Orlando had hesitated, unsure whether to stay put as he’d been told to by Lois, or to follow after Stu, who was certainly up to no good. After a brief moment he decided to follow him. Stu had not gone far into the dark and not thirty paces from his chair Orlando caught up to the man.
“You get right back in that…” Orlando started, then he too jerked, not so much at seeing Jillybean because he could not quite make out her features, but of seeing anyone at all. “Who is that? Wha—Jillybean? How the hell did you get out of your cage?”
She seemed small, too small to frighten a big man such as himself. Also he didn’t see the black M4 across her back or the pure malevolence in her eyes. If he had, he wouldn’t have been so relaxed in his superior masculinity. But, as it turned out, it was Stu he should have been more wary of.
Unexpectedly, Stu swung his rock-hard fist, aiming for the man’s cheek. He missed his mark because of the dark, and ended up giving Orlando a great clout on the ear. Stu had put a great deal of his strength into the punch and although it didn’t hit where he wished, he still managed to stun Orlando and drop him to his knees, where upon Stu promptly hit him again square in the back of his head.
This turned out his lights. Stu gave his shoulder a bit of a shake and hissed, “Orlando?” in his ear. He didn’t stir. Stu began to get up when he saw the shadow of Jillybean’s M4—the shadow of its barrel—pointed at Orlando’s head.
“Just stop,” he said, pushing the barrel away and getting to his feet. Eve’s fury blazed at him, obvious even in the dark. “I know you aren’t going to shoot so why bother pointing the gun.”
“I might shoot. I am craaazy. I could do anything.”
“Maybe you are crazy, maybe you aren’t, but one thing you’re not, is stupid. You’ll wake up the entire complex if you shoot and then where will you be? Strung up by the neck in ten minutes. Is that what you want?”
She was about to answer in a proper and cruel manner when he snatched the M4 right out of her hand in a quick move. “You can have it back when you have learned some manners.”
“Manners?” she cried in outrage. “How’s this for manners?” She attacked him, all claws and teeth. She had never been a fighter in the direct way and he easily spun her about and pinned her arm behind her back.
“Stop. Do you hear that?” Her cry had been loud enough to wake the living and the dead. Someone murmured in one of the apartments while out beyond the fence and the forest of spears one of the dead let out a howl. The sound raised an army of goosebumps on Stu’s arm.
The cry was taken up by others, many of them down the hill in the direction of the harbor and the Saber. They were loud but not close, though that would change quickly.
“Come on,” he hissed, grabbing the M4 that Orlando had dropped. They had less time than even he supposed. Stu had just straightened when Orlando put out a hand, feeling the ground and not understanding the cold and the damp, or the thumping in his head or why his eyes refused to focus.
Now, Stu really did grab Eve’s hand, holding it with near-crushing force. Eve was still spitting-mad. “Let go of my…” He gave her hand a hard yank, pulling her along so quickly that she was almost thrown off her feet and only their momentum kept her upright. She tried to resist, thrusting out stiff legs, but he was far too strong and she slid along as if she were skiing, up until one foot hit a rock. Then she was stumbling again.
“I was just having a little fun, damn it!”
She was loud, her voice carrying through the night. Behind them, Orlando had gotten to his knees and although he was still reeling, he was slowly putting the broken pieces of his recent memory together. They were big, clunky chunks of memory, like a toddler’s puzzle set: he had been with Stu. He had been with Stu and going back to his apartment. Going back to his apartment because Stu was in trouble. Orlando was mad but he couldn’t remember why. Then everything went blank from there. “He knocked me out, that son of a bitch!”
Standing at her open window, Jenn heard everything, from the curses to the zombies, to Eve’s blundering steps. She pieced together that somehow Jillybean had escaped from the shed, and that if they didn’t move quickly, she would get caught.
“Get the bags!” she said in an urgent whisper to Mike. He slung the duffle-bag and grabbed two backpacks, while she snatched up hers and Jillybean’s. Since there would be no coming back, they were heavy, filled with all the food Jenn had left.
They flew down the stairs, just as Stu hauled Eve out of the deeper shadows. The girl was practically foaming at the mouth.
“What the hell are we going to do with her?” Mike asked.
“We’ll turn her back,” Jenn said. “Eve, what’s seven times nine?” Eve snorted at the lame attempt. Jenn was about to throw out two more numbers and whether they had any sort of relationship with each other she had no idea. “Five times…”
“The girl has escaped!”
This was cried in a half-shout, half-whisper from Dango who was all the way over at the shed. It carried easily through the night. It galvanized the four of them, Eve included. Yes, she was mad and thoroughly evil, but she also had a streak of self-preservation a mile wide.
Stu, still with his hated fingers crushing her wrist, led them to the back of the complex to where there had once been a drainage ditch. Years before, it had been torn out and had been improperly filled leaving a small gap.
Stu had used the gap to sneak from the complex one too many times; Orlando’s friend, Dave Small, had been lurking in the dark waiting for him.
Dave had heard enough of the whispers and cries and all the running about to know a break-out was happening. He readied himself behind his gun, thinking he would be the hero. He was just a few months past his thirtieth birthday but felt far older than that mainly because he smoked liked a chimney, rolling his own tobacco leaves, of which he was perpetually in short supply. During the later months of winter, his insatiable habit forced him to add anything he could find to his cigarettes: grass, pine needles and even oak leaves.
He would smoke anything and it was killing him. A look into his lungs would have found them half-eaten away and the rest was covered in a grey/green film that he hacked up with alarming frequency. Traces of it could be seen on his collar and sleeve.
The harsh smoke from his last fag hung in the air. Stu missed the dirty smell, but Jenn and Eve did not. Practically at the fence, Eve spun, while Jenn, who was still on the dirt path stopped with Mike thudding into her from behind.
“Just hold up right there,” Dave said in a phlegmy whisper. He held an unwavering M4 on Stu and Eve. “Don’t touch any of them, hrrggh, guns.” He had scraped up some of the gunk from his lungs and now spat it out. He had turned to the side, but still didn’t see Mike and Jenn who blended into the shadows in their tattered ghillie suits.
Mike eased out from behind Jenn. Too late she realized that he was going to try to attack a man armed with a gun while he only had a hunting knife. Desperately, she shook her head, but he ignored her. He had the advantage; all he had to do was cross ten feet of dirt without making a sound.
His feet, which had always been a bit too big for his body, betrayed him. After only three steps, a sunbaked dirt clod went bopping away from his boot as he tripped.
In what felt like slow motion, Dave turned, swinging his rifle around in a long arc. Mike reacted without thinking, dodging down and away as Dave pulled the trigger in a flash and a roar of thunder.
He hadn’t meant to pull the trigger. When he heard the sound behind him, his heart had jumped in his chest and before he knew it he was hauling the gun around—then he was struck from behind by Eve who flung herself on him like a hellcat, her claws tearing at his eyes.
The gun went off as he went sprawling in the dirt with her on top, still doing everything in her power to blind him. To save his eyes he had to give up the gun and grab her wrists. As small as she was, he couldn’t get her off him. It was Mike who pulled Eve up and although she might have saved his life, he didn’t
pick her up gently. They didn’t have time for gentle.
He yanked her up, pinning her arms to her sides while at the same time, Stu bent and snatched the M4 from Dave. “Let’s have any extra ammo. Come on, quick…” Stu stopped as he saw a new shadow draped along the path they had come from. It was a shadow that didn’t make sense. It was oddly dappled with lighter flecks worked into a dark background. And the shape was long and narrow and…
“Jenn!” he whispered as he realized what the shadow really was. Forgetting Dave, he rushed to her and saw the blood gushing from her head. “Oh God! Jeeze. How did this happen? How…”
He spun and glared at Dave Small with such fury that Dave cried out, “I didn’t mean it, honest.”
Stu was nearly out of his mind, not only afraid for Jenn, but also with the likelihood of getting caught. The entire complex was awake now and where it was usually shrouded in a numbing quiet, he could hear people hissing back and forth at each other, and there were people rushing around in the dark, stumbling and cursing in high voices that carried over the wall.
The dead had to have heard the gunshot. They couldn’t have missed it and Stu was sure they could hear the commotion. He could picture dozens of filmed-over, grey eyes fixed on the hilltop. Almost as if the dead were in sync with his thoughts, a new howl broke the night. It was followed by more howls and then screams and moans. The dead were coming and by the sound of it there were more than enough to destroy the fence, and kill everyone inside.
For just a moment Stu was overwhelmed by all of this and he froze, not knowing what to do or which way to turn; there was danger all around them, mere seconds away and it seemed to him that any decision he made just then would only make things worse. Should he run? Should he hide? And when the dead came should he fight or slip out while everyone was busy getting killed? How was he going to…
He jumped as Jenn let out a soft moan and brushed his arm with a fluttering hand. She was alive. As though she were one of the dead coming back to life, Stu jerked away from her.
Before he could recover his wits, Mike was suddenly at his side. “What happened? Oh, she’s shot! She’s shot!” He had dropped Eve who immediately went scrambling under the fence. Stu rushed to snatch her foot as it was just about to disappear under.
He caught it and pulled her halfway back, kicking and cursing. Before he could get her all the way to their side of the fence. Dave took off running. Stu let Eve go and started to run after him only to stop after a few feet—Eve was squirming back under the fence and in a blink, was gone.
“Forget that guy,” Mike snapped. “We need Jillybean to fix Jenn.” He grabbed one of the M4s, two backpacks in one hand, took hold of Jenn’s coat in the other and dragged her to the low spot. He went under first then pulled her through. He whispered, “Ah crap. You better hurry, Stu.” In the woods beyond the spears there came a great deal of rustling of leaves and cracking of twigs interspersed with the long, hungry moans of the dead. It sounded like an army was coming at them.
Quickly, Stu shoved the duffel bag through and then crawled after, dragging two M4s along with him. Jenn, kicking out in her semi-consciousness, planted one on his cheek, leaving dusty tread marks but not really hurting him. She was making a raspy sound deep in her throat as her eyes fluttered.
“Do something about her,” Stu whispered. The little sound she was making had attracted one of the dead: a seven-foot tall female with only a single swinging breast and a deformed head that was straight flat in the back. It paused, staring, swaying slightly trying to make up what was left of its mind as to what the odd blobs were next to the fence and what the sound had been.
Mike gently put his hand over Jenn’s mouth, but this only caused her to moan louder.
The beast let out a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a shriek as it charged straight into the forest of spears, impaling itself on three of them. This barely slowed it down. Although it was only four-hundred pounds or so, the spears snapped like twigs as it forced itself on.
With every other step more spears stabbed up into it until its breast was punctured and her bowels ruptured. Black blood flowed and yet it didn’t seem fazed in the least as it began swinging its arms, swatting the spears aside. It came on so fast that Stu only had time to click one of the M4s from safe to fire and sight down its length.
It was so dark that he could barely see the end of the black barrel so that his aim could only be considered an approximation. The creature was little more than a monstrous shadow and shooting at it was almost the dumbest thing he could do, but what choice did he have? If they tried to escape back under the fence, the creature would certainly attack it and that would make even more noise and attract even more zombies. The complex was already ringed by them; there would be nowhere to run and few places to hide.
Stu waited until the last moment to fire, but just before he did, the beast tripped over one of the spears and as it fell, another spear transfixed its neck in a manner that would have killed a normal human in seconds. It did not die that fast. It wiggled and gurgled, not knowing what was happening to it as blood gushed down the shaft of the spear.
They couldn’t wait for it to die. Mike began crawling, pulling Jenn along by the strap of one pack. When he passed the beast, it ripped open half its neck to stare at them. As they were both in ghillie suits, it couldn’t decide what they were. Stu was without a suit and knew that he’d be seen as soon as it turned back towards him. Quickly, he yanked one of the spears out of the ground and plunged it directly into the creature’s face, taking out its left eye and driving deep.
What happened next was a complete shock. The zombie actually screamed as if in pain. It let out one long agonizing wail and then slumped, dead.
“Huh?” Jenn asked in a bleary voice. “What was that?”
It was the sound of their luck running out and what followed was the sound of a stampeding pack of zombies charging right for them.
Chapter 14
Now they had no choice but to flee back under the fence and hope that the beasts would forget about them. It wasn’t likely. If nothing else, the dead were dogged in their determination to kill. They would tear gaping holes in the fence in seconds and then charge into the complex, attacking anything that moved.
Stu would have to get Jenn and Mike to his apartment before that could happen. He left the duffle bag on the ground and grabbed Jenn’s right arm while Mike had her left. They had just began pulling her towards the fence when a sudden blaze of light spun both of them around.
A hundred yards away a house was on fire. Its timbers had been slowly rotting for the last dozen years and an infestation of boring beetles made them porous and easily combustible. The house had almost exploded into flame and in its light, Stu could see fifty or sixty dead scattered all over the hill leading to the complex.
He also saw the shadowy figure of a girl dancing in front of the flames. Mike, who was standing right next to him, asked, “Did she just take her shirt off?”
Stu nodded. It could only be Eve swinging her shirt over her head and whirling it around. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested, dropping into a crouch.
With the fire, the danger from the dead had decreased significantly, however the danger from the Hill People had grown and as they dragged Jenn through the spears, someone shot a crossbow at them, missing only by a few feet. The two began to drag Jenn along even faster as more bolts and whispered curses followed after them.
Once past the spears, they were safe from the bolts, but not from the dead as more began to flock in. Eve had disappeared, probably running naked and mad, but to where Stu didn’t know. He didn’t have much time to think about that. Jenn was no longer conscious which was no wonder with the amazing amount of blood that gushed from her wound.
That was the only good news. The dead were everywhere. Stu and Mike could only creep along on their hands and knees, both secretly frightened out of their wits. Zombies sometimes stomped by only a few feet away, sometimes they would rush r
ight at them only to turn suddenly and attack the shadow of a tree or, more often, another zombie.
There would be a great roaring followed by the meaty sound of heavy fists crashing into skulls. Bones shattered and blood flew as the fights escalated into an all-out war that seemed to shake the earth. In one second, it would be a battle to end all battles, then there would be a pause in which both creatures assumed a vacant-eyed recognition and the two would separate, forgetting the event ever happened.
To keep away from them, they scurried to a chain link fence that was so interwoven with weeds that it provided the perfect cover right up until a big bull of a zombie plowed right into it. Seven hundred pounds of undead meat bent it right over and as it thrashed about trying to get up, more zombies came to investigate and more zombies fell across it, trapping the three of them.
Thankfully, none of the dead were right on top of them or they would have been crushed, nevertheless Stu felt like he was in a waffle iron being compressed down into the dirt and he was sure that if he lived and managed to get away he would leave behind a cartoon-like imprint of himself.
The pressure and pain was hard to withstand in complete silence. Mike had his eyes clamped down and his teeth clenched, while Stu couldn’t take a full breath and found himself panting as lightly as he could, breathing only in the very upper part of his chest.
He had never been claustrophobic before, but he was at that moment. The weight of the beasts was smothering him and he had to fight the frantic desire to scream: Get off! I can’t breathe, damn it! And he probably would have if he could’ve sucked in enough air.
Just as panic began to set in, one of the beasts managed to roll off the fence. Stu gasped, sucking in a loud breath. It went unheard. There was a new fire going and the dead were charging towards it.
Eve had lit another house on fire and like the last it went right up with a sweeping whoosh.
Generation Z_The Queen of the Dead Page 13