"Did you hear me...Riley?!" Drake shouted in my ear, pulling hard on my right arm, "I said we gotta get the h.e.l.l out of here!"

With a yank, he pulled me away from the impressive blood pool already forming beneath the body, and pushed me out of the gla.s.s lobby door that Drake had managed to completely shatter with his wild shooting from the stairwell. Our feet were still crunching on the gla.s.s a good twenty feet from the entryway.

"Huh?" I finally asked when we were half a block away, running down the deserted and cold street. I looked over my shoulder at the gla.s.s building and it stared back at me, sad and damaged from our brief shootout.

"Jesus-f.u.c.k!" Drake hissed, still pulling me by my arm. "d.a.m.n, that was close! We gotta move fast - they'll hear those shots for sure."

Words finally found their way from my blank mind to my numb mouth, "Wh-where are we going?" I fought the urge to upchuck all over Drake's side at the juvenile and vulnerable tone of my voice.

I will not cry, I will not cry, I WILL NOT CRY!

"d.a.m.n, woman. You weren't kidding, were you?" He glanced over his shoulder, his hand still attached to me. I was surprised when I looked down to see that he was actually holding my hand.

"What?"

"That you know how to take care of yourself," he said with a manic grin. I didn't like it. I imagined his face held together from the inside by scotch-tape and that if he grinned like that hard enough, the tape would tear away and he would become nothing but cracks and b.l.o.o.d.y gashes. He was gripping my hand too hard for me to pull it free, even though I jerked my arm several times.

"They're dead?" It came out a question, though I knew it was a fact. Two men, their bodies leaking out the blood they spent the last year trying to keep inside their bodies.

Drake stopped in the middle of the sidewalk in front of a building that had boarded over windows and unreadable graffiti splayed across the entire faade. I blinked at it, curious what monsters lingered inside the darkness.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I flinched when he reached a hand up to my face and attempted to fight back as he tilted my chin up. "I'm fine," I said through my clenched teeth.

"No, you're not. Drink some water." He reached into his pack and tossed a bottle at me, then turned away, continuing up the sidewalk at a brisk pace.

As I walked-jogged behind him, I drained the bottle of water and tossed it into the street, instantly appalled at my lack of concern for the environment as the plastic cylinder bounced twice before it rolled to a stop in the gutter. The environment - what a joke that had become. The millions of dead bodies polluting the ground and air outranked one empty plastic bottle.

But I still felt a pang of guilt. Because that's who I was. My guilty conscious would never leave me be. It nagged at me - picking at my brain like a small child does at a splinter in their toe that they won't let their mother touch. Every thought was followed by guilt. Every smile, every laugh I had over the last year made me feel like s.h.i.t because of it, but some of it was warranted, I knew that. I was a s.h.i.t for smiling when my kids were dead. A s.h.i.t for laughing after Fin was blown away in front of me. A s.h.i.t for bringing Connor and Kris into the urban wilderness of California, when we had all been perfectly safe at home in the mountains. A s.h.i.t for thinking I could storm a warehouse full of armed men and shoot them down without a care in the world.

I was a complete and total s.h.i.t.

The first chance I got, after this mess in Orange County was over, I was going to walk to the coast and throw myself off the first cliff I found, letting the Pacific ocean claim me like it tried to do earlier that year.

CHAPTER twenty.

Drake was right, the others did hear the shots and they scrambled down the street in our direction like two-legged c.o.c.kroaches. I loathed roaches. They multiplied faster than rabbits and came out into the open only when it was dark. Except it wasn't dark when two fully armed men in black coats came running toward us. The tall one held a radio to the side of his head and as they neared, I could hear static growling from it angrily. Pointless, really - we had the walkie-talkies in our packs. Turned down low, of course. It's how we knew what street they would be taking.

From across the residential lane, squished under a pickup truck, Drake sent me a thumb's up sign. This meant we were a go. I flattened myself beneath the ma.s.sive bush I had crawled into and with a heavy exhale leveled my gun at the shorter man's head. He was closest to me. Drake had the sniper rifle he pinched off the first dead lookout pointing at the duo and when they were almost five feet from the b.u.mper of the truck, Drake gave me a firm nod. Do it.

My eyes involuntarily closed when my finger squeezed the trigger and my guy went down hard, landing on the ground a second before the radio guy. I didn't even hear the rifle shot. From under the bush, my knees began shaking so violently that they banged into the coa.r.s.e dirt hard enough to leave bruises. Spittle flew from my mouth as I struggled to hold the cry in.

Drake scrambled out of his hiding spot, only needing to crawl a few feet before he reached the first dead man's jean clad legs. I looked at his still boots as if the heels would magically click together and we would all wake up in a black and white world again - the color of blood no longer visible. Unlike Dorothy's ruby-red slippers, these boots were the kind that had a steel toe and laces that tied up the calf. Military boots. One of them twitched slightly when Drake nudged the man's side. After Drake shot him a second time in the face I turned my head to the side and did what my body so badly wanted to do for the last hour - I heaved up my meager food intake for the day into a wet, sloppy and grainy mess, missing my arm by a mere inch.

There's something macabre about hunting the hunters. After I threw up in the bushes, I yacked all over the street while helping Drake pull the two dead men behind a house. A hole the size of a quarter replaced the taller man's right eye. The first shot had torn through his throat. As I stared down at what was left of the still warm body, I wondered if Drake was aiming for his freshly shaven neck on purpose. I wondered if Drake wanted the man to drown on his own blood, like he almost had that summer. There wasn't time to ask. The radio in the street screeched as another man's voice cut in and out. There were more of them - close by.

"How many do you think are left?" I asked breathlessly, wiping the rotten drool from my chin. I would worry about my embarra.s.singly weak stomach later.

"Let me think...maybe half a dozen or so. You know I haven't been out here for weeks, there could be more of them now," he said, briskly rubbing the top of his head with one blood-streaked hand.

"Or less," I said softly.

"What?"

"You said there could be more of them...but there could be less."

He stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language. "Don't count on that. I doubt we'll be that lucky," he said with a grunt. There was that word again - luck.

As we walked north, following the curve of the road to the west, I said confidently more so for myself then for Drake, "Oh, I don't know about that. Seems like we've been pretty lucky so far."

It was the hottest day of the week and we were in two layers of clothing, not counting our warm jackets. The thick canvas-like material had a green camouflage print that was meant to retain heat. And it worked well - I was hot. Sweat soaked the collar of my shirt, pooling in unpleasant places around my armpits and crotch. I walked with my legs slightly further apart than my normal gait because I wanted - no, I needed airflow between my legs. In California, the weather in the fall was always a gamble. It could be hot and dry or cold and wet. We didn't have dependable seasons in this part of the world.

With my lower lip pinned between my teeth to keep from complaining out loud, we rounded a bend and found ourselves at a major intersection. The street sloped uphill over the freeway. The overpa.s.s fencing shimmered in the distance like a mirage.

"That's the way," Drake began walking down the center of the street, the rifle slung over his shoulder like an urban gunslinger.

"You sure you want to do this. Today?" I bit the inside of my cheek. I was the one that pushed him. I was the one that demanded this from him, yet I was willing to back out. To retreat to the safety of the solar paneled mini-mansion just a short walk away from anything and everything we could need.

"Why not? We've already taken almost half of them out." He looked me up and down and then grimaced. "You're right. It's too much, isn't it? Doing all of this in one day?" With his hands outstretched before me, he looked like he was waiting for rain to come. It wouldn't.

"It's afternoon. Let's find a place, wait for the others to come back. They have to regroup. We have to regroup." I nodded across the street at a school.

"No way. That place gives me the creeps," he pointed behind me, into the neighborhood we just exited. "I think we should find a place around here, but keep it dark tonight."

I nodded. "Lights out. Sounds good." And it did. I wanted a pillow to bury my head under. I wanted the darkness of sleep to take me over, consume me until there was no option but to allow my body to relax.

The first house we approached smelled. We didn't bother to see if the doors were unlocked. The dead lived there. The next house had a unique design to the outside from the rest on the block. A more modern build, a sleeker yard with a waist-high wooden fence, that Drake grumbled was completely useless, and several bushes growing up around the front windows. We hopped over the painted fence and a piece of the rusty-red coloring flaked off against my palm. I felt like an animal, standing on the front stoop sniffing the air, hoping it didn't linger with the smell of rot.

"It's locked," Drake said. He jiggled the handle in his hand before leaning over the porch railing to peek inside a window. "Looks clean. I'll go around back...you keep a lookout, yeah?"

I nodded and watched him jump off the porch, his shoes making a sc.r.a.ping sound on the gravel that bordered the steps. A minute or so later, a crack of gla.s.s echoed through the house and I jumped back up the steps to look through the front window. The sheer curtains made it hard to see, but a shadowy figure moved slowly across the room, approaching the front door almost hesitantly.

Already half-way to the fence with my pack thumping against my back and my heart crashing against my ribs like a feral cat stuck in a cage, Drake opened the front door and stuck his head out.

"Hey, where you going?" he smiled, "Man, you've gotta see the master bedroom."

Nightmarish. There wasn't a better word to describe what we saw. "I am not sleeping in here," I said finally, thumbing the room over my shoulder as I squirmed around Drake in the doorway.

"Ha! And I am?" he scoffed, staying close behind me, no doubt just as wigged out by the master suite as I was.

We set our packs on the kitchen table and took turns combing through the cabinets. Two cans of green beans, a pack of peach cups in heavy syrup, a can of cooked beets and a bag of peanuts later we displayed our loot on the table with mocked pleasure.

"We'll be feasting tonight!" Drake cheered.

"I'm allergic to peanuts," I lied. Drake dropped the few sh.e.l.ls he had cracked open in his hand like they were radioactive and flung the bag off the table with a frantic swipe.

It had to happen. That manic laugh one has when your psyche is just one warped event away from splitting into pieces, fracturing your mind beyond repair. The laugh was so violent that the convulsions brought me to my knees. I rocked back on my feet, not caring about the tears and snot flowing freely from my face as Drake stood next to the table, a look of shock plastered on his face.

"You're losing it," he said.

I nodded in agreement and his hazel eyes widened, which made me laugh harder of course. Even with a hand clamped over my mouth, I sounded like a rabid hyena. Ignoring the warning st.i.tch in my side, I shrieked, giggled, guffawed and bellowed until my bladder threatened to empty itself - with or without a toilet nearby.

Drake stood with his feet widened, his arms crossed at his chest and a curious look in his eyes as I fought to regain my composure and control of my cramping bladder. He furrowed his brow, the expression saying something like, 'What the actual f.u.c.k?' and that brought on another bout of giggles. With my knees pressed into each other, I struggled to right myself and swayed a bit before taking a deep breath.

I was going to p.i.s.s my pants if I didn't find the bathroom. Leaving Drake standing in the kitchen efficiently concerned with my mental well-being, I said over my shoulder on my way down the hallway, "I was just f.u.c.king with you, I'm not allergic."

A peanut sh.e.l.l promptly flew into the back of my head, getting caught in my braid. "You little s.h.i.t!" he laughed as I rounded a corner.

Laughing. We killed four men and we were laughing.

Yep, I was a s.h.i.t alright.

The sofa had a lump in it that pressed uncomfortably into my ribcage and sagged in a way that made my hip dip into the cushion awkwardly. Every half hour or so I turned like a piece of grilling meat on a rotisserie spit. My mind wandered through the past, present, and ignored the future completely. I didn't once think about the next day and what our plans were. I didn't think about the warehouse. What I thought about were walks on the beach. Hikes through the mountains. Holiday dinners and birthday cakes - all with the kids. Their smiling faces floated around my mind like helium balloons, a constant reminder of the person I used to be.

How foolish it was to think I could start over with a new love - a new family. As if it was really that easy. Somewhere in the tangled web of synapses, firing inside my skull was a memory. A reason why I got out of bed and decided to leave my house in the first place. But it was just out of reach, like searching for dropped keys on a moonless night. I knew it was there - the reason - but what it was escaped me.

With a sigh, I rolled over again, this time facing the rest of the room, the other side of my hip sinking into the sofa. Drake was asleep on the recliner, his head turned away from me, one socked foot poking beneath the blanket he was loosely wrapped in. It occurred to me that we had lived together nearly a month and yet that was the first time I had seen the man sleeping. Memories of the angry kiss in the hallway came back to me and I groaned, rolling over again onto my back. It's not that Drake wasn't an attractive man - we just weren't attracted to each other. He treated me like he would a rebellious little sister and I treated him like...well, I didn't treat him the way I should. He saved my life, offered me shelter, food, and the opportunity to seek revenge. The kiss was just weird. Though he didn't speak of his past, I wondered who he lost, who he had to leave behind.

The rest of the night was like that - lost in thoughts, memories, and rotisserie squirming on the couch. When the temperature dropped, I knew dawn was soon approaching. I flung my blanket off, not trying to be quiet as I padded across the living room and down the hall to the bathroom.

We closed the master suite door the night before on account of the hundreds of dolls that lined the walls, decorated the bed, and filled the floors two feet deep. They weren't cute, girly dolls. They were the kind with realistic gla.s.s eyes that followed you around the room and creepy grins that seemed to smirk at your back the moment you turned away. Old dolls with cracks in their ceramic skin and paper thin clothing. The lot would have been a collectors dream, but for two relatively normal people, it was like a scene from a slasher movie. The kind where evil dolls come to life and won't die no matter what you do to their little plastic bodies.

The only other room in the house was an office/h.o.a.rding room full of decades' worth of papers, unopened mail, recyclables, bags of clothing, and miscellaneous junk. Since neither of us wanted to spend any time in the dolled-out master bedroom, we opted for a fitful night of tossing and turning in the living room instead.

The cobwebby curtains did little to block out the impending light of day. By the time I returned to the living room, the darkness outside was unfurling around the edges, streaking the sky a violescent color. Rubbing the chill off my arms, I stood behind the curtain, looking through the gauzy fabric at the changing sky, marveling at how quickly the streets and buildings came into shape. Almost like someone above us was turning a dimmer switch, lighting the world up below with the flick of a ma.s.sive wrist.

Of course, I knew there wasn't really a universal dimmer switch but I liked to imagine things like that, especially when nothing made sense in the new world. The sound of Drake stretching turned me away from the window in time to see him untangle from his blanket and sit up with a groan.

"Morning," I said quietly. He only nodded.

After his bathroom break and tossing me a bottle of water, we ate a modest breakfast of peanuts and fruit cups before saying goodbye to our overnight haven. The air outside felt fresh on my face and smelled of dry earth, with a lingering scent of dead things that I was sadly growing accustomed to. Dead trees, dead flowers, dead gra.s.s, dead bodies - all emanating the same dried-out and overripe odor that filled the sour streets with a fetid tang. Before I threw myself off a cliff and landed in the ocean to drown in an endless supply of sea-foam, I intended on burning the cities of California to the ground. It wouldn't take much; one spark here, another there and the decomposing buildings would burn like fireplace timber. The fire would spread where the wind took it, which in the southern parts of the state meant the fire would eat up everything it touched from all four points of the compa.s.s.

Just as it should be. Burned to the ground, wiped out so life can start again. A rebirth from the ashes. Maybe then, the dead would finally leave and give the living a chance to survive.

Retracing our steps from the day before, we left the residential street and turned to follow one of the main roads toward the freeway and the large shopping area that was across the street from the warehouse. It was dark enough that we hoped to slip through the landscape unseen, choosing to think that anyone on the other side of the freeway was still clueless about the events of the previous day. I was relying on luck again.

Not in the mood for small talk, we walked side by side with at least five feet of s.p.a.ce between us. Before making it even a block up the street, we both stopped in our tracks as an image formed, still shrouded in the shadowy remnants of night. I peered hard ahead of me, at the small figure that stood in the center of the inclined road. As my eyes adjusted to the changing surroundings, a peek of sunlight lit up the road and we were able to clearly see that it was a boy standing in the distance. He was young, maybe five years old, wearing loose pants and nothing else. Unable to control it, my chest began to heave up and down as I fought to keep the panic and fear at bay. Spinning around, I saw no one behind us, but that didn't mean they weren't coming.

"Oh G.o.d, not again," I said to myself.

"Jesus - that's a kid!" Drake made a move to run after the boy but I yanked on his arm, pulling him close to my side.

"Don't," I warned.

"What? It's a kid," he repeated.

"No. It's not."

He turned to look at me, his face slack with shock and pulled free from my clingy grasp. "What the h.e.l.l's wrong with you, Riley? We can't just leave him there!"

I shook my head at him and begged him to stay. Not to walk up the street toward the small child that stood motionless and eerily quiet in the car-cluttered road, but it didn't stop him. At first, he walked, then he jogged, and when he was almost there it finally happened. It must have been what it felt like for Connor - to see no one and then dozens of bodies come out of the shadows and surround me. I finally understood how terrifying it must have been to see that from the outside.

Drake was leaning down toward the child, but something must have spooked him, since he jumped backwards and cursed, gripping at his backpack straps as if he was ready to bolt. He didn't realize there was nowhere to run. Small misty shapes began moving toward him, merging into little people as they got closer. Children. Only ten at first but then twenty, thirty, fifty. All in their bed clothes, all the color of death - pale grey skin with b.l.o.o.d.y faces. Scraggly blooms of burst veins shimmered beneath the skin like fireworks - the signature calling card of the virus.

He didn't know what to do; the circle closed on Drake so quickly. Some of the children holding hands, others reaching up to touch him, pulling at his clothes, tugging at his shirt, as small children like to do and all he could do was panic. With his hands fused over his eyes, he saw little of this but I could hear his distress. It was my name he yelled over and over.

I ran for him. Even before I knew what to do, I ran. I plowed right into the group, barreling into the shoulders, heads and backs that barely came up to my hips. So young; they were all so young. Hands reached out for me, and I felt their cold and slimy fingers through my clothes. I kept my momentum going, even after something snagged my sweatshirt, tearing the seam open. Gagging to avoid choking on the smell, my eyes watered with the memory of my dead children's faces before I burned their bodies. Not bothering to slow down, I collided into Drake and we clutched at each other, our eyes sealed shut to block out the horror. We crumpled to the ground in a muddled mess of limbs, bringing our bodies as close together as they would fit. My head was beside his, jammed into his chest, leaving my neck exposed. Small hands continued to touch and grab at us, but it was different than my first experience with the dead - the sensations felt less angry and more eager. Almost impatient, exploring rather than trying to cause harm and fear.

It's not real, it's not real, it's not real, I chanted in my head over and over until I almost believed it. I might have been saying it out loud, Drake might have been saying it too, but my knowledge that the tiny dead bodies would eventually vanish into thin air did little to stifle my screams. Especially, when something warm and sticky dropped onto my neck, sliding off my skin and landing at my side with a wet plop. It's not real, it's not real.

We shivered, cursed, screamed and shivered some more, until the air went still and sunlight warmed the place on my neck where some sort of flesh had fallen off one of the children. Fighting to calm my stomach, I kept my eyes closed while running my trembling hand along my skin, feeling nothing but my own sweat. Funny, even after no physical trace of the dead was left on our bodies, the lower hem of my sweatshirt hung at an awkward angle, torn clean along the seam.

"It's over." My voice wavered and creaked like an old board.

Drake's soft brown hair brushed against my cheek with each shake of his head. Such a strong man, an arrogant, independent man, and he was kneeling on the asphalt, refusing to let go of a woman half his size. After muttering something I hoped sounded soothing into his ear and pulling away from him, I looked quickly around us. We were alone again. The street seemed ma.s.sive then, as if the lanes spanned one hundred miles wide and we would never be able to reach either shoulder before the road cracked in half and swallowed us whole.

I imagined the waves of the ocean as they lapped around me. What the salt water would taste like as it filled my mouth and drained into my body. I was not going to die on that dirty street; that wasn't how I was supposed to go.

We didn't talk for the next hour. It took a considerable amount of urging on my part to get Drake up and on his feet. We sat on the sidewalk next to the b.u.mper of a dusty Audi with bird c.r.a.p dotting the hood. I glanced inside just once; it was long enough to see the dead family of six partially huddled under an array of different colored blankets. Like so many other people, they died in their cars trying to drive away from the virus. But you can't run from the air you breathe. I doubted they got far before the driver lost control of his bodily functions and the pa.s.sengers, too sick to notice, died beside him soon after. The first words spoken after the early morning event that nearly made me pee my pants came from Drake.

"Holyf.u.c.kings.h.i.t." It came out in one breath, strung together like a solitary word. He said it over and over until I placed my hand on his knee and gave him a friendly squeeze.

"It's over," I told him again. Knowing full well my words didn't matter, I tried to smile anyway.

"Holyf.u.c.kings.h.i.t," he said again, staring at one of the Audi's flat tires. His short hair just barely grazed the top of his tanned ear. It blended effortlessly into his centimeter long beard that he hadn't once shaved off completely the entire time I knew him.

"Yeah," I agreed. After draining the water I handed to him, he stood up too quickly and swayed a bit.

"Don't you dare pa.s.s out on me - you're too heavy to carry. I'll just leave your a.s.s here on the sidewalk," I joked half-heartedly. But I felt creases digging deeply between my brows as I watched him with concern.

With a curt nod, he let go of my shoulder and bounced his empty water bottle off the roof of the dirty Audi. It slide down the windshield and topple off the other side of the car. It rolled to a stop somewhere in the street - just another piece of litter for me to feel guilty about.