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

A startled cry escaped his quarry’s mouth as he almost tripped. Then a yank and the slippery bare foot slid through Connor’s fingers.

Connor scrabbled to his feet, swaying like a drunkard as he dodged and deflected zombies. He squinted through the rain, but Jeremiah had slipped through the tree line.

Connor surged forward, lungs afire, summoning his last reserves of energy. He followed Jeremiah under the sparsely spaced trees, but the underbrush and the silhouettes of thickening redwood trees made it hard to see. Instead of capturing Jeremiah, he tumbled onto the fragrant carpet of wet redwood needles.

Connor looked ahead: slow shapes that were somehow closing fast. Everywhere he looked walking death advanced upon him. The moaning became a dull roar in his ears. The stench of decay filled his nose, penetrating his mucous membranes to coat his mouth with its bitter taste. Would it be so bad to just stay down? The mission had failed. None of them would make it to Santa Cruz. One by one, they would be picked off. The vaccine would remain a perquisite of the powerful, and the world would continue as it always had, its indifference to injustice intact.

It would be okay, he thought, dazed. I’ll just stay here a little while. He looked forward, into the slack, blank face of the nearest zombie.

“Fuck that.”

He sprang to his feet. He had to get out from under the trees. A zombie lurched toward him. Connor looked for something, anything, that might save him. As he ducked under the arm of another zombie, he saw a boulder, perhaps three feet high. Not enough in itself, but enough to give him a boost to the branch above it. He ran, blind to the peril around him as he jumped onto the boulder. Connor crouched low, then exploded upward. His fingernails scratched the branch, and then he was falling. He crunched down to the boulder’s uneven surface and fell to the ground.

He climbed back up, zombies footsteps away. Again he crouched low, praying as he forced his legs upward to break gravity’s hold. He stretched his arms above his head.

The rough bark bit into his palms. Miraculously, the branch was dry, sheltered from the storm by those above it. Connor pulled himself up. As he slung his arm around the branch, a hand grabbed his foot. Heart racing, Connor kicked wildly. He felt his foot slip free and pulled his feet up, then swung his leg over. It took every ounce of strength to wriggle onto the prickly limb. He leaned back against the tree trunk, gasping.

The zombies below him moaned and thrashed, driven wild by his presence. Connor slumped against the tree, relieved to be alive but knowing he was screwed. Sleep or water, taking a piss or getting tired from standing, zombies were troubled by no such considerations. The horde below was focused on him and going nowhere.

They have the horses; maybe they’ll make it, he told himself, thinking of Miranda. The light blue of her eyes as they shone with laughter. The mutinous set of her jaw when she was angry. The way her body felt nestled against his as he had watched the fear recede from her eyes and be replaced by a cautious fondness. A fondness that he had hoped might turn into something more, but she was slipping away from him, bit by bit, and he couldn’t stop it. He saw it in the tilt of her head as she listened to Mario speak. The way she looked at her former lover, as if she was trying to figure out something necessary to her survival. But with him, she was impatient and short-tempered, felt smothered. However it might once have turned out, it wasn’t going to end with him and Miranda together. But he had to believe she would survive. The alternative was unbearable.

The zombies below shifted. The moans turned to snarls, as if they were angry. Connor peered down. The horde moved almost like a wave, forward and back, as if pulled by a magnet and then released. Before he could puzzle it out, a voice cut through the gloom.

“We told you, did We not? You cannot thwart the will of God the All-Father on Earth.”

The zombies below the tree began to roil. For a moment, Connor thought he was hearing things, but the strange behavior of the horde below told him otherwise.

He’s come back to gloat, Connor thought, stunned.

Aloud, he said, “You did.”

Jeremiah laughed softly. “How did you think you could succeed?” he asked. “When the righteousness of Our Will is so plain?”

“Because we had to.”

The space around the boulder cleared. Jeremiah strolled into view a few feet away, a light-colored shape in the gloom. But he stood too straight, moved with too much purpose, had too much personal space around him to be a zombie.

“But We can move among the Hollow Men. We understand more clearly now. They are not just Heavenly Father’s Judgment, but Our Children. They become Our Shield.”

And you can be mine.

He just had to keep him talking. Since he was pretty sure Jeremiah was a pathological narcissist, Connor figured it wouldn’t be too hard.

“What will you do now?” he asked. “Return to New Jerusalem?”

“We will,” Jeremiah said, his voice becoming flinty. “We will purify Our Body of infidels and rebels. We will restore Our Order. Our Justice will be terrible.”

“Finn killed the Prophet’s Guard. Who will help you?”

Slowly, to try and mask the movement, Connor pulled one leg closer to his body. He shifted his hip just enough to set his heel on the branch.

“Still, you think Our Will can be thwarted!” Jeremiah exploded.

Connor let Jeremiah’s unhinged tirade wash over him as he shifted his other leg into position. Now crouching on the branch, he took a deep breath.

“You have no answer?” Jeremiah sneered.

Connor’s stomach flipped over. He had been so intent on getting into position without detection that he had not been paying attention to Jeremiah’s tirade. Then he grinned.

“Damn straight I’ve got an answer.”

Connor sprang from the branch. Jeremiah stumbled back. A second later, Connor landed on top of him. Jeremiah thrashed against him with surprising strength, slippery as an eel.

“No fucking way,” Connor hissed, jerking Jeremiah toward him.

“My Children!” Jeremiah screeched.

The madman bucked and thrashed. No longer needing to protect himself from zombies, all of Connor’s attention was on Jeremiah. He straddled him, wrenching Jeremiah’s arm up behind his back. A thrill of triumph raced through him at Jeremiah’s furious howl of pain.

“No more!” Connor shouted. He wrapped his free hand in the neckline of Jeremiah’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. “I will break your fucking arm,” Connor threatened, cranking Jeremiah’s arm higher. Immediately, the thrashing subsided.

Connor turned himself and Jeremiah around, strong-arming his captive out from under the trees into the rain. He picked up the pace, hoping to outstrip the zombies behind them. Even though he knew they could not get close enough to Jeremiah to be a threat, the ebb and flow of the ever-growing horde surrounding them unnerved him.

They hurried to the building where he and Doug had split up. Jeremiah did not struggle anymore but muttered under his breath. As they rounded the corner where he had last seen Doug, Connor stopped without warning, the yank on his captive’s arm producing a yelp of pain.

It seemed as if every zombie in the world lurched toward them. The number of undead among the cluster of buildings they had chosen to shelter in had quadrupled in the time it had taken to catch Jeremiah. There were hundreds of zombies between Connor and the building he had to get back to.

How the hell was he supposed to rejoin the others without risking their being eaten alive before he got Jeremiah close enough to protect them? How was he going to find Doug? He’d only had a piece of rebar. He’s probably dead, Connor realized.

For a moment, he just stood there, overwhelmed by the sheer number of zombies he now had to contend with. Jeremiah began to laugh, as if sensing Connor’s fading resolve.

Connor shook himself. One problem at a time. I need to get back to the others. As he started forward, a whistle pierced the air. Connor turned toward the sound, the building on his left.

“I’m up here,” Doug cried. “Second floor, come get me!”

Connor scanned the second story of the building the voice seemed to come from. Through the downpour, a faint motion caught his eye.

“Get moving,” he said, giving a resistant Jeremiah a shove forward. They slogged across the sodden clearing toward Doug’s voice. As Connor approached, he saw Doug’s lanky form, hunched on the sill of a second-story window above a growing group of determined, if out of reach, zombies.

“Hurry up,” Doug shouted. “There are more inside and this window isn’t going to hold!”

When Connor and Jeremiah were below Doug’s perch in a newly created clearing, Doug turned toward the window, positioning himself to lower down from the sill. Then the glass cracked ominously. He jumped, landing almost at Connor’s feet.

“I thought you were dead,” Connor said as Doug climbed to his feet.

“Me too.”

“Your evil plans will not succeed,” Jeremiah ranted.

“For the love of God,” Doug said. He pulled a bandana out of his pocket and shoved it in Jeremiah’s mouth. The Prophet’s muffled protests continued while Doug helped tie his arms behind his back.

“I could see the others from up there,” Doug said as they dragged Jeremiah between them. “They’re saddling up the horses.”