“It’s okay, I did too. They’re getting smarter. I don’t care what they told you in your briefing Maxwell, they are. To pull off something like that.”
“I know.” She nods, looking at the devastation below before turning her eyes towards me. “I see it, they’re learning, or remembering more. Which means now probably isn’t the best time to bring it up, but on the floor, three o’clock, we got two more mating. It wasn’t an isolated incident. And now, to top it all off, we got infected animals on our hands.”
Marty groans, this little irritated half chuckle. “At the rate we’re going, they’ll be giving birth before we’re even outta this damn dam.”
“Marty,” Norwood says solemnly, “there’s only one of them. It’s just a regular dam, not a dam dam. If it were a dam dam, there’d be another dam downstream. And I don’t like that look you’re giving me so I’m just gonna see myself outta this conversation and reinsert when the time’s appropriate. Carry on.”
“I’m just sayin’, they’re storming the building while we’re dangling from the rafters. They’re gonna have us surrounded before we even poop out last night’s can of corn.”
“Ha, speak for yourself,” Norwood shouts, pumping his fist proudly. “And that probably wasn’t the best time to reintroduce myself into the conversation. I’m just gonna go hang over there.”
“There’s no way outta this, is there?” Maxwell whines, pulling her hair back into its ponytail so hard I fear for the safety of her scalp. “That helicopter was our one shot. And we pulled it off, but lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.”
“Yes it does,” Felecia whispers, just as Sami kicks through the ventilation shaft, opening an entrance large enough for us to fit through. “That’s a myth. Lightning can strike the same place as many times as it damn well pleases. People just say it so much we believe it’s true. We’re getting outta here. Fuck the helicopter, we’ll take a boat to an island. Now let’s go. That includes you Corn Nugget.”
“I’m Corn Nugget?” Norwood asks from his spot on the outskirts of the rafters, where he can pretend to be sulking but is really standing guard.
“Well,” she shrugs, “you’re at least the only one who talks about it. Noah, put your hand down!”
“Sorry.”
“We’re not dying in this dam. Even you, fucktard,” she hisses in Neil’s direction with a scolding finger. “Pull another stunt like that, you’re gonna wish Corn Nugget didn’t stop you. We’re in this together, all of us, whether we like it or not. Now let’s go cut a hole in the other side of that duct and get the fuck outta here before the Grizzly realizes he can climb.”
Even with everyone’s spirits down, no one dares object to the demands of Felecia Harmon.
I’m not the only one who isn’t me. It’s beginning to wear on all of us. How many times can victory be stolen from you before it’s no longer worth the fight?
“Guys,” Sami says, popping her head out of the newly cut hole, “this thing is creaking a lot. We probably shouldn’t all be in here at the same time. I’m gonna cut through the other side first.”
Maxwell nods, unable to snap out of her lethargic state. “Kid’s right, it’s not meant to hold weight. We’ll go through one at a time, then monkey bar our way to the other side. And you said that tunnel will take us across?”
“Does it matter?” Marty asks, rubbing the feeling back into his shoulder. “Because what do we do then? Do you realize how far we are from the ocean? How many of them are between us and the Pacific? With no vehicle? Look, facts is facts. And the fact of the matter is, Dipshit here,” he says, nodding in Neil’s direction, “he mighta had the right idea. Go out with a little dignity, because I’m gonna be honest with you, I ain’t looking forward to bein’ eaten alive.”
Neil drops his head in shame, shaking it solemnly. I can tell Maxwell and Norwood are both questioning it, wondering if maybe Marty’s right. Is this it for us? We barely made it here, how are we going to fight our way back?
A loud crash snaps us all out of the contemplative silence we’ve been lost in.
“Guys, come on,” Sami calls, clearly out of the loop. “I cut us a doorway.” She doesn’t know how impossible this actually is. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go.”
There’s hope and desire still burning inside her adolescent heart, and I fear that flame has blown out in ours. Or at least theirs, because that sparkle in Felecia’s eyes is enough for me. It pushes me on, when I have no reason to push.
I creep through the rafters, now that some feeling has finally come back to my legs, but I’m just going through the motions. I don’t actually know if any of this is worth it. Maybe Marty’s right, maybe he has been all along. We should have been making a home for ourselves, here in the wasteland, and not trying to escape it. We’ve spent days chasing after a hope that failed us.
The air duct is dirtier than I’d expected. In the movies, they’re always squeaky clean, but this is definitely not a surface I’d feel comfortable eating a meal off. Every movement sends clouds of dust bunnies frolicking through the air, stinging my eyes, trying to force their way into my throat. I’m being sodomized by dust bunnies.
“What are they doing? Aren’t they coming?” Sami looks over my shoulder as Felecia reaches the opening. “We’re so close. Why are they stopping?”
“Because they’ve been this close before,” Felecia says, surveying the inside of the shaft with a look of disgust.
“They’re not coming?” she asks, bewildered panic filling her frail voice. “We can’t just leave them here, can we?”
How do you explain to a kid that sometimes death is preferential? How do you explain it to anyone who hasn’t been there before? Things don’t always get better. Sometimes the hard times only get harder, and not everyone’s equipped to deal with that. We all have different breaking points. If they’ve met theirs, I can’t be mad at them. All I can do is be grateful they made it this far with us.
“Sami…” I start, not sure what I’m supposed to say. “They don’t see a way out, because there may not be one. We have so far to go, and we don’t even know where we’re going.”
“The ocean. An island. Where they can’t get us. Come on, let’s go.”
“Sweetie,” Felecia shouts into the darkened ventilation shaft, “you realize our lives are never going back to normal, right? When we find an island, there’s a good chance there won’t be anything on it. We’ll be starting from scratch, living in huts or whatever we can build. Living off the land. We’re not getting our old lives back.”
“Well then we’ll go to an island that has houses on it, where there’s people. People who won’t be infected. We’ll go there. They’ll take us in. There have to be good people left, there have to. They can’t all be like the men at camp.”
“Between Seattle and Vancouver,” Marty sighs, lifting his head high enough to make eye contact with all of us as he’s talking, “there’s a shitload of islands, just off the coast. It’s about a day’s drive from here.”
Neil shakes his head, biting his lip but it’s not enough to silence him. “And here, is like a two hour drive from home. Look what we’ve been through between there and here. It’s taken days.”
“And half those days are because of you,” Felecia shouts, pointing an accusatory finger at Neil. “We weren’t on the same page then. But we are now. If we stick together, we can do this. Have you ever been to those islands Marty? Do you know what they’re like?”
“It’s where my older brother went, when he dodged the draft. Fucking ‘Nam. It’s wet and cold but beautiful. It’s been an age but some of the islands were settled, some were national forest. We can make it work, if we can get there.”
“Well,” Sami yells, exiting the other side of the airduct, “that’s where we’re going. All of us!”
I follow our newest comrade, knowing it’s a long shot, but what in this dead world isn’t?
“Shit, guys, if we’re going we gotta go faster,” Norw
ood screams from the other side of the shaft. “A shitload of them are climbing into the rafters, the upper part, like us, they’re not swinging anymore. Go, go!”
“I’ll secure the tunnel,” I shout back, monkey barring my way from one beam to the next with a renewed urgency. “Felecia, you and Sami guard the intersection, make sure they don’t come down the hallway the bear came from.”
“Got it,” she grunts, clinging to the support beams. “I’ll come help you as soon as the others take over for me.”
I drop from the rafters, landing on both feet I might add, in the hallway. The bodies we’ve already silenced are right where we left them. I don’t know why that surprises me, it’s been maybe half an hour, but it feels like days.
A quick peek over the edge confirms my suspicions, they’re filling the giant room. I can’t even see the floor anymore. With a constant stream of them pouring in, they’ll stack one layer on top of another until they’re three stories high. They’ll walk right across their fallen brethren like it’s nothing.
I have to fight the urge to stand here and make sure they all make it but there’s no time. I need to secure a path because if we can’t make it to the other side of the dam, there’s no island in our future, settled or wild.
The darkness of the tunnel swallows me. What the hell happened to the lights? They were here thirty minutes ago. I can’t see anything. It was bad enough the first time through, when it was just little orange bulbs sitting behind metal cages.
Wait, there we go. Nope, gone again. They flicker to life for a fraction of a second before fizzling out.
Uh oh, does this mean the power grid is failing? Is electricity about to become a thing of the past? Not now. Please not now. Just wait a couple minutes, until we make it through the dam. We don’t need long.
What’s that sound? I hear groaning. Footsteps. Shit.
They’re making their way through the blackness and I can’t see a damn thing. How many are we dealing with here? I knew I should’ve eaten my carrots, Mom always told me they’d help me see in the dark. Why didn’t I listen?
The lights flash again, like strobes at a rave.
Shit shit shit shit, not what I wanted to see! Too many, that is way too many! At least ten of them. And I’m only one of me. And one me can’t see a fucking thing!
I turn to run but crash into a wall. Okay, who in the hell put that there? Which way did I come from? I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel anymore, I must be far enough in that the curvature of the dam is blocking out what little light I should see from the turbine room.
Which way are they coming from? Everything’s echoing too much. I don’t know what way to go.
CHAPTER 9
Left? Right? I don’t even know which way is which. I can’t see anything.
Their groans and growls grow louder until they’re directly on top of me. It’s too late to run.
Someone pounces on my back, string of anticipatory saliva slapping against my ear, little bubbles popping on contact.
Teeth graze my cheek before I pull away, but her mouth follows me. Over the stench of death and decay on her moist breath, I catch a hint of whatever perfume she was wearing when this all began. Her ratty hair brushes my arm, clumped together in bloody dreadlocked tentacles.
My fingers break through the crusty layer, finally able to get a grip. Her teeth click every time she chomps down, squealing and hissing in my ear. Maybe if I can hold her by the scruff, I can toss her off like a mama cat with her kittens.
Another set of erratic footsteps charge from the front, accompanied by a low snarling as someone sniffs their way closer in the darkness. Toucan Sam follows his nose right to me as a few more pairs of feet go racing by, lost in the blackness of the tunnel.
I swing my leg in front of me while grabbing at Crusty Dreadlock’s scruff, though I’m beginning to think humans don’t have one.
My foot connects with something on someone. It felt like a knee. But still no scruff. What the hell do mothers pick up their misbehaving children by?
The lights flicker again, shorter bursts this time. I can barely make out my surroundings before we’re thrust back into black, it’s not enough time for my eyes to adjust. But it’s long enough to make out the two standing in front of me.
And son of a bitch, the three that raced by just spotted me in the fleeting surge of fluorescent bulbs.
I throw myself back, finally figuring out where the wall is. Shit, nope, that’s not it.
I lose my balance halfway across the narrow corridor, trying to keep Crusty Dreadlock’s mouth off my neck.
We crash but the wall feels softer than it should, more give than I’d expected. She lets out a manly howl that…
It wasn’t her, we rammed into another infect. He must have been standing behind us, I didn’t see him in the far too infrequent spurts of light we’re being graced with.
He gets sandwiched between her and the wall, snapping something. Pipe, bone, I have no idea, but something broke. Two somethings? It sounded like a double crack, kinda like snapping your fingers when you’re serenading a girl, acapella style, in an epic promposal that I definitely did not help Doug choreograph in the mirror.
We slam into the wall part way through my ungraceful collapse. The back of her head connects with enough force to make a thwamping noise I can hear over her incessant growling in my ear. The collision vacuums the air from her mouth in a squeaky gulp.
I’m not all the way down, my butt’s barely touching the floor, but I can’t stay here. The two in front of me are probably lunging for us already. I need to get to my feet.
My hand slams down on the, wait, that’s not the floor. Snake? If you tell me there are zombie snakes I will freak the fuck out right here, even more than I already am because fighting off rabid cannibals in the pitch black is not my idea of fun. If you throw snakes into the mix, I am officially done. Is the snake wearing clothes? Not a snake Noah. Jesus Christ not a snake!
I remove my hand from someone’s junk and aim a little lower on the leg. Was I just part of the first ever human zombie hand job? This better not be how I go down in the history books.
His knee squishes under the weight of my repositioned palm. It was his knees that broke. Crusty Dreadlock’s back must have slammed right into them, pinning him against the wall. We popped his knees in the wrong direction, like a flamingo. And I’m assuming he’s not too pleased with me grabbing his trouser snake like it was a railing.
My fingers fumble through Crusty Dreadlock’s crusty dreadlocks, trying to get a better grip so I can take advantage of the sudden impact and toss her over my shoulders. But she just won’t let go.
What’s that? I’m grabbing something. Something I wasn’t able to get a hold of before. Her scruff? Did I find her scruff? Ha, I knew humans had one!
My fingers slip through a thick slime before meeting resistance on her neck. Neck? No, that doesn’t make sense. I’m holding her head. Why is her head so soft? And squishy? Does she have a hamburger in her hair? How long has that been there? If there are maggots crawling on my fingers…
Oh my god, it’s her brain. That is her brain! She must have cracked her head open on the wall. Her skull is split, I’m fiddling around in there and she’s still not letting go.
I ram my fingers in like she’s a good little religious girl who’s feeling kinky but doesn’t want to go all the way. They slide in deeper, causing her to twitch and spasm and not in the good way like I really know what I’m doing with my magic fingers. Her grip loosens before tensing up again in lightning fast bursts.
It gives me just enough of an opening to flip her over, finally getting her off my back.
I wait to hear her smack the floor, but it doesn’t come. She lands on the two in front of me, I can tell by the sound alone. You learn things you don’t want to know in this kind of environment, like what one human body sounds like when it collides with another. We might as well be mic’d up while playing tackle football with no gear. I’ve come
to know the sound all too well.
I thrust my foot behind me, catching him somewhere in the chest. Even with flamingo legs, he’s going to get back up, I know because I’ve seen them do it more times than I can count.
With a second mule kick, aimed a little higher, I make contact with his face. Bones crunch beneath my heel. Nose? Jaw? I don’t know, it could be his throat. All I know is that’s not enough to stop him, so I kick again, causing broken shards of bone to grind against one another before a fourth kick almost knocks me over. His face collapsed. The sole of my boot just caved in whatever was left of his skull.
But the two in front are definitely moving closer. Their gurgling breaths are blowing the peach fuzz on my face that will turn into a respectable beard, despite what my dad says.
I swing my sword blindly, hoping to connect with something, anything, but a neck would be nice.
The fluorescent bulbs above us blink again, clicking and buzzing as they fail to light up the darkened corridor.
Am I seeing this right? They’re holding her like she’s a freakin’ battering ram, upside down, facing me, her dazed and confused eyes finding me before the lights fade to black again. I don’t even know if they know they’re holding her or if she just got tangled up between them in the shoulder toss.
They crash into me, her face chomping at my genitals like some kind of sadomasochistic 69 maneuver. No no no, Noah’s balls are sensitive, you stay away from those! They are not for biting!
Her overactive jaw gnaws at my bulletproof vest, trying to chew through the Kevlar. She’s a few inches too high to take a bite of Noah’s Ark and I am grateful for that, I am, but that does nothing to prevent the other two who are trying to clamp down on both ears.
I’m trapped, entombed in darkness, pinned against the wall by all three of them, my body contorted from my frantic failed swing. All I can do is hold them back with my forearms, but I can’t break free. I feel like the cool kid in middle school who had girls on both sides of him at the movies, nibbling on his ears as he munched on popcorn like it was no big deal, while I sat alone because my pansy friends were too scared to watch scary movies.
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 5