The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  “Give it a rest,” Elania muttered.

  “He can’t,” Micah said. She had gotten a second pole from the railing. “He’s terrified. It’s easier to take it out on Corbin.”

  “That other man was awful this morning, the new one who thought we should have blocked the doors when we couldn’t even get to them.”

  “He was terrified, too. We were just handy targets for it.”

  “Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!”

  They drank their water and dropped the garbage in the river. Elania guessed the time was about seven. Five hours of praying in those bushes that no one stumbled across them in a murderous mood . . . Elania should tie her laces tightly. She reached down to her sneakers. They were thrashed. Leaves and twigs were snarled in the laces, and they were heavily stained. The treads had clots of dirt packed inside. These were the shoes that she’d worn for that glorious moment of her college acceptance, and now she was wearing them in this moment within a confinement point.

  The boys were still sitting there as people went to the stairs. Some of them looked back incredulously that the four of them were choosing not to take shelter in the lodge. A woman beckoned and Corbin waved for her to go on. The guard in the watchtower opened his mouth wide. Expecting him to yell, Elania watched him sneeze. Then he turned away from the hill and blew his noise gustily.

  When everyone had gone to the lodge, they crossed the bridge and walked out of sight of the watchtower guard. Then they crept to the bushes. Austin gave a dirty look to Micah, who jostled them by accident as she squeezed into the small space. Elania hissed automatically, “Stop it!” What Micah had done was over. Austin turned away, now mad at Elania, too.

  “Hooo? Hooo?”

  “Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!”

  The sky darkened and the guard turned on his light to shine over the fence and water. The bridge was dimly touched by it. Victor’s naked body floated past, having looped the whole hill. Elania wished that she could close his bathrobe. It wasn’t right that he was exposed when that had humiliated him so much.

  Micah returned Elania’s pole. The shock had worn off. She remembered what to do with it, should it be necessary. She gripped it in her fists, tense to be outside as night fell. Animal cries were increasing around the hill. Someone scuffled down the path. Checking the time on Corbin’s wrist, she was disappointed. It was only a little after eight.

  “Ahhh-HAAAAAA!” That feral was closer, somewhere above them on the slope. The figure coming around the pathway was silent. Elania followed him in glimpses through the leaves as he lurched to the bridge. He took a few steps onto it, stood there blankly, and returned to the path. Stepping around the body of the man who had run the harbor, he pressed on to the west. The watchtower guard rested against the pole and yawned, watching the zombie’s progress idly.

  Someone made a whooping scream. It was a frightened yet insane sound. A pack of ferals ran along the path after the silent one. Another solo feral came to the river and lapped at the rancid water.

  They weren’t barricaded into the great room. They weren’t high in the oak. They were on the ground with only bushes for cover and poles for weapons. There were hours to wait, hours to be discovered, hours for everything to go wrong . . .

  The feral got up from the river and tilted his head back to the rising moon. The whooping scream made him grimace. He grunted and lurched away.

  Dear God, Elania thought at footsteps on the stairs. Nothing followed that thought except its plaintive repetition. Dear God.

  Corbin

  The watchtower guard on shift by the North Bridge was Ugly. Corbin had watched him all through dinner, and now into the night. Considering the wildness of the night before, the guard was remarkably calm. He wasn’t a pop off like some of the others, shooting people at random or into the sky to freak everyone out. All he was doing currently was watch and sneeze, rub at his face and look miserable. He had a cold.

  The hillside was alive with ferals. Corbin died a little inside every time he saw one that he knew stepping out of the shadows. That was Mrs. Weling, who had come to America from England as a teenager and never lost the accent. There was Ned, a friendly guy who once was a firefighter. The virus had made him mean. He clobbered Kath, a former therapist who had come to the river to drink. She scuttled away. Corbin froze when the rustling of footsteps came near the bushes. So did the other three until it went away.

  At a quarter past nine, Ugly leaned wearily on a pole. He sneezed twice and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Corbin had never studied another human being so intensely in all of his life. The guard wasn’t a fat guy but he had a big face. All of his features were crowded together in the middle, framed by a pink expanse of forehead, cheeks, and chin. His eyes and ears, nose and mouth were small, out-of-kilter with everything else. Tight curls covered his head.

  Ned hooted and melted into the trees. Someone else was thumping up the steps to the crest of the hill. It was half past nine when Ugly stretched and leaned on another pole sleepily. There wasn’t anything for him to watch at the moment. He had no idea how much he was being watched by four pairs of eyes in the darkness.

  Austin was consumed with fear that they were going to die in the next few hours. To that possibility, Corbin felt utterly blasé. Death was better. He’d chosen it by trying to escape, rather than having it forced on him. In that gun slung over Ugly’s shoulder were bullets that could end all of their lives in seconds.

  Ugly closed his eyes for a few moments. If he nodded off, they could get to the bridge without a problem. The zombies were somewhere else on the hill now, lurching around the south side or pounding on the lodge. Sagging deeper and deeper into the pole as he fought to stay awake, the guard’s eyelids settled to half-mast and quarter. Then they closed for a full minute. He checked over the confinement point and closed them again.

  It was almost ten when a gunshot rang out from another watchtower. Ugly jerked to full wakefulness and checked over the hill and fence. Nothing was there to see. He stretched and paced, stopped and scratched his balls. Clearing his throat, he bent over the poles and spat into the river. A sneezing fit followed, ka-CHA, ka-CHA, ka-CHA, and a feral called back to it.

  Austin picked up Corbin’s wrist to check the glowing numbers. He did that every five minutes. Pulling it off the corpse had been sickening. Some of the flesh sloughed away with the tug of the wristband. It was a cheap old thing with a bright blue plastic strap, something out of a clear plastic bubble that a kid got from those machines in grocery stores for a quarter. All it did was tell the time, no alarms or other features.

  But all they needed was the time, and the numbers lit up in the darkness. The watch still worked after days on a putrefying body. The original owner couldn’t be identified, not even if it was male or female, and Corbin didn’t remember who had worn a watch in his time at the confinement point. The flesh of the face had been eaten away to mostly skull and the clothes were tatters.

  Now it was ten. A figure climbed the ladder to the watchtower awkwardly, going up with only one hand. The other was holding onto something. Ugly walked to the far side and spoke to the person in a voice too quiet to carry. Then he extended his hand for the object. The figure climbed down with both hands.

  It was a white coffee mug. Ugly blew away the steam and drank. As he set it on top of a short pole, a guy’s voice rang out very clearly from the other side of the fence. “That’ll keep you going for one more hour!”

  “Yep,” Ugly agreed. So there was a rotation at eleven, putting a fresh guard up there to stay awake all night. Corbin wanted it to be clueless Dumbass staring in the wrong direction, or Narcolepsy off in dream land, but it could be Psycho.

  Ugly did more stretches and paced, blew his nose and yawned. Poor Ugly. Corbin bet the dude had a hell of a time picking up chicks at parties. That wasn’t a face to make girls flock over. He’d need something else going for him, cash or fame, and if he had either of those things, he wouldn’t be standing up there on the tower.

  Parties. That li
e had blown up in Micah’s face a thousand times over, and she hadn’t escaped the consequences of it herself. She was here, and her best friend was done with her. Austin had been too outraged to do anything but splutter about it through dinner. Corbin would have been a lot madder if Micah had gotten away from that night without Sombra C. To think of her going off to college and having a normal life . . . All of those agonizing fights that Corbin had had with Sally over which party to attend! He could have just gone to the Welcome Mat party one evening and the South Haven party another evening. Then he would be home in his room, full from dinner and asleep in bed, so close to his high school graduation that he could taste it . . .

  But Micah had to live with it, too. On top of her Sombra C, she lived with every death, every infection, Zaley’s arm and Corbin’s hand and every other wound. His hand tweaked in a memory of pain. The feral man falling directly on him . . . Why she would make up such a dumb thing was beyond Corbin. It was the weird side of her, the one that threw a brick through a windshield. She looked so normal but deep down she wasn’t. He wanted to punch her in the face and tell her fuck you. Fuck you for that lie and how it changed us forever. Then they could go back to being friends, since what wasn’t normal about her was what kept them alive in this confinement point. But he couldn’t hit a girl.

  If they got to the world beyond, he’d deliver the fuck you minus the punch. Just so she knew what a shitty scene she had caused between him and Sally, and all for a game that she was playing. The responsibility for the attack still rested on the cullers, not a bitchy high school student.

  Austin picked up Corbin’s wrist. It was twenty minutes after ten. Someone was thrashing through the brush on the hillside. Corbin quieted his breathing at the scrapes of dirt and loose pebbles. On every second step, the feral said, “Uhhh.”

  If the feral discovered them and picked a fight, it would reveal their hiding place to the watchtower guard. The zombie lumbered along, two steps and a grunt, two steps and another grunt. Then the bushes behind Corbin rustled and pressed in. That changed the feral’s trajectory and he skirted around them, tripping over the last, lowest one and knocking into Micah as he slid down the last of the hill to the path. Elania grabbed onto Micah to hold her steady. So Elania wasn’t mad at her. Or she was, but like Corbin, this wasn’t the time for it.

  The feral rolled into a patch of light from the tower and got up. He wasn’t far from death. His forehead and the bridge of his nose were black, rot creeping along his body from the top down. It was also going from the bottom up. On his left leg, the blackness stopped at his ankle. On his right, it went up to his calf. He stared to the bushes. “Uhhhh.”

  No one moved. Corbin’s eyes shifted to Ugly. The guard was taking a sip of his coffee and watching. From farther away came a groan, which distracted the feral from the bushes. Raising his hands clumsily over his ears, he lurched over to the bridge and stumped halfway down it. Then he spaced out there. Corbin prayed for the guy to move along. They couldn’t very well get down the bridge with a zombie standing squarely in the middle of it.

  The feral stared at the water and Ugly stared at him, the four in the bushes stared at both of them, and the watch showed half-past ten. Go, Corbin thought forcefully to the rotting figure on the bridge. At seven minutes to eleven, he collapsed where he was. Just died there on the spot. The guard sneezed and blew his nose. Several times he checked down the ladder, perhaps for his replacement.

  The watch showed eleven when a figure scaled it, calling in a feminine voice, “Hey, there!” It was one of the three Bitches. She reached the top and slung a backpack off her shoulders.

  The guards chatted for a minute. Ugly motioned out to the hill and shrugged. Then he climbed down the ladder, leaving his mug atop the post. Bitch unzipped her backpack and went through it. She brought out two bottles of Pizoom, which made her number 2 or 3. Those she put on the posts around the abandoned mug. After checking over the hill, she picked one up and guzzled from it. The bottle was half-empty when she set it down. A big bag of chips was produced from the backpack. Over the next half hour, she ate and drank without cease. The empty bottle of Pizoom was thrown into the confinement point and she sipped from the second.

  “Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh?” It was far away.

  God, Corbin was lusting after a bowl of his mother’s minestrone or pea soup, and salted crackers to sprinkle over the steaming surface. That was the most perfect dinner imaginable. Weeks of only two meals a day, and the tiny bowl of soup for today’s dinner, had made him ravenous.

  Austin took Corbin’s wrist and then whispered, “Sorry, man.”

  “It’s okay,” Corbin whispered.

  As the time wound closer to midnight, Bitch yawned and rested against a tall pole. How the hell was she tired after pounding a whole bottle of Pizoom and part of a second? Corbin would have been bouncing off the poles from the caffeine.

  A whistle blew. Bitch raised her head and went to the side of the tower, shouting down, “Everything all right?”

  “Never mind! It’s fine!” a guy called. “Just a stray cat.” Bitch laughed and called down kitty, kitty, hey, kitty. The whistle blew twice and she returned to the poles to gaze at the hill.

  It was a quarter to midnight. Corbin’s stomach roiled from hunger and stress. His body ached from sitting on the packed ground for hours, and ached even more from last night. He wasn’t going to tell Micah fuck you if they got out. He wouldn’t be alive if not for the sofa that she and Austin had thought to tip over. He didn’t like her and he did like her, so she got the benefit of the doubt.

  He was so tired, and at the same time so awake. Bitch was resting her chin upon her hand. She got down to her knees to do the impaled impression that tired guards did, and then she vanished entirely. Twice she poked her head up at hoots, and a third time just her hand snaked up to get her Pizoom.

  “How should we do this?” Austin whispered.

  “I’ll lurch over to the bridge,” Corbin said. He couldn’t wait any longer. Whether he escaped or got shot in the attempt, it ended.

  It was eight minutes to midnight. Quietly, he stood up. No one was coming around the path or was on the stairs. Clutching his bow and slinging the quiver over his shoulder, he lurched down to the path and checked up to the watchtower. Bitch was taking a break.

  His heart pounded. If Zaley didn’t turn up, he was climbing over the fence, shooting an arrow into anyone he came across on the other side, and bolting until a bullet ended him. He stepped onto the bridge and checked out the fallen feral there. The dude wasn’t moving. The reek of rot was strong from him.

  “Ssssssst!” It was Micah, who lowered her hand to indicate that he should crouch. The railing would provide a little cover. He ducked as Bitch glanced over the poles to scan the hillside thoroughly. When her head disappeared, he crept along the bridge.

  He was where he was supposed to be and it was almost midnight. Something was whirring faintly by the darkened glass. Going over to it, he jumped at a metallic scrape. The bucket trembled in the metal panel.

  Corbin dropped to his hands and knees as the bucket was pulled into the room. A flashlight was on the floor inside. Its beam fell upon screws and a battery-powered screwdriver. Zaley put down the bucket in the corner. Pressing her finger to her lips, she motioned him in. Her Shepherd’s vest was a tad too large. She looked tired and tense and beautiful in the dimness.

  The air from the gap reeked of air freshener. It was going to be a tight fit. He passed through his bow and quiver. The bridge creaked, Elania coming at a near run past the body and to the glass. Corbin moved aside to let her go first. After gauging the small size of it, she stuck one arm and her head through the hole. Laying her other arm flat against her chest, she wriggled to get her torso inside. At her hips, she got caught. Corbin pressed his hands to her sides and compressed her flesh, letting her drag herself through inch by inch.

  Then she was in, in that room and out of the confinement point. Corbin almost screamed. If she’d fit, he
would fit! Getting out of the way so the others could come through, Elania whispered, “The watchtower guard stopped looking.”

  “I dumped enough ground-up painkillers in her fucking Pizoom to knock out a fucking horse,” Zaley whispered as Corbin passed in Elania’s railing pole. “And I gave her a bag of chips to make her thirsty and drink more.”

  The bridge creaked. Austin was coming over it. Thinking that he would need help on both sides to get through, Corbin waited. Up on the watchtower, the only witness to this unbelievable event was the light. Austin got down and whispered in despair, “I’m too big to go through. I’ll never fit.”

  “Just don’t try to shove your shoulders in at the same time,” Corbin whispered. Austin sat back on his haunches, already deciding that this wasn’t going to work. Impatiently, Corbin got his arm and put it through the gap. “Go, goddammit! We’ll help!”

  Austin put his head in, where he reiterated his belief that he wouldn’t fit. The girls pulled on him and Corbin pressed Austin’s other shoulder into a shrug. They started the slow process of getting him through, Corbin lifting up Austin’s legs and driving him hard into the gap. It couldn’t have felt good to scrape through that metal, especially at the crotch. Zaley moved the screws and screwdriver away as Elania stood up and lifted Austin under his armpits.

  “I’m not going to . . .” Austin was saying as Corbin shoved and Elania pulled. He went in and hit the floor.

  In astonishment, he got to his knees and threw his arms around Zaley, who patted his back and hissed, “Not now, Austin!”

  “Uhhhh.” The groan trailed into a rattle. The feral wasn’t dead. Raising his head, his eyes focused on Corbin. Just taking her first hunched-over steps onto the bridge, Micah froze at the groan. Then she waved to Corbin, who thrust his head and arm through the gap to climb inside. Elania and Zaley backed out of the way as Austin wrapped his arms around Corbin and yanked.