I fell asleep in one of them tanning beds. I ain't ever been in one of them, but I can imagine it feels just like this.

I can hear people talking all around me and I try to focus on what they are saying, but the truck is so cool and I'm so tired. My eyes close and I'm out.

When I wake up, the truck is bouncing along the road. I blink a few times and see kids huddled close together in groups. Each group is huddling around one of the farm women. I wonder if she's their mom. Or at least one or two of the kids' mom. I don't know. Don't really care. I'll care later.

My eyes close again and I let them. My eyes are smarter than me sometimes.

But when they do open back up, I start caring again. Not about kids or women or anything else. All I care about is how fucking thirsty I am. Sisters ain't psychic or nothing, but sometimes sisters is psychic. Marcie is suddenly in my face and she leans down over me. She puts a bottle to my lips and I smell the water before I taste it. I have to pry my lips apart and the skin tears, but fuck if I care because there's water and yay for fucking water!

It hurts to swallow, but I do not give a fuck. I swallow the shit out of that water.

"Careful," Marcie laughs as she pulls the bottle away. "You're gonna puke."

She gives me a little more then I pull back to take a breath. Gotta breathe too. Can't breathe water. Sisters ain't that perfect. Not yet.

When I can breathe and speak I smile at her and say, "What's the situation? How many dead? Where the fuck are we? Where are we going?"

She laughs and pats my cheek. It hurts, but I ain't gonna get mad at a sister cheek pat.

"The situation is you are alive," Marcie says. "All of the kids made it except for one. He died on the way back to the prison. There wasn't anything any of us could do."

"When will we be back at the prison?" I ask.

"Hold on, I'm not done answering your other questions," Marcie says. "We aren't going to the prison. We already left there. You've been asleep for two days, El."

"I what?" I ask and try to push up onto my elbows, but that ain't happening. "Two days?"

I look around the truck and realize that I'm on a pallet of blankets. We're in a good-sized panel truck and there are lots of other pallets with kids and a couple adults on them. The two adults are Audrey and Antoinette. Antoinette is smiling at me as she reads something to a couple kids all up in her lap. Audrey is snoring. Loud.

"Don't worry about her," Marcie says. "She's fine. She's been awake a few times. You were the one we were worried about. You took a hard hit to your head when the Jeep flipped and another in that truck after the blast sent you guys flying. Did you know you went flying?"

"I know we went tumbling," I say.

"You went tumbling through the air which is basically flying," Marcie says. "All of you are lucky to be alive. If you hadn't been packed inside that truck so tightly then you probably would be dead."

"Sardines saved us," I say. Marcie shakes her head. "You know, because we were packed in like sardines."

"Oh, I get it," Marcie says.

I frown at her. "Hold the shitfuck on," I say. "Where—?"

"El, watch your language around the kids, okay?" she replies.

"What? Is that a thing? Since when is that a thing?" I ask.

"These kids aren't Stanfords or from our group," Marcie laughs. "They aren't used to your mouth."

"No one is, El," Antoinette says.

"You look a shit-ton better," I say to her, ignoring my sisters' requests to watch my potty mouth. You live through being a canny and you get the right to say whatever the fuck you want.

"Can I ask where we're going if we already left the prison?" I ask.

"We’re going home," Marcie says. "I told Jack where the Stronghold is and that's where we're taking everyone."

"But we don't know if we can trust all the ladies," I say.

"True, but we don't have a choice, El," Marcie says. "That whole area back there is gonna be radioactive for a while. We have no idea what everyone has already been exposed to. But we do know that if we left Jack and the women at the prison, they'd probably be dead by the time we got to the Stronghold to take a vote and then made our way back to them."

"Even if the women are still loyal to the Doyles, it doesn't matter," Antoinette says. "The Doyles are dead. All of them."

"Right," I say. "Good job with that."

"Thanks," she says then goes back to reading to the kids.

"We'll get folks settled at the Stronghold and the council can decide what happens after that," Marcie says. "I'm sure Critter and Greta and Boyd will be unhappy about this, but I know Charlie will be fine and so will Melissa."

"Yeah, Charlie's a good guy," I say.

"He is," Marcie says and her whole face is one giant smile. She sure does like her some Charlie.

I feel the truck slow and then stop. There's some yelling outside and the backdoor slides up. Jack is standing there with a rifle across his chest, all SEAL-mode and shit.

"Hey there," he says, nodding at me. "You live."

"I live," I say then realize something. "I also have to pee bad."

"Then hop on out and do that," he says.

Marcie helps me out and I sigh as the fresh air fills my lungs. I can tell by the scenery around me that we ain't in New Mexico no more. Nope, it's full-on Colorado.

"How close are we?" I ask as Marcie helps me squat by the side of the road.

"A day more and we'll be there," she says.

"That's nice," I say. "I'm gonna sleep for a week before we go back out."

"Go back out?" Jack asks, looking right at me. He's military so seeing someone piss ain't no thing at all. "What the hell are you talking about? From what I've heard about the Stronghold, it's secure, filled with supplies, and sounds like a goddamn paradise. Why would you want to leave that?"

"Because we have a mission," I say. "Kramer ain't gonna kill himself."

"She's got to be joking," Jack says as he looks at Marcie. "Right?"

"We have a mission," Marcie says. "I think we'll rest up for more than a week, though. We're going to have to. Our last clue led us to Albuquerque, but there's nothing there anymore. That is a dead end in many ways. We'll need time to track the blind kids again and see if some of them can lead us to Kramer. That could be a few weeks of recon before we catch a break."

"Okay, if you say so," Jack says. "I still don't get why he's so important to find. You have a good thing, be happy with that. Good things don't happen often these days."

"We have to find Kramer because we want good things to keep happening," I say. "Good things for our families, for our friends, for you new folks. If Kramer is still out there then one day he is going to come back and try to kill us all. That's how that asshat shitfucker works."

I shake my butt and Marcie helps me stand and get my pants back on.

"You'll understand more when you get to the Stronghold," Marcie says. "Charlie will fill you in on it all. He likes to talk. Not as much as his dad liked to talk, but he does like to tell a story when he has ears around that will listen."

"We've all heard his stories so he's gonna like you a lot," I say to Jack. "New ears. This will be good."

Marcie and Jack help me back up into the truck and I sit on the edge and watch as women and kids tend to their bathroom needs.

"We'll camp here for the night and get going in the morning," Jack says. "You rest up. Dinner will be ready in an hour." He nods to me and Marcie. "I'm going to take some of the women and set up a perimeter around the camp. We have twine and empty cans in case Zs come stumbling across us. We'll hear them in plenty of time."

"Thanks," Marcie says.

I give him a thumbs up just like Long Pork would have then wait until he's gone.

"He's nice," I say.

"He is," Marcie agrees.

"He know about his granddaughter?" I ask.

"He does," Marcie says.

"Okay," I say.

She sits down next to me and we dangle our legs over the edge of the truck.

"We'll find him," Marcie says. "Sisters don't quit."

"Nope, sisters don't quit," I say and lean my head on her shoulder. I relax as much as my body will let me. Feels good to just rest on my sister. "And I ain't got no doubt in the world that one day we'll find him. Kramer can't hide forever and he sure as shit can't hide forever from sisters."

She kisses me on the top of my head and laughs a little. Then we just settle in and watch the sun set far off in the west. Maybe Kramer is out that way. Maybe he headed for the ocean or went to hide in those mountains out in California or Oregon or something. I don't know.

What I do know is his ass is mine, and when I finally catch him, he will pay for everything he has done.

Because there is only one thing I hate more than Doyles and cannies and Zs and crazies and all the other crap in this world. That thing is Kramer. Fuck that shitfucker.

I laugh.

"What?" Marcie asks.

"Oh, I was just thinking that Kramer is just like a Z," I say.

"How's that?" she asks.

"He's already dead, just doesn't know it," I say.

She laughs with me and we stay that way until the sun goes down.

It's nice.

Sisters are nice.

The End

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