by Megan Berry
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter One
I stare out at the water as it beads and runs down my window. Rain is pouring from the sky, and the gray depresses my mood even more.
“How much farther?” I ask from the backseat, and Ryan and Silas send me twin looks of annoyance.
“Ten minutes different than the last time you asked,” Silas complains, and I frown at him. I’m a little resentful that he’s finding my personal tragedy so inconvenient.
“Jane, it’s only been one day. I told you it will take three to get us to the cabin,” Ryan rephrases what Silas said, a little bit nicer, and I sigh. All this driving is making me anxious. There’s nothing to pass the time. Silas and Ryan aren’t the best conversationalists, so there’s nothing to keep my mind from dwelling on Abby.
I refuse to give up on her, out of all the people I’ve lost—Abby cannot be another name on that long list.
The rain increases, pounding harder against the truck like a hundred zombie fists, and Ryan starts to slow down. He’s leaning forward and squinting ahead. The wind is buffeting the truck, and the result is a lot like I’d imagine driving in a hurricane might be like— a small hurricane.
“I can’t see a thing,” he admits after five minutes. The truck is practically crawling now. “We’re gonna have to stop.”
I sit upright in the seat. “No,” I blurt out, causing Silas and Ryan to give me a look.
“I know what you’re going through, Jane. I want to find out if Megan and Abby are okay too, but it won’t help anything to kill ourselves getting there. If she’s there, she will still be there…” He trails off and doesn’t say the rest. If she isn’t there, she’s dead and we left her back at the camp.
“What’s that up ahead?” Silas asks, pointing to the outline of a large building on the side of the road.
Ryan shakes his head. “I can’t tell… we’ll have to get a little closer.” I bite back my sigh as we pull into the parking lot.
Ryan rolls down his window and rain drops pound in and hit my cheek. I lean forward anyway to read the signs.
“It’s a mini mall,” Ryan says in surprise as he looks around.
“Why’s it in the middle of nowhere?” I ask, and the boys shake their heads.
“Maybe there’s a town somewhere around here?” Silas suggests as he pulls out the map.
Ryan rolls the window back up and sits for a minute with the truck in park, idling.
“It could be risky,” he says at last, causing Silas to nod his head.
“Yep.”
“We could just wait in the truck for the rain to stop and then keep going,” I suggest, but both the guys shake their heads at me again.
For two people that don’t get along, they sure seem to agree on a lot lately, I can’t help thinking spitefully.
I know I’m being awful. I’m not myself; I haven’t been since I found out that my parents weren’t on Liberty Island. I knew it was a long shot going in, but it was one of those things where it’s so crazy you expect it to work.
“We should check it out,” Silas says in his deep, southern drawl.
Ryan turns to me. “You can stay here, Jane. We’ll go scope it out,” he offers, making me frown.
I’ve practically been a zombie these last few days. I’ve been nitpicking the guys, complaining, whining, bitching—you name it. I’m ashamed of myself. These two are with me for no other reason than to help me out, and I’ve been treating them like crap.
I know they’ve lost things too, during this zombie outbreak, but I’ve been making everything about me.
“Actually, I’ll come with you,” I tell them as I pick my pack off the floor, where it sits at my feet. Both the guys turn to me with surprised expressions on their faces. “…if you want me?” I amend, suddenly not sure of my welcome. Their reactions alone are more than enough proof that I’ve been a jerk these last few days.
“Hell yeah we want you,” Silas says with a devilish grin, breaking the silence, and I’m grateful to him.
Visibility is bad as the three of us ease out of the truck, being careful not to slam our doors. The rain is icy cold and beats relentlessly against my skin. I’m instantly soaking wet and shivering. I bring my gun up from the holster at my waist and squint through the rain.
There are a few vehicles in the parking lot, so it would be foolish to assume that this place is clear simply because it’s isolated.
Silas lifts his gun and fires. The pistol has a silencer, but I can still hear it from such a close proximity. A huge zombie keels over at our feet.
“Thanks man, I didn’t even see that one,” Ryan says, and I nod. I hadn’t seen it either.
We get our backs up against the brick building and creep along. Ryan is in the lead, I’m in the middle, and Silas covers us from the rear. Ryan peeks his head out around the corner when we get to the end of the building and then quickly pulls it back in.
“What?” I whisper, but he shakes his head, motioning for us to go back the way we came. The way he is acting, we don’t need to be told twice. Silas breaks into a fast jog. I suck in mouthfuls of rain as I try to keep pace with him.
Ryan keeps looking behind us like he expects a hoard to be on our tail, and I know it’s a very good possibility.
We run the full length of the mall again until we hit the other corner. We parked in what was probably the staff parking lot at the back of the mall, so there aren’t any store front windows for us to break into from this side. Silas stops and peeks around the corner and, same as Ryan, he jumps back quickly and motions for us to head back.
The three of us stare at each other for a minute, and then the boys nod back toward the truck. We begin to head that way as the rain starts to come down even harder. It’s pounding and bouncing off the pavement, and I feel like the cold and wet is being drilled into my bones.
Something catches our eyes through the rain, and we stop short. A crowd of zombies has just come around the side of the mall where Ryan had looked the first time. My stomach feels like it’s going to drop out of my jeans, as we flatten ourselves back against the building. I’m not sure if they can even see us in this weather, but it’s not a chance I really want to be taking.
I can hear their moans even above the pounding of the rain. I begin to breathe harder, though I try to only take short, shallow breaths so I won’t make noise and give us away.
I hear Ryan let out a grunt, and I swing around to find him grappling with a zombie that’s managed to walk right up to us while we stood gaping at the crowd. The rain masked the shuffle of its footsteps and the usual smell of decay.
More zombies are right in line behind him. I grip my gun, but I’m too afraid I’ll hit Ryan with a stray bullet. I hold my fire, my hand going to my waist for the knife that I keep strapped there. The carved wooden handle feels slippery from the water, and I say a quick prayer that this isn’t where everything is going to end.
Silas raises his gun, having no compunction about shooting so close to Ryan. He takes four of the creatures out. I run over to Ryan, who is still grappling with the zombie…my knife isn’t the only thing that’s gotten more slippery in the rain…
The zombie’s fetid skin slips around and falls o
ff in Ryan’s hands as he tries to keep his body parts away from the zombie’s snapping jaws.
I walk up with my knife and act on instinct. I aim quickly, but carefully, at the base of the distracted zombie’s skull and jab as hard as I dare. The knife slices in like butter until I encounter the base of its spine, and even then it doesn’t slow my thrust very much.
I feel my knife lodge into the bone, and the zombie goes stiff and falls to the ground, pulling my knife from my grasp as it goes. Ryan manages to step back from the zombie in time, and he bends down to retrieve my knife. The zombie isn’t moving, but it’s still alive and its teeth clack open and shut, so Ryan jams the knife into the zomb’s temple once before handing it back.
“Thanks,” I mutter as I take the knife, being careful to avoid the infected blood that’s splattered the handle. Through the rain I can see that we have attracted the attention of the other zombies.
They are slow, but there are a lot of them and we have our backs against a brick wall. “What are we gonna do?” I scream. There doesn’t really seem to be a lot of reason to keep quiet now.
Silas looks around and points to the row of dumpsters. They are sitting tucked up against the back of the building. We’d detoured around the stinking things when we’d crept along the wall.
“Over there,” he tells us, not stopping to see if we follow as he takes off at a dead run. I make sure Ryan is still behind me, and then I take off running too. Silas has already managed to scale his way up onto the lid before I even get there.
The dumpster looms when I get closer, and I’m not sure how I’m going to get up there. It feels a bit like the fence back at the town where I met Silas.
“Grab my hand,” Silas shouts as he kneels down to try and grab me. I clutch at his hand, as he begins to pull me up. Ryan bumps to a stop right behind me, crowding me as the group of zombies are starting to crowd him.
“Come on,” Ryan yells, and I can hear the panic in his voice. His arms go around my waist, and then he’s practically throwing me up onto the lid. Silas catches me before I go spinning off the side. Then he gives Ryan a hand and starts to pull him up. Ryan is much more athletic than me. With Silas’ help he’s almost to the top when the zombies bump into the dumpster. I flail a bit and then decide to crouch down so I’m not standing like an idiot about to fall into the zombies.
Ryan lets out a hoarse cry and my attention is riveted to him as time stands still. He is nearly up on the dumpster, but the lead zombie has grabbed him by the foot. Ryan is kicking like crazy, trying to free his leg, and the zombie is biting furiously down on his boot.
“Oh my God!” I cry out. Silas’s face is breaking out in sweat as he plays a horrible game of tug of war with Ryan’s life. I reach for my gun and try to get in the mix. I can usually depend on Silas to save us, but he’s already struggling just to keep Ryan from being pulled down into the hungry crowd.
I try to aim the gun, but I can’t get a clear shot with Ryan shaking back and forth. More hungry arms reach up to claw and scratch at him, and I start to scream.
The axe strapped to Silas’ waist suddenly catches my attention, and I grab it without asking, or thinking. I lean dangerously over the side, elbowing rotten fingers out of my way, and crack down on the zombie’s skull with everything I have.
The zombie’s eyes roll back in its skull, but it doesn’t go down. The zombies behind it are crowding him too much for him to fall. Silas pitches backwards from the momentum of suddenly having Ryan freed, and Ryan falls on top of him.
I pull my arm away from the axe handle just as a huge, ugly zombie tries to take a bite out of my arm. The zombie I just put down finally falls to the ground with Silas’s axe still stuck in its head like a flag pole.
“That was my best axe,” Silas complains in true Silas fashion, and I roll my eyes at him. We are trapped on the lid of this dumpster; we have more important things to think about.
“Sorry about that. I’ll buy you a new one.” I retort making Silas frown.
I look down at Ryan and his shoe is missing. Seeing his exposed sock fills me with fear.
“Are you get bit?” I ask, falling to my knees beside him, but he shakes his head.
“No, I was so lucky. When I pulled away the zombie kept my shoe,” he sends me a small smile, but it’s weak and shaky.
“What are we going to do?” I ask, backing up as far as I can from the reaching hands. Our dumpster is surrounded by zombies on all three sides, the only safe place is right up against the brick wall.
The dumpster shakes and wobbles as the crowd keeps getting bigger. The zombies are probably eight deep all around. I stare at the closest zombies, and my stomach turns sour to see them getting crushed up against the sides. I don’t feel bad for them, but one has a bulging eyeball that is giving me the creeps really bad.
Silas moves to sit beside me, and he slips a little on the wet metal surface of the lid. “Can our luck get any worse?” He curses as he plops down, and Ryan and I look at each other. The jinx.
Right on cue, the sky opens up and starts dumping even more rain down on top of us. I’m grossed out to discover that the smell of wet zombie is about ten times worse than a dry one.
I stare out at the undead crowd and try to unfocus my eyes so I can’t see their actual features. They don’t seem able to get us up here, but that doesn’t save us. They will never get tired, and they will never get bored and wander away, especially with us right in view like this.
We are probably going to die up here. Not of thirst, I can’t help thinking ironically as I spit cold rain water out of my mouth, but of starvation or exposure. I wrap my arms around myself, but it does nothing to keep me warm.
Ryan sits down and wraps his arms around me, generating a tiny bit of warmth, but it’s not nearly enough.
“We need to figure out a way to stay dry,” Silas says, looking around and taking stock of what we have available.
“What’s the point?” I say glumly, earning myself a frown. Silas stands up and looks over at the dumpster beside us. It is only a couple feet away, but at least five zombies have managed to squeeze themselves into the space between the dumpsters.
“Hold on,” Silas says as he goes running towards the edge. The zombies let out a hopeful moan, raising their hands as though they’ll catch him.
My heart drops into my stomach, and I have to stifle my scream. I don’t want to make Silas mess this up. The dumpster is tall, but the zombies reaching hands still must have tickled his knee caps on his way over, Silas lands on the other dumpster with a loud thud. He slides a little in the water, down towards the zombies’ eager hands, before he catches his balance.
“Are you crazy?” I yell over at him, but he ignores me. He’s busy prying up the lid. Silas pulls the huge lid up on one side of the dumpster and shines his flashlight inside, checking it out before he jumps inside and out of sight.
I stand up and try to get a better look at what he’s doing. Ryan stands with me, keeping a steadying hand on my arm. I’m sure he has visions of me tumbling off the dumpster and into the zombies—so do I.
It feels like time slows down while I wait for Silas to pop his stubborn head back up. I’m getting anxious that there might have been a zombie in the garbage and it got him, until I see the top of his head. He throws a ratty looking blue thing out and then follows it up.
I watch him roll it up carefully and tuck it under his arm, and then Silas is taking another run at the space between his dumpster and ours.
My heart stops when he sails through the air, and then I feel the thud of him landing as it reverberates through the metal. He walks over and sits down beside us, and I give him a hard punch in the arm.
“You scared me half to death,” I accuse him, but he only grins. He pulls the ratty thing out from the crook of his arm, and I get my first good look at it. It’s a piece of torn blue tarp, the type of thing you would use to cover a load of furniture in the back of your truck.
I look over at Ryan and he doesn�
��t seem overly impressed with it either, so I don’t feel too bad that I have no idea what Silas is thinking.
Silas sits down beside me so that I’m in the middle with Ryan on my other side. It’s so cold and wet that I don’t feel any heat radiate off either one of them. Silas shakes the dirty tarp out and shows us how to hold it over our heads like an umbrella.
We sit for a moment in silence, well…not real silence. All I can hear is the pounding of rain on the tarp and the groans and growls of the undead. I tuck my legs up to my chest a little tighter, trying to keep them out of the rain.
“This is pointless,” I mutter, and Silas looks over at me.
“It’s better than nothing,” he argues, but I’m too cold to fight with him.
Silas digs in his backpack and pulls out a crushed Twinkie, still in the plastic wrapper. I watch with wide eyes as he opens it and wolfs it down in two large bites.
“How can you even eat right now?” I ask him. The stench of the zombies is enough to have a normal person vomiting, never mind the sight of the ugly bastards.
“More calories will help me stay warm. You should eat too.” I shake my head. I can’t.
I lean my head down on Ryan’s shoulder and stare out at the sea of death before us.
“How are we going to get out of here?” I ask, and I feel Ryan shrug helplessly. He doesn’t know either.
I look over at Silas, who is staring out at the crowd with narrowed eyes. He feels my gaze and shrugs too.
“I dunno,” he says, and it’s worse than Ryan’s answer because I’ve come to rely on Silas to be the crazy redneck with the fix-it ideas for any situation. “We can’t get ‘em with the knives because they’ll start to pile up and be like stairs for the rest.” I shiver worse at the thought and press my face back into Ryan’s shoulder. He reaches out and grabs my hand, and his fingers are like blocks of ice.
Silas sits up suddenly and looks like he’s focussing really hard on something.
“Did you get an idea?” I press, and he shakes his head.
“Nah, I thought I heard something,” he admits, and I shake my head. I don’t know how he could hear anything with all this racket.