Cursing, he picked it up. “Yeah?”
“Todd?”
The voice was faint and he tried to see if the number came up on his caller ID, but the screen was blank. Monica gave him an inquiring look but he only shook his head. He didn’t know who it was yet. “Hello?”
“Oh, thank God,” came a scared voice and his mind suddenly clicked.
“Naima?” he nearly screamed, like she was having a hard time hearing him. “Are you okay? Where are you?” He could barely hear her response and he tried to work out where the hell she could be calling him from. “I can’t hear you,” he told the phone slowly, like somehow that would go through clearer than talking in a normal voice.
He heard a whispering voice say “We are in the attic.” She sounded scared out of her wits and he could barely imagine what she was going through.
Putting a finger in the other ear, he asked “an attic? Where? Don’t tell me you’re still in your house!” he cried.
Monica was watching him closely, worry spreading across her face. Where is she? She mouthed at him but he only shook his head again. He shrugged and strained to hear what was being said.
“They’ve gotten into the house, we can’t get out,” he heard Naima whisper through the receiver. She was trying to be quiet; probably scared that whoever was in her house would hear her if she spoke any louder.
“Living or dead?” he asked in response, knowing that if there were looters in the house, they would probably figure out where they were hiding and there would be nothing he could do to save her; he was just too far away to be effective. Something was tickling at his mind and he forced it away for the moment as she began to speak again.
“Dead, I think,” she replied. “Oh God, I’m so sorry I doubted you. I should have left when you texted me, but we were busy and I didn’t believe you. Then Michael found this thing on the internet and minutes later there were these—things—banging on the doors. I’m so sorry. Please help us,” she sobbed and his heart broke.
She was outside of Phoenix, one of the places he knew the military was concentrating on here in Arizona, and he had no idea on how he was going to get to her. Even if he somehow could fly Sean’s plane, the Air Force was controlling the skies and would not look kindly on him flying through their airspace.
Still, there had to be something he could do.
“Listen, don’t say anything for a moment. If you have supplies, stay where you are. Do not try to leave. Keep quiet and wait. I will try to figure something out and call you back. Turn the ringer off. Unless you are absolutely sure they’re gone, do not leave that attic. If you do, keep moving and try to get here as fast as you can. I’ll upload our GPS coordinates to your phone. Do not stop moving. If you have to fight, go for the head, it’s the only way I know to kill these things. I’ll call you when I have a plan,” he told her, hoping she heard the urgency in his words and that this time she would listen to him. There was a moment of silence from the other end and he thought he lost the call. “Did you get all that?”
“So I can talk now?” she responded with her normal tone of voice.
He smiled; it was nice to have his best friend back amongst the living. “Just keep it to soft tones and you should be fine.”
“I heard what you said. Whatever you’re going to do, please hurry,” she responded, part of that fear she was going through creeping back into her voice as the line suddenly went dead.
“Goddammit!” he yelled and finally turned to his wife. “She never left. All those texts I sent and she just ignored them. Not until her husband found something on the net did she start to believe, and by then they were knocking on her fucking front door! She’s trapped in her own fucking house!” He was beyond pissed and both women stood there for a moment and let him blow off steam.
“And that has nothing to do with me,” Monica replied when he glared at her, holding her ground. “Is she okay at least? How’s the baby?”
“They’re fine, for the moment,” he answered, his misplaced anger making him snap. She understood him well enough not to push the issue. “I don’t know how to get to her,” he said finally, defeated.
He had tried to think of a solution and was coming up with nothing.
“I don’t know what to do.” He hated feeling this powerless. Here his wives and kids were safe, but the rest of the people he cared about were all still out there right in the middle of this shit. He wanted to save them all, but had to deal with the reality that it was just not possible. Still, he had to try, didn’t he?
Samantha came forward and hugged him. It was the first time they had embraced that day and he took a moment to breathe her in and cherish the feel of her against him. It comforted him in ways that nothing else could.
Monica held her ground for a moment, then her frown disappeared and she stepped forward, put a hand on the back of his head and said, “for the moment, she’s on her own.”
Chapter 19
Double Check
Rosilynn
Springerville, AZ
They approached the house cautiously. Matt swung around the right side, his weapon held ready as John swung to the left to check the other side. The driveway was empty and she approached the door with her .45 in hand, ready to shoot anything that lunged her way.
Working as a team, the boys cleared the rear of the house and walked back around front, lowering their weapons but nodding to each other that everything appeared quiet for the moment. Their bikes were up on the sidewalk, the squad car parked beside them, and she glanced at her flank to make sure the street was still deserted before holstering her side arm and drawing her sword.
Not wanting to draw unwanted attention from gunfire, they both conceded that she should go first and took up flanking positions at her side.
She stepped up to the picture window, put a hand on the glass to cut through the glare, and took a look inside. The living room had little in the way of furniture and was for the moment devoid of life, both living and undead. The image of herself looking through the window reflected off a large flat screen across from her. She knew instantly that this was a man’s dwelling from the fact that while no expense had been made to decorate the place, there was a large ass fucking television in the room.
Shaking her head, she tried to study the layout of the room and waited patiently to see if there was any movement she was missing. Satisfied, she went to the door, nodded to the other two, then opened it as quietly as she could manage. A hinge squealed and she winced at the noise. Pausing to listen, she didn’t hear any response and she let it swing the rest of the way open. If Paul was still here, he had forgotten to lock the door; which was bloody unlikely in a situation such as theirs.
Stepping through the doorway, John stayed behind to watch the porch as Matt walked through and began sweeping the room on her left. She took it all in, looking at every crevice from ceiling to the floor. She treaded as softly as she could once she noticed that they were on a hardwood floor and anything with real pressure might cause a creak at an inopportune moment.
A moan broke the silence emanating from her right and with a head jerk from her husband, she held her sword ready as she moved to step around the corner. She stole another glance at the dining room area but Matt was already standing there and signaled an all clear.
There were two doors on either side of the hallway and one at the very end. There was a light on down there and she heard something shuffle across a linoleum floor, which likely made it the bathroom.
A shadow passed across the light on the floor and she stopped moving and pointed at it so Matt knew that someone was in there. She continued to move forward a step at a time and that’s when the stench hit her. It was a mixture of burnt hamburger, shit, and death, none of which seemed appealing to her and she had to fight the gag reflex that suddenly hit her in response. She knew instantly that someone had died and prayed that it hadn’t been one of her friends rotting away in one of these rooms.
Fingernails raked the door down th
e hall and her pulse quickened. Matt had stepped forward to check the room on the left and when a moan issued from the room to her immediate right, she stopped in her tracks and waited. Matt cleared the room he was looking through and raised his weapon to point it at the door her hand was resting on. She grasped the knob with her left hand, preparing to stab with her right if it became necessary. She hated close quarters like this, but what choice did she have? She had to be sure.
As the door opened, time seemed to slow down and every detail burned into her mind. There was a sofa chair against the window and Paul was slumped in it; his face drawn and pale, the white of his eyes showing as his head was inclined backwards and his jaw slack and open. To his left was a large pool of blood and her stomach turned when she saw the discarded arm lying in it. A belt had been cinched halfway up his right bicep, where once a perfectly good limb had been attached, and was now a mangled mess of torn flesh and blood.
She placed the smell now and saw the bloodied iron thrown sideways on an ironing board to the left. He had tried to cauterize the wound after doing a horrible job butchering his own arm off. The cleaver was lying discarded by his right foot, mangled flesh drying on its blade. Her trained mind picked up on every detail and catalogued it for later in case it was needed.
Half the flesh on the mangled stub was burnt but there was still bleeding bits of flesh glistening there. It sickened her to think of a hamburger on a grill, still red in the middle, with blood seeping through the burnt cracks on its surface; but it was exactly what this looked like. If not for her training, she would have retched. But she was used to seeing horrible things such as this, so she worked through it, stepped quickly across the room and reached down to take his pulse.
It was faint and barely there, but he was still alive. He had blundered through what had to be a very painful procedure and the sight of the knife made the bile rise in her throat regardless of her past experiences. It seared her airway and she had to cough to clear it enough to breathe normally. She tightened the belt and her old friend began to scream.
“My God,” her husband whispered as he came to her side. He had seen plenty of combat while stationed in Iraq but even he looked like he was having a hard time looking at this. “Why the hell—?”
She ignored it and slapped Paul across the face; but it wasn’t enough to stop him from screaming. “Give me a hand here,” she told her husband as she worked on inspecting the wound. He strode over to the closet and grabbed a shirt off a hangar, then bundled it up and placed it into Paul’s open mouth. The man gagged and tried to free his airway, but Matt held it there; Paul’s nostrils flaring as he tried to drag in air. His eyes had still not come back into focus and his pulse was quickening. This was the time to get the paddles ready.
Crap, she wasn’t at a hospital. Where was she?
“Everyone all right?” John asked from the doorway. “Heard someone screaming.”
Phone.
“Pick up your phone and dial the compound, put it on speaker,” she ordered him. His hand quickly took his cell from his side and began to dial; the sound of a ringing line echoing across the room.
Well, she wasn’t worried about letting anything know they were here, Paul had taken care of that for them.
“Well, it’s about damn time,” a young man’s voice said over the speakers.
“Ben, shut up and listen. We need an evac at this location now. Paul must have gotten bitten because he took his arm off,” she stated urgently, trying to convey the seriousness of the situation.
“What a fucking idiot,” her husband said from beside her.
“Do you hear me Ben? If you don’t get here with that fucking helicopter right now, Paul is going to die!” she yelled across the room.
John stood there, looking like he wanted to help but not sure what he could do. As he moved across the room, he heard something from his rear and stopped in his tracks. He was still holding the phone out but he was no longer paying attention to them.
“There’s no one here to fly it Ros,” the boy replied quietly.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m telling you, we don’t have time for this—Paul doesn’t have time for this. He is going to bleed out or have a heart attack, and do either of those things sound like something I can fix out here in the sticks?”
She was growing angry. What did he mean there wasn’t anyone there to fly it? Had they all gone somewhere?
“Sean took off. Todd, Sam, and Monica went to find him. My dad was nearly killed by a sniper and I don’t think Casey ever bothered to learn. Oh, and I know that my mom would never get behind the stick of that “death trap” as she calls it. In fact—”
“Ben, its Matt,” her husband cut in. “I understand how exciting all this is, but if you can keep things short and to the point—”
John had handed Matt the phone and was now exiting the room with his shotgun raised.
She knew that he had heard something in that bathroom and looking at Paul, she had a bad feeling that she knew who it was. “John!” she called and the man gave her one quick glance. “She’s family, make it quick.” The sheriff nodded and walked slowly out of sight.
“There’s no one here to fly the Huey,” Ben said, sounding like he wanted to say more, but after getting chewed out by her husband, had cut himself off.
“Hey Ben, want some lunch?” she heard a young woman say over the speakers.
“Not right now! Are your parents back?” the young boy asked urgently.
“No need to yell at me, I was just asking, shit. And no, they’ve run off with that other woman, doing God knows what. Probably needed some “quality” time,” the girl said and Ros wanted to cut her off; a man was dying here.
Her hands were moving of their own volition as she listened to the conversation; her patience running thin. She jumped as a loud thud could be heard down the hall, followed by the sound of a shotgun blast. “Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven,” she recited, hoping that someone up there heard her as she prayed for the souls of her two older friends.
“What the hell is going on?” she heard a voice say over the line and realized that Michelle was finally cluing in to the fact that this was more important than if her parents were off having sex.
“Look kids, we’re running out of time,” Matt said for her. “One of you needs to get ahold of your parents and let them know what’s going on—right now,” he ordered, bringing his former training to the foreground and hoping it snapped the two youngsters into action.
“I can go get them,” Michelle said, her voice coming over the line even louder.
“Uh, no—there’s no fucking way,” Ben replied. She knew the boy had a crush on the young girl, you’d have to be blind not to see it, and the stress in his voice was quite evident that it was still going strong.
She clenched her fist in frustration and Paul let out another moan through the shirt. “Bathroom is clear,” came a voice behind her and she nodded, trying to stay focused; but it was so damn hard with so much going on around her.
“There is no one else, you said so yourself.”
“I said no.”
“It’s not your choice Benjamin.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
“Would you two knock it off!” she thundered. “I don’t care who comes and gets us as long as it happens right fucking now!”
“On my way!” Michelle called, as if she won some victory by her response. She knew instantly that it might be a mistake, the girl wasn’t even an adult yet and she was going to go take a helicopter to come rescue them?
What had she just done?
“Ben, did she already leave?” she asked, concern growing in her voice. Todd was so going to kick her ass when he found out about this.
“I’m so screwed,” the boy whispered. “I’ve got to try and stop her.”
Then the line went dead.
Shit.
She looked down at her
friend once more. His eyes had closed and his breathing had grown steadier but his pulse was still erratic, his face pale. He had already lost too much blood and the supply they kept at the compound for emergencies might not be enough to save him.
She had to make a decision—was he able to be saved?
She could drive her sword right through his skull right now and no one would question it. She would be putting him out of his misery and preventing his return with just one moment of mercy. Then they would be free to move south unhindered, Michelle wouldn’t have to steal the helicopter, and they’d be at the compounds in just hours if things remained clear ahead.
That sounded so easy, but she knew that she couldn’t do that. It wasn’t just being a nurse, having sworn to save lives—it was the fact that she knew him; he was her friend. She wasn’t about to give up just because it made her life easier.
The two men hovered over her and she turned and glared at them, her decision made. “Why don’t you go make yourselves useful and make a stretcher; looks like we’re going to need it.”
“Yes ma’am,” John responded and quickly dashed from view.
Matt lingered for a moment, his hand on her shoulder and she nodded to him as their eyes met. They both understood the choice she was making and she could see it in his eyes that he had made the same one as well. “You realize that little girl may not even be able to make it down here, right? Hell, she might not even be able to get it off the ground.”
She shook her head and smiled. “I’ve seen her fly; she’s a natural at it. I feel better about her coming down here than if Sean was flying it. That man would get us all killed.”
“I hope you’re right,” he replied. He began to grin. “As long as she gets it to me, I can fly us back, and he just might have a chance.”
“That’s the spirit,” she said as she got tweezers and a knife out of the first aid kit. There wasn’t much she could do with this mess, but maybe she could start to clean it out. Paul moaned anytime she touched it, but at least it was a sign that he was still alive.
The Rotting Souls Series (Book 2): Charon's Blight: Day Two Page 12