Claire Marie set the wheel barrow down and wiped her brow with a sweat-damp cloth she had wrapped around a handle. She looked up at the late afternoon sky and sighed. It would be dark soon, especially since the hills rising to either side of the town meant night fell far too quickly, and being out after dark was even less intelligent than it had been a year ago. She looked around at the other scavengers. Old Harry and his son, Todd, were hauling timber out of the broken doors of the Home Depot. Mary and Tim were using shopping carts to gather more supplies from the supermarket. There were a dozen more people raiding the various stores in the shopping center but Claire didn't see anyone else. Armed lookouts, all cradling some form of hunting rifle, guarded the route everyone took to their "home".
Home, Claire thought forlornly, Goddamnit! How'd it come to this?
But Claire knew how it had happened. She knew how she had come to live in a goddamned hotel. Claire would never forget how the world had ended. Of course it had taken her, and nearly everyone else, a long time to come to terms with it.
The dead had risen last summer and it had taken all of two weeks for humanity to fold.
Clair had been driving on an interstate passing through West Virginia on her way to California when the first reports had come over the radio. She had ignored them, she had stopped taking the media seriously long before that, and driven through the night. She had stopped at a five-story hotel in the late afternoon. It was located at the top of a hill in the corner of a shopping center. The view was nice and that was why she had decided to stop after getting gas.
Claire had been awakened the following morning by horrible screams. People had been running through the halls as crazy, blood-covered maniacs chased them down. So she had done the only sensible thing. Claire had bolted her door and waited for the cops to show up. She had sat in that room for two days, with no food and the only water coming from the tap, before someone had knocked on the door. Claire had cried with relief as she fumbled open the locks.
Wish I had died, she thought bitterly.
"Zombies!"
The warning was high and shrill. It sounded like Doris and was coming from the hunting and sporting goods place near the entrance to the shopping center. Shambling figures rose into view in the road, maybe five of them, and they screeched as soon as they saw the humans. Each broke into ugly sprints before being shot multiple times. The men were good, they had cleared the town during the winter, but it still took far too many shots to hit a zombie in the head.
"Eat that, you dead fucks!" one of the men, probably Kyle, shouted and thirty zombies rose over the hill.
The lead zombies ran at the vulnerable scavengers and the armed men took off running to the hotel. They didn't take a shot or give the scavengers a second glance. Doris, young but somehow still overweight despite the rationing they had been doing, managed three plodding strides before the zombies were on her. Claire could only stare in shock at all the blood. She had never seen someone being murdered before, had never thought she'd see a human being eaten alive a year ago, and even from a hundred feet away the blood was sickening. Doris' screams seemed to never end as the other scavengers ran past Claire to the hotel. It was uphill, at least a quarter mile, and Claire knew that most of them would never make it. None of them were in the best of shape after holing up in the hotel all winter, eating rationed junk food from the supermarket, and somehow a group of these zombies were running like the ones in the first days.
No one tried to get Claire as they fled in sheer panic.
One zombie was much faster than the others. It had been a tall, skinny man once. Now the thing had a huge gap in its throat and was covered in long dried blood. The tattered remains of its clothes fluttered as it ran at her.
A figured slipped around Claire's back to stand in front of her. He was short, her height maybe, but wide. A small pack was on his back with a fancy crossbow strapped to the top.
Why doesn't he use it?
The zombie launched itself at Claire's guardian. The mysterious person, with eerie grace, stepped aside, and suddenly clutched something in his hand. When the zombie spun around, the stranger stabbed upward with a...spear through the zombie's lower jaw. The zombie's feet rose an inch off the ground with the force of the blow. Without concern for the mass of approaching zombies, the man removed the short spear weapon and raised an arm high. He made several sharp motions and Claire's new world was radically changed.
The man held his arm high as several long shapes flashed over Claire's head in the blink of an eye. Then several more were passing over before the first group made contact.
Oh my god, Claire thought in astonishment, They're arrows!
The arrows in question had been aimed low and all had stuck in some part of a zombie's leg. Claire didn't know much about archery but those arrows reduced the faster zombies to crawling across the ground dragging useless limbs behind them. At least twenty arrows were fired and every single one downed a zombie. Claire, watching the surreal events unfold with an intensity that was not something she usually possessed, noticed that some zombies had shorter shafts protruding from their heads as they fell. The man, his back still to her, lowered his arm and the arrows stopped.
With smooth, deceptively quick motions, the man removed his backpack and the crossbow on top. He gently set the pack down and aimed the crossbow similarly to the way the men held their rifles. The lead zombie, still big despite having half of his torso eaten away, stumbled towards the man with low, piteous groans. There was an almost inaudible snap and the zombie fell silently to his knees before dropping face first to the ground.
The man lowered his crossbow to rest atop his pack as a towering figure breezed past Claire's right side. This stranger was well over six feet tall and even wider than the first man. He didn't have a pack but instead carried an enormous hammer. At the other end of the long shaft was a large knob of metal. The two men stood together, maybe five feet separating them, and waited for the zombies. The shorter man began hopping in place and stretching his arms while his larger companion stood statue-still.
When the first zombie shuffled within ten feet, the smaller man sprinted forward with astonishing speed. The larger man fell into step behind him but couldn't keep up with as his smaller companion smashed something into the side of the first zombie's head. Congealed blood burst from the zombie's cranium and the monster fell towards the ground. The man spun with the blow and thrust the spear in his other hand up through the zombie's neck.
It was like watching an action movie on speed. The man's movements were too fast to follow, especially as he was in the process of tearing a way through the pack of zombies. Not all of the zombies he struck were dealt fatal blows but the giant finished any that tried to rise in the human tornado's wake. What struck Claire as surreal, well more than everything in the last year of her life, was that the entire fight was nearly silent. The men barely made a sound, she assumed they were breathing hard from their exertion, but whatever noise they made wasn't loud enough to be heard over the moans and screeches of the zombies. Even the impact of their weapons on putrid flesh seemed muted.
Soon, far sooner than Claire would have thought possible, the only figures standing were the two men. They met in the middle of the carnage and, since it was disturbingly quiet, Claire could hear the sound of their light panting.
"Well fought, brother," the giant said and clasped the padded forearm of his companion.
The smaller man nodded and neither noticed the broken zombie rearing up to bite the giant's ankle.
"Watch out!" Claire shouted for all she was worth but it was too late.
The zombie bit down and began thrashing its head, the last part of its body that was mobile, and Claire winced in anticipation of the man's scream. Instead there was a sharp crack, almost like a nut, and she opened her eyes to find the giant kicking the smashed skull around. Then, to Claire's horror, he squatted to root around in the gory mess. Her gaze drifted to the smaller fighter only to find his shadowed gaze on her. The man was wearing a helmet, thin and soft-looking, with a strange plastic piece that covered everything except the space between brow-ridge and the top of his nose. The distance, and the waning light, hid his eyes but Claire got the distinct impression the man was studying her.
"Hello," a soft voice spoke from her left as several people sprinted past her to the plaza entrance.
Claire jumped half a foot into the air but managed to stifle her scream mid-breath. She turned and found herself looking into wide, dark brown eyes. It was a woman, a girl really, who couldn't have been older than seventeen. The first thing Claire noticed was that her hair was cut so close that she was nearly bald. Number two was that, despite the girl's dazzling grin, the intensity in her too-wide eyes frightened Claire.
"I'm Athena. I'm glad you're okay," the girl said, talking so fast that Claire barely understood a word.
The girl was skinny, almost sickeningly so, but the way she stood made it seem like she could move at a moment's notice with the grace of a ballerina. She wore what looked like a cross between a football player's gear and medieval armor. The gray-green shoulder pad and torso protector were definitely football gear, but her midriff was protected by a what looked like a hard leather corset. Her arms and legs were covered in segmented pieces of hard material kept in place with straps and buckles. Knees and elbows were covered in pads that looked as though they had been shaved down and coated in hard plastic.
Clutched idly in one hand was a hunting bow and in the other was an arrow with an oddly-shaped arrowhead. The head of a hatchet, with a smoothly rounded back, rested against her right hip. Somehow the metal had been blackened so that it didn't reflect the light. On the opposite hip rested a shaft with a metal knob on top but the end resting on her leg was a spearhead-shaped pouch.
Holy shit! How is she even standing with all that crap on?!
"Hey," the girl put an arrow in the holder beside the spear and gently touched Claire's shoulder, "Are you okay?"
"Athena? You've gotta be joking!"
Ohmygod! Clair clapped a hand over her mouth, Why did I say that?!
But the girl's scary grin only got wider, "No, not really. Silly, I know. Listen, The People need a place to stay and that Home Depot looks like a worthy place. Who do I talk to about squatting for a couple of days?"
Claire had to concentrate hard to keep up with the girl's rapid-fire speech, "Boss Richardson."
Who am I to talk about her stupid ass name?
Athena nodded, "Good. Can you bring him down here. We'll secure the area."
Claire nodded slowly as she turned to watch the short man prying in a zombie's mouth with a knife.
"What's he doing?" Claire whispered to herself without even realizing it.
"Achilles?" Athena spoke as if Claire had shouted, "Collecting battle-trophies. See?" The girl reached into her chest protector and drew out a string with a dozen irregularly shaped white pieces hanging from it. "You only get to take them from those you give the Second Death, but if you assist then the warrior you helped can give one to you."
Those... Claire swallowed, Those are teeth.
Claire began running up to the hotel as fast as she could to get away from the lunatics and the low sound of Athena's laughter followed her the entire way.
