Twenty-Eight
Simone
“Come with me,” Rubin said.
“Where are we going?”
He waited like I hadn’t even spoken.
With a sigh, I slipped my feet into my sneakers.
I’d only managed to take them off the night before.
That was an old habit I thought I had shaken, but back then I’d never known when I might have to run, so sleeping with shoes on was almost normal.
I’d been proud of myself when I’d stopped doing that, but here I was.
I stood and grabbed my clipboard, certain that Rubin wanted to do another inventory.
Part of me wanted to tell him it wouldn’t make a difference. Counting wouldn’t change that there wasn’t enough, and there was less every day.
“You don’t need that,” he tossed over his shoulder.
I put the clipboard down but stuck my pen in my pocket.
Never know when I might need to take a note. Stupid Simone. I chuckled and Rubin looked at me like I wasn’t sane. He might be right. I chuckled again and then heard a faint scuffle upstairs and shivered.
“I wonder what’s going on up there,” I whispered.
“You shouldn’t,” Rubin said. “What’s going on up there only matters to the degree that it affects you down here. So push it out of your mind. Stay focused on what matters.”
“Yes, krye,” I muttered.
He heard me but didn’t look back. And we walked. The lights were on now, and the hallways were unnervingly bright.
Where are we going? I wondered.
The stairway down three floors into the courtyard, was in the opposite direction.
Rubin just kept walking and I followed. We went down one flight of stairs and I noticed a barricade.
I didn’t know how they had done it, but it looked like they had ripped off some of the metal tables, piled everything in front of the stairwell door.
Got to the second floor and saw the same thing.
He stopped at the first floor. “Come on,” he said.
This hallway was also bright, but that wasn’t a good thing. The walls and floors were splattered with blood and bodies, and I breathed through my mouth, which did nothing to ease the smell.
“What are we doing down here, Rubin?” I asked.
Rubin didn’t answer and instead banged the baton in his hand against the door.
Clang, clang, clang.
The sound was hollow, but also shattering.
“Rubin!” I whisper-hissed.
He didn’t look at me and instead stared down the hall, his body tense, waiting.
I looked from him to the hall, which was mercifully still empty, then back at him, and then I heard it. That moan, the scrape of something against the floor.
I kept my gaze on Rubin, not wanting to look, knowing that I had to.
I turned and saw a figure—a man wearing a white prison uniform that had been tinted pink with blood.
His intestines were hanging out of the gash that ran from his chest to his navel and one of his brown prison-issue flip-flops had come off.
He ambled toward us, his milky eyes unerringly focused.
“Rubin, what are you doing?” I whispered.
There was no reason to whisper. The thing had locked onto us and terrible experience had taught me that it wouldn’t be deterred now. Rubin didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed the baton into my hand.
It clanked even louder as it fell to the floor.
“Pick it up, Simone.” He wasn’t paying the thing any attention. He was focused squarely on me, and the tension I had seen in his body before was gone. “Pick it up,” he said again.
The thing got closer.
And even though I wasn’t looking at it, couldn’t let myself, I reached down and picked up the baton. The weight should have been comforting in my hand, but it felt like an anvil.
“What are you doing, Rubin?”
“Nothing,” he said. Then he took a step back and I jumped.
“What—what—” I said.
The shambler got closer still.
Rubin still seemed relaxed. I thought my lungs would collapse. I tightened my grip on the baton, then looked down at Rubin’s side. He had a knife hanging there.
“Give me the knife,” I said, like I was going to actually go through with this.
“No. The baton. You need to be able to use whatever’s at your fingertips. It might not be ideal, but that’s your option. Be happy I even gave you that,” he said.
“Rubin, it—it—”
“Simone, it’s getting closer.”
He actually leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. I turned and stood waiting. The thing getting even closer. It was four feet away now. The slide of its bare foot against the floor making my skin crawl.
I glanced back at Rubin even though the thing was three feet away now. He didn’t move at all. I tightened my grip on the baton, turned, and then swung.
The baton bounced off the thing’s shoulder. And the zombie didn’t even flinch. I thought I would vomit my instant grits, but I still kept my hold on the baton. The thing lunged and I stepped out of the way. Rubin didn’t move.
It regained its balance and turned, those near-sightless eyes still lasered on me. I swung again. This time I made solid contact with its shoulder. The give of muscle against the baton felt…weird against my fingers. I had never been in a physical altercation with anyone, let alone a dead person.
Bile rushed up the back of my throat, burning, almost filling my nostrils, but I swallowed it down.
I realized tears were streaming down my cheeks, but there was nothing I could do about that.
I wouldn’t throw up though, wouldn’t embarrass myself more than I had.
I tightened my grip even harder, my knuckles straining, and then swung again.
The impact of the baton against the zombie’s forehead made a dull thud ring out.
That slowed him a bit. Slowed him more when I hit a second time. Then the third, the bone gave way, the pinkish gray spilling through the white. And then finally, it slumped down.
I couldn’t stop then and turned, giving up the meager contents of my stomach and what little pride I had left. I fiercely wiped my forearm against my mouth, thinking about how I’d have to wash the shirt in the warden’s sink. And then, my face wet with tears, I looked at Rubin.
“Happy?”
He shrugged. “It’s a start.”
Simone
“Barricade the door,” Rubin said when we were back on the third floor. “More of those things are on the first. I want to make sure they don’t get up here.”
Besnik nodded, gave me a lingering look, and then set off about his task. Too late I thought to smile, maybe put him at ease, but I couldn’t manage it and couldn’t have said why. It had been necessary.
I’d made my peace with the idea that I might have to do something like that to survive. It had been disgusting. Unpleasant, and maybe it was supposed to be—but the thing I couldn’t shake was how calm Rubin had been through all of it. How detached. I cursed myself for my stupidity. He’d been clear.
I’d been clear.
In the end, how he felt and how I felt didn’t matter.
Rubin laid a hand on my elbow and guided me down the hall.
He frowned at a streak on the floor, then glanced up at the heavy footsteps overhead.
The walkie-talkie had been quiet for a day, but the movement upstairs never quite stopped, and neither did the screams outside—more distant now, but always there.
The shots. All of it. I pushed it out and made myself focus on the weight of his hand on my arm.
It was the only thing that felt real. Another lie, but one I let myself have.
He steered me into the warden’s office and back into the bathroom.
He turned the water on and tested it with two fingers. “Don’t know how much longer that’s going to last,” he said, like it was nothing. Then he wet one of the thin rags they gave the prisoners and lifted it to my face.
I flinched before he could touch me.
His eyes narrowed with something I couldn’t name, and then he blinked it away and moved again, wiping my face slow and careful, gentler than a man his size had any business being.
I had to look a wreck. Dried snot, tear tracks, and—I saw it when the rag came away—flecks of the zombie’s blood gone rust-brown against the dingy cloth.
His touch was firm but unhurried. When he was done with my face he took my hands and washed those too, his fingers laced through mine, scrubbing every trace of what I’d done off my skin until the water ran clean.
He patted my hands dry and reached for a bottle on the shelf.
I watched, not understanding, as he worked a pea-sized dab of lotion between his fingertips and smoothed it into my face, thorough, missing nothing.
Then he set his hands over mine where they lay in my lap and looked at me.
His expression was stern, almost hard, and worse than that, it made me feel stripped bare—like he was searching me for something.
After a moment his eyes narrowed. He hadn’t found it.
He didn’t pull away, though. That was the part I hadn’t braced for. He broke my gaze, leaned in, and nipped my neck, then licked away the sting of the bite. He moved lower, over my padded collarbone and licked the skin there too.
Then he slid his hand between my thighs and I sucked in a breath as he pushed two fingers into my pussy.
I was already so wet, which shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did.
He sank his fingers in deep and unhurried, so careful that it pushed me toward tears as he used his slow, deep movements to drive me over the edge.
As I shivered from the aftereffects, he drew his fingers out of me slowly and dragged them across my bottom lip. Then he followed with his tongue, a glint in his eyes.
He adjusted my clothes, tugged my shirt straight. I looked down and saw the hard line of his cock straining against his slacks. He didn’t touch it. Didn’t do anything about it at all. He just stood up straight and said, “Tomorrow we try with the knife.”