She thought of Keith running off singing his stupid song. She stopped and listened for it, but couldn’t hear him anymore. She hoped that meant he had lured the zombies far, far away and was coming back to them, and not the alternative. The last thing she wanted to see was Keith zombified.
It gave her chills, and to fight it off she tried to conjure the last moment she had seen him, and not the way she imagined he might return.
“I want to be an Airborne Ranger,” she sang.
Forty-Five
Wendy coughed, the sound filling the darkness. The moaning behind her redoubled, letting Wendy know how close the zombies were without having to look back. She focused most of her visual efforts on the road ahead—the only thing she could see with the sliver moon’s light. To her right and left, the dark woods loomed like walls of shadowy blackness. Bulbous trees towered fifty feet above her, leaning over the berm leading up to the road as though they meant to squeeze out every drop of meager moonlight.
The shadows she worried over the most pocked the slope of the berm, frozen mounds that could be anything. Wendy was keenly aware of what happened in Midamerica, when several camouflaged bulls rose from the snow to charge their snowmobiles. She didn’t expect anything like that, though. Not in a confined space like this. Cows preferred pastures to feed and have line of sight on predators. The thing that gave Wendy pause was the idea than any of those mounds could be a slumbering zombie, one of the unfortunate ones left alone and on its last, dying breath, but with just enough strength to rise up and grab her.
She chose a path through the ankle-deep snow that kept her a good distance away from anything that wasn’t flat, just in case. She didn’t want to think of what she would do if she ran into another zombie, or even a group of them. She just hoped she could keep moving, follow the road, and somehow everything would work itself out from there.
There was no way she was going to shoot one, that’s for sure. Not after what had happened back at the zoo. Her hands still shook, and not because of the cold. The thought of Reese pulling the trigger and shooting her had her stomach in knots.
Wendy didn’t like guns.
The fact that one was in her jacket pocket actually made her more nervous than being hounded by a clutch of five zombies that she had purposefully lured into following her. Her reticence came mostly from a healthy fear of suffering. It was all too easy for her to imagine the kind of pain people went through after being shot because she had stitched so many gunshot victims back together again.
It wasn’t the clinical part of it that bothered her. Once a patient was sedated and under the knife, they weren’t much different than cadavers or pigs, really. You manipulated organs and tissue, repairing what you could, stretching and sealing, or trying to come up with alternative ways of saving anything damaged beyond repair. You focused on the work, not the person. John Smith wasn’t a man of 54 with a mortgage and three kids in high school, he was a gunshot wound to the abdomen that perforated the small intestine in two places just below the colon with entry and exit wounds requiring nine sutures each. No, the blood and guts didn’t bother her.
What bothered her were the unrelenting minutes before sedation.
That brief time between when they came through the emergency room door and when she actually started working on them—that struck her heart as hard as any bullet.
The wailing, the screams, the utter agony of suffering, the sobbing, the sheer terror in her patient’s eyes as they came to grips with the likelihood that they may not survive. Their cries of pain as the orderlies lifted them from the gurney to the operating table.
Hovering over them to get her first sight of the wounds while a nurse prepared her gloves, she witnessed them reliving untold moments of their own lives, events flashing in their eyes with each unsteady blink, and that distant look of awe at knowing the end is near, the regret, the tears of realization that they might never hold their daughter or son again, or hold the hand of their partner, or feel a kiss, or give a wave goodbye.
Sometimes they recognized her. Not who she was, but what she was—a doctor, a surgeon—and where they were. A brief respite of relief emerged—maybe it was the drugs taking hold—but for a moment, just before they went under, a look in their eyes pushed everything else aside. Hope. Wordlessly, they thanked her, their eyes conveying such profound gratitude that it even stopped Wendy’s heart.
God, it was crippling sometimes.
“Damn it,” Wendy snarled, flinching at her own outburst. She looked back at the zombies, and then past them to see Larissa struggling to keep up, Troy slowly hobbling even farther back—a safe distance beyond the zombie’s earshot and range of smell.
“Damn it,” Wendy whispered again, more at her own personal demons than at the situation.
She withdrew the pistol from her pocket, tugging it twice to get it out. Her fingers were ice cold, but she had feeling enough to find the magazine release. She pressed it and dropped the magazine into the palm of her hand. The magazine went into her back pocket. Turning the gun sideways and pulling the slide back with her hand over the chamber, she felt the bullet fall out. She hit the slide release and pulled it back again, just in case. Still just one bullet, which she slid into her front pants pocket as she hit the slide release again, aimed the gun toward the trees, and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked harmlessly.
She just hated guns.
She hated knowing how to use them, too.
Even if she had to, she wasn’t sure if she had the stomach to pull the trigger. Not on a living creature; not even a zombie. She looked back at the group that followed her, their moaning less frequent now. It worried her that they may be tiring out.
“Come on, you bastards, keep up,” she said, taunting the lead zombie as it shuffled after her. “Just a little farther.”
Forty-Six
The road widened into a clearing as they came around the very next bend. Wendy recognized the snow-covered sign along the side of the road reading “KELLOG PORT”, the letters A I R having fallen off long ago. Everything was like that in the Quarantine Zone. With no one around to maintain everything, the cities and towns simply sagged and collapsed back in on themselves, returning to the earth from which they rose. The abandonment was palpable. Nothing looked, sounded, felt, or even smelled the same.
That’s why Wendy knew Keith was near. The scent of a burning cigarette wafted in the breeze. For the first time, she actually appreciated smelling it, relief filling her lungs as she breathed through her nose deeply in the hopes of figuring out how close he was.
“Keith?” she called out eagerly.
“Would you keep it down,” Keith snapped.
She honed in on his voice and saw where he stood under a bus stop shell thirty yards away, the glow of his cigarette lighting his face as he took a final drag and flicked the butt to the snow.
He exhaled audibly as he walked toward her. “Why the fuck did you bring a bunch of biters with you?”
“I couldn’t carry Larissa,” Wendy admitted. “Troy’s hurt. Bad.”
“Yeah, I saw him hobbling as soon as you all came around the bend. You know, you’re supposed to lead the zombies away from here.”
Wendy glowered at him, but she doubted he could make out her expression in the dark. She kept walking toward him as she looked back to make sure the zombies were still far enough back to be safe. “I noticed Larissa perk up when this group came out of the woods, so I had the idea to….” She shrugged.
“Oh, yeah,” Keith said as he stepped up next to her, squinting to see the shambling forms in the moonlight. “I see the kid. Good thinking.”
Wendy wanted to ask him how he knew about this zombie behavior, but thought it best to tackle the subject some other time. Her usual curiosity would have to wait until they figured a way out of their current mess.
“Well, shit,” Keith said, stopping to look at the airport hangars and terminal building ahead, then back at the zombies following them. “I guess we’ll have to de
al with them here.”
He drew a pistol from his pocket and pulled the slide to load it.
“Wait,” Wendy said. “Hang on.”
“For what? You know there are biters on the airfield, right?” Keith waved the pistol ahead of them. “We need to hurry up and deal with this pack before they call in reinforcements.”
Wendy held a hand up, leery of the pistol in Keith’s hand as he now waved it toward the zombies. “Can you not—?”
“Not what? Shoot ‘em? Look, we—”
Wendy snapped, raising her voice. “Would you stop waving your gun around?”
Keith straightened, shaking his head quickly as though he couldn’t believe his ears. He crossed his arms, sliding the pistol under his armpit. “Alright,” he said calmly.
Wendy took a deep breath and coughed. “Alright,” she said back.
The zombies groaned, shrinking the space between them with each shuffling footstep. Keith stood still, an eye raised at Wendy, arms still crossed.
“So, what’s the plan?”
“What?”
“For those biters.” This time he nodded and pointed with his chin.
“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “You just were driving me nuts waiving that gun around like it’s a toy. You know you can kill someone with that thing, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, almost laughing. “That’s the point. Where’s yours?”
“My, um.” She patted her jacket a few times, embarrassed that she had unloaded it. She looked sidelong at the approaching group of zombies, their faces now distinguishable even in the darkness, even though they wore hoods that draped over their foreheads. The lead zombie’s mouth was wide open, a yawning groan pouring from it as he jerked from side to side with each rigid step.
Wendy licked her lips.
“You ever shot a zombie?” Keith’s question came almost as a whisper.
She looked at him, her features easily painting the worry and shock she felt at the notion.
“I’ll take that as a no.” He took in a deep breath and let it out. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Keith said. “I’m going to make a fountain head with that middle biter, there.” Again, he nodded with his chin. “When they stop to chow down on their friend, there, then you and me are going to circle around ‘em and get T and the girl and make for the back side of the hangars before that army of other biters on the airfield pour down on us.”
Wendy stared at him, wide-eyed. She couldn’t think of any argument to stop him. He wasn’t like Troy. Killing a zombie wouldn’t bother his conscious. He’d done it quite casually back in Terre Haute. In a way, that was part of the reason she felt relieved having him back.
The zombies were suddenly terrifyingly close. She turned to find the lead zombie no more than a handful of strides away. Keith took one step toward them as he raised his pistol.
Blam!
Wendy flinched at the sound, closing her eyes against the sight of the middle zombie’s head snapping back as a bloody spurt erupted out of the back of its skull. She would never be able to unsee that. She wanted to throw up, but Keith grabbed her jacket and tugged her backwards. She opened her eyes again, worried she might trip. The lead zombie stood still as stone, glaring their direction, torn by a desire to continue the hunt, but drawn to the smell of blood that even Wendy could smell as it splashed onto the snow. The other zombies collapsed to the ground over the body, including the reluctant leader.
Keith pulled more insistently, dragging Wendy away from the scene.
God, how she hated this place.
Forty-Seven
Keith cupped a hand over Larissa’s mouth before grabbing her by the waist and physically lifting her feet off the ground. She kicked and squirmed and let out muffled cries, but he turned and quickly marched away from the carnage. Wendy followed, dazed by the shock of witnessing such a brutal end to life, but even more numbing was the ghastly notion that Larissa had been moving in on the body, too. She meant to feed. She meant to…eat another human being.
God, the poor girl.
“Come on, T,” Keith growled. “Keep up.”
Troy nodded, shooting them a haggard look as he changed course to follow Keith’s lead. Wendy wanted to slip under Troy’s arm and help him walk, but her own legs felt weak. She kept on Keith’s tail instead, following simply out of necessity and not with any measure of cognition.
She did notice her surroundings, though. The airport and parking lot stood higher than the forest that ringed it with a cutback used to keep the overgrowth at bay. Even the road was raised in that regard. When she looked back at where they had come from, she realized that last turn made a steep rise of about thirty feet in elevation, making the berms all the more sheer. Keith’s bloody mess lay smack dab in the center of it all, a mound of arguing zombies acting like hyenas growling and grunting at one another, all fighting over tattered clothing and limbs to gnaw on.
Keith led them away from the terminal building and toward the back side of the hangars where the forest grew into the steep incline. It seemed ominously dark through there, far more dangerous than between the buildings, but as Wendy looked in that direction, she heard the echoing moans of what sounded like a hundred zombies.
“Shit,” she breathed.
The sound of Keith’s gun had drawn a lot more attention than she thought. At least a dozen dark figures shambled their way from out on the open airstrip.
Keith marched at a purposeful, brisk pace. Too fast for Troy, Wendy thought. She looked back, but Troy was keeping up, hobbling and swinging his leg wide like some peg-legged pirate. They weren’t moving fast enough, though. The excited zombies on the airstrip had already massed to converge on the open gate, stumbling and lurching in the uneven snow. Keith picked up his pace, laboring to breathe with the added burden of Larissa in his arms. He had let go of her mouth to turn her over on his shoulder. Hanging upside down had a calming effect on the girl, at least it caused her to stop moaning. Now she just whimpered with each of Keith’s jarring strides.
Wendy coughed abruptly. She tried to muffle it, but too late. The groans from the airstrip redoubled. Having worked themselves into a frenzy, the zombies were now pushing and shoving one another to be in the lead, and some of them took note of Wendy.
Keith reached the far side of the parking lot and followed the edge of the steep berm around to where it met up with a chain-link fence that looked like it surrounded the airport. The path was only wide enough on this side of the fence to straddle the edge. Keith shrugged Larissa into the air to re-adjust her on his shoulder before plunging ahead. Wendy looked back at Troy, who shuffled up behind her and put his hand on the fence for support, breathing heavily.
“You okay?”
He waved with the back of his hand, motioning for her to keep going, to follow Keith. Movement past Troy’s shoulder caught Wendy’s eye. Zombies at the gate, spilling into the parking lot. She sucked in her breath sharply, and coughed abruptly.
“Damn it,” she hissed. This cold was going to be the death of her.
Troy glared at her, not looking over his shoulder. He didn’t need to see what was happening.
The moans had turned in their direction.
Wendy spun around and started along the narrow trail, bumping into the chain link fence rather than getting too close to the edge. She used it as a guide while looking back to make sure Troy was following. She didn’t think he was going to be able to traverse the narrow ledge, but he seemed fine. She wasn’t.
Her very next step landed on a soft patch of snow that gave out. Her foot slipped on the ice beneath, scissoring her legs apart. One leg slid down the hill while she tried to use the other as an anchor. With a gasp, she threw out a hand, groping for the fence. Her fingers latched on, but the force of her own weight plucked her grip from the fence with a rattling clang! Her whole body toppled forward out of control after that.
Her other hand hardly slowed her fall. The only thing having it up did was keep her head from slapping into t
he hard ice. Instead, her forehead smacked her forearm like a hammer. She felt the ground hit her chest as though she had stepped in front of a moving freight train, the force knocking the wind out of her. She slid face-first down the slope, all the way to the bottom of the berm, plowing a pile of snow up to her eyeballs by the time she came to a stop.
She rolled on her side to stabbing pains gnawing at her ribs, gasping for air. Through the ringing in her ears she heard Troy calling her name.
“Fine,” she choked, waving randomly. She coughed and spat snow from her mouth. “I’m fine.” She wasn’t exactly sure which way he was. The fall disoriented her. She grimaced as she tried to sit up, the sting in her chest making it hard to move easily.
“Wendy, get up,” Troy insisted.
Her bearings swam into focus. She looked up the slope to where Troy stood, one hand hanging onto the fence, the other reaching down toward her, waving urgently. She craned her neck, hunting for the groans and moans. She couldn’t see the zombies at the gates anymore—she couldn’t even see the gates at all from her new vantage point, but from the way the sound echoed around her, she knew they were close.
“Come on,” Troy insisted.
Wendy rolled onto her knees and straightened. The pains in her body were still there, but nothing serious. Nothing to keep her from climbing out of the hole she fell into, and it was very much a hole. To her right and ahead of her loomed the darkness of the forest, mostly on level with the sheet of ice she had slid onto, some kind of frozen runoff drainage. It probably smelled horrible in the summer months. She could only imagine how many billions of mosquito eggs lie dormant beneath her. To her left and up the steeper part of the slope was Troy and the fence line. Behind her, the parking lot and all the zombies.
Wendy nodded to Troy’s insistent whispering, hoping it would get him to be quiet. It was bad enough she face-planted and slid into a ditch, she didn’t need the whole zombie population for miles descending on her, too. Throwing a foot in front of her, she managed to rise onto her unsteady legs. She teetered a moment, gauging the distance up the berm, and made a run up it.
Plagued: The Battle Creek Zombie Rectification Experiment Page 19