It’s almost like a three-legged race, but with more blood and screaming.
“Want me to do it?” I asked.
“No,” he snapped as he motioned me away. “Go take care of your precious zombie.”
I hesitated, but Dave put his back toward me as he leveled his gun on the child in the back seat. As I turned away, the car rocked from the first explosion of gunpowder.
The Kid and I both flinched as I moved toward him. The caught zombie was still snapping at Robbie, his fingers pushed through the spaces in the net so that they twitched and closed around air.
“Nice specimen,” I said with false brightness. “It should be worth a couple of showers and maybe some new shoes and some food, eh?”
The Kid glared at me. “How about something useful like grenades?”
I laughed. “Okay, we’ll ask. Though I’m not sure I like the idea of you running around with the ultimate fireworks.”
The Kid’s eyes lit up like he hadn’t thought of that before but then he sobered at just about the same time that Dave fired his second shot behind us.
“Without the thing hanging in the air, it’s going to get tougher to bind it up,” The Kid said softly, watching around me for Dave as he came over to us.
Dave’s face was pale and grim, but he managed a smile and a nod for the boy. “Yeah, but we’ll figure it out. Go get the rope, huh?”
As The Kid scurried off to get rope and a burlap sack for our “guest,” I returned my attention to David. “You okay?”
He shrugged. “We haven’t had to shoot a victim in a long time,” he said quietly. “It just reminded me of Amanda. And Gina.”
I frowned. Amanda had been our neighbor who Dave had been forced to shoot in our car during our initial escape from Seattle. And Gina was his sister. When she turned, I had been the one to take care of her (and Dave afterward), but the particulars didn’t matter. Even all these months and all these kills later, Dave was still haunted. I guess all of us survivors were, we just covered it up most of the time. But there were moments… there were always moments.
I touched his shoulder as The Kid came running back up with the rope. “There are no more sacks, sorry.”
Dave swore under his breath as he grabbed the rope. “Shit. See, we should have taken our time better this morning. We could have cleaned out some supplies from the hardware store, but we weren’t paying close enough attention.”
I winced since the comment was directed toward me, but bit my tongue. “Maybe we can figure something else out for his head. Let’s just tie him up for now.”
Dave said nothing, just unraveled the coil of rope as he stared at the thrashing, hissing zombie. He was becoming increasingly loud as he looked from one of us to the other, trying to figure out if he could reach us and which one he wanted to eat first.
Finally, Dave shouted, “Will you please shut up!”
He was only venting, but to my surprise, it worked. The zombie’s jaws snapped shut and he stared at Dave almost like he understood him. But then the moment faded and he immediately started back into wails and groans of anger and distress.
“Fuck me, it’s worse than a damn cat in heat,” Dave muttered. He motioned to me impatiently. “Now come help me.”
I moved to his side. “So what, grab sides of the net and then try to hold him still while Robbie ties him up?”
Robbie took the rope from Dave and nodded. We exchanged a quick look and then each of us took a side of the twisted net. In one swift motion we flipped the zombie over so that he was face down and less likely to get to us with his gnashing teeth. We wrapped the net tightly around his back, holding him still as best we could.
Robbie jumped in between us, his small hands working swiftly as he tied a loop around the creature. Once his arms were bound tight at his sides, we started to roll him, wrapping him in the rope the same way we had with the other zombie a couple of days before.
The creature howled out his frustration with every spin, biting at us every time he faced us. But he was pretty much impotent by that point. Without him being able to scratch or grab us, his teeth were easy to avoid. The flying sludge from his mouth sprayed against our arms, but his teeth didn’t find a home in our flesh.
I sighed as we finally let him go and he hit the ground with a thud, his face down in the dust so that his grunts were mercifully muted.
“What about his head?” I asked.
The Kid had to sit in the back of the van with the thing that now sputtered in the dirt before us and I didn’t want him to have to dodge teeth the way he’d have to if we didn’t get the zombie’s face covered.
“What about a t-shirt?” The Kid asked, tugging his dirty one off his head to reveal his little chicken-y arms and chest.
“Great!” Dave said with a smile for him.
We flipped the zombie again and pulled him to a seated position. His garbled sounds of anger were muffled as we wrapped his head in the dirty white cotton t-shirt. I hoped he didn’t still have a sense of smell because p-u! That child had some body odor. A normal human would not have been able to survive, that’s for sure.
Finally we got our unhappy guest into the back of the van with The Kid sitting watch over him. And when I say over him, I mean it literally. The zombie was face down and The Kid sat on the middle of his back, holding him still as we took off.
Midday sun filtered down on us as we got back on the highway and headed back toward Kevin’s lab. With the temperature rising in the van, the smell of rotting flesh had both Dave and I rolling down our windows. As I drove, I wished I could put my head outside like a dog and just let the breeze fill my nostrils instead of the rancid smell of rotting, dead flesh inside.
“Put Febreze on the shopping list,” I choked as I got off on the now familiar exit and turned toward the lab.
Dave smiled, but that was as good as it got. I frowned as we came up over the hill and started the last half mile or so to the warehouse and the release of our stinky companion to Dr. Barnes. I could see the sunlight glinting off the slumped metal roof of the place, we were almost there…
And that’s when the zombie got his arm free.
Protect your brand… and your ass.
Even though the zombie mind was broken and infected by God knew what, even though they had no drive other than to kill and devour people… you had to give them credit. When it came to that drive, they were awesomely good at what they did. They had no fear, so they were willing to hurt themselves, to throw themselves off a cliff if it meant reaching a victim and feeding their never-ceasing desire for brains and flesh.
And that’s what this one did (or so we figured out later). He had dislocated his own shoulder in order to get free of the binds around him. The arm came up in my rearview mirror and before I even had the chance to scream or warn anyone else in the van, he had The Kid by the throat.
“Fuck! It’s free!” I shouted, glancing over my shoulder. We swerved and I forced myself to pay attention to the road, straightening out the wheel, but not before we started to skid on the loose gravel along the shoulder.
Dave unbuckled and flung himself into the back of the vehicle in one smooth motion.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he cried.
In the rearview mirror, I could see the three of them sliding around on the metal cargo area of the van. Somehow the zombie had gotten his other arm out of his binds, which basically made him completely free. A few ropes around his waist and a child-sized t-shirt at his neck weren’t going to stop him, that was for damn sure.
With a growl, the zombie flipped over on top of The Kid before Dave could get a good grip on him. Robbie screamed and flopped in a desperate attempt to get free, but the creature was immovable. It leaned down, pressing its rotting, black teeth against the soft cotton of Robbie’s t-shirt in an attempt to gnaw on the child beneath him.
Dave flung his arms around the zombie and pulled back as hard as he could and the two fell across the side wall of the van at a weird, twisted angle.
> Of course, I had to watch all this unfold in the rearview mirror, while at the same time I fought to control the vehicle. And it was a fight, because the van was completely out of control thanks to the shale on the shoulder. My brake was to the floor, but we kept sliding at an awful sideways angle. It took every ounce of strength in my arms to keep the vehicle from going completely off the street.
I failed.
The shoulder suddenly turned to a full-on embankment and that was it. We skidded a few more feet and then we were rocking, off-balance. We flipped and for a slow-motion moment I thought of the other car. The one where we’d found our current zombie companion.
How long would it take for the infected to flood our vehicle? To pull pieces of our bodies out and eat them while we still moaned in horror at the sight of it?
I hoped I’d die first so I wouldn’t have to see.
Then my thoughts were gone. The van rolled onto its roof. I heard The Kid and David grunting and the zombie moaning as they flew all around the back of the van. Their bodies banged against the neatly organized weapons cache that lined the walls and thudded against each other as they fought to avoid the still-clawing zombie fingers.
As for me, I was still buckled in (unlike Dear Old Dad in the earlier wreck) so I stayed in my seat, my body fighting against the strap with a painful series of tugs and thrashes.
The van was still sliding on its roof, but it was slowing down as it glided through sand and dust and the thin roots of desert plants. But the slide stopped abruptly when we hit something on my side of the car. Momentum made my head snap to the side and collide with the edge of my partly rolled-down window.
Stars erupted in front of my eyes as the world moved into a strange, surreal half-time movement. It was almost like I’d slipped into some kind of weird movie. I felt movement, I heard sounds. One of them was someone saying my name, slow and steady, “Saaarrraaaahhh…”
And then there was nothing else.
There was a bright light in my eyes. Like the kind a doctor or a dentist shines in your face at their office. Had I had a surgery? If so, there were some fucked-up dreams I’d been having.
“Sarah?” a voice said from what felt like was very far away. “Sarah, it’s time to wake up.”
I recognized the voice, but it wasn’t a family member. I had the odd, disconnected feeling that it was a doctor’s voice. Only there was something else that fluttered on the edge of my foggy memory. Something bad.
“David?” I squinted into the light, trying to make out the unseen person behind it.
There was a slight hesitation that made my heart leap, but then the person said, “He’s fine. Neither he nor the boy were badly hurt in the accident. They’re just putting the zombie in one of the lab rooms.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as clarity began to seep back into my cloudy mind. The boy. The zombie. Suddenly tears stung my eyes and I lifted a hand to cover my face.
“Shit,” I muttered as I swiped at the wetness that now covered my cheeks. “For a minute, I thought it was all a nightmare.”
The light that had been shining in my face was pushed away and when I moved my hand I saw that the soothing voice I’d heard was indeed a doctor, but it was Dr. Barnes. Kevin was pale and concerned as he leaned over me.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I wish I could say it was. But no.”
“You said accident?” I said as I struggled to sit up.
A blast of intense pain rocketed its way through my head like I’d put a shotgun to my temple and pulled the trigger, but somehow managed to survive the experience. I sucked in a breath as nausea overwhelmed me and forced me to cling tight to the edge of the bed as I rode out the feeling.
When my mind had cleared a small fraction, I looked around in an attempt to get my bearings. I was in one of the lab rooms just like the one we’d put the first zombie in a few days before. There were even straps along the side of my bed, though I wasn’t in them, thank goodness.
“You don’t remember the accident?” Kevin asked as he leaned over me to look at my face. I shook my head and he smiled, giving me that “cute-geek” feeling again. “Don’t worry. You have a mild concussion.”
I glared at him. “This is fucking mild?”
He gave me that same compassionate yet blank stare all doctors seem to have in their repertoire. The one that says, I care, but I’m going to forget you in five minutes.
“Actually, yes,” he reassured me. “And a little memory loss is actually very common with the kind of head injury you suffered when the van flipped. The details will likely come back to you over the next few days.”
“Well, can you fill me in a little sooner?” I asked as I collapsed back on the pillows behind me.
“Of course. You skidded on the shoulder of the road just outside my building. That gravel can be a killer, especially at high speeds. You lost control and ultimately hit an old telephone pole.” He shook his head. “Thank God I was watching for your return and saw what happened in the monitors. I was able to get out to you right away.”
“Sarah?”
I leaned around the doctor to see David at the door. The entire right side of his face was one big bruise and there was blood seeping from a small cut at the start of his hairline.
“Oh my God,” I burst out as he came into the room and grabbed me for a painfully hard hug. When he finally let me go I reached up to brush at his bruise gently. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Why?” he asked in a shocked tone.
I shook my head. “I was driving, I should have been more careful. I don’t remember—”
Dave pulled back. “The zombie we got for Dr. Nobody here got free, Sarah. That’s why you lost control. It had nothing to do with you being careful or not.”
“What?” I asked, my foggy brain searching for memory of what had happened. I vaguely recalled a rotting arm lifting up in my rearview mirror and shut my eyes with a shiver at the thought.
“But you’re okay?” I asked, my voice shaking. “And The Kid wasn’t hurt?”
Dave frowned. “He sprained his wrist pretty bad, but I splinted it and he’s managing. And his leg is all banged to hell.”
“Oh no!” I burst out.
Hey, The Kid was a twerp, but I didn’t want to hurt him… well, at least not this way. Strangle him like Homer Simpson might was more my fantasy.
“No, no,” Dave insisted. “He’s okay. He went to take that shower you kept ragging him about. The zombie got a lot of sludge on him when he attacked Robbie.”
I winced. Yes, I vaguely recalled that, too, now that Dave mentioned it. The entire situation could have been so much worse. I could hardly breathe when I pictured all the ways it could have gone even more wrong than it had.
“She’s okay?” Dave said, this time speaking to Kevin.
The doctor cleared his throat. “It’s a minor concussion. The small cuts on her face will heal on their own, I stitched the larger one. Otherwise, she’s okay.”
I lifted my hand to my face and felt swollen cuts across my left cheek and a painful line of stitches near my ear on the same side. There was a mirror near the bed and I grabbed it to see. I groaned.
I was pretty much a mess and not even a hot one. My face was puffy, bruised, and scattered with scratches that I guess must have happened when I banged my face on the window. I vaguely recalled a crash of glass at some point during the accident.
“Now, do you want to tell her what you did when you found us?” Dave asked.
I put the mirror down and looked at the two men. Dave was still standing next to me, not looking at Kevin, but his entire body was laced with undeniable tension and fury. As for the good doctor, he had backed up and was standing behind my husband. In that moment, he looked like he wanted to bludgeon him with whatever was at hand. Currently it was just a clipboard, which was sort of a funny idea.
“What’s going on?” I asked softly when a full two minutes had passed without a word from either one of them. “Did something
happen after the accident that I need to know about?”
“When I approached the vehicle, I checked on you—” Kevin started.
Dave spun around, fists clenched at his sides and eyes wild with anger. “After that, asshole! What the fuck did you do after that?”
Kevin hesitated, but his gaze never left David’s. “Seeing that the zombie was almost entirely free from his binds and that he was threatening both the child and David, who were pinned by the wreckage, I injected him with a serum.”
“A serum?” I repeated, watching the two men in confusion. My brain was still foggy and I didn’t really get what was going on.
“He knocked the fucker out with some kind of drug, Sarah,” Dave snapped.
I drew back with a shake of my intensely painful head that I immediately regretted. As I sucked in a breath and touched my skull, I said, “N-No, that’s not possible. We’ve tried all kinds of sedatives since the outbreak, from Luminal to horse tranqs to fucking heroin. They just don’t work on the dead.”
“Well, this one did.” Dave’s voice was dangerously soft and almost gentle, but his expression was anything but. He looked ready to kill. “The zombie went down like he’d been shot.”
“How do you know he wasn’t dead?” I asked. “Maybe he took a blow to the skull in the wreck that put him down.”
Dave arched a brow. “He isn’t dead. His hands kept moving, his lungs kept filling even though the dead asshat doesn’t need to breathe to live. He was still living dead, Sarah. Just down for the count.”
“How?” I breathed in utter disbelief as I stared at Kevin again. “How is that possible?”
The doctor sighed slightly. “You’re correct when you say it isn’t possible. At least not traditionally. Normally the infected system doesn’t allow for distribution of a sedative. The blood no longer flows since the host is dead, rendering drugs of any kind ineffective.”
“Then how did what you did work, Doc?” Dave insisted.
Kevin glared at him. “I admit, I’ve done some testing using the head specimens in my lab. I developed a sedative that uses the zombie virus itself to drive forward to the brain of the infected.”
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