"There's going to be a snow storm soon…" Emily said as we stepped from our room.
"How do you know?" Reese asked, leaned against the counter eating a dry bowl of cereal.
"I was able to get into one of the active weather satellites." Emily responded, turning a large laptop like device around to us, "One of the first places we went was the weather station so I could see if we could track weather patterns."
"Does it look bad?" I asked.
"Bad enough to matter…" Emily responded. Russell hobbled from their room, slowly making his way to the counter with us.
"What does that mean?" Reese asked confused.
"The problem we face is if there is snow on the ground, we can't do any sort of travel or reconnaissance." Emmett said, folding his arms over his chest and worrying his chin with his fingers.
"Why?" Reese asked.
"Well…" I started, "The truck will make tracks…"
"Exactly." Emmett responded, "Any tracks in and out will make it obvious we are here, and even though we are in a bunker built to withstand nuclear blast, we don't want to risk the house or garden getting destroyed if people find out we are here..."
Reese nodded. "Okay, so we can't move."
"But we need to make sure we have everything we need before it hits… enough to make sure we can fair well into the winter in case the snow doesn't melt quickly enough." Emmett sighed, "How long do we have?"
"Looks like three or four days maybe before it starts." Emily shrugged, "But that's just a guess."
Emmett nodded. "We need to do a few runs then, food, medical supplies, gas…"
"All of us?" Reese asked, Emmet shook his head.
"Russ will stay…" Emmett said, "You're not in the condition to be out yet."
"Do you think you could clear out the Garden?" Emily suggested.
"Yeah babe." he responded with a bright smile. He honestly just seemed happy to be able help even a little bit.
"Okay." Emmett said, "Everyone get ready, if we get out early we can get home early." everyone nodded and moved to their separate rooms.
With the air becoming colder Emmett and I both pulled on slim fitting t-shirts and then pulled on sweaters over top. Tucking the draw strings and hoods into the necks. I pulled my hair into a fishtail braid and stuffed the end into the back of the sweater.
"Satine." He started as he adjusted his holster and gun.
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry about my mood last night…" He said as he handed me my holster from the bed.
"I forgive you." I said pausing, he was trying to keep up a tough exterior. I stepped up to him, wrapped my arms around his waist and held him tightly. I reached up on my toes and kissed his lips, "It must have been hard. I get it."
He smiled and nodded, kissing me back once more before we finished getting ready. As we stepped out of the room, we saw Reese sitting in a chair in the kitchen, and heard the low buzz of clippers as they ran through his hair. Emily smiled at us.
"Whats going on…" I asked with a laugh, Reese shrugged with a small smile.
"Thought maybe it'd be safer to just cut it." he responded, "Not a fan of having a pony tail." He had on a slim fitting t-shirt and jeans that actually fit him. Emily bussed the sides of his head quickly, then shifted the blade to a longer length. After, she took a large chunk of hair from the top of his head and snipped it off, then ran the blade through the top a few times to even out the jagged ends so his now long blond hair was a slightly longer high, and tight haircut, similar to what Emmett had.
Emily brushed the hair pieces from his shoulders and he stood. His well-fitting clothes and hair cut reminded me of what he looked like when we had first met when I was in high school. As he clipped his holster onto his belt I grinned and nodded to myself.
"Lookin' Good Reese." Russell said as he hobbled back out from their room.
"Thanks." Reese answered with a thankful smile.
"Think you could trim us up tonight?" Emmett asked as he readied his backpack on the counter.
"Yeah, you are starting to look shaggy." She said with a laugh, Emmett and Russell both laughed.
Emily smiled and set her clippers into the container and pushed it to the side as she pulled up her bag to ready it to go, Reese got his bag, and we all emptied out any random stuff we didn't need and only kept a few emergency medical supplies and granola bars, and a bottle of water each. Then we said goodbye to Russell and trudged up the stairs and through the hatch to the garage. As we stepped out Emmett opened the garage door and checked for any danger. Once cleared we pulled out of the garage and zoomed off down the road to our next destination.
"The Pharmacy would be the best to hit." Emmett said, "But I don't want to go to the one stuck in a store again. It's safer if we can see outside."
"Sounds good to me." Emily said from the back. I nodded in agreement.
"Yeah, sounds good." I agreed as I took a turn toward the pharmacy on 5th.
I parked the car close to the door, facing the road to make a run if we needed to. We all stepped out of the car, readying our bags and guns as we surveyed the surroundings. A few dead bodies and abandon cars were strewn about the parking lot. Unlike the hardware store the door here was already broken open. However the inside of the store only looked a little disturbed.
We all did a final check over of our bodies and gear before I locked the car and stuffed the keys into my pocket, hooking the carabiner to a loop on my belt. We stepped up slowly to the door, Emmett took the front of the group, slowly pushing the door open with his gun propped against his flashlight. He scanned the store quickly, then motioned for us to split.
"Grab what can be useful and meet back at the front in 15 minutes. Use your gun only if needed." He said, we nodded.
Emily and I nodded, branching off to one side of the store while Emmett and Reese headed to the other. We scanned through the aisles we came across a slug, standing still in the corner. As he heard us he turned slowly, then began to lumber his way toward us. Emily pushed her gun into her holster and snapped the long knife from its place on her belt, she swept her foot under the zombie's feet and it planted its face into the tiled floor. Rotted teeth rolled out beneath its head before she stomped her heavy boot into its shoulder blades and slammed the knife through its skull. It made me cringe and gag slightly. The putrid smell of rotted flesh made my stomach churn.
"Aww… that's rank…" I said as I covered my nose with the sleeve of my sweater.
"Fucking disgusting" She yanked the knife from its skull and wiped her hands on her jeans, kicking the body to the side so we could walk through.
The shelves had been rooted through already, but it seemed like only enough to sustain a few people was taken, there was plenty of bandages, antiseptics, medical devices and more for Emily and me to both fill our bags. As we made our way through the aisles, filling our bags with what we found useful we chatted quietly. I could occasionally hear Emmett or Reese say something or laugh to one another as they moved about the opposite side of the store.
After about 5 minutes I paused as I heard a noise. A faint crying sounded from outside, barely audible through the walls of the store. I turned toward a door, it appeared to be a door to a back room or stockroom, I could see sunlight flooding into the small window.
"Did you hear that?" I asked softly.
"Hm?" Emily hummed absently, "No."
I strained my ears to hear, and again the faint cry drift in through the door.
"That…" I said as I stepped to the door.
"You're probably just hearing the groaning from the zombies." she said ignoring me, "Don't worry about it." she kept stuffing things into her bag and humming softly to herself. I looked back through the window of the back room and could see the back of the stockroom, a door stood there, cracked only slightly, leading to the outside. I drew my gun; an open door was an open path for zombies. I looked back at Emily, she had rounded the corner of an aisle.
As I pushed through the door I scanned the back of the store, it was bare, save for a long table and a few vending machines that looked as though it were a break room. There was nothing else in the room besides a bathroom door and a few pallet jacks that sat in the corner. I walked wearily, checking any small crevice I could see as I moved but no zombies were in the room. I wanted to turn back to the store and join the others but the crying grew as I neared the door. I slowly opened the door, pushing gun first through the opening. I was met with an alleyway that rounded the back of the store. It was blocked on either side with tall chain link fencing with a fence door large enough for a delivery truck to drive through A sign on the back of the door spelt "Receiving area: Authorized personnel only. Please report to management for delivery".
I heard the cry growing louder and turned toward the further part of the yard. I could see a few zombies clawing at the back of the fence where the crying came from. I scanned the area, the yard was fairly empty besides for a few old, disheveled pallets leaned against the walls of the other building or on the ground in small stacks of 3 or 4, and a large dumpster in the very end corner that looked like it was too close to the fence to hide any zombies. I let the door close behind me, leaving it only slightly cracked propped against a rubber stopper that had held it open before.
I pushed further through the alley way, the crying grew even louder. As I rounded the corner a small baby carrier sat just as I stepped around.
"A baby?" I asked myself in a whisper, "Who would leave a baby?" but as I crouched to pull the cover off of the carrier, the cry became more metallic and fake. As the blanket whisked away, a small, old recorder sat there. Its red light blinking as it played back the cry of the baby. My eyes widened with fear, I knew then that it had been a trap, and now I was stuck out here with whoever, or whatever, had laid the trap for some unsuspecting empath like me.
Suddenly I felt a length of rope, or leather, or something wrap around my neck from behind. I reached up and ripped at my own skin desperately, feeling a leathery length of something tightening around my throat, crushing my larynx and denying my want to scream out. All I could do was flail my body in whatever way I could and struggle against the body now straddling my back, hard points jabbing into my back as if his knees or elbows were digging into my back to push me down to the ground.
No matter how hard I struggled against the body above me, I couldn't release myself from his grip. I tried to yell. For Emmett, for Emily, for Reese… for anyone to help me. But I faded quickly, losing all sense of myself for a few moments, not even able to think of my friends to yell for them.
When my mind began to come through I could still feel the strap around my throat, still heard the recorded wailing of the baby, still feel the cold concrete scratching into my cheek. But my breath was still labored, I couldn't breathe deep enough to knock myself back into full consciousness. I could only bring myself to be slightly aware of the movement around me, on me…
I could feel hands tugging, not at me, but more at my clothing. Fingers frantically trying to rip at the belt holding my pants tightly to my waist. I finally felt a large knife snap through the leather, releasing the belt. Then the hands worked at tugging my pants down, slowly, they were too tight to remove without unbuttoning. I then felt the knife begin to slice through them instead, the perpetrator obviously becoming frustrated with how long it was taking to get access to what he wanted. As he made the first and second cut I tried to take in deep breaths, trying to snap some oxygen into my brain. I was finally able to struggle again. An angry grunt sounded before the leather strap around my neck tightened again and an elbow pressed into my lower spine, knees pinned my arms down. But I held in the deep breath I had taken. I felt my jeans pull further down then I felt him working his hand to pull on his own jeans. I clenched my legs as tightly as possible to prevent him from going any further, but he still tried to press himself into me as I struggled.
Then, all the sudden the weight of the person above me lifted after an audible *thump* sounded in my ear, followed by a metallic clank. The pressure lessened on my body all at once and I was able to throw my hands up and rip the leather strap from my throat, taking in a deep choking breath of air. I instinctively reached for my pants to pull up. As my vision came back my arms were ripped across the ground, I was pulled into a body, struggled to follow it as I listened to a smooth, sweet voice.
"Satine?" he screamed, "Satine!?" my cheeks cupped in large, strong hands, my eyes blinked, my brain fuzzy and lost in the oxygen deprivation. "Satine…" I stared into his sparkling green eyes, wide with fear. As my eyes focused on his he pulled me into a tight embrace.
"Em…" I started, disorientated. As I looked back to him his fear shifted to pure anger, a type of anger I had never seen before, and one I'd hope I would never see again. But his gaze wasn't on me anymore, it was on the man behind me. A small, skinny, lanky man with long raggedy hair and dirty clothes. He groaned loudly as he held his head, rolling against the ground, blood dropped from his forehead into the concrete below him. A splintered board of wood sat beside him.
"The fuck is your problem dude!?" I heard Reese's gruff, angry voice call from beside us. I looked up and then back to the man who was over top of me only moments ago.
He grumbled to himself as he stumbled up to a stand while pulling his pants back on. "Dumb slut." He grumbled under his breath as he grabbed for the knife below him. Emmett's nostrils flared in anger. He lunged forward, knocking the man off his feet. He straddled his chest with his hands wrapped around the man's throat. I could see his knuckles turning white, the veins in his arms bulging, as if he was about to crush the man's neck under his weight.
The man flailed, scratching at Emmett's arms until he couldn't hold his breath anymore. His body began to go limp.
"Woah, man, woah." Reese yanked Emmett by his shoulders, dragging him back where the man was finally able to get a breath in. He then scrambled to his feet again.
"You'd better give me one good reason why I shouldn't shoot you right now." Emmett screamed as he pulled from Reeses grasp.
"Cause the gunshot will alert zombies." the man said with a broken toothed, egotistical grin. His sunken eyes peered back to me. "Shouldn't have screamed… you dumb cunt… We could have had fun." the last word rolled slowly out of his mouth in a low hiss, making my skin crawl.
I heard the quick clack of a gun, Emmett's pistol raised to the man's head. He just grinned, his broken teeth blackened with rot. He looked like a living corpse, almost worse than the ones now grabbing at the fence behind him.
"Em…" Emily started, "Don't waste the bullets or time…"
But he continued to stare on silently, his nostrils flaring angrily, like a bull ready to charge. The man stared back, his back hunched slightly. His eyes fell to the ground, eyes on the large knife he had been using to try to cut my jeans off. He leaned down to it, fishing it up with his slender, pale fingers. He switched it around, got the feel of it in his hand and his head jostled up, and he began to move forward at a dead sprint.
Then… the loud *bang* of a gun pierced the air, causing the three of us to cry out and grab our ears into our hands, the shot reverberated through the alley, rang painfully in our ears, and roused the uninterested zombies to begin walking toward us.
We all winced in pain, all of us except for Emmett, he stood, unyielding to the sound. As if he was deaf to it. My brain swirled as I looked back up to him. Realizing it wasn't his gun he held in his hand. It was mine, which had been stripped off with my leather belt when the man had ambushed me. That's why the sound was so deafening. My gun didn't have a silencer.
The man's body had stopped cold, blood splattered from his skull and the force from the bullet knocked him backward. A sick grin stuck on his face as his body laid there. The top of his skull blasted off bits of his brain splattered and spilled onto the pavement below him. I didn't even know a small gun like a 9 mil was capable of mangling something as horribly as mine had him. But Emmett was trained for combat, and knowledgeable with guns and their capabilities. He angled it to make it cause the most gruesome damage it could. I'm sure he made certain the man's head had been desecrated. In a way, I think he did him a favor… destroy the brain, the body can't come back…
It was what Emmett did next that shook my core, and made sure the man had no dignity in his afterlife. He took a step up, grabbed the long bladed knife the man had carried, and plunged it through the man's groin. Then he simply turned and walked away. Leaving the three of us marred by his actions and his coldness.
The way he shot him was unlike Gerard and the woman at the hardware store, he took pity, and he approached with kindness and forgiveness. He took their lives as gently as he could in the situation, prayed for them, and released them from their misery.
This man, he had no sympathy for, there was only malice and anger for this man. No prayer, no forgiveness, a complete lack of any emotion in the moment. And we could see it in his cold, glaring, unfaltering eyes. I don't even think he had blinked when the shot rang out.
But we followed him nonetheless. Emily handed me the holster from my gun, but Emmett hadn't given me the pistol back. We grabbed our backpacks and returned to the car with the stuff we had gotten. Emmett didn't say a word to me as I drove but he squeezed my hand tightly on the center console. After we secured the hatch coming inside he escaped to his room and we stood, shocked by today's events, we filled Russell in on what happened. He made a worried face at us and then frowned.
"That's gotta really mess with him." Russ defended. We all nodded in agreement but shared worries glances with each other. "I don't think I could keep my cool if I ever saw someone doing that to Emily…" I saw him squeeze her hand.
"He locked the door…" I said absently as I stared back at it. "He wouldn't open it when I knocked."
"Do you want to borrow some of my clothes?" Emily added, "at least until he opens the door."
"If you have something that will fit." I said shrugging. My now ripped jeans were dirty and tattered in the back. My cheek was scratched to hell and my arms had scraps down them where I had been pinned to the ground. Even my neck had scrapes on it from where I clawed at the leather strap around it. Emily let me use her shower, dress my wounds in her bathroom, and then borrowed me an oversized pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt.
When I finally stepped from the bathroom I took a deep breath and then sighed softly, it was quiet, everyone seemed to have gone to bed or at least escaped to their rooms. I knocked on the door again and still no answer from Emmett.
I looked around in the dark living area then up to the stairs. I pulled myself up then slowly, typed in the two codes, one to the hatch leading up and then to the door leading into the garage. Then I let the doors close behind me.
I stepped into the back yard, I could hear the faint growls of zombies down the road but the tall privacy fence protected the yard, outside it looked like any abandoned home.
A ladder sat propped against the garage side, I stood for a second, pondering. I wiggled the ladder slightly, trying to see if it was structurally sound, it didn't budge. Then climbed up it, crawling into the tilted roof. I found a rope tied to a hole in the gutter, holding the ladder to the side of the house. It was obvious someone else had been up here before me and secured the ladder as not to trap themselves on top of the house.
I sat against a corner of the roof where I was hidden from nearly three sides of the house, only able to look out a small portion of the back yard. I leaned back, staring up to the stars. I laid there for a long while. Losing track of the time I had spent up there.
"Satine…" a soft voice called to me, I shot up to look down. I found Reese staring up to the roof at me. He waved.
"Hey…" I said.
"Mind if I join?" He asked. I shrugged and he began the short climb up. "You good?" He asked as he sat beside me.
"Yeah… just… needed to think…" I said, hugging my knees to my chest. There was a long pause as he settled in, staring out at the back of the house with me.
"Kinda freaky how bright the stars are with everyone in the town gone…" he said after a while.
I nodded, "Never realized how much the light messed with them…"
There was another long pause between us and then he finally sighed.
"Teen…" he began quietly, almost hesitantly.
"Yeah?" I asked absently.
"I uh…" he paused, cleared his throat quietly, "I wanted to say I'm sorry…"
"Oh… for what?"
"Everything…" he began, sighing heavily, guilt overcoming him, "For how I treated you, my anger issues, for how I risked Emmett's safety at the hardware store… for not protecting you at the pharmacy…" he swallowed hard and paused again. "I realize now, after what happened today, what you meant by me never thinking, not even taking anyone but myself into account… everything I did was for my own benefit… when we are… in this new world together… and I wasn't looking out for you guys at all."
"Nah…" I began, "its fine."
He shook his head, "No." He interjected, "I uh… I treated you badly… for a long time. Even now I didn't even worry about your safety until I saw that guy on top of you… then it all dawned on me. I treated you so badly, forced things you didn't want, put negative shit in your head..."
I shrugged and nodded my head, "Yeah… you did." I agreed.
"I uh… guess I always thought… you'd feel too bad to leave me."
"What do you mean?"
"You were gonna be a doctor Satine…" He said, "You are smart, and talented, and kind, and so… so incredibly beautiful…" he took another deep breath. "I thought… if I brought you down… made you think you weren't as good… that you'd think I was better than some lame 25 year old who worked fast food and drove a 23 year old civic…" he shifted to turn to me, "I brought you down, and treated you so bad to feel better about myself… I did it to everyone, but you… you had no reason to be dealing with me, you didn't deserve how awful I was, and probably still would be had the world not turned like this…"
"Guess I was just as foolish." I responded.
"No… you were never foolish… I was just an ass making you think you loved me… and if I could go back and change it all I would."
"Too late for that now Reese."
"I know Teen…" he responded, "but I'm glad we ended up here together…" he paused, "Not, 'together' together, but like here… I'm glad, out of anyone who could have found you, it was the twins…" he paused yet again, the pauses beginning to irritate my patience. "And I am glad that you and Emmett found each other…"
"Yeah?"
"He uh… we went to summer camp together every year since we were kids… he is probably one of the most upstanding guys I ever met… he gets flustered with emotional stuff… so I get his drawbacks right now… but he is smart, and kind, and protective of you." Reese looked at me and smiled, the first genuine smile I had seen him give in years. Not snide, nor haughty, not even sarcastic. His new haircut, his still bruised face, made his face and demeanor so much softer, he actually gave me a genuine smile. "But no matter how bad I feel about giving you up, and how weird it is to see you with one of my childhood best friends. I think Emmett is the type of guy who deserves a wonderful woman like you." He let out his a deep breath and shrugged, "I hope he treats you better than I think I ever would have had this apocalypse not happened."
I stared in disbelief at him, "Reese…" I began sighing softly, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pressing my face into his neck. "Thank you… I appreciate you saying that…" he hugged me back, squeezing me tightly. With his apology, a heavy weight of hatred. Ill feelings, and anger seemed to lift from both of our shoulders. When we parted we smiled and nodded to each other. The brisk air sending goosebumps over our arms. We decided together to head back inside, it was late now, we were both tired and satisfied with our forgiveness. And we knew tomorrow would be another long and hard day of getting ready for the winter. Back down stairs I rapped gently at the heavy door that separated Emmett and I.
It finally clicked open after a long pause. The room was dark, Emmett shuffled slowly back to our bed, crawled in and curled up in a fetal position without a word to me. I locked the door behind myself and stood in the quiet, dark room, only a light from the smoke detector pierced the almost blinding darkness.
I sighed, said Emmett's name softly with no response. Then I stripped myself naked and stepped to the bed, cupping his cheeks in my hands, I kissed him deeply, letting our lips linger as he reached for me.
When he finally grabbed my waist and pulled me to him, his body seemed to relax into mine. His previously vigorous and powerful authoritative touch was replaced with a soft, slow, passionate demeanor. He let himself relax into me in a way he hadn't before, allowing himself to lose his sense of being with me. His shaking body soon moved rhythmically with mine and we, for the first time, made love to each other.
Tonight he laid his head on my chest, holding himself as tightly as he could to me. I raked my hand through his hair and gently massaged the tips of my finger into his head. I felt him shiver and heard him sniffle before he let out a sob.
"I'm sorry I wasn't with you Satine…" He whispered through tears, "I shouldn't have left you."
"Don't worry Em…" I responded, kissing the top of his head and tightening my grip on him, "You came before it was too late, that's what matters."
He nodded his head against my chest but continued to cry into me, letting out soft sobs and sniffles as I held him. Before long his sniffles turned into an exhausted snore and he fell asleep in my arms for a few hours.