Mortality

Chapter 21: Savannah

Cole came at me, running and weaving sporadically as he approached. Once he was less than a foot away, I ducked my head down, and heard his arm swish right over me. He let out a groan as his body weight sent him sailing past me. We’d been sparring for almost an hour and he hadn’t beaten me once.

I braced my weight on the ground, swinging my own leg out to knock him onto his back. He hit the ground with a heavy thud.

“Nice try. You’ll be up to Belle’s level soon,” I said as I sprang back up and stood over him with a grin. I offered Cole my hand and hoisted him onto his feet. “Next time, do it with a little less flailing.”

“I wasn’t flailing.”

“If you say so.” I chuckled, playfully leaning my weight into Cole, knocking him slightly off balance. “The weaving wasn’t great either.”

“I was trying to keep you guessing, so you wouldn’t know which way I’d attack from next.”

“And if I were a zombie, first generation and completely mindless, that might have worked. If you want to take down a person, or even a second gen Z, you need to assume they’re at least as smart as you are. Even if they’re infinitely smarter.” I brought my hands up to frame my face. “Case and point.”

“Har har. Well, maybe I don’t want to take out any of infected. Why would I kill someone we might be able to save?” As he spoke, he watched me carefully as though weighing my every reaction.

I rolled my eyes. “Because they’ll have absolutely no reservations about killing you. As in, zero. This isn’t a game, Cole. You have to put yourself first.” It was clear the idea still bothered him, but he couldn’t argue my point. Even before all of these people became little more than rabid animals, when it came down to them or you, you had to fight for your own survival above all else.“How long have you been out in the big bad world, again? I’m not sure how you managed to make it this far.”

“You barrel through everywhere you go. I stick to the shadows and stay out of the way. Plus, I usually have a gun. It does the trick.”

“Guns are noisy, and you might not always have it with you when you need it. I know everything seems pretty safe out here,” I said, my eyes scanning the empty school ground where we were fighting, “but, an attack can come from somewhere completely unexpected. You’ll last a lot longer if you can fight an attacker off with nothing but your wits and your bare hands.”

I tried my best to sound like I knew what I was doing, as though I’d been fighting every day since my parents died. I didn’t claim to be an expert, but I needed to know Cole was taking this seriously. Taking me seriously. If he let it get in the way, caution wouldn’t do much other than getting him hurt.

Even without my help, he was a good shot and could do some real damage with a blunt weapon, but sparring kept us busy as we worked our way through Indiana by night. We hadn’t seen any signs of life, but the most dangerous enemies were the ones that didn’t make themselves known to people meandering through their territory.

What we did see was a lot of the infected trapped inside of buildings. It looked as though the United Militia had taken time to clear this small nowhere town of anything dangerous out in the open, but it hadn’t bothered with those trapped inside. Quick and efficient maybe, but it didn’t seem all that practical. Inside the buildings was where the supplies were.

Cole kept insisting that they were doing experiments and saving Zs to use as guinea pigs. I insisted that that was more his groups M.O. Despite what Alex thought he’d seen them do to Zack, it looked like these militia guys were doing something right.