by Gibb, Lew
Red and green jewels, so big and abundant they had to be fake, were set into the elaborate scrolled wire basket that wrapped around the handle. Jerry backed away as Holly twirled the blade and slashed it back and forth before her. His heel hit something heavy that thudded to the floor behind him. The handle that poked from beneath the fabric piled on the floor was nothing like the rapiers on the wall. It was big enough for both his hands and then some and ended with a crosspiece that separated the handle from the blade.
Jerry dropped the hedge trimmer blade on the desk, then bent and pulled his discovery from the pile of loose clothing. The handle was as thick as the grip of a baseball bat and wrapped in leather. The sword was huge, almost four feet long overall, and he struggled a little to lift it one-handed. The thing reminded him of the Scottish claymore carried by the main character in Highlander. He tested an edge with his thumb, and a drop of blood ran into his palm from the shallow cut left by the razor-sharp blade.
“You think this would be useful against the zombies?” he asked Alberto while holding it two-handed in front of him. It had to weigh five pounds.
“If you do not cut your leg off before you learn to use it.”
“Better than that thing.” He directed his light at the blade on the desk. “Unless you want it.”
Alberto’s headlamp wavered from side to side as he shook his head. “Be my guest. I am going to have enough difficulty with the axe, and I have used one before.”
Jerry turned away from Alberto. “This thing is so sweet.” He took an easy practice swing and had to strain to stop the tip from slamming into the closet door. He could do some serious damage with such an awesome blade. If Rachel were there, she would for sure have been making a comment about boys and their shiny toys about now. But just because the blade was super cool didn’t mean it wasn’t way better than the cheap spears that had nearly gotten them killed. Or the hedge trimmer. He would have to tell her about all of it when he saw her. If he ever saw her.
He was examining the amazing scrollwork close to the handle when he noticed Holly and Alberto looking at him.
Holly already had one of the rapiers in a scabbard on her hip. “Don’t get too infatuated, Jerry. Rachel will be jealous.”
“Yes, I have read about this,” Alberto said. “In a psychology text on deviant sexual behavior. A man will fall in love with an object that he sees as an extension of his—”
“Knock it off.” Jerry’s face burned. “I was thinking of Rachel.”
“Yeah?” Holly said, her teeth shining in the light from Jerry’s headlamp. “Were you both caressing the sword in your fantasy?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Jerry said, while Alberto’s dark eyebrows rose. “And the psychology text. Or whatever.”
“Sometimes they are the same thing,” Alberto said.
“I was just thinking—” Jerry stopped, then smiled and shook his head “—how Rachel would probably be making fun of me, too.”
Alberto clapped a hand on his shoulder. “It is a good man who can laugh at himself, my friend.”
They wrapped the remaining sword in its accompanying sword belt and put it in the duffel. Next, they added a bottle of painkillers and one of antibiotics they found in the master bathroom medicine cabinet, and Alberto slung the bag of goodies over his shoulders.
When they arrived back at the front door, Jerry said, “I hope we can get back as easily as we got here.”
“Yes. Let us hope that,” Alberto agreed.
They turned their headlamps off before Holly opened the door to the outside. Jerry was the last out. The storm door slipped from his fingers, and the aluminum frame snapped closed with a metallic clang.
Jerry froze and snapped his head around. Holly and Alberto were already scanning the area.
Alberto elbowed him and pointed at the right side of the lawn. Two shapes emerged from the dark shadows cast by bushes at the property’s edge.
Jerry’s heart started racing, and sweat prickled his hairline. He could see only that one was male and the other female. Both were more than a little obese, their girth pushing their arms away from their sides and their heads tilted back by the rolls of fat around their necks.
Jerry shuffled to the edge of the porch and raised the claymore until his hands were even with his head and his shoulders were angled, just like he’d seen in the movie. As the massive pair lumbered across the small yard, the woman let out a scream that made the hair on Jerry’s arms prickle. He could see her more clearly now. Her upper body was covered with dark round spots not much bigger than golf balls. At least he didn’t have to worry about time to prepare for the attack.
Holly had already drawn the rapier. The tip pointed at the sky, and her fist holding the handle was just in front of her face as she floated down the steps and across the yard. She slashed the man before Alberto, who was angling to meet the woman, had covered half the distance to his target.
Jerry mashed the button on his headlamp. The area lit up like it was daytime. He was using the highest setting since the light wasn’t going to attract anyone that hadn’t already heard the scream. He moved down the steps with the thought of backing Holly up, but the teen had already slashed the man with a forehand swing. She danced past the big man as a line of blood gushed down his neck and he collapsed. Holly made a backhand slash at the woman at the same time Alberto’s axe thunked into her forehead.
Jerry’s light illuminated a bunch of running zombies materializing out of the gloom beyond the woman. He couldn’t see how many, but it was more than a few. The leader was the same sleeveless jean-jacketed guy who had chased them before.
Jerry shuffled around the collapsing woman. The cone of Holly’s light merged with his. “Mierda,” Alberto cursed behind him, and Jerry darted a glance over his shoulder. Alberto was using a foot to hold the woman’s head down while he wrenched the axe blade from her forehead.
Jerry turned back to the approaching group in time to see Holly take on the leader. A flash of reflected moonlight was the only indication of movement as her blade traveled its arc. The man’s neck sprouted a dark gaping mouth, and his head flopped to one side before he dropped in a heap. Holly sidestepped toward the next one, a wavy-haired man in khaki pants and a ragged checked button-down shirt.
Jerry stepped forward and took a two-handed overhand swing at the next zombie as it stumbled over the leader. The big claymore thunked into the top of its head with the same hollow watermelon sound Alberto’s axe had made moments before. The sword was almost torn from his hands as the zombie fell.
Beyond the body, Jerry caught a glimpse of Holly slashing and dodging. Three lifeless lumps lay on the ground around her, and she killed another while he twisted his blade free. He felt like he was trying to pull an axe from a tree stump.
Then a big muscular zombie in a shredded tank top was almost on top of him. The fear and frustration of the past two days seemed to find an outlet in his sword, and Jerry took a massive two-handed swing at the big man. The blade made contact with the hairy neck just above the left collar bone. It sliced across the zombie’s upper chest at a forty-five-degree angle and came to a stop just shy of the man’s right nipple. The head and shoulder flopped to one side, and the zombie collapsed. Jerry was left holding his bloody sword and looking down at the dead pile of muscle.
Holly flashed past on his right and slashed a neck as the thunk of Alberto’s axe caving in another skull brought Jerry out of his study of the bisected dreamcatcher tattoo on his own victim’s scapula.
Alberto yanked his axe free and moved toward the next zombie while Jerry stepped over the bodybuilder’s legs and took another big swing at a woman in a bus driver’s uniform. He took a little flatter swing than the first time, and there was almost no resistance. The woman’s head rolled free of her shoulders, and the sword continued its arc, pulling Jerry off balance. By the time he stopped the sword’s momentum, he was bent at the waist with the tip of the sword pressed to the ground to keep himself upright.
Another zombie reached for him. Jerry gathered himself and made a rising backhand swing at the new arrival. His slash opened a channel from the bottom of the zombie’s ribcage to the shoulder on the opposite side. Blood fountained out of the wound, and the zombie dropped to his knees. As he finished the follow through, Jerry saw Alberto moving toward the street.
Holly yelled, “Run! Now!”
Zombie screams echoed in the street, and Jerry turned his head toward the sound.
Running zombies filled the cone of illumination. More voices joined the first, and their eerie calls increased in volume until they actually hurt Jerry’s ears.
He thought he had known fear before, but this was different. In a second, a live-action picture of his own death under a pile of chewing and grasping zombies appeared before his eyes. The vivid detail of the image nearly made him vomit.
He ran. He caught up with Alberto, whose face was three shades lighter. Holly screamed something else that Jerry didn’t catch and reached for the pistol at her hip.
Jerry pulled out his own pistol and flipped off the safety. He followed Holly as she crossed to her parents’ side of the street but headed away from their house. She sprinted across the front lawn of a stucco bungalow and headed for the gap between the houses.
Here, a rail-thin zombie that had apparently been slow to wake confronted them. Holly didn’t slow her pace; she extended her arm and fired.
Jerry couldn’t tell if the bullet struck home. There wasn’t time to tell before Holly slammed into the zombie like a fullback running up the middle. The zombie bounced off her shoulder and crashed through the flimsy redwood trellis separating the two houses.
Jerry didn’t wait to see if it got up. He turned and fired past Alberto as the man ran past him. The three leaders went down and created a log jam when the following zombies tripped over them. He heard Alberto hit the fence and turned to follow. He saw Alberto drop to the other side and move to his right.
Jerry tossed his sword ahead and jumped. He hit the fence with his left foot and grabbed the top with both hands, pulling himself up and over with what he hoped was half the speed he’d seen Holly do earlier. He dropped to the ground, scooped his sword, and sprinted after his friends. The pursuing pack slammed into the other side of the fence when he was halfway across the backyard. A new chorus of screams pursued him over the back fence and into the next yard.
Over the next ten minutes, Holly led them on a meandering path through backyards and over fences. The sounds of the chasers grew fainter, and Jerry’s fear loosened its grip as the group’s zig-zag path took them farther from danger.
Once they were safely inside Holly’s house, Holly looked at Jerry, wide-eyed and panting. “Holy crap. Where did they all come from?”
“I don’t know,” Jerry answered. “That was seriously crazy.”
“I am glad you did more damage to the zombies than you did to yourself,” Alberto said, deadpan.
“That thing is insane!” Holly said, pointing at Jerry’s claymore. “You chopped that one’s head clean off.”
Jerry looked at the blood-splotched blade in his hand. “I thought we might be in trouble when that other group showed up.”
“Good thing they can’t run as fast as us.” She winked at Jerry.
“Running is usually the best defense,” Alberto added.
“You got that right,” Jerry said. “Why don’t we head downstairs and think about getting some sleep? I’m completely worn out.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Rachel’s eyes snapped open. It took a minute of frantic searching among the bunched and twisted sheets before she found her phone wedged between the mattress and the side rail. She cupped the phone in her hands and thumbed her iPhone’s home button.
Three thirty.
The last thing Rachel remembered was the girls talking about how excited they were to get back home. Especially Constance—it seemed her beau hadn’t made the trip, and she was anxious to see him again and to get down to some serious making out, as Rhonda had said.
Rachel’s doubts about what to do had evaporated with the night. She had no illusions about the difficulties she faced, and she knew it wasn’t very likely Jerry was still alive. It was probably even less likely he had made it home, especially if he’d run into the same kinds of problems she had faced in just two days. None of that mattered. She owed herself and Jerry and their baby a chance at a family. Maybe later they could even ask the Walshes to take them in—from what the girls had said, the compound shouldn’t be hard to find. But she wasn’t doing anything without Jerry.
With her ears tuned to the sound of the twins’ breathing, she inched to the head of the bed, which was on the side of the truck facing out. She slid the window open and pried the screen free. She had hoped to get an earlier start, but she would just have to make the best of it. The twins’ breathing stayed deep and regular as she pushed her pack out the window and lowered it using a piece of the nylon cord Jerry had supplied and she had tied to the outside of her pack. Jerry really was good at anticipating the kinds of things that would be helpful.
The Walshes probably wouldn’t shoot her for desertion, but it was better to make a clean break rather than argue about whether she was capable of making it on her own. Something about the way Thomas had told her it was best that she stay with them made her suspect that it wouldn’t be an easy conversation. He seemed used to getting his way.
Her elbows took the weight of her body as her legs dangled in space until her toes found the truck’s window ledge. As she lowered herself, one of her knives caught on the camper’s aluminum window frame. It took all her self-control not to swear as she wrestled the handle back and forth until she freed it. The window ledge scraped against her stomach as she eased the rest of her body out, and she couldn’t help worrying about the new life growing inside her. Would she even survive the next nine months to give birth? She shook her head and took a deep breath. It would work out or it wouldn’t. She wouldn’t give up until she’d done everything she could.
The dry grass made only a slight crunch when Rachel’s boots hit the ground, and she absorbed the impact by letting her legs bend until she was crouched at the camper’s side. Rachel scanned a hundred eighty degrees, listening for the hiss of zombies moving through the waist-high grass surrounding the perimeter. Then she crab-walked to the truck’s front corner. The inky blackness of the forest made it impossible even to see the trees she knew surrounded the camp.
The sliver of moon gave her just enough light to make out the tools mounted on the back bumper of the next truck. Beyond that, it was just shapes and shadows—impossible to tell if any zombies were lurking in the forest fifty feet away. Trusting that she would hear them, she inched her head around the front of the truck and looked toward where she remembered the nearest guard was stationed atop his vehicle. The man was silhouetted against the stars—so many stars they wrapped the man in sparkling lights.
Rachel stared in amazement at the sky behind him. She and Jerry camped a lot in the mountains west of Denver, and she was used to the way being far from the light pollution of the city could bring out the usually unseen brilliance of the night sky. Whenever they camped, they would sleep outside their tent if the weather was good so they could stare up at the sight they never got to see in the city. Anything she had seen before was like a black-and-white representation of an old master’s painting. Tonight, the Milky Way was a gauzy silver cloud stretched across the sky with darkness piercing it in a million places. Rachel marveled at the sight for several minutes until she caught the guard’s head movement out of the corner of her eye.
The angular goggles were sweeping toward her. She was about to duck out of sight when his head stopped. She ducked and looked toward the trees but couldn’t make out anything. She took a quick look at the sentry. With his attention diverted, there wouldn’t be a better chance to make her exit.
Her running shoes barely made a sound as she moved away from him in a crouch, cir
cling the ring of trucks until she was halfway between the two sentries. She angled for the tree line, parting the grass with her hands. Her boots and legs made crunching and hissing sounds until she reached the forest. Rachel eased herself to a knee behind the first pine she came to and edged her head around its trunk to look back at the camp. The sentry with the goggles was still focused on the spot about a third of the way around the circle from where she was. Rachel was about to turn and begin walking when the man shouted something and aimed his rifle into the woods.
Rachel hadn’t heard gunshots without the benefit of ear protection before. When his rifle cracked and the tongue of flame shot out toward the woods, she flinched and had to rub her ears.
He yelled again, his voice muffled by the ringing in her ears. He fired some more, a long grinding burst that ripped the night.
Then the other sentry fired.
Their rifles tore the night’s silence, and in the strobing light of their muzzle flashes, Rachel saw the mass of zombies erupting from the forest and flowing toward the camp. The headlights on one of the trucks flashed on, and Rachel sucked in a breath and cursed.
A mass of running bodies flowed out of the trees, filling the space between the trucks and the forest. A chorus of eerie screams filled the gaps between the automatic rifle fire as the sentries were joined on the roofs by more armed defenders. The zombies in the front ranks dropped with each crack of the rifles. Some of the zombies tripped over their fallen comrades. The rest dodged and kept moving toward the defenders. More rifles joined the barrage, and the sound of firing became near continuous. Even with the volume of fire they were pouring into the attackers, Rachel could see Walsh’s people weren’t going to stop the horde before it reached the circle of trucks. In fact, she couldn’t see how they would stop the mob before they were overrun.
As she watched, the leading edge reached the trucks. A pair of zombies clambered up onto the hood of one, reaching for the men on top and screeching that horrible sound. They were shot down, but three more took their places. When those were shot and dropped back into the mass of attackers, more flowed around them as if they weren’t there.