Author: MCD

Over the next 12 weeks I will be sharing a chapter of my novel After The Virus  each sunday. Warning: for coarse language and brutal content. This is a post-apocalyptic love story. I hope you enjoy getting a peek. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If you are so inclined, purchase links can be found on the side bar. Oh, and not to play favourites, but this is one of my all time favourite chapters – that I have even written. – Meghan

Read Chapter 1

Read Chapter 2

Read Chapter 3

——

WILL

The crinkle of wrappers drew his attention. He guessed she was about nine; huddled in an aisle at the Drug Mart and inhaling chocolate bars. The absolute terror in her eyes made his stomach knot. This was what the world had become: a girl, mortally terrified, when she saw any man. He couldn’t think what the hell to say or do that wouldn’t be a threat — keep holding the rifle or put it down? Are you alone? Are you okay? 

He was pretty sure that was blood caked underneath her ragged fingernails.

He finally settled for, “Hey, sorry to sneak up on you. I was just gathering some supplies. I live the next town over. My name is Will.”

She didn’t answer, but her grip on the snickers bar eased. He continued, “Don’t mind me. I’m just going to pick up some shampoo and stuff.”

He eased back and crossed into the next aisle to stare at the still stocked shelves. He didn’t need shampoo, but he added it to his box anyway. He could hear her gathering chocolate bars into the sack she wore slung across her shoulders, then silence. He sidestepped to the soap.

Aware of her tracking him, he slowly moved around the store. He fought the urge to grab, feed, and scrub her clean of the blood and bruises.

He briefly contemplated the barrettes and, after he turned the corner, he heard plastic torn and wondered if she’d picked the pink ones. He was amazed she’d survived alone all these months, and then realized she probably hadn’t been on her own all this time. Was this her home? Were her parents and siblings now stinking, bloated corpses in a nearby house? Did she still return to them at night? Who’d been feeding her? Or what had happened to her caretakers to force them to abandon her here? Or, even more sickeningly, whose clutches had she escaped?

He didn’t think he was up for this. There’d been a few children in the survivor groups he’d drifted, but he hadn’t taken any responsibility.

He paused in the magazine section and, briefly, wondered if the actress on the Vanity Fair cover still had eyes that blue even in death.

The girl’s eyes were dark like her matted hair. He felt like a pedophile as he placed a coloring book and crayons in his now full box.

She was waiting for him by the entrance, and he briefly wondered how she had gotten in when he’d struggled to prop open the automatic door. He smiled, and she didn’t return the gesture. She was clutching another snickers bar and heavily weighing her options; trying to figure him.

“That’s my truck,” he gestured with the box towards his Ford and then stepped by her to load the box and the other supplies in the back.

He closed the tailgate just as he heard the passenger door slam. She buckled up, then sat, clutching her sack and staring straight ahead. He might vomit. He wasn’t sure if it was the fear of hurting her further, or the trust she’d so readily placed in him, that made him ill.

He ripped open a box of granola bars and climbed into the truck. He placed the bars on the seat beside him and shifted the truck into gear.

“Might be stale,” he warned, then he ate one anyway.

She reached a tentative hand, caked in dirt and blood, to press play on the stereo. He’d been listening to this on the drive over, but now, the third verse of Paul Simon’s “Call Me Al” hit him in the gut. He finally got it. He clenched his jaw to quell the rising emotion. The girl bobbed her head along with the bass line. He’d never had an epiphany before.

In this moment, he chose to become the man he’d always wanted his father to be.

 ——

 It had taken one day and three snickers bars to coax the girl out of the truck, then four more days to convince her that an upstairs bedroom was just as safe as the front hall closet. He wasn’t too sure when she began, finally, to sleep a full night in the bed, but he didn’t manage to get her in the bath until he remembered he’d found some animals soaps in the grocery. He’d also offered her a choice between Star Wars and Barbie sheets – she’d picked Star Wars and he wondered if she’d ever seen the movies.

He really didn’t know what he was doing and the people who’d built this home hadn’t exactly left self-help child rearing books lying around, but he figured she would need to feel safe alone before she would allow him to be her protector. So, to that end, he put together a backpack under her watchful eye.

He, pleased that he’d collected extras, carefully placed all the survival supplies he had on hand on the old farm-style kitchen table. A mini first aid kit, solar blanket, batteryless flashlight, waterproof matches, water packs, and granola bars.

He talked about each item in terms of function and safety as he tucked it away in the backpack. She watched his hands more than his face, but as he zipped the pack and crossed around the table to hand it to her, she slipped off her stool and turned her back so he could slip it over her too-slim-for-such-a-burden arms. She patted his knee and later added her crayons and coloring book to the empty outside pocket.

Then he taught her how to shoot a gun.

Over the next 12 weeks I will be sharing a chapter of my novel After The Virus  each sunday. Warning: for coarse language and brutal content. This is a post-apocalyptic love story. I hope you enjoy getting a peek. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If you are so inclined, purchase links can be found on the side bar. – Meghan

Read Chapter 1

Read Chapter 2

——

RHIANNON

She’d found a wheelbarrow for the dog from one of those urban garden centres. The place seemed stripped of anything remotely food related. A motorcycle with a sidecar, even if she could drive one, would be too conspicuous. Her last group had figured that out the hard way.

The dog’s leg was dislocated. She certainly wasn’t a vet, but she could read. Finding medical books was as simple as opening the front door of a veterinarian. Stitching through actual flesh was gut wrenching. And still, even calculating for weight, she’d worried about dosage.

She’d also found a tiny strawberry plant under the mulch she’d salvaged as rain protection. Wasting precious time, she’d repotted it.

——

She was headed to the haven of the mountains. There was no reason for them to follow, except revenge, which, she hoped, wasn’t worth it.

Then she saw the sign: REWARD FOR LIVE CAPTURE. The words a child-like scrawl in red paint slashed across a billboard from her last modeling gig. The campaign itself was so recent she hadn’t cashed the cheque before the dying started. She’d never thought her eyes looked that blue in real life, but they sure did when her face was hawking mascara. So…they’d recognized her.

She glanced down at her chipped fingernails. She was sure she didn’t resemble her last film; she’d spent the entire time in a wedding dress and wielding a gun. She wondered what the reward would be; valuables held no value now. This wasn’t the first time her face — and body — had gotten her in trouble. Even he had told her, he, her stepfather, that he only touched her because she was so beautiful. She was a prize or a pricey piece of meat.

She named the dog B.B., because she was just blood and bones when she found, rescued, and patched her up. B.B. didn’t mind the wheelbarrow.

They traveled evenings to early morning, and got off the highway ASAP. When you had no idea where you were going, time didn’t factor at all.

She hoped they’d assume she’d head down the coast to LA, but she hadn’t been there when the chaos had really hit and wasn’t ever going back.

 —–

B.B. didn’t stay in the wheelbarrow for more than a few days, which was good, because, despite all the Pilates, her shoulders screamed.

Going was slow with B.B. limping. They stopped, often, for supplies, but never slept where they scavenged. Dog food was oddly easy to find. She tried to not let B.B. gorge, but it was difficult, rationing a starving animal, and, despite her injury, B.B. bulked up fast.

It was four days before they saw another human.

 ——

Memory was a trap as sure as chain or concrete; one that she’d armored against even before she found herself living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland — were haunting and terror were everyday events. It didn’t do to dwell, wasn’t a functional way for her at least, but some days, like today, with the sun warm on her back, and B.B.’s nails click, click, clicking on the pavement, her mind wandered.

Often, when people got hint of the bits of terrible she’d confronted in her life, they wondered at the fact that she wasn’t lying in a basement somewhere with a needle in her arm and a hole in her soul.

She couldn’t answer those survivor questions, couldn’t be a life coach or some sort of role model, because she had no idea what made her different, what made her brain different than others who had suffered — she’d made the best of the situation, controlled it as much as possible and walked away when she got the chance, though some ties proved harder to break than others.

Sometimes the other person refused to let go.

In moments of weakness, she worried that the armor — all the years of protective layers built up around her heart and soul — had nothing underneath to protect.

Enough dwelling, Rhiannon. Keep on moving onwards. She had a plan — get away — and someone to protect — B.B. — that was as far as she needed to focus.

Except, except — the billboard haunted. She’d thought, when she’d had time to even think, she could shed that image and become, what, she didn’t know, but something other than herself. But that billboard, the fact they hadn’t raped her, the fact they’d given her a guided tour on the way in; it felt — planned? Contrived? Maybe she was just paranoid after so many years of so many fan stalkers, only one of which had ever laid violent hands on her and she had to admit, if only to herself, she had had some culpability in that situation.

B.B. pressed a shoulder against her knee and even before her brain cleared of its memory fog she could feel the tension rippling through the dog’s flank.

B.B. must have sensed the man about a mile before, because her nose was glued to the ground.

She, confident they’d left the city behind, had carelessly pushed their traveling further into daylight.

He, the man, had laid traps.

B.B.’s questing nose dislodged a pile of ripped up, wilted wildflowers and she yanked the dog backwards seconds from triggering a wicked leg hold trap — a trap big enough for a bear.

She froze, standing in the middle of the road with her fist clench around B.B.’s collar; every muscle in her body screamed exposure. Sheer rock rose to her left and dropped into a massive river to her right. No one was crazy enough to ride those rapids. Not any more.

She tamped down on her flight instinct. She let her gaze wander further up the road where seemingly random piles of leaves, weeds, and grass barely covered more traps. So, he was a moron then, but, obviously, violent.

Whistling.

B.B. growled; her target uncertain, but her belly low. She finally unfroze, had sense enough to drop to the ground, and crawl to the cliff edge. B.B. followed.

He was a hundred feet below: naked, hairy and fishing. Weren’t two of those three illegal? Or at least they used to be. She’d be worried about that hook, as a man.

The idea of fresh salmon beckoned, but leg traps? That’s a big no way, no how.

She tried to ease back, but then, just as she thought she was out of sight, she dislodged some rock — shale, her useless brain offered — with a twist of her foot. In the endless second it took for rock to hit river rock, she wondered if she should put more stock in astrology and that doomsday horoscope she’d read before this bad run.

He saw her.

He shouted.

She ran.

She ran forward not back, because she was miles past any decent place to hide. B.B. could barely keep up and wouldn’t be able to maintain.

She twisted her ankle, fell, and bloodied her palms. B.B. whined through her panting.

She looked up to find her forehead inches from a trap.

Fucking bastard. Fuck, fuck, fucking bastard with his little shriveled dick — and she didn’t give a shit if that river was fed by a glacier or what.

This wasn’t the time to fall and stay down. That time had passed, years before this shit. If her mother hadn’t destroyed her, nothing would.

So she got up.

Only then did she see the path carved in the cliff. Unless he had a fucking elevator, they’d be gone long before he got here.

——

He came for them that night, reeking of rotting fish and human waste. He hadn’t bothered to dress, perhaps clothing would have slowed down the plan that was evident by his engorged dick; it was, she noticed, as puny as she’d thought it would be.

He slunk in by the light of her embers, his belly low as he, on all fours, stalked her. She’d expected him, but was still thrown by the sudden, full body, vicious attack.

Of course, not as thrown as he was by the bear trap in her sleeping bag.

He screamed and thrashed, but still managed to show surprise when she swung down from the tree. Unbelievably, lust hardened his face even more than the pain. She didn’t take this as a compliment, knowing that any woman or maybe any warm body would do for this crazy — he considered himself a hunter, after all.

She was sorry to see that the sleeping bag softened the teeth of the trap. Unless it got infected, he probably wouldn’t lose the leg. What a pity.

“Get this the hell off me!” he demanded, “I wasn’t coming to kill you! I haven’t seen a…woman…talk… I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“I believe the common way a living being is forced to get out of this sort of mess is to chew their own leg off,” she sneered. “Try that.”

“Fucking bitch!”

B.B. lunged for his throat and she half-heartedly held her off. Revoltingly, he fear pissed; the spray soiled her runners.

“You’re right about the bitch part, on two counts, but certainly not the fucking.” And, leaving him to his hopefully dire fate, she pulled the still snapping and snarling B.B. away.

She always did like a great exit line, though she mourned the loss of a perfectly good sleeping bag.

Over the next 12 weeks I will be sharing a chapter of my novel After The Virus  each sunday. Warning: for coarse language and brutal content. This is a post-apocalyptic love story. I hope you enjoy getting a peek. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If you are so inclined, purchase links can be found on the side bar. – Meghan

Read Chapter 1

——

HIM

He wasn’t too sure how many bodies he’d lifted onto the pyre, but he was damn sure they weren’t going to burn like well-aged firewood.

‘Course, he’d never burned a body before.

He didn’t count. Didn’t want to count. He’d done everything he could before he’d dealt with the bodies. Cleared the cars, boarded windows, even swept the main street.

There weren’t more than 30 houses in the township, but they’d been prolific people. The bodies of the children particularly bothered him.

He wasn’t one of them originally, but he thought they might have accepted him eventually despite the twang in his accent and his permanent tan.

He’d never know now — every last one of them was dead or, if there had been survivors, they hadn’t stuck around.

He didn’t mind the quiet.

His life before hadn’t been so labor intensive, though he’d painted his father’s house one summer during high school: brown with brown trim. It still bothered him, not using a contrast color for the trim; ‘course it didn’t much matter, who knew if the house was even still standing.

But he enjoyed feeling his muscles stretch under his skin. He felt powerful here; this town was something he could control among the chaos.

It was getting warmer, so he had had to deal with the bodies. He was pretty sure that “immune to the virus” didn’t mean immune to everything, and he wasn’t interested in dying because he’d been too much of a coward to clean.

He didn’t like to think about immunity, because that just brought up thoughts of self-worth and why he was still here when others weren’t.

Others. What a nothing of a word to use, even in his own head. People. People, who he’d never loved, couldn’t love, like they’d deserved.

He stopped shifting bodies. He’d tied them all, one by one, in sheets from the homes he found them in, hoping that they wouldn’t break apart too badly on the way to the fire. The back of the pickup was almost empty. It wasn’t time for a break, but he could feel the darkness pulling him.

He cracked a can of cola, Coke, of course, though he couldn’t really tell you the difference. The bubbles always somehow lightened his mood.

He’d spent months dwelling, wallowing in wretchedness, hopping from survivor group to survivor group, until all the dead had finally died.

All the wants, needs, and desires of all the other Immune, even though there were so few of them remaining, crowded and controlled his own.

He grew tired of not knowing which woman had crawled into his sleeping bag and, come morning, the tense grins from their chosen protectors. As far as he knew, he never impregnated any of them. Their need to breed when surrounded by death was almost instinctual, but it wasn’t his instinct. Their eyes grew dim and sunken as each month passed. Hunger gnawed more than bellies.

When spring made mountains passable, he’d moved on from the final group. He thought they’d been sorry to see him go, his able body and all.

He crushed the empty pop can, but placed it carefully in the blue bin in the truck bed; you never knew these days what you’d need tomorrow. Though he couldn’t quite figure what he’d need a crushed soda can for, making the world worse than it already was wasn’t his first choice.

Thinking of needs, he wouldn’t mind a bit of conversation and a welcomed warm body in his bed. He shook his head and shouldered a corpse.

He turned and saw the three men. Two had their rifles, casual, on their shoulders, but one, the stupid-looking one, of course, had it aimed.

He heaved the last body on to the pyre. They just watched. His own rifle was in the truck, feet away. Not that it mattered against three.

“Coke’s cold,“ he offered, as he removed his Dallas Stars baseball hat and wiped his forehead, all the while watching Stupid with the rifle.

“Lower that, ya redneck idiot,” the big, hairy one ordered, his laugh definitely forced around the edges. Stupid listened, begrudgingly.

“You’re long way from home, Tex,” Big said, as he presented his hand. A handshake would force him to step further away from his rifle.

Now I make out if they’re actually friendly or just aching to kill. The shake might tell me, but the eyes are a better bet. Neither did.

“I think them Stars might’ve had half a chance at the cup this year,” Big considered in a way that made it clear he wasn’t talking hockey.

“Fairies dancing ‘round on ice,” Stupid bulldozed over the underlying tension, “that ain’t no mind skill, now football, that’s like chess-”

“You didn’t clean this place just for yourself, did ya?” Big, ignoring Stupid, asked.

“Yep,” he replied, knowing they’d think him lying. “Not halfway through the bodies, but I started with the hotel,” he hoped they missed mattresses. Then he upped the ante: “Got a stove working.”

The quiet one, the one he was damn sure was the leader, spit and spoke, “Hot food and a soft bed is a fine offer for strangers, thank you.”

He turned, expecting them to follow, and picked up his rifle from the truck bed. He heard no bolt slide in response, so he continued round the back of the general store.

“You got marshmallows?” Stupid asked.

Marshmallows?

“For the bonfire?”

He chanced a look back at them — they, stone cold detached, kept pace. To see all the dead, all piled there, was more than a horrifying sight, but, obviously, not to them. He was in trouble, the dying kind.

He was going to have to add them to the pile.

Killing was easier imagined than done. In fact, except for some angel-of-mercy deals, he’d never actually killed a person or an animal. No matter that they’d eventually figured out The Infected never healed. No matter that the dying didn’t always want to go in a painful puddle of puke and piss. Euthanasia, self-defense — it’s all still murder. Maybe he didn’t like where this life had dragged him, killing and screaming, but he’d do it.

——

He turned the corner onto Main Street. They’d parked dirt-crusted motorcycles by the hotel, so staying, at least overnight, was a foregone conclusion.

He glanced over at the general store and was happy to see they hadn’t smashed the remaining windows.

“We aren’t looters,” Big supplied.

“Am tired of canned shit, wouldn’t mind some fresh meat, in more than one way, if you get my drift, hey Tex?” Stupid liked to blurt agenda.

“I never was much of a hunter, and couldn’t bring myself to kill if I caught anyway,” he answered as dubious looks passed between the three.

The motorcycles were well ridden, and he momentarily thought he was wrong about their intent to stay, but then he saw that the hotel door was ajar.

“Saw you loading the truck, couldn’t figure what you was doing, so we looked about a bit, before we came to how do you do,” Big offered.

Who was the stupid one now? Overly secure in his remote location he’d been blasting the truck stereo and hadn’t even heard the motorcycles, and now they’d pretty much cornered him.

“The town is on a well, so there’s showers, cold, but still,” he offered as he crossed the three-story hotel’s old-fashioned veranda.

 ——

The lobby was shuttered against the heat, and the gloom did little to illuminate the velvet and wood décor he’d so painstakingly restored.

They’d dumped gear here, and chose to only carry rifles to meet and assess him, but it wasn’t much, so maybe there were only three of them.

“Kitchen’s through there. You’ll find food. Stove works, like I said,” he directed.

“Don’t seem like you live here regular,” Big judged.

“Yeah, you running a bed & bang, Tex?” Stupid actually clapped him on the shoulder.

The dull air dropped degrees.

Stupid removed his hand.

“Stop crowding the man,“ Leader instructed. “He’s solicitous, not accustomed to the company of fools. A personal choice, am I right?”

“Sometimes I don’t understand nothing that comes outta your mouth,” Stupid whined and, in that breath, Leader backhanded him to his knees. Instantly, Stupid began to blubber and grovel.

Big stepped back to avoid eye contact and association.

Leader caressed the blade in his belt.

Don’t react — but — if they start killing each other, they aren’t going to stop there. So, compounding his idiocy and assuring doom, he spoke.

“Just oiled the floors,” he drawled.

Leader tensed his shoulders, clenched the hilt of his blade, but then he cackled, like an actual madwoman.

“You got yourself a bonfire to light, Tex. Take the bitch out of my sight, and put him to work,” Leader ordered, “otherwise he’s worthless.”

Big and Stupid looked confused by, and then wary of, this suggested separation. Not that he was pleased with being ordered around either. They hadn’t asked his name, hadn’t offered theirs; a sign of disassociation, so said his useless psych class, but now he was walking away-

He sensed the knife seconds before it would have severed his spine.

He dived onto his hands and kicked Stupid in the gut as the blade sliced his leg.

Rolling to his feet, he saw that Leader was on the veranda casually lighting a cigar.

Stupid, who’d lost his knife with his fall, charged.

Jesus, he thought, as Stupid slammed a shoulder into his rib cage, it’s a God damn game.

As proof, Stupid grunted, “…only room for three!”

As he struggled with Stupid, warm blood flooded his leg. Damn it! Did he slash an artery? Could someone bleed to death from a calf wound? Then he remembered; he’d never had had any damn idea what a damn artery looked like, let alone where the bloody Christ one was in the body.

Stupid, without his knife, wasn’t up for twelve rounds. He was mean, but skinny and a little slow. A piece of siding to the head took him down. Winded and light-headed from blood loss, he stared down at the board in his hand. Damn, now I’m going to have to re-board that window. Stupid groaned and rolled over on his back.

“To the death, Tex,“ Leader cheerfully suggested, “you want his place, you kill him for it.”

“Not interested in your sick game,” he spat. He probably shouldn’t have sneered while saying so, because Leader had that psychotic glint again.

“Allow me to make it perfectly clear: it’s you or him,” Leader warned. Stupid started to cry, not blubbering like before, but silent shaking. He tossed the piece of siding away.

Leader raised and cocked his rifle, “You going to die for a man who would have willingly killed you? We are the chosen ones in this revitalized, reborn world, but here a man has to step up, has to fight for his existence. Fight or die.”

Christ, he’s one of those, those messiah complexes.

“Listen, the world that left us behind wasn’t half bad,” he offered. “Why ruin the-“

“Kill him or I will; he’s worthless to me now. Why sacrifice yourself if he’s going to die anyway?” Leader argued. “Prove yourself and live.”

“Boss, maybe-” Big began to beg, but faltered as Leader turned dead eyes on him. Stupid still silently wept; tears eroded his aggression.

He couldn’t stand by and watch a man be killed. Being stupid wasn’t an executionable offense.

“None of us survived because we fought some war; we all lucked out. Now, it’s a big, empty world, so you go play your game somewhere else.” He was insane, gambling with his life, but words continued to flow from his freed mouth. ”You’re no second coming. You. Just. Lucked. Out.”

Leader, his lips stretched across his teeth, aimed. No way to miss this close, so he waited for the bullet to carve through his skull. He heard the shot before he ever felt it, which was wrong, wrong sense order, wasn’t it? Though maybe a brain had no feeling nerves.

Leader slumped away from the gun that Big still held to his temple. Stupid scrambled to his feet to supplicate himself around Big’s knees.

“I…I…,” Stupid stuttered, his words stopped up with emotion.

“I know, I know, you’re welcome. Now you go on ahead, move the body before it stains Tex’s patio,” Big cajoled.

“You won’t mind the extra on your pile o’ bodies, will ya, Tex?” Big grinned. “You got a nice place here, but we’ll be moving on tonight.”

Still struck dumb, he watched Stupid haul the body back towards the bonfire. “It’s safer, safer to, to travel at night,” he finally offered.

“Yup,” Big agreed as he crossed towards the motorcycles and, straddling one, he turned to say, ”they don’t make ‘em like you anymore, Tex.”

“My name is Will,” he offered.

“Well, Will, thanks for the morality lesson. We won’t be seeing you again.” Big drowned out his own laugh with the roar of his motorcycle.

 ——

He watched until he couldn’t catch a glimpse of them on the horizon, then he scrubbed the blood off the veranda while the pyre burned.

Over the next 12 weeks I will be sharing a chapter of my novel After The Virus  each sunday. Warning: for coarse language and brutal content. This is a post-apocalyptic love story. I hope you enjoy getting a peek. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated. If you are so inclined, purchase links can be found on the side bar. – Meghan

——

HER

Waking up was never a good idea, and this morning she had momentarily thought she was…before, before them, before this life. If this was what it was to survive the virus, she didn’t much like it, but the alternative, killing herself, seemed cheap and easy.

She could hear a woman weeping; something she hadn’t ever done. Shut the fuck up, you’ll just entice them — the walking horrors and their keepers.

They hadn’t raped her, yet. They had other plans.

If you weren’t for breeding, they fed you to The Infected; that’s how they kept them alive, inhumanly strong and terrifying — the blood of the immune.

It felt like months, but she was sure she had only been here a few days. She was also very sure her friends-of-necessity were dead.

It was difficult to gauge in the dark. They, all women, were crammed into some concrete box, not chained, but definitely trapped. There was a toilet, the door had been removed and it didn’t flush, but at least they weren’t continually sitting in piss and shit.

She was definitely in some city they were working to get back online, but food still came in cans.

There’d been a power surge yesterday and, when her eyes adjusted, she’d seen the door through which she’d find freedom or death.

Chair-like cages, stirrups, and women with electrodes to their heads and bellies — baby mills? They had made sure she’d seen it all, like they were giving her some sort of insanity tour, when they’d dragged her in.

She was either going to go crazy, die of boredom, or kill the woman who kept trying to fiddle her whenever she succumbed to sleep.

Footsteps.

She could also hear the chains they kept around The Infecteds necks. Why bring them at all? These few women were too broken to bolt.

They came every few hours to either take women or drop new cattle. Normally, along with all the others, she pressed against a gritty wall, eyes downcast, willing them not to see her.

Not today.

Today, when she heard the bolts sliding, she stood and, stumbling over scrambling bodies, moved to the very center of the sty. Trapped here, she was losing all sense of being. It was time to make her stand — it was time to try to get through that door. She’d rather be dead than immobile.

She’d been told, before this, that she was beautiful, that her eyes were striking, so she ran her fingers through her hair and tilted her head. Harsh light struck her eyes, but she struggled to keep them wide, perhaps even coy, if she could remember how to be so. Silence fell, and, even more so than before, she felt their stares.

Two men loomed in the doorway with, heard more than seen, it — one of them, The Infected, all chain-rattling and snuffling great gobs of green snot. There had to be an ever-present danger of the hunter mutinying the master — they didn’t even keep the chains taut, but, right now, she didn’t give a fuck about anyone’s life but her own.

“Hello, sweet thang,” he, with the shotgun, purred. ”Remember me?”

Over his shoulder, The Infected groaned in an odd, soft sort of pleasure, at the smell of so many of the Immune so near.

She wouldn’t reply, not to him, not as if he had a soul, but she did suck on her lower lip to strike a thinking pose and keep them distracted.

Yeah asshole, I remember. Your dick is so insignificant you use a shotgun instead. She wouldn’t scream, so you pulled the trigger three times.

“We were just coming to get ya. Lucky girl. The Boss wants a taste, so no chains and chair for you, you get to ride the biblical way.”

Great, he thinks he’s funny — maybe even charming — but the fucking prick screamed his own name as he jizzed all over that fucking shotgun.

They reached for her, but she stepped forward so their fingers just brushed her bare arms.

The Infected growled at her nearness.

She dropped her eyes. She hadn’t been this close to one since — since it was someone she had known before. It reeked, worse for having been dying for months.

“Look out, sweet,” Asshole cautioned, “any bites out of you the Boss wants, he’ll take.” The two of them yanked, harshly, on The Infected’s neck chain.

What the fuck was his name? She couldn’t remember and she wanted to shriek it in triumph when she bludgeoned him with his own shotgun.

Their caution hinted that they wouldn’t hurt her, not too badly, unless forced. A woman was rare. A woman of childbearing age was precious. So, her full lips and wide hips would keep her relatively safe, until — well, there wasn’t going to be an until, not like this, not here, not if she could do anything about it.

They guided her down a concrete hall. She could hear generators whirling nearby, but didn’t see what they powered. Shadowed stairs led up. She could smell dampness; not the ever-present seeping rusty water mixed with piss and puke, but actual fresh rain.

The stairs led out. Outside.

She swallowed her hope so they didn’t feel her energy blooming. How much of the city did they control? All of it? If so, she was fucked.

More men at the top of the stairs equaled more staring. She hoped their Boss scared them dickless, otherwise she’d miscalculated. She could already feel pricks coming to attention, ready and willing to plunder her abyss. Except The Infected, of course; it just wanted to eat her.

She paused to consider that she might be crazy; she’d been in her head for days now — what if this was all some sort of massive psychosis brought on from some brain tumor — but then she quickly discarded this theory as unhelpful and irrelevant. It’s not like this was some movie, and even if it was all in her head, she still had to be herself, and react like she would; she still had to be in control.

They reached for her because she’d stopped, so she jerked away. They laughed. Men. Laughing. The virus had really shit-kicked women’s lib. She hadn’t grown up with four brothers not knowing how to handle a man. They were dogs and she was nobody’s bitch. Her bite was worse.

Cool air lifted her hair; she breathed like she hadn’t had oxygen for days, and looked to see that they were in a glassed space, like an atrium. It was night. More underlings held the door open, expectantly, so she headed that way. Outside, the street was wet enough to reflect the moon.

The Infected, already highly riled, lunged at the door guys as it followed her. They’d been stupid enough to lean in as she’d passed by, perhaps hoping for some contact, perhaps hoping for a whiff, or a smile.

Shotgun Asshole got tangled in its chain.

Yelling and beating commenced. The Infected roared in response even as it tried to cower between the neglected dried husks of the indoor palm trees.

The street was empty.

She felt the sure grip of her Merrell soles as she sprung ahead and was fucking glad she’d salvaged them from an outlet mall only days before they captured her.

These men had grown accustomed to, and lazy with, their dominance. She was a hundred feet away before they gave chase. She hit side streets and turned often.

The Infected could track her, of course. It loved a hunt.

She darted into an alley, to where they had obviously been clearing cars, though they hadn’t bothered dealing with the rotting corpses. She forced her brain to see these just as obstacles, to be climbed and dodged. If her hand sunk into some soggy chest cavity or her ankle twisted in mushed brains, she just ignored it. Her heart beat firmly in survival mode.

As she hit a relatively cleared section, some other person or people cut her path — perhaps deliberately — twice.

The effort to breathe quietly used too much air. She couldn’t soften the slap of her shoes on the wet concrete. She wasn’t going to make it.

She pressed behind a dumpster to listen to the chase. The men, and the bellowing Infected, were a couple of streets off, as best as she could gauge in the dark confusion. She pondered that she hadn’t seen any dead bodies for a couple of streets now, but then chided herself to focus.

“Left, left, and right,” a voice cut through her labored breathing. She tried listening to source him in the dark, but stopping breathing wasn’t currently an option. Was that heavily shadowed brick doorway concealing someone? The darkness was too deep to be sure. “Go,” he insisted. Someone else darted from the doorway and headed right.

She ran left.

“I see her, heading towards the park,” a woman, from a window above and behind her, yelled.

Needing to trust the first voice, she veered left again and then right. A tall chain link fence, pushed by unseen hands, suddenly closed the alley behind her.

There were people here. People helping her escape. Her brain clicked from image to image. The crisscrossing of her path had been to confuse the hunter, to whom any immune blood beckoned. Then the guiding voice and now the gate, but she couldn’t seek haven, couldn’t risk that this new group wasn’t just like all the others had been — the disintegration of humanity seemed utterly complete.

She continued to run through alleys and back lanes until she realized she was completely alone and compelled to stop. She tucked into some shadows. Her stomach revolted; nothing came up.

 ——

 She might have passed out there. If so, that wasn’t good because she wasn’t sure how much lead time she’d lost, but then she heard barking.

Savage barking. A dog. Here? She’d only seen maggot-ridden corpses in yards and ditches since, since everyone who was going to die had. She instinctively followed the barks.

The barks lead in a direction she knew she shouldn’t go, but the dog’s pain and desperation drew her, and then, then she heard the laughter.

More men. Laughing.

Before she even located them, she picked up a heavy piece of metal, some rusted piece of plumbing that had deadly weight. Turning the corner, she found them clustered in a basketball court nestled between derelict high rises.

They were baiting the dog, a powerful rottweiler, against one of The Infected. Fuck, how many were they keeping alive? One less, if she had her way.

The dog is fatally hurt, her brain argued. You aren’t going to save it, even if you sacrifice yourself. But her feet kept moving.

She smashed the pipe down to split the nearest head and then, on the reverse stroke, probably sent nose bone shards into a second brain.

In the following confusion, she flipped the pipe lengthwise and drove it into The Infected’s back. Their skin was saggy, soft, a bit like butter.

She easily skewered its heart.

In its dying rage, it grabbed the nearest man and tore off an arm.

Clawing hands were all over her now.

“Fuck, hold her!”

By the screams, it sounded like The Infected was eating one of them, but two others had her down.

Her skull smacked the pavement.

Blackness engulfed.

She realized they were trying to undo her jeans. Her self-rigged chastity belt was holding them off, but not for long.

Though she’d lost the pipe, she lashed out with fists and feet and received another blow to the head. But the dog wasn’t out of the fight and it tore at the throat of the one on top of her.

With her upper body freed, she managed to smash her heel through the teeth of the one on her legs, and she was up, slipping in the blood, fleeing, once again, for her life.

——

 After a block, she chanced a look back. They weren’t following, but the dog was, barely — with each stride she took the dog fell further back.

She couldn’t stop. She could hear them shouting into walkie-talkies and The Infected’s dying bellows. They’d be reinforced and all over her soon.

The dog went down and then managed to get up again. Its left flank was torn, the skin dragging, and maybe the leg was broken or dislocated.

Even in this dark, they’d be able to follow the blood trail.

So, with her brain warring with something she hesitated to identify as her heart, she stopped and turned back.

The dog made it a few more feet before collapsing — down for good.

“Hey love,” her voice sounded harsh and she flinched, “I’ve got you, do you trust me?” Weren’t rotties supposed to average 100 pounds? Though this one was terribly emaciated, so maybe — Fuck. Don’t fucking think, just do, Rhiannon.

She approached, the dog laid down her head, and, taking that as submission and acceptance, she hunkered down and somehow rolled the dog into a fireman’s lift and up.

With the dog across her shoulders, she took a step, “We can do it: first a pharmacy, then food.” She always felt better with a solid script to follow.

She smiled, the feeling of which was foreign and freeing.