Love You Forever
The sky was steadily darkening, twilight fading into night under clear, starry skies. The street was like a hundred others that they had left behind them, small and medium-sized shops and restaurants, most with their windows broken, a few with heavier damage, all dark and quiet, without a single light burning anywhere.
Zoey, Francis, Bill, and Louis were carefully working their way along the storefronts, covering each other, flashing lights into the stores, checking for anything useful. They were careful and alert, as always, but not particularly nervous. Here and there, the corpse of one of the infected lay stretched out on the sidewalk or sprawled in a doorway, but it was clear that there had been no full-scale battle in this area. Nothing stirred, and apart from the wind and what it blew back and forth, there were no sounds to be heard. If anything was still alive, survivors or infected, it had already moved on.
Louis approached a jewelry shop that showed no outward signs of damage. He tried the door, and to his surprise, it swung open. After a brief check inside, he called to the others.
"Hey, guys, this place is pretty well barred up. We can spend the night here safely."
Bill nodded in approval. "Good idea, son." All of them knew that it was too late for them to go any further that day.
Francis walked toward Louis, and then stopped, his attention caught by something across the street. He turned to address Zoey, a few feet away, as usual armed with a hunting rifle.
"Wait a minute. Zoey, could you watch my back? I want to check out something over there."
He pointed across the street with the barrel of his submachine gun, toward a shape in the darkness. It looked like a motorbike, with its rider still slumped over the handlebars.
Zoey readied her weapon and turned to face the street. She nodded her acknowledgement. "Sure, Francis."
"Make it quick, OK?" Bill's voice had an impatient edge, but Francis didn't rise to the bait. He paused and turned toward Bill to explain.
"I just want to take a look at that bike parked over there. And the guy on it. I think I recognize the bike."
"What good'll that do? He's deader'en dead."
"Just curious, that's all."
Francis crossed the street carefully, keeping an eye out for trouble. The other three remained on their side of the street, with weapons at the ready, scanning the road on either side and the rooftops. But everything remained empty, dark, and quiet.
Francis approached the bike and the corpse draped over it. He circled it, squatted, and then carefully lifted the corpse's head with the tip of his gun to get a look at its face. He stared at it for a moment, his own expression impassive, and let it drop again. Slowly, he rose to his feet and walked back across the street, without looking back.
Louis asked, "Was he anyone you knew?"
"Prob'ly. I know the bike."
Francis paused briefly and shook his head.
"Dunno about the rider, though. He doesn't have a face any more."
"Damn." Louis looked as if he wished he hadn't asked.
Bill was already walking toward the jewelry shop. He stopped at the open door, and turned to address the other three.
"You'll get used to it."
Zoey's response was immediate. "I'm not sure I want to get used to it."
"You will, you will..." Bill repeated, as he turned to go through the door. The other three filed in after him. Lights began to flicker through the barred shop windows as they settled down, the only lights to be seen on the street, or anywhere through all of the night, as far as they knew.
-o-o-o-
The four of them were sitting around a table lit by a hurricane lantern. They had a map of the area spread out in front of them, and the three men were discussing where to go next.
"Well, are we going to hang around here for ever, or try to move across country?" Bill said impatiently.
"I don't trust the woods," Louis countered. "It's a lot more dangerous out there than in the city."
"We can't keep on going round and round forever. No one's going to rescue us here. We've got to walk out by ourselves."
Francis cut in. "Maybe, Bill, but I think Louis is right. We shouldn't strike out across country. I hate the woods."
"Too timid. We won't get anywhere that way." Bill turned in his seat to speak directly to Louis. "You won't get eaten by a bear, you know."
"Yes, but I might get eaten by a zombie," was the prompt reply. "I'd just as soon not be, thank you. Too few places to spend the night safely, for one thing."
While this discussion had been going on, Zoey had been studying the map. Now she spoke up.
"We can follow Route 16 east. I know that country. It's mostly developed along the highway. There'll be plenty of places for shelter and supplies."
"Through Danielstown first..." Bill responded. "That's pretty heavily built up. You OK with that?"
"Places to go, zombies to kill." Zoey shrugged. "What else is new?"
Bill peered at the map. "There'll be ammo and supplies there anyway. Danielstown, then... what's this? Green Hills?"
"It's a suburb. I've been there as well." Zoey paused for a moment, then added "Nice area. Used to be."
"So, what do you two think?"
Louis said, "All right by me."
By this time, Francis was in no mood to argue. "Oh, OK. We get into the same trouble wherever we go, anyway."
Zoey tried to reassure him. "It was always quiet there. Maybe it still is."
Bill suddenly stretched and yawned.
"Maybe….Time to get some shut-eye."
He turned to Francis. "Wake me at four and you can turn in from then till nine. I don't need all that much sleep."
"Oh, OK. Louis?"
"I'm with you." Louis looked at Bill and Zoey, "Good-night to you both."
Bill yawned and said, "G'night. Zoey. See you at 4, then."
"That early?" Louis asked Zoey.
"It's OK. G'night."
Bill and Zoey retreated behind counters on opposite sides of the store and bedded down on the floor in sleeping bags. Louis and Francis drifted back and forth, walking slowly and peering out the windows. The light had been turned down very low.
After checking all the doors and windows multiple times, Francis and Louis sat down again at the front of the store. They were silent for a long while. There was a sound of snoring from Bill, very faint breathing from Zoey's side.
Finally, Francis scratched himself and yawned. "Quiet day."
"Yeah. Not many zombies. Almost none, really." Louis sounded as if he were trying to look on the bright side. "Maybe they're dying off."
Francis laughed softly. "Now I'm nervous. Every time you say that, we get mobbed the next day."
"I'm sure there's no causal connection, Francis."
"No what?"
"Forget it." Louis paused, and changed the subject. "Zoey's getting a bit on edge. Have you noticed?"
"Yeah. I wish she'd leave the damned witches alone."
"She did a pretty good job on that one at lunchtime, though."
Francis shook his head in doubt. "We could've snuck around it. And it dropped right at Zoey's feet. If she'd missed a shot, Zoey would've been in big trouble."
"Well, she didn't."
"I know. But she shouldn't be taking risks. We still have a long way to go."
"True that. But it'll pass. We're all under strain."
"Yeah. Guess so."
The two looked at each other. Clearly, both were uneasy about Zoey's mental state.
-o-o-o-
Next morning was sunny, but there remained the nagging wind that raised the dust and blew dead leaves and pieces of paper down the street.
The door of the jewelry shop opened, and the four survivors walked out onto the street. At once, a sharp gust blew an old newspaper up and into Francis' face.
Francis shook it loose with a violent toss of his head and spat on the road.
"I hate the wind. And newspapers. And dust."
Bill looked up and down the empty street. "Let's get a move on, then. We want to get through Danielstown before dark. Might be quite a few zombies there still. I'd rather take 'em on in the light."
Zoey said to Bill, "I know one or two places in Green Hills we could bed down."
"All right, let's just follow the road then. Keep your eyes open."
The four began moving up the street in a loose formation, watching each other's backs.
-o-o-o-
By late afternoon, they had reached the outskirts of Danielstown, and were working down streets of three and four-story buildings. There seemed to have been a lot more fighting there, though it was all over now. Many of the streets were blocked by barricades or wire, and it took a long time, and some false starts and backtracking, to go a relatively short distance.
Zoey and Louis were crouched behind a counter in a ruined beauty parlour; Bill and Francis were further to the back, near the rear door. Going through the beauty parlour seemed to be the only way they could pass a series of barricades, but to their annoyance, a witch was wandering slowly along the sidewalk in front of the store. As it was about to walk past, it hesitated and turned around, and began going in the opposite direction, as if it were intent on patrolling the store front.
Louis cursed the witch under his breath. "Not again! Damn it." He crept to the rear, where Bill and Francis were, slowly and carefully.
"It's been back and forth five or six times now. Must have some kind of sentimental attachment to the place."
"Maybe it's where it gets its nails done," Francis suggested. All three of them laughed softly.
"I think we're going to have to take it out," Louis said. "That or spend the night here. There's no other way round."
Bill frowned. "Damn. Out of shotgun ammo, no Molotov, can't get very far away from it... this could be tricky."
"Where was that gun store again?" Louis asked.
"Two streets over," Francis replied. "Past it."
"That's not much use right now."
"Hey!"
Francis and Louis jumped at Bill's muted exclamation. Zoey had slipped out from behind the counter with her rifle and was sneaking up on the witch from behind, staying just inside the store window. The witch sensed her, stopped, and began to growl, but didn't as yet turn around.
Bill hissed "Zoey, what the hell!" as he and Francis hurriedly lowered their weapons and attempted to get a shot on the witch. They found themselves blocked by the front window frame and walls. Louis worked his way further forward, to the right, but he didn't have a good shot either.
Then Zoey leaned out the front window with the rifle. She called out to the witch, in a tone that was almost cheerful.
"Hey, beautiful!"
The witch began to turn and scream. Zoey responded by firing several rounds into its head at point-blank range, staggering it. Then she dodged back into the window as the witch frantically charged her. The witch overran the window a bit and turned to climb through it into the shop, but Zoey was there again to shoot it several more times in the head, staggering it again. She slipped out the window into the street as the witch tumbled into the shop, and shot it three more times, always in the head. Louis, who finally had a clear line of fire, opened up with an automatic rifle into the witch's body from the back, and it screamed loudly and sank to the ground, dead.
There was the sound of a smoker from outside. Zoey spun around and shot it off the roof of a building across the street before it had time to strike. Its body flopped down and hit the pavement with an ugly thump.
"Asshole."
Zoey was furious. She walked over and kicked the dead smoker in its head, hard. "Thought you'd spoil my fun, eh? Fuck you." And she kicked the smoker again, so hard this time that she almost lost her balance.
The three others had moved out into the street by that time. Francis spoke up.
"Zoey, darlin', don't take it so personal."
"Yeah, yeah."
The anger seemed to drain out of her suddenly.
"Let's get out of this dump."
She began moving along the street, taking point again before anyone could replace her. Louis and Francis exchanged worried glances, and hurried to catch up with her.
-o-o-o-
They had found the gun store easily enough. Bill was on watch at the front while the other three ransacked the place looking for anything useful.
Louis straightened up and shook his head. "Not much left here. Somebody must have put up a fight."
"There's plenty for us, I think. Hate to be the next guy through here, though," Francis replied.
"I've found enough to keep the rifle running for a little while," Zoey said, as she emerged from one of the back rooms. "Lots of people out of town hunted. We'll be able to pick up rifle and shotgun shells in some of the houses."
"If we've got time to search, that is." Francis seemed doubtful. "We can't go door to door."
Their talk was interrupted by a thump and a noise of scurrying from the street. Bill crouched down and cautiously checked outside. He backed away slowly and turned to address the other three.
"Lock and load. I think we've got company."
A hunter growled, close. Bill stayed low and moved back into the shop. The other three covered the entrance and windows, which were open and unprotected, since the bars had been torn off by someone or something.
There was a momentary standoff. The hunter was somewhere near the front of the shop, growling now and again. The four tried to stay low and sneak peeks at where it might be.
Zoey quickly lost patience with this tactic.
"Oh, screw this."
Francis, the nearest to her, turned in alarm but was too late to speak to her or restrain her. Zoey suddenly jumped to her feet and shouted in the direction of the Hunter noises.
"Boo!"
She ducked again at once, but the Hunter was already in the air. It landed just short, on the countertop in front of her. She jumped up again and jabbed with the rifle, instinctively, warding off the Hunter. It snarled, but before it could do anything else, she fired several shots into its head and upper body at point-blank range. The last of these caught it square in the forehead, sending its body flying end over end to smash against the inside of the shop door.
"Good riddance," she snarled in its direction as it slumped to the floor, dead.
She went to clear the way by tossing the Hunter's corpse into the street. But when she opened the front door, she was confronted by a Boomer that had sneaked up under cover of the fight and was about to vomit on her. Losing her temper, Zoey smashed the Boomer in the stomach with her rifle butt, several times, knocking it stumbling backward.
Alarmed, Bill shouted a warning to her.
"Zoey, be careful. He'll pop!"
Too late. With a final vicious blow from Zoey's rifle butt, the Boomer disintegrated, spraying her with muck and puke. This didn't do a thing to improve her temper.
"You fat bastard."
She stumbled back to the open door, where she turned, crouched, and began swinging the rifle to beat off the crowd of infected attracted by the boomer bile. Bill, Francis, and Louis shot over her head and to each side, and the attack was dealt with quickly and successfully, though she ended up half-buried in bloody chunks of zombie.
-o-o-o-
"If they'd told me the apocalypse was going to be this gross, I'd have stayed home."
Zoey was standing in the door, picking zombie parts off herself. She looked as if she had taken a shower under the waste pipe of an abattoir. Glancing down for a moment, she noticed an eyeball on the sidewalk next to her foot, and with a vicious kick, sent it bouncing down the road. Then she pulled out a handful of wet wipes and set to work on the boomer bile in her hair.
Bill looked her over, gave a low whistle, and shook his head.
"Better stay closer to home in future, if you know what I mean. You're taking too many risks, Zoey. Either you'll get yourself seriously hurt, or I'll have a heart attack worrying about you."
Zoey glanced at him and shrugged. "You're tougher than that, Bill."
"But he's right, y'know," Francis said, and then Louis chipped in to complete the worried chorus.
"Yeah girl, you should dial it back a bit. We can't afford to lose you."
Zoey looked up at the sky, and then at the three of them in turn.
"I'll try," she replied, with a hint of exasperation in her tone, and then went on with open anger,
"It's just that they piss me off so much sometimes. All these things trying to kill us, and we've never even met them before. They don't even know who we are. It's stupid."
"Stupid like war always is," Bill said. "But stupid doesn't mean it can't kill you dead, all the same."
Zoey nodded. Throwing the last bunch of soiled wipes to the sidewalk, she straightened up and tried to focus.
"Let's get a move on. We're nearly at Green Hills, and the day's nearly over."
Francis checked the magazine on his submachine gun. "All right. Which way now?"
"I'll take point," Zoey said. "I've been here before." She turned to face Bill. "Don't worry. I've had enough adventure for one day. I'll try not to do anything dumb."
"Never said you did, Zoey. Just be careful."
She gave Bill a faint smile and a nod, and then without saying anything else began cautiously moving up the street, with the three others following her.
-o-o-o-
A suburban street. Evening was coming. The light was failing rapidly, and the street lights and houses were dark, as they always were now.
The four were moving down the street in their usual loose formation, Zoey in the lead. At an intersection, they paused momentarily.
Bill turned to Zoey.
"A couple more blocks, you said?"
"Two more after this one. It's a mall, a small one, with a really big gun store. It's probably in good enough shape to spend the night. Might be some ammo left too."
The voice of Francis came from behind.
"Hope it's not like the last place we tried."
He raised his hands in a gesture of concession as Zoey turned toward him.
"Not blaming you, Zoey. Wasn't you that burned it down."
"I know, Francis. Pretty annoying."
She paused for a moment, with her head down, thinking.
"There's a house in the next block I'd like to check out. I think there might be ammo there."
"Why there, Zoey?" Louis asked. "Did you know the people?"
"Yeah...I knew them some. The guy hunted deer and ducks. Always kept a lot of ammo around, a lot of guns. The paranoid type."
Louis began to laugh.
"Paranoid! Looks more like realistic, now."
Bill and Francis joined in the laughter. Zoey didn't. She straightened up and looked along the street in front of them.
"Let's keep going, guys. There isn't much light left."
The four began to move along the street again.
-o-o-o-
They approached the front of a modest, two-story house. Zoey reached the front gate first, opened it, and moved cautiously up the path. Bill and Louis followed her, and Francis brought up the rear, checking constantly to see that nothing was following them.
It was darker now, and the house of course was unlit. However, the moon was just rising, which helped a bit if there were uncurtained windows facing in the right direction.
Zoey tried the front door. It was open. She slipped in, and the other three followed her a short distance behind, Louis first.
Zoey turned her flashlight on. She moved down a short hall and then stopped suddenly. There were snuffling sounds from the front and right of her.
She began to move ahead again, cautiously, and turned right at the end of the hall. The front room was in front and to the right of her, and there was a door to the back yard to her left. Behind her was the kitchen and the stairs to the second floor.
A witch was sitting on the floor at the corner of the living room, eight or nine feet in front of her. It had the strange red glow of the witch, and was beginning to catch the rays of the rising moon from a window to Zoey's left.
The witch was sobbing, not loudly the way a witch usually did, but very quietly, like a child sniffling. In front of it, on the floor, there was an odd assortment of objects: several framed pictures, some papers and books, a few cards, loose photographs, and a broken mirror. The witch was bent over these things, running its fingers over them as it cried.
Zoey pointed the rifle at the ground so as not to shine the flashlight directly on the witch. Louis crept up behind her and halted suddenly as he saw what was there.
"Uh-oh. Let's get out of here before she sees us, Zoey."
"Let me handle this, Louis. Cover me. Don't shoot unless it goes for me."
"What are you trying to prove, girl? We don't need to be here. Let's just leave it to its crying and move on."
He put his hand on Zoey's shoulder but she shook it off and whispered to him, urgently.
"I need to find out something. Just trust me here, OK? And hold your fire unless..."
"Zoey!"
Zoey wasn't listening. She moved forward very slowly, keeping the light on her gun pointed down at the floor.
The witch raised its head. However, instead of snarling, it moaned loudly, and began to cry again.
Francis and Bill were now level with Louis. Francis raised his gun and light to aim at the witch, but Louis pushed it down again and whispered to him. The three men spread out a bit in the doorway, guns at the ready, all eyes on the witch and Zoey.
As Zoey inched forward, the witch's crying intensified. It scrabbled helplessly at the pictures and objects in front of it, unable to manipulate them properly because of the deformation of its hands. Then it leaned backward and brought its hands up near its face, looking at them wide-eyed, and crying harder still.
Zoey looked down at the pictures, shining the light from her gun over them. The witch covered its face with its hands and cowered away from her.
"Why do you want these? What are you looking for?"
The witch began to beat its hands against its face, which was already streaked with blood.
"No. Stop that. I won't hurt you if you don't hurt me."
The witch recoiled from her, sliding back along the floor and curling up in the corner at the foot of a floor to ceiling bookcase, in an almost fetal position. One of its hands was clutching a wadded-up ball of paper. Francis began to rise to his feet, and at once the witch half-rose to counter him, snarling.
"No. They're my friends. They aren't going to hurt you."
Zoey turned and gestured for Francis to fall back. He lowered himself to his original position, and the witch calmed down. It resumed its low moaning, and she could see that it was trembling violently.
She crept closer and closer to the cornered witch. It seemed terrified of her, twisting its head to avoid her gaze, covering its face and beating its head against the wall. Finally, when she was within arm's length, she reached out to touch it. The only response was louder crying as the witch spasmodically twisted away from her.
She questioned the witch in a gentle voice.
"You're in pain. What can I do? Why did you come here?"
The three men in the background exchanged puzzled glances, but did not move.
Zoey extended her hand again, and the witch reached out timidly to nudge it away. Then it began to bang its head against the floor, hard, and wail.
"No, don't. Please."
The witch stopped and looked at Zoey. It moved back and forth in jerks, seemingly close to panic. Then it spun around and began to scrabble at the books in the bookcase. Clumsily, it hooked one of the volumes out to tumble onto the floor.
The book was an old self-defense manual by one Rex Applegate, written seventy or eighty years before, during the Second World War, with a title on its faded dust jacket in lurid lettering, Kill – or Be Killed! The witch held down the book with the palm of one deformed hand and tore frantically at the paper jacket with the nails of the other, until the last part of the title, or be Killed! was obliterated. Then it shoved the damaged book towards Zoey with a sudden jerk, and slumped down again, sobbing silently.
Zoey looked at the book and its shortened title, and then again at the witch.
"Kill? Kill who?"
The witch looked up at her, meeting her gaze, and beat both hands against its chest.
"You want me to kill you, then?"
The witch nodded convulsively. Then it lunged forward and seized the end of Zoey's rifle barrel. The men behind instinctively raised their weapons, but the witch was no longer paying attention to them. It held on to Zoey's rifle with both hands and slowly guided her aim, to its forehead, its eyes, its mouth, and finally down to its chest, above its heart.
"You want to die."
It was no longer a question. The witch nodded eagerly.
"But you can control yourself." Zoey's tone was flat, almost desperate.
The witch shook its head.
"You don't have to die. You don't have to."
The witch shook its head again, more violently, covered its eyes with its hands, and began to wail. Then it grabbed the rifle barrel and jerked it against its own chest, bending its head over it, sobbing loudly.
"Is that what you really want?"
Head still bowed, the witch nodded convulsively, over and over.
There was a long pause. Zoey closed her eyes, hesitated one last time, and then pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times.
The witch jerked violently as the rifle bullets hit its chest at point-blank range. It toppled over, twisting to lie on its back as it fell. One of its hands came up, gently brushing the side of Zoey's hand before it fell back. Zoey stood up. She pointed the rifle downward and shot again and again, emptying the magazine, until the witch was lying in a pool of its own blood and had stopped moving. Then she let the rifle fall.
She half-staggered, half-fell backward to slump down on a couch. Her rifle remained on the floor where she had dropped it. The other three lowered their weapons, rose to their feet, and moved over to stand behind and beside her. All of them looked at the dead witch in silence.
Finally Louis spoke.
"You knew her."
"Yeah. I knew her. When I saw what she was looking at, I was sure."
A long pause.
"Claire."
And Zoey paused again, for a still longer time. Finally she spoke, in an emotionless voice.
"She was my sister."
"Good God! Zoey..."
Bill was the only one to respond immediately, but all three of the men were stunned. Zoey drew her legs up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around them in a tight hug.
"Your folk live miles away, Zoey." Louis' voice was gentle. "How did she come to be here?"
Zoey answered in an equally soft voice, almost as if she were talking to herself.
"Claire didn't get along with our father very well. There's an art college in Green Hills. So she came to stay with our uncle until she graduated and got a job...This is our uncle's house. That's how I know about the guns and everything...I didn't know she was here. I knew about his guns. That's why I asked to stop by."
She paused briefly, and then gave her head an angry shake, as if she was trying to stay alert.
"No, that's bullshit. I wanted to see if she was here. Had to. Couldn't help it. Francis?"
"Zoey?"
"There's usually a couple of cans of gasoline in the garage. Can you take a look? I want to finish things up here. I don't want anyone to see what she became."
"Of course, Zoey."
Louis turned to Francis. "I'll watch your back."
Zoey said, "Thanks." She looked up briefly. "All of you."
Louis and Francis hesitated a moment. Francis took a key off a nail in the wall, guessing it was for the garage door, and they went out.
Zoey eased herself slowly off the couch and onto her feet again. She stood looking at the dead witch for a moment, bent down to pick up her rifle, and then turned to Bill.
"Bill, can you cover me? I'm going to look upstairs. See if there's any of my uncle's ammo left."
"We can do that later, if you want, Zoey."
"No. I'd better keep moving."
She looked directly at Bill and added, "Like you said. Getting used to it."
They gazed at each other for a moment, and then Zoey walked out of the front room and climbed the stairs to the second floor.
-o-o-o-
After calling out their destination to Louis and Francis in the back yard, Bill followed Zoey to the second floor and through an open hallway door into what seemed to have been the master bedroom. It was untouched, everything in its place, the bed made.
Zoey was standing by the window waiting for him. She walked over to a closet, pulled the door open, and shone the light from her rifle inside, disclosing box after box of ammunition and several shotguns and rifles in a rack. She looked at Bill.
"Still some here. I thought so."
"God, you can say that again. Your uncle had quite a stash."
Zoey knelt and began to fill a bag with ammunition.
"The others can come up here and top up before we leave. We can't carry all this anyway."
"Yeah." Bill swept the beam of his flashlight around the bedroom. "It's all neat and tidy here. Looks like nothing happened."
"Maybe my uncle and aunt got away. His favourite shotgun's not here...I hope so, anyway. I hope they never knew. About Claire, about anything."
Bill nodded, and they continued to search through the contents of the closet.
-o-o-o-
Louis stood at the back door of the garage; Francis, ahead of him, had moved a few feet inside. It was very dark.
The beam of Francis' flashlight fell on the corpse of an older man. His throat had been ripped out, and blood was spattered all over the garage and the pickup truck it contained. A bloody shotgun, an expensive-looking one, was lying by his side. He moved the beam of the flashlight around. Slumped in the far corner of the garage was what was left of an elderly woman. She had been mutilated and disemboweled, and there was a look of absolute horror on what was left of her face.
Francis swore under his breath and turned to Louis, who was still standing in the doorway.
"Prob'ly her uncle and aunt. Witch must've gotten to them. Don't look. It's ugly."
"Shit."
The beam of Francis' flashlight fell on two gasoline cans standing at the back of the garage, just inside the door. Francis picked up one of them and handed it to Louis. He took the other himself. They paused a moment, looking at each other. Louis spoke first, but they had both been thinking the same thing.
"Don't say anything. Zoey doesn't need to know this."
"I won't."
They left and closed the garage door. Francis padlocked the door, and pulled the key out of the padlock. Then he angrily threw the key as hard as he could over the fence.
"Let's get the hell out of here."
Louis nodded, and they walked back to the house.
-o-o-o-
When the two men let themselves back in, they saw that Zoey had straightened out her sister's body and covered it with a brightly covered quilt that seemed to have come from a child's bed. She took one of the cans and covered it with a pillowcase, putting it under her sister's head. The other can, also wrapped, she placed by her sister's feet. Artificial flowers from the vases in the room had been scattered over the coverlet. The body was surrounded by candles taken from the mantelpiece and around the room.
Claire's face seemed to have changed. It was no longer wholly the face of a witch, but had partially reverted to the appearance of a worn, tired young woman.
After lighting the last of the candles, Zoey rose to her feet. Then she saw a crumpled piece of paper on the floor near Claire's side, and knelt down again to pick it up and smooth it out. She looked at it for a long moment, and then laid it down on the coverlet. It was a child's drawing, a birthday card from many years ago, that read To Zoey. Happy Birthday. Love You Foever. Your Loving Sister Claire.
"I love you too, Claire. Forever and ever."
Zoey paused for a moment to look at the card again. "That's what she had in her hand when I came in. The card she drew for my fifth birthday. She was four years old then. I gave it back to her when she started to study art, to encourage her. I didn't know she still had it."
Zoey remained standing by the side of her sister's body, as if she didn't know what to do next. Louis stepped forward to help her, if she needed it, but with an effort, she focused once more, looking down again at Claire and her birthday card, and beginning to speak once more in a very soft voice.
"You're beautiful, Claire. All the bad things have gone away, and now you can come home again. I remember you used to talk about how much you loved it when something like that happened in a story..."
Zoey walked over to one of the bookcases and took out a volume bound in black. She opened it to one of the last pages, and began to read out loud.
It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.
I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.
"Dracula. One of her favourite books. When they finally run the Count to ground and kill him. The dream she had, that even the wholly evil are in some small, secret place ashamed of the burden they bear and rejoice when it passes from them. Silly, really. Childish. But I loved her for it...
"She had such a belief that the good guys always win in the end. I used to feel that way too. I'd give anything to feel that way again."
Zoey knelt again and tucked the book under the coverlet by Claire's side. She lingered there a moment, and then stood up and looked directly at Louis, who was closest to her.
"We'd better go. That gun store isn't far, but it's dark now."
"If there's anything...," Louis responded, his voice trailing off.
Bill spoke up. "We can stand guard, Zoey, if you'd rather stay here the night at her side."
Francis and Louis glanced at each other in brief alarm. For obvious reasons, they preferred to be out of the place as soon as possible. But Zoey was looking at Bill, and she didn't notice their reaction.
"Thanks, Bill. And thank you, Louis, Francis. But there's nothing else now. It's over. Let's go."
She turned to Francis.
"It's just up the street, on the right, a mini-mall. The gun store takes up most of it, actually. I think that was why my uncle liked living here. You can't miss it. I think you'd better take point. I'm a bit tired."
"Anything you say, Zoey darlin'."
"You guys first. I'll light it up here when you're all clear."
"Careful, Zoey..."
"It's going to be all right, Louis, really. It's all over."
She turned Louis around gently, and nudged him toward the door.
The three men filed out of the front room slowly and paused in the hall. Zoey knelt down to give Claire a final kiss, and then got up and walked towards the hall. Seeing the men still there, she shooed them onward, and they moved out the front door into the darkness.
Zoey turned at the entrance to the front room. She took out a pistol and aimed toward the gasoline can at Claire's feet.
"Bye, Claire. Love you forever."
She fired once. The pierced can gushed liquid, and the gasoline ignited with a puff. Zoey ran down the hall to the front door, closed the door carefully behind her, and walked quickly but with a firm step down the drive to the gate where the three men were waiting. As she reached them, there was the thump of an explosion and the windows at the front of the house shattered. The fire spread quickly, and in only a few moments, the entire house was ablaze.
-o-o-o-
The four moved down the dark street, very cautiously, with Francis in the lead. None of them looked back. There was an occasional crackle of exploding ammunition. The light from the burning house shone down the street from behind, giving all four of them long, wavering shadows.
Zoey turned to Louis, who was walking by her side, trying to keep an eye on her as unobtrusively as possible. Her voice was calm, but weary.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we find my uncle holed up in that gun store. He practically lived there anyway..."
"Don't get your hopes up," Louis replied. "I think he would have left a note if he'd gone there. Still, stranger things have happened, I suppose..."