by Adams, Lucia
I faced forward and lined up the closest zombie in our path. The shot blew it in half as well as two others behind it. We ducked a shower of body parts as the quad bumped over their lower remains. After checking ourselves over for any spray or chunks, Sharon leaned over and punched my shoulder.
“Good God, Gerry. What part of ‘transmitted through blood’ did you not understand?”
“OK,” I said. “So shooting forward wasn’t the best idea.”
I tapped Lucia on the shoulder as we entered the clearing surrounding the lodge. “Let me off near the lodge, then swing around and lure them toward the booby traps.”
Lucia slowed, but before I could jump down, Sharon grasped my arm, then nodded toward the lodge. I nodded back, and she slid past me and hopped down from the quad. She shot a zombie standing between her and the lodge then ran up the steps, killing two more as she went.
“OK,” I said to Lucia. “New plan. Get this thing moving while I find you a gun.”
CHAPTER 46
Sharon
We managed to thin the herd out significantly. Bodies lay in piles like soldiers on some forgotten beach. Several more zombies were rolling around on the ground, still trying to get to us even though they lacked body parts. I had a theory about zombie parts.
When I was a little girl, I watched my grandmother wring the neck of a chicken. It flopped around the yard for well over an hour. She told me that if you damage the brain, the body won’t do that, but it was a lot messier. I was horrified by both notions and refused to eat the chicken for dinner that night.
I suspected that it was much the same for zombies. Shoot the brain, the body dies. Cut the parts off, and the virus will still animate those parts for a short while after they are separated from the body. I hadn’t tested my theory so far, and at the moment it wasn’t my primary concern—getting to the lodge was. Paul was in there with the kids. I was praying they were okay. I would have run in there by now, but I couldn’t leave Lucia and Gerry to face the undead horde alone.
The sound of gunfire ricocheted in the mountains like the rumble of distant thunder. I glanced over to Gerry and nodded towards the lodge. He nodded back. I jumped out of the trailer and ran knowing he’d keep watch and pick off anything that might come up behind me.
My boots sounded on the wood planks of the porch. Shattered glass was spread everywhere and glinted like diamonds in the late day sun. Three rotting corpses were piled before the front door. Dead for the second time, and for good. I slung my rifle onto my back and pulled out my handgun.
“Paul?” I shouted. “Can you hear me? Kitty?” I heard a grunt, then a crash and what sounded like pissed off Irishman. I grinned. If he was swearing, he wasn’t dead.
“Paul?” I called again.
“Yeah?”
“Everyone okay?”
“Yes,” he shouted back. I sighed in relief.
“I’m going to go around to the kitchen. Don’t shoot me.” I hopped off the porch and ran around to the back of the lodge. Gerry and Lucia were going from trap to trap, re-deading the corpses that didn’t have the decency to stay dead.
The windows over the sink, those that we didn’t board up because we thought they were too high to be a threat, were broken. A large woman had lodged herself in the frame. The hem of her dress flapped in the breeze, displaying her ‘Tuesday’ underwear to all of creation. I nudged her with the Glock. She didn’t move.
The kitchen door was locked. I pounded on it. “Paul? Kitty?” I yelled. “Let me in.” I heard more shuffling and then the sound of a bolt being thrown. Paul peered back at me though the crack.
“Are you bitten?” he asked.
“Nope. You?” I asked, scanning him for any signs of bites or scratches. He winced, but he had just fallen out of a plane. It was to be expected that he would be in pain. “You said the kids are okay,” I said as I walked into the kitchen.
The woman hanging in the window may have once been pretty. It was hard to tell, as she didn’t have a face. It was as though the skin had been peeled back, revealing putrid muscles and veins that would have pulsed with life. Now they stretched across her face like abandoned highways. Empty. A testament to life long gone. An eyeball hung from its stem, dripping fluid into the sink. I shuddered and looked away.
“The kids are fine. Locked in a room upstairs,” he said as he closed the door behind me.
“I’m going to go check,” I said. “You okay?” He nodded and waved me on. I turned and ran up the stairs to my room. The door was locked.
“Kitty? Parker?” I said. “You two okay?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. No one’s bitten.” Kitty said. “Are you bit?” she asked.
“No,” I said. I heard the door unlock, and then Parker launched himself at me, almost knocking me over. I hugged him close, enjoying the feel of him in my arms. I glanced up to see Kitty swipe a hand over her eye and looked away before she realized I saw.
The gunfire had dwindled down to just an occasional shot, but the feeling of unease was palpable. “I’m going to go check on Paul, Gerry, and Lucia…” I let my sentence trail off. I didn’t want to pester her with questions. This was a new world, and the old rules were gone. She wanted to be an adult, had to be an adult, and I’d extend her the courtesy I’d give anyone else.
“We’ll stay here,” she said, seeing my need to keep them safe and my hesitation to ask her to hide. I nodded and walked away, hearing the sound of the door locking behind me. The tension in my shoulders eased a bit.They’re safe, for now, I thought, and trotted down the stairs to see Lucia and Gerry coming in from the kitchen. Paul was sitting on the sofa. Lucia walked over to him. He said something to her about his back; she ran her hands down his spine, frowning, searching for the cause of whatever was bothering him.
“You left this in the cart,” Gerry said, handing me the worn case that we had trekked out into the cold to find. I was on my way downstairs to get it and was glad that I didn’t have to venture out in the killing fields that was once serene wilderness.
“Thank you,” I said, taking the case from him. I had planned on picking the lock, but my adrenaline was still thrumming through me, and I didn’t have the patience for it.
Wandering into the kitchen, I found a sharp knife and ran it along the seams of the leather, popping the threads of the stitching. The case I had been given was steel, and I wondered why they used leather to transport important materials. But like everything else, things had changed and this was likely the only case they had.
I couldn’t stand being in the same room with Tuesday hanging in the window, so I walked back to the dining room where my laptops sat. I managed to work open a seam on the side of the case.
“Gerry?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have a flashlight?” I couldn’t see into the case and was hesitant to reach my hand in. I didn’t know if the case was booby trapped, or I would have just dumped the contents out on the table.
He walked over and clicked on the light that he held in his hand. I pulled the seams apart. “Do you see anything in there?”
“Just papers and a flash drive,” he said, shining the light around the corners of the case, just to make sure. I nodded and shook the case. A stack of clipped papers slid out, landing with a thud. I caught the cool metal of the thumb drive. The sun glinted off the shiny case. I wondered what secrets it guarded.
Lucia called to Gerry, and he walked away as the smell of coffee filled the air. I heard her say something about helping her get a body unstuck and assumed she meant Tuesday. I certainly didn’t plan on using the kitchen until she was gone. But for now, the thrall of what I held in my hand captured me. All else faded away.
I powered on the laptop and inserted the flash drive in a USB port. A request for a security code popped up. I typed in mine and was relieved when it was accepted. The drive was huge and held over 100 gigs of memory. Thousands of files fanned out before me. It would take me days to read them all. I browsed through the headings, fou
nd one labeled “Darwin” and clicked on it.
Inside were journal entries from the research facility in Greenland. I started to skim through and then stopped, stunned by what I was reading. My breath left me in a rush as the origin of the virus was laid out before me.
They had found several seals that were exhibiting rabies-like symptoms. The animals were destroyed and samples tested. The virus was isolated and tests were run. They could not understand why the virus did not behave like they thought it should, and so they injected it into a couple of the lab monkeys and quarantined them.
The test animals began to exhibit symptoms later that night. A notation was made that only one tech was on duty as the wife of the other tech was in labor. A report from that technician said he fell asleep around 2 a.m. and awoke to several students who had broken into the lab to ‘liberate’ the animals. They shoved the tech into a closet and unlocked the cages of eight animals. I remembered the state that Tate had been in when he bit Mindy. Dread filled my heart as I read on, knowing what was about to happen.
Three of the students were brutally attacked. A fourth was so badly mauled that she died less than an hour later. The technician reported hearing screaming from outside the closet. He happened to have his phone with him and called Security. The research facility went into lockdown, and the students were detained.
I read an entry that said, “Female: age 18. Cause of death: brain aneurism.” It listed her resurrection time as less than fifteen minutes after she died. The researcher noted that the body was still warm when she rose.
They had not been expecting that, as none of the test animals had resurrected. The technician, newly rescued from his closet, was her first victim. One of the security guards put her down, and the tech, whose name was never given, was put in a holding cell. They labeled him simply as ‘Test Subject One’. The world’s first captive zombie.
The students that orchestrated a rescue became prisoners themselves. The ones that had been attacked but not killed were treated and watched as symptoms progressed. And when they died, the researchers were prepared. Detailed notes were kept about each subject’s death and subsequent resurrection.
I sat back, dumbfounded. I had been told that Malik Hauksson was Patient Zero, but that was not the case. They had these three students locked in their facility for well over a month before Hauksson went on the seal harvest. In their zeal to harness the virus, they didn’t keep careful watch of the seal population or keep track of any animals that might be exhibiting symptoms. If they had, Hauksson would not have been bit, and the world would not have died.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. I closed the file and went back to the index. There was a file named ‘Rapture’; it was odd enough that it caught my interest. I clicked on it and found a list of names. Next to each one was a job description and an address. A third column indicated if they were living. Most of them weren’t. As I scrolled down, I found my name. My hand began to shake.
The Rapture is a Christian term. It is supposed to happen during the second coming of Christ. A few will be taken, while others are left behind, I think it says. Clearly, this file was a list of people who were supposed to be secured. Where we were to be taken, I didn’t know. But I did know that this list did not bode well for me.
I noticed that a few of the names had asterisks next to them. There was one next to mine. I hovered the cursor over that symbol and a note popped up. ‘Location unknown, presumed living, liability’.
“Liability,” I read out loud.
The light in the corner of my laptop that had started flashing when Kitty hacked into the weather system changed color and became solid green. I frowned and watched as a second cursor appeared on my screen. It began to select files and delete them.
“Oh, no…” I gasped, jumping up from the table.
I felt frantic and wanted to throw the laptops out the window like the bombs I perceived them to now be. “This is bad. Very bad.”
CHAPTER 47
Paul
The cavalry came coasting over a snow clad hill on a quad bike. Parker was jumping up and down on the bed and laughing, I suspect, at the giant squirrel rider. Kitty and I looked at each other and grinned. The relief passing between us was palpable.
“You did good,” I said as the sound of gunfire drowned out the groans of hundreds of the walking dead. She dropped her eyes and her cheeks reddened.
I hauled myself up at the sound of Sharon’s voice calling to us. Before I could answer, I tripped on a discarded toy, which sent a spasm up my back. I fell against a bedside locker, and a vase fell to the floor and shattered.
“Paul?” Sharon called again.
“Yeah,” was about as much as I could manage, grimacing with the pain.
“Everyone okay?”
“Yes.” That was a lie. “Wait here,” I said to Kitty and started for the door.
“Paul?”
“Yeah?” I said, turning.
“Is this what it’s going to be like… forever and ever I mean?” Kitty was looking me straight in the eye; I could see her holding back the tears.
I didn’t know what to say. She was a smart kid and had been through more than any person, let alone a teenager starting out in life, ought to. I wasn’t sure what sort of reassurance she wanted from me. To lie? What was the truth anyway? I sure as fuck didn’t know. The world we were headed into didn’t have proms and sweet sixteen parties. There’d be no first dates to the movies and hanging out at the mall with her friends.
“I don’t know, kiddo. We’ve survived so far, and I’ll let you in on a little secret, so long as you swear not to tell anybody. I ain’t Bear Grylls, so if I made it this far, you can be sure there are a hell of a lot others out there who did too. We’ll find them or they’ll find us, and together we’ll form a community. So no, it won’t always be like this.”
I could hear footsteps on the porch below. “I’m going around to the kitchen. Don’t shoot me,” Sharon called up.
“I gotta…” I pointed downstairs; Kitty nodded and pulled Parker close to her. “Lock this door after me.”
After I let Sharon in the back door, she ran up the stairs to check on the kids. I hobbled into the main living area and fell into a sofa. When Gerry and Lucia followed in, I could see Gerry was carrying Tompkins’ leather satchel and a seriously big fucking gun. They’d found what they were looking for then. To be honest, I hadn’t the energy to ask.
“You look like you’re in pain,” Lucia said. There was genuine concern on her face, which was kind of touching, considering we didn’t know each other from Adam. Maybe that pile of shite I’d just said to Kitty wasn’t that far off the mark. If enough people cared, maybe there could be life again.
“I don’t think I’ll be lining out for the Dubs this season,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I half grinned, half grimaced.
“Let me take a look.”
Sharon came back down the stairs and took the satchel from Gerry while I closed my eyes, letting the conversation wash over me. My mind wandered to home, rolling green hills, and girls dancing a jig at the crossroads… yeah right, bollocks to that. A post-apocalyptic city. The streets choked with abandoned cars, trucks and buses, where dead people walked around trying to eat live people. I’d never see it again; I knew that with complete certainty, and to be honest, I didn’t want to. Again, I wondered if Mrs. Watson had the right idea when she flung herself from the apartment building. That seemed like such a long time away, a lifetime ago. That vision had haunted me every day since her graceful leap. It was beautiful in a macabre sort of way. I could nearly set it to music.
“Hey! That sounds like the helicopter we heard earlier,” Gerry’s words cut into the hellish vision of home I had been dwelling on.
“It passed over here earlier. I tried to get their attention, but they either didn’t see me or ignored me, and then I got distracted by a zombie invasion.”
“Sounds like it’s coming back.�
� Gerry hopped up and made for the back door. I followed a lot slower. Lucia took my elbow and dragged me out of the sofa. It made me giggle through the pain. Then I noticed the cut on her head.
“Hey, you’re bleeding.”
“Fuck!” She put her hand up to the cut, and the tips of her fingers came away red.
“Hey! You sons of bitches. Over here!” Gerry was jumping and waving. Lucia and I added our voices to the call when we made it outside. Everywhere I looked, dead people lay—dead people made proper dead this time.
“It’s coming this way,” Lucia said excitedly.
“It fucking is ’n all,” I added.
“I guess they did notice you. It’s hard to miss a jumping leprechaun,” Gerry grinned.
“Yeah, hopefully there won’t be another zombie horde leading the way this time.”
“What do you mean?” Lucia asked.
“I dunno, I just had a stupid notion that the helicopter had somehow herded the last one towards us. Stupid, I know.”
Lucia’s eyebrows wrinkled in consternation. Sharon appeared at the door then. She was waving, but the sound of the helicopter drowned out the words. I waved back. Then the world went to hell in a hand basket.
The helicopter raked the yard with machine gun fire. A trail of turned up earth and snow railed past me. Twin tracks of gunfire punctured holes in the Mustang and exploded the tyres.
“Oh, Sharon’ll be so pissed,” Lucia said.
“I’ll buy her a fucking new one. Run!” Gerry was the first to react to the situation. My brain was taking its time computing that our rescuers were trying to kill us. He returned fire with the heavy machine gun he’d salvaged from the plane, then ran towards the quad and snatched a green, metal case from the trailer.
We all ran in different directions. Headless chickens sprang to mind, certainly in my case as each way I ran was cut off by more gunfire. I eventually made it to the tree line and ducked down behind some cover.