by Dulaney, C.
He stepped over and kicked it away with his foot, then pressed the barrel of his gun to my temple. My gun skidded across the room and slammed against the wall next to the door.
Shit, shit, shit.
Chapter Nine
March 25th
“Keep them from spreading out!” John shouted, pacing up and down the line of snipers.
The minutes ticked by, and shell after empty shell was ejected onto the gravel roof. It quickly became apparent to Mia why zombies were so dangerous, and it had nothing to do with their speed, or lack thereof. As slow and ridiculous as they might seem, though admittedly horrific at the same time, the one thing they had going for them was numbers. The sheer number of the walking dead had never really occurred to her until now.
That’s how they killed you, that’s what made them dangerous. Overwhelm and consume, that was their game plan. Although Mia and the others were behind stone and concrete, on a roof, peppering the dead crowd below with lead, she was still being slowly eaten alive by fear and a keen understanding that they were outnumbered and nearly surrounded. Those two facts did a number on a person’s logic center. All rational thought seems to take a vacation, short or long, it doesn’t really matter.
John and Michael had been doing their best to keep the “troops” calm, repeating the order to “pick your shots,” or “take your time,” over and over. The folks they were attempting to restrain were only human, and humans tend to panic when a thousand dead bodies lurch closer and closer with no sign of relenting. Closer, and “around.” The damn things were practically surrounding the prison.
The shamblers didn’t seem to be bothering the animals on the south side of the property, apparently that was something only the runners did. The livestock sure as hell weren’t appreciative. Cows and pigs ran wild in their fenced-in areas, the horses were neighing loudly and kicking the walls inside their stalls. The chickens tried to fly away, but kept smacking into the wire roof of their coop.
How long had the deadheads been coming in through the outer fence before finally finding their way through the inner fence? It’d been hours since she remembered Kasey and the others coming back to the wall. Assuming Cal went to see the Warden then, and was killed very soon after, and also assuming the Warden had left as quickly as he could, that had given the zombies about six hours to filter through the hole in the perimeter fence, six hours to spread out and surround the prison, albeit from the other side of the inner fence, before finally finding the hole and streaming though, with nothing else standing between them and the survivors except the walls of the prison.
It wasn’t exactly rocket science when it came to The Question: how did the zombies know where to go?
After close to a day and a half of standing and moaning from behind a wall of their dead-dead brothers and sisters, not once making an attempt to go around and try the fence again at an open area, it was obvious that Harvel had led the fuckers to the outer hole. At least to Mia it was. The only thing that gave her comfort was hoping Harvel had been nabbed during his Pied Piper routine.
“Listen up! I want everyone on this side to move to the other roofs and the wall! Split yourselves up evenly, and make damn sure you cover every piece of ground out there! Go, go go!” John ordered, frantically gesturing with his hands, dividing the group of snipers into who stayed and who went.
Mia did the math in her head, Fifteen snipers, divide that by four. Shit. That wasn’t counting John and Michael. That put four guns on each roof and the wall, with one leftover. That also meant everyone would be shooting non-stop until the deadheads were, well, dead. Ammunition didn’t look like it was going to be a problem. Michael had made everyone do a hurried count before the firing began. Granted, when all this was said and done, almost everyone would be damned near out of ammo, but the general consensus on that was, “We’ll worry about it later.”
Except Mia was worrying about it now.
“Hey, get your head in the game,” Jake yelled to her over the drowning noise of gunfire.
He had stopped to reload and noticed Mia just sitting at her bench, staring out over the zombies to a point in the darkness he couldn’t see. When she gave no indication that she had heard him, he stood from his chair and rushed over, glancing back at John a couple times to make sure the big man hadn’t noticed he was one gun shy of a firing squad. He grabbed Mia’s shoulder and shook hard, yanking her out of whatever pit she’d fallen into, then leaned close to her ear so he wouldn’t have to keep screaming to be heard.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Go, get back to your seat,” she said and shooed him away.
Jake eyeballed her for a moment, then turned and jogged back to his chair. Instead of retaking his position, he grabbed the back of the seat and dragged it over next to Mia. Then he ran back and grabbed his sand bags. John caught sight of him on the second trip, but said nothing and kept shooting. The fourth sniper on their roof was a kid who couldn’t have been a day over eighteen, but he could use a rifle, and so far hadn’t freaked out and ran screaming off the roof.
“Where the hell’s Kasey, anyway? She wouldn’t miss this unless someone had a gun to her head,” Jake asked, his voice lowering slightly as the general loudness of the rooftop fell a degree or two. Mia shrugged and reloaded her rifle.
“Probably still in the infirmary. I saw Nancy run inside earlier, so I figure Kasey knows what’s happening.” She slid the bolt into place and rested the barrel on the gun-rest. “Hell, maybe they pumped her full of painkillers and she’s down there sleeping it off.”
She set her crosshairs on an old man wearing a pearl-snap shirt—or rather the remains of one—and his age was something that could have been argued considering he’d been dead awhile and most of his skin had sloughed off.
Jake took the hint and resumed firing as well. He hadn’t started to panic yet like so many of the others had, he was just tired. Funny how sitting in a chair for God knows how long and doing nothing more than scrambling the brains of a hundred or so zombies can wear a man out. From the looks of things, they had a long way to go before calling the dogs in and getting some sleep. He worried about his grandma more than anyone else.
What if Michael gave the order to evacuate? His grams would be at the mercy of strangers, would have to trust them to keep her alive. The more he thought about it, the worse it tasted, like spoiled food coming back up. He knew they could take care of the deadheads, it would just take time. Time and patience. But could they take care of his grandma? As he stopped to reload again, he made a decision: if the evacuation order was given, he’d take his grandma, Mia, and Kasey and get them the hell out of there. Oh, and the dog. Couldn’t forget Gus.
Maybe Abby too.
“What are you smiling about?” Mia asked.
They weren’t in rhythm with one another yet and were stopping at the same time to reload. John was probably annoyed by this, but so far had kept his mouth shut. Jake was momentarily confused by her question, until he realized he’d been thinking about taking Abby out of there with them.
He snorted and reloaded. “Trust me, you don’t wanna know.”
The stink was incredible now, though he didn’t know why. Most of these deadheads were older ones who’d been turned last fall and then been frozen all winter. They were literally rotting to pieces, which was a good sign for anyone still living. That meant the survivors could simply wait out the dead until they decayed and decomposed into nothing. Of course not all of them were old.
Jake noticed as he went from one deadhead to another, lining his sights up on the foreheads and slowly squeezing off the round that would blow out the back of the skull, that there were relatively fresh zombies scattered throughout the mix. But they still had that crusty-skinned, freezer-burnt look to them. He guessed maybe those poor bastards had been alive during the winter, or early winter, and had stumbled upon an accidentally thawed-out head, either on a sunny day, or perhaps from somewhere farther south.
; The runners, on the other hand, were entirely fresh. They hadn’t shown up yet, and he really hoped they’d dodged a bullet this time. Those damn things, now they were going to be a problem. The ones they’d had the pleasure of seeing so far hadn’t been decomposing at all, and were actually in such good shape they seemed to still be living. Of course Jake didn’t let his mind entertain that thought too long.
They all thought about it, the runners, though no one chose to talk about it, most likely out of fear of facing the truth. Jake knew a thing or two about microbiology, and had a general idea how viruses worked. He was a genius, after all. His own personal theory concerning the arrival of the runners involved only two things: mutation and survival. Whatever this virus was that had caused the dead to reanimate had mutated, changed its molecular makeup, either during the winter or very shortly afterwards, in order to survive. It was one of the basic rules of evolution. If an organism is getting its ass kicked, whether by aggressors or its habitat, then it makes whatever changes are necessary to ensure its continued existence.
He figured that eventually this virus would burn itself out, and that these runners would also eventually decay and crumble like their slower relatives. The only way that would happen, in his opinion, was if no one else became infected. As long as the virus had hosts, it would continue on, raging through the human population until there was nothing left but death-that-wasn’t-death. Could that happen? Would that happen? Had the human race been thinned out, leaving only the strongest and smartest? Jake hoped more than anything that the latter was true. If it wasn’t, well, he’d just make himself believe that it was, because if he couldn’t hold onto that, he might as well pull his sidearm and eat the barrel.
“Hey, now who’s the one with head-in-ass syndrome?” Mia shouted.
“Yeah, I think we need to do more killin’ and less thinkin’,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
Mia smacked him once on the arm and reloaded. Jake noticed he’d only shot a couple times since reloading.
“Taste the rainbow, bitches!” He opened fire once again on the zombies staring up at him with their mouths open and arms outstretched.
Let them come, he thought. Let them come.
* * *
“Just take it easy, okay? Let’s not do anything crazy,” I said, angry at the sharp edge of fear in my voice, and sickened by how close I was to begging this asshole.
“Stand up,” he said, then suddenly coughed.
It was a dry, hacking cough, the aggravating, unproductive sort that rips like a jagged edge. I did as he ordered, trying desperately to remember every detail since I first saw him in the mirror. As hard as I tried, the only thing I could clearly recall was how messed up his hand was.
“Now get over here, in the corner where I can watch ya,” he said.
I carefully turned my head to look at him. He waved his pistol in the direction of the sink, so I began walking backwards towards the corner. My rifle was in that corner, why was he telling me to stand there? Pieces of a puzzle swam in my mind, but dread and the incredible need to piss was stopping me from putting it all together.
“Alright, that’s good. Now get on your knees and lace your fingers behind your head.”
Yes, his voice had a definite gruff to it now.
Think faster, Kasey.
I kneeled down and clasped my hands behind my head. He sidestepped to the sink, swinging his gun around at the same time, then placed it on the ledge under the mirror and turned on the faucet. He kept his eyes on me when he stuck his hand under the running water. That’s when I saw it.
Dear God…
In my panic that followed after first seeing him inside the room, I’d failed to notice the color of the blood that was caked to his hand and shirt sleeve. I had also failed to notice the tint of his skin and eyes. The cough, the thin sheen of sweat covering his forehead, his cunning and speed, the obvious oversight he’d made by making me stand in the same corner as my rifle. There was a click behind my eyes as it all fell into place.
He was infected.
“You don’t look so good, man. You should call the doctor, let him have a look at you,” I said in a half-hearted attempt to confuse his already scrambled mind.
He stared at me, except now it wasn’t the stare a murderer would naturally give his hostage. Now that I knew what he was, it was the stare of a coyote with a rabbit in its sights. The blood on his hand looked like thinned-out tar and turned the running water black. I didn’t figure he had much time left, but then again, I’d never actually witnessed someone change, especially after they’d been infected by one of the faster zombies, since they were a relatively new thing.
How the hell did he get infected?
“Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t ya? Call someone in here, so they can haul my ass off to a cell, or just shoot me and get it over with.” He coughed again and didn’t seem to notice the drops of blood that sprayed out of his mouth. I scooted backwards on my knees, trying to put as much distance between us as I could. No way did I want that crap on me.
He pulled his hand back and turned the water off, then reached up and took his pistol from the ledge. He was looking very tired now, like he might drop at any second. Not good. He cleared his throat and leaned against the sink, holding his right hand tightly against his abdomen, casually pointing the gun at me with his left. He jerked his chin towards my face.
“Someone messed ya up pretty good. I should finish the job.”
He took a step towards me, but was still leaning most of his weight against the sink. The whites of his eyes were almost completely brown now, something I had noticed about the runners we’d encountered in Ohio. His skin was gray and his lips were a weird shade somewhere between blue and green. Every so often his breathing would quicken, and I imagined his heart doing the same.
He’s going to turn, right here in front of me.
At that moment, a vulnerability I had not yet known took root deep in my guts. I realized then that I had never really known true weakness. I thought I had, that day Mia and I were almost taken down by a pack of runners outside the wall gate, when I thought the guards inside weren’t going to open it for us, and a dozen other times since this all began. That was different. That was physical weakness. Being certain I didn’t stand a chance of getting out of this alive, I wanted more than anything for him to just kill me before he changed into a raging, screaming cannibal.
“Whatever you’re going to do, just do it. What are you waiting for?”
The words spilled out of my mouth, part of me screaming at myself to shut up, the other part actually wanting to die. I suppose, in hindsight, that part of me felt I deserved nothing less. How many had already died because of a decision I had made, or because of something I did or didn’t do? I was just a survivor, same as everyone else. No one special. I didn’t know whether I was a good person or not, but in reality good people died all the time. Sometimes for no reason at all.
“Stand up,” he ordered, his voice suddenly taking on a disturbingly calm tone. His lips peeled back in a hungry sneer, and I saw that his gums had turned black.
This is it.
Apparently I stayed on my knees, frozen like a deer in headlights, a moment too long for his liking. He took a sudden step forward and grabbed at me with his crushed hand. If I hadn’t been so afraid, I would have laughed. Just what did he think he could take hold of with that gnarled thing?
“Now!” he shouted and kicked me square in the chest.
I fell backwards and hit my head on the leg of the chair behind me, then rolled onto my right side and curled into a fetal position. He’d knocked the air from my lungs, and I laid there like a fish out of water, my arms wrapped tightly around myself, gasping, trying to suck in the tiniest bit of air. He screamed something else I didn’t catch, since I was too busy trying to breathe, then kicked me again, this time in the lower back close to a kidney. That kick-started my diaphragm. I inhaled sharply and groaned as pain seared up my back.
Not the best
way to die, but it’s better than being eaten alive.
He kicked me once more before holstering his gun and grabbing me by the hair. I admit, I screamed in pain with that last kick. Twice in the kidney, I’d be pissing blood for a month. Hell, what did I care? I didn’t count on living another five minutes, let alone a month. After dry-heaving a couple of times, I found a spare moment to appreciate the raw strength he showed as he yanked me backwards by the hair, lifting me up off the floor and flipping me over on my left side in the process, and dragged me out into the middle of the room.
“I said… get…up,” he growled, every word a struggle now.
I think I was whimpering, I know I was wheezing, and all I could do as he literally pulled me up by my hair was tighten the grip I had on myself, my arms wrapped around my abdomen, and my fingers curled and pulling the fabric of my shirt against my ribs. I felt like such a coward, and that, plus the overwhelming helplessness, made me angry.
“Fuck you!” I screamed after he finally yanked me to my feet and was standing face to face with me, his hand still knotted in my hair and twisting my head at an awkward angle.
Then I spit in his face.
That, quite possibly, could have been the last mistake I would ever make. Except this time, when he opened his mouth to scream at me, his eyes went buggy and he sucked in a sharp breath, then his mouth started to pucker in an O-shape. All classic signs of an inbound cough.
The next few seconds seemed to drag out as several things happened all at once. I spun away and to the left, unable to pull completely away from the hand clenched in my hair, but enough to avoid being hit in the face by blood, chunks of what I assumed were lung tissue, and spit. He doubled over and clenched his stomach with his fist, then started stumbling backwards as another round of hacking coughs hit him. I stumbled back with him, reached up with both of my hands, and clawed at his mangled hand until I finally ripped free from his hold.