by Dana Fredsti
“The bleeding’s slowing down, but her breathing is rough. And the wound is probably infected.”
“She’s a wild card,” Gabriel countered. “She can’t get infected.”
I shook my head, then realized he couldn’t see me.
“The guy that bit her... he wasn’t a zombie,” I said. “He was still alive when we found him.”
“What?” The word was explosive, like a bullet.
“He’d been bitten,” I said softly. “He said he could feel himself rotting. But he was alive, and he was eating his wife and son.”
Gabriel blanched, his skin actually turning pale as I watched in the rear-view mirror.
“Dude had to be fucking crazy,” Tony said.
“No. He wasn’t crazy.” Gabriel spoke in a carefully controlled voice. But some emotion lurked very close to the surface. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he wasn’t just crazy.”
He paused, and through the rear-view mirror I saw a play of emotions rippling across his face so quickly I couldn’t identify any of them. An instant later he’d schooled his expression back into Stoic 101. He started to speak again, but whatever he had to say got lost as the Suburban rounded a curve and headed straight for a knot of figures standing motionless in the middle of the road.
Gabriel twisted the wheel to one side in a knee-jerk reaction. As the SUV left the asphalt and veered off into the trees, I got a glimpse of the would-be road-kill Gabriel had swerved to avoid. Zombies. At least six of them, just standing there as if they’d been waiting for us.
Our truck bounced over uneven terrain and off of redwoods before hitting something, maybe a stump. It teetered for a microsecond, then rolled over and over, all of us inside thrown around like rocks in a tumbler, only without the shiny polished finish at the end of the ride.
Gentry and I had the worst of it, without any seatbelts or “Oh Jesus” handles to hang onto, our weapons flailing around as we rolled. Gentry did his best to shield me by wrapping his arms around my upper body, one hand pressing my head against his chest.
Something hard hit the back of my head, but my helmet protected me from more than an uncomfortable thonk and a little bit of brain rattling.
When we finally came to a halt, passenger side on the ground and the undercarriage pressed up against a huge redwood, Gentry and I were smushed up against the window, limbs entangled with scabbards, M-4s, and each other.
I pushed his forearm off my mouth.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded, wincing as he did so.
“Yeah, I think so.”
The SUV’s engine gave a final death rattle and cut out.
Assorted groans and little cries of pain filled the vehicle as the shock of the accident wore off enough for us to start moving around. We were all bruised and bloodied.
Shaken, but not stirred.
Shut up, brain.
“Everyone okay?” Gabriel hung awkwardly from his seatbelt, suspended sideways next to Lil, who was pressed up against the passenger door.
“Kaitlyn’s in bad shape,” Mack said, voice thick with concern. “The bleeding started up again.”
“Let’s get her out of the vehicle.” Gabriel unlatched the driver’s side door and gave a mighty shove. It swung open and then slammed shut again, gravity being what it is.
“Shit,” he said. “Lil, I’m probably going to step on you a little bit here.”
“That’s okay,” Lil responded.
He unlocked his seatbelt and fell on top of her. I heard a small “Oof!” sound, but otherwise she didn’t complain. Somehow Gabriel ended up feet first on the passenger window so he could use his height and long arms to open the driver’s door with enough leverage to insure that it didn’t slam shut again.
He pulled himself out of the SUV, then reached back in and helped Lil, as well. I heard the sound of his feet crunching on the ground as he moved around to the back of the SUV, where he popped the latch and opened the rear door, holding it up as Gentry and I slithered awkwardly out into the fog, grabbing our guns as we did so.
I hit the ground, wincing as my body protested any movement after being put through an automatic spin cycle.
“You okay?” Gabriel put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“I think so.” I gave him a brief smile.
“Good.” He reached out and touched my face, so quickly it might not have happened. Then he was all business as he leaned in the back. “Can you get Kaitlyn out through the back?”
“I think so,” Mack replied. “Tony, you go first, then we’ll hand Kaitlyn to you.”
Tony gave a grunt before squirming through the gap between the back seats and the roof, hunkering down as best he could against the side rear window while Mack and Kai slowly and carefully passed an unconscious Kaitlyn through to him.
He emerged back first from the rear of the SUV, hands hooked under Kaitlyn’s armpits as he dragged her outside. He did everything he could to hold the pillowcase, now tacky with blood, still pressed against her neck. He stretched her out on the ground as assorted thuds and grunts preceded Mack and Kai’s exit from the vehicle.
We did a quick inventory. Blood dripped from Gentry’s nose where something—probably my head—had clipped it during the roll. Tony had a gash across one cheek. We all could have used a bucket of ibuprofen, but all in all, we’d gotten lucky and escaped without any broken bones.
Kai thumped his helmet.
“Guess there’s a reason for these things after all.”
I did a quick check of all my weapons, and was gratified to find that the various sheathes and straps had held. Then I listened for any signs of movement around us. Whether it was because of the fog, or because we were alone, I didn’t hear anything.
That can’t last, I mused. Those zoms in the road aren’t that far away.
Kaitlyn groaned, eyes fluttering open.
“Wha—what?” she rasped. Mack immediately dropped to her side.
“You’re okay, sweetheart,” he said gently. “We’re getting you back to Big Red.”
She looked up at him, eyes glazed with pain and shock. And then she gave a small smile.
“You’re a liar, Postman.” Her voice was weak, but the words were clear.
Mack smiled back.
“I don’t lie,” he protested. “It’s part of the whole ‘neither rain nor sleet’ thing, didn’t you know that?”
Her eyes shut again, the little smile still on her lips.
Mack looked up at Gabriel.
“How far is it back to the campus?”
“We’re at least twenty miles out.” Gabriel shook his head. “We’ll have to call for extraction.”
“I’m on it,” Gentry said, and he reached down to his belt, then frowned, fingering a bent clasp. “Radio must have come off in the crash. Hang on, I’ll get it.” He turned back to the SUV, but Gabriel shook his head.
“Listen.”
We did. The moans of the walking dead penetrated the fog.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
* * *
The sound of unsteady yet relentless footfalls headed our way through the trees.
Gabriel tensed.
“We don’t have time,” he said. “We’ll have to run for it, find some kind of protection where we can make a stand. We’ll have to carry Kaitlyn.”
“I can walk,” Kaitlyn said faintly.
“Sure you can,” Mack said as he and Gentry helped her to her feet, supporting her weight between them. “You just can’t stand.”
The moans grew closer, the dripping fog and echoes off of the trees making it hard to tell exactly how far away they were, and from how many directions they were coming.
“This way!” Gabriel bounded away from where we’d gone off the road, the rest of us following as closely as we could, given the thick undergrowth of bushes, saplings, and vines.
Trees, trees and more friggin’ trees. It’s so easy to forget how big the redwood forests are when you just drive through them now and again. Bei
ng on foot made me aware of how very small I was, in comparison to the giants all around me, and how easy it would be to get lost.
Gabriel kept up a good pace, but made sure not to outstrip the rest of us. It would have been all too easy for stragglers to get disoriented in the fog, especially Mack and Gentry as they did their best to support Kaitlyn. She tried to walk, but was practically a dead weight between them.
A low hanging branch smacked me in the face.
I was tired, hungry, and had to pee.
My breath came in shorter gasps as the ground suddenly rose up in a steep gradient, moist pine needles and mud slowly giving way to eroding granite and rocks, all of it slippery beneath our feet. Lil sprinted just ahead of me while Mack and Kai struggled to maintain their footing. Tony and Gentry brought up the rear, helping Mack and Kai when they stumbled.
Even with our added advantages, we couldn’t go at this pace for much longer, and the moans of the undead weren’t fading off into the distance. I could see movement through the trees and fog, brief nightmarish glimpses of our pursuers. They were tracking us, whether by smell or sound or both, and they had the advantage of never getting tired or needing a bathroom break.
We needed to find shelter, and quickly.
We reached a particularly steep and treacherous slope, clumps of earth and rock crumbling beneath our feet as we clambered up, using scrub brush and trees as handholds. Lil slid back into me once, nearly sending us both tumbling back down the incline, but I managed to grab a nearby tree and dig my feet in until she regained her footing.
“Over here!” Gabriel’s voice came further up the slope. The rest of us scrambled until we finally hit level ground, and a high chain-link fence. About three feet of packed dirt and pine needles separated the fence from the slope in what looked like a well-worn path.
“This way,” Gabriel said. “There’s a house over here.”
We followed the path along the fence toward the right and the sound of Gabriel’s voice. The flat terrain was the first break we’d had since the accident. Mack’s face was red with the effort of hauling Kaitlyn up the slope and Kai didn’t look too fresh, either. Kaitlyn’s skin looked moist and the pale—almost bluish tinge—screamed shock. We had to get her inside quickly.
I moved ahead and nearly ran into Gabriel where he stood in front of a locked gate. A narrow dirt road led up to it from the woods below. Thankfully, there wasn’t yet any movement on the road. Beyond the gate I could see what looked like an adobe structure, set back against a steep tree-studded hillside, really almost a cliff.
The color of the building blended in with the rocks behind it, looking almost like part of the natural environment. The walls were gently rounded, reminding me of the hobbit houses in The Lord of the Rings, and followed the curve of a rocky overhang, which provided added shelter.
The two ends of the chain-link fence butted up against either side of the hill. Both fence and gate were at least six feet tall and had barbed wire strung across the top. To the right of the house was one of those portable garage thingies—a metal frame structure covered by canvas. Just beyond that was another, smaller, portable shelter, this one surrounded by pieces of redwood, burls and cross-sections stacked like wooden cucumber slices.
The gate itself consisted of your basic tubular bars made of galvanized steel, set too close to allow a person to climb in-between them. A thick U-shaped latch flipped down around an equally sturdy metal post on the side. A heavy-duty padlock latched the two together.
“Can you open it?” I asked as Gabriel examined the mechanism.
He shook his head.
“It’s a Medeco lock,” he said. “The military uses them because they’re nearly impossible to cut. We’ll have to climb over.”
The rest of the team caught up.
“No way we can get Kaitlyn over this,” Gentry said. He wiped sweat from his forehead as it drizzled down beneath his helmet.
“You got any better ideas?” Gabriel snapped.
A fresh wave of ululating moans rose from the trees below us. I could hear the distant sounds of zombies struggling with the same treacherous conditions we had just left behind.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have an idea.” Grabbing the gate, I started shaking it as hard as I could and yelled, “HELP! IF ANYONE’S IN THERE, PLEASE LET US IN!”
The look on Gabriel’s face was almost comically surprised. I shrugged and continued hollering. It only took a few seconds before Gabriel, Gentry, Tony, and Lil joined me in rattling the gate and adding their voices to mine.
The ruckus excited the zombies, and the volume of their hungry cries ratcheted up a level as they blundered upward through the trees. It couldn’t be long before the first ones reached us.
And then what? How long could we hold them off, even with gravity on our side? We could charge back down through the woods on the far side of the path, but it sounded as if they were coming up from all directions.
Even if we could make it past them, there was no way Kaitlyn could manage it.
I shook the gate with renewed determination, hollering at the top of my lungs. There had to be someone inside this mini-compound, damn it, and he or she had to hear the racket.
They have to help us, I thought grimly, or I swear I’ll come back and haunt them, even after I’ve been ripped to pieces and divvied up between a dozen zombies.
The moans and thrashing sounds grew closer. I took a quick peek over my shoulder and thought I saw movement through the fog, beyond some trees about a hundred yards down the hill.
Shit.
Turning back to the gate, I opened my mouth to yell again.
And froze, mouth wide as I found myself staring into the business end of a very big gun held by a very tall and very pissed-off man.
Square-jawed, dark-eyed, with graying dark-brown hair cut close to his skull, he looked about as welcoming as my dad did when he got cold-called by salespeople or Jehovah’s Witnesses. He wore baggy cargo pants, a dark green thermal shirt, and one of those photographer’s vests with tons of pockets.
The rest of the wild cards shut up, as well. The zombies, however, kept moaning.
The man glared at us.
“What the hell are you people doing here?” he demanded. “This is private property.”
That voice. Lil and I looked at each other. Pulling her up next to me, I ignored the gun barrel, and smiled brightly.
“Hi again,” I said. “Can we use your bathroom?”
Everyone looked at me as if I’d gone insane—except for Lil, who put her hands on the gate and stared up at him with the winsome gaze of a kitten trying to persuade a human to part with food.
The man looked from me to Lil, then back again. One eyebrow shot up. His eyes narrowed, then widened imperceptibly as recognition kicked in.
“Suuuure,” he said. “Come on in.” And he shouldered his gun.
“You know this man?” Gabriel didn’t sound happy.
“He’s the guy who helped me and Lil out in Redwood Grove,” I explained.
Lil nodded.
“He saved Binkey and Doodle,” she said.
Without further ado our rescuer pulled a key ring from one of the seemingly endless pockets, flipped rapidly through the keys, then inserted one into the padlock. It popped open and he quickly slid it out, and then unlatched the gate.
Before he opened it, he looked the group over, gaze lingering on Kaitlyn, who was hanging limply between Mack and Kai.
“So these are your fabled wild cards, eh?” He didn’t sound impressed.
“What were you expecting?” I snapped. “The A-Team?”
“Hell, girl, a cheerleading squad would be more impressive than this bunch.”
“I’ve known some pretty nasty cheerleaders,” Tony said.
The man snorted.
“Truth that.” His gaze raked over Lil and me again. “Hell, at least you left the cats at home this time. Binkey and Doodle...” He shook his head, but opened the gate wide enough to let us in and b
arked, “Come on, haul your asses. They’re almost here.”
“That falls into the category of totally unnecessary advice,” I told him as we stumbled inside the relative safety of the fence. He shot me a look before shutting and relocking the gate.
“Watch it, or I’ll charge you a quarter to use the toilet.”
“I’ll owe you,” I shot back.
“You already do.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I didn’t bother to try.
As our reluctant host led us to his house the first zombies reached the fence. Several of them smacked into the chain link, rattling it loudly and sending us scurrying.
“Will it hold?” Gabriel asked.
The man shrugged.
“It should. Not a lot of room for them to mass up against it, but enough zombies with enough time on their hands might bring it down, eventually. How many you figure followed you here?”
It was Gabriel’s turn to shrug.
“Hard to tell. But we were swarmed pretty heavily at Bigfoot’s Revenge. They seemed to come out of nowhere, too.”
The man rolled his eyes.
“Great. If I’d wanted to hold a dinner party, I’d have sent out invitations.” He glared at the zombies, then turned. “Well, we’d better get inside and hope the ones in front have short attention spans.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
* * *
The interior of the house was surprisingly spacious, with high arched ceilings and an airy, open feel to it.
The front door opened into a large living room on the right, a kitchen-and-dining area to the left, and a hall straight ahead with doorways on both sides and at the very end. Definitely bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, and a good thing, ’cause our host was a lot taller than your average hobbit.
“Um, excuse me,” I said, pulling off my helmet. “I wasn’t kidding—where’s your bathroom?” Mystery man looked amused.
“Down the hall,” he said. “Last door on your left, past the gunroom.” He turned to Mack and Kai, who were still holding Kaitlyn. “Let’s get her on the couch.”