“Did I get them all? Did I?!” I could barely speak. I was shaking all over from cold, and now from fear as well.
“I think you got ‘em,” Felicity laughed, “tough guy.”
“I hate spiders!” I was panting like I'd just run a marathon. I didn't even care that she was going to tease me about this forever. Big bad Xander, scourge of the undead and outlaws everywhere, is afraid of a little, itsy bitsy spider.
“Poor baby,” Felicity teased. “Did that little spider scare my ninja warrior?”
“That's not funny!”
I glared stubbornly at her, but she burst out laughing. I wanted to stay mad, but I couldn't. She was right. It was pretty absurd, but then again, so was everything else in our lives. Before I knew it, I was laughing right along with her. For a moment I thought about all the unspeakably dreadful things we'd had to go through, and for some reason it just made me laugh harder. It felt good to let it out. Making light of our troubles seemed to push them further away and make them less overwhelming.
I smiled at Felicity as our laughter died down, watching her face go from happy and joyful to absolutely terrified in just a matter of seconds. I felt a creeping sensation rising up my bare spine, and all the hairs on my arms stood on end. I had my blade out before I'd even turned around, before I'd even seen the corpse or heard the low rattle of a moan coming from it like a dying breath that never ended. In one swift motion, I brought my blade through what used to be the man's chewed out throat, separating his bite-covered head from his body. It rolled off into the weeds, and gave out a final gasp. The body remained upright, less than a few feet away from me, then sank to its knees and pitched forward. It lay as still as the grave it should have been buried in the first time it died. He'd almost snuck up on me while we were laughing. Once again, I'd come far too close to being a meal for the undead.
“Xander!” Felicity cried out. I turned back to see her pointing off in the distance. We'd been right not to come down to the tracks until the last minute. I'd known for a while that, left to their own devices, zombies tended to move downhill and congregate in groups. I wasn't surprised to see there were stragglers moving in the near dark like wheezing shadows. Lucky for us the rest of the biters were still a fair distance away from us.
“We don't have much time,” I said. “We need to lift this thing onto the track and get it moving.”
“What about Sonya?”
“She'll have to catch up with us,” I said. “Riding Black Beauty, she shouldn't have any problems. We're the ones who are done for if we don't get this thing onto the tracks pronto.”
I rushed into the canyon crevice and got behind the handcart, shoving it forward with all my might. I was no longer worried about spiders. I was worried we'd be torn to shreds if we didn't get moving. The metal wheels slowly came to life as the machine rolled slightly forward. Felicity ran around the body of the zombie I'd just slain, and leaned over the corpse.
“What are you doing?” I managed, huffing as I tried to keep the handcart rolling forward. I could see the first zombie coming out of the shadows. It was a fat man in a torn shirt, with half his guts hanging out. He looked like he'd been turned a long time, but there were fresh bloodstains down the front of him, like a sloppy eater with a bowl of spaghetti. He was less than a hundred feet away. If I was going to get the handcart on the tracks and get us to safety, I was going to need some help.
Felicity came back with the man's black leather jacket in her hands, holding it up as she ran to me, looking triumphant. It was an odd style, covered with zippers in strange places, more for fashion than function, but that wasn't what bothered me about it. What made my skin crawl was the fact it had just been on a dead guy I'd put down not a minute before. I'd never really been one to go through a corpse’s pockets before, much less one I'd slain. It felt a little like murdering someone and taking their stuff. I knew this was different, that I was only defending myself and that I needed the jacket to stay warm, but it still just didn't sit quite right with me.
“Put this on so you don't freeze to death,” she said, placing the jacket over my shoulders like a cape.
“That's disgusting,” I protested, holding it up and sniffing at it. “It still smells like rotting flesh, and who knows what else. I'm not wearing it.”
“We don't really have time to argue now do we?” She had a point. Stink as it might, I was already feeling warmer just having it draped over me. “Besides, it's not like you smell all that great either way. Worst case scenario, one of these zoms might mistake you for their own kind and pass right by us.”
“Fat chance of that happening,” I said, stopping just long enough to get my arms into the sleeves before putting all my weight back into rolling the machine forward. “But thank you.”
Felicity smiled and kissed my cheek. She leaned over and used her body weight to help me push the handcart. It was much easier with the two of us than it had been on my own. We quickly managed to get it onto the main line and climbed on top of the metal platform. Felicity wrapped her hand around the pull cord of the engine, preparing to give it a hard yank. The look on her face told me she was just praying it would still work.
“Wait,” I said, holding up my hand. “Not yet.”
“We can't wait much longer,” she argued, glancing around to see that there were now nearly twenty zombies heading in our direction. They were coming from both directions, in front and behind us. There was even one blocking our way on the tracks, her arms stretched out like something from a kids cartoon, a snarling growl coming from her torn, dead lips, sounding like a wailing siren.
“We'll have to do it by hand, then,” Felicity offered as a compromise. “Take your side and drive it down.”
“We made a promise,” I argued. “We can't just leave her, especially with a horde on her tail.”
“We're not going to leave her,” Felicity said, looking annoyed. “We're just going to get it started. Hopefully, by the time we're moving, she'll have caught up to us.”
“And if she hasn't?”
“What does it matter? Like she said, she can track us down. I'm not going to sit here and wait for these things to take a bite out of our legs just because I don't want to hurt her feelings.”
Felicity looked exasperated to even be having this conversation, but a part of me couldn't shake the threat Sonya had leveled at us. It wasn't that I didn't think I could defend us from the woman warrior, it's that I didn't want to have to, not after the last few days. I wasn't quite ready to take Sonya at her word, but I also wasn't ready to declare her the enemy just yet.
She'd make a nightmare of an opponent, I thought, realizing for the first time just how scary it would be to live looking over my shoulder the rest of my life, just waiting for her to come flying out at me. I'd have to grow eyes in the back of my head, as Moto used to say, if I planned on staying a step ahead of a fighter like her. I knew that might be exactly where I was headed, but I wasn't quite ready to admit it, especially after only a few hours of sleep.
“Xander, come on!”
She's right, I thought, snapping back to reality. We can't just sit here and wait for Sonya. She'll have to catch up with us, or we'll die for sure. Then no one wins.
“Sorry,” I said, taking the metal bar in the middle of the cart with both hands and pushing it down with my arms. It was grueling work at first, trying to get the wheels to move, but soon the momentum took over and it became easier, like playing teeter totter.
I wonder if I sat on my side if I could bounce up and down with my legs, I thought, doing my best to ignore the dull burn in my arms and chest from the strenuous workout I was getting.
“We're doing it,” Felicity said, sounding relieved. “Keep going, Xander. We're starting to pick up speed.”
Looking past her, I could see we were almost on top of the dead woman who was walking on the tracks.
“Watch your back,” I yelled out, the feeling of the cold air rushing past me making me shiver. “You got a bogey on your
tail, kid.”
Since we were up on the level metal platform of the handcart, it was fairly safe to assume we wouldn't have to worry about a lone zombie getting a good shot at us. Still, that didn't mean one might not be able to lean in and take a bite out of one of our legs if we got too close to the edge. Plus if they got under the wheels, or even fell the wrong way on the track, they might bring us to a dead stop. Then it would just be a matter of time until the others caught up and shoved us over. There was even a chance they might step on the bodies of their fallen comrades and end up overrunning our tiny little cart, like rats on a sinking ship.
Hungry rats, I thought, with a million dull teeth just waiting to mercilessly rip us to shreds.
The closer we got the more the woman’s condition came into focus. Her lips were cracked, but there was also a gaping hole in her cheek that revealed rotting teeth, and some kind of pinkish gray pus drooling out and down her neck in a glistening spider web of filth. Her hands looked like shredded gloves, the raw meat nearly hanging off the bones, as they reached out pitifully for us. Her eyes bled a black gunk like used motor oil. There were bits of leaves and brush on her crumpled clothes, in her hair, and even stuck to her body in places. Even though she was a walking nightmare, a vision from the depths of hell called back to life, I suddenly felt a surge of sadness for her. She'd been a person once, just like us. I'd been bitten before. That could be me wandering in the darkness, driven by hunger to commit unspeakable acts, unable to ever be satisfied or at peace, lost and alone, begging for a death that never comes.
Felicity turned to face the horrifying female zombie, snarling just a few feet away, and let out a rolling laugh at the sight of the woman, like someone had just told her the funniest joke in the world.
She's losing her grip on reality, I thought. It's been a tough couple of days for all of us, which says a lot when you live in a post Z Day world.
“I've got it,” I said, drawing my sword out carefully so I didn't cut my new jacket open in the back and expose myself to the cold again. Before I could figure out how I was going to walk around to her side past a swinging metal lever, Felicity lifted her right foot up and planted it in the woman's dead face. It was a sharp, effective kick that knocked the corpse off its shuffling feet and rolled it off the track, where it landed flat on its back.
If she was still alive, that would have knocked the wind right out of her, I thought, staring at Felicity with pride.
“That takes care of her,” Felicity said, wiping her hands as if to say she'd just taken out the trash. “Now let's get this thing cranked up.”
We set to it in earnest, each of us driving down the metal bar as soon as it rose up. We quickly picked up some speed, making it much easier to keep the momentum going. From behind me I heard the sound of horse hooves, and turned to see Sonya racing toward us as fast as she could on Black Beauty. I turned back to see the look of disappointment on Felicity's face, but she did her best to cover it up.
She was hoping Sonya might not make it back, I realized. Of course she was, but things are never that easy, not for us anyway.
Within the next few minutes, Sonya came up alongside of us and kept pace.
“It's taken care of,” she shouted, making sure we heard her over the rushing wind.
“You got them to change course?” Felicity acted like she was having a casual conversation with a stranger in traffic.
“Not all of them,” Sonya admitted, “but a large portion. Well over half, I'd say. Maybe three quarters. It was more than I expected, to be honest.”
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“They were right on my backside all the way into the canyon,” Sonya yelled. “Let's just say you're not going to want to slow down anytime soon.”
“How do we know you're telling us the truth?”
Sonya's eyes flashed with anger at Felicity's impudent suggestion that she might be lying.
That's what I was worried about, I thought. But I'm not ready to piss her off just yet.
“Because I gave you my word,” Sonya hollered, her voice growing harsher. “You can always slow this thing down if you like, and see what happens.”
We were losing speed, but it was because the girls were arguing so much that Felicity had let go of her side. Maybe with some oil and regular cleaning a single person could keep the momentum of the cart going, but not in its condition.
“I'm just saying,” Felicity continued to needle her. “It's not like we were there. So how do we know you really did what you said you did?”
The handcart slowed further, and Sonya wasted no time jumping on. Black Beauty continued to run alongside, keeping pace, but now the girls were face-to-face arguing.
“I've had about enough of this nonsense from you,” Sonya said in a threatening voice. “I have done nothing but help you and your husband, and all I get is attitude out of you. It ends here. Are we clear?”
“Or what?”
“Everyone thinks you're so nice, that you're so approachable for a former reality television star,” Sonya began waving her arms around dramatically.
“Child actress,” Felicity corrected her through gritted teeth.
“Whatever,” Sonya spat back. “Too bad your fans can't see the real you.”
“And just what is that? Why don't you enlighten us all?”
“I've risked my life to save your husband's life three times now, and all I get is distrust and hatred from you. I just rode through a zombie horde to save a group of people you recently met, for crying out loud! And still I can't get an inch of trust out of you, much less a thank you.”
In the distance I heard the sound of motorcycles echoing off the canyon walls. I turned to look back at where we'd just come, but all I saw were shadows. Then, out of the darkness, dozens of zombies began to appear. I turned back and tried to get us going again, but it was too much for me on my own.
“Ladies?”
“Sorry I'm not living up to your expectations,” Felicity goaded, not sounding the least bit remorseful. “Until you start telling us who sent you, or what your real plan is, that isn't going to change, so you can just stop crying about it.”
“We had a deal,” Sonya reminded her.
“And I'm not going back on it,” Felicity quickly added. “Just don't expect me to be your new BFF.”
“Ladies, we got a problem,” I said a little louder.
“I'm already tired of this argument,” Sonya said. “We made a deal and you're sticking to it. From here on out we do things my way, got it?”
“Yes sir!” Felicity jeered, saluting her.
“LADIES!” I yelled so loud I nearly scared myself, but it worked. Both of them turned my way.
“Oh my God,” Felicity mumbled, as she caught sight of the massive surge of undead monsters advancing on us.
“You happy now?” Sonya mocked, pointing at them.
“A little help would be nice,” I almost begged, still trying to get the cart to go faster on my own.
“I told you I drew most of them after me,” Sonya said haughtily, sounding smug and self-righteous. “And I don't lie.”
“That's just part of the problem,” I interjected. “If you listen, you can hear the Alphas are already on our heels. The only thing holding them back at this point is that wall of corpses in between us, but that won't hold the Alphas off forever. Sooner or later even they will figure out how to get around the horde, and then we're going to need all the distance between us that we can get.”
“Pull the cord,” Sonya ordered. “Start the engine and let's see if we can't get a good head start on them.”
“How did they find us again?” I questioned.
“It was her,” Felicity accused, turning to face Sonya again. “You tipped them off. It had to be.”
“And just how would I do that, genius? I've been with you the whole time.”
“I don't know,” Felicity admitted. “It had to be you though. How else would they know where to find us? None of us even knew
Gold Strike City existed before yesterday, but they found it with almost no trouble at all.”
“That still doesn't explain how I got word to them,” Sonya said impatiently.
“You must have sent them some kind of signal.”
“Really? How?”
“I don't know,” Felicity said, looking ready to fight. “I just know all of this is somehow connected to you. It all started after you showed up.”
“That doesn't even make sense.”
“They are getting closer,” I yelled out. “If we're going to have any chance of surviving either Alphas or zombies, we're going to have to do something fast.”
A look of realization flashed across Sonya's face.
“Give me your sword,” Sonya said, holding her hand out.
“What? No.” I wasn't just going to hand over my blade, especially not with enemies so close at hand.
“I will give it back to you,” she said. “I promise.”
“Why do you need to see it?”
“Just trust me,” she said. I looked at Felicity who was shaking her head no, but then handed my katana to Sonya. At that moment, all I wanted was to stop fighting and get as far away from here as possible.
Sonya flipped the blade over in her hands a few times, bringing the handle up to her face and inspecting it as closely as she could in the dark.
“What are you doing?” Felicity asked. “You're just stalling.”
“I'm obviously looking for something,” Sonya fired back. “Just give me a few more seconds.”
“Whatever you're looking for,” I said, reaching down and wrapping my hand around the pull cord once more, “you’d better find it fast.”
“Got it,” she said, digging into the base of the sword.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, springing to my feet, the anger swelling up in my chest like a hot air balloon. Before I could take a step her way, she held up a tiny computer chip with a beeping red light and a small battery like the kind used in digital watches.
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