Selina sends him a quick glance, nods, then pulls open the door. She lets out a gasp, but doesn’t move, simply stares into the shack.
“What is it?” the woman calls out. “Is he okay in there?”
Selina doesn’t answer.
Dan goes to her side, peering nervously inside. He thinks he’s mentally prepared for what awaits him, but the sight still shocks him.
Allan is no longer in the shack. Not all of him, anyway.
Dan swallows forcibly to keep down the nausea as the sweet, warm stench of blood rolls out at him. The shack is arranged like a small workshop, a bench and some tools. Dan hardly notices, though; he’s staring down. The concrete floor is more red than gray. Allan has lost what appears to be a gallon of blood. Way more than what could have been caused by the bitemark on his ankle or the nosebleed he had gotten from the airbag. In the middle of the pool, Dan sees the explanation. The lower part of Allan’s leg is still wearing the shoe. The saw is lying next to it.
“Oh, fuck,” Selina whispers, putting her hands in front of her mouth and nose. “He sawed it off …”
“Where is he?” the woman asks, joining them. But as soon as she gets a glimpse of the blood, she backs away, uttering a scream loud enough to pull Dan out of his trance.
He sees the bloody trail leading from the pool to the far end of the shack. A back door is standing wide open.
“He left that way,” he says, pointing.
“You think he’s still …?” Selina doesn’t need to finish the question.
Dan looks down at the blood once more, then shakes his head. “You don’t survive losing that much blood. And you don’t just walk away after cutting off your own …”
Behind them, the woman screams again. Dan looks back to see her sitting in the gravel, the weapon lying next to her. She’s clutching her head, screaming and crying.
She’s going into shock, he thinks faintly. And he can’t blame her. If he hadn’t been hardened by what he’d seen during the past twenty-four hours, he would probably sit down next to her and begin screaming himself.
“But perhaps he died for real,” Selina says. “Like, naturally, I mean. Perhaps the infection or whatever didn’t reach his vital organs. That’s why he did it: he tried to stop it.” She stares at Dan with an almost painful look of hope in her eyes. As though he’s the one to decide the fate of the policeman. “I mean, couldn’t that be? Couldn’t he have left the shack while he was still alive, and now he’s dead somewhere nearby? That would also explain why he hasn’t come back to attack us, right? Right?”
Dan shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe. We need to find him to make sure. But we have to be very careful, in case he didn’t stop the infection in time.”
A movement behind the leg of Selina catches Dan’s eye, and he almost yells out in surprise. Then he realizes it’s only a cat, black as the night. It’s strolls over and rubs itself against Selina’s leg before it slips into the shack.
“No, Whiskers!” the woman exclaims, as she finally stops screaming. She gets to her feet and staggers towards the shack. “Don’t go in there! Come back here …”
The cat completely ignores her call and sniffs the blood pool curiously, before it licks at it. Dan feels the nausea returning.
The woman squeezes past them, enters the shack and bends down to scoop up the cat. “No, Whiskers, stop that!”
Whiskers is in no mood to get told off, so he gives off a hiss and strikes at the woman with his front paw, causing her to let go immediately. The cat lands on its feet, darts past them and disappears behind the house.
The woman steps back out of the shack, looks at her arm where Whiskers’s claws have left three thin scratches, and starts sobbing uncontrollably, sinking to the ground once more.
Selina looks at Dan. “Are you staying with her? I don’t think she should be alone. I’ll go look for Allan.”
Dan doesn’t like the thought of him staying here, and he likes even less the thought of Selina walking around the forest alone, looking for a person who might have turned into a zombie. Luckily, at that moment, he hears the sound of sirens.
“That’s the ambulance,” Dan says. “They’ll care for her.”
“All right, come with me, then.”
“Wait,” Dan says, pointing to the gun. “Do you know how to use that?”
“Not at all. But maybe we won’t need it.”
Dan hesitates for a moment longer. His gut tells him they just might need the gun. He doesn’t think the chances of finding Allan as a regular corpse are very good. And he really doesn’t care to enter the forest unarmed.
“Are you coming?” Selina asks, walking towards the trees.
Dan makes a decision. He goes into the shack, careful not to step in the blood, and looks at the tool rack. There are screwdrivers, a hammer, a crowbar, even a small axe.
Everything you need to kill zombies, Dan thinks, suppressing nervous laughter.
He reaches up and grabs the hammer. Then he goes back out.
Selina looks at the hammer in his hand. “Are you seriously going to use that?”
“If I have to,” Dan says, trying to sounds more confident than he feels.
NINE
From behind the shack a narrow path runs into the woods where it’s quickly swallowed up by the greenness.
Dan looks down to see a trail of blood drops on the ground. “Looks like he followed the path,” he mutters.
“You want me to lead?” Selina asks.
“No,” Dan says quickly, surprising himself as he walks past her. “I’ll lead. I’m the one with the weapon.”
Perhaps I’m not a complete coward after all.
Selina sends him a faint smile, and Dan feels a jolt of excitement and pride. It’s a short-lived pleasure, though, and is soon replaced by fear, as they venture deeper into the forest. He clutches the hammer tightly, listens intently for any sounds, looks around for any movement. He keeps blinking to keep his eyes from watering. The only sounds come from birds singing, the only movements are branches bobbing in the high-noon breeze.
Dan keeps anticipating a one-legged zombie jumping out in front of them. The hammer begins to seem like a silly idea. He might as well be walking around with a bouquet of flowers. He would never be able to successfully defend himself from an attacking zombie at close hand; it just doesn’t work like in the movies. To take down a zombie with a hammer, you’d need several hard, precise hits to the head, and the zombie would still have plenty of time to attack you between blows, as it wouldn’t be deterred by pain or fear.
Why didn’t we take the rifle?
But he knows why. As long as none of them knows how to use the damn thing, it would probably be even less useful than the hammer; at least using the hammer doesn’t take any particular skills.
“The blood gets less and less,” Selina remarks, pulling Dan out of his head.
He looks down to see she’s right. Only a few, scattered blood stains are visible on the forest floor.
“Perhaps he found some way to close the wound,” Selina suggests with an unmistakable sound of hope in her voice.
“Yeah, perhaps,” Dan mutters, feeling still more convinced the trail of blood won’t lead them to anything living. He thinks it more likely the dwindling blood is a sign that the body from which it came is simply empty.
The only thing still giving him hope is the fact that the trail leads away from them. They have to be the closest humans around for at least a few miles, and that means the closest prey for a zombie. So why would it be walking away from them, if it really was a zombie?
Perhaps it picked up the scent of something better …
It feels like they have been walking forever, but it’s probably no more than ten minutes, when the forest suddenly ends. They step out into a ditch and find themselves right by the road again, a few hundred yards from where they turned into the forest road.
Dan looks in both directions, and his heart leaps when he sees the police officer
walking by the side of the road a fair distance away in the shade from the trees. He’s facing away from them, headed towards town, and his gait is completely crooked, since one leg is notably shorter than the other.
“Oh, shit,” Selina gasps. “There he is!”
She’s about to run after the policeman, but Dan grabs her by the arm. “Wait. He’s no longer …” He doesn’t need to finish what he’s saying, because at that moment, the officer stops and turns around in an awkward movement.
Even at this distance, and despite his itchy eyes, Dan can make out the milky white stare of the zombie. The blood has been gushing from the broken nose and drawn what looks oddly like a bib on the front of the shirt.
That’s why it couldn’t smell us, Dan thinks dimly. Its nose is completely busted up.
But even though the nose might have been put out of play, the mouth seems to work just fine, as the zombie opens it wide, snarls at them and starts staggering towards them.
“It’s too late,” Dan hears himself say, as he begins backing up, dragging Selina along. She doesn’t need much persuasion, though she seems to have a hard time taking her eyes off of the dead policeman.
She finally manages to look briefly at Dan, her face pale now. “We need to … how do we do it?”
Dan holds up the hammer hesitantly, feeling anything but eager to use it on the zombie. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
“But we have to,” Selina pleads, looking from Dan to the zombie still coming towards them. “We can’t just let him … hey, look!” She points.
Dan looks past the zombie and sees the car coming. It’s a black BMW and it’s going way over the speed limit, the roar of the engine growing quickly louder.
The zombie seems to sense the potential meal coming quickly closer, because it turns around and wobbles out onto the road, headed straight for the car. In its eagerness, it slips on the amputated leg and falls down on its hands and knees.
What happens next takes place within a few seconds of time, yet Dan picks up every detail.
The police zombie struggles to get back up. The BMW is way too close to avoid it, and even though the driver locks the brakes, the car runs right over the zombie. The body is thrown around violently underneath the car like a wet sock in a tumble dryer, arms and legs flailing helplessly before it comes out behind the car, rolling round in a series of somersaults and finally coming to rest at the side of the road.
The car, which has made a long track of black rubber on the asphalt, comes to a stop not far from where Dan and Selina are standing. The engine is still going. Through the smoke from the burned tires Dan can make out the dumbstruck face of a young guy still clutching the steering wheel.
Dan is overwhelmed by a sense of exhilarated joy. It’s dead! He crushed it completely …
The zombie is lying dead, still where it landed.
The driver gets out of the car.
Selina lets out a gasp. “Jonas?”
The young guy doesn’t appear to hear her. He walks back towards the zombie.
“No, wait!” Dan calls out. “Don’t get too close!”
“Jonas!” Selina shouts, running after him. “Hey, Jonas!”
Jonas still doesn’t hear. It must be because of the shock. Or perhaps the rumbling of the BMW’s engine drowns out Selina’s voice. He walks up to the zombie and kneels down.
It’s okay, Dan tells himself, running after Selina as best he can on his hurting ankle. It’s dead. It has to be. It can’t hurt him.
But his thoughts are proven wrong in the very next second, as the zombie lifts its head—even from this far away, Dan can tell how the neck is twisted in a completely unnatural way—and grabs Jonas around the leg with a bloody hand.
Jonas, who is wearing shorts, lets out a yell of surprise and tries to pull back, dragging the zombie along. Most of the broken body seems to be put out of function as the bones are crushed. The free arm and both legs look like limp elastic bands, as Jonas jerks his leg back again and again in order to shake off the zombie. But the arm holding on to Jonas is still working fine, and the zombie isn’t intent on giving up without a fight.
Jonas trips and lands on his buttocks, kicking wildly at the zombie. “Let go of my leg, goddamnit!”
Selina comes to the rescue and starts kicking the zombie in the ribs. It doesn’t seem to have even the slightest effect, though, as the zombie just keeps on tugging at Jonas’s leg in its desperate attempt to reach it with its mouth.
“What the fuck are you doing, dude?!” Jonas shouts. “Stop that! Let go of me!”
Finally, one of his kicks connects, hitting the zombie squarely between the eyes. Its head is flung backwards, producing a crunching sound loud enough for Dan to hear over the rumbling of the engine.
A couple of uncontrolled twitches go through the body of the zombie, as the last circuits in the already damaged spine are cut. Then it lies down limply, as Allan dies for the second time in his life.
TEN
Jonas immediately jumps to his feet and backs away from what used to be a young police officer not many hours ago but now only bears a faint resemblance to a person.
Everything went by so fast, that Selina almost didn’t have time to take it all in. She acted out of pure instinct when she started kicking Allan, and not until now, as the immediate danger has passed, does she realize how easily she could have been bitten. Had Allan let go of Jonas and instead turned to the side, she might not have been able to act quickly enough to get out of the way.
But that didn’t happen. The zombie didn’t let go of Jonas, and now she’s staring at the bloody scratch marks on his ankle.
“What the fuck, man,” Jonas wheezes, glaring from the dead officer to Selina. “I mean, what the fuck! What just happened?” He raises his hands halfway to his head, as though not sure where to put them. “He fucking attacked me … You saw it, he fucking attacked me! I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t trying to hurt him, I just … I had to … holy shit! What the fuck …”
“It’s okay,” Selina says, trying her best to sound reassuring. “You didn’t hurt him, I promise you. He was already …” For some reason, she can’t get that final word out.
Jonas stares at her, his eyes wild. “Was already what? What the fuck happened to him, Selina? His eyes, man, I tell you … they were all fucked up … and where is his fucking foot?” Jonas’s voice is rising in pitch. It’s clear to Selina he’s about to have a panic attack or maybe even faint.
She wants to tell him it’ll be all right, but she suddenly can’t speak. Maybe because she knows it will be a lie. Jonas won’t be all right. Not at all.
Dan steps closer. Selina notices he’s still holding the hammer.
Like he was ever going to use it, she thinks, feeling a sudden violent anger towards Dan, like it’s all his fault. What a great hero. Keeps out of harm’s way until it’s all over.
“Did you get …?” Dan asks, but shuts up as his eyes fall on Jonas’s leg.
Jonas doesn’t hear the question. He doesn’t even seem to register Dan’s presence. He grabs his hair and repeats over and over again: “What the fuck … what the fuck …”
“Oh, no,” Dan sighs, rubbing his forehead. “What now?”
Selina just shrugs. She can’t take any more in. Can’t deal with any more decisions. Can hardly think. Allan is dead, but he managed to scratch Jonas before he went. Now it all begins over again. Another innocent person will die. And this time, it’s someone she’s known for more than a few hours. Someone she was kissing only last night.
What is he even doing out here? Couldn’t he just have stayed home?
Selina feels like crying and screaming at the same time. It’s all she can do to keep herself together.
The sound of another car engine makes her turn and look down the road. A police car is coming this way very fast, no lights or sirens on.
“Shit,” Dan says behind her. “We need to get out of here, Selina.”
He goes to grab her by the arm, but
she pulls free. “Let go of me,” she hisses.
“But … we need to hide,” he says. “If we get arrested then no one will be able to …” He glances at Jonas, who has sat down in the middle of the road, still mumbling to himself.
“Be able to what?” Selina snarls. “Kill Jonas?”
Dan swallows. “I just mean we’re the only ones who get how serious this is.”
The police car is getting closer, and now it actually does turn on the sirens.
Selina shakes her head, suddenly feeling very adamant. “I’m done running around playing soldiers. I’m going to tell them everything. They need to handle it.”
“They won’t believe you!” Dan pleads. “Not until it’s too late.”
“You don’t know that. Allan was a policeman and he understood it.”
“No, don’t …”
Selina turns away from him to wave at the police car.
Dan runs into the forest.
The police car stops and an officer jumps out. “Stop, police!” he shouts and runs after Dan.
Selina looks at the other officer, a woman, who steps out and comes over to her. She’s not holding her hand on her gun, like Selina has seen so many times in American movies, but she still looks very vigilant as she approaches slowly and scans the scene with her eyes.
“What happened here?” she asks, her gaze stopping at Selina. “You guys had an accident?”
“I guess you could say that,” Selina mutters and points to Allan.
The female officer hasn’t seen Allan yet, as he has been blocked from her view by Jonas’s car. But now, as she sees him, she runs to him and is just about to crouch down, then seemingly changes her mind. “Oh, God …” She points to Jonas and Selina. “You two, stay where you are!”
Selina nods. Jonas doesn’t seem to hear the command, but he’s obviously not going anywhere.
The officer pulls a radio from her belt and says with a voice slightly trembling: “I found the rest of Allan.”
The other officer comes back out of the forest, dragging Dan along. Dan doesn’t make any attempt to escape, he just stares resignedly at Selina. There’s a twig in his hair.
Dead Meat Box Set [Days 1-3] Page 11