Darlings of Decay

by Chrissy Peebles

  “You’re a dirty cop, and I’m going to prove it. I saw you taking a bribe from a major drug dealer, and then you had me raid that house, where a million bullets happened to come my way. In case you haven’t learned by now, I’m hard to kill.” Her voice thundered. “I’ll spend the rest of my life taking you down. You’re going to regret the day you messed with me.”

  Jackie and Claire suddenly yelled for us to get back in the Jeep. Out of nowhere, six or so zombies moaned and broke through the thick blanket of fog. Val’s nose told no lies.

  “We can handle a few zombies, right?” Nick asked casually as he aimed to make his famous lethal headshot.

  “Oh yeah. No problem. Dean, you done?” Lucas asked calmly over his shoulder.

  “Almost!”

  “Just hurry!” Claire said.

  Gunshots echoed as they all fired away.

  My hands trembled. Get it together. Concentrate! I tightened another lug nut.

  “It’s not just a few. More are coming!” Lucas shouted. “Dean, that looks good enough to me. Let’s roll!”

  I scrambled to my feet. A zombie in a torn suit walked toward me, his head leaning to one side. He had a metal rod protruding from his head, and bite marks ran across his green arms and neck. Behind him and out of the fog, more zombies stumbled toward us.

  Val jumped straight into their path, with no weapon. “I’m going to arrest every single one of these sorry thugs. You have the right to remain silent…” The girl had guts. She started taking one down with her bare hands, using impressive karate chops and lethal roundhouse kicks like in those old Kung Fu movies. She sent the zombie rolling across the asphalt. If I hadn’t been so utterly terrified, I’d have been cheering her on.

  Nick grabbed me by the upper arm. “Let’s go! Who has the keys?”

  “Me.” Claire jammed her hands down her pockets and whipped them out. Jumping into the front seat, she tried to start the Jeep, but it just clicked when she turned the key. “It won’t start!”

  “What?” Jackie asked in a frantic tone. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No!”

  “Let me try then.” Jackie pushed her aside and turned the key.

  The engine spluttered but didn’t start. It wasn’t good, because I knew we’d never make it to the other Jeep without being mauled to death.

  Nick covered Lucas while he popped open the hood to see what the problem was.

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it,” Lucas yelled over the gunfire.

  “Have you checked the belt?” I yelled back, firing away, hoping to stall the zombies until Lucas could fix the Jeep.

  “Negative.”

  I frowned as I tried to focus on doing two things at the same time. I knew a bit about cars—not quite as much as Lucas, but enough to possibly be helpful. I thought if I could take a peek under the hood, maybe we could figure it out together and get the thing up and running again.

  Jackie stood close by, with a determined look on her face. She wasn’t the best marksman yet, but she was going to stand next to me and help me fight. I admired that. If there had only been two or three zombies, I would’ve let her have a go at it, but this wasn’t the movies. There was no way she could take down all those zombies after one fighting lesson. “Get back inside the truck!” I yelled.

  “I’m not leaving you.” She aimed and fired, letting out a round of shots, but she only managed to hit a zombie in a blue, sparkly party dress.

  It threw its head to the side and let out an angry roar but didn’t drop to the ground. The thing kept coming at her, this time with more vengeance than before.

  Chapter 18

  Stopping near the car pileup had been a bad idea. I’d known it all along, yet we had to help the girls change their tire. If only we’d just picked them up, squeezed them inside our Jeep, and driven away before we managed to raise half the undead population in the area. But Nick and Lucas didn’t want to lose a good vehicle loaded with precious supplies over a simple flat tire.

  Swallowing hard, I peered around me. The sun was breaking free from behind the clouds, but the fog made it difficult to see into the trees. Lucas continued to try to fix the Jeep and the rest of us gathered in a circle, pressing our shoulders and arms together so we could watch all angles as the undead neared us, their calls breaking the silence of the morning. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a zombie in a fancy sequined dress, heading straight for the girls. Jackie and Claire began to shoot, but their bullets did nothing to slow down the corpse.

  “Headshot!” Nick yelled.

  “I’m trying,” Jackie said, frustrated.

  But we had no time for trying. I took aim at the party girl zombie, measuring her raised arms and swaying body as she hobbled toward us. My gaze moved to her undead white eyes, and I pulled the trigger, nailing her right between them. Dark blood squirted in a wide arc, landing not far away from us. As I watched the zombie drop to the ground in a crumbling, bloody heap, adrenaline rushed through me.

  Jackie grabbed my arm. “Dean! Your sister! Look!”

  Val gripped a zombie’s hands behind his back and was telling the thing he had the right to remain silent. She hauled him over to the Jeep and opened the door.

  “Val!” Claire yelled. “That’s not a police car. You wanna kill Tahoe?”

  It wasn’t that I particularly cared for the guy, but I couldn’t just let her kill him. For one, we needed all the backup we could get. Also, there was the tiny inconvenience of him turning into a zombie if he was bitten; one more zombie might have been just one too many. I rushed over and shot the zombie in the head. He dropped down, crashing at Val’s feet, and I poked him in the ribs just to make sure.

  Val yelled in my ear, startling me. “How dare you? Where’s your code of honor? You can’t take justice into your own hands like that.”

  I couldn’t believe she was taking her job so seriously, even in the throes of delirium. I wanted to scream; my only sister was turning into a monster right before my eyes.

  Claire let off several rounds, but she did not hit any zombies. We needed all the help we could get, but she was really just wasting ammunition, so I motioned her back into the vehicle.

  “Try and start it!” I said.

  She opened the door, jumped in, and pulled Jackie in with her.

  Rolling down the window, Claire asked, “Hey! Can’t you just hotwire this thing?”

  “Hot wiring just starts the car without a key,” I said. “You can’t hot wire a vehicle that isn’t working.” I then turned my attention to Lucas. “Well? Anything?” I asked, shooting him a questioning look over my shoulder.

  “Claire, turn the key,” Lucas said, ignoring my question.

  I assumed he was either too busy and didn’t hear me or that he had bad news and didn’t want to tell me; I would have wagered on the latter. “Nick, cover me,” I said. “I’m gonna have a look under the hood.”

  “Lucas’s got it under control,” Nick said. “Besides, I can’t cover you both.” His tone betrayed his tension.

  I took a few steps to my right, arguing with myself about whether or not Nick could handle it. Suddenly, I saw a figure passed out on the grass, her long brown hair spread around her in disarray. Sudden recognition hit: It was Val. Zombies were stepping over her, some of them tripping, their feet burying into her flesh and kicking her limbs. They’d obviously accepted her into their clan. If Nick or I had been over there, they certainly wouldn’t have ignored us and kept on walking. Those zombies would have ripped our throats out without hesitation. Even though I’d seen them bonding and recognizing their own before, it still creeped me out.

  I had to help her, no matter what, so I aimed and fired until I had a clear path to reach Val. My feet moved quickly, minding the broken glass and dead zombies, until I was a step away. Kneeling down, I gently scooped her up in my arms and slung her over my shoulder, then sprinted back to the Jeep. Val’s eyes turned in their orbits as I laid her in the back seat and slammed the door shu
t, making sure to lock it to prevent her from venturing out again.

  The Jeep sputtered and started, but then it stalled, refusing to turn over.

  Lucas frantically let out a few choice words.

  More zombies broke out of the woods, as if they were multiplying by the minute. My heart began to race, pounding adrenaline quickly through my veins. We have to get out of here right now! I knew, but I began to lose hope as Claire turned the key again and again, to no avail. Just when I thought the car was beyond saving, though, the engine started.

  Lucas let out a loud, “Woo-hoo! Got it!”

  “Get your butts in here NOW!” Jackie said, rolling down the window.

  Lucas slammed down the hood. “Listen to Jackie. Get in there and lock the door.”

  “You too!” I said, not about to leave him or my brother out there to die like some kind of martyrs. Even if the tire wasn’t finished, we could still drive away. Even if we weren’t able to drive as fast, we’d still move faster than the clumsy zombies could on their decaying feet. None of the corpses would be joining the Olympic track team anytime soon, that was for sure.

  “I’m coming!” Lucas said.

  I shot another zombie right in the forehead, then gave him a hard kick in the gut. He fell straight back, sailing down to the ground, his badly shredded arms flailing. I slipped inside the truck, but I refused to lock the doors until I knew Nick and Lucas were safe inside.

  “Hurry!” Jackie shouted.

  Claire screamed out the window, “Nick! Lucas! Get in here! I’m leaving, with or without you two.” She laid on the horn to prove her point, but I knew it was just a bluff; she wouldn’t ever leave them behind.

  After a few more shots, they jumped into the Jeep, tumbling over sleeping Val, an unconsciousness Tahoe, and me in the back seat. Once they were all inside, I frantically locked the door.

  “Drive!” Nick yelled.

  Lucas rolled down the window and started firing. “Yeah! Run the bony freaks over!”

  Claire shifted gears, and we were about to take off, fixed flat or not. She peeled out, but we didn’t get very far with all the zombies pounding on the glass and rocking the Jeep. Before we knew it, we found ourselves helplessly sandwiched next to a semi.

  Claire kept gunning it, squealing the tires, but the Jeep wouldn’t move an inch. “It won’t budge!” she wailed. The engine roared, but we remained wedged, even after Claire jammed her foot on the gas over and over again.

  “You’re destroying the pedals,” Lucas said calmly.

  “I don’t care!” she yelled at him. “They’re not working anyway.”

  “Claire, you need to listen to Lucas,” I said. “We need this Jeep to get away from here.”

  She nodded, and her expression softened a little, as though his words made sense to her.

  A zombie with black hair and bald patches of bloody scalp crawled onto the windshield and began slapping at the glass.

  My heart raced. I gripped Jackie’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, though I wasn’t sure whether it was meant to calm her or myself. I didn’t want to go out like that, surrounded by zombies who couldn’t wait to get their paws and their nasty rotting teeth on us. Then, an idea struck me. “Nick! We can climb out through the sunroof onto to that semi next to us.”

  “It might work!” Nick tucked a gun in the waistband of his jeans and slung the rifle back over his shoulder.

  “What about Tahoe?” Claire asked. “We can’t just leave him.”

  I glanced down at Val, lying on top of him. “Val’s smell will repel the zombies. As long as he stays under her, he’ll be safe. Even if he turns, they won’t attack each other.”

  Jackie sucked in a deep breath, and I gripped her hand tight. “You can do this.”

  She nodded, and Nick slid the electronic sunroof open and climbed out. He reached down to help Jackie and Claire, and I was right behind them.

  Claire stumbled, almost losing her balance, but she clung tightly to Nick.

  “Don’t look down at them,” I said. “Concentrate on getting to the roof of the semi.”

  Nick wrapped his arm around her waist, trying to steady her.

  I balanced on the roof of the Jeep waiting for the girls, Nick, and Lucas to get on top of the truck. As I did, a blue-veined, beyond-creepy hand grabbed my foot, trying to force me to lose my balance. I thrust my boot into the zombie’s face, sending him flying back into the crowd. “Hurry up, you guys!”

  More zombies grabbed for me, and I lunged to temporary safety on top of the eighteen-wheeler. I wanted to jump and run off into the woods to try to lose the suckers, then circle around and get back to the Jeep Val was in. Val was safe for the time being, but I knew if we didn’t get her out of there, we might miss the turning and our chance to administer the antidote when the time came. The problem was, the semi was completely surrounded, so that little plan of mine wasn’t going to work.

  Chills swept through me. I glanced down at the zombies crowding us. Swarms of hands were reaching up to grab us, and countless others pounded the steel walls of the truck, causing an unnerving clatter. Groans, gurgling, and moans came from everywhere, making the hair on my neck rise. It was worse than being trapped inside the glass house. At least there, we’d been safe on the balcony after the stairs were blown to shreds, but in this situation, there was no safety net. I felt like I had done nothing but fight to survive since we’d crashed in the middle of what my brother called Zombie Land. I had been naïve to the dangers all around me, and I felt like an idiot—a terrified idiot.

  Next, the hungry zombies began to rock the truck. Claire and Jackie let out long screams, and I couldn’t blame them. We had no idea how to get out of that predicament. Desperate for some kind of escape, I swept my gaze over the area one last time. When I did, I saw it: a hornet’s nest, hanging just above us. I picked up a loose branch and poked at it, trying to find the entry hole.

  “What’s that gonna do?” Lucas asked. He aimed his gun and began shooting at the zombies who were rocking the truck.

  “There’s a method to my madness!” I hope. I used the stick as a baseball bat and swatted the nest as hard as I could, right into the group of zombies. Granted, they wouldn’t feel the pain of the stings, but I hoped it might be enough of a distraction to allow us the time we needed to get away.

  A mass of angry hornets immediately swarmed the zombies, and the undead began to swat them away. It didn’t cause the zombies to retreat, but it did distract them from rocking the semi-truck. We huddled close together.

  I looked at the others. “At least I gave it a try. Anyone have a Plan B?”

  “We could try and make a run for Nick and Dean’s Jeep,” Lucas said.

  “No way!” Claire hissed. “If they so much as grab our sleeves, we’ll be dead in no time.”

  “I agree. It’s way too risky,” Nick said. “We can’t possibly take a chance like that. If we could only divert them to the back of the semi, I could move toward the front and see if I can slip into the driver seat and try to hotwire this thing.”

  With a serious look, Lucas gave him a fist bump. “I like it, but if you get it running, just don’t go too fast. We’ll all fly right off the top.”

  “Maybe the keys were left in the ignition,” Jackie said, hopefully.

  “It could be out of gas, especially if the driver left it on when he was dragged out.” Tuning out, hundreds of thoughts raced through my head, until I came up with a better plan. I swatted at a few stray hornets that were headed our way, and I screamed my lungs out for Val. Everyone caught on quickly and started yelling for her too.

  I thought maybe she could bring the other Jeep around, the one Nick and I had driven, and open the sunroof so we could all slip in. It sounded like a great plan to me. I saw Val walking toward us to the back of the semi through the sea of zombies. They didn’t pay her one bit of attention, and her appearance—greenish skin and long, stringy hair—was allowing her to blend in with them.

  “Get my
Jeep!” I yelled to her.

  Squinting, she pointed a gun at the gas tank. She obviously had her own plans, but I didn’t like them one little bit. I was sure she wasn’t thinking straight. Did that shot Lucas gave her even work? She’s still deranged!

  “What in the world is your sister doing?” Lucas yelled.

  She peered up at him, droplets of sweat pouring down her face. “I’m going to fry these suckers.”

  “Yeah, and us too!” Jackie shouted down.

  My brother shot Val a glare. “Don’t you dare!”

  I waved my hands up and down, trying to get her attention. “No, Val!”

  Ignoring us, she shot a hole in the gas tank, and a river of fuel began to trickle down into the dirt. She pulled a pink lighter out of her pocket and was preparing to throw it to spark the flame when Tahoe appeared behind her.

  He grabbed the lighter out of her hand. “Don’t throw it until they’re clear!” He motioned for us to jump as he shot the zombies blocking our path.

  Val elbowed him in the ribs and grabbed the lighter, throwing it into the trickling gas on the ground.

  “Holy crap!” I shouted.

  “GO!” Lucas gave me a hard shove that made me stumble forward. “It’s gonna blow!”

  Chapter 19

  I couldn’t believe Val had shot the gas tank and thrown a lighter into the trickling gas. What was she thinking? The semi’s gonna blow up any minute!

  As we jumped off the truck, Nick, Lucas, and Val started shooting at the zombies to clear a path for me and the girls. Everything moved so fast that it seemed to be a blur before my eyes: bodies dropping to the ground in front of us, us jumping over them to get to safety (whatever safety we could find in such a situation), and our voices slicing through the morning as we called instructions to each other. Glancing over my shoulder, I was thankful to see the others right behind me. It was about all I could hope for, but the moment of weakness left me unprepared for the attack.