by Gibb, Lew
A fourth zombie arrived. Mandy released the now-dead zombie and latched onto the new threat’s right hand moving to her left and shaking the hand like she was trying to pull it off.
Kodi plowed into the struggling zombie, rode him to the ground, and tore his throat out as Jerry came to a stop beside his now blood-soaked dogs. They were both panting and looking at him like they were waiting for him to say something.
“Good dogs,” was all he could come up with.
In the space of about ten seconds they had shredded four zombies like a bunch of cheap shoes.
Jerry bent to check them for bites. They seemed unharmed and both tried to hop up and lick his face. Jerry twisted his head away to avoid their gore-covered muzzles. “Easy guys. We don’t know what’s in that stuff.”
“Mierda!” Alberto said, coming to a stop next to Jerry and lifting his axe over his head.
Jerry followed Alberto’s gaze back toward the bridge where the zombies had come from and the sight almost made his knees give out.
The cars they had used to block the footbridge over Cherry Creek were gone. In their place, a mass of zombies filled the old train trestle from one side to the other. The leaders were moving fast—so fast, Jerry didn’t think he’d be able to outrun them. He lifted his sword over his head and shuffled a step away from Alberto to give himself room to swing.
“This may be difficult,” Alberto said. He seemed to be going for his usual laconic delivery, but Jerry could hear the tension in his voice.
And then the leaders were on them. Jerry caught a flash of Kodi and Mandy sprinting at the pack’s edge. He saw them launch themselves at a pair of zombies and heard them growling over the now-deafening screeches coming from the mob. He couldn’t believe these two snarling killing machines were the same furry goobers who’d been playing with Alberto’s kids a minute before.
Alberto’s axe crushed the skull of a long-legged zombie in a softball uniform. Then it was all Jerry could do to swing his sword fast enough to keep from being dinner. He caught only brief flashes of black and brown fur as the dogs darted through the mob, snarling and ripping before darting away without getting grabbed or bitten. It occurred to him that he should have removed their collars. They were nothing but a handhold for the zombies, and it wasn’t as if they needed their rabies tags and licenses anymore.
When Holly rounded the corner of the building, the word that popped into her head was carnage. At least twenty dead zombies littered the street. Pools of blood spread from their sliced and mangled throats, enveloping the chunks of flesh that were everywhere. Jerry and Alberto were fighting side by side halfway from the driveway to the footbridge, slashing and chopping at the zombies. Jerry’s shepherds sprinted around the horde like crazed sheepdogs, herding the zombies into knots and tearing into the stragglers.
Holly had volunteered for lookout duty and dragged Tracy along, both to get her away from Zach—whom Holly was sure she still wanted to hurt in a big way even though she was making nice for Alberto’s sake—and to teach her some moves with the sword. They couldn’t all keep sharing the one they’d found at her neighbor’s house, but she was sure it was the best weapon for the girls who weren’t going to be swinging an axe or a big monster blade like Jerry’s.
Holly mentally kicked herself for not staying with Jerry as she veered to one side to take a look down. Jerry was chasing his dogs toward the other end of the courtyard with his sword over his shoulder.
She darted through the closing door. Tracy’s sneakers slapped the concrete steps a flight and a half below as Holly threw herself at the stairs. The thought popped into her head that Rachel would be super pissed at her if she let Jerry get himself killed. He was a great guy and seemed to know what he was doing, but he thought too much. About everything. Holly took the stairs three and four at a time and used the railing to slingshot herself around the landings. It was crazy, but after getting so close to Jerry and hearing him talk about Rachel so much, it almost felt like she and Jerry’s wife were friends. And friends took care of each other’s families.
By the time she hit the first-floor landing, Tracy was only a little ahead of Holly. Holly shot through, closing the door right on Tracy’s ass, and passed her in the first ten yards. Then she sprinted to the end, and that was when she saw four zombies with jagged holes in their necks. No way Jerry or Alberto had done that. She wondered how the zombies had gotten in. There was a bridge over the creek at the end of the street, but they had blocked both ends with cars. It didn’t make any sense.
Holly drew her sword and glanced back at Tracy. She nodded and waved for Tracy to follow her. She killed a couple of zombies that had bypassed Jerry and Alberto, then checked on Tracy. She was hacking at a zombie with Maria’s rapier. It finally went down, and they moved up to the main group. Holly had been working with Tracy and Maria on their technique throughout the day, taking turns practicing on a mattress they’d dragged up to the roof, but there was only so much a person could learn in day.
Tracy hacked a chunk out of a zombie’s shoulder but didn’t put it down. The woman was wearing a brown UPS uniform. She lunged at Tracy, just ducking under a wild swing. Holly started that way, hoping she would be in time. Then a black blur shot past her. Mandy pounced on the zombie and grabbed her by the arm. The zombie staggered and spun ninety degrees. Tracy stabbed her through the ear.
Holly ran across the concrete toward the area where Jerry and Alberto were about to be surrounded. Everything slowed down, just like it had that night in her neighbor’s front yard. It felt like she had never put down her sword. All her hours of training came back. She didn’t even have to think. She just knew what to do—she reacted. Thrust or slash, duck or sidestep. Every decision came to her at exactly the moment she needed it, and not a second sooner. She didn’t have to think of options, they were just there. It was just like the year she’d gone to the Junior Olympics, except this time her opponents had teeth instead of swords. She felt like she had total control over her body, and time became something changeable. She fought her way toward Jerry for what seemed at once to be both hours and mere seconds. Individual encounters happened in slow motion, but the succession of zombie attacks flashed past like a movie montage.
She slashed a zombie’s throat, then sidestepped, bringing her blade up for a backhand swing before realizing it was Tracy.
The sword hung from her hand as if she could barely hold it. “I just killed all these people,” Tracy said. Tears were running down her cheeks, making tracks through the blood splattered on her face.
Holly checked the area, found nothing but dead zombies, then walked over and hugged her new friend.
Jerry’s sword cleaved a channel down the center of a zombie’s forehead. It dropped at his feet. Kodi stood after mauling a spindly old woman zombie then trotted over to sniff a bush. Jerry looked at the bodies. Over a hundred—maybe close to two hundred—mangled zombies lay in a lake of congealing blood. His own arms were drenched, and he felt dried blood crack on his cheeks like a bloody facial mask when he moved his mouth.
“Someone moved the cars,” Alberto said. He was just to Jerry’s left, nodding at the vehicles parked just to one side of the bridge’s entrance and exit. Tracy and Holly were hugging each other on his other side. He didn’t even remember them arriving.
Jerry pointed down the ramp. The makeshift barricade at its base had been mostly dismembered. “No way the zombies did that without us hearing.”
“But who would do such a thing?” Alberto said, shaking his head and looking around.
“I don’t know.” Jerry noticed Holly stab a supine zombie in the eye while Mandy gnawed its hand. “But right now, we need to get that barricade back up.”
They moved to the far end of the bridge to push the blocking car back into position. A piece of paper was tucked under the driver’s side wiper. Jerry snatched it with a nauseous feeling in his gut and unfolded it. His skin went cold when he read the message printed in large block letters:
Bur
n In HELL Blasphemers!!!
Zebulan Picke
“Oh my god!” Holly said, reading over his shoulder. “That little bastard tried to kill us.” She spun in a circle and squinted into the distance, as if she expected Picke to still be there. “I knew he was going to cause trouble.”
“You know this person?” Tracy said.
“We had an encounter before we found you,” Alberto said.
The dogs trotted over and collapsed at Jerry’s feet, panting happily with the bright-eyed doggie smiles they got whenever they had been doing something strenuous and exciting. Their front halves were soaked in what he hoped was only zombie blood. He knelt to check them for injuries. He couldn’t find a scratch on Kodi, and he was about to give Mandy a clean bill of health when he felt a gap in the fur on the underside of her right foreleg. With a nauseous feeling in his gut, he lifted her paw. A perfect circle of flesh, exactly the shape of a human mouth, had been torn from the fur. Jerry dropped to his knees, wrapped his arms around Mandy’s neck, and buried his face in her fur. It felt like he’d been gut punched.“No, no, no, no, no, no.”
Tears flowed into Mandy’s fur, and it was all he could do to keep himself from falling to the ground and curling into a fetal ball. He couldn’t lose Rachel’s dog. From the beginning, the universe had seemed to be conspiring against him. Losing Mike, then being separated from Rachel. Holly’s parents, then Justin. Now this.
He felt a hand on his back. “Hey,” Holly said. “Didn’t you tell me that internet guy thought dogs might not get the virus because they’ve been vaccinated?”
“Yeah,” he barely squeezed the word out. Then his brain registered what she had said, and he felt like a man crawling through the desert who discovers a drinking fountain. It was like all the energy that had left him flowed back in. “He thought if the virus hadn’t mutated too much, there was a good chance dogs would retain their immunity. I don’t know, though.” He shook his head.
Holly turned him by the shoulders until he was looking at her. “Don’t give up on her. We could keep her isolated in the apartment next door till we know.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Jerry said. He was willing to grasp at any straw handed to him. No way would he be able to put his dog down like the guy in I Am Legend. He knew he didn’t have the strength to break the bad news to Rachel if—when—they saw each other again.
One of the nearby zombies started to move, and Kodi pounced on it, tearing at its throat until it stopped moving.
“Don’t let me ever get on the wrong side of those two,” Tracy said, taking a step back and looking at Kodi with hooded eyes. “They took out more zombies than I did.”
“Listen,” Holly was looking up at the building next to them. “Do you guys hear that thumping?”
“It’s probably a zombie pounding on a door somewhere,” Tracy said.
“I don’t think so.” Holly moved back and shaded her eyes. “It’s too irregular.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
“Did you kill more zombies?” Brent sprinted across the backyard and slammed into Rachel, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“One or two, buddy.” Rachel mussed his hair, then rested an arm on his shoulder as she trudged across the yard to the back door. Once inside, she let her duffel fall with a rattle and collapsed into the nearest kitchen chair. Clay followed her in and dropped into a chair without unslinging his duffel. He looked worse than she felt.
The rest of the trip back, through who knew how many backyards and over twice as many fences, had seemed endless. Rachel was in pretty good shape before the apocalypse went down—she’d finished her last half marathon in the top twenty for her age group—and the actual distance she and Clay had just run wasn’t huge, but she had no doubt she could sleep comfortably in the hard kitchen chair for hours.
“What was all that shooting?” Cindy asked. “We were worried about you.”
“Thanks, Cindy.” Rachel stifled a grimace at the maternal tone in her voice. Like she and Clay were a couple of wayward teens out after curfew. “But the horde of zombies on our asses made a phone call impossible.”
“I was going to come help.” Brent sat next to Rachel and held up his hatchet. “But Mom wouldn’t let me.”
“I appreciate it dude, but I think your mom was right.” Rachel wanted to reach out and pat him on the shoulder, but she felt like the kettlebells from her duffel were now attached to her arms. “You need to stay with her and keep her safe.”
After she took the icepacks in to Andy, Cindy came back and fed everyone canned chili and vegetables. She heated the meal with a camp stove Brent brought up from the basement, and there was even canned fruit for dessert. Rachel was already starting to miss fresh produce. There were some small farms on the edge of the city, and a lot of people had vegetable gardens. They should think about harvesting some of them when they got the chance. She laughed at herself for thinking ahead, then wondered if they should have gotten some vitamins at the pharmacy.
Andy hobbled in from the living room. His knee and ankle were wrapped in bandages that held the ice packs against his injuries. “Thanks, you guys, this feels better already. I heard you had to take a little detour.”
Rachel snorted. She could only imagine what Cindy must have told him.
Brent looked confused. “I thought you got attacked?”
Rachel rolled her eyes and bit her tongue while Clay described the trip to the pharmacy, including an abbreviated version of the zombie attack and their rescue. Rachel didn’t think she could have explained it all without laying into Cindy again.
“I’m sorry you guys had to go through that for me,” Andy said when Clay finished.
“It’s okay,” Rachel said. “We survived.” She shot a glare at an oblivious Cindy, who was staring at her own feet. Maybe thinking about doing some clothes shopping. “That’s what matters.” She hoped this denial thing Cindy was going through wouldn’t be a problem. “I was thinking we should head out first thing in the morning.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
Alberto leaned back and tilted his head. He had to squint to see through the late afternoon glare reflecting off the building’s windows. “I think I see something up there.” He shuffled a few steps to his left. “In the corner unit on the right. Fourth floor.”
“They’re waving,” Holly said. “We have to help them.” She ran to the building’s main doors and yanked. The doors were locked.
When she returned to the group, Tracy was looking at the building and frowning. “I’m not sure I want to go into a strange building,” she said. “Especially this close to dark and with who knows how many zombies in there.”
Holly crossed her arms. “If Jerry hadn’t risked his life by crawling up in that ceiling, I wouldn’t be here. I’m going.” She looked at Alberto, who nodded. Jerry was still kneeling with Mandy and looking dazed. “Jerry!”
Jerry seemed to pull his focus away from worrying about his dog and looked properly at her. “We found a bunch of climbing gear in one of the apartments this morning. We could use some webbing to make a ladder.” That was all she got from him before he checked out again. Holly nodded and started for Jerry’s building.
Twenty minutes later, she and Tracy were standing on the balcony closest to the window where they’d seen the person, it looked like a young girl, waving. Tracy had a hand on the sliding door’s handle, and she looked determined. Holly adjusted her stance and raised her sword so the tip was ready for a thrust at eye level. Light from the late afternoon sun barely penetrated ten feet inside, and the rest of the place was buried in shadows and darkness.
She was having second thoughts about going into the apartment without Jerry. Even though they had only met a couple of days ago, she trusted him with her life. They’d been through a lot together. Sure, they’d made mistakes, but they’d learned from them, and that made them a good team.
But with Jerry out of it—he’d been near catatonic since he’d discovered Mandy’s zombie bite, and in n
o condition to lead a rescue mission inside the possibly-zombie-infested apartment building; plus he seemed to be losing hope about Rachel making it home—Holly had argued that she was the best choice to lead the rescue. Her rapier would be more useful in the closed confines of an apartment than either Alberto’s axe or Jerry’s claymore. Alberto’s argument against her going boiled down to the fact that she was a girl. After she and Tracy, with a little help from Maria, blasted him for being sexist, and since Jerry was no help on either side, they sent him and Mandy back to the apartment for Mandy’s quarantine. After Holly got her way, Tracy surprised them all by volunteering to go with her. When she revealed she had been a college gymnast and pointed out that she and Holly were also the lightest and wouldn’t stress the climbing webbing as much, it was a done deal.
Getting up the building turned out to be easier than she’d thought. Alberto had whipped up an awesome webbing ladder with a bunch of knots Holly couldn’t follow, and Jerry’s six-foot stepladder got them high enough to reach up and fasten it around the next railing with a carabiner. Then all they had to do was climb up. Twice more, and they were on the fourth floor, ready to go in.
Holly nodded, and Tracy shoved the door open—too hard. It banged against the stop and bounced back. But Holly was already in the opening. She shouldered it aside and darted through at an angle. Keeping her sword up, she scanned the empty living room for threats. When nothing attacked, she waved Tracy in.
A white leather couch faced a huge TV mounted on the left wall. The kitchen on the right was mostly just dark shadows past the breakfast bar running parallel to the couch. An opened box of Cap’n Crunch sat on the counter.