Ollie slammed his hands on the table. “Why do you need a fucking sword, eh?”
Clarence and Jocelyn kept silent. Ollie made an almost imperceptible nod, and Brooke hit Clarence again. Then she hit Jocelyn. There was a pause and Ollie tipped his head to them. They still kept silent.
He nodded and Brooke hit Jocelyn several times in the head until Jocelyn’s lip split open and she bled. Inexplicably, perhaps without thinking, Jocelyn wiped her lip with her tongue.
Uh-oh.
Brooke pummeled Clarence, and he closed his eyes to absorb the punches psychologically.
“Jesus Christ, she healed! Her bloody lip healed!” Ollie cried out. Brooke stopped pounding on Clarence, and Clarence opened his eyes. Both Ollie and Brooke stood open-mouthed, staring at Jocelyn.
“You sure, Ollie?” Brooke asked.
“Well, you saw it, right? Hit her again. This time till she bleeds again.”
Brooke pounded away at Jocelyn’s head for quite a while.
“Stop, stop!” Ollie called. “She has a cut now, another one at the corner of her mouth.” Jocelyn had now bowed her head, an attempt to conceal her injury.
“Lift her head up and wipe that blood off,” Ollie ordered. Brooke lifted Jocelyn’s head and wiped away the blood with her finger—and the wound was gone.
“Well, I’ll be gone to Hell . . .” He turned to Brooke and said. “Quick, hit grampa until he bleeds.”
A barrage of painful, more forceful, punches struck Clarence. When Brooke stopped, he tasted blood in his mouth.
After staring at Clarence for a while, Ollie concluded, “It’s her isn’t it? You’re just along for the ride?” he asked Clarence. Clarence kept his mouth shut, except to spit out blood onto the table. Ollie looked at Brooke. “She sent zombies after us, they didn’t attack her or him, just us. They tried to sneak in and steal this sword, and she can heal herself so well she can come back from the dead . . . And if she can do all that without that sword . . . What the hell can she do with it?”
Brooke was silent.
Ollie shook his head. “I’d heard stories of the woman who could take bullets and keep going as if they were bee stings, but everybody thought that was a story concocted to cover up incompetence. But now, it’s clear what we have here, Brooke.”
“And what’s that, Ollie?”
“A witch. She’s a god-damned witch, and she scares the hell out of me.”
“How do you know she’s a witch? And what is a witch anyways?”
“Witches are capable of extraordinary things. One put a hex on my mother once and strange, bad things kept happening to her until she died from being hit by a bus. Witches are dangerous.”
“Well, what should we do?” Brooke asked.
“Well, now the first thing we’ll do is kill her. Put a bullet in her head right now!”
“You mean now?”
“Are you deaf, or are you just stupid, kill the fucking witch right the fuck now!”
Jocelyn sighed, closed her eyes, and shook her head.
Brooke obeyed, aimed and fired one shot into Jocelyn’s skull.
Clarence just closed his eyes and gave an “oh, fuck.” His heart beat rapidly as he feared he was next. This was it. This was where the zombie apocalypse finally claims his life. He felt like an idiot for leaving his safe room.
“Okay, Ollie. What do we do next?” Brooke asked.
Clarence opened his eyes. “We do what everyone does with witches,” Ollie said, gaze fixed on Clarence. Anger flashed in his eyes again. “We burn 'em. Care to watch?”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Day Eleven
Oliver Simpson was anything if not thorough and methodical. First, kill the witch. Check. Second, burn her to a crisp. Third, torture grampa, get him to spill the secrets of the sword. Fourth, kill grampa. Fifth, leave this motherfucking supermarket.
Perhaps grampa would tell them what hole he’d climbed out of.
He ordered Fred and Cameron to clean up all the bodies and pile them up outside the front of the store along with any remains that they could pick up with a shovel, and while they had been spared the battle, Oliver didn’t want them to be spared the carnage.
Oliver pulled back the witch’s slumped head until her eyes pointed at the ceiling.
“If she so much as blinks, if a muscle so much as twitches, shoot her in the head again,” Oliver instructed Brooke Reynolds. “In fact, if you’re just feeling jumpy, shoot her again.”
“What’s your name?” Oliver asked grampa. “You don’t want me calling you grampa forever, do ya?”
Grampa shrugged. “My name is Clarence. Are we supposed to be friends, now?”
Oliver laughed. “Of course not, I don’t take you for a fool, and I’m not one either. But I want you to know it’s nothing personal. Under different circumstances I believe you, me, and the witch could have been friends, but we can’t, and right now I’d love nothing more than to send you back to Hell or wherever it was you came from. But there’s no reason we can’t be civilized, and I need you to tell me about that sword, and . . . What is her name?”
“Was. It was Jocelyn.” Oliver sensed a little defeat in Clarence, but he was still somewhat defiant.
Oliver chuckled. “Was. Is. She came back from the dead once, I assume she can come back again. But if you would tell me about that sword over there, I’d much appreciate it.” He continued to laugh. Clarence was probably not going to spill the beans without some good old-fashioned persuasion, but hell, maybe he could get this done the easy way.
“Why don’t you go check out the sword yourself?” Clarence asked.
“What? And leave you and the witch alone with Brooke? I figure we’ll have plenty of time for our other activities once we can get those bodies piled up. Speaking of that . . . “ He talked into his walkie-talkie. “Fred, how’re you coming along? Over.”
“About halfway done, Ollie. It’s slow-going. Man, the stink . . . Over.”
“Wait till you breathe burning flesh. Over.”
Oliver caught Clarence
