Tomas shrugged at the jibe. “He has struck you hard, Eliza. Most of your humans are either dead or have fled. I beg you one last time, leave him be.”
“Never!” she screamed as she stepped out from behind a truck and smack dab in front of a speeding bullet. Her mid section punched in from the projectile as her upper torso bent over. Tomas grabbed her before she could fall and pulled her back behind cover.
“It is not a fatal blow,” Tomas said, inspecting the wound.
The zombies around the siblings did not advance, but they had stopped what they were doing and were now watching them intently.
Eliza sat in her brother’s arms for a while longer. The searing pain was something she had not experienced since her human youth when a gang of Huns had trapped her in an old barn and beat and used her for three days before they tired of her. For the first time in half a millennia, Eliza doubted her intentions. “Why won’t he die, Tomas?” Eliza begged.
“It is for something you have forgotten about, Eliza: family, he fights for the lives of his family. He knows no stronger bond.”
“Then that is the bond we must break,” Eliza said as she stood up. The bullet had worked its way out of her skin and the wound was nearly healed.
“Did you hear nothing I said?” Tomas fairly cried.
“I heard everything you said. If we kill Talbot’s family, he will follow closely behind.”
“Not until he exacts his fair measure of revenge. He will not strike out if we do not corner him.”
“Maybe that would have been the truth at one time, brother. No, we must strike while he is at his weakest, while he still has family to use as leverage and while he is still learning the powers that you bestowed upon him. You sealed his fate when you bit him.”
There was nothing he could do to sway her from this course, and when the final showdown did come, whose side would he fall on? He still hadn’t made up his mind.
The cries of her humans had nearly died out. A few trucks could be heard pulling away and zombies were spread out everywhere, hunting for food, including the ones that had stopped for a moment, checking out Eliza, to see if she would be coming on the menu.
“We should leave here, Eliza, in case he has any other surprises in store for us.”
Eliza made sure this time to keep under cover and concealment behind the remaining trucks as she herded her zombies back in. And on that highway was where she would leave them, two thousand zombies, through the coming winters and summers. Those zombies would sway forever, as leaves fell, as rain poured, as sun soaked them, tied to Eliza’s last order to stand still.
“You’re just going to leave them here?” Eliza’s first-in-command asked, as he swung the command truck around.
“I fear that a couple of the zombies looked at her with a less than flattering stare,” Tomas told the man.
The man wouldn’t miss them. It was tough to feel sorry for the creatures that tore his wife apart in front of his very eyes as she fell from the ladder they were climbing to get up their apartment’s fire escape. He had thought about just letting go and joining her, but he wasn’t brave enough for that. Not brave enough to die and not brave enough to live. Eliza had come across him a week later, still huddled in the far corner of his apartment, covered in his own filth, too scared to even cross his own living room to get some water.
She had promised him a chance to strike back at those responsible for his wife’s death. Dean had never been a God-fearing man, but he knew the devil when he came across it, and the only thing missing on Eliza were the horns. It wasn’t that he believed her words, it was what he knew she would do to him if he didn’t join her. A coward is led. He felt this was his punishment for not dying with his wife. He had seen and done more acts of brutality, cruelty and evil in the last six months than any person should ever be exposed to, and all in the name of Eliza. He knew his wife was looking down on him, frowning, and that he would never see her again. There was no place in heaven for the likes of him, not anymore. Maybe at one time, he had the whole meek thing going for him, now he was certain he was damned. If he had not thought that, he would have killed himself months ago, but he was afraid of meeting whatever it was that had spawned Eliza. So, afraid of this eventual meeting, he had begged first Eliza and then Tomas to bite him. Eliza had laughed cruelly at him when his request came.
“You would give up your soul so willingly?” she asked, flashing her lengthened canines.
“More than anything, mistress,” he had groveled before her.
“You disgust me,” Eliza told him. “The only way I would bite your pathetic neck would be to drain you dry. To watch you shrivel like an exposed worm in the mid-July sun.”
“Please mistress! Have I not served you well?”
“Do not think I am fooled; you serve for preservation, not loyalty.”
Dean withdrew; was he that easy to read?
“I can see by your reaction that I know your heart,” she said. “Do you not wish to once again see this wife you were wailing about when I found you?”
Dean sniffed, wiping his nose clean, nodding his head vigorously.
“But you know now that there is no place for you in your God’s heaven, don’t you?”
Dean nodded again.
“You think I’m cruel?” Eliza said through thin lips. “How about your master that banishes his children from his garden because they merely thirsted for knowledge! Or floods an entire world because of acts from a few that he finds depraved. Or allows the undead to walk among his creations, devouring them because they went too far with the knowledge they had obtained? That sounds cruel to me!” she yelled. “How about letting a man’s wife be allowed into his heaven, but deny the husband entry!” she said as she picked Dean up by a finger placed under his jaw.
The pain was excruciating as his entire body’s weight was suspended by his jaw. Eliza’s finger had broken through skin and was threatening to come up underneath his tongue. He yearned for death at that moment, to be free from the pain she was inflicting on him. He cared not what happened to his eternal soul as she paraded him around like that for a few moments more. When she finally pulled her finger away, he crashed to the ground, staying there many moments longer, until Eliza beckoned him like nothing had happened at all.
“How far, mistress?” Dean asked as he drove away from the scene of carnage.
“Until I snap your neck or tell you to stop,” Eliza said, staring straight through the windshield.
And from the mood she was in, Dean fully expected the neck snapping to be the outcome.
***
Paul, Brian and Mrs. Deneaux worked themselves off the bridge long before Eliza had made her departure and were making as good a progress as they could. Brian was slowed considerably by his injury, but it wasn’t like Mrs. Deneaux was blazing any trails.
“Get in the woods,” Paul urged, “I hear someone coming.”
“Is it Mike?” Brian asked, hoping that was the case.
“Possible,” Paul stated as he ushered the small group along. “But there were also a bunch of people running for their lives from that raid.”
Mrs. Deneaux had just entered into the underbrush as three heavily armed men rounded a corner on the road up ahead. One of the men was holding his side like he had the mother of all stitches from running.
“Hold up,” one of the men said. “I thought I saw something.” He was pointing to where Paul and the others were now hiding.
All three had assault rifles.
“Whassa matter, Vinnie?” one man asked the cohort who was holding his side.
“I cut myself getting down off the truck,” Vinnie said.
The man who asked the question brought his rifle up to Vinnie’s head. “Lemme see the cut, Vin,” he asked.
“Come on, Lenny. I cut myself. Get that gun outta my face!” Vinnie yelled.
“What are you two hollering about?” the leader said, turning to face the other two men.
“Vinnie says he’s cut,” Lenny said.
The leader turned his gun on Vinnie. “You know the deal, Vinnie. Let’s see it.”
“It barely got me,” Vinnie cried, “it’s more like a nip.”
