by Misty Vixen
…
“So where to now?” David asked.
They were now headed west again, towards another bridge that would bring them back across the river. The pair moved at a brisk pace.
“There’s an abandoned building over this bridge and through those woods up ahead. It’s kind of dangerous, there’s a lot of stalkers and zombies in the area, but it’s a pretty well-fortified location. I’m not sure what it once was, but what it is now is a makeshift, independent hospital. About six months ago, I helped a small group of doctors and surgeons, who were evidently the only survivors of a brutal attack on a caravan a few dozen miles north of here, set up shop in that building. Honestly, they just wanted a place they could call their own, where they could set up shop and help those who need help,” she explained.
“If they’re so into helping people, why are they in such an isolated location?” David asked.
She sighed. “They are...paranoid. I guess the last person they worked under was extremely controlling and practically enslaved them. And the attack, though technically it did help them, was very vicious and unexpected. And the trip here was not easy. Plus, this region isn’t the safest place. Basically, they’re at odds with themselves. I think they’re pretty much waiting to get secure. And they don’t turn people away who come to them, they are good people. I’d really love to get them set up somewhere else, somewhere more accessible, but then there’s the question of who will protect them? And anyone I suggest, they get paranoid and say, ‘Well, what’s to stop them from trying to control us?’ You see the problem?”
“Yeah, that fucking sucks,” David muttered.
“Yes,” she agreed bitterly. “But they should be able to help us. I’m sure this is where Jim was going when he hurt himself. Be ready, this is a dangerous place.”
He nodded tightly and pulled out his pistol. Once they were fully on the other side of the bridge, they began to move down a long, cracked road. Plants, mostly just stems and stalks now, withered husks of their former selves, grew through the cracks. The sun had melted the snow off the pavement, but the trees around them were still partially capped by it, and more lay in heaps and clumps along the bare dirt ground.
David listened as they walked through the chill afternoon air. It was peaceful out. Distantly, he heard the occasional gunshot, but that was very normal. Behind him, he could hear the river rushing by. And somewhere close, but out of sight, he heard the shuffling and occasional moans of zombies. He continually searched the woods around them as they made their way down the road. It curved out of sight maybe a half mile down the way, and the trees were thick to either side. This was a very heavily forested region.
They made it about halfway there before trouble showed up.
Something groaned, and this time the sound was far too close. Both of them stopped in their tracks, David taking the right side of the road, Cait taking the left, their pistols raised. A zombie came out from behind a tree and began to make a beeline for David, arms outstretched, hideously decayed flesh obvious in the bright sunshine, its eyes nearly rotted out of its skull. Its feet slapped the pavement as it made rapid progress towards him.
He aimed and fired, putting a round through its open mouth and blowing out the back of its head in a spray of ugly gore.
The zombie dropped, and that was easy enough, but then a chorus of groans went up, as well as a warning snarl from at least one stalker, and then there was movement all around them.
“Fuck,” Cait snapped softly. “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
“We’ve got this,” he agreed.
The undead abominations came for them.
David popped the first three that appeared in his line of sight without much trouble, but then half a dozen more appeared, one of them being a stalker. He immediately shifted his aim to that one, as it had the capacity to kill him the quickest. Opening fire, he missed twice, but managed to nail it first in the neck, then again in the head, dropping it. Unfortunately, that cost him precious seconds he needed to keep the rest of the zombies back. He fired off another shot, put a bullet into the rotting brain of another undead, and then managed to bring one more down before the others were on him. There was nowhere to go, because Cait was right behind him, and he couldn’t leave her exposed.
The only option was to stand his ground and fight for his life.
He punched the barrel of the pistol into the side of the nearest zombie’s head while pulling the trigger, blowing its brains out, and then brought his knife out with his other hand. Bringing his foot up, David placed it against the chest of the nearest of the three remaining creatures, then shoved as hard as he could. It was sent stumbling. He brought the knife around and stabbed another in the side of the head as it made a grab for him.
The thing roared and died, immediately dropping to the ground and bringing the knife with it, ripping it from his grasp. He shouted a surprised, angry, and terrified curse as the remaining of the half-dozen nearest fuckers grabbed onto him. Its flesh was awful and leathery and so cold. It began to bring its broken, decaying teeth towards his neck. He fought to throw it off, trying to get his gun up to get a good shot, but it was strong.
It had his gun arm. He shoved at it again, and suddenly its head snapped to the side right as he was trying to throw it off of him and he tore free as it fell away, nearly bringing him down with it. Another shot sounded and the zombie he’d kicked, which had already recovered and was coming for him again, went down.
David saw a few more coming his way. He snapped his pistol up and fired off three shots in rapid succession, putting them down, hyped up by near-death adrenaline.
“Fuck,” he whispered after he looked around and saw they were alone.
“Are you okay?” Cait asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” he replied, looking down. His coat sleeve was dirty and ripped, and his arm was going to be bruised, but he didn’t feel the burning sting of broken skin. He took it off anyway, as well as his overshirt, just to be sure.
“You’re clean,” she said after examining him. He quickly pulled on his shirt and coat again. She looked eager to keep moving.
“Should we search them?” he asked.
“No time, I really want to get out of here before more show up,” she replied.
He nodded. They didn’t look like they had much of anything anyway, as most of them had been out here for so long that their clothes had fallen off or been ripped off or any number of other ways clothes came off of you if you wore them for long enough and never stopped walking through the countryside.
They hurried on.
…
The first indication that they had that something was wrong was a raised, angry voice coming from up ahead.
They both froze as they heard it. David and Cait stood still, listening.
They had walked another quarter mile along the road, then broke off down a side path that would take them the rest of the way there. It curved up ahead out of sight, and that’s definitely where the voice was coming from.
“I don’t care! Okay!? I don’t care!”
“Please don’t hurt her!”
“Then fucking get out here and do as I fucking say!”
“Jesus fuck,” Cait whispered. She looked at him, her eyes wide. “David, you see that little, tiny, narrow pathway there?” She pointed to the left. He looked, saw it, nodded. “Go down it, follow it until you have a view of the building. I need you to be my backup. Don’t let them see or hear you. I’ll go ahead of you, make it obvious, cover your movements. I’m going to see what’s going on, play it by ear, but if it goes south, you fucking shoot and kill them. Got it?”
“Got it,” he replied, feeling another surge of adrenaline.
“Let’s do this.”
She moved on up ahead, and David slipped onto the path. Thank fucking God most of the snow around this area was melted. It was basically impossible to be quiet while walking on snow, the way it crunched underfoot. The trees were thick here. He followed the path
, listening as someone shouted commands at someone else.
He could hear someone crying.
What the fuck was going on?
Nothing good, obviously. He got into position at just about the same time Cait made herself known to the group.
“Hey, what’s going on back here?” she asked, sounding surprisingly innocent.
“What the fuck?! Who’s that?! Don’t fucking move!”
David studied the situation quickly, crouching down and getting his pistol ready. He saw half a dozen of them. Men in a mishmash of clothing, all of it looking grubby and stained. They looked like...the assholes who had burned down River View! And the shitheads who had been there, threatening Ashley, and the ones who had assaulted his and Evie’s and April’s cabin! Motherfuckers! He could be wrong, but something about them was definitely familiar. It didn’t matter. Whoever they were, they were obviously here on some kind of shakedown or extortion or robbery. And that was going to end.
“Okay, okay, no need to get upset,” Cait replied, putting her hands up.
“Who the fuck are you?” the leader, a tall, bald man who currently had a gun to the head of a slim brunette woman who was kneeling at his feet. He held her hair with his other hand. She was the one who was crying.
“My name’s Cait. I just came here to do some trading...what are you doing here? Who are you people?” she asked, sounding concerned and kind of...stupid. Man, Cait could really act. He saw a few of the men chuckle and nudge each other.
“None of your business,” the leader replied.
“She’s fucking hot,” one of them muttered.
“We should take her back home,” another said, a little louder.
“You wanna come home with me, sweetheart?” the first one asked.
“Uh, no,” she replied flatly. Well, that clearly wasn’t acting.
“Too bad. Come on, boss. I bet she sucks dick like a high class whore.”
“I fucking love redheads,” another muttered.
“All right,” the boss said, “get over here sweetmeat. Why don’t you show me what you can do with that mouth of yours?”
“I don’t think so,” Cait replied.
And then the boss made his first, and last, mistake.
He raised the pistol and aimed it at her.
When Cait moved, it was so fast David could hardly track it. She still had her hands up, on top of her head. She snatched the shotgun from its holster on her back, whipped it into position, and blew the guy’s fucking head clean off in a resounding explosion of blood and brains. Everyone shouted in shocked surprise.
David remembered thinking that she could do exactly that were he to try anything the very first time they’d met. It actually looked almost precisely how he had imagined it.
Fucking hell, she was fast.
He shifted his aim very slightly, so that he was tracking the one who’d asked to take her home, and put two rounds into his skull. His head snapped back and in death his nerves twitched as he fired off a few random shots. One of which actually connected with the leg of another nearby asshole. The man screamed and collapsed, grasping his leg. David shifted targets and shot another man twice in the chest, sending him to the ground to join his asshole friends. The brunette woman who had been being held hostage was now frantically crawling back towards the entrance to the building, where a man was urging her on.
One of the men’s faces twisted up in anger and he began to point his weapon at her. David shifted aim towards him, but Cait fired off a round that punched a hole clean through his skull and killed him in an instant.
Although some of their return fire came dangerously close, and David hissed in pain at one point as a bullet struck the tree next to him and sprayed him with a rain of bark shrapnel, he, Cait, and someone inside the building managed to cut them down and murder all the thieves in a matter of moments.
David looked around, a reflexive gesture. It was something you always did after you had to do something loud, because it could draw anything in. He saw several dark figures moving closer from elsewhere in the woods.
“Cait?!” someone said.
“Yes, Donald, it’s me. And a friend,” Cait replied. “Are you okay?”
“We’re fine, get in here!”
“Come on, David,” Cait said, and he emerged from his spot immediately. The pair of them paused briefly to snag a few guns and the most obvious gear from the thieves, but their corpses weren’t going anywhere in the immediate future, and he could hear stalkers coming, and a lot of zombies. They finished up at the urging of the man named Donald, and as soon as the pair of them were inside, he slammed and locked the door with a bar and several deadbolts. The door looked pretty heavy and sturdy.
David looked around the room they had come to as he calmed down. That had been close. One of those bullets had come extremely close to his neck. The room looked pretty old and decayed, but it also had the look of such a place that had been inhabited by people looking to spruce it up, make it habitable again. It was a big room, probably about half of the entire first floor. All of the windows were carefully boarded over with solid-looking wood. There wasn’t a great deal of furniture in the room, given its size.
Two old couches had been pressed into the corner together to his immediate right, and he saw another two couches taking up the far back wall. There was a desk and a chair midway down the left side of the room, and a few other chairs scattered about. There were just two other doors in the right wall. And right now he could see three people besides Cait. The first was the man named Donald. He looked...smart. Something about him just seemed smart. It probably helped that he wore glasses that were in pretty good condition.
That was rare.
He had short, graying brown hair and wore heavy jeans and a button-down shirt. If David had to guess, he’d peg this man as the leader. The woman he had seen before, that Cait had rescued, looked young, maybe a little younger than him. She had collapsed on the nearest couch and had hidden her face in her hands. She was crying softly. She had a slim build and something about her reminded him of April. The last person in the room was a somewhat more mature looking jag woman with red fur. She had an arm around the younger woman and was talking to her quietly and soothingly. She shot him a suspicious look.
Well, after what had just happened, he didn’t blame her.
“Is everyone okay?” Cait asked.
“I think so, the only other one here is...Peter! Where are you!?” Donald called.
“Coming! Coming!” a young, male voice replied. They heard jogging footsteps descending down stairs and a moment later a young human man appeared. He looked anxious.
“You okay?” Donald asked.
“Fine,” he said. Now he looked...guilty. “I was going to shoot them. I-I was waiting for an opening...I’m sorry Amanda,” he murmured, looking at the crying woman.
She tried to say something, but it was lost to another sob.
“Give her a minute,” the jag woman said.
“Okay,” Peter replied quietly, looking guiltier than ever.
“Peter, it’s fine. That was...a really, really bad situation. A very bad situation. It’s good that you didn’t shoot,” Donald said. He looked over at Cait and David again. “Thank you so much. You saved our lives. You really did.”
“It’s okay,” Cait replied. “What happened? Where’s Katya and Vanessa?”
“They’re out looking for something for us-”
A loud groan sounded and something banged against the door. Amanda let out a shriek, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. The zombie banged against the door a few more times, and they heard more groaning, then it stopped. Several soft sighs of relief sounded.
“Fuck,” Peter muttered.
“Um, everyone, this is David, a, uh, well, my boyfriend,” she said.
“Really?” the jag woman asked, sounding surprise.
David wondered if he should be offended by that.
“Yes, Janice,” Cait replied firmly.
“Huh.”
“Thank you for your help. They would have killed us,” Donald said.
“Not all of us,” Janice muttered darkly, “not right away, anyway.”
“Indeed,” Donald murmured. He walked forward and offered his hand.
David shook it. “I’m happy to have helped.”
“It’s very much appreciated. This here is Peter. And the others there are Amanda and Janice,” Donald said.
“There’s normally two more here, another human and a goliath...so what are they doing, exactly?” Cait asked.
“We’re running low on power. The situation is very desperate, I’m afraid,” Donald replied.
“How desperate?”
“It will become dire within the next day. Some of our medicine, and our supply of blood, it needs to be cooled. And we have other technical resources that we simply cannot use without power,” Donald explained.
“What about your generator? Your solar panels?” Cait asked.
He sighed. “The generator broke two weeks ago and we’ve been trying to fix it ever since. But it’s a complicated piece of equipment. Of the four solar panels we have, one has always been unreliable and finally gave up the ghost last month. Another was broken about two weeks ago. We still don’t know how the hell that happened, something heavy must have hit it but we have no idea what. And the third one gave out two days ago. The remaining one just isn’t enough, even with turning off everything else, and we don’t have any other emergency power stored anywhere. That’s where the other two are: tracking down another solar panel...” He paused. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what are the two of you doing here?”
“We need antibiotics,” Cait replied. “Strong ones. The ones you use when regular antibiotics have failed.”
“Oh dear,” Donald murmured.
“Please, please tell me you have some,” David said.
“We do, not what I might call a healthy supply, but we do. We could part with a bottle, which should be enough. But I’m afraid I need payment of some kind.”
“We can kill two birds with one stone,” Cait said. “If we can find some kind of power supply, then you can give us those antibiotics.”