Waking Up Dead

Something clicked in Jackson’s mind then and she halted. “Yes, of course. Nancy mentioned you. You know all about the zombies. About why the heat affects them.”

Sebastian heaved at the sack and rolled his shoulders. “Well…”

“Is that too heavy for you?”

“No, of course not!”

Jackson raised an eyebrow, transferred Mandy to her left hand, and took the sack. Sebastian spluttered slightly but she ignored him and carried on to the house with all the activity, her mind whirring in a million different directions. Was it finally time to get some of her questions answered? “I need the exercise. Don’t want to go soft. Now, Sebastian, tell me, how much do you know about them, the waking dead I mean?”

He frowned and gestured to the sack. “I can carry my own stuff, you know. It’s just awkward. I might not be a soldier-type like you and the others but I’m not a complete wimp.”

“Like I said, I don’t want to get soft.”

“No one goes soft here.” He snapped his fingers. “Of course. I know who you are now. Polly was talking but I wasn’t really listening. I was busy. But I am almost certain she said Jackson, and yes that’s good. Perfect, in fact.”

“Huh? Who is Polly? You lost me.”

“She’s a friend of mine, a scientist,” he said, as if that should have been perfectly obvious.

Jackson hefted the sack a little. “Did I meet her last night?”

“No,” he said. “She doesn’t live here.”

“Where does she live?”

Sebastian waved a hand in a vague kind of direction. “In another place entirely.”

Another place? Jackson frowned, wondering if Sebastian had all his cents to the dollar, because Nancy had said nothing about another camp close by. She frowned and racked her brain, a moment later and she remembered. “Polly is the woman in Chicago? At the university there?”

He smiled. “She is.”

“And she mentioned me?” Jackson said, wondering if her and Luke’s arrival was already a topic of conversation at the camps that seemed to be dotted around the country, camps the Laredo people were in contact with.

Sebastian gestured to the group by the door, one hand tugging at his gray locks. “I’m not entirely sure. Like I said I wasn’t really listening. But look, there’s so much to do, Jackson! And never enough hours in the day to do it. The others help me out. They don’t like it much, though, and Colin quit a few days ago. Said he couldn’t stand the smell anymore.”

Jackson gaped, completely lost by the good doctor’s rambling. “The smell?”

Sebastian nodded forcefully and tugged at his locks again. “I can’t say I blame him. It is quite awful and I’ve had a couple of years to get used to it. Still, it’s very annoying losing them one after the other. I’m getting down to the last few. What will happen then, I ask you? Nancy will have to force them into it and they won’t be happy.”

Jackson frowned, glanced at the group by the door, who gave her what looked like a knowing look, and then back to Sebastian again. “You know you’re not making any sense, right?”

He smiled, and that smile of his was quite brilliant, crinkling his eyes and making him, Jackson had to admit, look a teensy bit maniacal.

“You’re good with that blade I assume?” he asked.

Jackson nodded. “Of course I am.”

“Good enough to take down a pack on your own if you have to?”

“I have done,” she said slowly. “But it isn’t easy when it’s five on one.”

“It’s never easy. Why would it be?” he agreed as if this should have been perfectly obvious. “But unfortunately it’s necessary. Now tell me, how soon can you be ready to leave?”

Chapter Twenty-nine

It was almost ten o’clock by the time Luke put down his tools. He was sweating profusely and ridiculously grateful for the fact that Pete had thought to bring a supply of water with him. The water came from some sort of well on the property, sunk when building of the new housing development began. Just another thing, Luke was beginning to learn, in a long line of positives about the place.

“Time to take a break?” Pete asked.

Luke nodded. “I’d kill for a coffee.”

“Then you are in luck, my man,” Pete said, clasping him on the shoulder. “We have tins and tins of the instant stuff. Found it in the same warehouse we got the Frosted Fruit Flakes.” He shook his head. “They’re grim. I never thought anything could taste worse than some of the shit we ate on patrol, but morning after morning of that stuff?”

“Might be a bit more palatable with milk,” Luke said. “I had loads of the dried stuff in my bunker.”

“Can’t believe you found that place,” Pete said. “You lucked out.”

Luke wiped his hands on one of the rags, oddly cheered to see the grease there. The smell of the garage, the feel of it. Once or twice over the course of the morning he’d almost found himself humming. He’d forget, for just a few seconds, the reality of the world. Whether that was a good thing or not, he did not know.

“I mean who the fuck was so paranoid in the Chicago suburbs they built a fucking bunker?” Pete added.

“Someone I am eternally thankful to. I only wish—” He paused and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

“That you’d found it sooner?” Pete asked. “That we’d all managed to hole up there?”

Luke dropped the rag and turned his back on his friend. A nasty feeling slithering through him. How the fuck could he say that Lily was busy holing up there? That she’d found the bunker. Was probably even now trying to find a way in on the off chance that someone might be in there? No it was impossible. Would hurt his friend immeasurably to mention it, and yet…Lily was still around, and Luke had no idea how.

“What happened?” he asked slowly. “With Lily I mean, after. You don’t have to talk about it if it’s too much,” he added. “But…”

Pete sighed and kicked the tire of the Hummer. “Knew you were going to ask me this.”

“Tell me to mind my own fucking business if you want.”

“She was your friend too,” Pete said. “You remember all those nights we went out to dinner? She wanted to set you up with her cousin, Martha. You dodged a bullet there, bro.”

“I vaguely recall her mentioning that name.”

“I put her off. Told her you could find a wife of your own well enough, but that was Lily. She wanted everyone to be happy and settled.”

Luke nodded, even as the image of her snarling face filled his mind. Lily was the only zombie he’d seen that he’d ever known personally. There had been some he recalled from around the area. A customer here, a shopkeeper there, but Lily was the only one he’d really known, and he couldn’t quite fit the two together. The woman she had been versus the thing she’d become.

“I couldn’t do it,” Pete said after a moment.

“Do what?”

“Kill her. When she turned, and she was there trying to eat me, even then I couldn’t.”

It was as Luke suspected and he reached out to place a hand on the other man’s shoulders. “I understand.”

“It was still her,” Pete continued. “But she wouldn’t have wanted this. She was so fucking scared, so worried. I should have done it. Should have killed her and then turned the gun on myself, but I couldn’t.”

“Pete…”

“And then I was fucking trapped,” he added, as if he hadn’t even heard Luke’s whispered word. “I couldn’t off myself then, knowing she was still around somewhere. I didn’t know what else to do but head south. Charlie Foxtrot all around.” He kicked the tire again. “Assuming another zombie hasn’t taken her down, my wife is still out