“Not yet,” Juan answered, and picked a trowel. “They're reaching upwards. None of them can bite us that high. They'll just try to grab our hands. We have gloves. Keep going. ”
The workers hesitated and then acknowledged that he was right.
Again the wall came under construction. The bricks were laid out as quick as possible as the dead on the other side tried to grab the trowels or the gloved hands of the workers.
The other window began to crack.
“Hurry it up,” Juan ordered. He lifted the walkie-talkie. “Nerit, where are you?”
“Eliminating your problem one by one,” Nerit answered after a beat.
“What?” Juan answered confused.
Linda was laying another brick when a hand grabbed her wrist firmly. Yanking hard, it had her pinned against the freshly made wall.
Screaming, she struggled to get free.
“Taking care of your problem,” Nerit answered coolly.
Suddenly, Linda drew back, the zombie hand still attached to her arm, but now severed right below the wrist.
“Now leave me alone. I have a dozen to take out,” Nerit said.
Juan laughed and ran a hand over his curly hair. He had a vision of Nerit in a window high above systematically killing the zombies gathered at the windows.
And that was exactly what she was doing.
The moans dissipated and, finally, ceased. The hands disappeared from the windows and suddenly
the room was eerily silent.
“All done now,” Nerit's voice cackled over the static.
Juan looked down at the walkie-talkie, then looked at Ken. “She's a tough old lady. ”
Ken nodded. “She scares me. ”
“Good thing she's on our side. Now, let's get this wall done,” Juan ordered.
4. Upwards
Nerit leaned over the balcony railing and made sure that there were no zombies moving below. Bodies littered the street and were bunched up around the front door. It had taken time to take all of them down, but she felt a sense of satisfaction at their demise. Only one zombie remained moving. It was a huge zombie stuck on a lamppost. She was leaving him alive for a reason.
Turning, she moved back into the hotel room. Much to her surprise, she saw an old woman gazing back at her with an intense expression on her face. Nerit realized she was looking into a mirror. Her hand flew up to her face as she stared at the image, startled to see her worn countenance. She had slipped so thoroughly into her role as sniper she had felt young and powerful again. It was a slap of reality to not see the young, blond woman she used to be when in the Israeli army, but instead, the older, stern woman she had become. The eyes still glinted with the same fierceness, but there were fine wrinkles around them now.
Well, enough of vanity. Ralph had found her quite lovely in her old age and that was all that had mattered.
There was killing to be done and she was quite efficient at it.
She dismissed the old woman in the mirror and walked out into the hallway. This floor was cleared and chalk checkmarks adorned all the doors. Moving at a quick pace, she felt comfortable in her role. Her gun was a cold, comforting presence in her arms.
As a young child growing up in Israel, she had been acutely aware of a world that was not always kind. Her mother was a survivor of the concentration camps where most of that side of the family had died.
Her father often said that he felt Nerit had inherited her mother's finely tuned senses and fighting spirit. At a young age he had taught her and her brothers to shoot and had been thrilled when his tiny daughter immediately showed an uncanny ability to hit the bull’s-eye every time. Soon he had her enrolled in competitions and many of the photos of her childhood were of her and her father standing proudly beside a shooting trophy.
Ah, her father…how she missed him. He had raised her to be strong and confident. Not once did he dissuade her from pursuing her dreams.
Her marksmanship had thrilled him. When she had been awarded a medal for her valor in the Six Day War, he had crafted a fine little display case for it.