It was a terrifying and sobering realization.
“So, what’s the plan?” I asked once we made it past another large group of wandering zombies just inside the city limits.
Jude crouched down beside me and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not sure, Mel.”
My eyes widened when I heard the nickname only a handful of people were allowed to use fall from Jude’s lips casually.
I squashed the stupid smile that tried to worm its way across my face. I hoped he hadn’t noticed.
He sighed and rammed his knife into the ground between his feet.
“How the fuck can anyone be living in that?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.
I’d been thinking the same thing, but I didn’t want to be the one to say it.
“Where’s the base supposed to be located?” I asked instead.
“Not far from here, but it might as well be miles with all these undead fuckers walking around.” He scanned the area around us, making sure we weren’t going to be spotted. “Jesus, the sound alone would have driven me insane a long time ago.”
I agreed.
There had to be a somewhat safe way to enter the base, or they would have tried to move the survivors from there a long time back. Of course, even if we did happen to make it to the base, who was to say the people there would even let us in? For all we knew, they’d leave us out in the open and ring a dinner bell for the zombies.
“We have to try,” I said after a moment. Jude’s jaw tightened and he jerked his knife out of the ground. “Even if there is only the slimmest chance that there are soldiers or civilian survivors there being held captive, we have to try and help them. My dad would have helped them.”
I lifted my chin. “I have to try,” I said resolutely. And then I’d also be able to look for Jess.
Jude nodded, but I could tell by the way he held himself rigidly that he didn’t like it. It was written all over his tight jawline. His hand clenched and unclenched several times.
“Alright, G. I. Jane.” He chuckled under his breath when I punched him in the arm. “Let’s go and try not to get killed, okay?”
“I’ll do my best, Agent.” I offered with a jaunty salute.
“The building is supposed to be exactly half a mile that way,” Jude said, pointing into the city of glass, metal, and other dead things. He pointed to a section of the city that looked like a section where things might be manufactured or warehoused. There was also a small bridge not too far in the distance, but from what I could see, it was crawling with the dead.
I winced.
Where he pointed also happened to be right smack dab into the center of a huge knot of zombies. Similar to the herds in Gastonia, those zombies seemed to shift and move as a single body. It would have been almost beautiful if it wasn’t so fucking scary.
Vehicles were bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see. On every street, decomposing bodies lay strewn all over the place, and zombies walked in between it all, some of them shoulder-to-shoulder with what looked like hundreds of their undead brethren. The further you looked into the city, the denser the zombie population became.
“The secret base is located beneath an old toy factory there.”
What was with all the secret locations and toys? I grimaced.
Creepy.
“So, what’s the plan again?”
“Run like hell?” Jude suggested.
“You see how they’re clustered?” I said, squinting against the sun. Jude nodded.
“Some are in small groups or loners, but most of them are clustered in larger groups of twenty or more.”
I shook my head and pointed at the group closest to us. “Yeah, but do you see where the larger groups are clustered?” I asked.
Jude looked from group to group, his forehead crinkling in thought. His eyes widened fractionally.
“They’re grouped together in the shadiest areas,” he murmured thoughtfully.
He moved to the other end of the vehicle and searched over the trunk of the vehicle, scoping out the area. “We might have a better chance if we can find areas like that one.” He pointed to a long spot of road and abandoned cars where only a few straggler zombies milled about in the heat of the day.
“If we can move quickly, kill quickly, and get really fucking lucky, we might be able to make it to the factory by keeping to the sunniest areas.”
I nodded my head. It was the best plan we had.
I joined Jude at the back of the car and peeked over to the spot we were going to be running for. There were still half a dozen zombies between us and the first stretch of zombie-free zones. Not only that, once the zombies in the shade caught sight of us, being in the sunlight wouldn’t save us.
We had to move fast, and there would be no room for error.
Jude held up a hand, counted down from three, and we took off.
My heart tripped out a frantic beat, the noise of the zombies in the city drowned out by the blood rushing in my ears as we began our dangerous game of Russian roulette with zombies instead of bullets.
Jude ran ahead of me, his knife finding the skull of a lumbering zombie halfway to the first patch of sunlight. Two more came after him and we both drove our knives into their skulls before resuming our sprint across the road, weaving between cars and bodies.
I didn’t dare look behind me as we ran. I couldn’t risk taking my eyes off of where we were going, and I didn’t really want to know if any zombies were already following us.
Jude jumped up onto the top of a small car and landed on the other side to take down a female zombie who looked like it hadn’t fed since she’d been turned. Her yellowing skin sagged against her skeletal figure and her jaw hung impossibly low.
I jumped up too, but my foot got caught halfway across. I landed hard on the roof, wondering how in the hell I’d gotten tripped up.
I hadn’t.
A tall male corpse who must have been nearby or in the car had grabbed my leg and was pulling me with the strength of a linebacker toward him, his bald head reflecting the sunlight, his mouth open with slushy green juices oozing down the front of his tattered button-up.
I raised my free foot and kicked him in the face three times with my boot, hearing bones crunch and rotten flesh squish, before his hold on me lessened and finally released.
I nearly screamed when Jude grabbed me by my arms to pull me the rest of the way across the little car.
“Are you done playing with the nice zombie?” Jude asked, breathing hard.
I snorted and we took off running once again.
We ran full out, only pausing when a zombie got in our way.
Run. Kill. Run. Kill.
We were moving along quickly, but we were still pretty far from our destination.
Occasionally I felt somewhat disconnected from reality when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the surface of a building as I ran and fought.
Jude drove his knife across the throat of a zombie while I rammed mine into the skull of one of his buddies. Another zombie materialized from behind a van and made his way toward Jude.
I opened my mouth to tell him to watch out when, like out of a scene from a horror movie, zombies poured out from behind the van.
Jude swiveled and his eyes widened.
I kicked the zombie off of my blade and stabbed one close to me in the back of the neck. Jude sliced into a zombie and removed his knife just in time to ram it into the eye of another one. I ran for all that I was worth and made it to his side in time for us to find ourselves being corralled by a dozen or more of the menacing creatures. My back hit the door of a shiny, red corvette.
“Jude! On top of the cars!” I shouted.
He slid his knife across the throat of two zombies and then pushed a huge one into four more closing in on us. “Go!” he shouted.
I jumped at his command and propelled myself up on the hood of a rusty blue car. Jude shoved his knife into the skull of another zombie, and I kicked one coming up behind him in the mus
hy face, caving it in.
“Jude, now!” I screamed. I ran, jumping from hood to bumper, hoping Jude was right behind me. I couldn’t stop, couldn’t glance back, afraid I’d lose my footing and land on the ground at the feet of the zombie horde.
I could hear the zombies, their tormented sounds getting closer, their shuffling growing more pronounced as they worked themselves into a frenzy at the prospect of a fresh midday meal.
Up ahead, I saw a rundown factory, a monstrously large square building with vinyl siding and a metal roof and nearly wept from the sight.
My elation was grounded though, when I realized the entire perimeter of the factory was closed off by a high chain link fence with barbed wire gracing the top.
I came to a spot in my car jumping where I wouldn’t be able to make the next jump. When I reached it, I jumped down to the asphalt and looked back, glad to find Jude only a car jump behind me. His eyes scanned the factory and I knew the moment he saw what I had. The absolute devastation was plain to read on his face.
“Keep moving, Mel!” he shouted as he jumped down from the car.
I kept the gate to the factory in my line of vision, praying to God we’d be able to find a way in.
I’d just cleared the corner of the only building left between us and the factory, my legs trembling from the pace we’d run at, when a zombie flew out of nowhere and knocked me to the ground.
I scrambled back, pulling my gun out of its sheath on my leg, and held the tiny zombie off of me, not realizing for a few precious seconds that I’d begun crying.
The zombie now trying to tear my throat out was a toddler, no older than three or four when he’d been turned. His Oshkosh overalls and chubby little hands were a grotesque reminder of everything that was wrong in my new world, of everything that I’d tried to block from my mind and memories during the last six months.
The tiny zombie-tot gnashed his teeth in agitation and hunger, straining against my hold. I lifted my gun and a sob escaped my throat. The zombie was ripped off me while I lay there, useless for the first time in a very long time.
I turned my head when Jude put the undead child down.
He pulled me to my feet and shook me.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded.
“Good, cause we have problems.”
Jude grabbed my hand and jerked me toward the fence. We landed against the shut gate, hoping the chains would be faulty, or someone would come out of nowhere and let us in. Instead, just around the corner, in an alleyway we couldn’t have seen from our approach, dozens upon dozens of zombies stood in a silent stupor in the shade of the building. Their rattling breaths and moans were the only things that gave them away.
“Oh shit,” I whispered.
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Jude whispered back.
I pulled my gun out and put my knife in my left hand.
“Melody, move quietly and slowly. See the side of the fence down that alleyway behind us?”
I nodded, my breath growing labored as I realized exactly how far up a creek we really were.
A narrow alleyway between the toy factory and another abandoned warehouse was directly behind us. At the back of the alley was nothing but a cement wall and a line of huge, metal garbage bins. A dead end. Literally.
It looked like we were going to try to get into the factory perimeter through a side gate. Of course, the side gate was down that particular alleyway, which would make us cornered if it didn’t open. We didn’t even have to make the choice. It was made for us.
Dozens of zombies approached the area from where we had just run and the noise their frenzied movements made immediately roused the slumbering zombies in the shadow-darkened alleyway off to our right.
“Move!” Jude yelled.
I ran full out, my legs pumping for everything I was worth, one hand gripping my blade, the other gripping my handgun. We ran up against the smaller gate and rebounded off of it. Locked.
I turned in time to see my greatest nightmare come to visit me in broad daylight.
Zombies poured into the alleyway, blocking our only escape and our only hope.
“I’m sorry, Mel,” Jude said, pulling his gun off of his back.
“Don’t be,” I said, blinking back my tears. “The kiss wasn’t that bad.” I grinned.
At least the zombies hadn’t taken my sense of humor.
Jude snorted, shook his head, and then propped his gun up on his shoulder.
I began squeezing off rounds, standing next to Jude as he made headshots one after another.
Ten, twenty, thirty, undead dropped before us, but they seemed to multiply rather than diminish in numbers. When my gun was empty, I dropped it and pulled my knife out in front of me, waiting. It wasn’t long before the zombies advanced further and Jude dropped his empty gun next to mine.
If anything would be said of us when we were gone, it would have been that we went out kicking undead ass and not caring about taking names. As a team, we must have been something beautifully terrifying to behold.
I lost count of how many faces, necks, and skulls my blade sliced through. Eventually my arm was numb and without feeling and I only slashed purely out of habit. I couldn’t feel where my blade ended, and my arm began.
The pile of undead in front of us grew large and somewhere in the back of my addled mind, I wondered if we would become buried beneath the rotting corpses and smothered to death rather than getting bitten. Wouldn’t that just suck?
About that time, I started laughing. Jude jumped beside me, the sound foreign in our world of slicing and dicing.
I dropped a zombie, and two more took its place before me. My chest hurt, my arms hurt, and I was so tired. We were fighting a fruitless war and we both knew it. Out of some perverse sense of preservation I had kept fighting this long. But it was getting so very hard.
The promise I made to my dad to survive was the only thing keeping me going. That, and wanting to keep Jude alive as long as I possibly could.
I glanced over and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jude still fighting, his arm moving so lightning fast I could barely make it out, his face that of an avenging angel, and I was instantly sorry we didn’t have more time.
He was beautiful, I realized. Even covered in muck and rot, he was sexy as hell.
I sliced through the forehead of a girl, vaguely aware of my surroundings. Everything grew a bit fuzzy and my arms stopped working right. Blackness skirted the edge of my vision. The sounds of the dead began fading and a ringing took its place.
I watched in some sort of sick fascination as two zombies bumbled over the mound of bodies in front of me. My knife clattered to the ground.
“Melody! What the fuck are you doing?” Jude screamed at me, his voice full of terror.
My eyelids fluttered.
I tried turning my head to the fading sound of Jude’s voice.
But I found I couldn’t.
It’s a NOPE From Me.
When someone’s arms wrapped around me, I felt a strange disconnection from everything happening.
The arms banded about my waist and jerked me backwards. I felt myself being pulled and I heard Jude yelling, but no bites were forthcoming.
When the shots came, I opened my eyes and found I was on the other side of the fence. Men in Army fatigues had Jude on the ground, his face in the gravel and his eyes boring into mine accusingly. I blinked in a daze, wondering why he was looking at me like that.
I went to move, but my arms had been pulled behind me by a large guy who smelled like six months and fifty layers of sweat. More shots echoed behind me.
“Let me go!” I said gruffly. “I need to check on him.”
The guy behind me snorted and held my arms tighter.
“Let’s get them inside, before these zombies work themselves into more of a frenzy,” someone ordered from next to me.
“You don’t have to treat us like criminals,” I explained, holding back my inner bitch ready to rip someone’s head of
f. “We’re just looking for shelter.”
The man who held me pulled me closer to his body and I immediately stiffened in his grasp.
“Sweetheart, no offense, but we don’t know you and you have to be cleared of any bites before we let you free of restraints. Just be glad I know how to treat a lady and didn’t put cuffs on you like we did your boyfriend over there.”
His southern twang caressed my cheek and I shied away from his proximity, though I didn’t think he was trying to intimidate me. He was only stating facts. I nodded my understanding.
“That’s a good girl,” he said approvingly.
“Good girl, my ass,” I muttered beneath my breath.
I thought I heard the muscle head behind me chuckle, but I couldn’t be sure. I was still so weak-kneed from our run, almost death, and prompt rescue that I probably would have fallen into a heap on the ground if the guy wasn’t holding me up as we walked into the factory.
The inside of the factory was exactly what I imagined it would be—creepy.
A vast brick-walled space three stories high, with long panels of windows along the ceiling let in dusty light and tiny particles shimmered in the air. Thick iron beams crossed high overhead, dating this place to probably the early 20th century.
Unused machines sat collecting dust while broken parts of toys littered the floor and workspaces. Besides clowns scaring the bejeesus out of me, old dolls and creepy little kids also topped my nope list.
Walking through an abandoned room with doll parts everywhere was going to seriously take some major therapy. I chuckled and everyone around me tensed up.
Wow, these guys needed to lighten up a bit.
We were led into the back of the factory and then into what I could only imagine had been used as a cleaning supply storage room. In the back of the room, a door opened, and we were shuffled down a flight of stairs where we waited for a large door to be unlocked.
State of (Book 1): State of Decay Page 16