“What are we going to do?” Nestor asked, a tremor in his voice.
Jubal didn’t like the way the new guy was handling his gun, waving it around like that.
“Stay cool for one thing,” he said, gently taking the baker’s arm and holding it down at the man’s side until he got the message.
He then looked down at Salina’s unconscious body, at the red mark on her face where Amara’s foot had connected. He wondered if she was still breathing, then decided he didn’t much care—and then felt ashamed of himself for thinking like that. “How is she?”
Ned was kneeling, checking her out. “That freak damn near took her head off but I guess she’ll be okay, no thanks to you civilians.”
“Ha!” Mother said. “Ain’t no civilians no more, army-boy. Just the living, the dead and the soon-to-be-dead. And if we keep chatting like this, the dead are going to gain a few more members.”
“Put her in your vehicle,” Jubal said to Philly. “I think the best thing we can do now is to turn back and find another route. There’s just too many of them to risk confrontation.”
“And who died and made you King Shit?” Philly said, one side of his upper lip raised in a sneer. “How about you folks do whatever the hell you want and we’ll do the motherfuckin’ same. The only bitch we take orders from is down on the ground there, bitch.”
“Oh!” Mother said. “You did not just say that.”
“All right,” Jubal said, raising his voice. “We do not have time for this. Everyone who wants to, get into your vehicle and follow us out of here.”
“You are one lucky man,” Mother said to Philly.
Jubal didn’t like the look in his big friend’s eyes and was glad he wasn’t on the receiving end of that gaze.
“Oh, just shoo now,” Philly said, cradling his weapon. “You all run away while we take care of business. This is a man’s fight anyway; no place for little girls in this here.”
“Why, you—”
“Mother!” Jubal snapped.
The scarred man lowered his gaze and turned his head until his disgust was aimed directly at Jubal.
But the former deputy sheriff did not flinch and waited it out until he saw Mother’s expression soften again, as he had known it would. Finally, Mother nodded once and made his way around to the other side of the Jeep.
“That’s right now,” Philly continued. “Y’all do what that little bitch says, like a good boy.”
Before anyone could react to the taunt, Jubal shouted, “Just get in your vehicles and ignore these jokers. They won’t be laughing for too much longer anyway; they’ll have their hands plenty full.”
While Mother and the others got into the Jeeps, Jubal strode up to Philly. Ned and Morris stood at the tall man’s sides but didn’t look quite as cocky as did their gung ho friend, their worried gazes instead locked on the herd of approaching monsters.
“You got a problem, little feller?” Philly said, his eyes cold and dead as a corpse’s.
It ain’t worth it, Jubal Slate. Just get in your vehicle and get these others to safety. That’s your job, not confronting assholes like this one who are a dime a dozen and not worth your time.
“Why don’t you run along with your little friends there and maybe you can go have a picnic in that happy fairyland you all were talking about. Meanwhile, me and my boys have work to do. We’re gonna shoot us some dead motherfuckers.”
Jubal wanted to smash his Desert Eagle into the smug man’s face but he reluctantly turned himself around instead and marched back to the black Jeep. Like an automaton, he swung open the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. The anger inside him soon swelled into a rage that he wasn’t sure he could control. Somewhere deep down, a rational voice screamed to be heard, but that voice was growing fainter by the second. He slammed the door closed and pushed the button that started the vehicle.
“You should have done it,” Mother whispered.
Jubal shook his head, his brain boiling as Philly’s taunts replayed themselves in his thoughts, not trusting himself to reply to Mother until he got it together.
Not now, man. Not now.
“Leave him alone, Chris,” Heather said from the back seat, using Mother’s real name.
Mother faced front and didn’t say another word.
Jubal swung the vehicle around and as he did so, he glimpsed the zombie mob, barely fifty yards away now, staggering toward where Salina’s group of misguided thugs stood their ground over their unconscious leader. He pulled up alongside the red Jeep with Tommy, Amara and Nestor already inside and hit the brakes.
He stared at his hands gripping the steering vehicle for one, two, three seconds…
“Wait here,” he said, and opened his door, getting out of the idling vehicle.
“What the fuck?” he heard Mother say, but Jubal ignored him.
Jubal pulled the Desert Eagle from its holster and pointed it at the backs of the three soldiers who were now unloading their weapons on the approaching wall of walking dead. He had to shout to be heard above the groaning, hungry mob and the gunfire. “Get that woman into your vehicle and get the fuck out of here now, or so help me I’ll drop every one of you motherfuckers where you stand and let them eat you.”
Philly glanced over his shoulder at Jubal, then turned away again, shaking his head.
Jubal shot him in the leg.
The tall man cried out as he crumpled to the ground, his weapon slipping from his hands.
“Let’s try this again! Get into your vehicle and leave now or I’ll drop you both where you stand!”
Ned called out over his shoulder, practically in tears. “Now is not a good time for this, man!”
“Do it now!”
Ned and Morris stopped shooting and instead dragged their friends to the Sunsteeler, hurriedly shoving them into the back seat.
As the dead closed in, Jubal took shots at some of the faster zombies in order to give the soldiers time to hop into their vehicle and rev it into action.
With Ned behind the wheel, the SUV barreled around, knocking a few zombies off their feet. It raced past Jubal, coming so close that the Sunsteeler’s wake whipped his hair about and rattled his jacket.
Jubal gazed into the nightmare faces of the approaching dead and for a second he wanted nothing more than to blast them all back to hell. And when he’d run out of bullets, he’d use his fists instead, and when he’d lost those, he’d use his teeth.
“Earth to Jubal!” A voice said from behind him.
“Yeah, I’m coming.” He turned and raced back to the Jeep.
* * *
Her jaw hurt like she’d been kissed by a sledgehammer. A man moaned in pain and she felt the familiar rhythm of a moving vehicle beneath her. Salina opened her eyes to find herself slumped in the back seat of the Sunsteeler. Next to her, holding a tourniquet on his bleeding leg, sat Philly, bent over and wincing, tears streaming down his dark face. Ned sat behind the wheel with Morris riding shotgun.
“What happened here?”
“Uh oh,” she heard Ned whisper.
Morris turned in his seat. “That little dude Slate shot Philly in the leg right when that mess of zombies was about to chow down on us!”
“What? I find that hard to believe. I mean, he must have had a reason.”
“He didn’t want us shooting those zombies, I guess. I mean, what business is that of his anyway? What’s he got against killing people that are already dead?”
Smart, Morris was not.
“And what the fuck happened to my face?” She leaned over and looked into the rear view mirror and saw a swelling red bruise. She used her tongue to probe the teeth on that side; a few of them moved loosely within their sockets.
“That tall bitch used some kung fu shit on you after you…uh—”
“After I what?” She looked hard into Morris’s eyes.
Morris looked away and said not another word.
Through gritted teeth, Philly said, “After you called all them zombies down on us.”
She studied the man. Philly must have been in a hell of a lot of pain to talk back to her like that. In addition to the tears, beads of sweat dotted his brow.
The Sunsteeler swerved to miss a pair of stray zombies, throwing Salina against the door and causing her head to throb in agony.
“Sorry,” Ned said.
“Where is Slate?”
“Right behind us.”
Salina saw that the road ahead was clear of zombies. The only obstructions left were the occasional abandoned vehicle or toppled light post.
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s what I want you to do…”
* * *
The Sunsteeler pulled off the highway, throwing up a cloud of dust and gravel as it settled on the shoulder.
“What are they doing?” Heather said.
Jubal didn’t know. But he was damned sure going to find out.
He hit the button to roll down his window. Without being asked, Heather passed the shotgun up to him. He loved the Desert Eagle, but the scattergun’s wide dispersal was hard to beat in a situation like he was about to drive into.
Jubal stopped the Jeep on the highway, parallel to the Sunsteeler.
Mother was out of the Jeep before it came to a complete stop. He leaned across the Jeep’s hood, aiming the Shredder at the SUV.
The red Jeep stopped behind Jubal’s vehicle. Tommy and Amara got out with their weapons at their sides.
Morris rolled down the window on the Sunsteeler.
“What’s up?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Jubal said.
A moan of pain came from within the SUV. Through the open window, Jubal saw Ned leaning over the front seat, applying pressure to Philly’s leg with a towel.
“My man needs his leg worked on,” Morris said. “Somebody shot him.” He gave Jubal what was meant to be a fierce look but after everything that Jubal had witnessed in this new world, schoolyard posturing barely registered.
“How’s Salina?”
He knew Morris faced a tough decision. Did he keep up the badass stare-down or did he answer the question? After a few seconds of looking at Jubal’s impassive countenance, Morris sighed in resignation.
“She’s still out, man. The tall bitch messed her up.”
The Sunsteeler’s back windows were lightly tinted. Jubal could just make out the shape of Salina slumped in the back seat.
“So what are we doin’?” Morris said. “You gonna follow us to the state line or somethin’?”
Jubal pondered the question. Salina and her men were a major pain in his ass. On top of that, he wasn’t responsible for every last human on the planet. She and her cowboys were getting along fine before he came along. Maybe Nestor wasn’t having a grand old time, but Jubal had fixed that. Besides, Jubal’s people had a lot of ground to cover.
“Nope,” he said. “Have a nice life.”
Jubal rolled up his window. Mother threw Morris a salute and climbed back into the Jeep. In the rear-view, Jubal saw Tommy and Amara get into the other Jeep.
Jubal pulled away from the Sunsteeler and resumed the journey west.
“Good riddance to bad news,” Mother said.
“And hello, Iowa,” Robin said.
“What she said.”
“Iowa, ho,” Heather added.
Jubal felt odd. It took him a moment to recognize the sensation.
It was a small lessening of his burden. He wasn’t ready to completely buy into the happy fairy tale story of Sanctuary yet, not by a long shot. Still, it felt good to have a goal. Before they met Tommy Cho, the only plan they had was to keep moving and stay alive. Jubal realized it couldn’t hurt to allow himself to enjoy something he hadn’t experience for a very long time: a little—very little—bit of hope.
“Iowa, ho,” he said. And Robin and Heather laughed. Even Mother smiled.
* * *
In the trailing Jeep, Tommy checked his rear view mirror for the hundredth time.
“I don’t see her,” Nestor said. “Do you?”
“Nope,” Tommy said. “I think we’ve seen the last of your friends.”
“Friends.” Nestor spat out the word as if it had curdled in his mouth. “Satan should have such friends.”
“I don’t think they’ll want much to do with us from here on.”
“I hope not,” Nestor said. He sagged against the seat. “I will have nightmares about that woman for the rest of my life.”
“Maybe not,” Tommy said. “This place we’re headed? It’s supposed to be real nice. Maybe they’ll need a baker.”
“That would be great.” Nestor sighed and closed his eyes.
“I don’t think that crazy woman will want to mess with you again,” Tommy said. He turned to Amara. “What you did to her? That was totally crazy.”
The tall woman didn’t reply. She sat ramrod straight, staring ahead.
“Hey, how did you learn to do that fancy fightin’ stuff?”
Amara turned to look at him.
“How did you learn to grow food in the ground?”
“Well, uh, my dad and my uncles taught me,” Tommy said.
“Yes,” Amara said. She resumed watching the highway ahead of them.
Wow. Tommy was fascinated by her. Amara wasn’t anything like the girls he’d known back home. In fact, she was unlike anyone he’d ever met. He had so many questions, so many things he wanted to know about her.
He’d also been around her long enough to know that if he pressed too hard she would become even quieter than she was now.
“So, Nestor,” he said, “are you a Cubs or a White Sox fan?”
In response, Nestor snored. Great. Now he had no one to talk with. No radio. No recorded songs.
“Hey, Amara.” She barely moved her shaved head in his direction. “Do you like music?” he said.
“Certain music, yes.”
“Do you mind if I sing?”
“I won’t know until I’ve heard you.”
“Good enough,” he said. “This first song was one of my granny’s favorites. It’s called ‘The Devil Went Down To Georgia’. It goes a little something like this…”
* * *
“They outta sight,” Morris said.
Salina sat up. Next to her, Philly rocked his upper body up and down. At least he wasn’t making any more noise. Christ, she hated pussies.
“What do we do now?” Ned said.
“Nothing, for a little while.”
“The hell’s that mean?” Morris said.
“You’re getting a little mouthy, Morris,’ Salina said. “In fact all you cunts are getting on my nerves. You don’t like it, we can let you out here.”
“Naw, you know I don’t mean that. I just want to kill them assholes.”
That was something Salina understood.
She got out of the SUV, walked around to the other side, and opened the door.
“Let me look at it.”
With his jaw set, Philly scooted toward the middle of the Sunsteeler and carefully set his wounded leg on the seat.
Salina knelt, examining the bullet hole. “It was through and through,” she said. “At least we don’t have to dig out a bullet. Ned, get some water out of the back. Clean out the wound and find something to wrap his leg with.”
Salina walked away from the SUV and let Ned care for Philly. She picked up a rock and tossed it toward the southbound lanes of the highway. The two sides of I-88 were separated by fifty yards of scrubby grass and big-ass street lights that no longer worked. It would be so easy to cross that median and head back to Chicago, back to the life she had been leading before killing zombies and being the baddest bitch around. Until now, that had been enough.
But not anymore.
Not since Slate arrived, with his tale of aliens who could control zombies and of a place where zombies could not enter. Maybe it was all bullshit. In fact, it probably was bullshit. But she had to know for herself.
Salina had fled her mother, the whore, living on the streets until she could join the military with a fake ID. The Army was good for her, for a while. But eventually the structure, the orders and the men who gave those orders began to chafe her. If the shit hadn’t hit the fan with the green sky and the plague, she would have ended up in prison for murdering an officer.
She had been free now for a long time, killing anything that moved, queen of the fucking world. And she was bored.
She tossed another rock toward Chicago.
When the world turned bad, Salina didn’t figure anybody would survive very long. She was determined to cause as much damage as she could before the end. The need to kill, to destroy, hadn’t gone away. It had only grown. There was a crazy person inside of her, she knew that. It had grown from the child that had been locked away in a closet while her mother fucked for meth. Now, there were times she found it hard to keep the darkness locked up inside.
She smiled, and if any of her men could have seen it, they would have pissed their pants. Oh, she knew what they thought: Salina is barely on this side of sanity. They stayed with her because they always had food and something to kill. But they feared her.
If only they knew the Salina that she kept locked away, just like her mother had kept that little girl in the closet.
She was pretty sure she couldn’t hold back the other Salina for much longer. One way or another, she felt the clock ticking. That darker woman was a creature of pure rage, and she wanted out. She wanted to hurt everything still walking on this planet.
Nobody lives forever. And when Salina went, she would leave the world burning.
“You sure that transmitter is functioning okay? I mean, they’re getting away,” Ned said and spat a stream of chewing tobacco onto the roadside.
“They’ll find some side roads and circle around that mass of zombies. And then they’ll be back on the highway, heading up to Iowa, to this Sanctuary, if it actually exists. There’s no hurry.” She lifted a small black box and checked its screen. “And yes, it’s working. No matter where that red Jeep goes, we’ll be able to locate it.”
“You just slapped it on when we stopped back there, huh? That was good thinking.”
She shrugged and stretched. A chill wind bit her skin but she welcomed the sensation, anything that made her feel alive, even if it was unpleasant.
An image appeared in her mind: Salina with her hands wrapped around Amara’s slender neck, choking the life out of her, the woman’s eyes rolling back in her head, her tongue sticking out and turning black.
But all that would have to wait until after Slate revealed his secrets. And if they needed to shed a little blood to get the information out of him, or torture one of the others—even that little brat—then all the better. Wetwork was their business. The wetter the better.