Corbin patted Bleu Cheese, who settled her head on his thigh for a nap. “What’s going on out there?”
“They’re having a chat,” Austin said. Most were in the parking lot and one was in the lanes. It wasn’t a good sign that the Shepherds had brought along floodlights; they planned to stay here all night and brace the road. There were campers in the diner’s parking lot that never moved, though other cars went in and out with customers. The Shepherds could take turns tonight monitoring for Sombra Cs and sleeping in the campers.
It was cold. He opened his emergency backpack, wishing that he had taken more care with it. At the bottom was a sweatshirt with a hole in the armpit, one that he was going to discard but placed in the bag. Elania put on another layer and helped Zaley do the same. Corbin had only the long-sleeved T-shirt he was wearing, fine for day but not night. What a mess they were! Austin wanted to go back to the nitrous, where the world was a fine and friendly place. The hygienist had cranked it high and sent him spinning into a happy land where he dandled on the crest of ocean waves ever crashing into his own chest. Everything was good, and what wasn’t good would be good, so that made it good. And now he was here, where everything was definitely not good.
This is what the fox feels like. The wind died down and the foliage moved back, obscuring his view of the chatting hobby hunters and the diner. What was the right thing to do here? Cutting straight up the hill made them easy to spot since they’d have to use flashlights. Dashing across the split put them in full view of the fat asshole with his stop sign in the road. Going back was not an option. So it left them here.
Austin thought of Brennan’s staring eyes and recoiled. They had sat next to each other at lunch in Mr. Tran’s room, both engaged in a conversation with Janie about glitches and games coming out this summer. Janie had never responded to the warning about Shepherds. The three sat together at noon just today and now in the early night one was dead, one was missing, and one was cold and hungry on a dirt slope with Shepherds not far away.
Someone must have told Brennan’s mother by now. Somewhere she was weeping. Austin rubbed his eyes at the thought of Brennan’s mother alone in their hotel room. He wished that Micah had not taken the backpack. Those little treasures of his should have been returned to his mother. Austin would keep the stag and wonder what it had meant to a boy that sat next to him, alive and breathing all of eight hours ago.
“What was it like to shoot someone, Zaley?” Austin should know what it was like, in case he had to do it.
“It was nothing,” Zaley said, looking away into the dark of the hill. “He was going to shoot us, so I shot him first. I just did it. I was . . . angry.”
He heard the contradiction: that it was nothing yet she was angry. When it came down to the wire of your life or someone else’s, both of those feelings could be true. A bark of laughter echoed from the parking lot and pulled his attention away. The wind rustled and revealed some of the Shepherds going into the diner. Off to stuff their faces after a long day’s work well done.
“The boys must be so scared if Shepherds are at the house asking about me,” Elania whispered. “And the body in the backyard. They’re six. They won’t get this.”
Austin wanted to check his phone for service, but that wasn’t smart. It was one of the few times in his life he’d ever been so cut off from the world. Not being able to know filled him with anxiety. He wanted to read the news, check the braces on the Sombra C website, see if there were texts from Janie or anyone else. Thinking of the news reminded him of the old newspaper rolled up in his emergency backpack. They could use it for warmth, but the sheets would rustle.
Time dripped by. Mr. Redneck Deadneck drove off with his girls in the turquoise pickup. Vehicles came up and down Caravel more and more sporadically. The lights went out in the diner and went on in the campers. Two Shepherds kept watch over the road, one standing in the lanes and the other sitting in a lawn chair. They rotated every fifteen minutes. Sometimes Austin heard them talking about old football games and hitch parties. After that, they spoke of deliveries. Word was that they were going well. It wasn’t until Elania whispered that Austin understood deliveries meant Sombra Cs to a confinement point. Zaley and Bleu Cheese slept, both leaning on Corbin. One of the campers darkened.
Was it ten now? Eleven? The voices quieted and he closed his eyes, wishing to return to that hazy nitrous joy. Everything had been fine, so fine . . . Micah crept back, having been gone for so long that Austin forgot about her. Sliding on her ass down the slope to them, she whispered, “I’m going soon.”
“Going where?” Austin asked as the others roused to look at her.
She rubbed her arms for warmth. “Across that gap to the other side of the path. It’s only Multiple Madness down there, and he’s going to sleep.”
The very obese Shepherd was alone in a lawn chair, his head on his fist. The road was silent in both directions, and it had been for a long time. Still, it was so bright from those lights! Austin said, “It’s not safe.”
“It’s not going to get any safer,” Micah said. “How long will it be before one of them decides to stretch his legs with a stroll up the split? Once that idiot nods off, I’m running. If any of you are planning to come after me, then do it in your socks. Shoes make too much noise with the grit on this path.” Tightening the straps of Brennan’s backpack, she crawled back up the slope.
They put on their backpacks, Corbin insisting that he would carry Zaley’s. She nodded and adjusted her scarf sling. The wind gusted and the Shepherd shifted in his chair. His eyelids drooped as the foliage swung back. Pulling the straps of his backpack to lay flush with his skin, Austin crawled after Micah. His muscles were taut to run. Every sound that he made seemed terribly loud, even though the wind was sweeping it away.
When they were all gathered at Micah’s vantage point, they looked down. It was quiet in the parking lot. One camper had its lights on, the back of a head moving around beyond the windows, and the squad cars were gone. Nobody was left in the gas station parking lot or at the pumps. The Shepherd appeared to be sleeping.
Without any indication that she was going, Micah darted soundlessly across the illuminated split. Austin held his breath until she was out of the Shepherd’s line of sight. Shielded by a thick patch of trees, she turned and looked back to them. The guy hadn’t budged. Austin picked at the knots of his shoelaces while Elania stood up in a crouch with her shoes in hand and moved to the edge of the split. Corbin checked on the guy and motioned.
Elania bolted. She ducked once she got to the trees and bent down to put her sneakers back on. They weren’t even untied, and Austin thought that was a good idea. He stopped picking at his laces and wrestled with his left shoe to get it off. Looking terrified, Zaley moved to the edge. With one shoe off, Austin waited for her to cross before prying at the other one.
Bleu Cheese whimpered, wanting to run after Zaley. It was a small sound, but the Shepherd opened his eyes and looked directly up the split. Micah beckoned, unable to see, and Austin shook his head and pointed down. The girls huddled together to whisper and then separated, Elania and Zaley retreating into shadows as Micah stayed there. She was holding the gun. The Shepherd looked about sleepily, picked up his phone from the lawn chair beside him and tapped on the screen. Austin watched in despair. The man could have a game on there that didn’t require cell service and keep awake with it.
But he put it down within a minute and got up slowly to stretch. A window opened in the camper with the lights on and a man called, “Hey, you want coffee?”
The Shepherd at the road turned to face the camper. “Yeah, if you got decaf!” He swung his arms back and forth over his belly. With a yawn, he checked the empty lanes over his shoulder and started across the parking lot for the camper. Corbin held Bleu Cheese at the edge.
“Hey, I’ll bring it to you,” shouted the man in the camper, just as Corbin and the dog ran across the split. Austin shook his head as the Shepherd turned back. He was looking down
to the road, not up at the top of the split, but something of the movement had caught his peripheral vision.
Pushing his hands out to indicate to the others to back up, Austin turned frantically and crawled as quietly as he could to the slope. Micah, Corbin, and the dog rushed away in the other direction.
Oh God oh God oh God . . . This would be a good time for wind to muffle his movements. The air was stubbornly still. Boots scratched along the road as Austin descended the dirt path on his hands and knees. From the camper, the man yelled, “Everything okay out there?”
“Thought I saw something on the path.” The scraping changed from the pavement to the crack of grit. Going around the curve, Austin pressed against the bare rock wall of the hill and prayed. The man was climbing the split, his breath harsh and rasping. Eight steps, nine steps, ten and a pause followed by a click . . . Light burst out at the top of the slope. It moved back and forth. Dirt cracked under boots, more of a swivel than a step.
The dog howled. It was a forlorn sound. The man in the camper called, “I’ll wake Lynx.”
“No, no, just a dog or a coyote running around the hills. Hey, you got sweetener?” Steps moved down to the road, and Austin returned to his inferior spy spot on the slope. The wind came by belatedly, showing the Shepherd going around the camper to get his coffee.
Seconds. Austin might have only seconds before the man came back! He dashed for the split at top speed, the backpack banging on his back even though the straps were tight, his socked feet slapping against the dirt. The path ahead was dim and empty and inviting, leading away from this place and these people . . . now he was in the split, easily seen by anyone looking out a window, exposed to floodlights and guns and cries of alarm. He sprinted for the gloom while the split stretched out, lengthened and he knew that this was going to be a nightmare for the rest of his life. Running across a never-ending split with a Shepherd coming back around the camper with his coffee . . .
When he hit the gloom, he kept running. He could not stop. The light faded and faded more, rocks cut through his socks and the dirt changed to concrete littered with twigs. The moonlight was all he had to see on this paved path going alongside the road, and then the path twisted away into darkness. He stopped there, having no choice but to breathe and go into his backpack for a flashlight. Then he was going to keep going . . .
“Austin!” Micah hissed. She was behind him, her chest heaving from chasing him, and the others were coming along, too. Gasping for air, he worked at the zipper with his fingers trembling. The flashlight was old though the batteries were fresh, and the first sight it illuminated were small wet spots leading to where he stood and trembled.
“Oh God, we’re through,” Elania whispered.
His right foot hurt. Austin fell to the concrete and shined the light on the bottom of his foot, where the material of the sock was ragged and a rock had gone through to the skin of his heel. He sobbed, half from pain and half from hysteria, and took out the basic first aid kit from his bag. Disinfectant, a bandage, they slipped from his fingers as he shook.
“We made it, we made it,” Micah whispered, rocking back and forth with him in her arms as Elania patched up his foot. It was a dozen times until he heard her, really heard her. They had made it, crossed the brace, and were on the other side. He was alive, cold and hungry but alive, and the darkness of the trail ahead was beautiful.
“I guess we could sleep behind those bushes,” Corbin said, gauging the world around them.
“I think we should keep going a little ways,” Zaley said tentatively. Her voice lilted at the end like it was a question. “We’re pushed back a bit from the road but still so close to the brace. Let’s go deeper in the woods? If that’s okay?”
“You’re probably right,” Corbin conceded.
“Deeper,” Elania agreed. She pulled Austin’s sock back over his foot. “I won’t be able to sleep here, not when they’re still practically on top of us.”
“You’re alive, Aussie,” Micah whispered, and then said, “I’m voting for deeper, too. All one has to do in the morning is decide to take a nature walk this way and we’re toast.”
He was alive. They had a little food and water and Zyllevir, some clothes if not enough. In his backpack were matches if they wanted a fire for warmth when it was time to stop. Pulling on his shoes, he flinched when his foot stung.
“Goodbye, Cloudy Valley,” Zaley said.
“Fuck you, Cloudy Valley,” Micah muttered. Going into the first aid kit, she pulled out bandages for the backs of her feet. “Fuck you, clogs.”
“I don’t know if any place will ever feel like home again,” Austin said. “Not when it can turn on you like that.”
“It wasn’t the place, it was the people,” Elania corrected. “The place is just a place.”
“So then let’s find a place with green people,” Corbin said.
Austin got to his feet and shined the flashlight on the path. Trees loomed on either side, dark branches rasping in the wind. Blades of moonlight pierced the canopy to stain the concrete path gray. The concrete did not extend very far; at the edge of the beam, it returned to dirt. Once more a splintered fence was collapsing, weeds throttling the posts and winding over the path. An owl hooted in the trees. It was the most haunting and inhospitable path that Austin had ever ventured to travel, but all he saw was its loveliness.
Slipping on her clogs, Micah stood. They pressed around Austin, all looking down the shaft of light coming from his hand, and he started forward.
END OF VOLUME TWO
THE ZOMBIES: VOLUME THREE
by Macaulay C. Hunter
Set Seven
Zaley
She was hungry and tired, cold and drenched, yet she was also all right.
They had been trapped under the stone bridge by the pelting rain, which occasionally turned to hail. The bridge wasn’t wide enough for them to sit together on the rise above the rushing stream, so they had divided into two groups with Zaley, Corbin, and the dog on one side, Austin and Elania on the other. Rain poured off the bridge above, it blew under the bridge with the wind. It plopped to the ground and splashed onto them from everywhere but directly overhead.
This had been going on for thirty-six hours now, the storm abating only long enough for them to consider moving on, and then renewing with greater fury and force. Lightning flashed, thunder crashed, hail hit the ground so hard that it bounced. Sitting on the concrete rise hour after hour was killing Zaley’s ass. It was nearly impossible to sleep in these conditions. Elania prayed, Austin bitched, Bleu Cheese whimpered, Corbin was quiet with misery, and Micah had been gone since daybreak to seek shelter.
And Zaley was okay, even though her clothes were as wet as if she’d gone swimming in them. Stinging drops slapped her left cheek and bedraggled locks of hair clung to her neck from a braid going to pieces. But no matter how bad it got, here was better than there.
In her head, she surveyed the food left in the backpacks and divided it. They didn’t have much, not split six ways. Salmon Park wasn’t that far away, unless one was waylaid while trying to get there by the storm of the decade. The rain was coming down so fast that the ground couldn’t absorb it, transforming the dirt path into a muddy nightmare. Not that they’d been taking the path with the sporadic hiker and bikers on it right before the storm hit. They stayed close by, but then the rain submerged the ground and made it even more impassable than the path.
Thunder cracked and she heard the bullet within it. She had shot someone, taken the life of another human being. Her arm still felt the recoil of the gun and when she closed her eyes, she saw that Shepherd falling. It hadn’t been like a movie, the person staggering about with enough time to voice his last thoughts. The bullet had severed something critical on its rampage through the Shepherd’s body, because he only fell silently. And died.
Killing someone made her a bad person. Not feeling much of anything about it made her a worse one. Or it didn’t, since it wasn’t like one-armed, seventee
n-year-old Rosalie Grace Mattazollo was the one chasing people with Sombra C around Cloudy Valley to dump them into an illegal confinement point to die. She’d just woken up that day with the shits from taking too much pain medication. Her body was craving another pill, to float away into the reverie, but there were no more to be had. That was good. Her body also remembered the disgusting consequences that made her miss the first day of second semester.
School. The food was divided too quickly in her mental inventory, and she meditated upon a classroom. Warm and dry and comfortable at a desk, with lunch in her backpack. She just had to wait for the bell. The soft drone of a lecture and a window closing at a chilly breeze . . .
The man fell in Elania’s backyard and knocked Zaley out of the classroom.
He had been about to kill them. She killed him first. There was so much that was complex yet simple about their relationship. Her only other choice had been to die. The others looked at her funny sometimes, all but Bleu Cheese. Or that was in Zaley’s head, expecting that they should look at her funny. She’d pulled the trigger without any thought other than he is going to kill us, and determination in every cell of her body to get away.
Bang.
She had gotten away. They had gotten away. All the way to this no-man’s-land between Cloudy Valley and Salmon Park, with the sky dumping buckets upon them. After this much time, her parents must have noticed the boards kicked out of the window. Mom was so deeply in denial that she’d chalk it up to a kidnapping rather than a purposeful action on the part of her daughter. Babies couldn’t run away! Just as the recoil of the gun lived in Zaley’s arm, so did the kicking out of the boards live in her leg. She didn’t know which seemed more like a dream, her life before the boards, or her life since then.
How much farther could Salmon Park be from this bridge? The path wound around like tangled yarn, information they had gleaned from the one map along the way not destroyed by sun exposure. It exited into the northernmost point of the city. Micah wanted to go off the path wholly and cut straight east until they stumbled upon civilization. Everyone else wanted to stay near the path to ensure they didn’t miss Salmon Park altogether. They were sure to hit a city at some point, it was the peninsula after all, but they might have eaten the dog by the time they reached it. They needed food badly, and clothes.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 59