He shoved his elbow under its chin, pushing the snapping teeth away. He writhed, trying to wriggle out from under it, but his right arm would not cooperate with his brain. More zombies were nearby, doggedly making their way to him.
He had to get up. He bent his left leg. Then he pushed, rolling onto his side using his leg and the bent arm underneath the zombie’s chin that held its snapping teeth at bay. A thunderclap of agony detonated from his shoulder as soon he moved, becoming excruciating once the weight of his body was on it. Black fuzzed his vision. He was free of the zombie but only for a moment, and up on his knees. But he teetered on the sickly verge of passing out from pain.
He heard a metallic ‘shing.’ A hand grabbed his right shoulder. He howled at the bolt of pain that traveled down his arm and across his chest.
“It’s me,” Miranda said. Behind her Rocco hacked off the head of the closest zombie.
Doug couldn’t put words together because of the agony ripping through his body from his right shoulder. He gripped Miranda’s extended hand with his left hand, pushing up with his feet as she pulled. On his feet once more, Rocco pulled Doug’s left arm over his shoulders. Doug stumbled his first few steps when Rocco started running, Miranda on Rocco’s other side.
A hand snatched at his right shoulder, then the zombie veered off because of Miranda. The light touch released a fresh wave of pain that rolled down his arm and over his torso. They burst through the tree line at the back of the parking lot. Zombies were here along the railroad tracks, too. Not as many, but the moans were growing louder.
Hungrier.
“Take him,” Rocco said, shrugging away from Doug and pulling Doug’s good arm over Miranda’s shoulder.
“Rocco, stay with us,” Miranda cried.
But Rocco had already opened up a lead in front of them. Miranda pulled Doug’s arm tighter over her shoulders. She was limping badly. Doug had lost track of Delilah. The chunky gravel crunched underfoot as they ran. The light from Rocco’s headlamp jerked against the railroad tracks and trees. Twenty feet. Thirty. Rocco reached the railroad crossing at the road ahead. For a moment, when he turned the corner, Doug could see Rocco’s face in the light of the fire burning at LO. Then he turned out of sight.
Doug gritted his teeth. Miranda could repel zombies, and he was close enough to her to be protected, but her ability couldn’t raise the drawbridge. They reached the railroad crossing and turned the corner. Ahead, he heard Rocco swearing.
The normally well-camouflaged entrance to LO had been exposed. A large military-style truck was parked nearby. In its bed Doug could see two long benches along the sides. A canvas cover to keep out bad weather was attached to metal supports over the bed. The truck was big enough to transport twenty people and their gear. Whoever had planned this had gone to a lot of trouble.
Doug pelted up the road, Miranda ahead of him. The drawbridge lay ahead. Beyond it, the Nature Center was engulfed in flames. Doug could feel the fire’s heat from three hundred feet. Rocco crouched at the corner on the outer side of the zombie trench.
“Son of a bitch,” Rocco said. Beside him, Delilah sniffed at the edge of the drawbridge, a deep growl in her throat.
Doug skidded to a halt, gulping lungfuls of air.
“What is it?”
“The cables have been cut.”
They pounded over the drawbridge, which started up the moans from the zombies in the trench below. Except for when the sound defenses had failed, Doug had never seen zombies in this part of the outer trench. He looked across the parking lot, bright with the flickering light of the fire. Flashes of gunfire luminesced from the muzzles of guns in different locations, but the people were in silhouette, backlit by the fire. He could not distinguish friend from foe.
Rocco had already disappeared inside the south tower of the main gate. When Doug reached it, he saw bodies on the ground where the drawbridge met the road, people he recognized from LO.
“I’ll wait here,” Miranda said, breathing heavy and shifting her weight away from her injured hip. “In case anybody comes.”
Doug climbed the steep stairs, his useless arm throbbing. He glanced down at his shoulder. Misshapen, and he couldn’t move it. Probably dislocated.
“Fuckers!” Rocco said.
Doug reached the covered shelter at the top of the tower.
“What is it?”
Rocco didn’t answer. He pounded across the catwalk. Doug looked down at the winch that pulled the cable on this side of the drawbridge. It had been smashed.
“Doug, come here!”
Doug ran across the catwalk to the north tower.
“They didn’t bother with this winch,” Rocco said. He was already loosening the bolts that attached the winch to the tower. Doug had no idea where he had found a wrench. “I’m going to set this up in the center. We can use it to raise the bridge.”
“Will one winch be able to handle all the weight?”
“Yeah. Maybe. We don’t have to raise it up the whole way, just a few feet. There are ropes I can throw down. Can you tie them to the bridge?”
Doug shook his head. “I can thread them. Miranda will have to tie them. I think I dislocated my shoulder.”
“I’ll throw them down. Get them tied. Then lay low, kill whatever you can. And try not to get shot.”
38
Mario and Skye crawled on the ground, just inside the edge of the Big Woods, staying as low as possible. Rivers of sweat ran down Mario’s body. His skin hurt from blast furnace temperatures of the burning Nature Center. The bite on his arm itched underneath the improvised bandage that Skye had wrapped around it. Scratches on his hands from the fallen logs, rocks, and jaggy bushes they crawled through stung.
He squinted his eyes against the bright flames. They were just at the start of the Nature Center’s back lawn—what was left of it. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the community room with the climbing wall had melted. Stalactites of glass hung from the top.
The gun battle still raged. The intruders were pinned down on the south side of the parking lot, between two parked LO trucks and the inferno that the Nature Center had become. The main body of LO fighters were northwest of the intruders on the far side of the parking lot. Mario and Skye were working their way around the edge of the woods to outflank the intruders.
The intruders were stuck, in part because the fire they had started at the Nature Center lit them up from behind like kabuki puppets, casting sharp silhouettes whenever they stepped out from behind the trucks. There was also nothing they could use for cover between their position and the exit to the main gate at the bottom of the kidney-shaped parking lot. If they tried to dash across, they were sitting ducks. They could try the Big Woods but as Mario was finding out, unless you were on a path, you had a better chance of breaking your ankle than getting through the treacherous woods. That was why he and Skye were crawling. And there had been at least one zombie in Big Woods. It was safe to assume there were more.
The hot, itchy crawling seemed endless. Finally, Mario could see one of the small utility sheds behind the Nature Center through the trees, about thirty feet from an area with picnic tables. They crawled out to the edge of the forest, fifty feet from the shed. Mario heard voices but could not see anyone. He held his rifle, sweeping back and forth in one direction while Skye took the other.
When they sprinted for the shed, bullets whizzed by them. They both flung themselves to the ground behind the shed.
“Is he behind us in the woods?” Mario hissed.
The muzzle of Skye’s rifle flashed, pointed at the closest picnic table. A man fell backward off of it.
“Let’s go,” she said to Mario, pulling him along.
“Do you see any more?” Mario asked.
Skye shook her head. She had crawled to the other corner of the shed and peeked around the corner.
“I don’t see anyone else. I think he was the only one back here.”
They waited. Within a minute, the gunfire grew less thick.
Then it stopped. Voices began to shout, the message unintelligible.
It was now or never.
They slipped around the corner of the shed and ran across the open spaces around picnic tables and garbage cans, crouching low, to a line of trees that had once offered shade to hikers eating their snacks.
Mario could see them now—three men. They wore dark-green fatigues. At least one of them was badly injured. He lay on the ground beside the closer of the two trucks. Even in the golden reflection of the fire, he looked pasty and gray. They crawled to the last picnic table.
“I don’t see that working out,” one of the intruders shouted. He was the shorter of the two who were not injured.
“Y’all are surrounded,” Rich’s voice shouted from across the parking lot. “There’s no way you walk away from this. Surrender.”
The two men traded words that Mario could not quite catch. The taller, more broadly built man pointed to the man on the ground. His companion shook his head.
The taller man shouted, “Do you have a doctor?”
His companion rounded on him, his back also to Mario and Skye. Skye pointed to herself and left, then to Mario and right. Her lips moved silently: On one. Then they burst through the trees.
“Put them down,” Skye shouted.
The intruders froze for a moment, then the shorter one started to turn.
Mario said, “Don’t do it.”
Mario squeezed the trigger when the man did. It could have been his or Skye’s bullet, or both, that sent the man to the ground at the feet of his companion.
The other invader froze. Slowly, he raised his hands.
“I surrender,” he shouted, his back still to them. He dropped to his knees, keeping his hands in the air. “I surrender.”
Miranda caught the smooth, fat rope and ran to the corner of the drawbridge. Doug did the same, running to the opposite side. Delilah looked toward the road, barking and growling. Miranda could see the shadowy figures of three zombies closing in from the road, with more behind them. She dropped the rope near the massive eyehook protruding from the top of the drawbridge. Then she gripped her machete and walked quickly to intercept the closest zombie. She raised her arm to strike at the scrawny neck of what had once been a teenage boy. As she started the downward arc of her blade, the zombie lurched away from her. Her swing at its neck embedded into the thick bone of its brow. The blade stuck. She held the machete tight and kicked the zombie’s stomach. The machete blade didn’t budge.
She reached for the knife on her hip as the zombie tried to writhe away from her. The zombie’s behavior confused her for a moment—she knew she repelled them, but it still didn’t register, especially when she had dealt with them for so long without this advantage. She plunged the knife into the zombie’s eye socket, its jellied contents yielding like whipped egg whites. Two more zombies were now just steps away, their hissing moans frenzied. That would change when they reached her, but not if they reached Doug or Rocco.
Delilah pulled on the ankle of the rattier-looking one that was a step behind the first, slowing its progress. Miranda side-kicked the knee out from under J. Crew business casual zombie. She turned to the one Delilah had by the ankle and slammed her knife into its eye, then back to J. Crew. She stomped her boot on its face to keep its head still and plunged the knife into its ear. She stopped at teen zombie on her way back to the drawbridge and tugged free the machete embedded in its brow.
Back at the drawbridge, she dropped to her knees at the eyehook, pulling the rope through the cool steel. More zombies were turning the corner by the truck. She glanced at Doug. He was okay. She tied the rope off as quick as she could using knots Connor had taught her that would not unravel.
A scream pierced the moans and gunfire from the parking lot beyond the trees. She looked up in time to see Doug falling off of the drawbridge. She sprinted over, her heart in her throat.
He had managed to grasp the eyehook protruding from the drawbridge. His other arm dangled, completely useless. Zombies snatched at his boots, coming up short by inches. Miranda dropped to her knees and grabbed Doug’s wrist in both her hands. His eyes, visible in the flickering light of the burning Nature Center, were wide with panic.
“Get Rocco!” he shouted.
She shook her head. He would never be able to hang on that long, not with one arm. Beside her, Delilah leaned over the trench, snarling and snapping at the zombies reaching for Doug.
A yank almost pulled him down. A tall zombie had caught his ankle.
“Motherfucker,” Miranda screamed.
She realized she could jump into the trench and ward the zombies away. She shifted her weight to jump in when Delilah left the trench and started to bark. Miranda glanced after the dog. More zombies from the road were closing in. If she jumped into the trench she could save Doug now, but she would not be able to get back out in time to protect him from the approaching zombies, and he couldn’t tie off the rope threaded through the drawbridge eyehook.
The imminent feeding frenzy amplified the screeching of the zombies snatching at Doug’s feet.
“Tell Skye I love her.”
Miranda looked down at him. From the corner of her eye, she saw the slack rope already pulled through the eyehook, piled next to her knees.
She snatched the rope, pulled it through the eyehook, and wrapped the extra length beyond the eyehook around Doug’s wrist. Just as she finished a hasty but secure knot, the zombies yanked. Doug’s hand slipped off the eyehook with a sickening crack.
Doug’s howls of agony filled Miranda’s ears, but he didn’t fall into the trench. She lay on her stomach, sweat dripping from her nose, and looped the rope under his injured arm. He screamed even more. She ignored him, wrapping it around his torso before tying it off.
Doug looked up. His eyes widened.
Delilah’s bark sounded more like a scream.
A house landed on Miranda’s back.
That was what it felt like. The stench of a zombie that had to be massive filled her nose as it pinned her beneath it. A fucking dasher, she thought wildly, because she had not seen anything this big. Where the hell had it come from?
The zombie started to writhe like it was trying to get away from her but unlike the tackle, it was not being quick about it.
“Going too fast to stop and now you can’t get away,” she gasped.
She was pinned, unable to do anything but watch Doug kick frantically at the zombies snatching at his boots. The zombie finally pushed itself up. Miranda sucked in a breath, but it collapsed onto her again, driving the hard-fought breath from her lungs.
It was inert.
Not moving.
Not moving.
And not moving.
Had someone killed it? Where the fuck were they? Did they even know she was suffocating?
She heard gunfire, Delilah’s nonstop barking, the moans of zombies trying to make Doug their dinner. As her vision began to swim, Rocco’s hands came into view. He heaved on the rope tied around Doug, whose shriek of pain sounded like a troop of agitated macaques. Rocco heaved on the rope again, pulling Doug up so that he was close enough for Rocco to get his hands on him. He dragged Doug over the lip of the trench, and onto the drawbridge. A moment later the weight on her eased enough that Miranda could suck in a breath.
“This fucker weighs a ton, Tucci!”
Miranda squeezed out from under the massive dasher just as the leading edge of zombies from the road arrived. She shook her head, trying to clear the lightheadedness, and hacked at the first upright zombie, even as it shied away.
Rocco shouted, “Is this rope tied off?”
“Yes!”
“Get the winch. I’ve got him,” Rocco said. He slashed through the rope beyond the knot securing the eyehook, then hoisted Doug over his shoulder.
Miranda ran just steps ahead of Rocco to the gate tower. She stumbled up the stairs and found the winch at the center of the catwalk. Frantic, she searched it and found two buttons—one red, one black
. She pushed the black one. The scent of machine grease filled her nose, reminding her of carnival rides that smelled the same way. The winch squealed, shuddering against the bolts holding it to the catwalk.
The bridge is too heavy, she thought, but slowly, slowly, the ropes began to wrap around the winch axle.
“Thank God,” she cried, almost collapsing with relief.
She peered over the edge of the catwalk. The bridge was rising, slow, like drying mud. Rocco had set Doug down on the ground beneath the catwalk and turned back to cover their retreat in case any zombies managed to stumble onto the drawbridge as it rose. Delilah still barked, hovering near Doug. His wrist trailed a short length of rope and was bent at an unnatural angle. As soon as the drawbridge was high enough that a zombie couldn’t accidentally trip over the trench onto it, Miranda hit the red button.
Rocco looked up at her, grinning, then leaned over Doug. The crack of a single gunshot rang out. Rocco jerked and spun away before falling to the ground. In the flickering light from the fire behind them, Miranda saw Rocco’s crimson blood bloom beneath him like a poppy.
“Rocco,” she cried. “No!”
39
Mario and Skye left securing the captives to others and went to check the drawbridge. A team of people were spreading the word that the invaders had been repelled, and that they should shelter-in-place because there were zombies inside the palisade.
Even though the fire seemed to have reached its apex and was now waning, getting some distance from the Nature Center was a welcome relief. Mario actually felt chilled as they ran across the parking lot.
The Undead Age Series (Book 2): Damage In An Undead Age Page 34