Life After the Undead (Completed)

PART 4: The Others .2

Jack's P.O.V.

Godrick took me to what was considered a residential area of the city. It flanked a few places where you could still get supplies, like department stores, and it was surrounded by apartment buildings. The area was filled with both survivors looking for a place to live in peace and zombies who were just hungry. For a while we drove around aimlessly as he looked for some tell-tale sign that Evelyn was around.

He wasn't scanning the streets or the cars, his eyes were on the sky and when he suddenly got a bearing on where Evelyn was I could see what he was looking for. He was following a plume of smoke. Suddenly Godrick was nervous.

I could tell by the way he kept shooting these small glances at me.

"Look, I know you're pissed but she's on guard at the moment. You should probably be a little less... abrasive...."

I'm not going to lie, that last word was a bit big for my vocabulary. I had no idea what he had said so I took it offensively.

"If that was an insult..."

"Abrasive means to be too harsh," Godrick answered quickly and I felt quite foolish. It also made we wonder how a rough looking kid like him had such an advanced vocabulary.

"Don't worry, I won't hurt your precious Evelyn," I snarled.

"That's not what I'm afraid of."

I caught that hint. He wasn't worried for her, he was worried she was going to hurt me.

Either way I humored him. I parked a block away from where she was, and walked, allowing Godrick to take the lead. We found the source of the smoke underneath a lift, where a zombie lay in a heap burnt at the edges and emitting a black sour smoke.

Above that zombie, currently in the lift and operating on what looked to be a sort of generator was Evelyn, a screwdriver in her mouth and a soldering iron in her hands. Godrick's speed increased, and a small smile came across his face, I had only seen that smile once before and it was when he was hot on the trail of an escaped prisoner of ours.

I had asked him about it once. He had said that tracking made him happy, like nothing else before in his life. Odd that Evelyn could put that smile on his face.

I was starting to think that maybe Godrick had a bit of a crush on her.

"Hey Ev-ee!" he cried up to her, craning his neck to look up. One of his gloved hands went to his brow to shield he eyes from the waning sun.

Evelyn paused in her patch job to look down. She caught sight of him and immediately stopped everything she was doing. She spit out the screwdriver and leaned over the safety railing to smile at him.

"Hey Ricky. What brings you into my area?" she asked.

"Jack wants to talk to you," he said and that smile on her face faded as her darkening eyes found me just a few steps away from Godrick. He quickly added: "He wants to see if we can come to a deal about the alcohol."

Evelyn's tone was no longer joyous and happy but instead icy and soft when she replied with a: "Give me five minutes."

Godrick stepped out of the shadow of the lift and back to me as she turned back to the generator. He must have caught my quizzical stare, the curiosity apparent on my face.

"She works for Biocom, goes around and makes sure things are in order for the Big Eye," he said answering my unasked question. "She takes the jobs that the others are afraid to take."

My eyebrows shot up in surprise, was there nothing she wasn't involved in?

We waited patiently for Evelyn to come down and when she did I saw that she was far from pleased with Godrick or me.

"You and I need to make some sort of truce," I told her.

"Your leader tried to kill me!"

"And you actually succeeded in killing him back!" I snapped back.

Evelyn looked offended. "Not true, I just pushed him into the zombie cage and let them dismember him and eat his innards. It's not that same thing."

I blinked my eyes, and took a precautionary step back in case her kind of crazy was contagious. "Okay, let me try this again you little freak..."

A soft gasp was heard not just from her but from Godrick beside me, like the word was unholy, like I had sworn in church. Evelyn had outrage in her eyes as she looked me up and down and I realized exactly what it was that she was going do. She turned away from me, probably to signify that the conversation was done. So without a second thought I had pulled out my gun.

Godrick screamed "No!" and tried to reach for the gun as I aimed for her car and shot out the tire.

Evelyn flinched as if she were trying to dodge the bullet. When she turned to me she had a horrified look on her face mixed with a tinge of panic. She actually stormed back to where I was standing just so she could smack me as hard as she could on my shoulder. Surprisingly it hurt.

"Are you out of your mind?" she snapped.

I shrugged. "No! Now you have no ride, you need me to get back to your precious house."

To my left there was a loud growling and when I turned there was a pack of zombies standing across from us. There was a mix, most of them were the slow shuffling once, but I could tell that some were the faster ones, they had a wilder look about them and seemed less catatonic.

"You idiot!" Evelyn hissed. "You attracted the zombies!"

Godrick was already backing away. "Get the spray," he ordered through clenched teeth and I wondered what that was and how it would help.

And why was Evelyn afraid, she had that zombie thing where they were all afraid of her. I would have thought the worry was about the number of zombies but I had seen her walk through a crowded mall filled with zombies and they hadn't touched her then. What was different now?

"All out," Evelyn said under her breath. "I've been out for a while and I used it up my last bottle. I was going to get more from Steve on the way back home but obviously you guys had to ruin that."

"So what's the game plan?" Godrick asked her.

I hated that I was cut out of this. I was the new leader of the Drifters, why the hell weren't they asking me what to do?

Evelyn was silent briefly before saying: "On the count of three, run!"

But there was no counting, no warning, before I knew it Evelyn and Godrick had turned tail and sprinted away. How did I know this? All the zombies started forward leaving me no choice but to sprint away trying desperately to catch up to Evelyn and Godrick who had left me behind.

Seriously did they have this whole thing planned? Because it looked like the two had a play book.