Exhaling slowly, I tried to decide what to do. There was a chance that it would just sniff me, decide that I wasn’t on the menu, and join the others. Considering that they had no scruples whatsoever eating their own, I doubted that it would regard me as inedible. I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that I wasn’t wearing anything that could be considered protective clothing except for my boots, and I doubted that in my current condition I could deliver a good roundhouse kick—that option was a no-go, too. I could still punch, but the very idea of touching that thing without gloves made me want to retch. There was a chance that I couldn’t get infected anymore, but even that thought didn’t help. Running away wasn’t a good idea, either, as it would likely just lead to all three zombies coming for me.
That left one option—trying to intimidate it first. It had worked before—why not try that again?
I waited until the zombie was about three feet from me before I pushed myself away from the wall, hissing at it. It came to a halt, sniffing, but rather than shy away, it leaned closer—and hissed right back in my face. Foul air hit my nostrils, making me gag, and that was apparently enough to brand me the weaker of the two of us. The zombie let out a howl as it lunged for me, teeth snapping and hands clawing. I stepped back, trying to avoid it, but at the same time curled my right hand into a fist. The moment it took another step, I brought my fist up and slammed it straight into the zombie’s temple. I was rewarded with a satisfactory crunch, but unlike its living counterpart would have, the zombie didn’t even stagger back. Its hands came up, dirty, torn nails raking my arm as I pulled it back, trying to sidestep around it. Pain shot up my arm from the scratches, but it dulled compared to the rest. Exhaling sharply, I continued my retreat, but the zombie followed step by step, snapping at me whenever I made too sudden a move.
It was only when I passed the third door that I got an idea. When I was close to the next, I fumbled for the doorknob, but although it turned, the door wouldn’t open. Biting my lips to keep from cursing, I gave it a sharp twist, hoping that the combination of a cheap lock and an even cheaper door would turn out in my favor—but it didn’t. Then I heard another groan from right behind my shoulder, making me realize that they’d cornered me. Fear gave me strength—or made me plain stupid—and I slammed my shoulder into the door, the resulting crash loud enough to turn heads all over the lot. But the door gave, a small triumph. Staggering inside, I whipped around and pressed myself against the wall next to the entry. The two zombies came after me, howling—but were too slow as I pushed myself right past them and wrenched the door shut as soon as I was through. Then all I could do was to stay completely still, and wait.
It only took the zombies a few moments to batter down the flimsy wood, but by then several others had arrived from the lot. Because of the nice crashing and howling going on, they ignored the useless piece of meat right next to the commotion—me. I didn’t push my luck but instead started sneaking away slowly, moving in what I hoped was a continuous enough motion to seem uninteresting. As soon as I was sure that none of them were aware of me, I hastened my steps, until I was almost walking by the time I was parallel to the car. There was still no sight of Nate so I decided to just chance it, and ran the last remaining yards across the open ground. And because I was already panting heavily enough to bring the entire apocalypse down on me, I didn’t hesitate as I eased open the door and crept inside, closing it as silently as possible behind me.
The interior of the car stank almost as bad as the zombies outside, but I did my best to ignore it. Nate clearly had had other things on his mind than to deep-clean the seats, and it didn’t matter now. Looking all around me, I tried to gauge if any of the zombies had turned their attention to the car. A few were looking straight at it, but my maneuver with the room door turned out to be a blessing rather than a curse as the small tangle of zombies over there were much more interesting than this hunk of metal. Then my eyes fell on the road, and swallowing got a lot harder. Even with my enhanced nocturnal vision it was hard to make out anything that was farther away than three hundred yards, but I didn’t need to focus to judge that there were well over several hundred zombies coming our way. That crawling sensation in my mind was much stronger now, and it only took me a few seconds to find the two zombies it came from. And beyond them I could feel several more “pings” on the landscape of what I shouldn’t have been able to track.
I had no way of being sure, of course, but I had a certain feeling that we’d found the streak from Harristown again. Or rather, they’d found us.
Nate climbing into the passenger seat scared the shit out of me, but I tried to hash over the fact that he’d surprised me by reaching for the belt harness to buckle myself in. My heart should have been racing, but it felt sluggish rather than as if it were galloping, making my heavy breathing feel all the more at odds.
“You okay?” he whispered, giving me a concerned look.
I nodded, not bothering with an explanation. When I reached for the wheel, the moonlight hit my lower arm, the scratches dark against my pale skin. Nate made as if to grab my arm, but I shook my head. “Just a scratch.” That sentence almost made me laugh. Guess we would soon know whether I was immune to them now, or not.
Nate seemed to agree with that because his focus switched right from me to the oncoming horde. “That doesn’t look good.”
“Nope.”
“Any ideas?”
I shrugged, trying to get comfortable. “I don’t think that it matters. Whatever we do, if we’re still here when they reach us, we’re toast.”
“Run?” he suggested, snapping his own harness on.
“Run,” I agreed.
As soon as the engine roared alive, heads all over turned. My left leg protested vehemently as I stepped on the pedal, but I ignored it, kicking the car into reverse. The back bumper hit something, the entire car rocking as I backed right over it. As soon as I had enough room in front, I sent the Rover forward, accelerating as quickly as I dared. We tore out of the parking lot with a swerve around a bunch of zombies that were coming for us, narrowly avoiding most of them. One came right at me, but I plowed through it, wincing when the resulting bump shook not just the car but every single bone in my body. My vision went hazy with pain but I blinked until I could see the road properly again. A little more swerving around and we were in the open. Flooring the pedal, I sent the car into the dark night, praying that I hadn’t misjudged just how well I could see. The zombies fell away behind us, first from view, and finally that buzzing in my head stopped as well. I went another five miles before I allowed myself to relax, and finally slowed down to a less than breakneck speed, the plains around us coming into focus again.
I heard Nate exhale beside me, making me guess that I hadn’t been the only one not quite convinced of the soundness of our plan. Glancing over to him, I smiled weakly, but was sure that it got lost in the darkness of the car.
“Think that was it?” I asked, still a little winded.
Looking over his shoulder, he checked with his scope through the rear window before he nodded. “Let’s hope so.” I relaxed a little more, feeling a hint of elation slither through my exhaustion. Of course it was just like him to break the spell when he turned back to me and asked, “And now you tell me how exactly you knew that they were coming for us.”
I could have lied, but I didn’t really see much sense in that. As it was, things couldn’t get much freakier than they already were.
“I felt them,” I admitted after a long pause. “First one, coming from the back, then another down the road. I think they’re what’s left of the streak that hit Harristown.”
The look on Nate’s face was grim as I chanced a glance at him, trying to gauge his reaction. I hadn’t really expected him to freak out, but he still looked surprisingly disturbed. His tone was wry as he replied. “Guess that means we have our destination cut out for us already.” At my questioning grunt, he shrugged. “Remember that tech we recovered from that zombie? As far as I reme
mber, we left it at the Silo. And that’s exactly where we’re going now.”
Chapter 6
I had no idea how far we made it until I had to stop, too exhausted to go on. It was still dark outside, and we must have been on the move for at least two hours. Nate didn’t protest when I simply let the Rover roll to a stop and cut the engine. Cool air streamed in through the open windows—something I definitely could get used to, but still had to stop being paranoid about as well. We were in the middle of nowhere, close to a small rise that would hopefully hide our silhouette except from something standing right next to us. It was a quiet night, but the sounds of nocturnal animals going about their business let us know what we’d already guessed—we were all alone out here. Or rather, what Nate guessed. My mind wasn’t exactly capable of grasping details anymore. My leg was killing me, and while I didn’t exactly have cramps in my lower abdomen, that entire area didn’t feel too good, either. Punching that zombie in the face hadn’t helped the residual bruises on my chest, all but invisible as they were. Getting shot, not an experience that bore repeating any time soon. My temperature was down but I felt as if I was burning up again, paranoia making me twice as jumpy than I had a reason to be. Agitation and exhaustion where not two states that went together well.
After getting out and giving the area a generous sweep with his night vision scope, Nate grabbed a flashlight to check my arm. The scratches were deep and had bled somewhat during the first half hour, but now they were scabbed over and starting to heal. That was freaking me out as much as I was happy about it. Nate dabbed at the scabs to make sure that there wasn’t any dirt embedded in the wound—apparently residual bits of zombie were not good for keeping scars small—but eventually declared that he thought I didn’t need stitches. What he didn’t say was that, like me, he could only hope that I wasn’t hours away from dying again. Time would tell.
I considered starting the car again after five minutes, but my leg wouldn’t quite cooperate. There was a house about half a mile off the road, barely more than a hovel. We’d slept in sheds that were larger. Nate watched me shift tenderly for about a minute before he told me to shoot at anything that wasn’t him, got his AK and sniper rifle ready, and left for the house. It took him forever to return, although the dashboard clock insisted that it had been less than twenty minutes. Nate’s pack, previously empty except for some spare ammo, was stuffed to the brim, and he’d even went as far as juggling a six-pack of water bottles with his rifle. He dropped the water in the leg room of his seat before he went rummaging through the pack in the back, dropping a shitload of medicine bottles into my lap. “Not sure what all that is,” he offered. “I took everything that I could find. Not that I’m positive that painkillers will still work for you, but it’s worth a try.”
A lot of the loot was useless to me—blood thinners, statins; other prescription drugs that made me guess the inhabitants of the house had been elderly, or hadn’t exactly hit the genetic jackpot—but there was also a bottle of Ibuprofen and some Motrin. Nate made a joke about “vitamin M” that I didn’t get as I swallowed a handful of the Motrin pills, washing it down with what was left of our water. I didn’t ask, instead waited for the pain meds to kick in.
They didn’t.
Half an hour later I gave up and started the engine again, gritting my teeth until the worst of the pain had eased up in my leg. Nate looked ready to shoo me over into the passenger seat, but it was still pitch black out there, and we were too close to the streak to risk stopping yet. Besides, I had no idea where we were, and Nate could, at best, take a guess until we found some signs, so we just kept on going. I figured that the worst that could happen was us ending up in Canada. Maybe Canadian zombies were more friendly than ours?
The sky started to lighten in the east by the time I had to stop again, this time to follow nature’s call. Getting out of the car was much easier than getting back in, and I debated taking Nate up on his offer to take over driving. As it was, it was still too dark for him to see, and I had a certain feeling that I wouldn’t be doing too well once the sun was over the horizon. So on we went, him checking more on me than our surroundings, and me in too much pain to concentrate on anything but keeping the car on the road. It helped a lot that backwater Minnesota was about as much of a wasteland as could be.
“Take that right over there,” Nate said a while later. At my frown, he nodded toward the small access road branching off from the somewhat larger access road I’d been idling along. “Looks like it’s leading to a house. I say we stop there, at least for an hour or two. We need more water, and maybe we’re lucky and no one has raided it yet.”
I was, quite frankly, too tired to protest, so I went right ahead. There was no house, but the road led right by a small creek that was just as well for refilling our bottles. I wondered if I should have asked Nate about washing up in the small stream, but the very idea of stepping into ice-cold water wasn’t too enticing. He returned soon, yet instead of getting in on his side, he opened my door, leaning against it as he studied me.
“Wanna scoot over?” he suggested. “It’s light enough now that I can drive.” I shook my head, making him utter an exasperated sigh. “Bree, stop being so fucking stubborn—“
My harsh laugh cut him off. “Can you, maybe, for once not be such a fucking asshole?” I asked, exhaling forcefully as I stretched out my legs. “I can’t.”
“Can’t step down for once?” he asked, still angry.
I bit my lip hard, counting to ten in my head before I replied, hopefully not as sharply as I wanted to. “Can’t scoot over. Do you have to make this so hard on me? Do I have to swallow my last bit of dignity? Really?” He just kept looking back at me, daring me to say it out loud. Sighing, I sagged deeper into the seat. “Don’t have the strength left to pull myself over the center console,” I explained as I glared up at him.
The look of guilt that crossed his features made me crack a smile, but that disappeared soon enough when he picked me up, my entire body protesting vehemently. At least he tried to be gentle as he deposited me in his seat. This time I didn’t protest when he buckled me in before he returned to the other side.
We drove another two hours, half of that I spent more or less sleeping. I knew that I should have tried to stay awake, but whenever I startled, Nate told me in a quiet voice to go back to sleep. Neither of us was very happy with that arrangement, and shortly after eight he finally called it quits. There were a few houses scattered across the plain but Nate deliberately chose a small copse of trees for our temporary camp. I was asleep before the engine had cooled off completely, hiding my head in a black shirt of Nate’s to keep my eyes away from the sun.
Although I got some sleep, I didn’t feel very rested when I peeked out of my cocoon again just after noon. Nate was awake, studying the maps splayed out over the steering wheel. He wordlessly held out my aviators to me, followed by the Motrin and some more water. I took it all without comment, swishing my mouth out with the stale water once the pills were down.
“Why do I even bother with these?” I asked as I handed the bottle back to him. “They do absolutely nothing.”
“Welcome to my world,” he jeered, but softened his voice a moment later. “Strong intravenous painkillers still work. I just don’t know where to get any morphine right now.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Remember that ketamine you idiots used for the tranq gun for cattle hunting? Would have come in mighty handy now, wouldn’t you say?” The look he gave me was way too bland for his own good. “What?” I asked, not sure what to make of that.
“Actually, we had some left,” he explained.
“Had?”
He nodded. “I shot you full of it before I cleaned up the wound on your thigh. The last thing I needed was for you to come out of your coma while I was scraping bits of necrotic flesh from your femur.”
“You what?!”
Rather than look at me, Nate got busy refolding the maps. “You heard me right the first time. T
rust me, you didn’t want to be awake through that. Been there, done it, don’t exactly recommend it. Next time I’ll only use up half so you can complain later why it hurt like hell.”
I didn’t know what to reply to that, and eventually settled on a subdued, “Thanks.”
Nate’s brows took a hike up, but he acknowledged it with an equally low, “You’re welcome.” Of course he had to destroy the moment by foisting some disgusting tuna at me, but for once I didn’t feel like protesting and just munched down the food.
“Found out where we are?” I asked after chucking the can right out the window. Littering? Not on my list of concerns right now.
“More or less,” he replied. “If we head west long enough we should be good. Three to four days, depending on how many miles we make each day.” He gave me a considering look. “Or maybe five to a week. If you don’t mind, I’d rather you not drive unless you have to, at least until you feel up to it again. We can stay here until it gets a little cooler. Then we drive until full dark and hunker down in a house. Depending on how well you are, we break camp after sleeping a few hours, or once it’s light enough that I can drive safely. Rinse, repeat. Any objections?”
I shook my head, which seemed to surprise him greatly. Concern, too, which made me stretch my leg experimentally. “Just give me a day or two with some downtime and I’ll be back in the saddle,” I promised. “Just don’t want to push my luck.” I knew that I was being wildly optimistic there, but I didn’t want to consider the alternative. Then again, I should have been dead, or at least suffering from one, possibly two massive bouts of infection. Instead I was ramping up a rather considerable count of scars, but that was about it. Pain and exhaustion I could deal with; death, not so much.
Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 Page 5