She made her way back to the bedroom. Emily’s breathing was worse, the caffeine not enough.
“Marty,” Alexander said. “We have no choice.”
“I’ll go,” Marty said.
Janice startled herself with the next words that came out of her own mouth. “No, you two stay with Emily. I’ll go.”
“You understand we’re talking about going across the street to get some asthma medication,” Marty said.
“I know,” Janice replied. She omitted the two men with the assault rifles. No sense in getting everyone upset, especially Emily.
Janice went back to the front door, opened it and yelled, “Help!” The men turned their rifles in her direction. “Don’t shoot! I’m in the house across the street! I’m unarmed! I’m coming out with my hands up!”
Janice trembled as she opened the door the rest of the way and emerged with her hands up, the screen behind her swinging closed with a clap. She yelled, “I’m coming forward now!”
Prepared to die, Janice walked over to the armed men, who continued to aim their assault rifles at her. A week ago, she’d have been too paralyzed with fear. Now she walked over to the men with a sense of pride that she would risk her life for another. Thinking about all this distracted her from her fear enough to approach the two men.
When she reached the middle of the street, the person next to the loading dock said, “That’s far enough.” It was a woman’s voice. She was approximately twenty feet from her. The woman stood up, and she had a name tag, illegible in the nighttime gloom.
She was thankful that these two didn’t want to kill her, at least for now. “We have no weapons, except for one handgun that I’m not carrying. There’s a little girl with severe asthma, and we need an inhaler. May I go inside and get one?”
“Who are you?” the woman asked. “What were you doing in the house?”
“There’s little time. The skinheads captured and enslaved us, but we escaped and hid out in the house.”
“So they put the swastika on your forehead?”
Oh, shit. She had forgotten about the swastika. “Yes. You do see I still have hair.” Hopefully, the hair would be enough.
“How do we know you’re not compromised by a hostile?” It was a man’s voice, coming from the landing in front of the rear door at the top of the stairs.
“Look, I’m just trying to save a little girl’s life. The longer we delay, the worse she’s getting.”
The man took out a walkie-talkie with one hand, the other still pointing the rifle. He said something that Janice didn’t make out. “Okay,” he projected. Something must have convinced him Janice was telling the truth.
Janice waited at gunpoint for what seemed like a long time. Eventually, someone emerged from the door, another person in battle fatigues. He tossed something into the street, about ten feet short of her. The woman slowly backed away, stepping over a corpse.
“Take the inhaler and get back there. I hope you understand we need to hold the store. Keep the doors locked. We’ll protect you from here as best as we can.”
Janice understood. Their protection was more than she could hope for. “Are you the military?” Janice had the temerity to ask.
“US Army—out of Peterson Air Force Base, originally Fort Carson.”
“Colorado Springs?”
“Yes. Stop asking questions and go.”
Colorado Springs. Janice felt relieved. They could finally stop running . . . if the Army took the town.
When Janice got back to the house, she felt like she’d saved the day. After two puffs from the inhaler, Emily started to breathe normally.
She felt euphoric. Way back in the day when she had become a nurse, it was a calling, something she couldn’t not do. And then she had lost that calling, and she had been miserable ever since. Now she had regained that calling, and she would do whatever she could to be that nurse, that healer, again, despite being possibly infected with the zombie pathogen. She prayed she wasn’t infected, but being able to help Emily, even in a small way, made her happy regardless.
Maybe things would turn out all right after all. As well as a zombie apocalypse can.
Chapter Forty-Six
Day Eleven
While in the safe room, Jocelyn concentrated and sensed all the draugar within the range of her power. Instinctively, she knew it was somewhere around 200 to 400 feet.
There were seventeen.
To formulate a plan, she would first have to test the limits of this newfound ability to control draugar.
She focused on the draugar and could bond with seven of them again, despite not having line of sight. But no more. Her limit was seven. If she tried to bond with an eighth, she would succeed, but one would leave the group. She could drop all draugar within the bonded group, in which case she had no bond and her tingling stopped. Then it would start again, bonding her to a group without her choosing. And, in fact, when she bonded with one draugar, she bonded with its entire group. But once bonded, she could drop any draugar she wanted from the group.
And now she understood the tingling—she felt it when bonded with draugar.
She commanded seven to go outside of range. They did as commanded, but soon they started to return. Were they trying to attack Clarence and/or herself, or were they trying to get home? Which draugar decided which home to go to? Did they remember where she and Clarence were, or if they’d attacked them at all?
The second time she ordered some to go outside of range, they didn’t come back. The mystery deepened. This pattern didn’t repeat. More draugar took two orders to not return, some one, some three.
But one thing was clear: she could maintain a “bubble” around herself of about 200 to 400 feet devoid of draugar.
She allowed seven into her range and bonded with them, and then she tried to maintain
