by Bible, Jake
“That’s enough, Carly,” Foster says as she walks into the workout room. “I need everyone’s attention.”
“Yes, Ms. Foster!” twelve teenage girls say in unison as they all step in line, even the one from the floor who is busy rubbing the bruise that is quickly forming on her right cheek.
“What’s up, boss?” Zorn says from the side of the room just before he pops a cracker with peanut butter into his mouth. “We gugga go hone nah?”
“Yes,” Foster says.
This gets Zorn’s attention quickly, as well as the attention of the few other men that are busy lounging against the walls of the workout room. “Where’s Joe T?”
“Killing zeds,” a Team member answers. “A horde just showed up outside. He’s with Cooper and LeRoy clearing them out.”
“Good,” Foster says. “We are all going to go help. Time you girls learned how to handle the new world. I have two days to get you ready so that we get out of here alive.”
One of the girls pulls a large knife and flips it around the back of her hand before tossing it across the room where it sticks in the wall right between the heads of two Team members. “Not a problem.”
The two Team members close on the girl, pissed at her little stunt, but she is quickly surrounded by the rest of the girls. The men back off without hesitation.
Foster can’t help but smile.
“That’s my girls,” she says. “What’s our motto?”
They all start singing the nursery rhyme, but with newer words. “The world can suck my big fat dick, big fat dick, big fat dick,” they sing in unison. “The world can suck my big fat dick ‘cause the dead ain’t gonna get us!”
“Fucking A right,” Foster nods. “Now let’s help Joe T kill some zeds. Watch your backs, watch your sisters’ backs, watch my back.”
“Yes, Ms. Foster,” they all say as they sprint for the door.
Z-DAY PLUS THIRTY-TWO.
Foster kneels by the side of the road, hidden in a thicket of rhododendrons. Behind her, concealed by the dense foliage are the rest of her Team and her girls.
Her girls.
That’s how she has come to think of them over the past thirty-two days. Once she realized how suggestible they were, she took advantage quick and made them hers. Unless someone with a will stronger than hers comes along, she has twelve girls ready to kill or die for her. A handy thing to have in the zombie apocalypse.
She has a hard time coming to terms with the whole idea of the dead coming back and walking the Earth, but that’s the reality of things. The world is in ruins and she has no intention of going down with it. All she has to do is get her girls into the Humvees then keep them safe during the travel back to headquarters.
Not that they can’t take care of themselves.
Whatever Kramer had planned for them, it included combat. All Foster had to do was add some discipline and focus to their conditioning and she had an instant fighting unit ready to do whatever she wanted. For a person like Foster it was side by side with winning the lottery.
“Engines,” Joe T says as he nods to the north and a bend in the road. “Here we go.”
Within seconds, a convoy of six Humvees come into view, each with a manned .50 caliber machine gun on top. Foster stands and moves to the side of the road and the convoy comes to a stop next to her. None of the men manning the guns even glance her way, their eyes locked on the surroundings, watching, waiting, careful.
“Hey, boss,” a woman smiles from the driver’s seat, “you’re a damn good sight to see.”
“Torres,” Foster nods. She turns and gives a low whistle. The Team and the girls all hustle from their concealment and load up into the Humvees. It takes less than five seconds. Foster hops into the passenger seat of the lead Humvee and nods. “Get us the fuck out of here, Lourdes.”
“On it,” Lourdes says, “but we’ll have to circle around Asheville. We drew a herd with us as we came down from Weaverville. They were just hanging out on one of the roads, like they were having a fucking block party or something.”
“How many?” Foster asks.
“Couple hundred,” Lourdes says as she puts the Humvee into gear and hits the gas. “We got by fine, but no way we can backtrack directly.”
“Fine,” Foster says, “just drive. We’ll get around them.”
The convoy drives.
They spend an hour trying to get turned around. The GPS in the Humvees still work thanks to the magic of satellites, but the little black boxes can’t show them where the zeds are. Or what roads are blocked with debris. There is a surprising amount of debris crossing the roads.
“This isn’t right,” Foster says, “this feels deliberate.”
“My gut has the same feeling,” Lourdes nods. “What’s the call?”
A bridge lies ahead and the convoy starts to cross it. Foster’s Humvee is the first across and comes around an immediate turn in the road. Lourdes slams on the brakes to avoid ramming into an eighteen wheeler that is parked lengthwise, blocking them.
“Get ready!” Foster shouts into the com. She barely has the words out before gunfire erupts everywhere. “Fuck!”
“Fucking ambush!” Lourdes yells as she grabs her rifle and shoves the door open.
She sprints towards the side of the road and dives into the brush just as a man comes out, a double-barrel shotgun in hand. She rolls and comes up fast, her fist nailing him in the balls. He grunts then is dropped as she sweeps his legs. Quickly relieved of his shotgun, he finds the barrels pressed up against his chin.
“Idiot,” Lourdes says as she pulls the triggers, turning the top of his head into a grey matter and blood fountain.
“Return fire!” Foster yells as she jumps from the Humvee. “Find cover!”
But there’s no cover for the five Humvees on the bridge; they are sitting ducks. The .50 calibers open up, firing indiscriminately, but soon go quiet as one by one the men behind them are taken out. It was something Foster was worried about. Sport hunters in the apocalypse. They can’t fight, but they can shoot. The Humvees, and everyone in them, are sitting ducks.
“Girls!” Foster screams into the com. “Girls! JUMP!”
“But, Ms. Foster,” one of them replies.
“Don’t fucking argue!” Foster snaps as she puts a bullet between the eyes of a man running at her. With an axe. Really? Moron. She watches him fall and her mind takes in his appearance: dirt covered, torn clothes, emaciated. Survivors. Scavengers. The dregs of the apocalypse.
Only took thirty days to go completely to shit.
The girls don’t argue and the Humvee doors fly open. Foster turns just in time to see the twelve girls briefly hesitate then leap from the bridge into the churning waters below. She can’t watch long as she feels a bullet burn past her cheek. She spins and drops the offender.
The fight lasts for another fifteen minutes before voices come over the com.
“Clear!” Joe T shouts.
“Clear!” yells Zorn.
“Clear!” Lourdes adds, as do a handful of other voices. Much less than what they started with.
Foster sprints to the bridge and looks down into the water.
“Girls!” she shouts, tapping at the com in her ear. “GIRLS!”
THE WATER LAPS AT HER face. Cold, bracing, constant.
Carly wipes the mud from her eyes and looks about. She has no idea where she is or how far she has floated downriver. Maybe the convoy is only just back around the bend. Or maybe it’s miles away. A quick glance up at the sky tells her she jumped at least three hours earlier. But were those three hours spent floating or resting or half and half?
She doesn’t know.
What she does know is she hurts. Hurts badly. She can feel cracked ribs, a swollen jaw, there’s a lump the size of Texas on the back of her head, and she looks down at her right leg as it floats in the shallows of the river, there’s a hunk of white sticking up through her pants. She knows what it is; she fears what has happened; she braces for what she mus
t do.
Carly Michelle Thornberg reaches up and grabs a branch that droops out over the water. She takes a deep breath, counts to three, and then pulls herself up and out of the river.
The pain is white hot. It envelops her and she fights to stay conscious. She loses.
The water laps at her face. Cold, bracing, constant.
Carly opens her eyes once more. The sun has gone down and her entire body is racked with shivers. Her teeth chatter so hard she’s surprised she didn’t bite her tongue off while she was passed out. The moon is out and the light glints off the white bone that protrudes from her pants. She knows she can’t stand, but she also knows she doesn’t have the strength to pull herself free of the water without moving her leg.
The pain is coming and she takes a deep breath.
“Okay, C-, uh...,” she says out loud, ready to talk herself into moving. Except she doesn’t know herself; can’t remember her name. “C something. It’s C-, uh, C-...SHIT!”
Her voice echoes along the small ravine the river has cut into the mountains. She clamps a hand over her mouth, knowing she messed up. But why? Why does she know she messed up? There’s something else she’s forgetting besides her name, something so important that a lightning strike of fear slams into her gut. She fell... She jumped? There were...others?
It’s all gone, a dark chunk of fuzz that covers her thoughts.
Another deep breath, this time silent, and she rolls all the way onto her back and sits up carefully. God her head hurts. She reaches back and feels the massive bump that has taken over most of her scalp. Just the little pressure she applies fills her eyes with fireworks and her head with broken, rusty saw blades.
More deep breaths and she pushes backwards with her hands, scooting her ass and legs up onto the riverbank. And she’s out.
The water laps at her feet. Cold, bracing, constant.
Carly hears the birds in the trees, calling to the morning sun that is knocking at her eyelids. She doesn’t want to open them. All that waits for her is pain. But that fear in her belly is gnawing at her, screaming at her, telling her she’s been lucky so far, but she better fucking move ass.
Why?
She wants to shake her head, dislodge the information that’s trapped inside there. But she knows that will mean night-night all over again. She may not know her name, or why she’s terrified, but she knows she’s hurt bad. She knows she needs help.
A war rages inside her, a war over whether she should stay quiet like her gut fear says or call out in hopes someone will find her. It isn’t a long war.
“Help!” she yells, her voice ragged and weak. She coughs up a hunk of phlegm and tries again. “HELP!”
The sound rolls through the ravine, bouncing off limestone and granite that’s hundreds of millions of years old. With each reverb, she flinches, but she’s made her decision. She knows she’ll die without help.
“Somebody!” she shouts. “Hello? Hello! Please help me!”
She carries on for close to thirty minutes before her voice is gone. Desperate, she grabs a hunk of driftwood close by and begins to smack it against the rock. It thunks deep, sending vibrations up her arm and into the water. Ripples shimmer out with every whack.
Another thirty minutes of that, switching back and forth from one arm to the other, and she’s done for. Her body can’t handle any more movement. Carly leans back against the pebbles and grit of the riverbank and closes her eyes. Just a quick rest, that’s all. Just a quick rest.
The water laps at her head. Cold, rough, scratchy. Smelly.
Her eyes shoot open. Above her, bent over and licking the blood from her forehead is a small boy. His hair is a rat’s nest of gunk and debris. The hair that he has left, that is, since half his scalp is missing.
Carly screams. This sends the boy into a snarling rage and he lurches back for a second, hissing, before he opens his mouth wide to show her broken, jagged teeth, crusted with blood and rotten flesh. She reaches above her and shoves, pushing him away, but he’s having none of that. He leaps at her, his cracked and splintered fingers reaching for her soft flesh.
Then he’s not there. Or to be more precise, his head is not there. The rest of him is and it falls next to Carly, black blood oozing from the exposed neck. Where the head was just a second before.
“Damn near got ya, girlie,” a voice says as a shadow falls across her.
Carly looks up and sees a man standing over her, a machete in hand.
“Help me,” she whispers.
“That’s what I aim to do, girlie,” the man smiles. His dental health leaves something to be desired. “What’s your name?”
“I don’t know,” Carly replies, her mind still fuzz and fluff and a humming nothing. “I’m hurt.”
“Well is your name Don’t Know or is it Hurt?” the man cackles, thinking his joke is the funniest thing in the world.
“I...I...I...,” Carly stammers then burst out crying.
“Well, shit, girlie,” the man says. “No need to blubber like that. I’s just playin’.”
He leans down close to her and Carly can see that his left eye is swollen shut and oozing yellowish liquid. She reaches up and touches his cheek.
“What happened?” she asks.
“Ain’t nothing,” the man says. “Got into a tussle. I won, but came away with this. It’ll heal up. Or it won’t.” He shrugs. “Don’t matter since I got a perfectly good one on the other side, right girlie?”
“Yeah,” she says, “you do.”
“Thank ya,” he grins. “Now how’s about we get you up outta the crick and back to my cabin? Sound good?”
“No,” Carly says, “I can’t move.”
“Can’t move?” the man asks then looks her over. He spies the leg. “Oh. That. Well, I’ll do the moving. All’s I need is for you to keep your mouth shut. It’s gonna hurt fierce, but you’s have to stay quiet. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Carly nods. She tries to smile, but her lips won’t obey.
“You having a fit?” the man asks. “Oh, never mind.” He crouches and scoops his arms under her. “On the count of three. One, two.”
He lifts and Carly doesn’t stay quiet. She starts screaming at the top of her lungs as the bone stretches the skin of her leg.
“Now that ain’t gonna do,” the man says.
The last thing Carly sees is his forehead coming at her face. Fast.
THE PAIN DRIFTS IN and out of her dreams, but it’s the smell that brings her around.
The smell of cooking meat.
“There ya are,” the man says. His face illuminated by a large fire set into a good sized stone hearth. “You been sleeping so long, wasn’t sure you’d come back alive or as one of those things.”
“One of...?” She trails off, the words unable to form from her dry throat.
The man smiles and fetches a cup on a table shoved into the corner of the room. Carly glances about and sees she’s in a small, wood cabin. A real cabin, not some prefab thing she used to vacation in. Vacation...? With who?
“You okay there, girlie?” the man asks as he lifts her head and puts the cup to her lips. She tastes the cold, clean water and sucks at it greedily. “Look like ya seen a haint.”
“Thank you,” she says as the cup is taken away. “What’s a haint?”
“A ghast, ghost, ghoulie,” the man says. “Where you from, girlie? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
“I don’t know,” Carly says, “I can’t remember anything.” She thinks for a second. “Wait, what did you mean by one of those things?”
“The dead folk,” the man replies. “The flesh eaters. Zombies. Like in them movies. The mountains is overrun with them.” He glances about the cabin. “But we’re safe here. For now. Don’t see too many up this way. Not unless some fool girl goes screaming her head off.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Ain’t no thing,” the man smiles. Carly is glad he’s helped her, but there’s something to that smile
. He cocks his head. “What?”
“I don’t understand any of this,” she replies.
“Nothing to understand. Except that you have to do what you need to do to survive nowadays,” the man nods. “Whatever it takes. But I’m used to it. Been up here for years now.”
“Are you alone?”
“Not now, I ain’t,” the man smiles. That smile...
“But you have been?”
“Nah, I’ve had company. There’s always company when you go lookin’ for it.”
He gets up and goes back to the fire. He pulls an iron poker from the fire, looks at the glowing tip, and smiles.
“You say you don’t know your name?” he asks her as he rotates the poker in his hand. “That so?”
“I...I don’t remember,” she says, “I don’t remember anything.”
“That’s good,” he says. “Very good. ‘Cause I have a name for you. It’s the name you were meant to have.” He walks over to her, poker still in hand. “Elsbeth. That’s your name.”
“I don’t think so,” Carly says, her eyes drawn to the glowing iron. “What are you doing with...? Hey. Hey! Why am I tied down?”
Carly realizes that her body is strapped to the cot she’s lying on. Before she can say anything else, the man jams a large, smelly cloth into her mouth. She tries to scream around it, but just chokes on the pungent material.
The blanket that’s covering her is torn back and Carly can see she’s completely naked. Her leg is splinted and bound, but that’s all that covers her. She looks back up into the man’s eyes, seeing the hunger there.
“Now, my sweet Elsbeth, time we made you pretty,” he says. He starts to lower the poker to Carly’s belly then stops. “Damn, if I ain’t rude. I know your name, but you don’t know what to call me.” The smile. The smile. The smile. “You can call me...Pa.”
The poker is thrust flat against Carly’s, now Elsbeth’s, abdomen and she shrieks against the gag until it is all too much.
All. Too. Much.
Pa smiles down at her as she screams and squirms and prays for it to stop.
“You know any good jokes, Elsbeth?” he asks. “I love me some jokes.”