Hope's End by Martin John

Author:Martin John [John, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-05-19T22:00:00+00:00

A little after four p.m., Brooks and Cricket returned from The Warehouse. Cricket was ashen. She took a tumbler from one of the cupboards and poured herself a large glass of rum from a bottle Elliot had put on the kitchen table a few minutes earlier. She sat heavily in one of the seats at the table and downed it in one big gulp. She poured another.

“So how did it go?” Jebediah asked.

“Well, let’s see,” said Brooks as he took a lite beer from the fridge and popped off the cap. “At first sight of the zombies, she screamed, ran back to the car, and wouldn’t come back out for the next ten minutes. When she saw Gog, she gurgled at him for five minutes…”

“In my defense,” said Cricket, “I thought I was speaking to him.”

“…and she damn near fainted when she saw a skin demon crawl off one of the zombies. All in all, she handled it better than I thought.”

Noah smiled empathetically at Cricket and said, “Yeah I was at a loss for words too when I saw it…him.”

“Lost for words? You must be joking,” scoffed Brooks. “After the initial shock, I couldn’t shut her up. Where’re you from? How long you been here? What’s it like to cling to a zombie? What’s it like to be a zombie? What’s hell like? Do you know Gog has two hundred and eighteen children?”

Jebediah shook his head.

“Yeah neither did I. Go figure. Or that cold sores are fatal to skin demons. Who’d have guessed,” Brooks said.

Jebediah laughed and said, “We’ll have to make a note of that.”

“Well if there’s ever a skin demon uprising, you can get him to kiss ‘em ‘cause I ain’t doing it,” Brooks said and pointed at Noah.

Noah looked at Cricket once more. Something was not right. If she had bounced back enough to question the denizens of The Warehouse, she should not be looking as grave as she did.

He sat in the chair next to Cricket and looked her straight in the eye. “You saw something else, didn’t you?”

She gulped and glanced at Brooks.

He said, “On the way back, we drove past the Grundy’s. Apart from Mara and the kid, it looked like the whole damn clan was heading out in the direction of Fullard’s. I think it’s safe to say they haven’t found what they’re looking for yet.”

“That’s not all,” said Cricket. “I caught a glimpse of something in the trees keeping pace with their truck. I didn’t get a good look at it, but it was big.”

“How big?” Noah asked.

“Really big,” Cricket replied, “a little bit bigger than their truck.”

She put down the glass of rum and took Noah’s hands in hers. “Noah, I really don’t think it’s a good idea that you go there tonight. Please don’t go. We can find out what’s going on another way.”

“No. I have to go. Besides, if they’re all gone, now’s the ideal time for me to search their house. They could be gone for hours.

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