by Urban, Tony
Doc’s eyes narrowed. Was he angry at her? She almost hoped he was. She was tired of the benevolent dictator act he’d been playing since her arrival.
She’d found him in his quarters, clutching a cup of coffee like it was lifeblood. She thought he looked small like this. So mortal and average and lacking in the swagger he carried when out amongst his followers. He seemed less like Doc and more like her father. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.
“The committee votes on every major decision. That’s the way it must be, Ramey. You’ll come to understand that in time.”
“Fuck your committee. You know damn well that you can get him out of that box with one word.”
He opened his mouth to speak but Ramey cut him off before he could get started.
“He’ll never last two more days. “
Ramey expected to see something in his eyes. Remorse. Regret. Maybe compassion. Instead, she saw nothing but detached calculation.
He’s looking at me like a lab rat. Not like his daughter.
She’d traveled hundreds of miles to find her father. She’d risked her life in the process. Others had lost theirs because they had tried to help her find him and his supposed safe haven. Was all of that in vain? It sure felt like it.
Ramey crossed the four feet gap between them and took her father’s hand. She was surprised how cool it felt. What could she say to get through to him? To bring back the man he used to be?
“Please, dad. I’m begging you to do this. He saved my life out there, more than once. He’s a good, honest man. He was only doing what he felt was right.”
He didn’t respond right away. She thought she was making headway.
“I can’t lose him, dad. I love him.”
As soon as the words spilled from her mouth she felt the muscles in his hand spasm and he slipped free of her grasp. His eyes shifted from being simply detached and became angry. Cruel.
“I thought I raised you to be smarter than that.”
Ramey knew the words were meant to hurt her, but instead they only made her angry. “You didn’t raise me. You abandoned me.”
She spun on her heels and headed to the door. Pulling it open, she was ready to storm off when she saw the zombie. She knew immediately what he was. He had that fast but awkward gallop she’d seen so often outside these walls. But how was this possible? How did a zombie get onto the island?
Ramey didn’t realize Doc was behind her until he grabbed hold of her shoulder and pulled her back into the confines of the cabin.
“What— “she couldn’t get the words out before he slammed the door closed and locked it.
Ramey turned to her father but he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring out the window.
“There’s a zombie out there,” she said.
“No. Not one. Many.”
Ramey followed his gaze and realized he was correct. Ten or more of the creatures ran through camp, attacking and eating anyone they could catch. Their wounded, pained screams brought back a rush of horrible memories.
“Oh God no.”
Ramey turned away from the carnage and saw her father flip a small, metal switch. Outside, an air raid siren, the kind she only knew from movies, began to wail. The sound was almost deafening and drowned out the screams.
Chapter 26
“Wim? You alive?”
The morning sun spilled through the cracks in the box, painting pinstripes on his face, which had grown noticeably thinner. He hadn’t fallen asleep since Ramey left but he was barely conscious. So, when he heard the siren blaring, he assumed it to be another hallucination. Nonetheless, he held his hands over his ears.
The noise ricocheted off the metal walls of the box, so loud he thought they were shaking. He closed his eyes, trying to shut it all out, but then he heard a voice yelling.
“I asked if you alive in there?”
The voice was familiar. Female, but husky and with a heavy Appalachian accent and sandpaper grit. But he couldn’t pinpoint it. It wasn’t Phillip though, so he dared to answer. “I am.”
A gunshot rang out and immediately afterward light flooded the box, assaulting Wim’s eyes which had grown strangely accustomed to the dark. He couldn’t see anything but a black shape against the sea of white.
“Dere’s trouble out here. We need you.”
The shape pushed something toward him and as Wim’s eyes adjusted to the brightness, he realized it was a rifle. He looked past the gun, to the hand holding it, and saw Delphine.
“What’s going on? Why are you letting me out?”
She again shoved the rifle at him, and this time he accepted it. Then she handed him something much more important, a gallon jug of water.
“I reckon you’re parched, so drink up while you listen.”
He did. He chugged the water so fast that his stomach spasmed and he regurgitated the first several swallows. It spilled into the snow, melting it.
“Dere’s zombies in the Ark. Don’t know how it started but people’s getting bit and infected. I counted sixteen, mayhap seventeen.”
Wim stopped gulping the water as he did the math in his head. That was about one fourth of the entire population of the Ark.
Ramey. God, don’t let them have got Ramey.
Delphine must have seen the terror in his eyes. Either that or the old woman could read his mind.
“Ramey’s all right. She’s holed up with Doc in his cabin. But I haven’t seen the other two you came in with. “
Wim tried to stand but his legs gave out. He didn’t think he’d ever been so weak, so helpless, and it annoyed him to no end. Especially now when lives were at stake.
“Easy now,” Delphine said. “You ain’t no good to no one if you pass out.”
“I’m fine.”
Wim sucked down a few more swallows of water. The jug was half empty already and he wanted more but his stomach felt on the verge of bursting and he forced himself to stop. He set the butt end of the rifle on the ground and used it to steady himself as he worked his way to his knees, then his feet.
The world around him started to spin and he shut his eyes against it. In his head he counted to five, then opened his eyes again. That time all remained steady.
Keep it together.
“You okay with that rifle or you want a handgun?” Delphine asked and pulled aside her shawl to reveal two pistols in her waistband.
“I’ve always favored long guns.”
“Good man.”
Wim checked the rifle and saw a round was already chambered. “Where’s Phillip?”
Phillip and his security crew were the only people that Wim knew of who were allowed to carry firearms on the Ark, which made Delphine’s weaponry even more of a mystery.
Delphine shook her head. “Haven’t seen him all morning. None of them.”
A deep, masculine scream echoed toward them from the camp. Wim took a step away from the box. His head was still cloudy but he no longer felt like he was going to collapse.
“Take me to the zombies.”
She did.
Delphine led him a few hundred yards toward camp. Along the way they passed several spots where the snow was disturbed and red, but there weren’t any bodies. Wim knew why. Because the dead were coming back.
The first one he saw was Amy Orlean, a hefty woman on the downhill side of middle age who served as the Ark’s cook. Wim and his friends usually ate out of cans but on the rare times where they were welcomed into the mess hall, special occasions mostly, to eat with the others, he often thought that Amy’s peach pie was the best he’d ever tasted. Even better than what his mama had made, although he’d never have told her that if she were still alive.
Now, Amy wasn’t baking up something sweet. Now, she straddled a man Wim only knew as Stevie. He seemed to recall the twenty-something year old jeering at him the other day, before he was sent to the box. He had little memory of the beanpole of a man aside from that and he didn’t pause before he shouldered the rifle and sent a bullet zipping throu
gh Amy Orleans’ head.
The woman toppled over, landing chest down atop Stevie who desperately, and unsuccessfully, tried to push off her corpse.
When Wim and Delphine reached the scene, Wim grabbed hold of Amy’s denim jacket with his left hand and hauled her off the struggling man. Blood dripped from the bullet wound above her temple but also from her mouth and, when he looked closer, Wim saw a masticated wad of flesh jutting from her clenched jaws. His eyes moved from her to Stevie and he saw a missing hunk of skin about the same size where his shoulders met his neck.
Stevie stared up at them, his eyes so wide Wim could see white all the way around the irises. “Oh shit man thanks. Thank you. That fat bitch was trying to eat me! Can you believe that?”
Wim had liked Amy and it made him wince to hear her called such names, but he supposed a man who had just been attacked by his first zombie might have a right to be crass. He didn’t have a chance to respond before another gunshot rang out and Stevie’s face collapsed inward as a bullet tore through the bridge of his nose. The snow under his head exploded in a crimson burst and then Stevie went limp.
When Wim looked to his side, Delphine was already lowering the pistol. She raised her wiry eyebrows at him.
“He got chomped. That meant he was gonna turn into a zombie, don’t it?”
“Yep. That’s usually how it works. But maybe you should have asked that question before you shot him.”
“Mayhap I should. Too late now though.”
They continued. Wim shot three more zombies by the time they reached the outskirts of camp and Delphine one. All were dashing about like wild animals stalking prey but there wasn’t any prey to be found. Wim hoped everyone had the good sense to lock themselves inside somewhere but whatever optimism he held on that matter vanished when he saw five zombies all huddled around some bodies on the ground. They look like pigs at a trough, he thought.
He recognized them but didn’t know any of them well when they were alive and that made it easier to pick them off one by one. When he finished he turned to Delphine.
“Have any more ammunition for this?”
She nodded and passed him a box of bullets. Wim reloaded while Delphine stepped into the fray and looked to see who they’d been eating.
“Aw, dammit,” she said with a sigh. “They got Marty Knecht. We used to play chess outside the dining hall when the weather was hospitable. Always suspected the scoundrel of cheating when I went into a daydream, as I’m apt to do on pretty days.”
Delphine stared down at dead Marty Knecht. His face looked like a pile of partially chewed, raw hamburger with two big, white eyes plopped haphazardly in the middle.
What remained of Marty’s mouth fell open and his tongue lolled out. Those eyes somehow moved within the pile of gore and locked on Delphine. She didn’t hesitate and shot him in the head. “Guess he won’t be cheatin no more.”
Wim’s rifle was reloaded and ready to go. He rubbed his palms against the denim of his jeans, using the friction to bring some feeling back into his cold hands, which were well on their way to being completely numb.
As they rounded the corner, nearing the door to the clinic, Wim saw a woman running. He assumed she was a zombie and raised the rifle but when he saw six undead monsters chasing her, he realized she wasn’t the hunter, she was the hunted. Her name was Barbra Lowe and she was a nurse who’d stitched up his calf when he’d ripped a ragged, five-inch gash in it early last the summer. She’d done a good job and it left just a thin, milky streak of a scar.
Wim shot one of the zombies pursuing her, then another. Delphine fired, hitting one in the back but that didn’t do so much as make it stumble. Wim shot the one she’d wounded, then aimed at the fourth. Just as he shot, the zombie dipped to the right and the bullet whistled by harmlessly.
The creatures were close to Barbra now and the pale, golden-haired woman kept looking back. As they neared her, her rearward glances became longer and longer.
Wim shot again, dropping the zombie he’d earlier missed. As he went to take aim at the fifth, Barbra fell. Between the snowfall and her constant, fearful looks behind her, she hadn’t seen the circle of rocks that stood guard around the fire pit and, when her foot hit them, she did a forward somersault before crashing to the ground. Her back hit the rocks and Wim heard something break. That sound was immediately replaced by Barbra’s screams. And then the zombie pounced on her.
It chomped a mouthful of flesh off her forearm before Wim could fire. Delphine beat him to the punch sending a bullet through the zombie’s head, but it was too late. Barbra tried to push herself up as blood gushed from the wound but her legs were immobilized from the fall and Wim knew it didn’t matter anyway. He was glad her face was hidden when he shot her in the side of the skull and prevented her inevitable transformation.
“Let me go!” Ramey tried to free herself from her father who had a vise grip on her wrist. She was surprised he was so strong.
“You’re staying in here. Where it’s safe.”
“People are dying out there. Your people. Don’t you care?” She saw the truth in his face. He didn’t care. She wondered if anything she’d ever believed about her father had been real.
“It’s too dangerous, Ramey.”
“I can help them. I’ve seen this before. I’ve fought them, remember?”
There came a crash at the window and both of them flinched. They turned to see a woman just a few years older than Ramey banging against the glass.
“Let me in, Doc! They’re right behind me!”
Ramey again tried to free herself, but couldn’t.
“No. It’s too late for her.”
Ramey saw three dead children running for the woman and realized her father was right this time. Within seconds they were on her. The first one latched onto her, biting a small mouthful of flesh from her side. The next got her forearm, its tiny teeth sinking in to the bone. The third jumped onto her back and started chomping on her head. Ramey saw it pull back with long, bloody strands of hair caught in its teeth.
It didn’t seem possible, but the woman’s screams were even louder than the siren. She flailed and thrashed, knocking the child at her arm to the ground. It jumped back up and buried its teeth into her stomach, excising her belly button in one extra-large bite. Her strength gave out and she fell against the window, smearing blood against the glass as she slid down the slick surface. Ramey turned away, unable to watch any more.
“Give me a gun and let me go help.”
“I told you— “
“Do it!”
Doc’s eye twitched. Ramey didn’t know if it was anger or shock.
“I don’t keep any guns here. Besides, you know how I feel about firearms.” He looked beyond her, grimaced.
Ramey turned to see what he was looking at, but before she could find anything, her vision went black.
Wim saw the zombies first. There were a half dozen of them, mostly children, all clumped together. He only saw their backs as they squatted down on their haunches their faces hidden, but he had a good enough idea what was going on. They were eating.
“Think that’s the last of them?” Delphine asked.
They hadn’t seen any other zombies in more than ten minutes. He hoped this was indeed the last of them, that they’d eliminated all the others. He was tired of killing, but even more so, he was just plain tired. Five days of not eating or drinking was catching up to him, leaving his legs weak and eyesight bleary.
“Might be.”
They got within eight yards of the zombies before opening fire. In under half a minute the creatures were dead. Or dead again, Wim supposed. Their bodies half sunk into the fallen snow, strewn atop each other in a haphazard pile, but all Wim cared about was finding who they’d been eating when their ends came.
He grabbed the shirt of one, lifted it free of the mass and tossed it aside like a sack of feed. Then the next. Delphine watched with her gun raised, ready to shoot if the need arose.
After Wim had
moved the fourth zombie, he saw a thin, chocolate colored arm poking out from under the pile. The site of it caused his stomach to tighten up.
“Get on with it,” Delphine said, making Wim realize he’d been staring, motionless, at the arm, which had several bites taken out, and made him think of a partially eaten ear of corn.
He grabbed the zombie, which he recognized as Vince, the frequent gatekeeper and one of the men whose testimony sent him to the box. Despite that, Wim loathed seeing what had become of him.
After casting Vince’s body aside, Wim’s eyes went to the person at the bottom of the pile. He fully expected to find Emory or Mina. His gut told him to prepare for it but he still didn’t know how he’d deal with seeing another of his friends dead.
But the brown arm didn’t belong to Mina or Emory. The woman who had been breakfast for the cadre of zombies was Ellen Sideris. Her body had been protected by a heavy parka, leaving her face to bear the brunt of the assault. A good seventy percent of the skin was gone, along with all her nose, her lips and her right eye.
“Oh, Lord,” Delphine said as she peered over Wim’s shoulder.
At the sound of the voice, Sideris’s remaining eye opened and, after lolling around momentarily confused, settled on the two of them. Wim knew his rifle was empty as he reached out and pressed against the zombie’s chest to hold her to the ground.
“Hand me your pistol.”
Delphine passed it to him like a distance runner handing off a baton. Sideris’s head darted forward, lunging at him with her skinned mouth, her teeth smashing together as she bit and missed.
Wim pressed the pistol against her temple, keeping it flush as she tried to bite him, and squeezed the trigger. Sideris’s brains blew out the opposite side of her skull, spraying the white snow like red water from a hose. What remained of her head fell against the ground and her struggling ceased.
Chapter 27
The cold air made Emory’s bones hurt. He’d been hurting a considerable amount of the time lately, to the point where thoughts of long, painful illnesses taunted and harassed him. It’s just the cold, he told himself. He wasn’t sure he believed that any more but knew worrying was pointless. Besides, at his age and under the circumstances, he knew the overwhelming majority of his life was behind him and each additional day he was given was a bonus.