by D. J. Molles
Maybe it’s not Harper after all…
The thought spurred her forward. She moved quickly across the circular clearing to the chain-link fence and slipped quietly through with only a slight metallic snickering sound from the fence as she negotiated her way through the cut. On the other side, she looked behind her, half-expecting to see a pack of infected come hauling out of the woods, raising their skin-crawling howl that was neither human nor animal.
The woods remained motionless.
Back to the tower.
She jogged smoothly to the ladder, slinging her rifle onto her back as she went. She took the first few rungs with a jump and a swing. The ladder groaned but held as it had every other time. She barely noticed now. She felt exposed as she gained height. Not only was she in the open, but she was high up now. Obvious. The water tower like a stage with spotlights.
Bad idea, Julia.
Too late to turn back now.
It’s too late when it’s too late, right?
She was almost halfway up when the rusted ladder finally betrayed her. The metal was icy to the touch and covered in a thin layer of frost, making her hands numb and slow to respond. So when the rusted rung in her grip popped and yanked free of the ladder, her unwieldy hand slipped right off.
Her heart went into her throat and she lurched out for another rung.
Her cold, numb fingers didn’t open and close as fast as they needed to. She struck the next rung up clumsily, skinning her knuckles across it, and then she had no grip at all. Her body weight swung her out, pivoting on the one hand she still had fixed to the ladder, but she wasn’t able to hold her grip with her entire weight on it.
Please hold on! Please hold…
She was falling. The ladder rungs were whizzing by her face, it seemed. Close enough to reach out and grab, but when she tried her arms were not long enough. She had time to think that maybe she hadn’t climbed up that far. Maybe the fall would not hurt her.
She didn’t feel the impact. Her body felt like it was made of dense rubber. She could tell she was rolling, and it seemed like she was rolling for a long time to have fallen straight down. The tower and the ground swapped places a couple of times, and then she was still. Staring up at the sky. The stars were incredibly clear. She could see the Milky Way, a pale band across the sky.
She tried to breathe and nothing happened. Her chest seemed to be seized.
Still, she didn’t feel much fear.
I’m still here. I’m okay.
Her stomach ached dully. She felt a numb warmth spreading over her legs. No, not both legs. Just her right leg. She tried to lean up, but couldn’t quite manage it—God it was hard to move when she couldn’t seem to take a breath. Then she tried to lift her legs and couldn’t manage that, either.
That was when the panic hit her.
Paralyzed. Paralyzed. I’m fucking paralyzed.
It was the panic that managed to break through her shocked diaphragm and pulled air into her lungs. At the same time she rolled onto her side and her body curled up like a pill bug and she could look down at her numb legs that were becoming not-so-numb. She could feel her right leg and it felt weird to her. Loose, like a limp noodle. Disjointed. She could feel the skin bending in ways it had never bent before.
She managed to move her right leg.
The thigh and knee moved naturally. But everything below that flopped.
Her eyes went wide and she could feel the cold air on them. She thought she might vomit.
“Oh. Oh,” she whispered. Tears now mercifully blurring the image of her oddly bent leg. Unmercifully, the shock was dissipating like a fog and the numb, weird feeling in her leg was turning into agony. “Oh, no. No.”
Then she clamped her hand over her mouth and her hard-fought breath came out of her in a stifled sob. Don’t scream. You can take the pain. Just don’t cry out. Don’t attract attention.
But who was going to find her if she didn’t cry out? What if it wasn’t Harper coming through the woods after her? What if her final bout of incredibly stupid temper had led her out of the house and into harm’s way and Harper had just shook his head and decided to let her figure it out on her own?
Lee had a phrase to describe when stupid people did stupid things that got them hurt.
“Self-correcting injury.”
Good job, Julia. Way to fucking go. You figured it out.
Self-correcting injury.
Then, What are you going to do?
She craned her neck at the woods and almost couldn’t focus on what she was seeing. The pain was a white-hot curtain hanging in front of her eyes. She tried to listen but her blood was rushing in her ears and it was all she could hear in that moment. Blood in her veins and air in her throat. Adrenaline and pain muted everything else.
She blinked rapidly and felt the moisture on her eyes and rolling down her cheeks, at first warm and then ice-cold. She kept one hand clamped over her mouth to hush the scream that kept trying to come out and the other she reached down and clutched at her leg, just below the knee where the pain was intensifying.
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” Her voice was threadbare. She clenched her eyes shut and heaved herself onto one elbow. “You can’t sit here. You have to move.” The pain was bad, but it would only be worse if she got tracked down by some starving creature and torn apart while she was still alive. That was her sole motivation.
She began to drag herself toward one of the big steel pylons of the water tower. It was all she could think of. The area was bare of any sort of concealment except for hiding behind one of those four supports. And she needed to hide. There wasn’t a chance in hell that she was going to drag herself through the woods, trying to get back to the house. And she would not call for help because she knew that help would not come—only many, many hungry mouths.
So she had to hide.
Fuck, it hurts so bad! She couldn’t believe how bad it was. She’d broken a bone as a kid, but she didn’t remember the pain being so bad. The throbbing was horrendous and she wondered if parts of her bone were beginning to punch through her flesh, too. Because the pain had a sharp edge to it now. She pictured her leg bones, all white and glistening, edging through muscle and skin with each movement she made. But there wasn’t enough precision in the pain to know about the specifics. It was just a fiery riot below her knee.
Trying to control her breathing, she looked down to her strangely twisted leg and stared at the cloth of her pants, trying to see if it was getting dark with blood. She couldn’t quite tell. There was a dark smudge, but maybe it was just dirt.
She continued pulling herself along the ground, and gradually her mind came back to itself, able to acclimate through the pain to a certain degree. Just the basic functions. Her blood wasn’t roaring in her ears as bad as it had been. The world didn’t seem so white and sparkling in her vision. She was able to see what she was crawling toward with clarity, and she was able to hear behind her.
In the woods.
The sound of feet in the leaves.
More than one pair, she was certain.
“Don’t let them get me,” she said to no one in particular. Sitting duck, you stupid idiot. You dumb bitch. Nice self-correcting injury you got yourself there. Had to prove a point. Had to be the big girl. Had to show off your dick. Christ, sometimes you’re worse than the boys.
All she knew was that she didn’t want them to get her. If she had to wait in the freezing cold for hours, if she had to wait all goddamned night, that was what she would do. It was cold enough to freeze a person to death, but there were tricks, like tensing your body and your abdominals to increase core temperature. If she could manage it. Being injured wouldn’t help. It would sap her strength. But she was having trouble coming up with a better plan.
Wait. Just wait. Harper knows where you went. Eventually they’ll come looking for you.
Won’t they?
Of course they will.
But then another part of her wondered if they were all rolling their
eyes when she stormed out of the house, happy to be rid of the Troublemaker. The one that kept making rash decisions. Like the decision to bolt out of the house with no help and to march through the woods, alone, in the dark, to the tower, only minutes after a horde had passed them by. Maybe they were relieved that she was gone. Maybe they would be in less danger that way.
The thought horrified her, but her mind wouldn’t let it go.
She reached one of the pylons and she scooted up on it, her back to it. Behind her came the footsteps through the woods, much closer now. Getting ready to hit the clearing, she thought. Hit the clearing and then sniff the air and maybe smell her out like prey. Maybe root around the edges of the fence until they found the hole. And then what?
She yanked her rifle out from where it was slung on her back. It took some effort and some extra pain as she unintentionally leaned weight on her leg and nearly passed out from the pain that it caused. But she got it in her hands. She had it. Thirty rounds in the magazine.
Best-case scenario: if she was a real Cool Hand Luke, she might take down thirty of them before they ripped her to shreds. More realistically? It would take three to four rounds apiece to put down. So… maybe ten.
Through the grim arithmetic she was still picturing Harper and Charlie and Dylan standing next to the fire, with Sergeant Kensey and his Marines standing behind him. Laughing and joking. All of them quite jovial with each other now that she was out of the picture.
“Well, that’s a relief!” Sergeant Kensey would chuckle.
Harper would nod. “She’s been out of control.”
Charlie, giving Harper a slap on the back. “If she wants to go, let her go.”
And Dylan would agree. “She’s only been causing problems for us, Harper.”
“She’s rash,” Kensey would point out.
“That’s what I told her!” Harper would say, with a laugh.
No, that’s ridiculous, Julia told herself. And yet she kept picturing herself still under the water tower come dawn. Either as a big, black patch of frozen blood, or half frozen to death. Icicles hanging off her chin and nose. Skin a pale blue. Like a cartoon.
A hiss in the darkness. “Julia!”
No more of your bullshit imagination…
The fence rattled. “Julia, are you in here?”
Julia turned her shoulders, grunting against the strain it put on her. She could almost feel the separated bones grinding together. The thought made her nauseous. She looked out over the overgrown but otherwise cleared area at the bottom of the water tower and she saw a figure standing at the fence. Her heart went into conniptions.
Wait… that was…
“Charlie!” she snapped. “Get the fuck in here and help me out!”
Charlie’s figure seemed to triangulate on her voice. Another figure appeared, and she knew it was Dylan. “I see you,” Charlie said, probably a little louder than he had intended. Worry was coming out of his voice and Julia realized he hadn’t come expecting to find her crouched behind one of the water tower pylons.
Anytime something unusual was happening, it was usually bad.
That was a rule to live by.
Dylan’s neck stretched, trying to see her. “What’s she doing on the ground?” he whispered.
Charlie just swore at him and told him to hold the fence.
Relief managed to overcome some of Julia’s pain. It was still there, hard and resonant like iron hammers on steel drums, but at least there was someone there. She wouldn’t be left alone under the water tower to freeze to death or be ripped to shreds.
Charlie made it through the fence and was too focused on getting to Julia to hold the fence for Dylan, who came through more noisily. Charlie’s head swiveled around, his eyes darting one second, and then locked on to Julia the next.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
“I’m hurt,” she said. She forced a ghastly grin. “Self-correcting injury.”
“What?” Charlie looked confused.
Julia closed her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing. Help me up.”
“Holy fuck!” Dylan’s voice. “Your leg!”
It took a second for Charlie to react. “Oh my God, Julia… your leg. It’s broke.”
“No shit it’s broke!” She stifled her voice because it reached for volume—that scream still trying to make its way out of her. “Help me up, Charlie.” She thrust her right arm out to him, her left holding her rifle.
Dylan shook himself into action and crossed to the other side of her. They stooped down, each of them grabbing her by the upper arm. Charlie looked at Dylan and nodded his head. “Ready? One, two, three.”
It was inevitable that her leg moved when they pulled her to her feet. It felt like the bone was bending again, trying to cut through her flesh. She tried to relieve the pain by holding her leg up, hoping the broken parts would hang naturally and not so painfully, but it only made it worse. She managed to control her voice, but her mouth still shot open and a little Aaaahhh-aaah noise came out of her.
They began moving her carefully toward the fence. Charlie and Dylan’s eyes were constantly up and scanning as they did so. Julia stayed locked on to the cut in the fence, her teeth clamped down so hard that she thought one of them might crack under the strain. She wanted nothing more than to have never walked out of that house. She just wanted to be back in front of the fire, unbroken. Then she thought about why she had even left the house in the first place and she thought about the water tower and the view it would provide into Eden, where she could confirm or deny what Sergeant Kensey had held to be gospel truth.
Was Eden overrun?
They were halfway to the fence when a new sound reached her. One that she had not been expecting.
Tires on gravel. The roar of a diesel engine.
“… the fuck?” Charlie stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the gravel utility easement that led out to the main street. Julia followed his gaze and saw the blaze of headlights. She knew the shape of them well enough. It was a Humvee. One that was traveling fast.
It ground to a stop, causing gravel to skitter out in front of it. She could not see who was driving, but it was Harper that came out of the passenger side, leaving his door open behind him as he ran for the fence, waving for them to hurry up and not quite shouting, but not quite whispering, “Let’s fucking roll! Big horde’s coming right at us!”
Charlie and Dylan swore in unison and began dragging Julia for the fence. The boot of her broken leg caught and dragged her, but the two men on either side of her gave it no mind. They kept moving for the fence, even as Julia’s entire body locked up with the strain of trying to find some momentary relief.
Harper was on the other side of the fence now, rifle in hand. He stared at Julia. “Holy shitfire! Julia. What the fuck did you do to yourself?”
Charlie answered for her. “She broke her leg. Open the cut.”
Harper swore again and grabbed the chain-link sections and pulled them apart like a curtain. “We don’t have time for this. We don’t have time. You need to hurry.”
“We’re hurrying as fast as we can.”
“Hurry faster!”
“I’m trying!”
Julia was being passed through the cut in the fence amid grunts of strain and effort and her own noises of misery. Then all of the sudden she was horizontal, Charlie and Dylan on her arms, and Harper holding her legs, on the thigh. It hurt, but not as bad as when she’d been vertical. But now there were other things to think about.
“Where are they coming from?” she choked out, trying to get her rifle up, but it was difficult with Dylan and Charlie on her arms.
Harper’s response was clipped. “Eden. Where else?”
“How many?”
“Fucking all of them.”
In her vision the dark shape of the Humvee, crowned by its own halo of headlights, was jerking and jumping back and forth with the hectic movement of the three men hurrying her along. They were breathi
ng hard, all three of them. Actually, she was breathing hard, too, but for different reasons. She had to keep clenching every muscle in her body, as if doing so helped squeeze the pain out of her.
Another sound reached them and it split the late-night air like a crack of lightning and for a moment it spurred a burst of adrenaline that blocked all pain. It was the sound of a single voice lifting in a howl, eerie and ululating. And then it was answered by others. Many others. Hundreds of others, and it seemed the woods all around them was suddenly alive.
We’re fucked. We’re so fucked.
It’s your fault. You did this.
Please don’t let anybody die, because it would be my fault…
They reached the Humvee and doors were ripped open. Someone in a familiar uniform was crouched inside. Calculating eyes already assessing her. Dirty old cap tilted back on his head to keep it out of the way.
“Careful, now. Don’t bump that leg. You banged it up good, didn’t you?”
“Kensey?” Julia said, feeling a little confused. Afraid. Exhausted. “I thought…”
“Yeah, you thought.” He pulled a pack up close to him and began unzipping the compartments. He was crouched in the back of the Humvee with Julia, while Charlie and Dylan piled in, slamming the door shut behind them. Harper took the front passenger seat and then the Humvee was tearing a wide U-turn, spitting gravel into the wheel wells.
“Are you a doctor?” she asked, lamely.
“Corpsman, once,” he answered. “But that’s about as close as you’re gonna get.”
In the front, Harper was holding the radio handset and looking into the back. But he wasn’t looking at Julia; he was looking through the back, into the woods behind them, his eyes searching the trees for the telltale movement.
“Come on. Get us the fuck out of here.”
They spun off the gravel and onto blacktop. The other four vehicles in their convoy were there and already rolling. Julia was able to see them by craning her neck up and around Reilly’s body to see out the side window of the Humvee. And for the briefest of moments before the Humvee fell in beside the other vehicles, she could see the road toward Eden and the throng of gray movement, pouring toward them like a ghostly wave in the moonlight.