Three weeks later, she breaks down, crying. She covers her mouth with her hand, because someone—something might hear them. Something. Some thing. She covers her mouth with her hand and leans against the wall, and they need to get to a defendable position, but she sinks down to the ground.
Skulduggery looks at her like she grew a third head. He cocks his head, crouches down to her level, reaches out a hesitant hand.
"I fucking dropped it."
The hand retracts. "Sorry?"
"The ice cream cone," Valkyrie whispers, wiping away tears with a hasty hand. "I fucking dropped the last ice cream cone ever! I dropped it!" She covers her mouth again for a second. "I dropped it."
"I'm sure the cone didn't mind."
"I minded!"
"Valkyrie…" He trails off, lost, and she knows he is looking at her, observing her, gears turning, trying to figure out what to say.
"I'm fine," she says instead, standing, still wiping her face still. "I'm fine, let's go. It's almost dark, and we still have to raid the grocery store." When he doesn't follow, "I'm fine, Skulduggery."
He nods, stands, follows.
…
Skulduggery stops, looks around the street. Valkyrie blinks, comes back to herself, tightens her grip on the stick. She relaxes when she sees Skulduggery's shoulders, the angle of his head, and she follows his gaze.
"Oh."
She looks at him, replaces the stick on her shoulder. "Oh? What does oh mean?"
"Oh means the Bentley is gone."
Valkyrie makes a face, begins to grin. "Gone?"
"I fear it might have been stolen."
Valkyrie waits for the punchline. Her eyebrows twitch downwards, and she begins to look around the street. She recognizes the hardware store, the pile of wood that was once a farm stand, the burnt-out car smashed into the streetlamp.
And a cold terror drips down her spine.
"They hotwired it?" Valkyrie looks around, suddenly feeling very exposed in the middle of the street. She feels like she's a thousand miles away from home, in the middle of a town she doesn't know the name of—doesn't want to.
"No. No, they didn't hotwire it."
Valkyrie turns to look at him, slowly, slowly. "Did you leave the keys inside?"
Skulduggery pushes his hat higher up his forehead, puts his hands on his hips. She sees his shoulders start to hunch, see his jaw clench, his gaze fall to the ground. "In my defense, I figured luxurious car would not be a priority in a zombie apocalypse."
…
They're everywhere. They clog the streets, an unmoving mass of rotting limbs, swaying in the breeze like some demented forest. The ships in the distance—the ones that didn't escape without someone infected—mark the shore of the beach.
Valkyrie stands with Skulduggery, on the edge of the city, and a part of her wants to curl up on the ground. Another, stronger part wants to attack them, slam into the crowd, rip them apart, and she flexes her fingers.
"Necromancy," Valkyrie says.
Skulduggery looks at her. "A most foul magic."
"No, I mean, I could take them out if I still had my necromancy ring. God, I could take them all out." Valkyrie considers it. "Or a monster truck. We could just mow them all down. Even the Bentley—didn't we do that? We ran over someone."
"I would never lower myself to using the Bentley as a battering ram."
"But we ran over someone." Something catches in Valkyrie's throat, and it takes her a minute to continue. "Something, I guess." They lapse into silence, and Valkyrie wants to redo the conversation. "I'm coming."
His head snaps to her. "Valkyrie, I would—"
"They're my family, Skulduggery. I'm coming. And I mean," Valkyrie gives him a look, a smile, "No one's exactly going to point if we fly over. Come on."
And it still smells like home.
They float through her old bedroom window, and it brings tears to her eyes that she wipes away. He follows behind her, hands in his pockets, head scanning the surroundings. Valkyrie focuses on the creaks—the old, familiar creaks—of the house, for the sound footsteps would make on the stairs.
Everything's a mess. Clothes trail down the hallway, and Valkyrie notices the pictures taken from frames, and something about it lets her breathe a little easier. The car isn't in the garage, and after checking around corners, Valkyrie sees the pantry raided.
"They got out," she sighs, sinks into the kitchen chair.
Skulduggery's gaze keeps returning to the window.
Valkyrie laughs. "They got out. Thank God."
…
Valkyrie's eyes snap open, and she jolts into Skulduggery's arms. Her holds her for a second, pulls away, holds a finger to his teeth. Something in Valkyrie freezes, cries out, and she nods, once, deadens that part of her, grabs her backpack and stick.
They had been given a room upstairs, and Skulduggery eases open the window. Valkyrie grabs his wrist, points at the floor. Points to where they both knew most people slept, around the fireplace.
Skulduggery doesn't move.
For a moment, Valkyrie thinks he's going to disagree.
But he doesn't, and they slink towards the door, ease it open. They move as one down the hall, checking the rooms as they went. Most are empty. Some already had the windows open. Valkyrie focuses on her breathing, not the noises.
They just reach the stairs when Haley comes stumbling up. Valkyrie goes to help her, support her weight, but Skulduggery grips her and drags her back, gun level with Haley's head.
"Please!" she screams, falling to her knees, crawling towards them. "It's just my arm and my leg!"
Skulduggery leads Valkyrie back, gun unwavering. "You don't that doesn't work. You're going to die and come back, and you're going to try and eat my partner."
"No, no, no," Haley moans, following after them on all fours. "I'm not, please, Valkyrie, you know I wouldn't. You know me. Cut my foot off. Please. Please. I'm different. Mages are affected differently."
"It's a different strain, Haley," is all Valkyrie can choke out.
"No!" She falls to the ground, heaves shuddering breaths. "No, no, no, please, I want to live. I don't want to—"
"Skulduggery," Valkyrie whispers.
The gun goes off—once, twice.
They leave through the window. Valkyrie jams the door shut, and Skulduggery starts a fire. It leaks around the base of the building, climbing higher, and there are screams from the inside.
They sit there in the early morning. The dew soaks through Valkyrie's pants. They sit and watch until there are only embers, charred bones, and they would have joked about it. She almost wanted to, but her throat was dry and she was so, so tired.
So they sit there until Skulduggery touches her shoulder. And then they stand and walk away.
...
People.
Valkyrie doesn't believe it at first, and when they find out it's a group of mages, she whoops and spends the entire evening comparing stories. They sit around the fireplace, under a blanket, the first tea she's had in months in her hands.
"I swear!" An elemental named Haley Tallow laughs. "A zombie troll! It was disgusting. It like, was hunched over this raccoon, and the whole thing felt like it was some really bad B-movie."
Valkyrie half-listens, leaning against Skulduggery. For the first time in years, it's like people don't even know who they are. She supposes it doesn't matter anymore.
…
Valkyrie lets her mind go blank.
"They might have switched cars."
Skulduggery looks through the cracked windshield.
Her throat is tight. "Say they switched cars."
She looks at him, and it's harder to keep the thoughts away, wiggling through her defenses, at the blood on the seat, at the luggage still in the back of the car, the blood, the blood, the crashed car. Cut themselves on the glass.
"Skulduggery."
"Of course."
"Don't say it like that," she hisses, faces him, the car burning into her side like a fire. "Don't say it like you're pitying me. Don't you dare."
He meets her eyes. "I'm not pitying you."
And she knows that's true, but she still wants to fight, to scream at him. Underneath, she feels guilt, a small voice telling her she was acting like a child, and she was being immature, that she was ignoring facts.
But God damn it.
"They're not one of them. They can't be. We warned them. But you don't think they can make it, do you? You think they're just some weak mortals, and they can't deal with it—with this. You don't know them like I do. You think—"
"Valkyrie," he says, so softly it makes her want to cry.
"You think they died. You think they're dead. You thought that from the beginning! You didn't even give them a chance!" Valkyrie steps closer, chest heaving, words tumbling, tumbling in her head and still the car. "That's why you kept me in that stupid safehouse! That's why you didn't tell me about it until it was too late!"
She doesn't realize she grabbed his suit until her eyes focus on her hands. They look very strange, gripping the fabric, like they aren't her hands. She relaxes her fingers, but still holds on, still searches his skull for something.
"You think they're dead," she whispers. "I could have saved them."
Skulduggery rests his hands on her shoulders. "I didn't think they were weak. We warned them, they did what you would have wanted them to do. They were headed toward the country."
And Valkyrie breaks and hugs him.
…
Valkyrie lies in the back seat, Skulduggery driving. The ceiling of the car is all Valkyrie has looked at the past few days. When she closes her eyes, she sees the daycare, the family hanging from the oak tree, the church.
The Bentley lurches.
"Sorry."
Valkyrie stretches one leg, toe poking Skulduggery in the back of the head. "I want a milkshake. I think that's what I'm missing most."
Skulduggery laughs. "Not society? Perhaps the internet?"
"Nope. I just miss food. I miss calling for a pizza, or like, opening the pantry and looking through the boxes and not liking anything. Fruit. I miss fruit. But more than anything, I miss milkshakes." Valkyrie closes her eyes. Opens them. "I would kill for a milkshake."
"I'll get you a milkshake."
"You couldn't make a milkshake. You don't understand the nuances behind it. I like them thick."
Skulduggery glances back her. "Thick?"
Valkyrie smiles at him. "Yeah. Like, with a bunch of ice cream in them. Where you almost need a spoon to eat them. Thick."
"You disgust me."
She laughs.
...
"Shit!" Valkyrie snarls, slamming her palm into the zombie's temple.
She shakes out her arm, flexes her fingers. They bite hard, and a small part of her shrieks to check for teeth marks, even though she knows that her coat doesn't have any holes, that she's safe. She slams her stick into the head, and the body crumples.
The ice cream is smashed on the ground, and she slams her stick into the next head, and she spits the gore out of her mouth. She had managed to keep a hold of the cone for the fight, but now she was slipping on the puddle as it melted.
They had ambushed them, blocked all the exits. Valkyrie had just wanted a milkshake.
Skulduggery was fighting his way towards her, and there was a fire spreading from corpse to corpse. The smell of burning flesh made Valkyrie's stomach turn. Skulduggery looks over the sea of heads.
"Are you okay?" he asks, fast.
"I dropped my ice cream!" she yells back, energy crackling the chests of those zombies near her.
It takes an age, and by the time they're fighting back to back, Valkyrie's arms are sore and she's taking in huge gulps of air. It's been a while since she's had to fight, and there's something savagely pleasant in putting everything she has into bashing heads.
And then there was a gap, and before Valkyrie can even think, her stick in slamming on top of child's head. He crumples, shirt covered in blood, and Valkyrie is reminded violently of Alice running to hug her, when she was still waist height. Alice, Valkyrie slamming her weapon into her skull, Alice trampled by a hoard behind.
Suddenly, every face reminds her of her parents, of Alice, of Tanith, China—and it's all Valkyrie can do to beat them back, screams rattling in her throat, screams she refuses to let escape.
Skulduggery grabs her, and then they're in the air, flying.
It feels fake. In the air, it was like they had always been flying. Like they had just been watching a movie, something that made Valkyrie lean forward, engrossed in the gore.
Like some really bad B-movie.
They land a few kilometers away, and Skulduggery runs his hands over Valkyrie's arms, checking for bites. Like it would matter if he found any. She lets him, closes her eyes, enjoys the leather against her hot skin.
[ Hops on the bandwagon]
Zombies
