Now there was an alternately cheerful and horrifying thought. Dinner sat uneasily in her stomach, a congealed lump. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, either.”
“I’m right useful, huh?” But his expression—mouth softening, eyes no longer yellow-direct but darker and soft as well, head slightly tilted—robbed the words of any sting.
Still, it bothered her. She set her knees down, pushed Traveller's nose away from her pillow again. “Not just useful.”
“Oh, it ain’t bad.” His smile broadened. “I don’t mind it, not when it’s you.”
Huh? Ginny tried to parse that. It was a little difficult, because her pulse had decided to skyrocket. He smelled like male and citrus, with a deep peppery tang that was all…him. Funny, she’d missed it, riding with Juju. How soon did you get used to the impossible? Humans adapted, it was their great advantage.
“You hear me?” Lee leaned forward, slightly into her personal space, and that made it even harder to think. “I like being your useful.”
What the hell does that mean? Ginny swallowed, hard, and tried to focus, to express what she meant very clearly. “I don’t want to use anyone,” she managed. “Lee…”
That set him back, physically, onto his boot heels. “Not what I meant.” Lee unfolded, and Ginny found herself picking up and hugging her familiar pillow, with Traveller nosing at her elbow, insisting that it was bedtime and he wanted his snuggles, thank you very much. “Just lock the door when Steph gets up here, Ginny.”
Was he angry? She couldn’t tell, and before she got her wits about her, he was gone. The door closed with a small click, and she looked down at Traveller. Dogs were creatures of routine, Juju said, and humans were too. Canine habits were simple, Traveller didn’t seem to care how complex the situation was, as long as he had kibble and a warm place to nest.
“God,” she whispered, and the hound’s ears perked. He stared hopefully at her, scooching as close as he could get for ear-rubs. “I think I like him, I really do.”
Unfortunately, the rest of that thought wasn’t nearly as nice. What if it’s not him I like, but the fact that he’s capable?
There was no answer. Ginny swore under her breath, and resigned herself to a restless night on a cold floor, even if Lee swore the pad underneath would help.
Oddly enough, though, as soon as she settled Steph, locked the door, and laid down hugging Traveller, she was out like a light.
It was a good thing, too, because the next morning started way too early.
“Miz Mills?” Steph, whispering, and a chill-damp hand at Ginny’s shoulder, shaking her. “Miz Ginny, wake up.”
Traveller yawned and Ginny lunged into consciousness, sweat collecting in every hollow and her heart banging against her ribs. It was damn close to pitch black, only faint paltry moonglow filtering through the office windows. Steph’s face was a pale smudge atop a dark shadow, her hair hanging lank on either side.
Ginny rubbed at her eyes. “What?”
“Shhh.” Steph clutched at her, and the faint trembling in the girl’s hands was unsettling. “I heard somethin. At the door.”
Oh, God. “It’s locked,” she mumbled, trying to shake the cobwebs out of her head. “Was it—”
“Then I went to the window.” Steph’s fingers bit with hysterical strength, sinking into Ginny’s upper arm. “They’re here.”
That brought Ginny up in a rush, shaking her legs—and her sweatpants—free of the bag. It was cold outside that warm nest; goosebumps rose all over her, and the sour taste in her mouth was early morning and fear. Her sweats had ridden up, ankle cuffs gathered below her knees like she'd gone wading. Traveller nosed at her left leg, a cold, forlorn touch. “Who’s here?”
“Them,” Steph whispered. Pink tank top straps slipped down, and her boxers were on backwards. Her shoulders, sharp and glowing like shells, hunched miserably. “The zombies.”
Traveller nosed at Ginny’s heels as she shuffled for the window, almost smacking her hip on the desk with its now-useless computer. Paperwork on a cork board fluttered, and the manager’s marked-up whiteboard watched two frightened women, one young, one older. The moon hid briefly behind moving clouds, but there was enough of its glow—and reflected light from unmelted snow and glare-ice—to see dark shapes in the parking lot.
A whole crowd of them. Easily twenty, or more.
“OhGod,” Ginny whispered, her breath making a circle on the glass. Steph shivered next to her, and she was suddenly very sure that if she said the wrong thing, or even moved the wrong way, the girl was going to start screaming. “Shhh,” she said, finally, and put her arm around Steph’s shoulders. The girl’s skin was frigid, and her teeth chattered—Ginny would have to find her better pyjamas. “How long have you been watching them?”
“I d-don’t know.”
“Okay.” Think fast, Ginny. “If they’d broken in downstairs we’d hear gunshots. They’re on watch down there.” She winced as she said it. Don’t worry, the menfolk are watching. Christ, how civilization faded in the face of disaster. “We’d hear it. So they haven’t, and in any case, the door’s locked.”
“I heard it,” Steph insisted. Her eyes, wild and white-ringed, glared up at Ginny. “Something rattled the door.”
“I believe you.” Lock it, Lee had said. Was it Brandon? Mark? Or Lee, checking to make sure she had? Maybe that was it. “It could have been the building settling, or the wind.”
“I don’t think so.” Steph shivered again. “But okay.”
Ginny watched the slumping, shuffling, chewing crowd. A cold, moon-silvered parking lot full of slush, human shapes gathered in a clot, some of them terribly wrong. They took up half the expanse, pressing close to the building, and the ones near the crowd's middle swayed gently like a wheat-field under a breeze. Near the edges, they milled about, a vaguely counterclockwise motion as they bumbled. Hats moved gently, blood-stiffened hair pasted to a sprinkling of bare heads, and it was a mercy Ginny’s dinner was fully digested, because otherwise she might have lost it looking at those twitching, jerking, oddly fluid movements. They bumbled against the truck and Juju's 4x4, hands patting spiderlike along metal and glass.
Steph made a soft, hopeless sound, and Ginny landed back in herself with a jolt. “Come on,” she said, drawing the girl away from the window. “They can’t get in. We’d have heard if they did.”
The teenager resisted, leaned towards the chill, slick glass. Traveller’s wet nose printed itself on Ginny’s bare calf again, and he whined, deep in his throat. Maybe he could smell Steph’s fear.
“Don’t you start too,” Ginny told him, firmly. “I’m not taking you downstairs to pee at this hour, for God’s sake.”
That made Steph giggle, a soft, lonely sound, and the girl relaxed all at once. Ginny pushed the desk aside as far as she could, and they dragged the girl’s foam pad and sleeping bag next to hers. The dog wouldn’t rest until he had himself snuggled between them, and ended up with all four paws in the air, snoring mightily.
Ginny listened for a long time, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the silent, eerie crowd outside, straining her ears.
She was pretty sure Steph did, too.
Extraordinary Situation
Morning came bright and cheerful, warming up yet again. Water trickled from edges, and cold fog lifted from hillocks and humps of freeze in the parking lot. At least it didn’t look like another storm was moving in. “Maybe the Fudders lot, north on the interstate,” Juju said, swirling thick sweet coffee inside his black and gold Viper Tires travel mug. “Find all sorts of canopies there, somethin’s bound to fit. Get you a nice one.”
One I couldn't afford otherwise, you mean. Lee made a brief noise of assent, taking a scorching gulp of his own percolator juice. It tasted a little like Nonna’s, only without the chicory. For a moment, he wondered what his grandparents would have made of all this. Big Q wouldn’t have been surprised, just balefully determined to shoot any critter that got close, and maybe Nonna w
ould have talked Ginny out of this damn trip.
He tried to imagine Ginny at their dinner table, forced to listen Big Q’s pronouncements about the state of the world, seeing Nonna jumping up every few moments to fetch something else for the meal. Ginny, of course, would get up with her nine times out of ten, and be waved back to her seat—Nonna would save her own grilling of the Yankee girl for when they were washing the dishes. And of course Ginny would help her with them, being so polite. That would go a long way with Lee’s grandma.
The whole thing was nice to think about, even if it did needle his chest a bit.
“Get some chickens.” Mark Kasprak grinned, scratching at the back of his neck. His hair was bound and determined not to take any of this lying down, now that he'd slept through an entire night. “Put a coop on the back of the truck.”
Steph rolled her blue eyes; she looked a lot better now that she’d had some rest. Her changecolor hair had thickened up and darkened without washing, and she was busy trying to braid a hank of it on the right side of her head to go with the hank on the left. “I ain’t cleaning that shi—” She glanced at Ginny, who was eyeing the glass front door. “That stuff up.”
Lee was betting she’d try to cross both braids over her head like Ginny often did. How on earth did girls get things like that to stay? That would be something worth figuring out, he decided. A man's fingers would be too blunt, but he could certainly wield a hairbrush.
“Run a hose under the floor. Wash it all right out.” Mark was having fun poking at Steph, and she enjoyed shoveling it right back. It was kind of heartening to see.
Ginny poured hot water into her tea mug and rose, gracefully. She plucked at Lee’s elbow. “We need to talk.” Her curls hadn’t worked free of the French braid down her back yet, and she looked a lot smaller without her bulky jacket on. Camping suited her, though, except for the circles under her eyes.
She wasn’t sleeping well. At least he didn’t have to wonder why. He wasn’t getting much rest himself, what with standing watch. As soon as he lay down, one uncomfortable thought after another danced through his head, and he’d lost the soldier’s habit of dropping off anyhow. It would come back, he just needed to adjust. He’d managed a few hours last night, listening to Juju breathe while French was at the front of the store on watch.
Lee nodded, steadying his own mug and wondering what the hell. Maybe she wanted to say something about last night. I like bein your useful. How stupid was that? He’d spent his entire time on watch blushing about it, and the fact that it was true didn’t make it any less embarrassing. “Finish eatin and get packed up,” he told the kids. “Wanna be out of here in an hour.”
“Yessir,” they chorused, and Steph giggled when Mark elbowed her.
Ginny drew him aside, into the mouth of the cereal aisle. Bright boxes marched on either side, promising sugar, fiber, fun, all sorts of things. How long before all the cardboard started to mold? It wasn’t that damp yet, but during a howler winter, even the tightest building would develop a few holes.
Especially when abandoned, without anyone breathing inside to hold it together. “Somethin wrong, Miss Virginia?”
“Did you see them?” She’d turned pale, her face tilted up to his like a flower. “Last night?”
His stomach turned over. He didn’t drop his coffee, but his fingers loosened and it slopped inside his familiar white and blue NRA mug with the decal wearing off under repeated washing. “See what?”
“There were a bunch of them outside the store. The parking lot was full.” She swallowed, dryly, and now that the kids couldn’t see the worry was printed all over her, ten feet tall and lit up with neon. “They were watching.”
Shit. “What time was this?” His back prickled, something close to gooseflesh walking up and down his spine.
“I don’t know—maybe four in the morning? A little after?” Ginny studied his face. “Steph heard something and woke up, looked out the window.”
“Huh.” He’d shaken Brandon awake for watch at four AM, and the parking lot had been an empty wasteland of whipped, frozen melt then. So, afterward. Four-thirty? Five? Why hadn’t the college boy said anything about it? “They movin around?”
“Some, at the edges. Some were going around the cars. Others were just standing there, watching the store.” She sucked in her top lip, bit it for a moment, and her paleness was alarming. She’d been sitting on this almost all morning, dammit. “If they figure out how to break the doors—”
“Let’s not borrow trouble.” He had the idea trouble was going to show up, whether borrowed or bought. “We’ll be gone tonight.”
“But what if they can sense us somehow?” The I-want line between her eyebrows was back, and working itself in deeper.
Christ, she was too goddamn smart. He should call that little line the I-worry instead. “We keep movin.”
“What about when we don’t have a store or a building to hide in?” The line didn’t go away. Oh, Nonna would have liked her, I-want line, Yankee accent, and all. No moss grows on that girl, she would have said, her apple-cheeked face crinkling up with amusement.
Or maybe Lee was just thinking what he’d want Nonna to say. At least she wasn’t asking who’d been on watch. “Then there wouldn’t have been enough sick people for a crowd of critters,” he said, slowly, giving himself time to think and space between each word to slow her down too. “We keep watch. Sleep in the cars.” Getting a canopy for the truck, and maybe something for that Brandon fellow to drive, would be a good idea anyway.
“Great. My back’s already killing me.” But the worry eased, her face smoothing out, and Lee found out his heart was doing something funny. Swelling inside him, like. It felt good to ease her.
Real good. “Maybe we’ll find a hotel tonight.” He decided not to tell her any of his troubling thoughts. There wasn’t any point. “Real sheets and all.”
Her shy smile warmed him clear through. Pretty fingers cupped around her tea, steam lifting to touch her face like he wanted to as she inhaled its warmth. “Her collarbone looked too fragile to hold her shoulders. Sounds good.” But that worry-line returned and Lee waited, examining her face.
“Well?” he said, finally.
“I hesitate to…” She glanced over his shoulder. Mr French was pontificating about something, sounded like. Boy did not know when to shut up, and Lee didn’t like the notion of being trapped in a vehicle with him. “Steph said what she heard wasn’t out there. It was inside. The doorknob rattling.” Ginny’s eyes had darkened, and her shoulders curved inward. “Maybe just the building settling, I don’t know.”
Those eyes of hers said different. They said she was used to men not believing her about other men, and plenty of other things as well.
So that’s why she didn’t ask who was on watch. She already suspected. Lee thought this over, and the idea of shooting the college boy and leaving him for the next wave of snow to cover—or the critters to snack on—was powerfully tempting. “We can tell the French fellow to travel his own way,” he said, finally. “Wouldn’t mind that at all.” And if it took a bullet or two to make it stick, well, that was the way of the world. He supposed he should feel bad about how soon he was thinking of fragging a civilian, but this was what you’d call an extraordinary situation.
In enemy territory with your squad to look out for, you got used to that equation—and its solutions, no matter how grim—right quick.
“Shouldn’t we stick together, though? We’re all, you know. Human.” She paused. “Or uninfected, at least.” Her expression changed again. “I mean…oh, hell.”
“I know what you mean.” His face felt funny. He realized he was smiling, and her wry grin in response was a beauty. “I ain’t gonna have him with us if he makes you or Steph uncomfortable.” There. That was reasonable enough. “Ain’t worth it.” Shut up, Lee. Makin a fool out of yourself. He watched her take another sip of tea, giving herself time to think. Behind him, something clattered—Kasprak, clowning around. Steph’
s laugh in response, and a clatter of mugs. Juju, telling them to quit monkeyin and get to packin.
“We should stick together,” Ginny said, finally. “The more of us, the better, when those things show up.”
He didn’t necessarily agree, but she sounded sure. And really, if he put one in French’s leg and left the motherfucker behind, during a scramble it could buy time for the rest of them to get away. “Aight,” he said. “But I’m watchin him.”
That made her her troubled frown retreat again, worry draining like a bathtub. “Me too.” Her earrings glittered, and her eyelashes were a dark fringe, veiling her gaze for a moment. “And maybe it wasn’t that, you know? I just…I have a bad feeling.” Ready for him to disagree, maybe.
“No shortage of that goin around.” Lee decided he wasn’t doing too badly. Hell, she might even call him comforting now. “Don’t you worry, Ginny.”
“Can’t stop.” She was smiling again, and the weight had slipped off those slim shoulders. “But it helps to hear you tell me not to”
Then, wonder of wonders, she stepped forward. He didn’t realize what she was fixing to do until she’d gone on tiptoe, her tea and his own coffee splashing a little as her free hand curled around the edge of his leather vest and pulled him down. Her lips touched his cheek—he hadn’t had a chance to scrape yet that morning.
Lee froze, hunched uncomfortably, and the simmer-scent of a healthy woman rose from her hair and skin, filling his nose. When she let go of his vest, he didn’t straighten, just stared at her like he’d been hit on the head.
And Ginny, of all things, winked at him, before swinging around and heading away to help with the packing and loading.
Goddamn.
Knowing Be Better
She’d seen the ads for this place—FUDDER’S RV on a big revolving sign, the billboard next to it easily viewed from the freeway with a giant, gaudy plywood rendition of Uncle Sam next to a redneck conservative Comment of the Month, one the rotund owner with his shades and white Brimley-esque mustache apparently thought was a crushing response to any “damlibruls” unlucky enough to live in this part of the Greatest States. Ginny had always found it unsettling and funny in equal measure, especially with the full-color ads in the Thursday free newspaper circulars shouting NO MONEY DOWN and WE’LL FINANCE U! The TV spots were even more hilarious, with the owner doing his best Crazy Dave impersonation filtered through a drawl so thick it was a wonder he could stuff all the words into a sixty-second ad.