Fighting to Survive (As the World Dies #2)(51)

“It’s okay. I told Juan. He was real quiet then shrugged it off. Said it was kinda cool not to have to worry about condoms. Later on he said something about when people do start having kids that Hillary Clinton will have her wish because it will be a village, literally, raising them. I guess he figures that somehow he’ll get in on the kid thing. I mean, if you have a kid, I’m so gonna be Auntie Jenni.”

“Oh, yeah, you will be,” Katie said with a wide grin. Her smile faded and she looked very thoughtful. “I’m madly in love with him. It’s different. Very different. I’m still adjusting. His body, his…smell...the way he touches me…all different, but I love him. I kept wanting to not love him, but I do. And if we have a baby out of our f*ck up, I’m okay with that. Because…”

Jenni reached out and hugged her as Katie started to cry. She smoothed her blond curls back, kissed her brow and held her close. Katie clung to her, sobbing, both happy and sad, and Jenni knew she just needed to hold her.

“Hey, lesbos,” Shane’s voice said from afar. “Can you watch the f*cking street instead of making out? We’re heading out again.”

Jenni looked down to see Shane and three other men getting into a delivery truck. All day, they had been going in and out of the hotel since it appeared to be a slow day in zombieville. Already they had returned twice with truckloads of supplies.

“Fuck off, Shane,” Jenni yelled down at him.

“Save your * eating for later, bitch,” Shane responded.

“Bite me, *,” Jenni shouted back.

“I have no trouble smacking up a dyke. Trying to be all manly up there like you have a big cock,” Shane snapped back.

“Somebody’s gotta since you're hung like a light switch,” Jenni retorted.

“Fuck you, bitch.”

Katie leaned over the rail next to Jenni. “You’re just jealous ‘cause the girls like me, not you.”

Jenni saw such intense rage overwhelm Shane’s features that, for the first time, she felt afraid of him.

He merely pointed at them and got into the driver’s seat of the truck. It roared down the street.

“He’s such a scary f*cktard,” Jenni said softly.

“Why doesn’t someone throw him over the wall?” Katie muttered.

They were both quiet for a while, sitting back down and staring over the streets. The wind was hot and the sky was growing overcast in the distance. Another summer thunderstorm was coming. “I wonder if the heat will make them rot faster,” Katie said after a while.

“Yeah, I wish they were like Romero’s zombies.” Jenni wistfully sighed. “They’d be so much easier to deal with. What the hell?”

A man was coming down the street on a scooter. Its engine was coughing and sputtering and the exhaust was a cloud of dark smoke. He was a tall man dressed in very old jeans and a leather jacket. On top of his head was a beat up, greasy straw cowboy hat that was warped out of its shape so badly it looked like a banana sitting on his head. Even from this great distance he looked dirty and smelly.

“Who the hell is that?” Jenni stood up and tried to get a better view.

Seeing her, the man waved to her and aimed the scooter toward them. Behind him, in the distance were some shambling shapes.

Katie stood up beside Jenni and drew her pistol. “What does he think he’s doing?”

The man cruised up to just under the fire escape. “Now, I am a tax paying citizen of not only this country, but the city and county as well and when the Mayor decides to steal my property be sending out rabid CIA clones to try to tear down my fence and get onto my property, I have a God given, constitutional right to defend my property. Now if you think I’m going to just sit back and not complain, you have another thing coming. I fully intend to speak with the police, even if they are a bunch of coke snorting, mafia thugs, about what the Mayor has been doing and I will have justice. I may have had to kill the clones, but I figure since they are clones they really don’t count as a life form. Besides, the mixture was bad on that batch and they had all sorts of things wrong with them….”

The man spoke earnestly, in the voice of someone giving an interview with Larry King on a TV show, his hands moving eloquently as he talked.

“Is he for real?” Jenni asked.

“I think so,” Katie answered.

“…and even if they are going to sit outside my house and snort up on coke so they don’t feel a damn thing, I will defend myself. A good knock to the head seems to do the trick. Took me awhile to figure that one out. But now that I know how the clones have got to be killed, I won’t have an issue with them. Now the aliens, well, they don’t die so easily…”

Jenni was so fascinated by what the man was saying, she almost didn’t see the zombie run around the corner. But her reflexes were fast and sure and she shot a nice hole through its head and sent it sprawling.

“…and that’s what I’m talking about. Now they are everywhere! I am going to write to the President of the United States even if he is in league with the aliens to let him know of the blatant abuse of the use of taxes on this cloning program…”

“You need to get the hell off the street right now,” Jenni yelled at him.

“The slow ones are closing in,” Katie pointed out. She took aim and waited for them to be in range.