Deadrise (Book 2): Blood Storm

by Siara Brandt

  He was staring down at her feet, probably wondering why she was wearing shoes that didn’t fit.

  “I had high heels on when everything- ” she started to explain.

  “Hit the fan,” he finished.

  “Yes. That.”

  A picture flashed through Eli’s mind for a moment. Of high heels and shapely legs. He disciplined himself against any further distractions and said, “You should be safe up here. From every zombie movie I’ve ever seen, the zombies can’t climb ladders.”

  “What if the movies got it wrong?”

  “Then we’re in trouble.”

  As he checked the load in his pistol, Ailin noted how the deep yellow sunlight falling through the window gleamed on hair black as a raven’s wing. How it lit up his lean, strong jaw and the masculine curve of his lips. He was handsome, darkly handsome in a ruthless kind of way. Definitely an alpha male.

  “I want you to wait here for me.”

  “You mean you’re leaving- ” She changed that. “Why?”

  “I’m going to take that road to the top of the hill and have a look around. I want to make sure we don’t walk into something we’re not expecting. I can do that a lot faster and easier if you’re not with me.”

  His military training would make him take precautions, of course. Reconnoitering, wasn’t that what they called it? So they didn’t walk blindly into a dangerous situation.

  “Is that what they call reconnoitering? Do you want me

  to- ”

  “I don’t want you to do anything. I’ll take care of any- reconnoitering that needs to be done.”

  “I’ll have a better- what do you call it? A better vantage point from up here,” she told him. “Are you sure you don’t want me to keep a look out? Is there some kind of signal you want me to give you if I see something and you can’t hear me?”

  “Signal?” He was frowning again. “Don’t worry about any signals. Just sit tight and wait for me.”

  And then he was gone.

  While she sat there alone, Ailin thought about Edmina and Bevanne. Were they alive? Were they safe? Were they even at the inn waiting for her?

  She continued to scan the forest below her, but she saw nothing that shouldn’t be there. A slight wind had sprung up. It was moving through the weeds and setting everything in motion. That unnerved her a little bit. But as for zombies? Nothing. From up here she could see a sagging wire fence strung from tree to tree that she hadn’t been able to see from down below. There was a tangle of rusted barbed wire that was hidden in the weeds where the fence ended.

  She turned and surveyed the loft. It was empty except for a stack of hay bales. She pushed the hair back from her face and held it there, trying to regroup. It had been a long, trying day and- Was she really standing in a barn in the middle of nowhere in a skirt waiting for a soldier to tell her what their next move would be?

  She went still. Sticking out of the crack between two of the hay bales, she saw a snake skin. No, two snake skins. Two very big snake skins. And then she was sure she heard something slithering around in the hay. Something that was also big. She knew these old barns harbored snakes. She knew it very well because she had heard people talk about seeing snakes that were seven feet long. She wasn’t going to wait around to see a seven-foot long snake.

  It didn’t take her long to make a decision. She climbed down from the loft. A lot faster than she’d gone up.

  Eli had told her to stay put, but she wasn’t worried. She’d had a good view of the surrounding countryside from up above, and there hadn’t been any signs of trouble anywhere.

  But she stiffened when almost immediately she heard a rustling sound in the weeds somewhere near the barn. Or maybe it had come from the round hay bales. It was just the wind in the weeds, she told herself. Or it was the wind rustling through the cornstalks. Or the cracks of the barn.

  That’s when she saw the shadows moving over the ground. They shouldn’t have startled her, but they did. She looked up and saw the huge birds circling overhead.

  “Stay calm,” she said to herself. “Stay calm. They’re just buzzards.”

  She didn’t see anything else moving, but she heard another sound. It sounded like something bumping against the barn wall. Maybe Eli was back. Maybe he-

  She slowly turned around just as something appeared around the corner of the barn.

  It wasn’t Eli.

  It was-

  A zombie.

  Yes, that accurately described what she was looking at.

  She remembered all that Eli had said about the zombie he had seen. She recalled every zombie movie she had ever seen, and knew that’s exactly what she was looking at right now.

  The shadowy figured swayed back and forth in front of her, shuffling aimlessly through the tall weeds. A zombie was a reanimated corpse. That’s exactly what this looked like. A zombie had festering sores, bloodless skin, and- and what looked like decomposing flesh. Which explained why the stench was so disgusting.

  She was afraid to make a move. The zombie shuffled on, apparently oblivious to her presence. And then it stopped. She could hear its deep, ragged breaths and a strange rattling sound in its throat. Its manner changed as if its senses were honing in on something. Like a dog on a scent. On her, she realized. The zombie was definitely focusing in on her. It turned with a glare that made her catch her breath.

  She wanted to run away as fast as she could. But she was too terrified to move. So she stayed stood rooted to the spot as the zombie continued to hang its head and stare straight at her.

  What was it you were supposed to do with an aggressive dog? You weren’t supposed to turn and run. Or show fear. And you weren’t supposed to look it in the eyes. But she didn’t dare take her eyes off of it.

  It was a male. It was big, almost as big as Eli, and it was dressed in jeans and a badly-torn plaid shirt that was stained with what looked like blood. And it was wearing one cowboy boot. The other foot was bare.

  Ailin had no idea how fast this zombie could move. Even without the missing boot. But she was going to have to make a move. And soon. She was pretty sure she couldn’t get to the ladder in time, not without it being able to grab her from behind. In any case, if it chased her, there was a good chance she would be trapped inside the barn. Her only chance for survival lay in a try for the woods.

  Except for the breathing of the zombie, the silence of the woods seemed to intensify. The shrilling of cicadas rose in the stillness and then died again. Ailin’s heart was pumping faster as she tried to gather up enough courage to make a move. She felt strangely lightheaded. It seemed like there was no breath left in her body.

  She shifted her weight. Hopefully imperceptibly. If she was lucky, she might be able to get a head start before the zombie made a lunge for her. Because that’s what every zombie she had ever seen did. They lunged. She moved as slowly as she could, but a branch snapped beneath her gym shoe and the zombie reacted immediately.

  Ailin realized that her luck had just run out.

  Chapter 13

  _______________

  Ailin held her breath as she saw the feral look in the zombie’s eyes. Its nostrils flared. It growled, a rattling, guttural sound that filled her with terror. Its mouth opened, lips pulling back over teeth that were stained with clotted blood. Black blood was also trickling out of its nose and oozing from the dark sores on its ashen face.

  The zombie tilted its face spasmodically several times, like a hawk marking the movements of its prey. But it didn’t charge her yet. A coarse wheezing sound rose from its chest, making Ailin take an unconscious step backward. It did look savage enough to rip her to shreds in a matter of seconds.

  “Eli,” she whispered silently. “Where are you?”

  Without warning, the zombie lunged.

  At that moment, Ailin also saw Eli coming. She had never been more relieved to see anyone in her entire life. But by that time she was running toward the open field they had just come through. She was running for her life
.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she heard Eli shout behind her. “Don’t run away from me.”

  But she didn’t stop. She tore through the leaves like the hounds of hell were on her heels.

  As she ran, she lifted her blue skirt high above her knees. And then she jumped. She slid on the leaves and went down hard on her backside. It jarred every bone in her body.

  If the zombie was still pursuing her, then she knew she was already dead. But when she scrambled to her hands and knees and looked back, she saw a trapped zombie flailing about in the tangle of barbed wire fence that she had just jumped over.

  Eli ran up and pointed his gun. He pulled the trigger and the flailing stopped.

  “You all right?” He sounded a little breathless himself as he stood over her and then helped her to her feet.

  She brushed the leaves off her skirt as she stared down at the motionless zombie on the ground. It was her first up-close look at a zombie and what they were dealing with.

  The sightless eyes were wide open and colorless. The skin was greyish-white and marred by scabs and sores that seeped black blood. The deep scratches from the barbed wire also oozed dark blood. It did look exactly like something that had died and come back to life. And it definitely smelled like a corpse.

  “Was that necessary?” she asked in a shaky voice. She wasn’t criticizing Eli, nor was she condemning what he had done. She was just trying to understand what she was looking at.

  “It wanted to kill you. What do you think?”

  After a silence, she said, “They’re still people. Maybe there’s a cure.”

  “Not that I’ve heard of.”

  “Are we just going to leave it there?”

  “We don’t have any choice right now.”

  She had scared the hell out of him. And he reacted emotionally. “Why the hell didn’t you stay in the loft?”

  She needed to know the rules. And she needed to know she had to obey them. And hell, didn’t she know she had just scared about ten years off his life?

  “There were snakes in the loft.”

  Snakes? Was she for real?

  “You’re comparing snakes with that?”

  Josiah Hunter was on his way to the Civil War encampment up on Creyvan Ridge. Maybe if he did some jogging up there in the rugged terrain, he could save himself a trip to the hospital. It was worth one last try. Anything to get rid of this excruciating pain. If anything, it was getting worse, not better.

  As he maneuvered his pickup truck around another sharp curve, he looked up and stared in open-mouthed shock as someone fell over the edge of the granite cliffs above him. He didn’t know if the person was alive or dead. The body pirouetting through the air looked like a lifeless scarecrow, falling limply until it disappeared into the heavy brush at the base of the cliff.

  Josiah looked back at the road, saw the bus at the last second and jammed on his brakes, instinctively bracing himself for the crash that he knew was inevitable. He heard the shrill sound of branches scraping against the roof of his truck as soon as it left the gravel road. He had his seatbelt on. He’d seen enough accidents to know that wearing one could mean the difference between life and death.

  The brush was too thick for him to know just how deep the ditch was that he was headed for. Not that it mattered. There was nothing he could do about it at this point but to ride it out, even if his truck rolled.

  But the truck didn’t flip over. It tipped precariously on a steep embankment, but it was setting on all four tires when it finally came to a sudden, violent halt against some trees that kept it from rolling all the way down into the deep ravine below him.

  The first sensation he was aware of was that he was pain-free. His kidney stone apparently had been jarred loose by the accident. He was grateful for that, but the thought that was uppermost in his mind was the school bus and the people who might be on it.

  He tried his cell phone. It was dead, probably not working here in the bottoms. He tried to push his door open, but it wasn’t budging, so he ended up kicking his side window out. His seat belt gave him trouble, too. It seemed to take forever to get it undone. He thought he heard a vehicle drive by while he was struggling with it, and he hoped against hope that someone would come along who could help. Finally he was able to drag himself out of the vehicle and he started to climb.

  The ground was uneven and covered with dead leaves that swished against his shoes. It was slippery, too. He had to use his hands to grab onto saplings to keep from sliding back as he climbed the steep embankment. The smell of damp earth and leaves filled his nostrils. He hit a patch of briars and that slowed him down, too. Shaken, he paused for a moment to lean against a tree and wipe at the sweat on his forehead. But when he brought his hand away, he saw that his fingers weren’t damp with sweat but with blood. He realized he must have hit his head in the crash.

  When he finally reached the road, he saw it. A big yellow school bus lying on its side. There was a faint cloud of dust hovering in the air. The shadows were heavy here and a web of them fell over the bus. Those shadows were set in motion by a slight wind, but inside the bus there was no movement. There was just an awful, deafening silence. That silence was broken by a low rumble of thunder, a sound so faint and far away that Josiah wasn’t even sure he’d heard it. What he saw next brought him to a standstill.

  It lay mangled in the center of the gravel road. The out-flung limbs were twisted at unnatural angles. Black blood was seeping out from several places on the face and body. Whatever it was, it wasn’t moving and it looked beyond help. Was it a victim from the bus? It gave him a sickening, queasy feeling.

  Keeping his gaze focused on the thing in the road to make sure that it didn’t move, Josiah made his way over to the bus, dreading what he might find inside. He scrambled up to a window and, cupping his hands, peered inside.

  At first he didn’t see any signs of life. He hurried over to the back emergency door and after some effort, managed to pry it open. He saw the bus driver first and he started to make his way to the front of the bus.

  “Check on the kids first,” she panted. “I’m all right.” And she did appear to be. She was climbing out of her seat on her own.

  “How many kids?” he asked her.

  “Four.”

  He found the first one in a seat near the front of the bus. The boy moaned when Josiah got close to him.

  Underneath him, a smaller, still form lay in a fetal position in the corner of the seat against the window.

  “My brother- ” the boy sobbed. “Bobby.”

  “Careful,” Josiah warned him. “Let’s make sure he’s all right before we move him.”

  The smaller boy had a small cut along his hairline that was oozing blood. He looked scared and shaken, but he was conscious and nothing seemed to be broken.

  The bus driver was making her way back to them. She held her hand pressed tightly over her ribs. “You sure you’re all right?” Josiah asked.

  “I’m fine,” Tessa assured him.

  The older boy had a small bump on his forehead.

  “I have a first aid kit,” Tessa said.

  “Good. Can you get to it?”

  There was an older teenage boy and a girl. Both seemed to have only minor bumps and scratches, but they were all emotionally traumatized to some degree.

  “Is someone coming for us?” Tessa asked, hoping he had been able to call for help.

  He didn’t want to tell them the truth, but of course he had to. “That might take a little while,” he told her. “My cell phone isn’t working.”

  “We need to get them out of here,” he said to Tessa. “Bobby, do you think you can you walk?”

  Bobby’s eyes widened as he looked at him. He barely nodded and Josiah had the impression he didn’t want to go outside. Maybe he had seen that thing in the road.

  “There are zombies out there,” Bobby whispered.

  The other kids didn’t make fun of him this time.

  Tessa didn’t say
a word. She didn’t confirm, nor did she deny it.

  Still trying to make sense out of what he had just heard, Josiah helped lift each of the kids over the seats. Zachary Clune was first. “You keep watch.”

  Zachary nodded. Neither one of them had to put into words what they were watching for. It was lying right there in the road.

  “Did I hear him right?” Josiah asked Tessa in a low voice when all the kids were off the bus.

  “Something is going on,” she told him. “But I don’t know what it is. That thing in the road tried to get at me from outside the bus. A car came along and hit it. But they didn’t stop to help.”

  When they were all gathered at the front of the bus, Bobby kept a death grip on his brother as he stared at the zombie in the road.

  Unfortunately, my truck isn’t going anywhere,” Josiah told Tessa. He was frowning as he bit the corner of his lip and said, “It’s getting dark. And- ” He looked up at angry-looking clouds as an ominous rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. “It looks like we’re in for a storm. I’m not sure if the bus would be a good enough shelter.”

  Tessa nodded, agreeing with him. She purposely avoided looking at the frightening-looking thing in the road. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to spend the night out here all alone.”

  “What if there are other zombies out here?” Bobby asked, looking around nervously.

  Josiah didn’t have an answer for him. He had no idea what they were up against.

  A sudden wind, a harbinger of the coming storm, blew through the forest, setting the leaves in motion.

  “Look!” Bobby pointed. “There’s a deer. And another one.”

  Not only were there deer, but rabbits, too, were all running in the same direction. Birds had also suddenly taken flight.

  “What the h- ” Josiah looked at the kids, stopped himself and said “heck” instead.

  He frowned in the direction that the animals had come from. Like the animals, his instincts were kicking into high gear and they seemed to be telling him to run if he wanted to be safe. It was a long walk back to civilization. The big stone Creyvan house wasn’t too far away. It seemed like the best bet.