Arizona Afterwards - a Zombie novel

Chapter 38

Six of his fingers were missing.  Once his story was done, Jay thought he’d play it cool and ask the first question, try and take the wind out of the old dude’s sails.  “If it was so bad over there,” Jay said in front of the assembled mass of students, “why didn’t you just kill yourself?”

That old man had stared him down, made him feel small and worthless, refused to even open his mouth and answer until Jay had sat back down.  “Sometimes life don’t know how to quit, kid.  That’s why.  If you can keep on hoping that tomorrow will be better than today, you can get yourself through anything, choke down whatever shit the world’s put on your plate.  If those bastards wanted me dead, then they were going to have to do it themselves.  I wasn’t going to help them out, not even with that.”

Jay hadn’t really gotten it, but that man’s words had stuck in his head just as surely as all that marketing crap had.

If they didn’t get out of the truck they’d be dead now.  If they did, they’d be dead later.  That was enough.

"Hattie," he said.  "I'm going to get out of this truck.  Beth is too.  I don't know what'll happen, but whatever does will be the same thing that would've happened anyway.  I know Jessup was trying to save everybody, but sometimes things don't work, no matter how badly you want them to."

Hattie looked at him.  Even though she'd been crying, her eyes still appeared sharp enough to look through him if and when she wanted them to.

"You coming?" he asked.

"You kids go on.  Tell them I'll just be a second."  She reached for the purse she'd stashed in the footwell and took out the little folded note Jessup had written her.  "I've just got something to read first, and I'll be right out."

Jay took the shotgun back from Hattie.  He didn't know if he could trust her with it, but that didn't mean it was worth risking.  Sure, maybe Hattie and Beth had had lots of chances to end it all, but back then they'd had hope.  He looked around from the cab one last time at all of the once-familiar and now-torn faces looking back at him.

These people had been all he'd known for so long, and now he hardly knew them.

Jay got out and then Beth slid from the seat and hopped to the ground.  He put himself between Dean and her, just in case she was thinking of doing something stupid.  Beth could be a real spitfire when she got it in her head to be.  Jay didn’t know if her first instinct would be to spit in Dean’s face or throw her arms around him, but either one would be a mistake.

“You guys shouldn’t have gotten out,” Dean said.  “But now that you have, your friend will have to, too.  Is that Hattie Daye up there?”  He peered up into the cab through the open door, his look neither hungry nor particularly alert.  He looks like he’s just waking up, Jay thought to himself.  Maybe he was.

Jay nodded.  “It is.”

“Get her down here, then.  They think they’ve been patient so far.  I don’t think it has much hope of lasting.”

Beth took a step in the dump truck’s direction and slammed the door she’d just come out of.  “She needs a second.  If the guy I loved is still running around somewhere in that head of yours, I hope he shows up for a second and makes you leave her alone.

“Beth,” Dean said.  “Love Beth.”

Jay didn’t like the way his brother’s voice sounded.  There wasn’t any real knowledge in it, no confidence or certainty.  It was obscene, so much like sitting beside his brother’s bedside fifty years and another reality away and listening to him try and remember the past through the fog of time.

“Yes Dean.  Beth.  That’s your girlfriend.”  He tossed a glance over his shoulder at her.  “At least she was before all of this went down.”

Dean swallowed hard.  Jay watched his Adam’s apple flutter down and then bob back up.  “You three need to come with me.  They-“

“They,” Beth said, her voice a perfect mixture of bile and disdain.  “Your new best friends, you mean?”

Something big went off in the distance with a thump that rocked the truck.  A ball of fire rose above the oily black smoke in the direction of the gas station.  The wind wasn’t yet a factor, but if it did pick up they were going to turn into very welcome guests at a very poorly timed barbeque.

Jay stepped in.  The Zombies were getting restless, and these two getting into a spat wasn’t going to help.  “Where do they want you to take us?”

“The same place they made the ones like me take the ones like you.  City Hall.”

Beth lowered her voice and took a step closer to him.  “The ones like us?  What does that even mean?”

Dean wouldn’t meet her eyes.  “There are choices to be made.”

She sighed.  The noise wasn’t the fight leaving her, not yet, but it was something close.  “If we’re talking about picking sides Dean, it should be pretty fucking obvious which one the three of us are on.”

But Jay didn’t say anything.  He had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly what Dean meant.  This didn’t have anything to do with Beth making a choice.  She was right.  Beth had already made her choice, and the Zombies knew it.

This was about Dean being given one last chance to rejoin the fold.