Without that, she would linger in excruciating pain for a few hours, if she wasn’t eaten alive by the undead, that is.
Bryce wanted to make an excuse and leave as fast as he could. There was only one right thing to do with Audrey, but the thought of it was sickening. He lifted slightly, hoping to see Maddy, hoping she would be safe and sound…and ready to murder another young girl. But she was nowhere in sight and could be in trouble herself.
We’re all in trouble, Bryce thought. The bombs had probably killed thousands of zombies, and also left millions untouched. They would come crawling over the destruction sooner rather later and when they found Audrey…
He swallowed loudly, took a shaky breath, and asked, “Is your mom or dad here with you?”
Her frightened eyes went glassy. “They never came home from work the other day. They left and I didn’t come out of my room, and I didn’t say good bye or nothing.” Fat tears formed from nothing and fell onto her cheeks. “Is it bad?”
“Yeah.” It’s so bad that there’s nothing I can do about it but cave your head in with a rock. He bit that back and wished himself out of the tunnel. He wanted to be anywhere else but right there.
She looked around at the remains of her world and the tears came harder and yet she didn’t blubber and her chest didn’t hitch. The numbness in her legs felt like it was spreading and that was a good thing in her mind. Maybe she would just fall asleep and wake up in heaven. That would be good.
But she wanted to live, too. She wanted to have her legs back. She wanted to run. She wanted to go back to when she was a kid when she was the terror of the neighborhood, racing around the cars stuck in traffic and laughing.
One look at Bryce killed the image. She saw the pain in his eyes; it had nothing to do with any real hurt.
“You can’t save me?” He shook his head. “And I’m going to die?” His eyes slid away as he nodded. “No matter what?” This time his chin barely lifted. They were silent while all around them the tunnel filled with sounds: rocks crumbled and fell, dirt sifted down in a sighing rain, grunts and groans, and little cries of pain came from the darkness.
“They will be coming soon,” he said. A part of him wished zombies would come creeping out of the thousands of new crevices right then. He would be forced to act without hesitation, without thought, without the guilt filling his insides.
She began to cry harder now and he realized that all he was doing was prolonging their misery.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Can you make it so it…so it doesn’t hurt?”
Bryce was no expert at killing and for a moment his mind went to chemicals and poisons that supposedly induced a quick, painless death. They had none of these. He didn’t even have his sword; it was lost somewhere in the rubble. All he had were his bare hands and some rocks.
Regardless, he nodded a vision coming to him: He held a chunk of cement like a football as he cocked his arm back, but instead of throwing it, he slammed it…
“Yeah,” he said in a broken whisper. All the saliva in his mouth had dried up leaving a mucus paste. “Do…do you want to pray or something?” She nodded and turned away to stare at the wall. While she mumbled a convoluted prayer that seemed to meander over a score of topics, he found a chunk of cement. It was shaped somewhat like a football and when he picked it up, he was shocked by a moment of revulsion as his little vision came back to him.
When she had gone on for a minute and didn’t seem like she was wrapping it up anytime soon, he touched her shoulder. “It’s time.”
The shoulder under his hand shook as she began crying harder. He waited, expecting her to give him permission, but she only cried. “Fuck,” he whispered. He held the chunk of cement like a football as he cocked his arm back, but instead of throwing it, he…hesitated with it held high above her. Suddenly, it was Bryce the weakling holding the rock.
He was plenty strong enough to kill her; he simply lacked the internal strength to do what had to be done.
Audrey proved to be his superior. “Do it,” she said. “Be quick.”
Bryce the weakling slammed the rock down. And she did not die. Thankfully, she was knocked unconscious. He didn’t know what he would’ve done if she had turned to look at him with a look of disdain. He lifted the rock again and brought down onto her temple with crushing force.
Or so he hoped.
He couldn’t look at her. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t know who he was apologizing to exactly. It wasn’t to God. It almost felt to Bryce that God was behind all of this, as if he were testing Bryce, personally.
“And I’m failing.” He stumbled away from Audrey’s corpse without looking back. There was no looking back; he was on the verge of vomiting and knew he would lose the dark stew churning in his stomach if he saw his handiwork. The rocks tumbled under his feet as he worked his way to where the tracks lay mostly buried. There he stood, bent over, gasping and the acid taste of his vomit was on his tongue when he spied something dull and metallic grey with in the rubble.
“My sword.”
Taking the hilt and sliding it out with a ringing sound calmed his stomach amazingly—but he still didn’t look back.
In front of him, his battered group was slowly climbing to where the tracks had once been. Every one of them sported new cuts and fresh bruises, all save Maddy, who was unmarked and the thirteen-year-old boy who had been too slow and had been crushed. His sneakered feet stuck out from beneath a strangely shallow pile of rocks. Just enough rocks to kill him had landed on him, and no more.
Bryce was still staring, when Griff said, “We have to help the wounded. We’ll set up a triage down by the wall. Partner up. It’ll make the work go…”
“Fuck that,” Wilkes said, interrupting. “We have our group right here. I say we go on while we still can. Those fucking zombies will be here in no time and then what? What good will your little triage do you? Besides, they wanted to be their own group. I say screw ‘em.”
Sid shrugged at this, Nichola and the diseased merc nodded, Maddy looked too dazed to come to a decision and Victoria turned her face to Bryce. “What do your powers say?”
“I don’t have powers, but it feels…” Dirty. Dishonorable. Immoral. “Wrong in some way.” More wrong than cracking open a girl’s head like an egg? You know if we stay to help there’ll be a lot more eggs to crack. “Yeah,” he muttered under his breath. Louder, he said, “I don’t need powers to know we aren’t safe here. At the same time, we lack, well everything to protect the weak. We should allow anyone who can walk to come with us.”
“And everyone else?” Wilkes asked.
Bryce pictured himself kneeling in the gloom, a hand gripping his hoodie as he raised another rock. He squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them again, it was to stare down the tunnel, into the darkness. “Zombies are coming. I’ll take care of them. You guys figure things out.”
Hefting his sword, he walked down the tracks. Someone would have to defend them. It was necessary for their survival, so why did it feel as though he was failing yet again?
Chapter 42
After the explosions, the dead were jarred into aimlessness. The air was thick with dust, disguising the scent of the survivors. Their ears, not great to begin with, rang with echoes from the explosions and in the shadows an injured person and a zombie looked a lot alike.
Bryce knew there would be a time limit on this period of inaction on their part and the weaker part of himself cried out to run while he could. The streets had to be far worse than the tunnels, and the zombies either blasted into bits or concussed into drooling manikins.
He could be at the Federal Plaza in ten minutes of hard running and then his living nightmare would be all over. It was such an alluring idea that he peeked back at the others. They were mere shapes nosing around the broken ground; they wouldn’t notice him slink away.
A voice whispered up out of his soul asking, What about Maddy?
“Of course, I’d let her come.
And Griff, too.”
And what about your promise?
“Promise?” Even though it had only been made ten minutes before, he had already forgotten the promise he had made to Victoria. He pictured Tessa’s mangled leg and suddenly he found he couldn’t stand any longer. He dropped down on a rock with his sword across his knees.
“I want to be done with this,” he said. Physically, he was still strong—hungry maybe, but still strong and able to go on. Mentally, he was exhausted by the endless running and fighting. Being surrounded by so much death was bringing him down.
Just then someone behind him cried out in misery. It was a cry from the soul and he knew someone had found a loved one crushed beneath a rock. His shoulders slumped, but only for a few seconds. He was not the only who had heard the sound. The dead were no longer so aimless.
A sigh drained from his chest, while he ran a finger over the sword. It was three and a half feet of dull steel and as such, it was only a step up from a heavy stick. He glanced around for something to use as a whetstone and realized he was sitting on a perfect rock. Kneeling next to the rock, he slid the blade across it at an angle. Using an entire rock like that felt strangely right. He was able to bring to bear the strength in his shoulders and back to really create friction.
But was it making the blade sharper? “It can’t make it any duller,” he said and slid the sword over the rock again. The metal let out a gritty sigh that caused the closest of the zombies to shift in his direction.
Bryce kept working until the thing was only feet away, then he leapt at the creature, aiming the now glittering edge of the blade at its neck. The result was disappointing. The zombie, a blank-eyed, ragged woman whose one arm was stretched out to him, was skinny. Her head should’ve popped right off and rolled down the craggy slope. Instead, the blade bit three-inches deep and lodged in her cervical spine.
The metal severed her spinal cord and she dropped in a revolting manner. It was as if her limbs had become soft rubber and she slithered into a pile at his feet. Working the blade back and forth freed it. He sighed and went back to the grindstone.
A minute later, the next zombie arrived, laboring over the rocks. It was a big, meaty creature and Bryce decided against testing the blade on it. Instead, he picked up a rock the size of his head and smashed it into the zombie’s forehead, sending it sprawling backwards. It fell into more of the creatures, knocking a couple down.
A third came up a second later. It too was thick-necked, but that was okay since there were now a dozen zombies on his little hillock, plenty to choose from.
Fifty yards away, Maddy’s eye caught the flash of metal and she paused as she was about to pull back a rock. Bryce was swinging a sword, hacking it into the skull of a charging zombie. Fear for him crept into her heart. There were so many of them! And for some unknown reason, he was letting them get too close.
“Does he want to die?” Sid asked. So far he had moved only a few rocks, picking them up and carrying them off into the dark. At the speed he worked, it would be a week before they uncovered all the bodies. He wasn’t the only one whose heart wasn’t in the task.
“Maybe,” she told Sid. She wanted to go to Bryce’s side and fight. She’d rather risk death than have to kill another innocent person.
Of the other group, only eight had been unhurt and standing when they came up. Together, they had quickly uncovered eleven other people; three of whom were dead and three more in the process of dying. Of the remaining five, only one couldn’t walk.
Not far away, a woman sat next to her injured husband. She had found him deep beneath a pile of debris and had singlehandedly dug him free only to discover a huge hunk of his thigh had been ripped violently open. He couldn’t put weight on the leg and at two-hundred and twenty pounds, he was far too big to carry through a city crawling with zombies. They all knew it.
“I’m staying with you,” the woman kept saying to her man and by the fervent look in her eyes, she meant it.
No one knew what to say or do. They went back to digging with even less enthusiasm and, a minute later, when they uncovered the mountain of a man and discovered him to be crushed flat, the will of the searchers broke. There was only the question of what to do with the wounded man.
“I was against looking for them in the first place,” Wilkes said and walked away, heading for where the rubble reached up to a hole in the ceiling of the tunnel.
“Just kill ‘em,” the diseased merc muttered. “It’s all they deserve.”
“We aren’t going to kill anyone,” someone in the darkness announced.
Nichola scoffed, “Then you can deal with them,” and went to join Wilkes as he mounted the rubble. Victoria, Sid and a few others followed after.
Griff sighed. The long journey, along with the dust had aged him. He looked forty-five instead of twenty-eight. “We ask them what they want and we do our best to carry it out. That's what we would all want.”
Of the five who were alive, two were unconscious and killed quickly, one asked to be killed, one couldn’t make up her mind, and the last was the man with the injured thigh said, “Get her out of here and then kill me.” His wife threw herself over him and blubbered. There was no time for this. Already Bryce was being forced back by the dead. He laid them out one after another, but always there were more.
Griff tried to haul the woman back, but she clung to her husband all the more fiercely, her long nails digging in. It was an ugly battle of wills that was won by the merc. He had found a railroad tie. It was a brute of a weapon handled by a brute of a man. “Get back, bitch!” he snarled, a second before swinging the hunk of wood at her husband’s head.
No one had time to react, including the woman. The railroad tie smacked off her shoulder before glancing off the man’s cheek, leaving a tarry gash. He grunted in pain, she screamed in anguish, and the merc swung the railroad tie a second time, again hitting her. Her arm took most of the blow, but her husband had his nose smashed, so that it was turned sideways.
The merc went to swing again and this time, Griff was able to pull the woman away before she was hit again. He wasn’t able to turn her away quick enough, and she got to watch her husband get smashed a third time. Then Griff rolled her away and wrapped his arms around her head and squeezed. It looked as though he was trying to suffocate her, but in truth he was trying to drive out the sound of the railroad tie thudding again and again into her husband’s skull.
“Enough!” Maddy screamed after the fourth hit. The murderous attack had taken her by surprise and left her flat-footed. Now she threw herself forward and grabbed the bloody hunk of wood as the merc brought it back for another strike. “Stop! You’ve done enough.”
He stared down at the body, half in revulsion over what he had done and half in hunger over the freshness of the blood.
No one else looked at the deformed body. Stunned, they turned away and limped off. The rescue had ended in death.
Griff hauled the woman up, still crushing her in his arms. She sobbed against him as they followed the others. Only Maddy and the merc were left. In her hand was her climbing axe. Her hand grew damp around the handle as she eyed the back of his head…she targeted it. He was sick with the virus and had to be killed; the sooner the better. Because he was so big, she would have to be quick and precise, unflinching. Her hand went back.
“That was wrong,” he said, confusion in his voice. “That was wrong and it was also right. It had to be done. Some things have to be done for the good of everyone.” He turned and caught her with her axe raised. “It had to be done,” he said again.
“Yeah,” she answered, as her hand came down. He wasn’t wrong. If he hadn’t killed the man, who would’ve? Maddy had killed a girl who was halfway in the grave, but the man had been big and strong, still full of life. A broken leg shouldn’t warrant the death penalty—Maddy wouldn’t have been able to kill him. Maybe Griff might’ve done it, and maybe not. He had no weapon, and perhaps that had been on purpose. You can’t kill anyone with
out a weapon.
Had it not been for the merc they would all still be there, staring at each other waiting for someone else to do the right thing.
This was still flicking through her mind when he stepped towards her. She sucked in her breath, afraid that he was about to attack her, but he just walked past. For a fleeting moment she considered striking him down. It has to be done! That was a fact, but she hesitated, knowing how dishonorable it would be to attack him from behind. But why did that suddenly matter, she wondered.
When it came to honor, she felt hers fell within the normal range. She would never steal a penny from anyone but had no problem grossly “fudging” her taxes. She was kind to strangers, unless they were in a car then she had no problem verbally abusing them over the least traffic infraction, real or imagined. She would never strike a person unless provoked, that was true, but the merc was quickly becoming an un-person and his death had to happen sooner or later, so why did it matter if she…
“You coming?” the merc asked, breaking in on her thoughts. “Your boyfriend ain’t gonna last much longer.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” He wasn’t listening. His back was to her once more. Over his shoulder she could see Bryce flailing about with his sword, looking a lot like his old self. Actual combat was exhausting and this was doubly true of hand-to-hand. Against one opponent a fight was draining enough, against three or four at a time, it was a wonder he had lasted as long as he had.
“Bryce!” she called softly to him. “It’s time to go.”
He turned and she thought he would run, but the best he could manage was a staggering trot. It was faster than the dead, barely.
Maddy followed after the merc, who stumbled constantly over the loose rocks. He would send some tumbling at her; sometimes she could dodge them and sometimes she couldn’t. She was good and bruised by the time Bryce caught up to her. His chest was heaving and he was speckled with dark blood.
The dead were closing in. They didn’t care about bruised shins or broken knee caps. All they cared about was dragging Bryce down and filling their empty bellies with his warm flesh. Maddy set her climbing axe among the rubble and picked up the largest rock she could throw. Two-handed, she lifted it up over her head, and then heaved it down into the upturned face of the closest zombie. With a satisfying crunch, its cranium was dented in five inches. It went toppling down to knock three others from their feet.
Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling Page 31