Mother and Heather kept low, moving as fast as they could. They kept to the back of the cabins. Not, Mother thought, that it would necessarily keep them safe from zombies. In his experience, the undead fuckers just wandered to and fro unless they were being controlled. That made him think of Luther Kemp, the psycho motherfucker who had tried to kill Mother on several occasions. Kemp was gone, but not a day went by that Mother didn’t wish Kemp would come back from the dead so Mother could kill him all over again.
Nobody could say that Mother didn’t know how to hold a grudge.
“How far?” he said.
“At the end of this row,” Heather said. Her voice was flat, mechanical. He understood. If she let her feelings get out of control now, she couldn’t do anything for Robin.
So far, they’d been lucky. Mother knew that wouldn’t last. The dead things were streaming into Sanctuary and they would be hard to avoid.
One step at a time. That’s all he could control.
They arrived behind the school cabin. Heather didn’t wait on him. She threw open the rear door and entered. Didn’t anybody lock their doors around here? Mother figured none of these people had grown up in east L.A.
He followed Heather into the big school room. There was a blackboard on one wall and three rows of desks. The wall opposite the blackboard had a long bookshelf. The wall above the books was plastered with drawings made by the kids. All were sunny, happy pictures. Not one drawing showed a woman on an operating table with wires coming out of her brain.
A handful of people were clustered together in the middle of the room. There were three adults—two women and one man. The man was one of the security men. He held the hand of a child.
It was Robin.
Heather was running toward the group like a bat out of hell, a high keening sound came from her, all of the fear and rage and frustration she kept bottled up now coming to a boil.
The security asshole raised his handgun. He was going to kill Heather; Mother saw the certainty on the man’s face.
Mother lifted the rifle.
There were too many people grouped together. Kids, too. Fortunately, the security man was taller than the women.
The gun of the security man was almost parallel to the floor.
Mother sighted down the barrel and fired. The round entered the man’s left eye and exited in a bright, crimson bloom from the back of the man’s skull.
Heather didn’t even slow down. She had Robin in her arms before the corpse of the security man hit the wooden floor.
The other women stared at them, mouths open in surprise. The children also watched them, slightly less shocked.
“We got her,” Mother said. “Let’s go find Jubal.”
“Wait,” Heather said. She lowered Robin to the floor.
The child glanced at Mother and smiled.
What a kid, he thought. She’s handling this better than the grown-ups.
The dead security man still held his handgun in his right hand. Heather pulled it from his grasp. Then, kneeling close to the corpse, Heather spit in the man’s face. One of the women gasped. Heather stood, with the gun in one hand and Robin’s small hand in the other.
“Ready,” she said.
* * *
Considering the circumstances, Dr. Arnand Sims was feeling pretty good.
He walked through Sanctuary, stepping over the bodies of his neighbors, aware of the fighting in the park and determined to avoid it. To survive in this new dead world, one had to be strong, cunning or brilliant. Sims wasn’t strong, but he had the other two covered. Oh, yes. In spades.
The zombies continued to avoid him, proving his genius. The helmet had exceeded his wildest expectations. Certainly, there was the weakness. He had expected that. Thankfully, he wouldn’t have to wear it much longer. He simply needed a safe haven from which to wait out this fracas. Perhaps a spot outside the town would be best. He could simply exit the same way the zombies had entered. The dead things wouldn’t interfere with him. Although he had a strong curiosity about what other force had invaded his town, he also had a powerful desire to survive, one that now overrode any curiosity or thoughts of “saving” Sanctuary.
“Doc! Hey, Doc!”
The sides of the helmet somewhat muffled his hearing—something Sims must correct in the next version of the helmet. He had to turn around to determine who had shouted at him.
When he saw Lauren and another man running toward him, Sims felt impatience cause the muscles in the back of his neck to clench. He didn’t have time for this. Didn’t Lauren realize Sanctuary was over? It was a noble failure, and Sims would take what he had learned from the experience and begin again somewhere else. He already considered Lauren and the others—every man, woman and child in Sanctuary—to be part of the past, characters in a story already told. How foolish he had been to entertain the idea that they could save Sanctuary.
“Doc, you’re not going to believe the shit we seen!”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t,” Sims said. “Now I really must be going.”
“Going? What do you mean?”
The other man spoke. “Hey, Doc, what’s with the crazy hat?”
Sims thought his name was Burton. Ultimately, it did not matter.
“Hey, Doc, what the hell?” Lauren said. “He asked you a question.”
Sims bristled. He hated being questioned by inferiors. These men were no more than ants to him. Yes, they had served a purpose—once. Now that purpose had ended.
Still, if it would help to speed his journey out of this place, he would satisfy their curiosity.
“The helmet produces a localized field to repel the zombies,” he said.
Lauren tilted his head, like a dog trying to understand the voice of its master.
“Hold on,” he said. “You got your own personal force field?”
The pain in Sims’ neck grew worse. Of course, the real pain in his neck was standing in front of him, yammering on like a brain damaged monkey.
“Yes,” Sims said.
Now Lauren rubbed a hand across his mouth, contemplating one of the few thoughts his limited intellect could manage. He said, “I want it.”
“Ridiculous,” Sims said. “I need it to leave here. To continue my work.”
“Yeah?” Lauren pointed a gun at Sims. “I need it too. Since I helped you kill people to keep the zombies out of here, I figure you owe me. My family’s dead. I got no reason to stay. So hand it over.”
Burton looked from Lauren to Sims and back again. Perhaps he was beginning to realize that this day would not end well for him.
“You wouldn’t like the experience, Lauren. Trust me on this.”
“Trust you? You deluded cocksucker.”
Burton screamed.
Sims didn’t understand why until he saw the arms encircling Burton’s waist. It was a zombie. The dead woman was chewing into Burton’s lower back. Burton flapped his arms uselessly before he fell to his knees. The dead thing never lost its grip on him. She must have been well into his kidneys by now.
Sims was fascinated. He’d never witnessed a zombie attack this closely before.
Burton was prone on the ground now, trying to throw the zombie off by rolling. Lauren fired the handgun at the zombie. Unfortunately, Burton chose that moment to lift his upper body in one more attempt to disengage the dead woman, and the bullet struck him in the shoulder. He fell forward with his face in the dirt. Lauren fired repeatedly. The remaining bullets struck the zombie’s head. She, too, ceased to move, her face still buried in Burton’s back.
Lauren turned to face Sims. Sweat ran down the sides of his face.
“Okay, Doc, I’m not fuckin’ around here. Give me the helmet.”
“Or what? I believe you’re out of ammunition.”
Lauren smiled. It was not a nice sight. “Then I guess I’ll have to beat you to death.”
Sims took a step back. He felt certain Lauren meant it.
Lauren raised his empty weapon over his head and took a menacing step toward Sims.
Sims heard the shot at the same instant blood exploded from Lauren’s knee.
As Lauren fell, a man said, “Really? You went for the knee?”
“I was aiming for his head,” a woman relied. “I stumbled.”
The newcomers. Three of them, at least. The large black man had a rifle. The child stood behind him. He pointed the gun at Sims. “That’s one ugly fucking hat.”
Sims sighed. “It’s not a hat. It’s—”
The black man pressed the barrel of the rifle against Sims’ throat.
“Don’t care,” he said.
The blonde woman stood over Lauren.
Through clenched teeth Lauren said, “You shot me, you bitch.”
“And you took my child,” she said.
Sims thought she sounded very calm. Then she aimed her pistol and shot Lauren in the face.
The black man said, “It had to be done.”
The woman nodded. She pointed her gun at Sims. Two weapons aimed at him was overkill, he thought.
“I heard what you said. That helmet keeps the zombies away?”
“Yes,” Sims said.
“Take it off,” the woman said.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Sims said.
“Take it off,” the scarred man said. To emphasize his point, he poked the rifle barrel into Sims’ throat.
Sims yanked the helmet from his head. There was barely any pain.
The woman gasped.
“You sick son-of-a-bitch,” the man said. He pulled the trigger on his rifle.
* * *
Doctor Arnand Sims let go of the helmet and toppled to the ground alongside of it. After that, he did not move, his eyes were open but glazed over now with death. From inside the helmet protruded four thin spikes, spikes which were covered with blood and brain. Dr. Sims’ brain.
Mother sneered and poked the helmet with a booted toe. “You still want this madman’s anti-zombie hat? You might want to be careful. Looks like once you put it on, it’s sort of permanent.”
She shook her head, a look of disgust on her face. “Let’s get out of here, Chris. Jubal said to meet outside of town or back at that river.”
“Nuh-uh. I ain’t going anywhere without the boss-man. You can head off if you want to, but personally, I think you’d both be safer with me, and you’ll be even safer once we have the group back together again.”
“The group back together, huh? Because we rock, right?”
“Damn right, girl.”
Heather nodded and so did her daughter.
Then the three of them headed toward the park, eyes open for clusters of the hungry dead.