Guide to Surviving, chapter 11 (Patreon)

Stella was almost a town before she heard a bizarre thump-thump-thump that made the ground reverberate. At first, she assumed it was her own heartbeat, driven by her panic about seeing Jordan. He took everything her father ever said about surviving and twisted it into some new form of crazy, but she had trouble believing that he thought she would join him. He had killed their father. Nothing would erase that horror.

She wrenched her mind free of the past and moved through the trees. The lack of zombies suggested the noise was coming from the other side of town. Zombies had an uncanny ability to pinpoint the source of noise. If they weren't hampered by human senses, humanity would have gone extinct already.

Stella stayed close to known pathways, alleys where rain barrels would give her quick access to roofs and trees that would let her escape upward. Every passing minute made her more uncomfortable.

Someone had rushed through, which suggested zombie. The scattered survivors clung to caution. Behind the Tsang house, someone had knocked over the bones of Mrs. Tsang which had become a weird sculptural art form. She had climbed to her roof, which was arguably the smartest place to hide from zombies. But she had then proceeded to lay the edge watching the zombies gathering below. If zombies could see prey, they never stopped stalking it. And because Mrs. Tsang had never retreated from the edge of her roof, the zombies had never wandered away.

She died there, and the first big storm that came along, her head had landed in the garden below. A couple of good rains later and the rest of her body and followed. As time stripped away the meat, she'd become an abstract sculpture of ribs and spine and femurs. Stella had always paid her respect as she walked by, but now the bones were kicked far and wide, with the skull resting against the base of Mrs. Tsang’s rose trellis.

Stella moved cautiously towards the Scrappy family compound. She needed to talk to Sally about tracking spells, specifically how to block them.

Maybe Stella should feel guilty about potentially leading her brother here. After all, she was avoiding her own treehouse for that very reason. However, if her brother came to town, the Scrappy family would be hard to miss with their raised gardens and patrols. Stella had scattered her gardens out and try to disguise a cluster of carrots here and a clump of pumpkins there. It had fooled the few random travelers that had wandered close, but she suspected her own home wasn’t that much more camouflaged than the Scrappy family bed and breakfast.

She really needed to get the blood tracking spell off so she could to one of her backup locations. If any were safe. The cellar in the orchard would be to close. The Garcia barn was solid and dry and awesome, but closer to Jordan’s territory, making it completely out of the question. She might be able to move deeper into the woods and build a new treehouse, especially if Alicia would help. But all her plans depended on getting the blood tracking off.

She was one street away from the Scrappy compound when Chad dropped onto the street right in front of her. “What are you doing here?”

“I assume you can see what direction I’m walking in.” Stella waved a hand where the corner of the compound was barely visible.

Chad looked around before he closed the distance between them. “Alicia said she was going to meet you at your tree house.”

“Personally, I would love to go to my place. However, my brother tracked me down for an awkward family reunion and rehashing of his psychopathic glory days. Apparently, I left blood in an inconvenient place and now he had a blood tracking spell on me.”

Chad grimaced.

She pointed at him. “That is exactly the face I made. That's why I need to talk to Sally.”

“Sally?”

Chad was being weird. Maybe. Maybe isolation had broken Stella’s ability to read people. “Yes. Sally. You know, the one other person who knows how magic works?”

“Geoff knows how it works; he just doesn't have the power to do it for himself.”

Stella stared at him. He stared back. “And this is useful information for me… How?” she asked.

Instead of answer, Chad said, “You shouldn’t go to Sally.”

“Why not? She has agreed to be moderately useful in the past, you know the way she helped me avoid death.” That made her one of Stella’s favorite people. At the very least, she was on the list of three or four people she tolerated.

“Wait here, and I’ll get Alicia.” Chad would've fled, but Stella grabbed him by the arm.

“Why would you get Alicia?”

“So you can talk to Sally.”

“And this requires Alicia… Why?”

“I should just get her.” Chad tried to pull away, but just like Stella had clung to Alicia earlier, she held on. Shifters might be strong, but unless they were willing to break human fingers, tenacity trumped strength.

“Setting aside the strangeness of you assuming I can't talk to someone about Alicia, did you find where my brother set up camp?” Stella prayed that he was going to say next to the lake. Unfortunately, her luck never was that good.

“Another quarter-mile and we would've walked right into their camp. Were close enough.” Chad huffed as though disgusted with himself. “Most of their hunters have bows and arrows, so we were lucky we picked up the scent of gunpowder at all. There’s forty or fifty of them set up in a barn.”

“And you couldn’t smell that many unwashed people?” Stella demanded. A quarter mile. That was too close. That wasn’t raiding distance from town as much was announcing that they were moving into town. They could walk over here every day. She needed to move.

Chad crossed his arms. “They smell like earth and sweat and animal. How is that any different from the way the rest of the forest smells?”

He might have a point. “Was the barn a big two-story thing with graying wood and faded white trim?”

“Weirdly specific guess.” He studied her. “I assume you know the place.”

Stella nodded. “The Garcia place.” She might need to grab the most vital supplies from her house and run for it. Dammit. She didn't want to lose library, but she couldn't justify risking her life or Alicia's to move books. And knowing her brother, he would scavenge nonfiction and burn everything else just to prove some point about nothing mattering except survival. Even before he turned traitor, he was talking like that. She should have noticed he was a complete psychopath. Her father should've noticed. Clearly neither of them had wanted to.

“I have to warn Sally and the others that the magic user’s group is moving in on us, but I can get Alicia first. Find somewhere high and stay out of sight until we’re back.”

Stella stepped into his path before he could vanish. “How about I just go see Sally and stay inside the compound, unless that god-awful racket coming from your compound, in which case I would rather be anywhere else.” The thump-thump had continued through their whole conversation.

“We use the hydraulic hammer to lure zombies away from the compound. Geoff must be trying to behead as many as he can before any potential fighting.”

“Fighting. You mean a war with my brother. Great. There’s nothing like a deadline to get yourself motivated to clean house.” If they had a way to clear the zombies out, they should have been doing that already. Of course, she was the one who regularly procrastinated hauling water for her gardening or bathing so she could read under a blanket. So she didn’t have much room to complain, but she expected more from the Scrappy family. They were functional human beings, as opposed to Stella’s version of bumbling through from day to day.

“They didn't want all the zombies gone before,” Chad said. Stella stared at him blankly for long enough that he shifted uncomfortably. “The zombies being around means that travelers keep moving and any local survivors stay out of our way.”

Stella opened her mouth and then closed it when the profanity that threatened to come out were entirely unforgivable. She had to take a couple of breaths and search for more diplomatic words. “Are you trying to say that your family used zombies like guard dogs? That you intentionally kept them around?” That was a whole ton of unethical.

“They aren’t my family. They’re the place I took refuge, and in return for another those guard dogs, they let me.” Chad's voice had a venom that Stella hadn’t expected. She released her death grip on Chad’s sleeve and shifted to rest her palm against his shoulder.

“If you don't want to stay with them, there are options.”

“Like you?”

Had Stella expected those words, she would have anticipated a condescending tone. It would be ridiculous to think that anyone would consider trading in a guarded compound with weapons to spare and gardens and workshops and fucking couches for a series of treehouses that offered little more than a place to stay dry in the rain, and even was questionable. Stella had been forced to dry out her possessions after more than one storm, and she kept her books in big plastic bins she’d salvaged from the craft store.

Instead, his tone was almost hopeful.

“If my brother is moving into the neighborhood, I am pretty much homeless. I have to take what I can scavenge and get far enough away that Jordan can't hunt me down.”

Chad frowned. “If he wants you dead, why didn't he kill you when he told you about this blood tracking spell?”

“Because my brother likes mind games.” At least, that's what Stella assumed. The whole bit about her getting her very own boy was creepy on a level that made her hope for mind games. If he meant it, he had slipped right off the sanity train, not that he was well established in the first place. He had always hung out in the caboose and sort of dangled off the back. Even in high school, she’d suspected that one sharp turn and they’d be visiting him in prison.

“In that case, I can help you move,” Chad offered.

“As long as my brother can track me through my blood, will not be as useful as you seem to think.”

“If we get far enough away, why would he bother coming after you?”

She stared at him, wishing she could see inside his head. She was getting the feeling it was not logically organized in there. “Again, because he's a sociopath. Did I stutter the first time I implied that?”

Chad gritted his teeth. “Fine. I'll go get Alicia and we can talk to Sally about removing the spell. But don't mention moving to her.”

“Why? What aren’t you telling me?”

He snorted. “A lot.”

That was fair. Stella wasn't exactly sharing all her secrets either, although she had a habit of talking out loud, so she assumed that Alicia knew a bunch. “If things are bad with the others, you're welcome to come with us, but I want to make one thing clear. This is not some love story. I have no interest in boys.” And that was one more reason why her brother's offer had been not only ironic but also symbolic of just how deeply her brother didn't know her.

Chad retreated a step. “I would never ask for that. I would never offer that.”

Stella was offended by the look of disgust on his face, but before she could point out that he wasn’t her type either, he tilted his head to the side in a classic listening pose. It took her a second to realize the thump-thump was silent; however, Chad heard something.

“Run.” His tone made the hair on Stella's arms stand on end. He shoved her in the direction of the Scrappy family compound. “Run,” he said louder.

Stella heard the growl of an engine, a poorly maintained one that banged and bellowed angrily. Who the hell would run a vehicle? Zombies loved cars. Cars were like zombie-nip. However, clearly there were idiots in town because that sounded like an old car or a big truck or something in between.

Before Stella made the conscious decision to take Chad's advice, her legs were already pumping. She thought she'd become inured danger. She’d slipped in and out of town knowing that one wrong move could get her killed while feeling nothing but a certainty that she would survive another day whether she wanted to or not.

But now, fear inspired her in a way that would make her old track coach proud. She pulled the slipknot on her emergency supplies, and the bag fell to the ground as she struggled to find one more ounce of speed. She could see the fencing for the Scrappy family compound, and her lungs burned as she sucked in oxygen. Behind her, the engine roared closer, but Stella was not as afraid of whoever was in that truck as who might be following. That much noise would attract a mob. And zombie mobs congregated. They fed off each other's movements and waited for their prey. Mobs left abstract pyramids of bones behind when survivors stopped surviving. She had to get to the compound.

The truck passed her and pulled sharply to the right, ramming the Scrappy compound. Instead, the fender and hood crumbled on an invisible barrier just in front of the fence. A man jumped out, a boy really. He wielded a rough sword that looked like it'd been cut from an old stop sign. Stella heard the moaning behind her and feared that the invisible barrier would stop her to. But her only survival lay in reaching the compound. They had enough food to outwait a mob, and none of these other houses would. So she set aside every fear that Chad had planted in her brain and ignored the moans and the slapping of feet against the pavement behind her.

“If you want a war, you can have a war,” the boy with the improvised sword yelled as he shook his weapon in the air. Stella passed him and face planted into the chain-link fencing, almost crying in relief when the barrier didn't block her. But she wasn't safe yet.

She started climbing, her toes digging into the chain-link holes as she pulled herself up as fast as she could. If she faltered, zombies would rip her apart. While that was a better way to go than to be chewed on by a single zombie, she preferred to avoid death altogether. After wondering if she had the strength to go on, she found the answer was yes. Vehemently, yes. Unquestionably, yes. She wanted to live.

After all, she hadn’t found out what was going to happen to Jamie and Claire. She didn't know whether the long looks between her and Alicia were attraction or some zombie-born attempt to connect with another human being. She would never figure out why Chad didn’t trust the people he chosen to survive the zombie apocalypse with. Stella had never been good at walking away from a mystery. These mysteries required her to survive. So despite her aching lungs and her oxygen-starved muscles, she climbed. She her fingers in the chain-link and pulled herself up as fast as she could.

“This is your fault,” the boy from the truck screamed with primal desperation. Stella looked over, and the zombies were at his back bumper. He looked toward her, meeting her gaze where she clung high enough to avoid zombies’ scrambling, cadaverous fingers. “Your fault,” he screamed once more and he threw his sword at her.

It arced through the air, and she could only watch as it tumbled end over end through the air. It hit her hip and for one second Stella thought that she was fine. She thought she had managed one more impossible escape. But then fire burned up her leg and she saw blood dripping off her shoe.

The boy’s scream died as he was buried under the zombies, each desperate to grab a handful of flesh before their victim died. But his final attack had been too good. Already, the cold sank into Stella’s bones as her blood dripped to the ground below. In minutes she wouldn't be able to hold on. She would fall into the zombie mob under her. She was stubborn. More than her father or her brother given her credit for. But she couldn't fight biology. Blood loss versus determination? Blood loss would win. Stella just didn't know how many minutes she had until it did.