One crosshair draws down steady over a ravenous horde. The dead stagger, not focusing their shining yellow eyes on much of anything. Somehow, they still manage to find the living, as if they're drawn in by some supernatural force to destroy what's left with beating hearts.
Finger steady on the trigger, he could take his shot. Instead, he passes the scope over every one of them. That crosshair lingers longer on the female zombie with dark hair and freckled skin. Taking in their rotting faces, he passes onto the next and then the following carefully.
"Doyle?"
His name sounds from the left, where the scars from shrapnel pucker the flesh around his ear. He doesn't turn or acknowledge the call since it falls on his deaf side.
Her voice drops into silence, and he's honed sight on what he's aimed. There's no mistaking that distant movement, of course. A sound meant nothing anymore, especially the ones below the decibels of screams.
The sway of the dead stumble yet always manages to find footing for their next meal should a chase call for such. It's been a while since his own run from the chase. Only recently had he stopped bolting up in the middle of the night thinking another race had found him.
These walls were different from that of District 1. They were stronger, taller, built to keep the infected out. The red brick layer down Doyle's watchtower, matching the other towers surrounding the colony on all sides. All around, it's a fortress against beating zombie fists and raiders.
The sounds of the dead muffled through the bricks, but up here on Doyle's watchtower, he sees reality. These sounds from the dead, he can still make out from his good ear that the bomb blast failed to take out with the other.
He takes his shot onto the dark-haired zombie, once a woman, with half of her face chewed off. The bullets always seemed to ring louder with this one in particular and the others that resembled it.
The press of weight against the worn wood below his knees draws his attention. He knows who it is before his eyes find her, and he's blinded by the dying sun that glares in his eyes.
Her hair is a halo of red in this light. Doyle's trained eyes struggle to adjust to the changed depth of field. He blinks when his eyes adjust, then returns to stare down his scope.
Her face is free from upset splotches, and no blood stained her clothing. There was no little Abby clutched to her side or in her arms, and she was smiling.
Everything, seemingly, was fine. So why was Sophie here? Why did she visit him every night, every shift, before curfew went into effect?
He returns to his job and blows the head off of another infected. He watches it fall to its knees, and then he exhales as it plops like a sack of flour into the grass.
"They've doubled since yesterday," he says to her.
From the corner of his eye, he can see her wiping at the hair that refused to settle against the slight breeze. She kneels to his level, and it causes him to tense. Why? He wasn't sure himself.
She replies, "Think he'll take your suggestion this time? Or will he just leave them here to eventually get into our new home?"
It's been about eighty days or so since they arrived here, and like most places in his life, Doyle hesitates to call it home. All this was temporary, but that cynical ideology seemed lost on Sophie. He imagined all she wanted was a home, and Doyle didn't have the heart, yet, to tell her that was an out-of-date hope to have.
Sophie, Abby, and the strange Doctor, Elisa Martin, were the sole survivors of the fall of District 1. Williams, his fellow soldier, died in the helicopter crash beyond the field where Doyle shot down zombies daily. The collision into this protected District 4 land caught the attention of those from these watchtowers. Russell and his men found them inches from death while the infected reached for them in the mangled chopper.
Another sound, Doyle didn't think could be forgotten. One that still rang in his memory...
That excited shriek from the hungry dead, the dying chopper blades, and poor Abby in the back screaming out of his reach...
Since then, they've been the freak kids sitting alone in the cafeteria, the "new kids" they had little intel on. The elite lived in "the mansion" where Russell and his team lived, chosen by city District 4 to run out here in the boonies for their supplies. The likes of Sophie and Doyle lived on the other side of the colony in bungalows. The colony elites generally kept to themselves. Only did they emerge when it came to enforcing the intense, bizarre rules of this place:
1 - No one is allowed out after dark except for The Guard.
2 - No visitors can visit other civilian's cabins unless approved by The Guard.
3 - No weapons of any kind are allowed within civilian quarters or shops.
Rules one and three mimicked the rules of District 1, so they weren't that strange, but the elite didn't have the same rules, it seemed. Now that the laws applied to Doyle as a civilian here, he didn't much care for them. More so, Doyle had a problem with the extreme punishment if anyone dared break a rule.
Anyone breaking colony rules are subject to being shot on sight. In lesser extremes, civilians may undergo a trial, with the penalty of imprisonment, death, or exile.
Also disturbing was the treatment of those who couldn't take on the same workload. Everyone had to work, from children to the elderly. Enough so that backs broke, and fingers bled to keep the mother District fed.
Harsh, a little too harsh. Yet, Doyle wasn't the one in charge here, much to Sophie's dismay. She'd voiced it often to him that he should be in control, that he knew more, that he had the experience.
She held him in high regard, and maybe that was because he'd saved her life, and they've been inseparable ever since. The pedestal she kept him on would one day come toppling down. If only she knew. If only she knew the real him and all he'd done...his own secrets.
Her eyes lit up in a certain way whenever she looked at him. They did now, and he avoided keeping eye contact for too long so as not to give false hope.
He nods to himself at his thoughts, as he often did. It led those around him to wonder what he was thinking. It never had anything to do with his last thoughts whenever he spoke next. Like everything, his thoughts and emotions had to have a diversion. Let anyone see the real him? Never. They couldn't bear it.
"They won't break down the wall," Doyle says, his nod carrying out. He adds, "you're going to find yourself in trouble if you keep sneaking up here to visit me during my shift. You're risking it with curfew coming soon...."
She grins in a forgotten way, where a faint red hits her cheeks. Doyle tries to ignore it, as the woman over a decade his junior carried that blush whenever he teased her. The same blush, he'd caught himself returning from time to time when he'd forget where passing blushes lead...
Disappointment. Heartache. Betrayal. Doyle wanted no more of it.
Sophie replies, "It's not in his rules. This isn't a house or a shop. It's a watchtower, a roof pretty much, there's no rule about coming up to the watchtowers."
Always finding a loophole, Sophie had a constant rebellion in her that irked him. Doyle often wondered about Sophie's pre-zombie past that she usually avoided disclosing. While he wasn't for story-time either on wars from his past, Sophie tended to avoid the simplest of questions. He still never received a direct answer on where she was from or what she did for work before all this.
Somehow, all the events after District 1's end had bound them together, and Doyle failed to keep her at a distance. Close relationships didn't settle well with the seasoned veteran. Friendships, or relationships at all, didn't have happy endings for Doyle.
Doyle learned to invest in the moment, to stay focused on the days to come against the dead. He was obsessed with preventing any further catastrophe, to stop an insane death toll that didn't cap. He had to help a world rebuild and welcome the likes of Abby or any kids that managed to survive in their waking hell.
Doyle grins back at Sophie, forcibly, as she rambles on about the child he had on his mind. All he wanted to do was get some last shots in before his shift ended, but Sophie was making that a challenging goal to achieve.
The heavy bronze bells from the empty church sound. No congregations held there was religious nature, but trials did and meetings of law and order. Nightly, those bells rang with great force, announcing that curfew would begin within the hour to all colony dwellers.
He tells her in the cheeriest tone he can manage against the bells, "Get out of here. They'll be doing house checks soon and you still have to get Abby."
Slapping a small box against his chest, Doyle caught it instinctively when her hand left his body.
"Holy shit!" He exclaims in a higher pitch as he grabs the carton of cigarettes in his hand. Doyle smiles wider than he had in weeks. He'd been running out of his supply and miserable in his forced control of smoking what's left.
"There's more where that came from if you keep smiling like that!" She shouted as she climbed back down the watchtower's ladder, her smile carrying with her till she was out of his sight.
Chuckling to himself with the rifle still in one hand, he lit up one. Then, he aimed again at the zombies through the cloud of cigarette smoke.
Every day he searched the faces, looking for one in particular that he had yet to find. A face from his past, one he'd somehow learned to resent and adore all the same. Doyle still felt guilty for having left her behind, states away, forever ago.
His inevitable backyard litters with the corpses of his making—his existence forever. Searching, longing, for some sense of closure. Doyle waits for an impossible moment he's sure will never come.
He lines up his aim and fires another shot.
***
The gun cooled when Doyle made it to the jailhouse for drop-off. Jail duty belongs to one of the most disliked guards, who didn't exactly fit the physical bill for her role. She looked like she could kick anyone's ass, even his.
Doyle admitted to having old-fashioned ways. Especially on his thoughts of the Sheriff of the colony. The position shouldn't belong to a woman with venom in her soul. Rumor had it she'd been a cop in Los Angeles, but a lot of stories floated around about Ana Maria.
The desk wobbled beneath her heavy-handed loading of fresh shells as Doyle approached. Layers of old newspapers line the table. She folds one to slide the igniting powder into the casings with ease.
The comics and horoscope section lay bare in color and black and white. The newspaper pages three years out of date, his sharp eyes scan the last moments frozen in time before the fall.
A headline in bold letters from a newspaper cover pops:
SCRIPTURE KILLER TERRORIZES METRO-ATLANTA AREA
The flat of his palm rests on the front story as he leans forward to speak to Ana Maria.
"Horde's doubled," Doyle says.
She spits out something off to the side of the desk. Her dark eyes are lazy in meeting Doyle's, and she takes her time replying. She loads, grabs another bullet shell, and repeats.
A jail cell behind him stirs, but Doyle avoids looking at the two occupying the cell. Presumably, they broke one of Russell's several rules, and now they waited in limbo.
With the limited amount of people and the goals of District 4, the demands gave way to broken backs and exhaustion. Doyle never saw much of Elisa either, the doctor who came with him from District 1. The woman never left the medical center, and when she did, she didn't speak to them about her work or the secret jobs Russell gave her. Sophie also pulled many hours there when she wasn't helping on the farms.
"I'll tell the big guy," Ana Maria finally replies.
"Do that," Doyle grits out.
Taking the pass on the desk that's nothing more than a fraying paper, Doyle thought of high school and scoffs. He'd carried this piece of paper like a hall pass on too many nights. With it, Doyle would walk at night from his job without punishment on the designated route for the color. With the red pass, he'd take his course to his appointed housing sector and nowhere else. When the next shift came, he'd have to bring it again, drop it off and head back again. Doyle wondered if his lack of privilege to roam came because of his skills with a deadly weapon.
As he turns to leave, he catches the eye of one of the detainees.
She's leaning through the bars, her eyes intent on him as they often were when he saw this strange, young woman with long black hair. A pretty girl— far too young for him and in her late teens or early twenties—but that wasn't why he'd noticed her. She had been one of Russell's elite, fallen from grace. He'd seen her before, and she looked like no one else here.
Her eyes pulled straight from your soul in their steely demeanor. Her final judgment on you never hinted in her silence, yet she always seemed to hold a negative opinion. She's odd, intimidating to most in her ever-present sour mood that rivaled Ana Maria's. Doyle didn't have the energy to figure her out beyond labeling her as some brat with serious attitude problems. His tired eyes looked off before they could bother to notice the young man in the cell along with her.
"If I get to shoot the dead fuckers from the towers, do I get to walk around after dark too? I'm a pretty good shot with a bow, you know..." The girl behind bars blurted. It wasn't till Doyle looked back that he saw she spoke to the Sheriff and not to him. Still, he kept walking faster, against the rising tensions behind him.
"Shut up, Hannah, please!" Doyle heard the other kid whine, "I want to go home! My uncle's already pissed at me! I just want to go home!"
Ana Maria's quick, impatient retort went unheard by Doyle as he made his hasty exit.
***
"Sergeant Doyle..."
The Sergeant's spine straightened as he halted. The dread called for him through the chill of the coming autumn night. A gust of visible air passes between Doyle's lips, and he closes his eyes before turning.
"Yes, Russell?" Doyle replied, his eyes not matching the forced patience of his voice.
The leader of the colony approached, too calm for Doyle's liking. A way that rubbed Doyle wrong, like Russell believed he walked on fucking water.
"Pass, please?" Russell asked.
Fucking hall pass.
Doyle refrained from rolling his eyes as he held out the red paper between clenched fingers. The back of the form stamped Russell's colony's seal—the seal for the self-crowned king of Southern Zombie America.
"You got yours?" Doyle asked, unable to control his biting sarcasm.
Russell smiled wide in response, and Doyle didn't care much for that perfect smile either. His teeth were too straight, too white, like a slimy politician.
"Thank you, Sergeant. Have a nice night," Russell says. As he goes to turn, Russell then lingers to add, "Oh, and thank you for your service."
Doyle's fist clenches out of Russell's sight, further abusing the already mangled pass. Doyle let the cocky son-of-a-bitch walk away. There'd been a time when he never let anyone walk away without a fight. That Doyle was a ghost to him now.
Pride got the best of the soldier on more occasions than not, but to keep his friends safe, Doyle bit his tongue and held his trembling fist behind his back until Russell disappeared.
Walking past Sophie's house, Doyle's quickened pace slows.
He'd stand in the path connecting their bungalows as he did every night. He readied to wave to her as she waited for him by the window. As per the colony rules, they weren't allowed to visit one another. Since Abby stayed with her, Doyle felt it imperative to check every night—or so he told himself it was the reason—when it came to this nightly routine.
He sees Sophie's hand offering up a soft lift in the dim light. The wave he gave back offered a bit more of life to it.
"Night," she mouthed through the glass, and Doyle imagined she didn't even say the word out loud anymore.
"Goodnight," Doyle whispers as she closes the curtain and fades out of sight.
Left standing alone, Doyle's unaware of how he lingered there a little bit longer every night, till the thoughts of her faded off enough to release him. Remembering the cigarettes she gave him, he lit another up.
Walking past more empty homes, Doyle finished the cigarette before making it up to his small walkway. Tossing the butt of it in the overgrown hedges after putting it out against the bungalow wall, he took a deep breath before opening the door. Once inside, he flipped the light switch, but the house remained dark.
Switching it on and off a few times, Doyle groans in annoyance to the shadows.
A few steps into the house and Doyle felt a heavy shift of energy that brought the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. A stranger in the dark filled the space ahead, short breath gusts, passing in quick beats. This person approached in boldness, and with his good ear, he tried to listen for a weapon or threat.
"Who are you?!" he asks with shoulders held in a tighter line and a fist ready to strike the living or the dead.
"It's me," a soft voice replies, and it didn't take more than one word for Doyle to know that voice over anyone.
It's the voice of a ghost. The voice of the face Doyle's been searching for in the walking corpses. It's her.
The eyes that matched his son's hit the moonlight coming in from the window. They were eyes he fell in love with long ago, back when he carried an actual hall pass. That striking blue fanned in long lashes haunted him, in the forever wondering if he'd ever see the pair of them again replaced with deathly yellow.
"Paige..." he breathed out in a small gust.
Paige recants like a dog beaten one too many times as he takes a giant step toward her. He can barely see her as she hides further in the dark.
"How did you find me?! What are you doing here?! You're alive..." he starts in disbelief, but she shushes him.
"Be quiet, James! We've been watching. I want to warn you before it's too late," she says, "I'm with an outside group. We're being lead by a man who isn't Russell's biggest fan, that's been exiled from here, whose wife went missing to District 4. He wants the colony, James. He's coming for it and for his revenge. Since you're working the watchtowers, I want you to stay out of our way when we come, to let us pass, so you don't get hurt. Russell's men aren't safe. No one is who's on his side... I'm not even supposed to be here...but I can't see you get hurt..."
Doyle grabs her from both sides, taking in the full sight of her, making sure he's not hallucinating again. She's trembling, cold. This isn't the girl he once knew, the woman he'd asked to marry him, the mother of their son. Struggling to grasp that she's here, Doyle drags her further from the window, hiding her from anyone patrolling.
Doyle asks, "How many of you are there? I can't believe you're alive...how...how did you even get here?!"
Doyle's confidence in her leader's plan already sounds faulty. In Doyle's vast experience, no men in power are good men, nor are the men who seek to take it for themselves. Still, could this be real?
"We've gathered a lot of information, from sneaking in here for weeks. Recon, I think you'd call it.."
She sounds recognizable again. Her disdain for the military and Doyle's chosen life never held back from Paige's bite.
She continues, "...only I'm just here to deliver the message...to you. I'm here for you James, to warn you...please...we don't want to hurt anyone that's not with Russell, no one we don't have to. I promise... we're just waiting for the right moment...maybe you can even help. Lord knows we need it..."
"How the hell did you get in here?!" Doyle repeats, instinctively looking out the window. He moves to it as if he's predicting some sudden attack and searching for any of her allies.
"James, please. I don't have time. You'll get us both killed," her expression broken in the dim light when he turns back.
She adds through a lining of tears, "I'm just so glad to see you alive. You have no idea. I had to see you up close, to tell you I'm okay, that I'm here..."
"I do. I do have an idea," Doyle says quickly in return as if she stole the words right out of his mouth.
He's drawn to her again, but she's gone and running before his hand can find her. With trouble, his impaired hearing fails to lead him, and she escapes out the back door. He follows and scans the darkness around the bungalow. She's gone as quickly as she appeared, with nothing but kicked-up dirt left in her path. A trail he could follow but doesn't, as he stands in his confusion and concern for his sanity.
Wanting to follow her but knowing the guards patrolled, he held back for both of their safety.
Doyle didn't have a solitary guess from where she possibly found a way into the colony. Secured better than Alcatraz, this place didn't leave much for an opening, but Paige said they'd been watching them. Doyle had his suspicions she'd be in trouble with her new friends for what she pulled here tonight. She'd waited in his house, flipped the breakers, and waited for him in enemy territory to reveal her group's secret plan against his people.
How long had she known he was here?
His hand moves through his hair, strands of it caught in his grip before he switched the breaker back. Wanting to break down, cry, and lose it, the last of what he held in, Doyle knelt to the floor to find the right pace of breath. He's granted his greatest apocalyptic wish—Paige was still alive, and she'd found him. Though he held resentment in their toxic past together, she was the only semblance of a family he had—even before humanity fell.
"Fuck," he choked out, his hands clutching the red route pass and ripping it from its already weakened crease down the middle.