Siege (As the World Dies #3)(4)

“Jenni says that he’s always been one of those kids tinkering with stuff. She said he once took apart his Xbox, put it back together and it still worked. I don’t think she’s surprised at some of the things he’s come up with lately. But I’m pretty stunned. For a teenager, he’s pretty amazing.” Katie checked her mirrors and saw that she had the zombie perfectly lined up. She squeezed the trigger.

The bolt slammed into the top of the zombie’s head and it fell backwards onto the street, limbs askew. Later, a cleanup crew would remove the body and toss it into the landfill on the outskirts of town.

“Penis! I see a penis! It’s a boy!” Stacey sounded far more excited than she should be.

“Gross!” Katie made a comical face. “That is so disgusting!” She couldn’t help but look. “Ugh! Stacey!”

Stacey giggled and wiped her bangs away from her forehead. “It flopped out!”

“It’s not funny! It’s a poor dead guy.” Despite herself, Katie was laughing. “My God, the gallows humor around here is thick.”

“Freud would have had a blast studying us,” Stacey agreed.



“Oh, well. Either we be a little crazy and laugh at the absurdities of life or just give into the despair and die.” Katie shrugged and reset the crossbow, taking care to show Stacey each step.

“I’ve done despair. It doesn’t help anything.” Stacey fell silent for a moment, obviously pondering something. “The fort hasn’t really had anyone go nuts and commit suicide or anything has it?”

“Well, a city councilman in the first days tried to save his zombie family and ended up eaten. And we do have the Vigilante pitching people over the wall.” Katie slipped her hands into her jacket. Her swelling belly was straining the zipper. She would need to find a new winter coat. “Some of us haven’t handled things as well as others.” She thought briefly of Jenni. “And others have used the crazy to survive.” “Who do you think the Vigilante is?” Stacey pulled the collar of her coat up a little closer to her face and huddled down into it.



Katie bit her bottom lip, not sure what she should say, then opted out by just shrugging. “No clue. I’m sure everyone has a theory.”

“I think it’s Nerit,” Stacey confided.

“She wasn’t here when the first guy got pitched over the wall.” “The meth dealer?”



“Yeah. Ritchie.” Katie remembered far too vividly the young man’s mutilated body as he stared up at her from the road, duct tape still over his mouth. “Well, there goes my theory.” Stacey watched the street thoughtfully. “A few people think the Vigilante is doing the right thing.”



“I had no love for Phil or Shane, but what the Vigilante did to them was inhumane. Stranding them with gimped weapons in the middle of the zombie deadlands.” Katie shivered.

“They kinda deserved it.” Stacey shrugged. “I’m not gonna cry over them.” “Maybe not. But what if the Vigilante gets mad at you, or Eric, or someone else you care about? What if the Vigilante kills them out of some skewed sense of justice? The Vigilante killed Jimmy because he panicked when we took the hotel. We all have our moments. All of us. We’re human. And zombies are so f*cking terrifying how can we not be afraid?”

Stacey’s brow furrowed at Katie’s words. “When you put it that way...”

Katie pulled her cap down on her head a little tighter, the cold wind whistling in her numb ears. “Life is hard enough without worrying about someone judging you and casting you out of the fort based on their own sense of right or wrong.”

Stacey leaned her elbows on the wall, avoiding the rebar poking out of the top of the cement blocks. “I just want to feel safe.” Her gaze was on the mutilated body of the zombie below. “But I never really do.”

They smelled Calhoun before they saw him. The scrawny, old man shoved them roughly aside and looked down into the road.

“Hey, Calhoun, watch it! Katie is pregnant, you know!”



“Checking something,” Calhoun muttered. He scribbled in a battered notebook, making quick notations with a stubby pencil. Katie craned her head to take a peek, but couldn’t make sense of the marks.



Stacey covered her nose with her gloved hands, trying not to gag while Katie felt her eyes watering. Calhoun was more ripe than usual. Calhoun whipped out a strange contraption that looked like rulers taped together at odd angles and held it up, studying various views. Grumbling something about the city planners being imbeciles, he made more notations.



“Calhoun, um, we’re supposed to be guarding this area. You need to move along.”

“Dear God, woman! Do you understand the gravity of what I am doing? No, you do not! I am trying to make this fort safe from the messed up clones.” Calhoun pointed down at the corpse in the road. “Dear God, they don’t even have the decency to cover their junk. Heathens!” Folding her arms over her breasts, Katie stared at Calhoun, one eyebrow arched.



“Fine! I will return later!” Calhoun whipped around, his long coat slapping their legs. His long scrawny legs carried him down the stairs past Travis, who was just starting up to the sentry post. The cold wind ruffled his hair over his furrowed brow as he climbed up the wood steps.