by TW Brown
A teenaged boy was standing amidst a cluster of bamboo, his eyes regarding me as his teeth clicked together seemingly in anticipation of getting a bite of my warm flesh. I felt my heart leap to my throat, but almost just as quickly settle back down to a more reasonable rate.
He tried to lunge for me, but somehow, he’d gotten his clothing so tangled and snagged on a few of the broken stalks of bamboo that he was trapped and unable to get free to reach me. I could see up the side of this home and spotted the gate that would open to the front. Beyond that were dense woods. Thank God for the tree-loving folks of the Pacific Northwest that loved keeping decent sized wooded lots intact. That was my objective. Once in the woods, I could hopefully lose Neil and find my way back to the compound in time to warn everybody and haul ass before Don and that prick Neil returned to finish everybody off.
I took off as fast as I could run, and I’d just reached the gate when I heard a voice from behind me. “Evan!”
This wasn’t some sort of “I have you now!” shout of triumph. It was a whispered hiss that sounded urgent and…scared?
I spun to see Neil with one leg tossed over the fence. All I had to do was pull a gun, aim, and end him here and now. And that was exactly what my body was already in the process of doing. Only…something was strange. Off.
Wrong.
“Evan, please,” Neil pleaded in a whispered hiss. “Wait for me.”
I now had a pistol out before me in a two-handed grip. I had his center mass lined up for an easy shot. After all, he wasn’t that far away, I wasn’t going to miss. The look in his eyes told me that he knew I had him.
Then why hadn’t I pulled the trigger?
“We have to get out of here before that maniac figures things out and circles back to the compound.” Neil hadn’t so much as tried to throw his other leg over. He was sitting there in my sights. I could drop him easy. So why wasn’t I?
He had no weapon in his hands. Was it because I couldn’t shoot a defenseless person? No, that wasn’t it. If I had the drop on Don Evans, I’d shoot him in the back or even in the face if he was where Neil was at this exact moment.
“I didn’t have a choice, but I tried to set them up and lure them into a trap. Somehow they managed to either avoid it or get free.” He glanced over his shoulder and then back at me. “Shoot me or let me come with you, but we don’t have time to waste.”
“You gave up Marshawn,” I hissed.
“Because he got the jump on you. He will get away, I’d be willing to bet on it. You aren’t able to move as fast. Your arm is still messed up. If Don came after you, chances are he would’ve caught you.”
All of this seemed to make some kind of perverse sense. Also, why would he go through all this to call me and risk that I would’ve shot first and asked questions later?
“I told Evan not to trust you,” a familiar and gravelly voice barked from the other side of the fence and the yard I’d just exited.
Neil turned to look back over his shoulder. His hands rose and all I could think was that the bastard had been telling the truth. I have no idea what or how things had shaken down to where they were at the moment, but, as strange as it seemed, Neil had not been lying…at least not to me.
That thought only had a fraction of a second to gel in my head before a thunderous boom sounded. I saw something chunky explode from Neil’s back where the round of from a high-caliber weapon blew a hole in him. He toppled backwards and landed hard in the yard I was in.
“We’re coming to get you, Evan,” Natasha Petrov growled from the other side of the fence.
That broke whatever spell had kept me from taking off the moment Neil had been shot. I reached the gate and flipped up the latch. Just as I ducked through, I heard another thunderous boom and a chunk of the fence evaporated in splinters that plunged into the back of my head and neck.
I stumbled forward, the stinging sensation just enough to motivate me to run faster. I looked around and saw that I was at the end of a cul-de-sac. Directly across the street were the woods that would hopefully allow me to evade Natasha.
As I ran, I tried to make sense of what had just happened. Nothing came to mind that could explain it away. And now Neil was dead, so the chances that I would get to the bottom of things seemed unlikely.
“Keep running, Evan…too bad that little girl you promised to protect didn’t have the same chance,” Natasha called after me as I ducked into the dark shadows of the grove of dense pines.
She was talking about Ariel Mannheim. Ariel and I had met while I was on the run. I’d rescued her only to have her pull a gun on me. We’d both been captured by Don Evans and he’d kept her as supposed insurance when he sent me out on a run with his goons. All I had to do was come back, and she would be fine. If I didn’t, then he said he would give her to the zombies he kept in the basement of the church he was using at the time for a base. That was just one of my many sins starting to pile up. I doubted that I would ever have a night of sleep that was not haunted by either the ghosts of those whose deaths were my direct responsibility, or by visions of the things I’d seen, like those children back at that house.
Part of me really wanted to find a spot and hunker down. Maybe that bitch Natasha would pursue me and I could get a shot at her. Next to Don Evans, there was nobody I would rather kill.
That sentiment made me stumble. Or maybe it was just the root in the ground that I hadn’t seen. Whatever the case, I was faced with a stark reality.
I was prepared to kill living human beings.
If I was being absolutely honest…I wanted to kill. Maybe I was devolving like the rest of society seemed to be doing. Perhaps I was simply adapting to the current ways of the world. Whatever the reason, there was still a small part of me that was uncomfortable as to where my conscience was drifting.
I went a good distance into the woods, but I didn’t hear any sound of pursuit. That didn’t mean there wasn’t any. It only meant that I couldn’t hear anything. I crouched down just behind some really thick sticker bushes and tried to see if anybody had come after me.
I could see the front of the house I’d cut through the yard of…the place where Neil lay dead, hanging head down from the top of the fence where he’d been shot. There was nothing. No movement at all.
After a few seconds that ticked by with terminal slowness, I got up and took off. Thankfully, the woods were basically zombie free. They were also much too small for my liking. I emerged on the backside of the continuation of this neighborhood.
It took all of my control to stay put for as long as I could stand—which was probably not nearly long enough—before I ventured out and started cutting through one back yard after another. Occasionally I heard something pound or slap on a window, but I didn’t stop to look.
Finally, I came to the edge of the neighborhood that sat just behind the place I considered our base. I was at the neighborhood I called the race track. It was clear that every single one of these residences had been stripped. Probably by Carl and the individuals that had magically appeared and joined him on the same day that I’d left.
When I crossed the grassy field, I was ridiculously happy to see the remnants of my noisemaker devices. Obviously Carl had thought the idea good enough to implement on what appeared to be a larger scale. I wish it’d helped him when it came to the living. One thing for certain, I would take that into account if we ever found someplace we could settle into. I would make precautions to deal with the zombies, sure. But there would be a helluva lot of prep to deal with people like Don Evans and Natasha.
I reached the wall and was halfway over when something struck me. Nobody was noticing. Not one person was visible. The pile of stuff was still where it had been when we’d left, and there was even a neat row of packs presumably belonging to the few folks we’d left behind.
“They are in the house,” a voice whispered from behind me.
I turned to see Michael standing there with Chewie. From the looks of things, the two had been hiding i
nside one of the shot-up cars parked inside the walls.
“Why are you two outside and everybody else is inside?” I asked what I considered a logical question.
“They are drinking the icky stuff from those smelly bottles.” He wrinkled his nose for emphasis and Chewie made a low woof that almost sounded like agreement.
Great. We go out and risk our butts and the rest of the group decides this is a good time to tie one on? We were going to have to bail on this place. And it wasn’t zombies that I worried about.
I walked into the main entry hall and could hear a bunch of loud talking and laughter coming from the living room. What I saw when I walked in was enough to make me want to just turn around and walk back out.
Rickey was in the act of passing a bottle of Jack to Tracy. Darya was reclined in one of the over-stuffed chairs, a stupid grin on her face and eyes lidded, looking like she was on the bad side of inebriated. Her kid was curled up on the floor in a blanket and snoring softly, his mouth open just a little, and a line of drool trickling from one corner.
“This is going to seem like a stupid question,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice even. “But what the hell are you guys doing?”
“We saw you lead that horde away. We were celebrating,” Rickey huffed, no sign of a slur in his voice…yet.
“Well you got excited just a bit early,” I snapped, failing at hiding the annoyance in my voice. “And did you get that kid drunk, too?” I hiked a thumb at Darya’s sleeping son and realized I hadn’t ever bothered to even learn the kid’s name.
That seemed to be all it took to sober Darya Kennedy up as she bounded to her feet and stomped to me. “How dare you!” she hissed. “My son is exhausted. In case you haven’t been paying attention, we have been on the go for over three days straight. He is just a child and was on the verge of collapse.”
“Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we need to bail from this location right freaking now.” I leveled my glare at everybody.
“But we watched you draw the zombies away,” Tracy insisted. “I thought we were going to stay here at least for the time being if you could lead them away.”
“But we didn’t count on Don Evans and his people being in the area. We—” I started, but was cut off.
“Grab your packs and let’s go!”
I spun to see Marshawn standing in the doorway, his hands on his knees as he sucked in great lungsful of air. I was torn between being relieved that he’d made it, and horrified at the prospects in knowing we were safer out among the undead than we were here.
“How close behind you?” I asked, my voice barely able to go much beyond a whisper as all the moisture had suddenly evaporated from my mouth in the last few seconds.
“No idea, I was hauling ass and not bothering to stop and see,” Marshawn gasped as he struggled to catch his breath. “But they were coming this way. They know we are here.”
That seemed to sober everybody up. It didn’t take long for us to grab what we deemed important and be ready to move.
“I know where we should go,” I offered as I slung my pack over my shoulder and took Michael by the hand. “Right across the way there is a small community. The entire neighborhood has a wall around it. They might not think to look for us there.”
I was grasping at straws, but I also knew that we were in no shape for a long run. We had two kids with us, three of our number had been drinking, and when I shot them a glance, I noticed both the ladies swaying a bit on their feet. Then there was my Chewie. She would push on if I made her, but I worried she might eventually collapse. She was still beat up pretty bad and I could see some darker spots on her where some of her wounds were seeping blood still. Is this what Neil had meant about how pointless our struggle might be? Would it perhaps be easier to just roll over and let the waves wash us away?
I shook my head and forced those thoughts away. As long as I could draw breath, I would fight. That was it. And in that moment, it was as if my resolve finally etched itself in my soul once and for all. I would not doubt, and I would not quit.
Everybody started for the wall and I paused. “Get over, I will catch up,” I said.
I jogged back to all our supplies that we’d be leaving behind. There was still a good amount of stuff here, and sure, it was possible that we might be able to come back and scavenge a few things, but I was willing to bet that if Don Evans and his crew rolled back into this place, they would not leave any of it behind.
I tossed a few lids aside as I scrounged around. I knew what I wanted, and even made a little cry of victory when I found it. It only took a moment, but when I reached the wall and managed to haul myself up and take one last look back, I couldn’t help but smile. It was a small victory…but a win is a win as my old high school coach used to preach. It didn’t matter if it was by one point or a hundred. The pile of supplies that we hadn’t been able to bring with us was quickly becoming a decent-sized bonfire.
I hadn’t seen who helped Chewie over, but I wasn’t surprised to see her padding along beside Michael. Marshawn was walking beside the pair, his head on a swivel as he tried to look in every direction at once. The good news was that not a single zombie stumbled along at the moment.
We crossed Johnson Creek Boulevard and started up the hill towards the walled-in community. I had picked up my pace so that I was in the lead. I knew exactly where I wanted us to enter.
It only took another moment, and I had reached the gate that was blocked with cars. I’d entered the place at this exact location just a few days ago when I’d thought that I was going to turn.
I watched as Rickey stopped, turned and then just began hoisting the ladies over the gate. Then, with a gentleness that surprised me, he knelt in front of Chewie, whispered something to her, and then picked her up as he used the bumper of a car for a stairstep. He climbed onto the hood and very carefully set my beloved Newfoundland down on the hood of the car on the other side. In the blink of an eye, he scooped up both the young boys and set them down on the other side.
With an agility that you would not believe possible for such a big, bulky guy, he hopped the gate and then got down on the ground, quickly transferring my dog from the hood of the car to the street.
When I climbed over last, I looked around and was surprised not to see any undead shambling our direction. We weren’t out of the water yet…but it was a start. We headed into the neighborhood just as the teeth-jarring chatter of a machine gun started up back in the place we’d just vacated.
Now I had to hope and pray that they didn’t decide to come over here and check this place out. I had a few places that I knew were cleared out, so I took them to the house I’d spent that first night in.
We made it inside the door just as a low moan sounded from someplace close. I wasn’t sure if we’d been spotted by the zombies, but we could deal with that in a minute once everybody got inside.
Turned out that was about all the time we had before a meaty hand slapped on the front door we’d just come through. I jerked my machete free and stalked to the door with the intention of ending the zombie quickly.
“Water…” a woman’s voice rasped from behind a netted veil that draped around the front of her camo-colored bush hat.
She dropped to her knees and sprawled with her arms hardly breaking her fall as her face bounced off the concrete step-up entry to the house. There was something oddly familiar about her, but I couldn’t figure out what it might be.
“Get her inside, quick,” Rickey hissed.
I looked up to see a trio of zombies shambling past the house we were going to try and hide out in for a little bit while we figured out what to do next. I grabbed her under one arm and Rickey grabbed the other. We pulled her in as quietly as we could and eased the door shut once she was inside.
Now that she was inside, I gave her a quick once over. She was packing more firepower than any two of us combined. And while we had a few police weapons in the mix, she was carrying one rifle in particular that I was
guessing had been very much on the illegal side of things a few months ago when that sort of thing mattered.
“You did hear the poor thing ask for water?” Tracy snapped as she shouldered past us and knelt down with a canteen that she brought to the young woman’s lips.
In a flash, and way before any of us would’ve been able to react had we been watching out for something, the woman whipped her body around and was suddenly on her knees and crouched behind Tracy with a very ugly knife that was filthy with dark blood that was so fresh it still dripped from the blade.
“Who are you people, and what do you want?” the woman hissed through clenched teeth.
“Whoa there, sister,” Rickey said calmly, stepping back and raising his hands to show he was unarmed. “We’re just passing through. If this is your place, we apologize. We was just following our boy here. Thought he knew what was what in these parts.” The nasty look he shot me was very obvious.
“You.” The woman gestured to me. “I seen you in here before. Wasn’t you with those poor bastards across the way?”
I processed that comment as having the possibility that maybe she’d seen something when Don Evans and his people rolled in and did what they did. And as much as I wanted details, I knew that would obviously have to come later.
“You set those bastards up and sic that crazy bunch of heathens on ‘em?” the strange woman pressed.
Yeah…much later.
“No, I was actually trying to find them. I left when I thought that I was infected, but it turned out that I wasn’t.” I was talking way too fast…babbling even. I hiked my sleeve up to show my healed scratch.
She gave my arm a cursory glance and then cocked an eyebrow in wry amusement. “Am I supposed to see something?”
“Yeah…well…there was a scratch there. It’s healed up since.”
“And not left so much as a scar?” She snorted a laugh that was definitely “at” me and not “with” me.