“Look at this,” I said to Rachel. “The eyes look like ours.”
“So,” she responded.
I looked up at her. “How does something that’s been dead for quite some time now still have the eyes of a living person? Eyes that appear to still hold life within them.”
“What is your sudden fascination with these things?” Rachel asked.
“It’s not sudden,” I said. “I’ve wondered this from the very first time I saw one of them. Plus, what does it hurt to know a little about your enemy? Maybe I can figure out a way to kill these things quicker by studying this one?”
Rachel wearily scanned the area around us. She wasn’t about to miss anything that could sneak up from nowhere, so the more her eyes panned from one direction to the other the better she felt. However, standing in the middle of the street talking in normal voices instead of whispering, counteracted her subsequent approach to a thin margin of safety. “Can we just go, please? I’m not real fond of standing here in the middle of the street making a huge target out of myself, and I’m starting to get cold,” she stated.
I ignored her words as my eyes swept down the body and stopped on a large wound near its right ankle. “Hey, take a look at this,” I said to Rachel, who out of sheer curiosity looked over my shoulder and saw the wound.
“It’s a wound, big deal,” she replied.
I closed in on the sight and got a better look. “This is a bite mark,” I said to her. “I haven’t been able to find any other marks on this thing, but right here on its ankle is a damn bite mark.”
“That can’t be,” she rattled. “This thing is bleeding from where you shot it.”
I hadn’t noticed the pool of blood forming beneath it until she said something, and now I was accurately aware that this thing, whatever it was, wasn’t dead like the ones that shuffled about. That single thought frightened me, yet at the same time gave me hope that this could be beaten and the world might actually have a chance at recovering.
“This thing was still alive, even after being bitten by something else – probably by one of those,” I said pointing to one of the nearby undead. “Somehow this person messed up and was attacked, yet was able to get away and instead of dying and coming back to life… they simply mutated.”
Rachel threw both hands in the air. “Okay, I’m done with this shit. They are all dead, so can we please get the hell out of here like we planned back at the house?”
I stood and looked hard at her. “But this proves my point even more,” I said. “Back at the house, you and Morris were so convinced that I was going to turn, but that thing right there says otherwise.”
Rachel looked at me with somber eyes. “It proves nothing of the sort, because it smells of sweat accumulated over the course of a few days… maybe less, Brandon. This thing could have been bitten a day ago or nine days ago. We don’t know and it sure as hell isn’t going to tell us anything,” she added.
A look of pure confusion crossed my face. “How the hell can you stand there and pretend to know how many days of sweat he has built up, like you’re some kind of fucking sweat expert?” My words were gaining strength and leading to anger.
“Just calm down a minute…” I cut her short by standing quickly.
“Screw that!” I began to grow louder. “Even if this guy turned days after being bitten, which is a very huge if to begin with, there would have been signs before it all happened and I’ve been chugging right along since day one like everyone else has. I was even in the school with you and your asshole friends – Smith tested me by taking blood – allowed to live because there was nothing wrong with me. How many of those other people that came through those halls are out here, right now?”
She said nothing, as she stood there staring at me. I might as well have been speaking Greek to her, because nothing I said resonated in her eyes as logical or truth. She had already made her mind up, hell it might have been made up a long time ago, but she was just using me to get away from the tyranny of Smith and Morris. Now that she had that freedom, I was no more a concern to her than any of those poor people who had been brought into the school under false pretenses had.
My eyes spotted something out of place, although I kept my composure. “So this is how it’s going to go down, huh?”
“What’s going to go down?” she asked in her perfect innocent voice, topped off with a coy look to accentuate her beautiful face.
I hit the mag release on my SBR and the mag slid out of the well into my hand, which I slid into my chest rig and pointed the barrel toward the street. “I have one round in the chamber and that’s it,” I told her. “You have a full mag in your pistol on your hip.”
“Well, yeah.” She replied.
“I’m going to count to three, at which time we are going to draw on each other and fire. The fastest one lives… the slowest dies, right here.” I stated with a glare of determination forged upon my face. I saw something flash on her’s that I took as fear.
“Wait a minute,” she started.
“There’s no time left,” I told her. “You don’t trust me, even after all I have done for you, so we’re going to let nature take its course… you know, survival of the fittest and all that shit.” I tightened my fingers around the pistol grip.
Rachel moved her hands away from her waist, trying to symbolize that she did not want to fight. “I never said any of that and you know it!”
With a cool head, I started counting. “One…”
“Listen to me! Stop counting and just listen to what the hell I’m trying to say!” She spouted swiftly.
“Two…”
I wasn’t listening to what she had to say or her pleas to stop counting, so she had to get drastic in the next microsecond or she’d be dead. “I had the ability to shoot you, back in the first house. I could have done it and been a hero in Morris’ eyes, but I didn’t,” she professed. “I didn’t shoot you, because after I realized who you were, I’d heard the rumors of what you did at the school all for your son and it broke my heart. Any father that would be willing to give his life to save his child’s life could not be bad. That’s why I didn’t shoot you… so I’m hoping you won’t shoot me now,” she said and let her arms fall freely to her side, showing her unwillingness to fight me.
“Three,” I said, jerked the short rifle up to her surprise and fired. A second later she heard something hit the pavement behind her and turned to see one of the undead, motionless. Her heart was beating so hard that she was sure it would explode at any moment and she’d fall right beside the rotting body. The sound of a magazine being inserted into a weapon pulled her head my direction. “You’re either the world’s greatest actress and deserve an Oscar for that performance or you meant every word of it? I’m going to choose the latter,” I told her.
Something abruptly slipped past us, disturbing the air with violent force. I should have immediately known what it was, yet I stood there for a few seconds trying hard to brush it off as nothing more than a freak occurrence of the above storm. It wasn’t.
“Run!” I shouted to her, turning in the direction that shot had come from and let loose an entire magazine indiscriminately. I hurried back toward the covered carport in Rachel’s wake, hoping to not get hit before I could get to safety. Another round came my way, hitting the ground an inch in front of my lead foot, sparking as it hit, bounced and flew helplessly off into nowhere.
Rachel ducked behind the carport wall and without being instructed by me, hung her pistol out and began shooting. There was always the possibility of luck and her scoring a hit on whomever was shooting at us, although the likelihood of that was almost nonexistent, it was still plausible to some degree.
Under the carport, I quickly began to reload as my lungs sucked in massive gulps of air. Years of smoking and spending my free time on the couch had worn me down, and then the heavy pack and gear attached to my body didn’t help any.
“Who the hell is shooting at us?” She asked.
It took me
a moment to get enough air into my lungs to respond, which added in me reloading before doing anything else. “I don’t know, but whoever they are they suck at shooting. We were both in the middle of the street and the wind was blowing against us, so why they missed is anyone’s guess,” I answered.
“You think they missed on purpose?”
Before I could speak a bullet blasted through the wall, showering us both with splintered debris, forcing us to get lower to the ground.
“Well, if they did, they’re making up for it now,” I said to her. “Keep your eyes and ears open though, they could have others with them and shooting at us to keep us from seeing them advance.”
Two more holes were blown into the side of the carport.
“Maybe we should move?” Rachel suggested.
I nodded my head vigorously. “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” I announced. “You push and I’ll cover you.”
“Which way?”
“The backyard,” I told her. “There are too many obstacles, including fences, to block their view. So unless they are elevated somewhere, they won’t see us hauling ass.” That set of ideas got me to thinking and it completely engulfed my train of thought. I was no soldier; therefore I had no way of knowing whether the person shooting at me was far off or close up. The falling rain and rolling thunder masked any gunshots or they could have been using a suppressor like I had. In every past gunfight I had been so focused on staying alive that I’d never really payed much attention to what the chaos sounded or felt like.
All I knew for sure was that I could feel the fear working its way through me and I needed to get it under control before it shut me down. I didn’t have to be a soldier to know that freezing up in a gunfight would kill you.
“Okay,” I said to Rachel. “When I start shooting, you haul ass and don’t stop until you get to cover. Once there, I’ll move and you cover me. You got it?”
“Gotcha,” she answered.
I weaseled my way up to the wall, where three bullets had shot through so far, and flattened out into a laying, or prone position. Very little of my body was exposed, in case of further gunfire. I could see in the direction of where I thought the fire was coming from, so if anyone at all tried to move on us while Rachel was going for cover, I’d kill them with extreme prejudice. And if the sniper fired at us again I might be able to see a muzzle flash and locate their position.
“Go,” I said quickly and she shot from under the carport like a bullet. I watched from my concealed position, yet there was no more fire directed at us and no one tried advancing.
Rachel made it to a small shed in the backyard and quickly knelt down facing me. She propped her pistol against the side of the building to steady her aim and waited for all hell to break loose.
I lay there watching the several front yards and street for what seemed like a half an hour or more. No one came to investigate. No more bullets flew our way. There were no other disturbances and that bothered me more than if they would have charged us with great numbers. At least in that scenario I could kill a few of them, let them know we weren’t scared and we’d fight like cornered animals. It was the not seeing them that toyed with my head the most. “What the hell are you guy’s waiting for?” I asked aloud.
They had to be coming up behind us. That would explain why I couldn’t see them moving, which meant the first four rounds had simply been shot at us to unwillingly conform us to their unspoken demands. It had been a diversion of epic proportion and most of all… it had worked.
Rachel motioned for me to come to her. I shook my head and pointed toward the fence, trying to get her to understand what I was saying, as I didn’t need her looking at me. I needed her watching the fence for any intruders that were sure to come bounding over at any moment. Unfortunately, she didn’t understand what I was telling her and continued to shrug her shoulders, motion for me to come to her, never once looking in the direction of the fence.
“Dammit!” I growled under my breath. I couldn’t just shout instructions to her, because the moment I did that, I’d be telling them that I was aware of what they were up to. And I wanted them to think I was oblivious to their plan.
“Anything?” A voice suddenly asked softly and very close.
I froze solid, realizing that they had closed the gap to me unseen and were now just a few feet away. I had no idea how many of them there were, nor did I know the type of weapons they carried, although I knew for a fact at least one of them had a long range rifle. Probably something large in caliber for hunting things like Elk or Moose, something I didn’t want to get hit with by any means.
“Nothing,” another voice replied a little further away. “I just saw them slip up along this area and disappear.”
“Did you hit any of them?” The first voice I had heard asked.
There was a brief pause, to which I’m sure the shooter was receiving a look from his friend or superior of utter disappointment. “I didn’t see any blood on the street, so I either missed or winged them.”
“Great,” the first voice exclaimed. “Now we have a cop running around, that could be just winged or scared shitless. How many times do I have to tell you to focus right before you squeeze that trigger?”
“I wasn’t aiming for the cop,” the second voice stated.
“What?” the first asked.
“I was shooting for the military guy,” the second told the first.
I lay there wondering why it was that every time I ran into other survivors, not only were they trying to kill me, but they were completely stupid as well. Was that a curse I was carrying with me, to be assaulted and hunted by dumbasses until I was killed by one of those things? I mean how unlucky can one guy be at the end of the world? Isn’t the end of the world punishment enough already without having to factor in gun totting idiots with no more brain power than the ones who shuffle aimlessly around? Geez!
“You idiot,” the first said, trying his best to keep control of his voice.
At least he’s calling it what it is. My mind said in a sarcastic tone.
“The military guys are on our side. It’s the damn corrupt cops from the school that we are fighting with, hence the reason he was about to shoot the cop, right before you went and screwed that up,” he added.
The second man’s voice went into defensive mode. “You said to shoot them! You didn’t say which one, you just said shoot and I did. He had the military hardware in his hands and I considered him to be more of a threat than the cop with a pistol.”
Another few seconds of silence, and then the first voice spoke. “Okay… you did what you thought was right, I see that and I should have been more specific. But we can’t change that now. We’ll have to find both of them and finish this thing now.”
“The cop could have easily called for backup by now or went for help,” the second voice said. “I say we caught our loses and go, while we still can.”
“What, and let them come back here later or in a few days and wipe us all out? I don’t think so. We find them both right now and eliminate them,” the first voice said.
The fear that had been dwelling within me, threatening to take control, faded like insurmountable pain devoured by syringes of morphine. The numbness that remained was filled with a sea of rage and hatred toward those that stood in my way of finding my children. For them to threaten my life was the same as them threatening my children and when it came to their lives I’d become the hand of God and smite them all.
The mercy I once held was fleeting with each new day.
The compassion had run dry, as well as what humanity I could spare. I was de-evolving faster and faster until all that would remain were the basic of instincts. I was becoming less of a human and more of a predator. Everything in this very instant was as clear as glass. My life, their lives, none mattered to me but those of my children… and they would live at all costs.
Rachel, upon seeing the first stranger stroll up from nowhere, had moved further down the side of the shed and dr
opped to the wet ground in order to remain out of sight. From her position, she was able to see under the shed as they two men talked and my proximity to them. The odds of them finding me were great and at the current range, which was outside of her skill level in shooting, there was little she could do to save me. I was on my own when it came to these two… or however many of them there really were.
The assumed leader turned and headed toward the backyard in which Rachel was hiding and slowly came into my vision. I quickly, yet quietly at the same time, altered the direction of my body and rifle barrel, bringing his full appearance into view.
“They couldn’t have gotten too far,” he said and turned to see his friend still in the same spot. His eyes also danced across me and instantly he froze, a hand stopped halfway toward an unseen pistol, as he knew he’d never make it before I got my shots off on him.
“That’s what I was thinking,” his friend replied and took a few steps closer, realizing his buddy had abruptly stopped and was facing the carport with something odd flashing on his eyes. As he grew closer he could see what he feared the most, and that was the look of utter horror in his friends eyes, there was no doubting it. “Marcell, what is it?”
Marcell threw up a hand. “Don’t come any closer, Erin, stay where you are.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” Erin asked, the worry evident in his voice.
Rachel could see that with everyone’s attention upon Brandon, she could move unmolested or unseen and gain a better, as well as closer vantage point, so if something were to happen she could better support her new friend.
Day One (Book 3): Alone Page 20