The Wilsons' Saga (Book 1): The Journey Home

by Gibb, Lew

  More rifle fire erupted from between the trucks, and the zombies fell in greater numbers. Still more came out of the forest. Their tortured screeches grew in volume until the cacophony was almost as loud as the gunfire.

  Protect the baby, Rachel’s instinct screamed at her. Turn your ass around and run. The sensation was so strong she had actually spun and taken two steps into the forest before she stopped herself.

  Although they didn’t know her, the Walshes had been willing to keep her safe, even to put themselves in danger by taking her in and making her one of their group. She couldn’t just leave them to fend for themselves.

  A solid mass of zombies filled the slight rise between the camp and the forest.

  “Fuck!” Rachel yelled, then drew her chef’s knife and circled to her left, keeping just inside the tree line. The horde coming out of the forest had finally ended as she approached their rear. The zombies were silhouetted against the lights from the trucks. The nearest zombie didn’t register her presence until she grabbed a handful of his hair and stabbed him in under the ear. A black rope of blood shot out after she twisted the blade and yanked it free. His arms flailed, and he dropped, leaving her with a fistful of hair.

  A stocky girl hopped over the man with surprising coordination and reached for Rachel. Her scream was cut short when the chef’s knife sliced into her throat. Rachel moved forward, taking the next one from behind.

  After that, things became a blurred series of encounters. Perception, attack, recoil, and regroup. Repeat. She lost track of how many she killed. When she realized the sound of her own pistol wouldn’t be heard over the sound of gunfire and the zombies screaming, she drew her pistol and fired. The zombie directly behind the one she’d shot in the back of the head seemed to notice the sound and turned her way. She shot him and kept firing until she emptied all three magazines, then switched back to her knife and continued to slice through the mob’s rear. The blood that coated her gloves and the arms of her jacket made her wonder again about the zombie virus being transmitted by contact with bodily fluids. She remembered something Jerry had said about saliva, but the thought was pushed out of her head by the need to keep track of the constantly shifting mass of zombies in the wavering light. More headlights had been turned on, but out at the edge of the mass where Rachel stabbed one zombie after another, deep shadows were the norm.

  Sometime later—an hour or two or maybe only ten minutes, it was impossible to tell—Rachel twisted her knife free and let go of a large bearded zombie’s overall straps. A black rope of blood twisted in the light and followed him to the ground. When she looked for another attacker, there were none in her immediate vicinity. She was about halfway between the trees and the circle of campers. Zombies littered the ground in her wake and lay piled, three and four deep, against the trucks. The campers would have a job clearing a space to drive out of the ring of bodies. The zombie horde had been reduced from a solid mass to several groups of twenty or thirty that were still being whittled down by the stream of bullets the campers were pouring into them.

  A movement atop the nearest camper caught Rachel’s eye.

  Thomas Walsh was standing with his rifle braced on his hip, looking at her over the melee with a frown. He was probably wondering how the hell she had ended up in the middle of all those dead zombies—and why.

  Rachel smiled and shrugged as she backed away from the circle of trucks.

  Thomas’s attention was drawn by a zombie trying to scale the hood of his truck. When he lifted his rifle to his shoulder, Rachel turned and ran for the woods with the echoes of gunshots following her into the dense forest.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The silhouette of Holly’s thumbs-up was just visible against the lightening sky as she signaled an all-clear from her perch straddling the top of the fence that separated her parents’ backyard from the alley. After she dropped out of sight on the other side, Jerry eased the gate open. The pickets made only a faint scraping noise against the alley's concrete pavement. After flinching and darting his gaze around, he waved the Vigils through. Alberto carried the axe he had used so effectively the night before, and Maria had the second rapier. After talking with Holly and testing the rapier’s weight, Maria had decided the weapon would be easiest for her to wield one-handed while holding onto little Isabella with the other. Jerry was impressed by how fast she had picked it up. It turned out Holly was a former Junior Olympic gold medalist with the foil. In only an hour, she had Maria wielding the rapier like she’d been using one for years. It didn’t hurt that the woman was determined to protect her kids.

  Holly was already halfway down the alley and closing in on the waiting ambulance when Jerry eased the gate shut—if there were any zombies trailing, he didn’t want them to have an easy time of it. After making sure the gate was latched, Jerry followed Holly and the Vigils.

  The group had woken at four thirty and geared up quickly, shouldering three backpacks full of food and the duffel bag loaded with all the bullets and additional supplies they could carry. Jerry was happy to see his guess that the zombies would still be sleeping had been accurate since a group the size of theirs couldn’t help but make a little noise moving through the neighborhood.

  Jerry was anything but well-rested. A dream of drowning in a pool of blood had left him exhausted and bleary-eyed. The sound of his alarm at four was the last thing he’d wanted to hear. He reminded himself to charge his phone once they were in the ambulance. It was incredible how their only source of electricity was now the ambulance. Also incredible was how an iPhone, which only days ago could do so many things, was now only useful as an alarm clock, maybe a flashlight. They would need to figure out some way to generate electricity for lights.

  He wondered if his dream was a reaction to all the killing from the night before. There hadn’t been time to think about it in the moment, and he had seen a lot of death in his job. He thought he was okay with it. Maybe his subconscious was working through the morality of it all while he slept. Ten years as a paramedic had left him with a pretty thick skin when it came to the suffering of others. He had treated one sick patient after another, and more often than not for the same preventable things like mismanaged diabetes, poor eating habits, and lack of exercise. Had all this made him incapable of feeling compassion for a being whose life he had ended? Not that he should feel bad about killing someone who was trying to eat him, but he could at least feel bad for their situation that, if things had only gone a little differently, could have easily been his own.

  And then there were all the video games. Practically every paramedic he knew was a Call of Duty fan who spent countless hours “killing” enemies on the screen. Yet they were compassionate, caring people who didn’t seem more predisposed to violence than anyone else. He would have to bring it up with Alberto the next time they were in a safe place.

  When Jerry was less than ten feet from the ambulance, a piercing zombie scream echoed down the alley behind him. He turned to find an average-sized male zombie jogging down the alley toward them. Jerry raised his sword two-handed and shuffled his feet into position to defend himself. Then Alberto ran past him and buried his axe in the man’s forehead.

  A second later, a dirty, homeless-looking woman emerged from behind the dumpster to Alberto’s left on the opposite side of the alley. Brown leaves clung to her hair, and blackened, dried blood covered the front of her jean jacket. A day or two ago, Jerry would have dismissed her as one of the many homeless living in the Denver area who had maybe been in a fight the night before. But there was no mistaking the red eyes and hungry look on her face.

  Jerry shuffled forward and put her out of her misery with a medium-hard swing of the big claymore that stopped halfway through her neck. He was ready for the way the blade stuck in the woman’s flesh, and he hung on tight while she fell and her head flopped to the side. Then the blade came free. Blood jetted from the collapsed street-woman’s severed carotid artery and soaked the toe of his boot. He was just turning to head for
the ambulance when Holly yelled.

  “Look out!” she screamed. “They’re in front, too.”

  Jerry spun. The spaces between the ambulance and the fence was clogged with zombies on both sides. A thin woman in a pastel green tank top cleared the far side just as the rest started their shrill screeching.

  Holly slashed the lanky blonde and stepped sideways to avoid the jet of blood from the gaping neck wound she had caused while Maria moved toward the other side with her rapier over her head. She clutched the handle with two hands like she planned to bludgeon the obese teenaged boy just emerging from the gap instead of slashing him.

  Isabella and Marco clung to each other by the ambulance’s back doors. Their eyes were wide with fear, and Jerry was amazed they were still obeying their parents’ order to keep quiet. The scene in the alley had him on the edge of screaming himself.

  Holly lunged and thrust her rapier up through the chin of a freakishly tall zombie man at the same time that Maria’s blade entered the right eye of the rotund teen who lurched toward her. Blood ran from a spot on the side of his head where he seemed to have lost an ear. He fell as soon as the blade penetrated his skull. Maria jerked the blade free and faced off with a thirty-something guy in a white t-shirt that was too small for his bulging biceps.

  Jerry stepped to Maria’s side and nearly amputated the arm of the next zombie. He had been aiming for the head, but the squat woman had stumbled over Maria’s first victim. He wrenched his blade free and thrust it through the next zombie’s sternum. He yanked the blade free from this zombie and used the momentum to raise the claymore above his head. His victim had barely hit the ground when the next zombie climbed over her dead predecessors. She had to bend to stop herself from falling. Jerry brought the sword down on the back of her head. Instead of the solid thunk that had echoed when Alberto had hit the zombies the night before, the blade clanged and twisted in his hands. Jerry’s palms stung. The zombie dropped on top of the pile with a massive flap of skin dangling from the side of his head. A brilliant white section of skull was visible for a second before blood gushed from the wound.

  Jerry grabbed the rear door handle of the ambulance and scanned the alley as he yanked it open.

  Alberto had his foot on the neck of a dead zombie. He jerked the blade of his axe free from the zombie’s chest and turned to cut down another one that came at him from down the alley.

  Holly stepped over the pile of zombies on her side of the vehicle. “There’s too many of them.”

  Isabella and Marco scrambled into the ambulance.

  “We better go!” Jerry shouted and tapped Maria on the shoulder. She turned, hopped up the two steps, and disappeared inside. Alberto leapt in after her. A line of blood, so thin it could have been drawn with a pen, crossed his face from just beneath his right eye to the left corner of his mouth.

  Holly was stabbing into the space next to the fence.

  “Come on!” Jerry yelled, tapping her hard on the shoulder.

  She cocked her sword arm with the elbow up like she was going to stab again but then turned and nodded at him. She seemed to levitate through the ambulance’s back door.

  Before Jerry could follow, a woman in flowered stretch pants and a peach-colored tank top screeched from beside the vehicle.

  Jerry slashed at the woman one-handed. His sword cut deep into her flank, and she tripped over something and went down.

  Jerry pulled his sword free and dove through the ambulance door, landing on the floor where the stretcher would have been if he and Mike had made it back from their transfer.

  Holly yelled, “Go! Go! Go!”

  Bloody footprints covered the floor. He tried not to put his hands in them as he started to push himself up.

  The ambulance lurched forward and bounced over something big—probably the zombies still wedged between them and the fence.

  Something clamped Jerry’s left ankle. His hands went out from under him, and he began to slide backward. An inarticulate yelp escaped his throat. He flailed his arms and missed the corner of the bench seat. His hand hit Marco’s leg, and he grabbed it by reflex. Jerry let go right away, and Marco yanked both his legs against his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees.

  There was nothing to stop Jerry from being pulled out by his foot.

  He pressed his palms against the sides of the compartment and craned his head around. A bald, red-eyed zombie with a jet-black beard and half an ear had one foot on the rear bumper, and the other was moving up to step into the cabin. He was using Jerry’s leg as a rope to pull himself into the vehicle.

  Jerry rolled onto his side and tried kicking the hands latched on his leg, but the space was too tight. He couldn’t dislodge the man’s grip. Marco and Isabella were now standing on the bench seat and staring down at him with wide, terror-filled eyes.

  The violent swerving and bouncing as Alberto dodged and ran over zombies in the road was keeping the guy holding Jerry’s leg off balance. The zombie couldn’t overcome the violent jerking and climb the rest of the way into the cabin.

  Jerry could feel his sword beneath him but couldn’t let go with either hand, or the both of them would be going out the back.

  Then the zombie planted both feet on the bumper and heaved backward.

  Jerry squealed as he slid a foot toward the rear of the ambulance. He twisted his body and managed to stop his slide with a foot planted against the door frame. His other leg extended into space. The zombie’s weight kept pulling him toward the space outside. The zombie reached forward and grabbed a handful of Jerry’s pants. He reeled in another six inches of Jerry’s leg, digging his nails into the fabric of his pants and catching a hunk of skin in the process. Jerry slid another few inches toward the door, and the guy got a hand on the cargo pocket of his pants.

  Isabella and Marco were both screaming and cringing away from the zombie with their arms wrapped around each other. Maria tried pull them toward the front, but they seemed too terrified to do anything. They just screamed more.

  Meanwhile, Jerry slid another six inches. His legs were completely outside the cabin, and the metal door’s edge dug into his butt.

  Jerry caught sight of Holly as she loomed over him and grabbed the safety rail running along the ceiling with both hands. She pulled her knees up against her chest and swung toward the back of the cabin. At the apex of her swing, her legs lashed out, and the heels of her boots connected with the zombie’s face. His head snapped back, but he hung on. A tooth landed in Jerry’s lap. The grip on his leg loosened a little.

  Holly dropped one foot to the floor beside Jerry, then reared back and nailed the zombie again with her other foot.

  A couple more teeth bounced off Jerry’s leg, and the zombie let go. Jerry watched him fly then bounce once and roll three or four times before coming to rest in the middle of the road.

  Jerry clawed his way onto the bench seat next to the Vigil children and checked his legs for bites. The zombie’s teeth were lying on the floor in front of him. Holly kicked them out the door with a shudder, then reached out and yanked the rear door closed while still holding the ceiling rail. She collapsed on the bench seat beside him.

  The ambulance was still rocking from side to side. The worst was when Alberto slammed on the brakes, causing the five of them slide on the vinyl-covered bench. Jerry and Holly braced themselves to keep from smashing the kids and Maria against the forward bulkhead.

  Jerry leaned forward. “I should check on Alberto.” Through the passthrough—the aisle in the middle of the cab—a section of the front windshield was visible. It looked like they were driving through a junkyard. “Adrenaline seems to be having the same effect on his driving as it did on mine yesterday.”

  “Wow. It seems like that was weeks ago.” Holly’s eyes were red-rimmed, and there were dark circles under them.

  Jerry nodded and pushed to his feet. He used the safety rail to keep from being thrown against the sides as he staggered to the passthrough and leaned through. “I’ve never gone
this fast without the siren,” he said, patting Alberto on the shoulder.

  “Oh.” Alberto slowed a little, then jerked the wheel to avoid a heavy-set woman with a baby in a carrier on her chest. The infant’s arms ended in a pair of ragged stumps.

  Jerry grimaced and looked away as the ambulance sped past. He tried to distract himself by asking Alberto about the road conditions even though it looked the same as what he had dealt with the day before. “How does it look?”

  “The zombies keep running toward us.”

  Jerry nodded and grimaced again. The image of the armless baby wouldn’t shake loose. “That’s what happened yesterday.”

  “Which way should we be going to get to your house?” Alberto asked.

  “It’s right downtown.” Only a mile or two, maybe fifteen minutes on a good day. Now the distance seemed almost insurmountable. Would Rachel even still be there, or would she think he wasn’t coming and leave to join Bob at the station? “My building’s near Union Station. I was thinking we could head north, then get on Speer when we’re just northwest of downtown. What do you think?”

  Alberto thought for a minute. He seemed to give everything a thorough once-over before speaking. “It is worth a try,” he said finally.

  Jerry looked off toward home. The sun was just starting to make its presence known along the eastern horizon with another display of smoldering beauty. Or was that smoke from burning buildings?

  Alberto leaned forward, squinting at the dashboard. “But I think we have a problem.”

  Chapter Forty

  For anyone who was awake—and not a zombie—the day dawned with an amazing display of orange, yellow, and red that Rachel, who was taking it all in through the gaps in the pine canopy, suspected had a lot to do with the number of fires she had seen burning throughout the night. It had been like an upside-down Fourth of July display, with the fireworks spewing up from the ground instead of bursting in the sky and cascading down to earth. Entire sections of the suburbs seemed to have caught fire and were still spewing sickly blackish-yellow smoke that merged with the clouds, dimming their colors while wrapping them in a cancerous gray haze. She was safe in the foothills, separated from any housing by a green area half a mile wide that ran between the two-lane highway from Boulder to Golden and the foothills where she lay.