Taron had reasoned that biology supported the apparent fact. Women were predisposed to have access to inner strength reserves that men did not own. A pool touched on in life when giving birth or protecting the young.
It made sense to Henry also, but the discussion on the matter was kept short, for at the end of the day, male or female, all post-humans needed to be put down.
The first woman––a younger girl, who, judging by the way her figure still held a certain pertness, could not have been long out of her teens before she died––charged at Henry. She stumbled as she swung her arms in his direction, the large chunk of flesh torn from her inner thigh sending her wide on her approach. She swiped at him, her long fingers ending in nails that still had a nicely manicured finish to them. They had been sharpened down to a fine point. Henry had seen it before. In the final days of society, salons were offering the service, turning their clients’ nails into deadly weapons. It didn’t help worth a damn.
Henry took a step back, allowing the creature to come at him again. He studied her walk and struck just as she put weight on her mangled leg. She as good as fell onto his knife, her eyes going wide in perceived shock. She fell away, black blood oozing from the neat hole in her temple.
Henry turned and saw Taron and Hector each dispatch their zeds in hand-to-hand combat. One on one, the post-humans were manageable, providing you had room to work and kept your cool. They became truly dangerous in a group.
“Are you guys all right?” Henry asked, his body tingling with adrenaline. Part of him felt guilty for the rush he felt, but he also understood it was a natural reaction to the skirmish. From time to time, he still needed to remind himself that dead was dead, and zeds were what came next. There was no getting people back from it.
“All good here,” Taron replied, checking himself quickly.
“Not a scratch on me,” Hector answered, holding his arms out for all to see.
“Of course not, I keep telling you, not even the zeds would eat a lawyer. Your meat must taste like feet,” Taron answered, smiling at Hector.
Hector rolled his eyes. “I can’t help that I’m an expert at this shit. I’ve put in way more time in building up my skills than the rest of you,” he answered.
To many, Hector was an asshole. To the group living in the shelter, he was still an asshole, but one they had known so long, that his cockiness and arrogance no longer really registered with them. If anything, they turned it around on him.
“Yeah, the rest of us were busy building this place up and stocking it with supplies. Remember that when rations start running low,” Henry added, smiling at the pair.
“Whatever,” Hector snarled. Turning, he stomped back toward the shelter.
“Oh, come on, man. Don’t be like that,” Taron called after him, trying to suppress the laugh building in his throat.
“Leave him be. It’s probably his time of the month,” Henry said, just loud enough for Hector to hear.
There had been a time when his attitude had caused friction among the group, but they had found the best way to deal with him was with humor. It would often darken his mood even more, but the overall impact seemed to expedite the entire process and bring him back around sooner.
“I don’t think so. His lips weren’t bleeding,” Taron answered.
Both men opened their mouths and drew breath with the intention of laughing, but a frantic scream for help soon had them looking back toward the trees.
It turned out that danger was an even more effective tool than humor to bring Hector around.
“It came from the south,” he said, pointing through the trees beyond the deer carcass and the dead zed that lay slumped over it.
“We need to check it out,” Taron said, sheathing his knife and grabbing his crossbow. The M4 Tactical bow was a work of art. They had all been jealous when Taron revealed the weapon during one of their last monthly meetings before things went south. The red dot sight alone made it a very popular toy.
“Nah, wait it out. They’re dead now, whoever they were,” Hector said, squinting into the trees. He tensed as if he saw something but relaxed a moment later.
“You can’t be sure of that,” Henry said, looking over at Taron, hoping he would back him up.
“That wasn’t the scream of a health hiker spotting a fucking bumblebee. That was the sound of imminent death,” the lawyer answered, his no-nonsense attitude shining through. “Why waste our time chasing a dead girl when there are enough of the posties out here to keep us on our toes.”
“Because they are people. There could be more of them out there. We can save people,” Taron said.
“You’re not in the OR now, Doc. You can’t save people out here. It’s every man for themselves. Besides, we’ve got it good here. We have supplies and space to live in semi-comfort.” Hector turned to face Taron. The pair argued like an old married couple yet were always the first to pair up when it came time to patrol. Even back when they were still just building up for the possibility of a disaster, they worked best together.
“You can’t be serious. We are talking about people. Survivors, like us. What right do we have to turn our back simply because we were prepared? I mean, good god, man, we were just playing until all of this came along,” Taron said, dumbfounded at the cold, calculating way with which Hector spoke.
Another scream rang out. “Help me,” the voice cried, the words distinguishable enough from the pain that surrounded them.
“We’re going to check it out,” Henry said, deciding for the group.
They left at a pace close to a jog, with Hector bringing up the rear. He was naturally slower than the others, given his short legs and stocky build. Far from fat, he would be described by most as simply being solid. A benefit of his Puerto Rican-Samoan heritage.
Once again, Vanessa and James stayed behind. Not because they were woman and child, but because it was their turn to guard the camp. Plus, they acted as a standby reserve should things go south, and they need a cavalry charge.
They had not moved far through the trees before they spotted the area of their perimeter defenses where the zed had pushed through the razor wire. The recent rainfall had softened the ground and its persistence had seen it work the foundations of the makeshift fence free from the mud.
They heard the steady, and now all-too-familiar slurping growls that told them a group of post-humans was ahead of them, feeding on a fresh kill.
The trees were dense in that part of the forest but not so much that you could not make a path through. The cool autumn saw the trees drop their leaves unseasonably early, and while the weather had stabilized since, the nudity of the forest increased their visibility considerably.
The forest floor sloped upward, forming as a gentle hill that gave way to a long, shallow incline into a small basin below. The higher ground served to their aid, as it hid them from the zeds’ baseline view.
Once the feeding started, there was little that could distract them, other than the scent of another meal.
“I count four,” Henry whispered, looking through the scope of his rifle.
“I only see one victim. You suppose the other got away?” Taron asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Henry replied.
“You fools are out of your mind. We don’t know these people from Adam,” Hector protested but to no avail.
Taron raised his crossbow and took aim. The red sight setting on the back of the nearest zed’s head. “This should get their attention,” he said, moments before firing.
The arrow shot forward with a quiet whoosh, covering the ground between them in mere seconds, embedding itself in the skull of its target. The post-human died without making a sound, collapsing on top of the meal, much to the perceived annoyance of its hungry brothers.
Henry and Hector advanced down the hill, with Taron keeping back to cover them from a distance.
The three remaining posties turned at the first sound of their approach. Their pale skin, painted with the deep red
of fresh blood, made them look more like a troupe of murderous clowns than the living dead.
Snarling and gargling, they announced their attack. Henry met his first one with a heavy swiping blow. Less skilled with a melee weapon than Hector, he relied on his strength and the simplicity of their opponents. His blade sliced open the zed’s distended belly, expelling a belched rush of gaseous rot. The blast rushed over Henry’s face and made him gag.
He reacted to the dead man’s fetid release by burying the knife hilt-deep in the side of the post-human’s head. It dropped to its knees, landing in the pile of cold, black offal that had spilled from its gaping belly.
Hector made short work of his post-human. The kid could not have been very far into his teens, certainly not old enough to drink in its previous life. Not that age was a factor anymore. Once they woke up, all posties had a strength that bordered on superhuman.
Still, the kid's skinny build and baggy pants, which Henry assumed were dropped close to its knees before it died, made its movements clumsy and predictable. Armed with a knife in each hand, Hector jabbed the creature once on each side, kidney shots, and that pushed it to its knees where it continued to snap and snarl like a crack whore desperate to suck a cock and earn her next rock.
Hector put the post-human kid out of its misery by slamming a blade through the top of its head. The creature fell away, and Hector immediately turned to advance on the third.
The woman, oversized in the gut and even more so in the bust, was a messy sight indeed. The right-hand side of her face was missing, stripped down to the bone. They could even see gouges in them, from where her whatever claimed her life had clearly gotten over-zealous with their bites. She also had deep wounds in her sides and across her chest.
Henry paused for a moment as he wondered about her final moments. It was clear she did not die peacefully; she knew exactly what was happening to her. He gave a sigh and drove his blade through her face and out the back of her head.
“She was mine,” Hector said, sounding disappointed.
“We’re not keeping score,” Henry said, shocked.
“We’ve got to do something to pass the time,” Hector said, smiling. It was a strange expression and reminded Henry that there was something not quite right with that man.
In all of their days prepping and preparing, the simulations they would run, and the supply checks they ran through, none of their scenarios involved the rising of the dead. Well, apart from one of their very first meetings. But that had been for shits and giggles. Yet, in all of them, Hector was the first to raise the issue of combat and taking lives. He hid it behind his role as weapons officer for their shelter, and always had an answer thought out and ready to use. A lawyer through and through.
“Guys, look,” Taron said as he moved his way down the slope to meet the others.
He pointed to the side where a clear trail of blood could be seen leading up and over the other side of the depression.
“Let’s take a look,” Henry said before Hector had a chance to complain.
They heard Hector grumble, but he followed along with them.
The three men crested the rise and did not need to look hard to see the injured person. He was on his back, reverse crawling through the woods. His leg was broken, a fact made clear by the way the foot was twisted over ninety degrees to the position of the other leg. The long shard of bone poking through the man’s mid-thigh merely served to accentuate the injury.
“Help me,” the man screamed.
“Quiet, you fool,” Hector snarled, scanning the trees. “He’s going to be like a fucking flare for those things.”
“He’s scared and hurt. What do you expect?” Taron asked, moving off toward the man.
“I expect you to have some common fucking sense,” Hector replied, once again following the two men, in spite of his protestations.
“Guys, watch for any zeds. I need to take a look at this. We can’t move him without a stretcher or some kind of splint,” Taron said, dropping to his knees.
“We can’t help him, period,” Hector growled, but took his blades and turned to watch the trees.
“Ignore him, he’s a lawyer. They’re all assholes,” Taron said, eliciting a strained smile from the injured man. “Bite down on this. I need to clean your leg, and well, I won’t lie to you, it’s going to hurt.”
Taron grabbed a leather strap out of his pack, folded it double and placed it in the man’s mouth before he had a chance to say anything else.
Taron grabbed his water bottle and washed the bleeding limb. The man cried into the belt, his face turning a deep shade of red. Sweat poured from his face.
“Easy, easy,” Taron whispered, as he poured more and more water onto the wound.
The man offered no response, but his face paled visibly, and his eyes rolled back into his head momentarily.
“Hurry up, I think we’ve got company coming,” Henry said, switching from his knives to his rifle.
“I’m going as fast as I can. This is nasty,” Taron said, understating the task he knew faced them. “Even if I clean this up, we need to make a splint and get him back to the shelter. I have more supplies out there.” Taron swapped his water bottle for a pack of bandages.
“We’ve got company,” Henry called, taking two quick shots to put down the first two zeds that emerged through the trees.
“Oh crap,” Taron said.
“Let us worry about them, you just work on him,” Henry said.
“No, I mean oh crap, look at this,” Taron said, looking up at the others, and then beyond them at the approaching group of zeds.
Taron pulled up the man’s shirt and showed them the bite mark on his side. The wound was not deep but did not change the fact that the man was going to die, or that Hector was right. They needed to leave him behind.
“Shit, we wasted time on a dead man,” Hector snapped. “I told you.”
“Hey, we tried. We did the right thing. We have bigger problems now,” Henry said, pointing at the encroaching zeds. They easily numbered into the double digits, and moved like a flood, fleeing, rather than hunting. Their growls hung in the air like the rumble of a propeller aircraft flying low overhead.
“What are we going to do with him?” Taron asked, looking at the man who was staring at him with wide-eyed horror.
“This,” Hector said, stabbing the man through the temple without as much as a pause for final words.
“Jesus Christ,” Taron cried out in surprise.
He shot to his feet, realizing his mistake immediately when the post-human flood turned and headed their way.
“Shit, we need to get back to the shelter,” Henry said, turning to retreat.
While they had been busy tending to the wounded man, the zed flood had surrounded them; closing like a spreading fire, they inadvertently encircled their newly discovered prey.
There was no room for them to head back the way they came. Instead, they needed to move through the forest and the open areas that lay beyond. The other option being to engage the group, which none of the trio felt any inclination to do. Being vastly outnumbered by a horde of the undead did not promote an optimistic feeling of survival.
Taron set off toward the closing gap, knowing that not only did they need to make it through, but do so without drawing any more unwanted attention to themselves. Henry followed, with Hector bringing up the rear, dragging the dead body with him.
“What are you doing?” Henry asked, watching as Taron increased the distance between them.
“Saving our asses,” Hector said, his accent coming through stronger when he was stressed.
He dropped the body and pulled out his knife. With a quick, sure motion, he slit open the man's belly, spreading the incision until everything that belonged on the inside leaked through to the outside. The rush of warm blood and innards tainted the air with a heavy, coppery aroma.
“We need to talk about this later on,” Henry said, worried by the ease with which Hector did what he did.
“Sure thing, but don’t tell me it didn’t work. Look,” he answered, pointing to the zombie group that was closing in on them, the tantalizing aroma of fresh meat drawing them in.
“Just run,” Henry said, unwilling to admit that Hector was right.
They hurried off in the direction Taron had moved. He was no longer in their direct line of sight.
They broke away from the main group of the undead and soon found themselves following a hiking trail. The forest was filled with them, each one conveniently marked with colored placards.
They caught up with Taron, who, having noticed their lack of presence, turned and set up a watch, taking out three post-humans that had been stumbling away from the rest of the group.
“What happened? We had a clear run!” Taron asked when the pair finally appeared from one of the trails.
“We baited them,” Hector said. “Let’s get back to the shelter.”
“We can’t go back that way. There are too many of them,” Taron said. “I’ve never seen a group this size before. It’s like a goddamned herd.”
They pushed on, following one of the trails, away from the group. Even with the main body behind them, the number of strays they came across was more than they had seen in the previous weeks combined. More than they had seen since leaving the city.
“Do you guys smell that?” Taron asked as he pulled an arrow out of the head of a heavy built zed. He had carried on walking a few paces even after the arrow had penetrated its skull.
“Fire,” Hector and Henry answered in un-choreographed unison.
They broke into a run, sprinting past the lone posties, the fear of an inferno overriding the danger of a few lone zeds.
“Honey, get inside, lock the place down and whatever you do, don’t go outside,” Henry spoke into the walkie-talkie as they stopped to rest just on the edge of the trees.
“They are already in the camp,” Vanessa answered, her voice hushed. “Everything is secure, but you can’t come back, not yet, there are too many of them.”
Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct Page 64