The Good, the Bad and the Dead Part 2: Lone Wolf and Cub

Sylvia didn’t like the look of the two men taking inventory of every damn bean in her delivery. No one weighed to the gram any more. At least, not for coffee. Yet here they were, the blond haired one with his ice blue eyes letting each little nugget plink into a metal bowl. While a man with a black baseball cap turned backward marked tallies in a notebook.

“Boss must like his morning brew,” Sylvia said. Her fingers twirled a corkscrew of hair the same color as the coffee that now tested her patience. 

“You’re gettin’ paid, ain’t ya?” The one with the ball cap clicked his pen a couple times and kept writing. 

“About two hundred grams all told. Enough for about a week the way we drink it.” Blondie turned the lid of the mason jar a couple times, then feinted as if he were about to throw it back at Sylvia.

Her eyes widened for the briefest moment, then narrowed as she seethed at the bad joke. “I wouldn’t do that. The jars are extra. The deposit only carries over to the next shipment if I get the empty ones back. Course it’s worth it sometimes if I end up picking bits of glass out of a joker’s scalp.”

Ball Cap huh-huh’ed a laugh that made Sylvia clench her teeth. Even with a tank top on, the river’s heat helped create a smothering humidity that did little but grind on her mood. 

“What’s the final tally then?” she asked. The strap carrying her machine gun dug into her collarbone some, but its weight was a comfort in situations like these.

“It’s worth about five long banana clips, give or take.” Blondie gave her the amount in the kind of ammo that would fill her AK-47, a currency she expected given her weapon of choice. “You can have rice or millet to fill your belly down river. Cannabis grows well here, so you can have a discount on it if you’d like.”

“Cannabis grows well in most of the Ohio Valley,” Sylvia said. “You’ll have to do better. I can get seven long banana clips two hours down river.”

“A rough stretch,” Ball Cap had a deep baritone. “The dead have claimed half the banks.”

“And I need those extra clips to help claim ‘em back,” Sylvia countered. “You think coffee comes cheap?” She glanced at the rest of the cargo, weighing down her raft, gently rocking in the river’s current with every precious kilo.

Something in the shack behind the men made a noise. A spoon falling? She swore the barge man said only two of them would be here.

Ball Cap and Blondie shared a quick glance.

“What was that?” she asked. 

“None of your business,” Ball Cap told her.

Sylvia didn’t press. She just wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. 

“Six and a half banana clip’s worth then. Long ones,” she said.

“Five,” Ball Cap repeated. Blondie began unloading the raft. 

Sylvia furrowed her brow. “Hey, what the fuck are you–”

And then a pair of eyes met hers from the window of the shack and faded back into the darkness just as quickly.

The familiar sound of a bullet being loaded into the chamber of a pistol click-clacked its way into Sylvia’s ears and she sent a stiff hand into Blondie’s throat with barely a thought. He fell to his knees and struggled to send air into his lungs.

But Ball Cap had pulled a baseball bat from the ground, and swung it down toward the top of her head. She dodged away from him, and was able to keep her skull from being crushed. But the barbed wire wrapped around the bat’s wide end cut a trio of scratches deep into her shoulder. A fiery pain radiated from her wound, but she ignored it, gripping the rifle tight, her only tether to this mortal coil.

BUR-RATATATAT! Sylvia squeezed the trigger of her machine gun and cut Ball Cap almost in half. His bat fell to the dock with a thud. Then two more for good measure went into Blondie’s head. She scanned the tree line for any dead, runners or walkers, so she could figure out how much time she had before a swarm came. In the hope she could pile at least enough on her raft for the half a clip she’d spent on these two.

And maybe a third? Her eyes looked up, and a little girl was standing in the shack’s doorway. 

“You don’t know me,” the girl said, cinnamon skin covered in tattered clothes. “But I bet you know my mom.”

Sylvia thought for a moment, distracted for once from the hordes of zombies probably lurking just beyond the water’s edge. “

Her freckled brow reminded her of someone. The way she cocked her head while sizing Sylvia up.

“Alexandria’s girl? Christ…”

“My name’s Remi.” She hopped onto the raft and shaded her eyes with her hand, looking deep into the tree line that surrounded the riverbank. “We’d better shove off before any of the horde come this way. With all those gunshots, we’re bound to have visitors soon.”

“I’m the one that gives orders, between the two of us,” Sylvia said. She began piling the raft with all the bullets and supplies she was about to purchase with her delivery.

“Time to get on,” Remi said coldly. 

“What did I just say?” Sylvia seethed, already having just enough of this impudent little brat. 

“BEHOZIAG JOREWSKI DIBLAP!” Behind her, she heard a wordless gibbering and turned in time to see a runner about to sink its rotting teeth into her. But before she could defend herself, a bullet whistled past her ear, and entered the zombie’s skull right between its eyes and it collapsed at her feet, a stinking lifeless heap. 

Sylvia turned and saw Remi holding a smoking gun, the same pistol Blondie had held mere moments before. 

“Ready now?” the little girl asked.

About ready to send you overboard, Sylvia said to herself. But for Remi’s sake, she let only her actions speak, and took in her hands a long wooden pole. The river bank slowly drifted away as she pushed off. And then the horde finally came.

Each carried with them an echo of their humanity. Sylvia focused on a boy, once walking that awkward bridge into adolescence. It. Always it, she reminded herself, reached its arms toward her as if grasping for an embrace, wading into the river. The bones of its forearms were yellowing, but still fairly pale, flesh covering most of them. Fresh. Turned in the last year, most likely. Sickly sores pockmarked what remained of its skin, the lower jaw of its skull hanging slack and open. Its collar was ripped open, but aside from that, its clothes were still in good shape. A few runners rushed past it, their muscles and tendons spared the decay that affected most of the others.

They churned the waters, charging mindlessly, driven only by their mad hunger. But soon the raft was in the deepest part of the river, and the dead could not reach them

Sylvia put the pole on top of the raft, and then put her hands on a wooden rudder that steered her vessel. She examined Remi. The girl was a bit worse for wear; hair tangled, clothes in tatters, the toe of one of her canvas sneakers poking open. But she was well fed and a good height for her age. Rare these days. 

“So those men,” Sylvia said. “Did they…do anything to you?”

“Not like that.” Remi sat down on the raft, her legs criss-crossed in front of her. She put the pistol down in front of her, placed her finger between the trigger guard and spun the gun around.

Sylvia thought about taking it from her, but noticed the gun’s safety was on. And despite the girl’s age, maybe nine or ten, she realized how handy it could be to have another trigger finger nearby.

“Good,” Sylvia said, bad memories lurking in her own past threatening to come back into the light of her consciousness. Before she forced them back down again. “If the current’s decent, I can have you back in Cairo in a couple days. I’m sure your mother’ll be glad to have you back.”

“I don’t want to go back. Those men you killed were hired by me to escape my mom. You don’t know what it’s like in the company she keeps.”

“I know all too well.” Sylvia’s eyes grew teary as she steered the raft into the setting sun, the river’s waters glowing red. “I used to be one of her bodyguards. Until the day she lost her eye. Since then…we haven’t been on good terms.”

“You’re Sylvia then,” Remi realized. “Well then, if you bring me up river, there’s a reward waiting for you in Cincinnati.”

“There’s nothing waiting for me in Cincinnati except a slow death at the hands of your mother’s goons. No, it’s time to bring you back, so I can squash this grudge. I know it isn’t fun to be a bargaining chip, but sometimes that’s our lot in life.”

Remi stewed. Sylvia felt a heavy silence between them. Only the river whispered, its current lapping against the logs of the raft.

* * * * *

The tension between them never left. Sylvia slowly realized Remi had enough good sense, even armed with a pistol, not to run off on her own, into what could be dozens of zombies, infected dead, whatever you wanted to call them. 

Or who knows whatever else. Whoever else.

But the thought of what she might be returning her back to did weigh on her mind. Alexandria was a warlord. The warlord, at least in these parts.

She controlled the town of Cairo, Illinois. Where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers met. A big hub for transportation, one that didn’t need to rely on any kind of fuel. The water’s currents took care of that, at least going south, eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. 

So Alexandria ruled her roost, charging a toll for everything that went through her little slice of the rivers. And had grown rich and powerful from her prime location. 

Sylvia met her after her long journey southwest, abandoning the community that she’d lived in for years in Brooklyn, New York. Before things went sour. Since then, she’d never really settled into one place, at least not for very long. 

Looking at Remi, she could see the curve of Alexandria’s nose, her dimpled chin and midnight black hair. Realizing the girl sensed her gaze, punctuated by a sideways glance, Sylvia looked away. 

A pang of guilt went through her. She still blamed herself for the hidden knife, the one she’d failed to find in a routine frisk, that ended up taking Alexandria’s eye. And despite the fact that Sylvia had technically saved Alexandria’s life, she’d also been the one who’d let it come to such great risk to begin with. 

She’d known better than to plead for her life. So in the chaos of the attempt’s aftermath, she’d slipped out of Cairo with little more than the stolen machine gun she still carried (though she no longer thought of it as stolen, but rather her own). 

Sylvia had never seen any bounties posted about herself. Maybe forgiveness earned from her self-inflicted exile. But now she had Alexandria’s daughter, and felt that must be worth more than an eye. At least she hoped so.

“What are you thinking about?” Remi asked. 

“The past,” Sylvia said. “Not a good thing to do with a rudder in your hand, I guess.”

“I’m bored. And I need a snack.”

Sylvia sighed, realizing the girl was making her go through her food more quickly than she expected. Only a couple days in, and almost half their food stock was gone.

“Are you hungry because you’re bored?”

“No. I’m hungry, because I’m hungry. I’m bored, because I’m stuck in the middle of this river with you with not much to do.”

“Hmph. Here.” Sylvia handed the girl an apple from a sack she kept near the rudder. “And you can have these sunflower seeds too.”

The seeds were taken from the stash of those men she’d killed, the ones that had tried to cheat her. With the extra food and bullets she’d taken off them, she was still able to feed Remi and herself without too much to spare.

In a few minutes, a slightly more swift current took them a little faster down the river. Thank heavens. Sylvia’s grip on the rudder relaxed slightly, and she caught herself looking back at Remi again. But before the girl noticed her gaze, she examined the wide swath of the river ahead of them once more.

The sound of splashing came up from behind them. Sylvia turned, making sure there weren’t any zombies on the banks trying to rush her from any shallows. Her breath paused in a gentle gasp as a pair of canoes came to follow them. They snuck out from behind some willow branches gently caressing the water.

“Remi, get ready.”

“Sylvia?” the girl turned to look behind her. “Oh. Shit.”

“You there!” Sylvia called out to a couple people riding in canoes. “We don’t have supplies to spare. Our apologies.”

One of them was piloted by a middle-aged woman with long gray braids, the other by a younger man who looked like he might be her son. 

“Ain’t asking, just takin’,” the woman said. Soon, she and the young man had rifles pointed at her, ones that looked to be used for hunting. Usually, Sylvia would have fired on them in an instant and hoped she survived taking them both out. But Remi’s presence had tucked itself into the back of her mind. She didn’t want to risk the girl.

A rustle in the trees on the nearby bank. Everyone looked over, but only a squirrel hopped down a few branches and then back into the bush.

“I’ll disembark over here,” Sylvia said, leading them to the edge of the water. She had no definite idea as to what to do next. How to keep going if these people had any interest in her raft to keep them alive and fed for the rest of the journey to Cairo. Without a gun, which she was sure about to be stolen from her along with her ammo. And Remi’s pistol, unless the girl somehow managed to keep it hidden.

Sylvia trusted something would happen on the bank. Something always does. The canoes were soon sliding into the mud, and Sylvia’s raft bobbed in the water nearby. 

“I’ll untie your craft when we’re done,” the young man said. Sylvia noticed a scar under his left eye, possibly a shallow scratch from a knife or an angry lover’s fingernails. He threaded a rope around one of the raft’s cross-beams and tied it around a tree. It was well tethered.

“Stay on unless I say otherwise,” Sylvia whispered to Remi. Remi nodded.

The braided woman began by taking their sack of food. Again, there was a rustle in the trees near the banks. “Keep an eye on that,” the woman said to the young man.

Remi began coughing. Loudly. Like a child feigning sickness to keep herself from something she didn’t want to do. Sylvia was about to tell her to cut it out, but then the rustling in the trees grew louder. And she began to suspect Remi might be up to something that could actually help them.

Pop! Pop! A pair of rifle shots. The woman’s eyes widened. 

Sylvia eyed the line tying them to a tree, and remembered the blade she kept on her, a serrated knife she tied to her right calf. One she almost forgot about, most of the time, since she always wore it.

“Go! Go!” the man rushed back toward them, but a gnarled hand pulled him back, and gnashing teeth sank into his neck.

“Ralph!” the woman cried, and began firing her rifle wildly. But soon a pair of zombies was dragging her down too.

Sylvia began sawing through the line, eyes wide as she took in the carnage before her. She moved her arm as rapidly as she could, holding the rope steady with the hand not holding the knife. One of the zombies looked up at her, then back down to its feast. Then back up just as the last few fraying strands of the rope finally fell away.

She grabbed her pole to push them off the bank, but that zombie grabbed onto it too. It almost pulled her into the river, in some grim tug of war. Sylvia felt the wound from the bat’s barbed wire dig its teeth into her shoulder as she strained. Christ. 

The muddy water lapped up past the zombie’s ankles as she continued to pull, and it began to lose its traction. But then a pair of infected on either side of the one now churning the river came running, breaking from the woods with slavering maws hungry for flesh.

Remi shot wildly. One of the pair fell, splashing face down. The other began clambering up upon the raft. 

Letting go of the pole, Sylvia fired her machine gun into the zombie she’d been struggling with. The pole bounced off the raft, and slowly began bobbing into the edge of the water. She fell flat on her stomach to grab it, and then swung it into the remaining zombie who plunged into the water as well. Remi grabbed it from her and pushed them back into the current.

Then Sylvia let loose a torrent of bullets into the bank. The braided woman was being overwhelmed, so Sylvia felt no guilt granting her a quick death as she fired into the cluster swarming her.

Her gun radiated heat onto the hands that gripped it. She let it go, and took the pole back from Remi.

“Good girl.”

* * * * *

On their sixth day down river, as they passed beneath a long steel bridge, Cairo finally came into view. The walls of its central compound were lashed together from towering pine trees carved into the sharp teeth of an evil grin. Watchtowers at each corner kept an eye on incoming river traffic. Any hordes that came too close were thinned out by snipers perched high atop them.

Through her binoculars, Sylvia could see them studying her from far away, and knew they would be checking manifests for any cargo her raft might bear.

“Hoist the white flag, Remi.”

“I guess so.” Remi raised a wooden stick they had tied one of Sylvia’s tank tops to, the least filthy one they could find. “My mom might still have it out for both of us, you know.”

“She’ll be glad to see you alive. Me, not so much.”

A pair of semaphore flags fluttered from the central watchtower. Their gold and red triangles caught the afternoon sun, and sent a signal for Sylvia to approach. The tower stood on the tip of the peninsula where the rivers merged. 

At the dock, a small flotilla made up of all kinds of craft bobbed up and down among wooden decks that jutted into the water. A guard looked down at Sylvia, scratching a rust-colored beard, the handle of a revolver poking out of his waistband. He carried a clipboard. 

“Well, lookie who we have here,” he said with a grin. “The prodigal daughter returns. And Sylvia? Thought your days guardin’ bodies was over.”

“Frank, how are ya,” Sylvia greeted him coldly. “Carrying precious cargo.”

Frank whistled, his yellow teeth revealed by puckered lips. “We’ve been lookin’ for you, Remi. Ain’t been eating much, have you? Must be rough going down these rivers.”

“Pirates took most of our supplies about a week ago. Been living on walleye and bluegill. She don’t much like it raw,” Sylvia said.

“I lost my appetite for sushi a long time ago.” Remi’s arms were crossed, and she scowled at both of them.

“I guess we’d better take her inside. Ain’t nothing out here but river rats and infected dead.”

He took a long look at Sylvia. A little too long for her liking. “Got room for ya if you need it,” he said. “No telling what folks’ll think when they see the woman who let Alexandria get her eye poked out.”

Sylvia rolled her eyes. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Whatever suits ya.” Frank flipped a lever, and a wooden portcullis creeped up, an iron chain creaking as it rose. 

Inside the compound, it smelled of firewood smoke and roast venison. Hunters who could bring back game and avoid being prey themselves were highly valued. As were the cooks who could gather herbs, and river pilots who brought salt in from the coasts. Nothing moved an economy like hunger. And greed.

Sylvia’s stomach cramped with pangs of hunger, and her mouth watered at the smell of the cookfires. 

“I’m starving,” Remi said.

“Food’ll have to wait,” Frank said. “Your momma doesn’t like to.”

Already, Sylvia could hear murmurs from passers-by and merchants trading wares from old store fronts; convenience stores and gas stations reclaimed from looters. They recognized her and Remi both. And from some of the looks she was getting, Sylvia knew she wasn’t remembered too fondly by many of them.

Eventually, they reached an old brick warehouse. “Tell Alexandria, Sylvia has her daughter. Quick, she’ll want to see them both,” Frank ordered a guard standing outside.

Its metal doors squealed as they opened, yearning for oil like a mewling infant. A shaft of sunlight stretched into the darkened interior, lit only by light through some broken windows and a few beeswax candles.

Glowing in the dimness, Alexandria sat upon a massive rolling office chair that resembled a throne, the kind with a high back. It was torn in places, stuffing leaking out like a well-loved teddy bear. Even then, it held onto its regal essence.

A bodyguard on her left side held a shotgun with both hands, but at least it wasn’t pointed at them. Tyrone. Sylvia remembered him well. He was her counterpart, a second bodyguard. She was surprised she’d never been replaced.

“Remi. You’ve been a bad girl. Come to Mommy.”

Remi walked forward, her head bowed. Sylvia could see the glint of tears in the corner of her eyes. The little girl finally reached her mother. Alexandria lifted Remi’s chin with her index finger, and held her daughter’s gaze.

She’s trembling. In the silence that stretched seconds into what felt like minutes, Remi seemed to vibrate almost imperceptibly. Her right shoulder scrunched up and she tilted her head down as if she were about to feel the full force of a lightning bolt sent from the gods to smite her. 

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Alexandria clucked her tongue. “Mmm, mmm. That won’t do.”

In one quick stroke, Alexandria smacked the little girl’s cheek with enough force that her head turned sharply. Sylvia caught sight of a teardrop that shimmered in a ray of sunlight poking into the warehouse. It fell on the ground like the first drop of rain.

Only the rest of the storm didn’t come. Remi held her tears.

“You mustn’t worry me like that. If one of my enemies had found you…you can’t imagine what they could do.”

“Then you’re lucky it was me.” Sylvia stepped up to the young girl, and placed her hand upon her shoulder. She squeezed slightly in the hope of soothing Remi, even a little. 

Alexandria cocked her head, and the shadow of a grin curved the corner of her mouth. “You and my daughter have a bond now, don’t you?” 

“We sailed down a few hundred miles of the Ohio River, fighting zombies and river pirates along the way. An experience like that’ll do that to you.”

“Good. I have a proposal for you.”

Before Alexandria could explain, a klaxon sounded. 

“Alexandria, come on,” Tyrone said, trying to pull her by the arm. “We need to evacuate, before it’s too late.”

“No! I’ll not abandon my home. I’ll die here before the hordes take it, or raiders, or whoever it is.”

She went to a metal locker tucked into a corner of the warehouse. She pulled two magnums and placed them into holsters she wore on her waist like an old fashioned gun slinger. Then she put an AR-15 with a shoulder strap around her shoulders, and a couple hand grenades upon her belt. 

“I’m ready.”

Tyrone sighed, but nodded. “C’mon. Let’s get up to the central tower. There are a couple o’ rifles we got stashed up there that we can use to thin out whatever’s attacking us.”

“Good. Sylvia and Remi’ll come with us,” Alexandria said.

“I can’t guarantee their protection.”

“I can,” Sylvia said. “Well, at least our chances will probably be better up there than trying to fight our way out of town.”

Remi pulled the pistol tucked into the back of her jeans and click-clacked a bullet into its chamber. “Let’s go.”

The tower was on top of the warehouse, up some service steps and onto its roof. It was made up of wooden beams and corrugated metal. Tyrone was right about the rifles. 

Alexandria and her bodyguard each wielded one. Sylvia and Remi kept their weapons ready for whatever enemy might come too close to them.

It was a horde. They had breached the walls somehow. The most massive one Sylvia had ever seen, concentrated into one place. At least a hundred, and probably a few dozen more. Not the handfuls that hoped to surround their loan prey or even the swarms called to the sounds of gunshots and screams of their victims.

They milled outside the walls, but were now climbing on top of each other to breach them like a colony of ants seeking to overwhelm their enemy with sheer numbers. Their moans were a constant drone. And Sylvia could smell them, the rotting stink that their infection somehow sustained. It was a grim wave of lost humanity.

“Ay Dio mios.”

POP! POP! Two heads exploded into a fine red mist fifty yards away. Tyrone was firing too, hitting torsos as much as heads; the bullets that didn’t penetrate skulls might slow an infected for a moment, but not destroy them outright–an assault rifle at close range could, but not rifle shots from this far away.

Beneath them, Alexandria’s people were holding their own. Barely. At least a dozen had fallen. Zombies swarmed around their bodies, tearing the corpses apart. These clusters were destroyed by hand grenades or machine, but the infected dead seemed to double any of its own number that had been destroyed by more forces climbing over the walls.

“I’ve seen one this big before. In ‘32,” Alexandria said, squeezing her finger every few seconds, and pushing the bolt of the rifle forward each time, bullet casings falling to the ground with a metallic plunk. 

“I remember that one. It took my father.” Tyrone kept firing, now with almost as much accuracy as Alexandria. 

“Sylvia!” Remi pointed down the ladder at an infected climbing up to the platform they were on. The girl fired her pistol, and a zombie fell backward, pulling one more back with it. 

Sylvia fired her AK-47 straight down and thinned out the infected dead swarming around the tower. 

“I’m going down.” Sylvia began descending.

“No!” Remi called down after her. 

Sylvia dropped from the last few rungs, and spun around, firing her gun in all directions. She hoped against all odds no one took any friendly fire, and through the smoke of her gun, it seemed that no one had.

Her vision tinged red, and she charged into the fray. Fuck these fuckers. In her mind’s eye, she remembered John Jakes’ throat being torn out and Phil Eastman keeping his infection from taking him fully by sacrificing himself with a pair of grenades. To thin out the swarm that almost took her squad. For the mother she barely remembered, and the father she never knew. For the dim memories of her home in Cuba, now an island abandoned to the dead, and the uncles who died charging into the beachhead in Florida to give her any hope in life. And now, for Remi and the rest of Cairo. For any chance she had at redemption.

One zombie got too close, and Sylvia rammed the barrel of her rifle into its gaping maw and sent a bullet out the back of its skull. Within a few seconds, she was covered in stinking viscera, black and red blood. 

Another woman, squat and strong with close cropped hair and a spiked choker, fired twin Uzis and together they became a maelstrom of fury. 

Sylvia let one of her clips drop on the ground and reloaded, letting muscle memory fend off the panic that crept into her even for the half dozen seconds she became vulnerable. As she finished, she had to kick back one of the infected that threatened to bite her. Her partner fired three bullets into its skull.

On top of the battlements, one of the zombies pointed inside the compound, up to the tower Alexandria and Remi were inside. Pointed?

“Come with me.” Sylvia charged once more into the fray, and the woman followed, firing all around at the ever tightening ring that threatened to overwhelm them. RATATATAT. RATATAT. It took a long time to thin them out (what felt like a long time) enough to have any breathing room. 

Sylvia found a rope ladder, and pulled herself up its rungs, near the pointing zombie. It looked into her direction and growled. Sylvia fired, but only heard a click.

“Fuck.”

She punched the zombie square in the jaw, hoping that its teeth wouldn’t make her fist bleed, leading inevitably to an infection. The zombie fell back a few steps and charged her again. It knocked Sylvia over, but she kicked up with her feet and flipped it behind her. 

Somehow, the infected landed on its own feet, displaying more agility than Sylvia had ever seen before. It charged at her again. Sylvia pulled the knife from her boot and threw it as fast as she could, straight into the zombie’s throat. It made a horrible retching sound, then pulled the knife out and threw it back at Sylvia. She ducked, and the blade flew by.

“Fuck!” What the hell is this uber-zombie? Thank God there only seems to be one of them.

In the next instant, the zombie’s head exploded. The woman she’d been fighting with called up to her. “You’re the bravest bitch I ever saw.”

“You are!” Sylvia called back down.

Voices began to ring throughout the compound.

“Look! They’re running scared.” 

“Good God! They got Gary.”

“Kill ‘em all!” A man fired blindly into the retreating horde.

Jesus. They're like an animal pack now that’s lost their alpha. And not a mindless force of nature. Ay, Christo…

Sylvia looked up into the tower. Alexandria saluted. Sylvia fell back into the battlements, sliding down its wall into a heap. It took her long stressful moments to catch her breath, to let the rush of adrenaline slide into blissful relief. She wept, hot precious tears of the living. 

* * * * *

“I have an offer for you.” Alexandria laced her fingers, creating a cradle for her chin, elbows perched upon their lunch table. The attack was now a few hours past. Clean-up, and the awful task of euthanizing the newly infected had finally ended.

“Yeah?” Sylvia asked.

As much as my empty socket itches whenever I see you, I realize now you have skills, luck, instincts, whatever you want to call it, that even the best of us sorely lack.  I want you to lead the militia. Take our scouts into the field, so the horde can never come up with those numbers again. And that zombie that pointed. We need to figure out how they’re getting smarter.”

“And what’ll you give me?”

“Food. Shelter.” She gave her daughter a sideways glance. “And you’ll help me raise Remi.”

“Excuse me?” her daughter nearly choked on her goat’s milk.

“You heard me. I know you don’t want to stay here forever.”

“I don’t want to stay here now.” 

Alexandria rolled her eyes. 

“You need skills to survive. And another ten years. If you want to find another settlement. Or live as a lone wolf. But now, you’re just a cub.”

Remi sighed.

“Okay,” Sylvia said. She grabbed another chicken drumstick. “Okay.”

From across the table, she caught Tyrone’s glance. The man smiled and looked away. Sylvia felt herself blush. Curse my luck.

“It’s settled then. And this is a second chance. A final one. But you’ve earned it.  Welcome home, Sylvia.”