So Long, Lollipops (An Until the End of the World Novella) Read online

  Table of Contents

  So Long, Lollipops

  Copyright

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  So Long, Lollipops

  An Until the End of the World Novella

  By Sarah Lyons Fleming

  Copyright © 2014 Sarah Lyons Fleming

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at [email protected].

  Cover photo © Cruskoko, Dreamstime.com

  Lumos font © CarpeSaponem, Sarah McFalls

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For the readers who let me know Until the End of the World meant something to them. Your words meant a whole lot to me.

  And for my parents, who fully support my craziness.

  CHAPTER 1

  It wasn’t the brightest idea to watch the pickup drive off, not with all the zombies at the foot of the dumpsters he stood on. But Peter knew he was going to die. And since he had only hours—or minutes—to live, he wanted to spend those last moments happy. Well, as happy as you could be surrounded by zombies.

  But he was happy, which was mind-boggling, especially when you considered that he’d spent more than half of his life unhappy. He’d spent the last eighteen of his thirty years miserable, in fact, until he’d been saved. And now, as he watched the people who’d saved him jump the curb and swing out of the parking lot, there was happiness in the knowledge that he’d saved them back.

  The minute John had pulled them behind the dumpsters and out of view of the Lexers in the alley, he’d known: either none of them would escape or all but one of them could. Bits sat between Penny and Ana, face pale, blue eyes frantic. She’d looked at him like he had the answers—the way a little girl looks at the daddy she believes will never let her down.

  And although he supposed he’d already known, in that moment he realized he was the closest thing Bits had to a dad. He’d held her hand during the nightmares that plagued her. He’d cuddled her and teased her and named all of her freckles. And he loved her so much that when he imagined losing her it felt like looking into a black hole. Isn’t that what black holes did—suck all light out of the space around them? That’s exactly what would happen if Bits was gone. He knew Cassie understood; if he was Bits’s dad, then Cassie was her mom. He needn’t worry as long as Bits was with her.

  It had made the decision easy. Maybe once—a few months ago, even—he would have weighed his life against another’s. Calculated pros and cons. Made a deal. He was good at deals. He’d spent years making them; he’d learned all about them at Harvard Business School. But there was nothing here to negotiate. It was refreshing. He was flooded with a resolve so strong, so sure and clear, that it was painless.

  He didn’t regret it, even as the torn, rotten hands scrabbled inches away from his boots. The racket they kicked up brought more down the alley. The Lexers on the other side of the fence, the one everyone had escaped over, struggled against the chain link now that his family was gone.

  It may have made the decision easy, but he was still scared. He was really fucking scared. The hilt of his machete was slippery with sweat. He considered putting his gloves back on, but what was the point? He moved forward and drove his blade into the middle of a face. Another one down. There were so many, though. And they would keep coming, no matter how many he finished off. He couldn’t win; it was all a matter of how long he wanted to live.

  There was no way he was going to let them take him. He already knew that when the time came—when he was too tired to stand, or they got too close, or some tall basketball-player zombie was able to reach across the dumpster and get a grip on his ankle—he’d finish himself off with a bullet in the mouth. If there were any brains left in his head, he might become one of them, and that was not going to happen.

  The dumpsters gave him a platform that measured around six by seven. Behind him was the brick wall of the building, and the other sides—well, those were all zombie. He drove the machete into a neck, then an ear. All that trench digging and wood chopping had made his arms feel tireless; he could do this for hours. So he would. He would fight until all he had was enough strength to pull the trigger on his last bullet—the one meant for him. He laughed, not that it was funny. Maybe he was losing his mind.

  “Can’t really blame me,” he said to the hissing mass. “Can you, you stupid fucks?”

  Cursing was good. Cursing made you angry. Anger gave you more strength. The machete flicked out again as he bent forward. The alley echoed with groans and filled with the smell of decay.

  Actually, if he kept killing them, they might pile up and become a convenient staircase that allowed the ones behind to reach him. But the only other option was to watch them until he couldn’t take it anymore, and then blow his brains out. Every Lexer he killed was one less monster in the world, one less threat to Bits, so he dismissed the thought.

  There was an old lady at the far end of the dumpster. Her wrinkles had become deep cracks, and the tissue that peeked out, the tissue that should have been pink, was gray and veined with black. She reminded him of his grandmother, who’d been such a bitch. After Mom and Dad and Jane had died, she’d raised him in much the same way she’d raised Dad. And, if the fact that Dad had limited them to an annual visit was any indication, she hadn’t been a candidate for Mother of the Year.

  “They’re gone, Peter,” she’d say. “No sense talking about it.”

  So he’d learned to keep his mouth shut. But one day he’d tried to bring up how he knew that Jane hadn’t died immediately in the crash, how he knew she’d been trapped in the fire. How every night in his dreams he watched her die, saw her begging for him to help her, to open her seatbelt. Just one little click, and she’d be free. He hadn’t been in the car because he hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t wanted to hang out with his nine year-old sister somewhere his twelve year-old friends might see. Or worse, be seen by a twelve year-old girl.

  He needed someone to tell him it wasn’t his fault.

  Grandma cut him off. “You made a decision, Peter. Choices have consequences.”

  He’d taken those words to heart. He’d wanted absolution, but instead he’d gotten agreement.

  Two steps down the seam where the dumpsters met, and the old lady was finished off. How about that decision, Grandma? It felt great. Years of therapy in one machete move.

  “Hey! Up here!” a voice shouted.

  Okay, now he was going crazy. He was even hearing voices. Real voices, not groans and hisses.

  “Up here! Look up!”

  There it was again. High-pitched and carrying over the Lexers’ low noises. He should look up, just in case he wasn’t going insane. If it was nothing, then he’d go back to killing as many Lexers as possible before that bullet. He pressed against the wall, as far out of their reach as he could, and looked up. There was a face looking down from the second story window. It was hard to tell from his vantage point, but it looked like a teenage girl.

  “I’m throwing down a ladder!” she yelled. “Hold on!”

  This wasn’t part of the plan. Not that it wasn’t a welcome ch
ange; as plans go, his had really sucked.

  She reappeared and yelled, “Watch out!”

  Peter caught a flash of short blond hair as she hooked a fire escape ladder to the windowsill and released the bottom. The chains that held the metal rungs clattered and rang. The dumpsters raised him a good five feet off the ground, and the bottom rungs hit them with a hollow bang. Peter watched in astonishment. It was unbelievable that he was being rescued from what had been a hopeless situation.

  The blond head leaned out. “It’s secure!”

  A hand on his boot woke him from his stupor, and he swung his machete through the bones of the wrist and shook off the amputated hand. He slung his machete over his shoulder and reached for his daypack against the wall. The ladder swung as he climbed to the window, and the chorus of moans reached a crescendo, almost as though they were complaining.

  He risked a downward glance and muttered, “So long, lollipops.”

  He planted his boot on the window ledge, and then he was in a small office. The girl stood close to the door, past two desks and a few file cabinets. She was about sixteen. Chin-length blond hair. A tiny nose. Wide eyes and rosebud lips. She looked like a little pixie. She smiled, but the pistol she was pointing at him was dead serious.

  “So long, lollipops?” she asked with a cocked head. “That’s what you say to zombies?”

  Peter watched the gun and thought about his answer. She might be tiny, but she looked like she knew her way around a weapon. “I say that with my...little girl. Instead of So long, suckers.”

  “That little girl who went over the fence? That’s your daughter?”

  “Sort of.”

  “So long, lollipops,” she said again. A little giggle escaped. “I like it. So, I’m thinking you’re a good guy, since you basically, like, volunteered to die for your friends. But I want you to take off your weapons anyway.”

  Peter pulled the gun out of its holster and slowly lowered it to the desk. Then he laid down his machete and stepped back. “I’m Peter. Peter Spencer.”

  She didn’t seem particularly afraid, but he thought introducing himself might break the ice. Or at least get that gun pointing in a different direction.

  She nodded. “Natalie. Nat.”

  “Thanks, Nat. For sending the ladder down. We didn’t know there was anyone in the building.”

  He smiled; she flashed tiny white teeth in return. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t just let you die after that whole martyr thing. Even though my dad and uncle are going to kill me.”

  “Are they here?”

  “No, they went for supplies. They’re fixing a place up. We’re here for now, ‘cause it’s high.”

  She still had her finger on the trigger, although the pistol had fallen by her side. She screwed her mouth to the side and studied him. “So, Peter, you’re not going to rape me or anything, are you?”

  “No!” God, this crazy world, where a kid had to ask things like that. He opened his mouth again, but that was the only answer he had.

  “I didn’t think so,” Natalie said. She waved her gun and shrugged. “But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Grab your stuff. Let’s get up to the third floor.”

  She led him into a hall lined with ugly brown carpeting. Footsteps carried up from the restaurant below. All those Lexers were still in the building. And they’d probably be there forever, since they were too stupid to find their way back out through the door they’d broken down.

  Natalie opened a door to a narrow staircase and motioned for him to follow. Peter thought that she was far too trusting to keep her back to him, to take him only at his word. He wanted to tell her that, but this was one of those times when it was better to keep your mouth shut. The wooden stairs deposited them in the center of an open space that ran the length of the building. Two beds took up one corner, with a third across the room. The bright comforter and stack of young adult books by the lone bed were dead giveaways as to whose it was, although Peter remembered being a teenager well enough to not need those hints. No way would you want to sleep near your dad and uncle. Not if you were safe, anyway.

  There was a sofa and coffee table. A table and chairs by the street-facing windows. A folding table and shelving unit held a camping stove, boxes and cans of food, assorted pots and jugs of water.

  At the edge of the table was a handheld radio. The voice blasting out of it was deep and anxious. “Nat. Natalie! Are you okay? Answer me, damn it.”

  Nat skipped over to the radio. “Sorry, Daddy. I was on the second floor.”

  “Rich and I can see the group from here. What’s going on?” His voice was less frantic now, although still concerned.

  Natalie sat on a chair and crossed her legs. Her foot swung, like she was on the phone with a friend. “There were people down below. The zombies came in after them.”

  “What happened to them? Could you tell?”

  Nat cut her eyes to Peter. “They got away, out the back. But one of them got stuck here.” Her voice got higher, like a little girl. “Daddy, promise you won’t be mad when I tell you something?”

  “Spit it out, Nat.”

  “I kind of threw down the ladder and he’s up here with me.”

  “He’s up there? Natalie, what the hell?” He seemed about to go into a lecture, but then sighed. “Put him on. Now.”

  Nat held the radio out to him with a small smile. She might not be afraid of her dad, but Peter knew he should be.

  “Hello?” Peter said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Peter. Peter Spencer.”

  “Peter, we’re going to draw enough of them away to get up there, and I swear to Christ, if my daughter is harmed in any way, we will kill you. Understand?”

  Natalie rolled her eyes and whispered, “Just say, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said. His life had taken many strange turns these last months, but for some reason, being threatened via radio by the father of the teenage girl who’d saved his life took the cake. “I wouldn’t harm her. She saved my life.”

  “You’d better not. Give the radio back to Nat.”

  “Hey, Daddy,” she said. “So, what’s the plan?”

  Peter had been thinking that she was altogether too lighthearted about this situation, both with him being a stranger and the fact that there were hundreds of Lexers downstairs, but now her posture straightened.

  “Rich’ll draw them away and swing back when he’s far enough. I’ll be there in a few. Sit tight.”

  “Okay.”

  Peter followed her to a window and watched a truck roll down the street. It was a big pickup, with an American flag decal across the rear window and chrome rims. It stopped just past the bar, windows lowered, and the music began. Not the music Peter would have ever guessed would come out of this truck. He’d been expecting classic rock or country-western, anything but the classical music that echoed off the cement and brick buildings.

  He knew the piece. Grandma not only made him take dancing lessons, but she’d also expected him to go to museums and the symphony. It was Verdi’s Requiem. And whatever orchestra was playing the piece was playing the hell out of it. The timpani crashed, the strings wailed, and the choir gave it their all. Deliver me, Lord, from eternal death—Peter remembered that one line from the end. It was a fitting selection.

  The Lexers in the bar streamed out to meet the music. When they’d almost surrounded the truck, it pulled forward another half a block and stopped. It did it again and again, until a trail of zombies a block long followed it around the corner and out of sight.

  “My Uncle Rich calls himself The Pied Piper of Bennington,” Nat said.

  Another truck pulled onto the sidewalk. Peter could make out a large-framed figure before it disappeared into the building. Footsteps thundered up the stairs. Peter quickly removed his gun, set it down on the table and stepped away from Natalie.

  The man burst in. Natalie walked forward and wrapped her arms around him. “Daddy, this is Peter. I’m sorry,
I know you say not to get involved, but he was going to die because he—”

  The man held up the hand that wasn’t holding a pistol. There was nothing about him that resembled his tiny elf of a daughter. He had a square face, ruddy cheeks and short brown hair with a beard. The only thing remarkable about him were his eyes, which were ice blue and, Peter guessed, probably friendly when he wasn’t staring you down.

  He raised his chin. “Let me hear what he has to say.”

  That was kind of open-ended. What should he say? What was most important? Probably that he didn’t plan on sticking around and using up any of their valuable supplies. “We were on our way up to the Vermont Safe Zone. Kingdom Come. We got trapped downstairs, and I stayed behind so my friends could get out. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for your daughter. I just want to continue on my way up there.”

  The man took off his flannel jacket to reveal a barrel chest and another large pistol. He waved his gun toward the door. “Well, get going then. Glad—”

  “Daddy!” Natalie yelled. She stamped her foot. “You know they’re still in back. Some of them are probably down the street. Peter has a little girl. She was one of the ones that got away because of him. You can’t just send him out there!”

  The man breathed in through flared nostrils. “That true?”

  Peter nodded and held his breath. He didn’t necessarily want to be where he wasn’t welcome, but without a vehicle he might be dead in minutes on the street. The man lowered his weapon and looked at Natalie.

  “You always say I’m a good judge of character,” Natalie said. Her eyes widened and grew wet. “I saw the whole thing. He sacrificed himself for them. He was going to die! Daddy, you would do that for me, too.”

  Her dad’s face softened. She was playing him, the same way Bits played Peter when she wanted an extra treat or another chapter. Not that what Nat was saying wasn’t true, but it meant that she could accomplish in minutes what would take Peter days to do, in terms of gaining her father’s trust. He couldn’t resist Bits when her eyes were big and her lips trembled. The funniest part was that he didn’t even mind he was being suckered.