She cocks her head to the side and blinks at me. "Fail?"
I nod. "We want them alive, right?"
Her bloodthirsty gaze lands on the gruesome mass at her feet and her pretty face twists in a grimace. "Oops."
Twenty-Seven
Despite the three zombies that Skye found, or that found her, the night passes uneventfully. We leave the fire raging in the hopes that it will attract our prey. Two men take guard duty while the rest of us sleep in the cars. We do guard rotation every few hours.
Though Skye attempts to take another rotation, I tell her to remain in the car. While I may trust her to fight, I want her fresh for the hunt, not exhausted with slow reflexes.
The next morning, we have a quick breakfast of fresh buns made for us by Hannah, paired with another round of antelope meat and soup.
We agree to drive further northwest, still skirting the mountains and remaining as close to the river as possible. It's starting to look like our zombie hunt is going to be a bust, but we push on anyway.
After several more hours of driving we find an old abandoned gas town.
Shortly after the Fall, before survivors began organizing themselves into Sanctuaries, small towns with resources like gas, crops and water were inhabited. Unfortunately for the inhabitants, the Primitives found easy prey in these small, isolated towns. As the years passed and Sanctuaries cropped up, survivors moved out of the smaller towns and into the heavily walled and guarded Sanctuaries, turning gas towns into ghost towns.
When we attempt to fill the vehicles with fuel, we discover empty tanks. This isn't a problem for us since we didn't anticipate a fuel stop and calculated our mileage accordingly.
"Zombies like these old gas town settlements," Skye says casually as we drive through the main street of the empty town.
I don't reply, my gaze on the cracked pavement as I carefully maneuver through the town.
"No recent activity," Skye murmurs, her sharp eyes scanning the area for movement.
"They might still come looking for survivors," I say to her, stopping the car outside of a group of buildings that look like they’ll make good cover if we can lure a horde our way. "We’ll spend the night here, use the buildings for cover."
I climb out of the car and she follows my lead, gazing around at the ramshackle buildings with a critical eye. Half of them are in such disrepair they’d be dangerous for us to explore. Everything is covered in weeds, vines and dirt.
"What if they don’t come?" she asks.
"Then we head back to Sanctuary and prepare another party. Try our luck again in a few weeks, maybe head out in the opposite direction."
Skye turns to me, hands on her hips. "You know what I like about you? You’re tenacious. You’re willing to play the long game, give a good idea a chance to work."
I’m damn near stunned by her words. "Didn’t know you liked anything about me."
She shrugs and sets off for the nearest building that looks semi-inhabitable. "Well, you can’t be all bad all the time."
I would argue that I can be bad all the time, but I like her playful mood too much to contradict her.
She tries to open the door of a building that looks like it was once an old hotel, but the door doesn't budge. She puts her shoulder against it, braces her feet and shoves harder. Still, it doesn't move. I throw my shoulder into it next to her and it flies open with a poof of dust. I catch Skye’s shoulder and steady her so she doesn't fall over from the momentum. We both cough as dust settles all around us.
We step into the shadowy building and Skye looks around critically. The entire room is a ramshackle mess. Roots have broken up most of the floorboards and vines have creeped through the windows to wrap themselves around old rotted furniture.
"Home sweet home," Skye says dropping her bag on the floor.
I assess the hotel with narrowed eyes, deciding that she's right, this will make a good base for luring zombies. I head outside and gather my men around. Skye follows behind and stands next to me as I speak, her arms crossed under her chest, her leather armbands gleaming in the sunlight.
"Kingston, take two of the men and check out the rest of the buildings on Main Street. Pair up in teams and choose buildings to stake out. Make sure you stay hidden. We’ll lure them here to the hotel and you can ambush them from behind. If there's too many, kill the ones we don't need, but remember to grab at least three of them."
As the men scatter to search through the buildings, Skye comments from next to me, "Good plan, bringing an entire horde down on top of us." She grins her approval. "I like it."
She stuns me with the heat of her smile. It's so unexpected, so rare that I can't help but stare at her. She’s in her element, out in the wild, flexing her zombie hunting skills. I recognize the look, because I feel the same. I wish I could take that smile, or the feelings that smile engenders, wrap them up and hold them next to my heart forever.
"Let's check out the hotel," I say gruffly, turning to go back inside. "Stake out some attack points."
"You say the most romantic things," she says with a laugh, following behind me.
I wish I was smooth speaking enough to banter with her. When she's in a good mood like this I want to bask in the heat of her attention. But I've never been able to engage in meaningless conversation with people. Instead, I listen and learn, looking for weaknesses in the people around me before exploiting them.
Skye doesn't seem to care about my lack of conversation. She chatters to me as she wanders through the hotel, gingerly placing her feet so as not to fall through any of the rotted floorboards. I follow her closely, intent on keeping her safe if she does happen to find something harmful. We carefully make our way upstairs and check out each of the guestrooms. There are twelve in total, though four at the back of the building are missing the outside wall. The elements have rotted all the furniture and rusted all the metal.
We make our way back downstairs and attempt to find a way to the basement to see if there are any lurking Primitives who want to fall in with our ‘catch the zombie’ plan, but the stairs to the basement have long since fallen, leaving a gaping hole in the floor. One of us could drop down and search, but I decide against it.
Skye runs outside to grab a solar flashlight from the vehicle. She comes back in and we shine it through the hole, squinting into the darkness before determining that there's nothing down there except for possibly rats and cockroaches.
Skye sits back on her haunches and says to me, "I think we'll just have to wait. Hopefully they show up tonight."
I grunt a noncommittal response that seems to satisfy her. She heads back out to the vehicle to bring in our packs, including bedding and food and water. She tosses mine at my feet and sits down, her back against the wall, and starts digging through her pack for some of the food Hannah packed for us.
I leave her for a few minutes as I check on my men, making sure they’re in place for a potential ambush. I determine that everything looks good and head back to the hotel.
I follow Skye’s example and reach into my own pack, pulling out a flask filled with water, unscrewing the lid and drinking deeply.
We don't speak, just sit in companionable silence, eating and drinking. Eventually, Skye’s eyes begin to drift shut and I think about waking her up enough to get her to lay down on her bedding, which is now spread out on the floor in front of her.