Zommunist Invasion by Picott, Camille (ebook reader ink TXT) 📗

He knew that. This feeling of wrongness he’d carried his entire life—the feeling of being born into the wrong body—wasn’t normal.

People didn’t like people who weren’t normal. Hell, his awkward, geeky nature alone had made him the target of bullies for his entire life. Dressing like a girl was unfathomable.

Nonna turned to face him in the trail. “The shoes make you powerful.”

So she wasn’t the only one who had seen the transformation. To him, they felt like She-Ra’s Sword of Protection—like the key to his safe transformation.

But he wasn’t a magical princess in a land of flying horses. He was a nerdy high school boy in a zombie war. He was positive the fantasy world of his little sister’s cartoon didn’t remotely correlate to the living hell they found themselves in.

“The choice is up to you. I’ll beat those boys with my wooden spoon if they even think of pestering you.”

With that, she turned and resumed their hike through the woods. Stephenson had a sick mental vision of little old Nonna rescuing him from Leo and the others. Now that would be embarrassing.

He couldn’t actually imagine Leo and the guys hurting him, but he could imagine them hating him. Despising him. He was already on the outside looking in. The idea of being even further outside the circle was inconceivable.

No, the shoes would go back under the bed. Actually, he would take them off before they got to the cabin. He’d walk barefoot the rest of the way home so Amanda and the others wouldn’t see him. They could never know. His secret would die with Nonna.

This resolution effected him in different ways. There was the customary relief that came with feeling safe. But lurking just beneath that was a deep sense of loss.

Stephenson buried that second sensation, firmly shoving it down with an expertise developed over a lifetime. The loss hurt less than the penetrating fear that came with the thought of exposing his true nature.

Maybe things would be different one day when he graduated from college and moved out on his own. Maybe it would easier when he was an adult. He’d move to a big city like LA or San Francisco where he could blend in. Maybe then he could wear pink shoes without being laughed at or hated. Maybe—

Nonna froze ahead of him, holding up a hand to signal a stop. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Stephenson strained his ears. All he heard were birds and the bugs. He realized the sound of the bugs didn’t bother him today nearly as much as they had bothered him yesterday.

“Voices.”

“Do you think they’re back?” Stephenson cupped his ears, eagerly craning his neck in the direction of the cabin. The thought of seeing Amanda filled him with relief. “I hear it. You’re right, it’s voices.”

“It’s not our people,” Nonna said. “It’s not coming from the cabin.”

She was right. The cabin was somewhere east of them. The voices came from the south.

“Follow me.”

Nonna hustled down the trail, moving at a good clip for an old lady. Stephenson scrambled to keep up with her. She ducked between a thick clump of manzanita trees. He followed her, snapping off twigs in his wake.

On the other side of the thicket was a game trail. Stephenson realized he shouldn’t be surprised that Nonna knew it was here. This land was her home, after all.

The game trail led south, snaking downhill through trees and shrubs. They stopped at an outcropping that overlooked the valley below. Between the trees, it was possible to see stretches of the two-lane highway. It was far below them, the steep hillside dizzying from the height.

There were people down there. Survivors. A group of them. Stephenson counted thirteen. They were on bikes, pedaling as fast as they could.

Behind them was a pack of mutants. Only four of them, but from what Stephenson had heard from the others, four mutants was more than enough to take out a group of thirteen unprepared people. The mutants loped down the road in hard pursuit of the cyclists.

For the first time in his life, he had an instinctual reaction to help rather than hide. This feeling shocked him. It must be the shoes.

But the mutants were too far away and they moved too fast. He knew Leo and Anton and even Lena were good shots, but he didn’t think any of them could shoot the mutants from this far away while they were moving. They had to be, what, half a mile away?

“Think they can out-pedal the mutants?” Stephenson asked.

“Maybe. Depends on their endurance.”

The cyclists took a hard turn around a ninety-degree bend in the road. To Stephenson’s horror, one of the riders lost control. The bike slid sideways across the asphalt and knocked into two other bikers. The riders behind them never even had a chance to brake. They ran straight into the pile-up.

In the blink of an eye, there was a pile of downed bikers in the middle of the road. Only six of them had escaped the disaster. One of them turned back to help his friends, but the rest kept riding.

The mutants closed in fast.

Nonna grabbed the Soviet machine gun hanging around her neck. Before Stephenson could register her plan, she fired into the air.

It took him a few seconds to catch up with her plan. But then he saw two of the mutants below them slow, turning to scan the tree-covered hillside. Then Stephenson understood.

Heart pounding, he grabbed his machine gun. Joining Nonna, he fired into the air.

He let loose a long, deep scream. The cry echoed across the valley with the staccato of his weapon.

It was a very old scream, one that had been gathering in his belly for years. The scream was comprised of fear—a fear of others, and a fear of self. So much fear, it was hard to comprehend. He threw back his head, letting it rage out of his body into the charged air.

They were pretty much painting a big target over themselves with this