17: The Pact
"I'm hungry," said Lisa suddenly.
"Not hungry like the zombies," she added hastily, seeing Jack's horrified expression. "I mean normal hungry."
"You wanna stop for a minute?" said Jack.
"No," said Lisa immediately. "We have to find my parents."
"When you last eat?" said Jack.
"Just before I went to bed last night. About eight," said Lisa.
"You better stop an' eat somethin'," said Jack. "You gonna be ill if you dunt."
"There's no time!" Lisa insisted. We have to find my parents! They could be in trouble!"
"You mama an' dad both be doctors, right?" said Jack.
"Right," said Lisa. "They used to work at the hospital. Mom was a pathologist and Dad worked in the research department. He specialised in the study of bacteria and viruses."
"Then they be smart enough to take care of theyselves. An' if they be here, they prob'ly tell you that you gotta take care of youself. If they be in trouble, you no can help 'em if you be ill 'cause you ain't eaten," said Jack firmly. "Now you sit youself down an' you eat. You want some chocolate?"
Lisa gave in.
"All right," she said reluctantly. "But I'll eat it while I'm walking."
"No," said Jack. "You sit down an' rest. My feet hurt an' you feet prob'ly be hurtin' too. We got a long way to walk, Lise. It ain't so far normally, but now there be barricades everywhere an' they be too high to climb. We gotta find a way round 'em, an' it gonna take a while longer to get there."
"How much longer?" said Lisa, her heart sinking.
"Maybe an hour. I dunt know exactly," said Jack.
Lisa groaned.
"We're never going to get there," she sighed.
"Sure we gonna," said Jack, trying to sound more optimistic than he felt. "Might take us a little while longer, but we get there in the end. Dunt you worry 'bout it. Now eat you chocolate. Think I gonna have some too."
They both sat down.
"This never happens in the video games," said Lisa, unwrapping a chocolate bar. "You don't get the Super Mario Brothers stopping for lunch, or Lara Croft wishing she'd gone to the bathroom before she left."
"Yeah, but this ain't no video game," said Jack. "This be real. It no be like those Bad Neighbourhood games, where Jane Sweetheart can keep goin' for days with no food or sleep, an' even though the evil Parasol Company's Z-Virus infect people an' turn 'em into zombies in a few hours, it take three days before Jane even start lookin' ill, an' Miguel got plenty of time to get the antidote from Gopherville Hospital an' cure her. By all rights she oughta be dead by the time he get back. An' if anyone no eat for three days they faint all over the place, an' if they dunt sleep they start hallucinatin' an' stuff, then they die. Everybody knows that."
They finished their chocolate bars in silence.
"Better?" said Jack.
Lisa nodded.
"Let's go," she said.
----------
There was a broken fire hydrant in the next street. Water sprayed everywhere, gushing over the road and sidewalk, collecting in puddles and running down the drain in little streams.
Just visible through the mist of water droplets was a girl, no more than about six or seven years old. She was bending over what looked like a body.
"Hey, kid!" called Jack. "You okay?"
The little girl stood up, and turned around wordlessly. Only then did they see the bloodstained clothes and hair, the mouth smeared with red, the blind milky-white eyes.
"Uhhh…" said the little girl, and she started lurching towards them.
It occurred to Jack that he was wrong about the zombies; they didn't amble aimlessly around. Quite the opposite, in fact. They were slow, clumsy, and walked unsteadily, as if the brain was no longer in control of the body, but they were definitely after something. And that something was food.
The thing that drove them forward, the thing that kept them going, was the desire to feed on living flesh and blood. Jack, however, had no intention of letting them feed on his flesh and blood.
Let 'em try, he thought angrily. Just let 'em try. I kill 'em all if they come near me or Lise.
Then Jack took a long look at the little girl, who was still stumbling erratically towards them, and was suddenly overwhelmed with pity. She was so young – she'd probably been playing with her Barbie dolls this time last week. And now she was dead. Seven years old, and her life was already over.
That be then, Jack told himself. Now she be a zombie. She gotta die.
He didn't want to kill her. But what else could he do? There weren't many other options that didn't involve them both dying grisly and painful deaths.
Very reluctantly, Jack took aim.
"Jack, no!" shrieked Lisa. "You can't! She's a little girl!"
"Yeah," said Jack, as patiently as he could manage. "She prob'ly be a little girl once, but now she be a zombie. An' she be headin' straight for us."
"Yes, but – oh, Jack, you can't! You just can't!" Lisa wailed.
"You think I want to shoot her?" yelled Jack. "I dunt! But I gotta! It be her or us! You wanna die, Lise?"
That made Lisa think. Of course she didn't want to die. Not here. Not now. Certainly not like this. And when you got right down to it, the little girl was already dead. Maybe they'd be doing her a favour.
Her. Or them. Lisa chose.
"I don't want to die," she said quietly.
"Good choice," said Jack, and fired. At least, he tried to; the gun was empty. His aunt must have thought that she wouldn't ever need to use more than one bullet.
"Oh, no…" said Jack, searching his pockets for a spare box of bullets.
"Wait a minute," said Lisa. "Isn't there any way we can run past her?"
"No, there ain't room," said Jack. "No with the fire truck blockin' the rest of the street."
The cause of the broken fire hydrant was a fire truck, which had careered into a building and was now ablaze. On its way into the wall, the fire truck had hit the hydrant and dented it so badly that the metal had split open – hence the fountain of water spurting out of the hydrant and flooding the street.
"There be no other way outta the street," continued Jack, taking a few steps backwards – the little girl was moving further towards them. He found the bullets, and took the box out of his pocket.
"We no can go back, 'cause then we gotta find another way through town, an' I ain't sure how long that gonna take… ah, crap!"
The box had turned out to be full of spent handgun bullets. Jack threw it aside in frustration, and he and Lisa backed away from the zombie until they came up against a brick wall.
"Jack," said Lisa suddenly, "Can she actually see us?"
"Dunt think so," said Jack. "Look at her eyes. She look like she be blind. They all got eyes like that. They can hear us, yeah, an' I think they got a good sense of smell, but I dunt think they can see us."
"Good," said Lisa.
"Why?" said Jack.
Lisa said nothing; she just grabbed Jack's hand, and stayed still. The little girl was just a few feet away now, and getting closer.
"Uh, Lise? Maybe we oughta move out the way?" said Jack nervously.
Lisa shook her head.
"Lise, she be gettin' real close now," said Jack, even more nervously.
Again, Lisa shook her head.
"Lise…" said Jack urgently, tugging at her hand, but Lisa held on even tighter, forcing him to stay where he was as the zombie girl approached.
"The hell you doin'?" he yelled. "You gonna get us both killed!"
"No I'm not," said Lisa under her breath. "Just wait…"
Now the dead girl was almost close enough to touch, if either of them had felt the need to do so. The unmistakeable odour of decaying corpses wafted towards Jack and Lisa as the little girl raised her arms, preparing to grab hold of her next victim.
At the very last minute, Lisa moved quickly and soundlessly aside, pulling Jack with her. Unable to see that her prey were no longer in front of her, the zombie slammed into the brick wall.
As the zombie girl, knocked out by the collision, fell lifelessly to the ground, Jack and Lisa took the opportunity to run for it. They didn't stop running until they'd put three whole streets between themselves and the zombie.
"Oh, jeez…" gasped Jack. "That be way too close. Dunt do that 'gain, Lise."
"Sorry," said Lisa. "But we got past her, right?"
"Yeah, but… whew. You oughta feel my heart. It be beatin' like it wanna get out. I never be so 'fraid in my life. I thought she gonna get us back there."
"You never see that in the movies, do you?" said Lisa. "Zombie kids, I mean. You see all the grown-ups turn into zombies, and it's pretty scary, but there are never any zombie kids. Why?"
"Too disturbin', I guess," said Jack. "It disturb the hell outta me, that be for sure, seein' some cute little kid tryin' to eat people alive. An' I think people prob'ly would complain if they ever see kids bein' shot by the heroes in a movie, y'know? Even if they be zombie kids."
Lisa nodded. Jack was right; zombie children were far more frightening than adult zombies. Childhood was meant to be a time of innocence, and seeing children engaging in something as appalling and horrific as cannibalism was – well, calling it disturbing was probably the understatement of the year. It was evil. There was no other word for it.
She shuddered at the memory of the zombie child. The image of the little girl, rotting and covered in blood, stuck between life and death, was one that was going to keep her awake for a long time to come.
Someone had once said that the eyes were the windows of the soul. There had been nothing in those white, dead eyes at all. Where was the little girl's soul? Did she still have one? Had it left her and gone to wherever souls went after death, or was it still trapped somewhere inside her dead body? She sincerely hoped it was the former. The other possibility didn't even bear thinking about.
"Jack?" said Lisa. "If anything happens to me, I want you to kill me."
"What?" Jack gasped.
"I don't want to end up like that poor little girl," said Lisa. "If I fall down dead, promise me you won't let me get up again."
"But Lise - " he began.
"Please," she said softly. "Promise me."
There was a long, long pause.
"I promise," said Jack eventually.
"Thank you," said Lisa.
"I ain't gonna let anythin' happen to you, Lise. Dunt you worry 'bout that," Jack told her. "But if it all go wrong an' I no can save you, then yeah. I kill you. Then I kill myself."
"What? No! Jack, you mustn't do that! If anything happens to me, I want you to get out of town!" protested Lisa.
"I ain't leavin' without you," said Jack firmly. "An' that be that. Where you go, I go. You live, I live. You die – I die too. I dunt wanna be alive if you be dead. There be no point if you ain't gonna be there."
Despite the nature of their conversation, Lisa was touched. No-one had ever said that they'd die for her before, or that life without her wasn't worth living. And what was more, he meant it. She knew instinctively that if anything bad happened to her, he would be only too willing to take his own life. One thing she'd learned about Jack was that he never said anything that he didn't mean. She'd never known anyone as open and sincere as him. It scared her sometimes.
But then, so did the prospect of a life without Jack. What would happen if he died, and she and her parents managed to escape? They'd probably just go on living the way they had before. Different house, different school, different town - same old story. Her parents would find an identical job somewhere else and spend all their time working, too busy to pay her any attention. She'd be put in another school just like Raccoon High, and integrate with the usual crowd of giggling, gossiping, shallow, insipid, boring blonde girls. She'd spend each day and night alone in a big, beautiful house that would always be tidy because no-one really lived there. No Jack to keep her company, to brighten up her day and make her smile, to make her feel wanted and appreciated. He'd be dead, and she'd spend every moment of her life wishing that she was dead too.
"All right. And if you don't make it out alive, then I won't either," said Lisa. "We leave together, or not at all."
"But it ain't gonna come to that, Lise," said Jack solemnly. "We gonna be okay, Lise. We gonna make it."
"Not if we stand around making suicide pacts all day," said Lisa. "We need to keep moving if we're going to get out of town by nightfall. It's nearly half past three now. We've only got a few hours to get to Umbrella HQ, find my parents, and find a way out of town."
"Tell me 'bout it," said Jack. "Can I reload first, though?"
"Yes, please do. And for God's sake, keep your ammo to hand in future. Put your bullets in your pockets so you can actually get hold of them when you need them. They're no good to you if they're in your backpack and you can't reach them."
Jack was quick to follow her advice.
"There," he said. "An' I ain't gonna be so damn stupid next time."
"It's okay, Jack," said Lisa. "People do stupid stuff when they're scared. Like one time when I was a kid, I dreamed there was a monster in my house, right at the foot of the stairs, and I could see it walking across the hall. I woke up and I was so terrified that I didn't want to go back to sleep in case I had another nightmare, but I was too scared to cross the landing and go into my parents' room just in case the monster really was at the bottom of the stairs and I saw it as I went past. I was so frightened, I didn't know what to do with myself. It was horrible."
"As bad as this?" said Jack.
"No. Not nearly as bad as this. You can't die in your dreams. And at least I could wake up from that nightmare. This time I'm awake and I'm still seeing monsters," said Lisa. "And my parents won't come running if I scream."
I will, thought Jack, fighting a terrible urge to say it aloud. 'Cause I love you. I never gonna let anythin' bad happen to you. I promise.
"Well, let's move," said Lisa.
"Yeah," said Jack. "Which way now?"
"That way," said Lisa, pointing.
They turned right, and then stopped dead. It wasn't the corpse lying in the middle of the road that worried them, but what was feeding on it.
"Oh no," gasped Lisa. This was worse than zombies. Much worse…