Free After the Ending by Lindsey Fairleigh, Lindsey Pogue

here, Dani.” Jason’s voice was calm and
soothing—completely incompatible with his aimed pistol and threatening stance.
At first, I thought his weapon was pointed at me, but I quickly realized it was
fixed on the man behind me.
    Did I just hear a
footstep? Is he moving closer?
    “Come on, Dani. Just come here.” Strain marbled Jason’s
calm tone, nearly fracturing it.
    They must be closer. Crap! But fear seemed to have
cemented my feet to the speckled linoleum floor.
    Jack padded to me, and snarling ferociously at the
intruders, leaned against the back of my frozen legs; I had to either step or fall.
After the first stride, there was no stopping me until I was safely stowed
behind both Jason and Jack.
    “There’s no need for that, son. We just want to have a
little fun with the girl.” Irritation clouded the menace in the stranger’s
voice, making him sound, of all things, a little whiny. His cronies shuffled
and puffed up, looking like they were spoiling for a brawl.
    Reaching around Jason into his unzipped coat, I pulled a
handgun from his shoulder holster. I couldn’t help but notice the extreme
tension in his body; each muscle was coiled like a viper preparing to strike.
He was ready to take them all on…but there were four of them and only
one Jason.
    I stepped up beside Jason and raised the gun, though we
both knew it would prove useless if the confrontation actually erupted into
physical violence. I didn’t even know how to turn the safety off. Hell, I
didn’t know where to find the safety.
    But our aggressors didn’t know that.
    Ominously, Jason warned, “Get the hell outta here. If I see
you again, you’re dead.” As a chilly afterthought he added, “If you’d touched
her, you’d already be dead. Leave. Now .”
    They did.
    I didn’t lower the gun until the men were long gone. I
just…couldn’t. Jason had to pry it from my shaking hands.
    I was still standing in the same spot, my arms hanging
stiffly, when he spoke. “That was smart thinking, Red. I don’t think they’d
have walked away like that if you hadn’t pulled the hot little badass card.”
    Did he just call me hot? It worked as well as a
slap, pulling me out of my frozen mind.
    Hints of concern tightened Jason’s eyes as he hunched
down to my eye level. “You okay?”
    Listening to Jack sniff the nearby items in the store, I
nodded and whispered, “No.”
    Jason laughed. “Good answer. So how about that dog stuff?
Find what you need. I’ll keep watch.”
    I nodded again and wandered off in the direction of
Jack’s sniffing and tail-thumping. I found him with his head stuck in a bucket
half-full of two-foot-long, stretched and dried bull penises. That’s my dog ,
I thought.
     
     
    Date: December 15, 7:20 PM
    From: Danielle O’Connor
    To: Zoe Cartwright
    Subject: An interesting day…
     
    Zo,
     
    Today wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. We found lots
of dead people in their homes, mostly in beds and bathrooms. They were also in
some of the shops and in a bunch of the abandoned cars. And they definitely
didn’t all die from the flu. I saw some that were obvious suicides. Holy crap,
can I just say that dead people are GROSS. It sounds stupid and, I don’t know,
flippant…but they are! It’s hard to think that they were alive like us a few
weeks ago. It’s frightening to think about what the world might be like in
another week. Or a month. Or a year.
     
    And the living, they’re almost worse than the dead. Every
person we found was crazy or violent. Or both. Jason and I started calling them
“Crazies”. Seemed fitting. Anyway, Jack, Jason and I had a run-in with some uber -hostile survivors today. Luckily, we managed to
convince them to back off. Why aren’t people just happy to find other living
humans? I’m getting to the point where I see movement out of the corner of my
eye, and I immediately look for somewhere to hide.
     
    So, I need to vent about something. You know how I’m search
partners with