by Megan Berry
“Let’s go get your lover boy,” Silas says, and there is actually less spite in his voice than usual when he talks about Ryan.
We are already wearing our backpacks and carrying our weapons, so we have no reason not to leave right away. We keep going and walk right out the front door. We don’t encounter a single zombie. In a weird way it’s almost worse than having to fight our way through a bunch of deadheads—waiting is the worst part, and it gets me jumping at shadows.
Once we get outside in the hot, dusty parking lot, I feel a lot more exposed than I had up on the roof. Silas leads us around the side of the mall, making us walk right past the piles of zombies we killed.
The flies are already buzzing around so thick that it looks like black clouds moving from corpse to corpse. I swat a fly away from my face and try not to let it remind me about the zombie guts I’m still accessorizing with.
“It’s that hill, isn’t it?” I ask Silas, pointing to the lone rise off in the distance. We don’t have the advantage of height anymore, but it looks like the same hill—it even has the same black smudge of zombie sludge marring the grass.
“Yep,” Silas says, never willing to waste words when a simple grunt will do. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a crinkled pack of smokes. “Want one?” he asks, holding them out to me, and for a second, I’m tempted. I’ve already turned into a badass zombie slayer, sort-of, maybe a smoke would help cement my image?
I finally shake my head when I think about my parents, and what they would want me to do right now. “Keep those cancer sticks away from me.” I grumble, feeling ashamed by my urges.
“Suit yourself,” Silas says, lighting one up and taking a deep puff. We walk in companionable silence for fifteen minutes, our eyes scanning the landscape. It’s a bit chilly since it’s the start of fall, but I’m sweating by the time we reach the top of the hill.
Silas grabs my arm and pulls me down, when I would have simply walked over the rise of the hill. “If you stand at the top of this hill, every zombie for miles will be able to see you,” he hisses at me as I lay stretched out on my belly. I don’t really like being on the ground either; it’s a lot harder to run away from this position, but I decide to trust that Silas knows what he’s doing.
We peek over the hill, only popping our heads up enough to see the neighborhood that comes into view. It looks like it’d been a nice subdivision with new houses in neat rows, there’s even a park, but it’s destroyed now from the dead and is littered with the skeletal remains of people, pets, and a surprising amount of trash.
It’s a ghost town. “I think I’ve found Ryan,” Silas says, making my heart speed up in my chest. I scan the area, trying to see what Silas sees.
“I don’t see him,” I whisper finally, frustrated with myself.
“See all those zombies gathered around that one house over there?” Silas asks, and with a sinking feeling in my gut, I nod. “That’s most likely where Ryan is holed up. He must have gotten trapped.”
My head knows that Silas is probably right. Why else would the zombies be gathered there? They don’t give a shit about anything that isn’t warm human flesh. “How can you be sure?” I ask anyway, not wanting it to be true.
“I’m not, but we won’t know until we get them to move,” Silas says as he stares out at the group with a calculating look.
“Are you going to shoot them?” I ask, hesitant to fire bullets towards the house Ryan is trapped in, but he shakes his head.
“If I can avoid it, I will. The noise will bring every biter in the area to investigate.” Silas runs his hands through his short, brush cut hair, and I notice for the first time that it’s not as short as it’d been when I first met him a week and a half ago. It’s even more sobering to realize that I’ve known Silas for such a short time. He’s become such an integral part of my life it feels like he’s always been around.
I peel my eyes away from Silas to look around and make sure there aren’t any zombies coming up behind us. The hill behind us is clear. “Okay…” Silas says, bringing my attention back. “We’re gonna need a vehicle. If Ryan is trapped in there, then he hasn’t found one yet. We can’t lure that group away on foot; it’s too dangerous.
I nod. “Sounds like a plan,” I agree as I pick my 9 mm up off the grass.
“We’re gonna have to be quick and not make any noise when we go down this hill, use the houses for cover, and try not to draw their attention until we’re ready.”
Silas peeks over the hill one more time and then gets to his feet, staying hunched over as he runs, like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible. I was expecting him to take off, so I’m not the least bit surprised. I try to emulate his movements. Silas ducks behind the odd tree as we go, and I do the same.
I’m out of breath when we reach the bottom, not from lack of energy, but from the spike of adrenaline and fear. I don’t hear anymore moans than usual, so I’m pretty sure they haven’t seen us. Silas ducks behind the first house we come to, and I lean back against its solid frame trying to catch my breath.
A gentle thumping behind me makes me spin around, gun up at the ready, and my heart pounds even harder in my chest. A child-sized zombie is staring at me from the other side of the massive window. He bares his small teeth at me and then runs a black, bloated tongue across the glass like he can taste me.
I don’t want to risk making noise when it’s so important to be quiet, but this kid has me tripping balls. I reach out and yank Silas’ sleeve to get his attention. He turns and sees the zombie, and a pained expression crosses his face, and remember too late that he lost his little brother to the zombies.
I put my hand on Silas’ arm, but he shakes me off and takes off running to the next house, leaving the disturbing little zombie behind.
We work our way in the opposite direction from the horde. It won’t do us any favors to get spotted before we have a vehicle.
We scurry along back alleys, and it reminds me of the night before I found out zombies were real. I’d taken the back alley as a shortcut home in the dark. I am one hundred percent sure, now, that the person who ran into me in the alley had actually been a zombie, and not a drunk like I had first assumed. I haven’t had a spare minute to reflect back on that night since this whole mess started, but now that I do, I am so grateful that I wasn’t turned into a zombie before I even knew what was going on. So many people probably died in confusion at the beginning; they didn’t even have a chance of escaping their fate.
A zombie that looks like it’s been through the wringer is staggering along ahead of us. It’s missing patches of hair and flesh from his head, and dragging a leg with the foot completely facing the wrong direction. Silas shoulders his AR-15 and pulls his trusty pistol from his belt—it’s the wiser choice because it’s easier to use and will be quieter.
Silas drops the zombie by shooting it through the back of the head. It never even knew we were here. Up ahead there’s a minivan that might be alright. Silas jogs over and tries the door, but it’s locked.
“Can we break the window and hotwire it?” I whisper, but Silas shakes his head.
“Too risky, this van is new, it would be tough to wire, and breaking the window might set off an alarm.” I shudder thinking about setting off an alarm that would bring every zombie for miles to our location.
“Yikes,” I murmur, and Silas nods.
“I’d only risk breaking a window if the keys were sitting out where we could see them.” He pauses and scans inside the van again for a second time, cupping his hands against the glass. “There’ll be something else—let’s keep moving,” he says as he starts walking away.
I jog to catch up, and have to keep jogging just to keep up with his long-legged strides. Ryan would have slowed down for me, I can’t help think, and it makes me miss him even more. Ryan is the perfect balance to Silas’ prickly personality, his polar opposite.
We reach the end of the alley and will have to cross the street if we want to continue down the next
alley. It’s dangerous to go out in the open where we could be spotted by a hoard. The house across the alley has a large garage though, so our risk might pay off. We poke our heads around a tall, cedar fence and spot a group of three zombies tearing something apart.
I look past the zombies, and something about the truck parked further up the road catches my eye. I poke Silas and point to the black truck with the red fuel tank in the back. “Is that our truck?” I ask incredulously, shock making me stand up a little straighter.
It really can’t be this easy to get it back. I can’t help thinking, and then cuss myself out for jinxing us.
Silas had already spotted it and nods grimly, “Yep.”
“What are we waiting for, let’s get it back!” I say excitedly, remembering to keep my voice low at the last moment. It’s a massive breakthrough to find our own truck. The external fuel tank Ryan found had really given us an edge, not having to stop at gas stations so much cuts down on our exposure to the dead.
“We ain’t waitin’,” Silas says as he aims his gun and quietly takes down the three zombies in our path– no fuss, no muss. He steps out into the street and jogs across the road, going to the sidewalk so that he can keep to the shadows of the fences.
I follow, close on his heels, my heart hammering like crazy in my ear. We both freeze when we see movement through the back window.
“They’re in there,” I mutter, and Silas nods grimly.
“Something is.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask, making Silas smile, though it isn’t a nice smile. It’s a ‘we’re getting even’ kind of smile.
He doesn’t answer me as we creep along until we reach the back of the truck. I can’t believe they haven’t spotted us and made a run for it yet.
Silas charges up to driver’s side window and points his gun at the driver. I don’t have a clear view inside the truck, but I do see the surprise on Silas’ face as he takes a giant step back.
I cautiously move closer and see a zombified Jamie snarling and snapping at the window. I jump a little when another zombie smacks her head against the back window, trying to get to us. It’s the woman who offered to dry our clothes for us. I struggle with mixed emotions. They were living breathing people who I met yesterday, and now they are zombies. On the other hand, the assholes did steal our truck and left us stranded!
Silas doesn’t even consult me before he yanks opens the driver’s door and jumps back. I quickly follow. Jamie, the zombie, falls out of the truck on his face. I wince when I hear his teeth hit the pavement. “You could’ve given me a little warning,” I mutter. Silas ignores my complaint, waiting in silence for the zombie to get up and start staggering towards us. He waits until he’s closed an alarming distance before shooting zombie Jamie in the head.
I get to see why he waited so long, first hand, as gore shoots out the back of Jamie’s head. Silas shot him point blank, and it made one hell of a mess. I’m guessing he didn’t want any of the brain splatter to go back inside the truck. I stare down at the guy who’d saved our lives yesterday and feel a knot form in my stomach. His skin hasn’t had time to take on the truly rotten look that most zombies quickly develop, he must have turned recently. There is a huge bite out of his cheek and his bottom lip is torn off and completely missing. I look away, being bitten in the face would be a terrible way to go.
Silas doesn’t even bother to look down as he steps over his kill and repeats the process, this time opening the back door. The female zombie falls out of the truck just as gracefully as Jamie did, but she doesn’t get back up. She is in much worse shape than Jamie. I feel sick as I watch her use her only remaining arm to pull herself towards us, her teeth bared and snapping.
Silas takes pity on her, or maybe he just doesn’t want to wait around all day until she finally gets close enough. He walks up and sticks his knife through the base of her skull. She stills instantly, and it’s a mercy. She is covered in ragged bites, and her left arm is completely missing—she wasn’t just bitten, she was torn apart.
My stomach heaves as Silas reaches into the backseat, pulls out a half-eaten arm, and tosses it down beside its previous owner, the flesh smacking noisily on the pavement.
I stare into the backseat and wrinkle my nose up at all the blood and chunks of gore that litter every surface. “Silas…” I start to say, but he’s already shaking his head.
“Forget it, Blondie, we’re taking it.” Silas feels the need to tell me and I let out an annoyed huff as I walk around to the passenger side. It’s not much better in the front. Red blood splatter mixes with dark zombie juices, making me cringe as I gingerly lower myself down on the seat. It’s one thing to be gore covered in the middle of a fight for your life, but for me to purposely climb inside this truck uses up a whole new level of self-control that I never even knew I had.
Silas gets in, not even glancing at the gore, and starts checking all the gauges to make sure everything is working right. It’s a good idea; it would suck to be in the middle of a bunch of zombies and have the truck crap out. The gas tank is full, so Silas puts our petri dish on wheels into drive and we slowly circle back towards the house that had all the zombies so interested.
“What’s the plan?” I ask, and Silas looks away from the road long enough to give me an assessing look.
“You’re not gonna like it,” he says, making my stomach clench, but I shake my head.
“If it saves Ryan, I don’t care if you want me to ride naked on a horse into the middle of those zombies,” I say with a grin, causing Silas to look at me sharply.
“Is that an option?” he asks, causing me to reach over and playfully punch him in the arm.
“Okay, be serious,” I tell him, and the smile slips from his lips.
“I want you in the back of the truck making a bunch of noise so they chase us,” he says baldly, and my mouth drops open.
“Outside?” I ask for clarification, and he nods. I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say, and I’m a little offended by how surprised he looks at my willingness to cooperate.
“The back window opens, you should be able to climb in and out through there.” I stare behind me at the blood-smeared window. “Okay,” I echo, my voice quieter this time, reflecting my doubt. “Should I go now?” I ask, and Silas nods.
“It can’t hurt to get into position. Just make sure you stay low enough that you don’t get thrown out of the truck, but high enough that they can see you.” I nod my head. “Oh, and, Blondie…” he says, making me look back at him. “Make sure you make a lot of noise—we want their attention.”
I try to memorize his advice as I climb over the bloody seats, making a face when my hand lands in a wet spot. I cringe again when my knees land in several pints of fresh blood, and I know that this must be where the Jamie zombie ate his friend. I try to slide the window open, but my hand slips because of the wet, sticky blood. I wipe my hands on my pants and try again. This time I manage to get a little traction and it slides open, letting in a much needed breath of fresh air.
The window isn’t very big, but I squeeze through once I take off my backpack and toss it out the window ahead of me. I feel like a calf being birthed as I slide out the window and land on my belly in the bed of the truck.
A surge of excitement goes through me when I see that our bags are in the back of the pickup box. The group must have moved them out of the cab to make room, and no doubt wanted to keep them around to scavenge through our supplies.
The wind whips my ponytail into a frenzy, and I dig through my bag, pulling out the noisy Glock. I quickly load a couple spare magazines and leave them next to my knee.
Silas slows down, turns the corner, and then quickly flips a U-turn, making me grab onto the side to keep steady. I open my mouth to berate him but suddenly find myself facing an enormous crowd of zombies. They are still facing the house, moaning and clawing at the vinyl, but when Silas lays loudly on the horn, every eye turns in our direction.
Chapter Six
T
he zombies let out a collective hungry moan and begin moving towards us like a slow wave. “Make some noise!” Silas yells from the front seat as he honks the horn again. Each blast of the horn makes my body shake with fear. To say you’ll come out here and be the bait and to actually be out here with nothing between you and the dead are two very different things.
I look up at the house and see movement in one of the small side windows—Ryan—it gives me a bit of purpose, and I brace myself for the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
“Hey!” I yell, waving my arms in the air. It works. The zombies lock their gaze on me and put a little extra hustle in their step. I wait, watching as they get closer and closer, and still Silas doesn’t move the truck.
“Silas!” I yell back through the window. “What’s going on?” Terrible what-ifs flash through my head, like what-if the truck suddenly breaks down?
“Hold tight, Blondie, we have to let them get a little closer or the ones at the back won’t move,” Silas calls back.
I stare out at the herd, watching as they get closer, twenty feet, and then fifteen…
A snarl pulls my attention away from the main group, and I realize with a sickening jolt that a lone zombie has managed to walk right up to the side of the truck without my notice. He bumps his chest angrily against the metal and growls. I sidestep to make sure he can’t reach me with his frantic clawing, and raise the Glock.
I aim carefully at his head and punch a new hole in it for him. At this distance, I would have been pretty ashamed of myself if I’d missed. He goes down hard, and I do a quick three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn to make sure I’m not going to get anymore smelly surprises. There are a couple zombies up ahead on the road, but they are still pretty far away, and I really hope Silas will take care of them for me.
I turn back, raise the Glock, and start firing wildly into the crowd. The zombies are only a couple feet away from the tailgate now. I let myself give in to my terror and let out a ragged war cry that turns into a girly shriek.