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Bubblegum in her mouth. Cold metal in her hands. The rotten egg stench of gunpowder in the air. A skull-splitting echo muffled by her ear muffs. A paper target with three holes in its head.
She takes a deep breath, switches the safety on, and keeps the muzzle pointed down range as she removes the magazine. Once the pistol’s dry, she sets it and the magazine down on the table, and promptly braces herself the second before Dad’s arms wrap around her.
“Zoey!” He shouts, loud enough for everyone in the range to hear (and that’s over the gunfire and bulky ear muffs). “That’s my girl!”
It’s her first time landing three headshots in a row, with one between the eyes, no less. Zoey would be lying if she said she wasn’t as excited as he was, but the celebratory bear hug was starting to get a little suffocating.
“Offa me,” she squirms, and thinks about biting him when he squeezes her. “Daaad, you’re so embarrassing!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Dad snickers, relinquishing his iron grip. “It’s just—three headshots in a goddamn row? And on your third week? It took me months before I could pull a trick like that! You’re a damn natural!” He laughs deep in his throat, practically brimming with pride.
Zoey tries to shrug it off and play it cool, but her Dad’s unabashed joy is just too infectious. Before she knows it, she’s giggling, her cheeks are lifting into a big dumb grin, and then she’s laughing just like him.
They must look like a couple of crazy people, cackling like hyenas in the middle of the range, but she just can’t help it. She always laughs when Dad’s around.
A minute later, Zoey regains enough composure to speak. “Okay, okay, I guess I’m just that good, aren’t I?” She manages. “At this rate, I’ll have to change my name to Annie Oakley.”
“No, no,” Dad shakes his head. His laughter’s starting to fizzle out.
“Why not?” She cocks a brow, still giggling. “Afraid I’ll show you up in front of the other badges?”
Her Dad stops laughing. He opens his mouth to speak, but he stops. For a second, she worries that she actually offended him, but then his eyes are suddenly earnest and proud, and he says, “No, Zoey’s perfect for you. I couldn’t have done better if I tried.”
Zoey blinks, and then it’s her turn to clam up. She tries to think of something to say, but she can’t find the words. Despite the years, she still hasn’t gotten used to how unconditional his acceptance of her truly is. Zoey shies away, and under her breath, she murmurs, “I love you, Dad.”
“Hm?” Dad tilts his head. Zoey pauses, and then she remembers the earmuffs.
A firing range isn’t really the most ideal spot to have a heart-to-heart. Zoey sighs. She clears her throat and speaks up to say, “I said we should get some ice cream!”
“Hah!” Dad chuckles. “You read my mind, kiddo. Come on, this is cause for celebration! Three scoops of Rocky Road, my treat.” He puts a huge hand on her shoulder, and through the clangor of the firing range, she can just barely see him mouth, “Three shots… Three shots.”
Zoey smiles. Ice cream sounds pretty kickass right about now.
—
Rocky Road was overrated.
Zoey shifts her spoon through a bowl of melting ice cream. She sniffles, rubbing her cheek, and finds a black smudge on the back of her hand. Oh, she realizes. My mascara’s running.
A muffled shout snatches her attention. Her head snaps to the window, and she sees her Dad punching one of those assholes outside the parlor.
Zoey looks away, lets out a groan, and buries her head in her hands. Under the table, her knee starts bouncing a mile a minute.
She just wanted to spend some more time with her Dad… Why did those jerks have to notice her and start shouting slurs? Why couldn’t Dad just let it go? Despite not wanting to remember it, the beginning of the confrontation flashes through her mind.
“Dude, it’s that fucking tranny from your film class!”
“Ugh, sick! What’s he doing here? You think he’s gonna eat some fag cream, heh?”
“Yeah, straight from your balls, bitch. I saw you checking him out—you’re totally into him!”
“Am not! And besides, seeing him in the wild is like watching a car crash in slow-mo—hey do you think his tits are real?”
“Faaaaag.”
“Come on, it’s not my fault if he-”
“HEY! No one talks about my daughter like that!”
Why couldn’t they all just shut up?! Why did her presence always cause a scene!? She didn’t want a bunch of assholes from school to say awful shit about her, she didn’t want Dad to listen to them and start a fight, she didn’t want ANY of this!
She’s two seconds away from screaming when the table shifts hard. Zoey flinches, looks up, and finds her Dad sitting slumped across the table.
He drops his jacket onto the booth beside, and notices the collar of his shirt looks ripped. His knuckles are bruised black and red, his left eye is nearly swollen shut, and his nose is bleeding. He’s breathing a little heavy, but not enough for her to consider calling 911.
All the same, Zoey grimaces. “They really did a number on you,” she utters.
She expects him to say something, to tell her to do something, but he just stares down at his melted ice cream in silence.
Zoey chews her lip. A beat passes, then she grabs a napkin, hesitates, and reaches across the table to hold it up to him.
Dad looks up from his bowl and stares at her offering. After a moment, she shakes the napkin, and he begrudgingly takes it and presses it to his nose.
For the next several minutes, they sit together in silence. Zoey waits while Dad nurses his nosebleed, nervous and awkward. At one point, a waitress comes over, and Zoey expects her to kick them out. But the woman only asks if her dad needs a doctor, he quickly shrugs it off, and asks for the bill instead.
It wasn't until after he had paid, walking into the parking lot, that she found it within herself to speak. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
He glances at her, then shifts his gaze back. “You’ll never have to.”
Frustrated, she steps forward to close the distance between them. “What do you think the other kids at Templeton are gonna hear when those guys get back?”
“That nobody should bother you,” he grunts.
“No, you know what they’re gonna say? Oh, that tranny shut-in wannabe-director’s Dad is a total psycho! He picked a fight with us at a goddamn ice cream parlor! Can you believe it?”
He stops in his tracks and turns around to glare at her. “Don’t say that word.”
“Why?” She spits. “Everyone calls me that, why shouldn’t I join in on the fun? Or would you prefer transsexual or vestite or whatever the hell else they call freaks like me on Wikipedia?”
“You’re not a freak,” Dad grunts. “You should never say that about yourself!”
“You aren’t listening to me!” Zoey all but screams. Her face is burning up, her makeup’s ruined, and tears are running hot down her cheeks, but she’s too angry to care. “You aren’t helping! You’re just making my life more of a living hell! Can’t you just shut up and let something go for a change!?” She yells so loud her legs start shaking.
“Hey…” He says, voice dropping. His face takes on that sad, pitying look she despises like nothing else. “Zoey, calm down, I-”
“SHUT UP!” She shrieks. “SHUT UP, SHUT UP! I HATE YOU!”
“Zoey!” He tries to put his hand on her shoulder, and she smacks it away.
“I HATE YOU!” She screams her frustration, voice echoing through the cold night air and into the empty parking lot. “I HATE YOU!” She pours all of her seething anger, stabbing anxiety, and drowning hopelessness into the words. “I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I WISH I WAS NEVER BORN!”
She’s crying now. Full body sobs that shake her to the core. And the worst part? The worst part of this terrible, shitty, migraine-inducing awful fucking day? She really means those last words. And she really thinks she always will.
Dad’s arms wrap around her before she can sink to her knees. Zoey tries to pull away, but she’s too overwhelmed emotionally and physically to do anything. After a moment of resistance, she gives up, crying into his shoulder and breaking down in earnest.
He doesn’t say anything for a really long time. Neither of them can. But it doesn’t matter. His presence—blunt, rough, and stubborn though it may be—always has a way of calming her down. It’s been like that since she was a child, crying her eyes out and hugging him tight whenever she fell off her bicycle or the other kids called her a sissy.
She can’t stand him right now. She really can’t. But deep down, she’ll always love her old man.
And as if he read her thoughts, her Dad mutters, “I love you too, kiddo.”
It isn’t enough. It’ll never be enough. But at that moment, Zoey doesn’t care.
“I love you,” she sniffles. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
He rubs soothing circles into her back, and she hates how much it calms her down. “There, there,” he murmurs, like she’s just a kid again, and all her troubles are just dust on the wind. “You’re alright, baby, I’ve got you. I love you, and I promise, everything’s gonna be okay.”
—
Heavy is the gun in her hand. Scalding is the blood on her skin.
“Jesus Wade, do something!” Gore dripping from a red skinless jaw. “I love you, Zoey…” One last conversation before the end.
The deafening BANG still rings in her ears—an epitaph to remember him by.
She has to move, there are more of them outside. But all she wants to do is lie down and die.
Mother is dead, and the thing that killed her. Dad’s head is blown off, no skull, scalp, or hair.
She tries to look at him, dead and gone and bleeding on the floor. But she can’t, she can’t, she just. Can’t. All she can do is despair.
And so she sits there, cold, unmoving, crumpled up just like a corpse. Heart bleeding, mind screeching, walls all around closing in for the kill.
Zombies—real zombies—tearing off her skin, ripping out her guts. Unfettered by the gilded silver screen, the thought makes her ill.
The pistol is cold in her shaky hands. A bringer of death, and her last lifeline.
She could stick the barrel to her soft palate, or the things that killed her Mom and Dad. No, that first option wouldn’t help at all, but the second? Now, that sounds just fine.
And thus she rises resolute, hardens her heart, and trades her grief for rage. If she has to die here, she’ll take as many of them with her as she can.
Door barricaded shut, jacket zipped up, sweatpants swapped for jeans. Leather belt, double holsters—one she bought, the other, Dad’s brand.
She loads her backpack with enough essentials to travel fairly light. A few canned goods, forty-five ACP mags, and all the hormones she has left.
Lastly, her hot pink Templeton track jacket, and another pistol to make things akimbo. It hurts her heart a little to bring them both, Dad was always proud that she was ambidextrous.
Locked and loaded and fresh out of tears, Zoey walks over to the window. She rips off the blinds, unlatches the lock, and hops onto the fire escape.
Her Chuck Taylors touchdown against the platform and rattle the rickety stairwell. She looks out over the railing and grimaces at the overrun cityscape.
A cursory glance tells her all she needs to know. She’s never gonna make it out of here alive.
Distant screams, sirens, and a blood-red setting sun. Despair weighs her down, and she hasn’t even tried.
Zoey sinks slow to her knees, lets out a long, drawn-out, whimpering groan. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, she still isn’t going down without a fight.
Rise. One step, “Heat from fire…” Two steps, “Fire from heat…” Four, six, seven and nine, “You can do this.” A little bit closer to the ground, a little further down, just another few flights.
—
“We made it,” Louis pants, his optimism surfacing after the five-minute-long adrenaline-fueled race with death. “I can’t believe we made it!”
“Son, we just crossed the street.” Cigarette in hand, Bill flicks his lighter, and a little flame dances in the cold night air. He lights up, sucks in a breath, and puffs out a thin cloud of smoke. “Let’s not throw a party till we’re out of the city.” A moment later and the old man’s already on his feet again, pacing around the roof like a soldier along a watchtower.
Francis groans, his voice raspier than usual. “That bigass zombie gorilla almost turned us into mush,” he complains. “Can’t we sit down for more than two seconds?”
Bill doesn’t bother turning around, just unslings his M16 as he surveys the area. “If we don’t make it to Mercy soon, we’re as good as dead.”
“Keep your beard on, Bill, five minutes isn’t gonna kill us. At this rate, you’ll bust a hip, and I’m not gonna carry you.”
That gets his attention. “The longer you dawdle around, Francis, the less chance we’ve got, so pull your head out of your ass and hop to it.”
The vet and the biker stare daggers at each other. Louis glances at her and opens his mouth to speak, but Zoey beats him to the punch.
“In the last five minutes, we almost died like five times,” she points out. “If the zombies don’t kill us, then exhaustion will. Please, Bill? Just a few minutes before we climb back down into hell?”
Bill shifts his steely blue eyes to her, and she swears his gaze softens a touch, though it could just be her imagination. He’s silent for a long moment, then he lets out a sigh. “Five minutes, and then it’s back to the street.”
“Finally, the old man’s talking some sense.” Francis slumps against the brick wall.
“Don’t push it, Francis.” Bill takes a drag from his cigarette.
“Yeah, yeah…”
Zoey relaxes a little, and her remaining adrenaline wanes. She looks back at the vet and calls out, “Thanks, Bill.”
Bill grumbles something that might be “You’re welcome,” and heads to the other side of the roof to patrol their temporary rest stop.
“Way to go, Zoey,” Louis bumps her gently with his elbow. He waits until Bill's out of earshot before he says, “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone talk Bill down like that, he never listens to Francis and me.”
“What?” Zoey smirks. “You saying I’m some kind of old-timer whisperer?”
Louis shifts on the railing to sit more comfortably. “Trust me, he listens to you. I’ve only known Bill for a few days, and he hasn’t stopped pushing us once. It’s mush, mush! To this evac zone, then mush, mush! To the next. Bill must’ve dragged us halfway across the state, and he didn’t let us have a break once. Ain’t that right Francis?”
“Yeah, it’s like one wild goddamn goose chase after the next.” Francis starts counting on his fingers as he says, “First it was the park, that one really went to shit. Then the recreation center, which was fucked before we even got there. Then the high school, by God, that one was awful, aaaaaaand that civic arena. Oh, wait, no—that was before I met you guys. Yeah, just those three. And the old bastard’s been driving us like we’re rented mules.”
“Oh, he’s not a bastard, Francis,” Louis argues. “But you’re right about one thing, to him, R&R might as well be the plague. If he were my boss, I’d have filed seven HR complaints by now.”
“Old man’s stubborn,” Francis agrees. “Must have a soft spot for you, Zoey. Heh, maybe the dementia’s finally kicking in and he thinks you’re his long-lost granddaughter or something.”
Louis frowns. “Come on, Francis, how would you feel if someone said that about you?”
“Wouldn’t ever happen,” Francis smirks, cocksure. “I’m too young and spry for my brain to turn into soup.”
“It’s still rude,” Louis persists
Francis scoffs. “Whatever, man.” He wipes some blood off his black biker vest and flicks it over the railing.
Louis huffs, turns away, and begins to inspect a new tear in his white dress shirt.
As the two fall into a semi-comfortable silence, Zoey stares off into space.
She thinks about Dad. About the last time they went to the shooting range. She looks at his pistol—the same one he carried for over a decade on patrol—and scrapes a few drops of dried green blood off the slide with her thumbnail.
She looks at Bill, leaning against a brick wall with his cigarette still in hand, and considers what Francis and Louis said.
—
When she first met them, Zoey was a little scared to be stuck with three men.
Francis and Louis were both easily a head taller than her, and Bill wasn’t far behind.
Bill was old, which didn’t bode well for her. Francis was a walking, talking, violent biker gang stereotype. And Louis was… Well, if she was being honest, there wasn’t really anything scary about Louis. But he was still a man, and that was enough to keep Zoey on her guard. All three of them were a great deal stronger than her.
Passing as a real woman was her saving grace—she couldn’t imagine an outcome where they found out she was a tranny that didn’t end in violence. But looking just like a young girl in the eyes of three older men felt equally dangerous.
Even so, Francis, Louis, and Bill didn’t turn out as bad as she thought. Francis had more bark than bite, Louis was practically a beacon of positivity, and Bill’s misogynistic tendencies only extended to good old-fashioned 1950s chivalry. “Watch your step, Zoey,” “Hold it Zoey, Francis’ll go first,” “You’re holding that gun wrong, Zoey,” etcetera etc. It was kind of annoying, but also sort of affirming,
Bill treated her more like a child, Louis wasn’t interested in her like that, and the only hard-on Francis had was for killing zombies. Never in her whole life has she been so relieved that guys aren't into her. Sure, it sucks most of the time, but right now, unfuckability’s never felt so good.
…Which is maybe the most pathetic thing she’s ever thought. God, you really are gonna die a virgin, aren’t you?
She has six seconds to mourn her nonexistent sex life before a pounding fist against the bathroom door snatches her attention.
“Zoey!” Francis’s raspy voice booms, followed by more insistent knocking. “It’s been like twenty minutes, I gotta take a shit!”
“Keep your pants on!” Zoey shouts back after she recovers from jumping out of her skin. “I’ll be done in a minute!”
Francis grumbles something about “Hating unisex bathrooms,” and she starts to finish up.
True to her word, Zoey finishes getting dressed and refreshed in less than a minute flat. She’s only ten seconds over the time limit because she bothers to wash her hands, and that must be totally unthinkable to Francis since he’s pounding on the door before she even has time to dry them off.
Zoey takes extra long out of spite. She crumples up the paper towel she’d been drying her hands with and aims at the trash can in the corner. She shoots, she almost scores, and she purses her lips as the wet ball rolls away from the wall. With a sigh, Zoey shoves past Francis and into the safe room proper. She takes pride in only flinching a little when the bathroom door slams behind her.
Zoey yawns, stretches her legs, and gives their little shelter a once-over.
A shit ton of furniture barricading the door they came in from? Check.
Various messages in the form of graffiti left on the walls by other survivors, ranging from farewells to loved ones, to warnings stressing that the reader get the fuck out of the city, to expletives, condemnations, and corrective instructions written over CEDA safety posters? Check.
Bill and Louis standing over the designated gun table? Check. Bill and Louis staring at her from said gun table? Weird, but check.
Zoey stops at that last observation. She returns their gaze, tilts her head to the bathroom door, and shrugs. “Don’t blame me—when a guy’s gotta go, he’s gotta go. Maybe he’s got hemorrhoids or something.”
Louis giggles at that. Bill palms his face and mutters, “Jesus H. Christ…”
Zoey lets herself smirk just a little. Tough crowd. At least half the audience likes the material. She ambles over to the two men and joins them in taking stock of their weapons and supplies.
Louis’s submachine gun, with a dozen or so magazines neatly stacked next to it—Francis’s chrome shotgun, with four, seven… Nine magazines worth of shells (God, he couldn’t organize if his life depended on it) scattered across the table—Bill’s M16, which was shined to a shimmer beside five extended magazines—and a scoped, semi-automatic hunting rifle she’d pried off a wall back at the apartments, with eleven magazines.
There was also a cowboy-looking six-shooter, a huge piece of iron she assumed was a Desert Eagle, and her two pistols, each of which shared a pile of magazines so large Zoey couldn’t be bothered counting them. Oh, and some policeman’s nightstick Francis took off an infected cop. Purely because he thought it was funny. And like, if she was being honest, it was maybe a little bit, but only in a cosmic irony sorta way.
Anyway, aside from guns, there was a Molotov cocktail Bill made, a few bottles of painkillers and an adrenaline shot Louis and Francis had found respectively, and four first aid kits that came with the safe room.
With everything accounted for, it feels safe to say they’ve got a pretty killer stash. Zoey lets out a low whistle, then says as such. “This is all pretty kickass.”
Louis grins. “You can say that again. If you’d of told me a week ago that I’d be running around the city spraying a machine gun, I’d’ve asked what the hell you were on and where could I get some.”
Zoey laughs at that, and Louis smiles a little wanly. It’s enough to take her mind off the hellscape just beyond the door, at least for a few seconds. She giggles for a little while longer until she looks at Bill and realizes he isn’t even the least bit amused. The moment of levity dies as quickly as it began, and she stops and watches him.
Sure enough, Bill’s just sorting through the pile of pistol ammunition, silent and scrupulous. If he wasn’t well into his sixties, she’d almost say he was brooding. Or maybe that was just the same slightly annoyed, slightly disappointed stern expression he always wore? It was hard to tell when she’d known him for less than two days.
Zoey purses her lips.
A beat passes.
She decides to rope him into the conversation.
“Hey Bill?”
Bill looks up from the table and glances at her, magazine in hand. “Hm?”
“Just out of curiosity, how many of these guns have you shot?” She asks.
Something sharp she can’t quite parse flashes across his stern blue eyes, and Zoey worries she said something wrong.
“Not saying you’re some kinda gun nut,” she quickly clarifies. “It’s just, you look like you know what you’re doing.”
The rigid lines of the old man’s hawkish face soften. His eyes flicker across the table, and he says, “Hell, kid, I haven’t come across a gun that I haven’t shot since this shitshow first kicked off.”
Seizing on the opportunity, Zoey follows up and says, “No kidding? Two days ago, I’d only ever shot a pistol. You know which of these things is which? Names, I mean.”
Bill hums. Sets down his magazine. “That submachine gun Louis was kidding about is an Uzi, Israeli.” He picks up said machine gun and checks to see if it’s empty. Once he’s satisfied, he aims at a Ceda poster on the wall, adjusts the iron sights, and places it back on the table. “I shot a few of these back in ‘Nam. Hard to shoot at first, but it handles well with burst fire. Recoil ain’t too bad. Sleek, compact, damn fine gun.” The longer he speaks, the more his tone relaxes.
Louis must sense the little team-building exercise hidden in her questions, since he asks, “What about Francis’s shotgun?”
“Remington Model 870.” Bill grabs the shotgun, and in the space of six seconds, he scowls, flicks the safety on, and unloads three shells. “Inexpensive, versatile, great stopping power. Would be a whole lot better if Francis actually took care of the damn thing.”
He’s getting pissy, Zoey thinks. She changes the subject. “What about your machine gun? What’s it called?” She dumbs herself down, pretends not to know what an M16 is. Acts, y’know, girly.
“M16 assault rifle,” Bill grunts. “Hell, kid, you know that.” He swaps the shotgun for the rifle and clears it like he’s done so a thousand times. “This was our bread and butter back in the war. Lightweight, high-round capacity, and reliable as all hell.” He pauses, glances at her, and then at the rifle. After a moment, he offers it to her. “Try it.”
Zoey blinks, and Louis’s brows quirk up. They share a look, and then she directs her attention to the assault rifle. She stares at it, awestruck, and looks back at Bill. “You serious?”
“You gotta learn to shoot more than just a pistol and a deer killer if you wanna make it out of the city.”
She hesitates for a moment longer before he shakes it in his hand. Begrudgingly, Zoey takes it.
The gun feels heavy in her hands, much heavier than what she’s used to, and the plastic warmer than she expected. It’s awkward to hold at first, but then Bill adjusts her hand positioning, and suddenly the grip feels fine. Once he’s satisfied, he lets her aim at the CEDA poster on the wall. She squints down the ironsights and imagines a bullet flying through an infected head.
A few minutes later, after Bill’s finished instructing her, she lowers the M16 and giggles a little. Heh. Just like Full Metal Jacket. Zoey knows it’s really, really stupid, but she can’t help herself from exclaiming, “This is my rifle! There are many like it, but this one is mine! Without me, my rifle is useless, without my rifle, I am useless! I must fire my rifle true, I must…”
She’s unable to recite the rest, half because she can’t remember the other words, and half because she’s laughing too hard to form a coherent sentence.
Louis laughs the same way he did at her hemorrhoid joke, and this time, Bill’s lips twitch into a smile for a fraction of a second. He snorts, turns away, and mumbles for her to put the rifle back on the table. Zoey does so with a pep in her step.
It’s a fleeting victory, but she feels a deep sense of pride and accomplishment all the same. The moment is only partially ruined by Francis yelling that he’s out of toilet paper.
—
Rain pounds overhead, cold and insistent. It all but drowns out the distant wail of police sirens a few blocks back.
The neon lights of an abandoned liquor shop sign flicker in the distance, a reminder of the booze he’d looted to fix a few bottle bombs.
Insipid tobacco on his tongue and smoke in his nostrils help him keep his nerve. “I’ll be fine, I’m right behind you, it’s just a pit stop,” her voice echoes in his ears.
Louis was keeping an eye on her, and the bulk of the horde was still a few blocks over. Neither piece of information quells his restlessness. Their little ragtag elected him group leader. Her safety was his responsibility.
But then, you never worry about the others like that, do you? A cynical little voice in the back of his head whispers. Losing your touch, old man? Getting sentimental?
He takes a long drag from his cigarette, tries to ignore it.
How many of your brothers in arms died because of sentimentality? It persists. Davis, Barnes, Willard? Favor one, and the others will slip out between your fingers like so many grains of sand.
Bill snuffs his cigarette against the brick wall, lets it fall to the ground, and crushes it with his boot. He tries to focus on keeping a lookout.
“For God’s sake, what’s taking them so long?” As if on cue, Francis chimes in to add to his anxiety.
Bill says nothing. Just marches to the mouth of the alley, peers around the corner, and checks in on the pharmacy.
They’re still there, Louis standing guard with his Uzi, Zoey pocketing bottles of pills. She notices him out of the corner of her eye, turns, and gives him a little wave. Bill exhales, nods, and motions for her to carry on.
He doesn’t let himself relax, doesn’t let his guard down. But when he steps back to the alleyway to bear with more of Francis’s whining, there’s less urgency in his footfalls.
She’s safe. They’re alive. And any bastard who tried to change that would have to get through him first.
…
A few minutes later, Zoey and Louis walk out of the pharmacy and into the alleyway. Unscathed, Bill notes. He breathes a little easier.
Louis steps up, duffel bag in hand, while Zoey hangs back a bit.
“We found painkillers, a first aid kit, and an AED.” He turns to Bill, offers him a bottle of pills, and says. “Oh, and I got you some heartburn medication.”
Bill cocks a brow as Francis titters. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t,” Louis acknowledges.
He says nothing. A beat passes, and suddenly Bill feels very awkward.
It’s Zoey who breaks the silence. She marches forward, claps a hand on his shoulder, and orders him to, “Just take the damn thing and say thank you.”
Solemnly (stiffly), Bill accepts the heartburn meds, coughs into his fist, and mutters a quiet (sheepish), “Thanks.”
He’s sticking them into his kit when Francis says, “Finally, let’s go. We’re sitting goddamn ducks out here.”
“Not ducks,” Louis shakes his head, striding forward to lock steps with the biker as they walk down the alley.
Francis knits his brows together. “Oh yeah? Then what the hell are we?”
“Geese,” Louis answers without skipping a beat.
Francis’s brows quirk up. “What now?”
“You know, Canadian geese, they’re real’ ferocious. Ducks can’t do shit in a fight, but geese? Geese’ll peck your eyes out. Kings of the pond, mean sons of bitches. That’s us.”
Francis is silent for a moment. Then he snorts, breaks into a chuckle. “Stupid. I hate geese.”
“Better a goose than a mallard,” Louis snickers.
They break off into another argument, with Francis spouting that “Geese shit everywhere,” but Bill isn’t paying attention. He’s too busy watching their six, keeping an eye on the girl. It is because of this vigilance that he spots Zoey trying to sneak a pill into her mouth.
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
“Hold it,” he orders, raising a hand. Loud enough for her to hear, but not for Louis and Francis.
Zoey freezes. Her eyes shoot open, and when they fix Bill, they’re full of shock and fear.
He offers her a chance to explain herself. “Waddya got there?”
Red-handed, Zoey lowers her arm. She looks away as she murmurs, “…Nothing.”
Bill sighs. Glances back at Louis and Francis. Motions for her to start following him down the alley after them. Slowly. It’d be better to keep it between her and him.
They walk in silence for a few moments before Bill asks, “What is it?”
Zoey mumbles something about “Medication.”
He sighs again, a little more worn out. “Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”
Her eyes go wide. The hand holding the pill clenches into a fist as she says, “So what if it is?”
“It’s horseshit,” he states matter-of-factly. “Dope, speed, LSD, all that shit’ll turn your brain to mush. You should know better, kid. I’m…” His voice trails off. He grits his teeth and makes himself say it. “I’m disappointed.”
Zoey stops walking. So does he.
When Bill turns around, she’s got this blank look on her face. He grumbles, palming his forehead. For Christ’s sake, she’s high already?
“Listen,” he tries getting through to her. “We can’t afford liabilities out here. Those bastards ain’t gonna wait for you to mellow out before they sink their teeth into you. You’ve gotta be alert, gotta shoot straight, gotta think faster than they can run, got it?” When she says nothing, he presses on. “I know you’re stressed, kid, we all are. But that doesn’t mean you can go popping pills after every supply run. If Francis can put down the bottle, you can put down those pills.”
He looks her straight in the eye, stern and unflinching as he asks, “Do I make myself clear?”
Zoey says nothing. Wordlessly, she fishes a bottle of pills from her jacket pocket. It rattles when she holds it up for his inspection.
Bill steps forward and confiscates it. “There, this is for your own good. What is this crap anyway?” He raises the bottle to his eyes, squinting a little. His face blanches when he registers the words printed on the side.
Estradiol
USP 10 MCG
Vaginal Inserts
…
Silence falls upon them like a shroud. The rain is cold on his neck. Blue eyes scan the ground. Suddenly, he’s itching for a cigarette.
“…Oh,” Bill mouths.
Zoey says nothing.
His tongue is a lump of lead in his mouth. The bottle scalds his hand. Gingerly, he gives it back to her. She stuffs it in her bag without so much as a word. Zoey begins walking down the alley. Awkwardly, Bill follows after her.
Hell. Me and my big mouth…
He should’ve known she wasn’t a dope fiend, the girl had a good head on her shoulders. Of course there was a perfectly logical explanation to it, his head had just been too far up his ass to realize that. Zoey was a lady, and ladies took pills for… Things. Like uh… Menopause, or menstruation, or whatever. He won’t pretend to understand, but he ought to have known better.
And yet, despite knowing that he really ought to just shut the hell up and forget about it, something still bothers him. Why was she about to stick a suppository in her mouth? Even an old man like him knew you weren’t supposed to do that. Did she? The last thing he wanted was to intrude even more, but… Hell. The worst he can do is make an ass of himself again.
“…Kid?”
Zoey looks over at him, her face etched with anxiety and a touch of frustration. “What?”
“They’re not supposed to go there,” he says. When her brows knit together, Bill quickly clarifies, “You know, in here?” He touches a fingertip to his lips.
Zoey’s eyes go a touch wide, and she quickly looks away. “Course I do. You think I’m stupid?”
“No,” Bill shakes his head. “But… Do you know what you’re taking, kid?”
Her eyes remain fixed to the ground. She says nothing.
Bill sighs, his mind racing at the thought of trying to explain this to a teenage girl. Why’d it have to be me? Didn’t her mother ever tell her about this shit? “Kid, you aren’t supposed to take that stuff unless you’re my age.”
Again, Zoey says nothing, and again, Bill groans.
“I don’t know what your plan is here, but… It ain’t gonna make your… Bosom, any bigger,” he all but chokes on the words. “It’ll zig your z’s and zag your y’s, crosswire your hormones. You don’t want that, alright?”
She offers him the same reply as before. Bill takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales.
“Listen, I know the last person you want to hear this from is an old bat like me, but…” He winces before the words even leave his lips. “You’re perfect just the way you are.”
It’s the cheesiest sentiment there is, but he truly doesn’t know what else to say. The last thing he wants is for her to get sick because she doesn’t know better.
Zoey doesn’t utter so much as a word, though her expression does shift. Now she’s staring at him like he just grew a second head.
Bill can’t find it in himself to say anything more. He sighs, starting to walk again in silence. At least I tried.
The hairs on the back of his neck stand when Zoey begins to giggle.
He stops in his tracks and spins around, watching as she fails to suppress a bout of laughter. Zoey covers her mouth with a fist and titters like a schoolgirl who’s just heard some new piece of gossip. She laughs, and laughs, and laughs some more for good measure. She laughs for so long that he’s starting to get a little concerned.
All the while, Bill stares, stock still, nonplussed, and wide-eyed. He wonders what the hell was so funny.
The moment stretches on and on, and it seems to him that an unreasonable amount of time has passed when she finally calms down. As Zoey’s laughter tapers off into a snigger, she rubs a knuckle under her eye and wheezes, “Whatever, dude,” before walking past him like nothing happened.
Several seconds pass before he moves to follow her.
Teenagers, he thinks belatedly. He’s never felt so exasperated.
—
There was No Mercy to be found at the hospital evacuation center.
The stench of iron, gunpowder, rot, and odorous chemical disinfectant ground her nostrils down until she couldn’t tell feces from lemon pledge.
Fading fluorescent lights flickered over bloody corridors. Strewn about guts, splattered gore, and the odd transplant organ littered the floor. At the dead end of the hallway, a single upturned wheelchair sat alone, its frame soaked in blood. Her mind can think of only one word to describe it: Abandoned.
Zoey steps past without a word, eager to get the fuck away. Bill lingers as he covers them. He stares for a few seconds too long, eyes starting to glaze over as Francis and Louis walk by. His fingers tighten around the M16’s rifle strap until his knuckles turn bone white.
She pauses, staring for a few seconds, and steps back to stand at his side. Zoey reaches out, hesitates, and touches his shoulder as gently as she can.
His eyes refocus, sharpen, and shift to meet her gaze. A beat passes as they stare at each other wordlessly. Bill briefly glances back, sighs, and steps away from the one that was left behind.
Zoey moves to follow, but despite her nerves, her gaze lingers on the flickering light at the end of the hall. For a moment, all she can do is stare. The far-off screech of creaking pipework beckons her swift departure.
…
The next several rooms were covered in blood. Red colored the walls, the hospital gowns of the zombies attacking them, and the makeshift barricades where would-be survivors had tried to hold out. It was everywhere; in her hair, on her clothes, and down by the tiled floor, where puddles of rainwater from busted pipes and broken windows accumulated in a fine, viscous, crimson mush. Zoey almost wished they were back on the street; at least she could breathe out there without gagging. Such an idea was laughable in this claustrophobic hellscape.
More nerve-wracking than the blood, however, was the noise. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof. Whenever they were done shooting and all the things that’d heard were dealt with, the corridors became far too quiet. Sometimes it got so quiet she could hear the beating of her own heart. Zoey grew conscious of the feeling of blood pulsing through her veins, of green bile drying on her skin. Her senses were getting overwhelmed, and it was starting to get unbearable.
She tries to focus on something else, on anything else. Her relief when Francis elbows her, suddenly giggling conspiratorially, almost like an older brother, is outright palpable.
“Hey, Zoey,” he whispers. “Zoey, hey.”
Zoey looks up at him, and from the glint in his eyes, she can immediately tell that he’s about to say or do something stupid.
He directs her to a corpse on the floor. It’s an infected, of course (she can’t remember the last time she saw a regular human corpse). But it’s wearing a hospital gown, and it’s face down, and its grey ass is hanging out, and Francis is still snickering.
She stares numbly for a few seconds, and then it hits her all at once. It’s so fucking stupid, and absurd, and childish to find funny, but the corners of her lips are lifting on their own, and a noise sputters out from the back of her throat that’s half snorting, half choking, and before she knows it she’s giggling with him, stupidly, like a couple of kids on the playground whispering new swear words they’ve heard.
“You’re an idiot, Francis,” she reminds him, like she isn’t holding her sides laughing.
“He’s the dumbass,” Francis objects, nudging the corpse with his boot. “Who’s stupid enough to die showing their ass like that?” For just a moment, the big dumb grin on his face is enough to make her forget all the horror they’ve trudged through since they walked into this godforsaken nightmare.
But then she snaps out of it. The hairs on the back of her neck shoot up, and the animal screeching of a fresh, hundred-strong herd of their tormentors echoes from the corridors ahead, the sheer sound of it passing through her like a gale of hellfire.
“Ah, shit!” Louis shouts, a few steps beside them, readying the new machine gun he found a few floors back. “Here they come!”
“Beaucoup crazies inbound!” Bill takes up the call, taking point with his M16 already locked and loaded. Frosty determination gleams in his blue eyes.
Francis and Zoey share a look.
“Welp,” he shrugs, shouldering his Spas-12 (which she’s still a little annoyed you can’t double blast like in Half-Life). “I guess we should get to it.” She’s pleased to see that the grin hasn’t left his face. If anything, his smile looks even sharper.
Zoey unslings her hunting rifle and flicks the safety off. She hopes she looks cool as she says, “Right behind you, big guy.”
Francis smirks, cocksure as he turns on his heel and strides toward the fray.
She follows after him, and compared to the previously crippling silence, the staccato barrage of gunfire comes as a welcome relief.
—
Bill cuts a path up the ramp like a weedwhacker, mowing down anything that gets in their way. He’s absolutely saturated with green guts and gore, but Zoey doesn’t hesitate to take his hand when he hefts her onto the helicopter.
It’s funny to think she would’ve marveled at that just a week prior. Zoey Miller, tranny shut-in wannabe-director extraordinaire, standing on a goddamn helicopter. Crazy how things turn out.
Francis comes next, vaulting over the mangled corpse of a burst Boomer. He touches down beside her with a thud, and Zoey swears she feels the chopper shake from the force of his impact. She holds on tight to the straphanger, pressing her feet as hard as she can to the swaying floor.
She’s about to shout at Bill to get up already when an explosion nearly deafens her. Her eardrums spasm violently, and she damn-near collapses as the shockwave of the pipe bomb pushes past her. Zoey clutches onto Francis’ arm like a lifeline when he jostles forward to steady her, her fingers gripping tight enough to leave marks. Though the ringing in her ears, she barely registers his gruff voice as he yells, “GET THE HELL UP HERE BILL!”
Bill must say something, because his lips move and Francis curses at him, but she can’t hear a damn thing between the whiplash of the explosion and a sudden burst of his machine gun fire.
She follows the trajectory of the 5.56 to the other side of the roof, near where the pipe bomb had erupted, and her blood runs cold when she notices Louis climbing back onto the mounted machine gun.
Zoey screams his name, though she can’t hear her own voice. She can barely hear her own thoughts through the maelstrom of panic suddenly consuming her. When had Louis gotten to the other side of the roof? He was just behind them, taking up the rear as they ran like hell towards the news helicopter. Why in the world had he gone back?
Her senses are assaulted once more when the minigun revs up faster and faster before spitting out a torrent of hellfire into the mob of zombies blocking the ramp to the helicopter. The sheer amount of burning lead lights up the night sky, its luminescence only dimmed by the upside-down monsoon of infected blood.
Earlier, Zoey thought Bill was like a lawnmower, but compared to Louis, he was hardly a broken scythe. The vet finally hops onto the chopper to avoid the wave of fire, and she thinks, distantly, that she hears him shouting for Louis to hurry up, but it could just be her imagination, because she’s probably going to be deaf after all this shit is over.
Either Bill’s words carry over the firehose spray of bullets, Louis must think that the chopper pilot’s about to leave him behind, or the minigun just runs out of ammunition on its own, because suddenly the hellfire grinds to a sputtering halt, and its light flickers out like a candle in the wind.
The ringing in her ears clears just in time to hear what happens next, which is good because the roof’s gotten so dark that she can scarcely see.
Louis shouts, “Shit!” And disappears into the room with the radio under the machine gun, bursting through the doors not five seconds later with an Uzi in one hand and a bag clutched in the other. He bolts towards the ramp, desperately clambering over the muddy corpse sludge.
Distantly, she hears Francis yelling at the pilot, something like “DON’T YOU FUCKING TAKE OFF WITHOUT HIM!” But all the sound around her, the deafening, overwhelming sound around her, might as well have vanished. Subsumed by the black hole that is the bone-chilling, world-shattering roar of a Tank.
All at once, she knows why Louis abandoned the shelter. No structure on Earth, be it manmade or divine, would’ve protected him from that walking nightmare.
It appears without ceremony or warning. One second, the rooftop beside the ramp is clear, the next, it’s just there, beating its fists against its chest like a primeval monster. It bounds toward Louis from on high, colossal knuckles slamming into the ground like a broken jackhammer until it's poised to leap down and crush him, and suddenly it occurs to her that they’re never going to stop, are they? This must’ve been the third one that assailed them since they crossed the street. Guns barely did anything, they’d only gotten away because of luck, and now Louis, poor Louis, oh Christ, he-!
Bill interrupts her despair with a burst of machine gun fire, lighting up the Tank’s back and knocking it off course. Louis barely manages to slide ahead before it can crush him, running up the ramp toward them with invigorated tenacity.
Zoey doesn’t have time to register the fact that he might actually make it. Dad’s pistol is in her hand before she thinks to grab it, and then she’s firing at the howling wall of meat alongside Bill.
They won’t kill it, they could never hope to like this. But if they’re lucky (God, please), they just might buy Louis enough time.
Louis doesn’t let their efforts go to waste. He bolts up the ramp in a dead sprint, bulling over a few infected strays that’d clambered onto the path. He looks for all the world like a roided-up wide receiver.
Just as her magazine runs dry, a screeching Hunter suddenly leaps toward him, so quick she barely has time to jolt in place. For half a heartbeat, she tries to scream, but Louis, like a goddamn man possessed, blasts it open mid-fucking-air and knocks its yelping form aside and into a concrete wall.
She doesn’t have time to reload, not when some monster could drag Louis down any second, so she shoves her pistol into its holster and unslings her hunting rifle, linking arms with Bill to keep balance. He and Francis are covering Louis as best they can, cleaving the swarm chasing him apart with a hail of 5.56 and 12-gauge slugs.
Zoey can’t exactly provide suppressing fire with a hunting rifle, so she peers through its scope and watches out for anything that might be waiting to ambush Louis.
That’s how she spots the Smoker lurking on the mechanical penthouse, its bizarre silhouette clashing with the other, normaler zombies. In the time it takes her to steady the rifle, it hacks out a rasping howl, its coiled tongue primed to launch forward and snare Louis like a bug in a web.
She isn’t quick enough to pop its head open before its tongue flies out, but the neck-breaking whiplash of the bullet sends the tentacle veering off course, and instead of wrapping around Louis’s whole body and dragging him down to his death, it just snatches the Uzi out of his hand.
Luckily, that particular near-death experience seems to be the boost he needed. Louis dashes, dashes, dashes forward, and he’s so close that she can actually see his face through the dark of the night, afraid yet determined, and he’s almost there, almost there, come on, come on you big lug just get your ass over here already, you’re so close-!
It all happens so fast.
The helicopter lurches back abruptly. It would’ve thrown her out the door if Bill wasn’t holding onto her so tightly. Her blood turns to ice in her veins, and her voice finally reaches her ears as she shrieks out a “NO!”
Louis reaches the helicopter pad, but he doesn’t slow down. He keeps running forward, forward, and her terror doubles over as she realizes he’s going to try and leap the gap to the chopper. He can’t, he won’t make it, he-!
He jumps.
Arms flailing.
Reaching.
Desperate.
Half a thousand feet to plummet below.
He isn’t going to make it.
He won’t.
He's gonna fall.
Oh God, he's-!
Francis grabs his arm, Louis grabs his.
The helicopter pulls away from the rooftop, dragging Louis through the air. It narrowly avoids a slab of concrete, the size of a boulder, hurdling toward him.
And he’s safe, good God almighty, he’s safe.
Francis drags him onto the helicopter, and pulls him to his feet. And he claps Louis on the shoulder and shouts at him, but there isn’t any real anger in his words.
Louis is laughing, disbelief written all over his face, and Bill grabs his hand and congratulates him on his survival. He cocks a brow as Bill asks for the gun bag, shakes his head, and shrugs her backpack off his shoulders, offering it to her with a friendly smile.
Then her arms are wrapped around his back and she’s hugging him as tight as she can, and she’s so happy that it takes her a while to realize she’s weeping. Because they’re going to be okay. For the first time since she put Dad out of his misery, she’s going to be okay. Since the world went to shit and those monsters crawled out of hell to eat everyone she ever knew or loved, she’s going to be okay. Since those kids outside the ice cream parlor called her a faggot and a tranny, and her Mom asked why she couldn’t just be a feminine boy, couldn’t just be normal, she’s going to be okay.
Because it doesn't matter if they don't understand, or if they're crass or puerile. Because she doesn't need them to understand to accept her. Because they'll never, ever hurt her. Because they're hers.
For the first time in what must be forever, Zoey really feels like everything’s going to be okay.