Page 93 of Dating After the End of the World
With my knife in hand, I sprint at him, my sudden movement catching his eye. He’s bewildered by my presence and the searing pain I’ve inflicted and almost forgets to respond. His expression changesfrom a glare of surprise to one of anger. Stamping his feet, he tries to rip out the object from the bone. At the last second, he snaps to attention and raises his weapon, pointing it at me. I have too long of a distance to close, my outstretched arm with knife in hand is still two full body lengths away from making contact with his skin, and I have no choice but to throw it at him. It flips over on itself, tumbling through the air like a gymnast, before the handle smacks into his forehead, sending him reeling back. The blade clangs against the concrete floor.
The burner brings his gun back up, but the second of time I bought myself allows me to slide forward. Dipping below the gun, I punch him directly in the balls. His hands involuntarily grab for them as he lets the gun drop to his side, the shoulder strap stopping it from hitting the ground. I sweep the back of his leg, making his kneecaps smash into the floor and his arms splay out, catching himself on all fours. Jumping onto him, I plant both of my feet on his back, riding his spine to the ground like a skateboard. His chin ornament drives into the concrete, and a muffled scream emits from his sealed mouth. I raise my boot and stomp his head. The structure caves and cracks, like an egg that’s been dropped onto the floor. A pool of red spills out, the yolk having been released from the shell.
“Casey!?” a familiar voice exclaims.
Chapter 38
A million questions run through my mind as I paw at the bars, touching his hands, reaching through to his face. There’s a light returning to his eyes, a flicker that nearly extinguished. He probably thought he would never see me again, and he may have even prepared for the end. But death didn’t arrive—well, not for him—and instead my presence is pulling him back into a world he wants to be in, and one he wants to fight for.
“I’m so happy to see you,” Blake says.
“Are you hurt?” I’m trying to look him over, but I can only take in pieces of him through the door, like his bloody hands. “Where’s the blood coming from?” I ask.
He smirks, looking down at them himself, as if seeing it for the first time. “Nah. This isn’t mine. One of them got too close to my cell door and decided to start talking nasty about what they were gonna do to Julie, Elaine, and Meredith, so I grabbed the back of his head and smashed his face into the bars ... a couple times, actually.”
When he says their names, a certain dread sets into his face, harsh lines of concern digging into his forehead. “Where is everyone? Are they okay?”
“Greg and Molly are up in the sniper tower keeping watch. Julie’s a little banged up. Tessa and Elaine are fine. Meredith ...” I pause, realizing that I don’t actually know the truth about Meredith, other than that she’s alive for now. “Is gonna be okay.”
Blake inhales deeply through his nose, digesting everyone’s status, and then the scream I heard before we entered the house comes rushing back into my brain. It comes in slowly at first, in fragments, like it’s breaking through the barrier I created to focus on the moment at hand, but it wants out. It needs to be heard.
“The Carter family,” I say. Blake looks to me, waiting for me continue, but he can read it on my face. The somber tone that we once held between us in this very spot, as we awaited his fate, has returned. The fate of an entire family already sealed. He reaches for my hand, squeezing it.
“I haven’t found my dad or JJ or Uncle Jimmy yet. Do you know where they are?”
I almost flinch, waiting for him to answer.
“I overheard the two that were keeping watch. They said something about making them dig it themselves.”
“The burn pit ... past the fence.” I turn to run back up the stairs, the image of my family members already lying in shallow graves, dirt being tossed on their bloodied and lifeless bodies, is plastered across my mind, like the burn-in of a once static image on a TV.
“Casey!” Blake’s voice stops me dead in my tracks. “Uhhh,” he says, rattling the cell door.
“Right!”
A quick trip to the armory has Blake and me fully stocked up with weaponry, the two of us ready to take on the world, or what’s left of it. The burners must have thought the weaponry they had on them was enough for the job, since they left my dad’s arsenal untouched, possibly saving it for another day. Big mistake, though. They should have made that day this one.
Through the woods out near the burn pit, we can hear yelling, harsh bursts of directives aimed at a few men who are hunched down,their arms swinging in a rhythmic scooping motion, elbows rising with the handles of the shovels, before striking into the earth.
A small plume of smoke grows from a newly set fire. They’re using the corpses we already burned, biters and evil men just like them, as kindling. Their charred bodies are already sapped of fuel, so the fire is small and pallid, barely rising a foot off the pile.
No less than a dozen burners stand around the helpless diggers in a semicircle, throwing clumps of dirt and scorched body parts at them while they work.
“There’s too many of them. We don’t stand a chance,” I whisper to Blake.
I try to shake the thought of defeat from my mind, but the situation feels so hopeless, so oppressively unwinnable. I hear a shout and look back just in time to see the butt of a rifle connect with the spine of one of the diggers. Their body collapses to the ground as a puff of dirt rises into the air, lifting the laughter of the men toward us. Between the dirt-caked boots standing tightly together, I see the wiry, speckled-gray bristles of a beard, rising up off the ground as its owner gets back to their feet.
“Dad,” I say to myself, my rage only being held in check by my own sense of helplessness.
A hand grabs my shoulder as a cheek presses against the side of my head, his chin resting gently on my shoulder.
“We can do this,” Blake says. “I’ve faced worse odds in theSeals. These clowns probably have no training, and they’re too comfortable, thinking they have this place under control. A quick burst from that SMG you have there, and you could injure nearly all of them before they even realize what’s happening.”
I nod, keeping my eyes on the burners.
“Here’s the plan. You lay down a volley aimed at the five or six guys on the left over there.” He points over my shoulder, and my eyes follow the line of his arm. “That way you don’t risk hitting any of your family. Worst-case scenario, you injure one or two of them, and they all run in a panic, scrambling to find the source of the gunfire, giving Dale, Jimmy,and JJ time to either flee or grab a weapon and fight. Meanwhile, I strike from the wings, velociraptor-style.”
“Clever girl.” I smile, picturing Blake emerging from the thick brush of woods, the fire in his green eyes turning them into a searing yellow as he unleashes hell.
