Love in an Undead Age, A.M. Geever [best contemporary novels txt] 📗

it altogether. Miranda could see its dim outline, a dark shape against a darker background.

Her shoulders felt like they were on fire. She lifted a heavy arm to hack at prickly brambles as tall as the Humvee’s roof. Muscle memory—lift and swing, strike and cut—was the only thing that kept her moving forward. She winced with every swipe of the machete; her blistered palms and fingers had long since been rubbed raw. Along with Connor and Doug, she had hacked at the thicket of thorns and briars for half an hour, breaking it down just enough for the Humvee to nudge its way through. Finally, impossibly, the thicket began to thin.

“I think we’re through the worst of it,” Connor said.

Miranda pushed through the brambles to stand beside him in what passed for a clearing compared to the thorny hedge. Clumps of grass as tall as a man grew in the semi-open space, whipped in all directions by the wind and rain. A simple clapboard house sagged on the far side of the clearing. Behind the house, closer to the water, stood a collapsing garage.

“Thank you, God,” Miranda whispered. She sheathed her machete and began to wipe at her forehead, then caught herself. It was not likely to make any difference for more than a second. She drew her handgun instead. It felt too light in her hand compared to the Desert Eagle she had lost in the crash on the Expressway. Her hands hurt so much and her arms were so tired that she wouldn’t have had the strength to hold the Desert Eagle anyway.

A moment later Doug caught up to them, looking like he’d been on the losing side of a fight with a pissed-off cat.

“Scout ahead to the water’s edge. I’ll tell the others to drive through,” he said. He turned and disappeared into the brambles.

“You heard the man,” Miranda said, trading a tired glance with Connor. They set off toward the house. Thorns snagged at Miranda’s pants. Dead branches reached up from the ground, tripping her. Miranda stopped once, cocking her head to the side to listen, but only heard the rain. She wished she still had the night-vision goggles she had tossed aside in the chaos of the ambush.

They approached the house cautiously. The front door stood ajar.

“Let’s shut the doors and clear the garage first. It’s smaller and we can do it quickly, then come back to this after we wash off,” Connor said, his voice low. He produced a bungee cord from a pocket on his vest. Miranda kept her gun trained on the door. After a few cautious steps forward, he snatched the doorknob and tied the door shut. Then they separated, Miranda on one side and Connor the other, before meeting again at the back porch.

“Nothing on my side,” Miranda reported.

“Mine neither, and the back door is locked,” Connor said. He leaned against a peeling porch rail. “You up for this, Miri?”

“Are you?” Miranda could not see his shadowed face well but was sure Connor was smiling from the slight shake of his head. She could hear the reservoir now, the water lapping against the land. She wanted to leap into its chilly depths, surrender her blood-contaminated clothes to its cleansing waters. So close, so near, the pull so strong it was almost unbearable.

They headed for the garage instead. The doors hung open, one almost off its hinges. A sweeping flash of light engulfed them, then passed. The Humvee was through the brambles.

Miranda reached into her vest pocket, ignoring the flare of pain when her raw hands curled around the flashlight. She switched the flashlight on, then crossed the wrist of her hand that held her gun over her flashlight hand. Connor did the same. They stepped inside the doors and swiveled in opposite directions. Utility shelves, rusted and brittle, littered the floor. Paint cans, tools, a ladder, and lawn chairs lay askew amongst puddles from the leaking roof.

“There’s just a bunch of crap over here,” she said, relieved.

Still, they picked their way through the debris, just to be sure. If a legless zombie lay hidden in the debris, they had to find it. It would start to moan with prey so near, and that would bring a stampede of the undead to their doorstep. By the time they finished and propped the doors shut, the Humvee had parked nearby. Delilah ran to Miranda from the water’s edge, where everyone was shedding their clothes. Everyone but Naomi, who lay inert on the ground, rolled onto her side. Miranda gave the pit bull a perfunctory pat on the head before she and Connor joined in, ripping off their boots and clothes, emptying the contents of their pockets into jumbled piles.

“Put all the clothes together. We’ll wash them all at once,” Doug said.

Miranda’s breath sucked from her lungs as she plunged beneath the frigid surface. Tiny needles of cold pierced her skin. She rubbed at the blood that had seeped through her clothes. The water made her hands hurt even more. Delilah doggie-paddled nearby, not a care in the world.

Miranda emerged from the water a few minutes later, shivering uncontrollably. The air felt downright balmy now, in sharp contrast to the soaked bra and panties that clung to her gooseflesh-prickled skin. She squatted next to Naomi and began to unlace her boots with clumsy fingers. A second later, Doug joined her.

“Leave this to me,” Miranda said. “I’ll get started on the clothes. The house still needs to be cleared and my hands are a mess. I’m not sure how good I’ll be with a gun.”

“No worries, Miri,” Doug said with a wink.

She watched his retreating form, pale and tall and skinny. She could count every rib, pick out every joint. You’d never think he’s so strong, she thought, thankful for his ability to do just the right thing—a snappy response, a saucy wink—to raise her failing spirits.

Miranda pulled the boot off Naomi’s foot and began unlacing the other. She looked up to see Doug, Connor, and Seffie creeping toward the house in their skivvies and boots, armed with crowbars and rocks. To her left, Mike was dragging supplies out of the Humvee and stacking them next to the garage.

Miranda started to roll Naomi onto her stomach.

“Hold on, let me put this down.” Mario laid a wet vest on the ground under Naomi’s tourniqueted leg. “I started on the clothes. This one is clean. Well, cleaner.”

They rolled Naomi onto her stomach. Scorched flesh mingled with the oily smell of soot filled Miranda’s nostrils. She switched on her small flashlight.

“Oh Jesus.”

The back of Naomi’s jacket and the top of her pants had burned away. Her exposed back was charred black beneath her shoulder blades, interspersed with white and red cracks. Above her shoulder blades, there was no skin, just red and leathery flesh to the base of her skull.

“Goddammit,” Mario hissed.

Miranda wanted to look away but could not. Third degree burns from ass to neck. She was as good as dead.

Miranda ripped her eyes away from Naomi’s mangled flesh. “What medical supplies do we have left?”

“I don’t think there’s much point, Miranda.”

Mario touched her arm. A simple gesture meant to comfort, but she realized Mario was almost naked, and so was she. Her heart began to beat faster in a mixture of panic and—to her horror—attraction. His brown eyes held hers like a magnet, a flicker of recognition, longing, hope flashed in their depths.

“How bad is it?”

Miranda jerked back to reality, pulling her arm with her. Mike had crouched by Naomi’s head, a bucket in hand. He looked at them, expectant.

“It’s bad,” Miranda said, acutely aware of how close Mario was to her. She shifted away, hoping Mike would not notice.

When Miranda did not elaborate, Mike looked to Mario.

“Third degree burns all over her back,” he said. “I don’t think she’ll last very long.”

“Shit,” Mike said. He nodded to them before walking on to the water’s edge, filling the bucket, and heading back to the Humvee.

Miranda started to cut off Naomi’s pants, steeling herself against whatever Mario might say next, but Doug called out softly, “The house is clear.”

The hustle was on to finish rinsing out their clothes, wash blood from the Humvee, tally supplies, and cover what tracks they might have left behind. Half the ammo and most of the blankets and medical supplies were lost. They still had the C-4, but no fuses to ignite it. All five of Naomi’s and two of Seffie’s vials of vaccine serum had been smashed during the attack. Four of Miranda’s five vials had cracked protective coatings and were ruined. They were down to twenty-nine vials from the original forty in less than two hours.

Miranda walked up the staircase to the second story of their hidey hole, Delilah on her heels. The adrenaline rush from the attack had worn off, leaving her suspended between almost incapacitating exhaustion and paranoid hypervigilance. Gabe stood on the landing at the top of the stairs, whittling a small tree branch into a stake. Behind him, the door to a bedroom was cracked open. A sliver of light that flickered and leaped, leaking into the hall.

“You have watch?”

“Yeah,” Gabe said, pausing his knife mid-stroke. His face was a shadowy imitation of his earlier cocky assurance. “Doug has watch at the front door.”

“I know,” Miranda said, holding up her bandaged hands. “He just cleaned and wrapped these up.”

“Not a look that inspires confidence, chiquita.”

Miranda shrugged. “You saved us back there, Gabe.”

“We got our asses kicked.”

“It would have been a lot worse without you on that gun.”

“Keep an eye on her for me, all right? Naomi’s my girl.” From his tone, Miranda knew he did not mean it romantically. What Gabe was talking about was much deeper.

“This isn’t your fault, Gabe. It just happened.”

“I should have taken them out.”