Love in an Undead Age by A.M. Geever (good non fiction books to read .TXT) 📕

They had covered half the distance, but Connor didn’t see how they were going to make it.

“When I say duck, you stop and do it!” Mike said, not bothering to be quiet any longer. Connor saw him pull the pin from a grenade.

“Duck!”

Connor stopped and ducked low. He could see the dirty gray laces of a battered pair of Converse tennis shoes that shuffled closer. Black ballet flats. Work boots. A broken high heel.

The grenade detonated.

Connor and the others leaped to their feet, toward the thinning of the almost-horde ahead of them. Mike lobbed the next grenade without telling them to stop. Connor shielded his face when it detonated, saw its lack of effect.

“Climb!” Seffie shouted, grabbing his hand.

They climbed the vehicle barrier, hands slick with sweat, fear sharp in the air. Connor crouched on the roof of the minivan on top of a car. Mike scrambled up, then leaped to the next vehicle. When Connor pushed off to follow, he felt the minivan roof beneath him shift. He looked down to see zombies pressing against the barrier from both sides.

Seffie and Mike stumbled ahead of him, swaying like drunkards as they struggled to keep their balance on the shifting car roofs. They both stopped short, and when he reached them, Connor saw that the barrier ended. The flare still burned bright, bathing the wrought iron enclosure around the wall’s outer gate in a rosy glow. They were two hundred feet short. No way they could make it. All the way from Mexico and they were going to die, here, two hundred feet short of salvation.

The barrier beneath them shifted first one way, then the other. They huddled close together on the dented roof of the finest German engineering money used to be able to buy.

“Goddammit!” Seffie yelled. “God motherfucking dammit!”

Mike put his hand on her shoulder and pulled a grenade from his pocket.

“I’ve got one more.”

The car shifted a few inches. Mike looked nervous but confident. Seffie looked as pissed as Connor had ever seen her. Connor just felt defeated. He’d never see any of them: Miri, Walter, Emily. They’d never know what happened to him.

Connor looked at Seffie and Mike. They were more than his friends; they were comrades-in-arms. A sudden rush of affection swelled in his chest.

“You’re the best people to die with.”

The car shifted again, more forcefully this time.

Mike pulled the pin.

A siren split the night, drowning out the noise of the horde. They all looked to the wall. Industrial yellow lights twirled bright, making the pink light at the gate a hazy orange. The interior gate built into the wall opened slowly, far too slowly when the perch between safety and death rocked beneath their feet. An armored delivery truck rumbled through the wall into the wrought iron enclosure. When the inner gate shut behind it, the outer gate opened.

“Holy shit,” Seffie whispered.

Suppressing gunfire mowed down zombies in the truck’s path. As it closed the distance, the rocking of the car they huddled on lessened. The over-tall truck pulled alongside as a round top hatch opened.

“Come on, get a move on!” shouted the man who popped up through the hatch.

They all leaped at once, landing on the truck with a hollow thud. First Seffie, then Mike climbed in. Connor fell down the ladder with trembling legs and clumsy feet, shaking from head to toe, and collapsed on the floor.

Their amused-looking rescuer scurried back up the ladder, secured the hatch, then slid down firefighter-style with his feet pressed against the outer rails.

“Okay, Jimmy, let’s go!” he shouted toward the front.

The truck jolted forward and began a wide U-turn. Connor crawled out of the way and leaned against a row of lockers built into the truck’s wall.

“Thanks,” he said, extending his hand to the stranger, who took it in his own, giving a firm business-like shake. “We were just about to blow ourselves up.”

“Is that right?”

“Why’d you do it?” Seffie asked, a rescue from certain death not enough to overcome her suspicious nature.

The man began to laugh.

“I made a bet with Jimmy up there,” he said, gesturing toward the driver. “He said you weren’t gonna last one minute once the flare went up. I said you’d climb and make it to the end of the cars. He said he’d drive out himself to get you if I was right.”

Seffie’s posture relaxed. Connor did not know what had happened to her, but she was suspicious of altruism. Bets, on the other hand, even those made at her expense, she understood.

“You’ll need some skills, something to offer if you want to live here,” the man continued. “They don’t let you stay just because you made it.”

“We’re not going to San Jose,” Mike said.

For the first time, their rescuer looked surprised. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“SCU,” Connor said. “We’re here to see Father Walter Brennan.”

The man looked, if anything, even more surprised than before.

“You better be ready to pull the tiger’s tail if you’re going to see the Jesuits,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, they run a tight ship, but they piss the City Council off on a regular basis.”

“That sounds about right. Jesuits have always been troublesome priests,” Connor said, feeling suddenly exhausted. Dying would have been clear-cut. Surviving in an unfamiliar landscape was always a murky, dangerous business.