by Lora Powell
The zombie wasn't one of the ultra fast ones, but my heart rate still skyrocketed at the thought of having to kill one completely on my own. I hadn't realized until that moment just how much I had come to rely on the others to always have my back.
It was another humid day, and the sun had climbed high into the sky. The smell of week old road kill coming off of the zombie made me want to gag as the creature bared broken teeth to hiss at me.
That hiss was apparently too much for Rex to take sitting down. Baring his own sharp teeth, the dog launched himself at the zombie. Colliding mid leap, the zombie was knocked over by the dog, who began viciously biting into the rotting flesh.
"Rex, no!"
I tried to move closer, to find room to use the machete, but Rex was on top of the zombie. Any move I made would have been sure to hit the dog first. I yelled at him to stop again, but he kept up the furious assault like he hadn't heard me.
The zombie's grasping hands tugged at the dog's sides, ripping out handfuls of fur. Releasing his hold on it's neck, Rex snapped down on one arm. The crack of the bones was clear, even over the sounds of the dog and zombie snarling at each other.
Crunching down on the arm harder, Rex refused to let go of the flailing limb. When the zombie managed to sling him partially off of itself, I finally found an opportunity.
The machete sunk into the zombie's skull much easier than a knife did.
Even after the zombie had slumped to the ground and stopped moving, Rex held onto it's arm. Bending over to rest my hands on my knees, I tried to calm my racing heart.
"Rex."
This time he listened to me. Dropping the mangled arm, he trotted to my side and grinned up at me with zombie blood splattered all over his fur and coating his teeth.
The dog was inordinately pleased with himself, but I was horrified. Could dogs contract the virus? I knew that some viruses, like rabies, crossed species all of the time. I also knew that many other illnesses did not jump from human to dog, or vise versa. And I had no way of knowing which way the zombie virus would go.
"Why'd you have to do that, boy?" I patted his head, ignoring the gore.
There wasn't anything I could do about it now, what was done was done, so I straightened up with a final pat to his head and continued trudging along the dusty road. Panting from the heat and the exertion, Rex trotted ahead a few yards, tail held high in the air.
The faint tracks that the two vehicles had left in the packed dirt were becoming harder to see. Hours had passed, and the tracks were disappearing with the breeze. I was certainly no hunter, and worry that the trail could be gone before I found where my friends had been taken made me pick up my pace.
These little back roads were like a maze as they wound their way through the trees. "Right, straight, left, left," I chanted to myself as I took a right. If I couldn't remember the way I came in, we could end up lost out here for days when we tried to get back to the highway.
I was studiously ignoring the thought that we may not be coming back out. If I let myself think that way, I was going to curl up alongside the road and give in to panic. I didn't have time for panic. Whatever the reason behind the strangers' attack and mass kidnapping of my group, it couldn't have been good. I needed to find my friends and figure out a plan to free them as soon as possible.
The skin on my nose felt like it was burned to a crisp by the time I had my first hint that I had reached my destination. Rex perked his ears up and stopped in the middle of the road, listening to something ahead of us.
Darting into the trees on the side of the road, I crept forward slowly, listening for any sign of people. We hadn't gone far when I heard something.
There were goats ahead. At least, I thought it sounded like goats. Maybe it was sheep. Either way, live livestock probably meant that there were live people caring for them.
A little further and I got my first glimpse of humanity. A chain link fence, at least 6 feet tall and topped with barbed wire, appeared. The fence ran to the left and the right away from me. Just on the other side, a dozen goats grazed on tall grass. I inched further toward the fence. The grassy field, roughly the size of a football field, led to the compound.
There really was no other way to describe it.
Several low buildings surrounded an area of dirt where the grass had all been worn away. The buildings were utilitarian, ugly grey cinder block affairs that had been built for function instead of form. A line of vehicles was parked nearby. The black pick-up, and our van, were parked at the end of the line.
Two men had the doors to the van open and were pulling our things out to lay around on the ground. Past the parked cars, what looked like a large garden had two women and several young kids working at pulling weeds.
The whole picture was one of the most bizarre things I'd seen. That was saying a lot considering the fact that the dead now roamed the earth. It reminded me of that TV show I used to watch when there was nothing else on. The one where groups of people, convinced that the end of the world was near, retreated into the mountains and hoarded food and guns.
With a start, I realized that those crazy people on TV had been onto something, after all. The thought did nothing to make me feel better. If these people were like those people, then they were organized and well armed.
No sooner did I think that, than I heard male voices. Scrambling behind a tree, I held onto Rex and prayed he stayed still and silent.
What sounded like two men approached. Daring to look around the tree, I found them walking together along the inside of the fence, rifles propped casually over their shoulders. I hid myself again and listened as they got close enough for me to make out what they were saying.
"... wonder when Mack is gonna decide what to do with them."
"I bet he keeps them locked up for at least another day. You know how he gets, he's really mad that that one got the jump on his brother." The second voice chuckled. "Did you get a look at Tom's black eye?"
The voices faded as the men moved too far away for me to hear them. Stepping back out from behind the tree, I looked in the direction they had gone. The men were out of sight.
Following them seemed like a bad idea, so I began to work my way around the fence, going in the opposite direction. I still had no idea exactly what I was going to do to help my friends, but at least now I knew that they were somewhere inside that fence, and still alive.
FORTY-DAY 21
A short distance through the trees, I came across a way in to the stranger's camp. There was just one problem. The gate was closed and guarded by yet another armed man.
I stayed hidden for what felt like a really long time, waiting and watching for the guard to slip up and give me some opportunity to get inside. But that never happened.
After a while, the two guards who had walked by me before, came around again. They laughed with the gate guard about something that one of them must have said on an earlier pass, before making another round.
When the guard posted at the gate looked up to talk with the other two, I got a good look at his face. One eye was swollen almost shut, a nasty looking bruise surrounding it and spreading across his cheek. Unless this group had more than one man sporting a black eye at this time, this could only be one of the men who had directly attacked my friends. The pair of guards had called him Tom. A hint of satisfaction creeped through me. Whichever of my friends had managed to fight back, they had hit this guy really hard.
I crouched under some bushes and watched. By the fourth time the men walked by, a pattern had emerged. As close as I could estimate, it took roughly twenty minutes for the walking guards to complete one circuit. In all of the time I stayed there, Tom never left his post. He wasn't exactly the most attentive to his task, none of them were, really. The walking guards seemed to be spending more time talking than looking outside the fence. And Tom was alternately digging the toe of his boot into the dirt, and watching birds flit from tree to tree. But I doubted any of them would miss a strange woman and her dog if
we didn't keep ourselves carefully hidden.
Easing back deeper into the forest, I gave the gate a wide berth as I continued my circuit of the fence. After spending the past couple of hours watching the security for this place, I doubted I would get lucky enough to find a conveniently open and unguarded gate elsewhere. But I still needed to check.
There was also still the matter of my friends being inside somewhere. I hadn't gotten any hints of exactly where they might be from the front of the compound, but I was hoping I might be able to find out something useful if I kept looking.
The mosquito bites that I had been picking up from the relentless little bloodsuckers ever since stepping foot into the trees, were starting to itch. Scratching at a particularly nasty bump on my neck, I found the fence again and circled the perimeter slowly. I had rounded a corner, bringing me finally to the opposite side from where I first started, when I found exactly what I had been looking for.
The largest of the buildings had been blocking my view of another, smaller chain link fence within the perimeter fence. This second fence was also taller than I was by far, and topped with more razor wire. And inside it, all of my group sat huddled together.
Back here, the fence wasn't nearly as far away from the buildings as it had been on the other side. I was close enough that I knew they would hear me if I called out to them, but I didn't dare for fear that someone else would hear me, too. Finding Shawn sitting between Maya and Devon, I was relieved when he seemed to be sitting upright and looking alertly around.
My eyes flew over the group, looking for any signs that any of them were hurt. My heart sunk when I got to Bill.
He was an unhealthy shade of grey. Listing sideways to rest up against the fence, the big man looked exhausted. The blood that had drenched the front of his shirt had dried, so at least he didn't seem to be bleeding any longer, but the damage had already been done. I had been hoping that his injury wouldn't be as bad as my first sight of it had seemed to indicated, but it seemed like that was not the case.
Maya sat next to her husband, leaning towards him and it looked like she was whispering something to him. Worry clouded her features. The odd way that she was holding herself baffled me for a few seconds, until I figured out why. Maya's hand were still bound behind her back.
I looked closer and saw that they all still seemed to be tied. Looking alarmingly sickly himself, Devon was leaning up against the fence with his eyes closed. Fallon had stopped crying and now she just looked mad. I could see that she was working at whatever had been used to bind their hands, twisting this way and that in what I assumed was an effort to loosen the ties, but she didn't seem to be having much luck.
I was so engrossed in checking over my friends, that I almost missed the walking guard as they came around. A low growl from Rex warned me in time, and I crouched back down until they had passed. It was a close call, and I resolved to be more careful. I was probably the only hope my friends had of getting away from these people, and if I got caught too, there would be no one left on the outside to get us away.
Reluctantly, I finished my circuit of the fence. I hated to leave my group, even for just a little while. But I needed to be sure that there wasn't any surprises waiting for us around the next corner. Like I had figured, nothing about our situation changed. There was a second, smaller gate that was also guarded. Other than that, the chain link continued in an unbroken line that led me back to where I had first found the fence.
By the time that I had made my way back to my position within sight of my people, I had hoped to have come up with some plan to get them free. That was not the case. As I stared at them, I was still as clueless as I had been an hour before. Left out in the open like they were, all of them had started to look a little worse. Sunburn colored exposed patches of skin and they all looked like they were too hot.
Even protected from the worst of the sun by the trees, it was hot. My growling stomach reminded me that I had not eaten anything since the day before. I had thrown anything that I thought would come in handy in my backpack, but there had not been much left in the way of food. The strangers had taken most of our stuff with them when they left. Looking at my friends, I was reluctant to use any of the remaining supplies without them, but reason prevailed. If I was going to save them, I needed to not be dehydrated and dizzy with hunger.
Rex had lapped thirstily at a small stream that we had encountered on our walk around the fence. Breaking off a small piece of my granola bar, I handed it to the dog before settling down to finish off the rest myself. I was sipping from a half full bottle of water when movement inside the fence caught my attention.
Swaggering, the man with orange hair approached the cage that held my friends. In his hands, he twirled a bottle of water. With keen interest, I watched as he opened the latch on the door, I hadn't noticed him use any sort of key, and let himself in. He stood over my friends, still twirling the water bottle, for several long seconds.
"It's hot out here today, ain't it?" He paused like he was waiting for a reply, but when he got nothing in return, he continued on unperturbed. "My name is Mack, and you all have found yourselves in a bit of a jam. This is my territory, the things that you took in the gas station are mine, and I can't just let people come in and help themselves to the things that are meant for my group. You see where I'm going with this, don't ya? What kind of a leader would I be if I allowed actions like yours to go unpunished?"
Pacing back and forth the short distance between sides of the fence, he seemed to be deliberating something. Eyeing him like the viper that he was, my group held their silence.
"Now, you all brought this on yourselves, but we're not bad people. We understand, times are tough and you have to do what you have to, to survive. So, we are prepared to offer immunity for your actions, if you decide to join our group. To one of you." Mack brandished the bottle of water. "All of the perks of being a part of our community can be yours, you just have to say so."
Waggling the water in front of him, he waited.
FORTY-ONE-DAY 22
Yet another mosquito whined in my ear, but this time I didn't swat it away. The roving guards were approaching in the night, their flashlights cutting through the dark. It was unlikely that they would notice my movement outside of the beams of light, but I wasn't taking that chance.
A stinging on my forehead let me know where the insect had decided to bite. My fingers twitched with the urge to squash the tiny parasite. Finally, the guards passed and I was able to kill the bug.
The compound was still and silent. Everyone had gone inside hours earlier, with the exception of the four guards who were now on duty. From my hiding place, I had watched as one man headed toward the back gate, another toward the front, and two more started walking the fence line.
That had been just before dark. Hours later, everyone besides the guards seemed to have gone to bed. It was nearly time to make my move.
If I was going to get my friends free, it would have to be before dawn. The orange haired man, Mack, had been very clear. When my group continued to stare at him in silence, despite his offer to join them, his oddly pleasant expression had morphed. I'd had no problem hearing his loud proclamation that he would give them the night to think it over, before stomping out of the cage.
When the sun came up, I had no doubt that Mack would be back, and nothing good was going to happen.
The plan I had managed to concoct was rather simple. The pattern of the guards activities had been well established as I crouched behind trees all day. If I could get through the fence quietly enough to not attract attention, I had a good idea of how much time we would have to make our escape.
The chain link of the fence wasn't impossible to get through, if one had the proper tools. I did not happen to have anything like that stuffed into my backpack. Likewise, going over the fence wasn't going to work. The sharp wire used to top the chain link would slice anyone who tried to ribbons. That left only one option, we were going to have to go under the fence.
Digging a hole under the fence sounded easy in theory, but I had a feeling it was going to prove more difficult than I was hoping. I only had about 20 minutes between rounds by the guards, not a lot of time considering the hole would have to be big enough for a person to fit through. And if I failed to finish on time, the guards weren't going to miss a giant, partially dug hole under their fence, even in the dark.
Sipping the last few swallows of water from the bottle I'd been nursing all day, I zipped the empty container back into my bag. Resolutely ignoring the hunger pangs clawing at my stomach, I swung the backpack over one shoulder. There were only two bottles of water and a couple of smashed pastries left in the bag, and I was saving those for my friends. They hadn't been given anything to eat or drink all day.
The guards came back around and strolled by. As soon as they had melted into the darkness, I climbed to my feet.
The ground was full of stones and packed down hard. Tree roots tangled together in the dirt. It took me mere seconds to know that my half baked rescue attempt was in trouble. Pulling out my knife, I dug it deep into the soil and attempted to use it to loosen anything in my way.
Standing next to my shoulder, Rex whined softly and I shushed him. Batting a stray piece of hair out of my face, I renewed my attack on the ground. I felt a finger nail snap and the tips of my fingers grew raw, but the pile of loose dirt steadily grew beside me.
Glancing up, I tried in vain to see where the flashlights of the guards were located, trying to gauge how much time I had left. They were too far away, but I could feel time racing by with every fast beat of my heart.
The hole was finally big enough for me to wiggle my shoulders through. I was halfway under the fence when I realized that it needed to be bigger. I was the smallest person in the group. If I could just fit, most of the rest of them would not be getting out that hole. Dragging myself backwards hurriedly, I failed to stay low enough. The sharp metal ends of the chain link dug into my shoulder blades.