The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set

by Macaulay C. Hunter

  The last ferals were running away, some after Micah and others straight out to fall over the next drop. One was heaving himself back up the first drop, lured by the sound of the guns. Another took refuge behind a bush, looking even more afraid of Corbin than Corbin was of it.

  Corbin stepped over the dead feral missing its arm and rushed over to snatch Austin’s flashlight. Where the hell was Austin? He was just gone, standing there one second and then not. And Zaley was gone, too. Running the beam around the tents, Corbin was dismayed to find himself the only one there. More gunfire burst out and he ducked. Men were shouting, their voices coming from down on the road and over on the trail.

  “Zaley?” Corbin cried. If she had crawled into the tent to get away and then the ferals had landed on her . . . he threw himself to the ground and searched through the crushed fabric. All he came across was his backpack, which he yanked out and threw over his shoulders. Then he spun around and shined the light over the trees. “Zaley? Austin? Where are you?”

  If they had gone after Micah and the baby, Corbin should have seen them. But it had been too crazy. He picked out all of the sounds in the night, the shouting men, the distant screaming . . . for a moment, he thought it was Mars, but then a charge ran through him. That was Zaley’s voice coming from the east. He broke into a run, remembering only at the last second about the drop. Letting himself down carefully, he skimmed the light over his surroundings. Brush, only brush, flattened plants where bodies had fallen, a tennis shoe with its laces undone.

  “It’s going that way! Get it!” Guns fired furiously. That was down on the road and he didn’t think it was about him. No light was shining his way and the foliage was too dense for them to have a view of Corbin, especially at night.

  Zaley screamed again. Her flashlight hadn’t been around the campsite. She had to be running with it, and if she was screaming, something was running after her. Corbin pressed through brush and onto a rough trail that was hardly wide enough for one person to stand upon. He raced along it, wishing he could keep an arrow nocked and hold the flashlight at the same time. The trail was overgrown, and had plants pushing up out of the soil. He came across a second tennis shoe to match the first. It was trapped in a squat, thorny plant and the laces were tied.

  The screams led him on through the night, the gunfire fading away. Please keep screaming. If she was screaming, she was alive. Paired with her screams was an odd roaring sound, growing louder the farther he went, a sound not of ferals but something else.

  Footsteps. He whirled around and dropped the flashlight to nock an arrow. It flew away and buried itself in a feral’s windpipe. Jumping aside as the rotting creature fell, Corbin scooped up the flashlight. He hadn’t killed the feral, which was struggling to get up. Its breath came out choppy. But it had been slowed down, and he moved away from it fast. The trail began to curve around the mountain.

  Zaley went quiet and he refused, he refused to consider what that meant. She was his heart, the reason he’d keep going in this awful world that wanted nothing more than for him to check out of it. He wasn’t going to let the world take her away from him, too.

  The roaring was getting louder. It was from a waterfall out there in the darkness. A feral howled and Zaley screamed, “Oh God!” After that, her cry was wordless.

  She was close. Corbin charged off the path and climbed a slope in pursuit of those voices. They came to an abrupt stop. At the edge of another drop to rocky ground, he shined his flashlight down to a horrible sight.

  There were five figures below, four of them ferals. Water raged down the mountainside to fall into a pool in three different places, where it bubbled and frothed among rocks and spilled into a stream that rushed away. Droplets were spraying Corbin’s face and arms. Zaley had been knocked down at the edge of the pool. Backing up frantically from one of the ferals, she hit a wall of rock. There wasn’t anywhere else for her to go. Two more ferals were closing in slowly. The last one wasn’t focused on her. Just beneath Corbin, the guy’s gaze was fixated on a beam. It was coming from Zaley’s flashlight, which had been dropped in the rocks. The man swatted at the shaft, which was striking his face and agitating him.

  Corbin couldn’t get to Zaley without going through all of them. Setting down his own flashlight and sloughing the backpack, he nocked an arrow, took aim, and shot it at the nearest feral. The guy never knew what hit him. He landed face first in the rocks by Zaley’s flashlight, the arrow jutting out of the back of his skull.

  “Zaley!” Corbin shouted. Leaping down the embankment, he landed in a crouch and pushed himself up. Two came for him, returning enraged animal chatter to the noise he had made. The one closest to Zaley only looked over his shoulder briefly. She tried to escape, but he turned back and blocked her.

  Corbin shot arrow after arrow in rapid succession until the two coming over went down. When he reached for another arrow to kill the last feral, there weren’t any left in the quiver. Freeing one from a fallen body, he raced over the rocks in the dimness and leaped the stream. Zaley’s face was a rictus of terror as she fought the feral desperately, her arms locked and her hands at his throat as he battered and screeched at her. Her right arm was starting to bend in, unable to take the strain. There wasn’t time for Corbin to find his footing and take aim. Dashing over, he plunged the arrowhead into the feral’s upper back.

  The guy wasn’t fazed. He didn’t even take notice of it. Corbin roared and threw himself bodily at the feral, ripping him away from Zaley. They hit the rocky ground and rolled. Adrenaline was racing so strongly through Corbin that he didn’t feel the pain of the myriad pricks stabbing into his back. The feral screamed above him, saliva falling from his mouth onto Corbin’s face. A half-rotted thing at the end of life, he clobbered Corbin in the head.

  Corbin didn’t block the blow because it gave him the opportunity to yank the arrow loose. His knife was in the backpack. The bow had been knocked away. All he had was this arrow, which he pushed into the feral’s chest while aiming for his neck. Pulling it out, he lost his grip on the shaft.

  They traded blows and kicks, neither able to get away without the other one latching on. Then Zaley was there, shouting, “Get off him!” She slammed the bow down on the feral’s back. Corbin pulled out the arrow as the feral launched himself at Zaley, toppling her to the rocks and snapping at her legs. She kicked the guy in the face and scuttled backwards like a crab. Her right arm gave out and she crashed down on her back.

  The bow had fallen toward Corbin. He snatched it up, nocked the arrow, and drove it into the base of the feral’s skull.

  The feral still moved, his hands locked on Zaley’s legs as she thrashed to break free. God almighty, this animal wouldn’t die! Corbin beat him on the head and then jerked him off Zaley so the blood didn’t get on her. The feral’s face twisted in a grimace to be denied the object of his fixation, and Corbin slammed the bow down squarely on his nose and forehead. The feral turned over. Corbin bashed at the back of his head until he collapsed the guy’s skull.

  Then he jumped to remember the others, but they had remained where they’d fallen. Nothing else had come to the area in response to the noise. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest that it hurt.

  “Corbin?” Zaley’s voice was small and pained. She repeated his name with a hitching breath. “Cor-Corbin?”

  He clambered over a rock and knelt beside her. There wasn’t enough light to check her over properly. Although he wanted to embrace her, he restrained himself. There was wetness on his arms, his blood or the zombie’s, and either one was full of Sombra C. Spit was on his cheek, too. “Are you hurt?”

  “Yes, a little.” She was weeping.

  They needed light. He placed the bow beside her and said, “Don’t touch this. It’s got his blood on it.” Then he gathered up the backpack and the flashlights, leaving the arrows in the bodies to retrieve later. Those had to be washed off in the stream, as did his bow and his skin . . . Forcing himself to go to the stream instead of her, he splas
hed water over his hands, arms, and face. “I’m coming.” Guns were firing, but they sounded very far away.

  He shined the light over his clothing. It was a little dirty but not bloody. Zaley had had to touch that feral, so he searched through his backpack for the first aid he carried. There were alcohol wipes for her to use on her hands.

  Returning to her side, he moved the beam around her body. He expected gashes and blood everywhere, but she looked okay. When she reached for him, he said, “Wait.” The scent of alcohol stung in his nostrils as he wiped off her hands. Some of the feral’s skin had come away in her fingernails, but she didn’t have any open wounds to let the infection in.

  Then he wrapped her up in his arms and let her cry. When something hooted in the wilderness, she quieted abruptly. It didn’t come a second time, nor did any foliage rustle. Into his chest, she whispered, “They were everywhere. I just ran. I didn’t know what else to do. But the beam was leading them on after me . . . and I was too afraid to drop it. Even when I fell off that drop by our tents . . . I just kept holding onto it. I couldn’t make myself let go.”

  He ran the light over her again, more carefully than the first time. A smear of dirt was on her forehead. There were no visible injuries to her face or neck. She had gone to sleep wearing her jacket, which was dirty but not torn. The beam showed blood at her knees. “How badly are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.

  “I stayed upright over that first drop, but my left ankle turned when I landed. There was a woman . . . she was running alongside me. She was just trying to get away, too. She wasn’t totally feral yet. A real feral caught hold of her shoulder and she twisted off the trail. I thought I heard her cry out. Did you see her? She looked so panicked. She was Asian. She had on a sweater and her hair was tied back in a ponytail.”

  “I didn’t see her.”

  “I kept going until I ended up here with the rest of them after me.” She rotated her left ankle and winced. “I crashed down on those rocks when the one in the lead grabbed me. The rocks cut up my knees as I broke away. And then . . .”

  There was one thing he had to know above all. “Did they get any of their fluids on you?”

  “That one bit me when I was fighting with him.” Zaley motioned to the feral’s body closest to them. “On my leg.”

  Frightened, Corbin moved the light farther down her legs. “Where? Where exactly?” The only blood was at her knees from the rocks. Then he saw a rip in the fabric lower down on her right leg. It was such a small rip that he almost missed it. He hiked up her jeans and shined the light. A little blood was on the sock underneath. Rolling it down, he inspected the injury.

  It was a very small abrasion, two minor cuts made by teeth and nothing more. The jeans and the sock had blunted the feral’s bite, which still had to have been extremely vicious to puncture the fabric. But she had to get these clothes off! The saliva of the feral could be in her jeans and sock, working its way down to her open wound. His panic only heightening, he dropped the light, whipped off her sneaker and sock, and reached for the button of her jeans. “Get these off! I have to wash them!” She hissed from pain when he worked her left sneaker from her ankle.

  Once the jeans were off, he tossed them aside and cleaned the bite with another alcohol wipe. The teeth hadn’t gone deep. Shallow pools of blood sat in each of the two marks and didn’t spill over. He washed the blood away and stared at her leg suspiciously. The virus was so contagious and that feral had been crawling with infection.

  Shivering from being barefoot and in her underwear, Zaley said, “Where are Micah and Austin? And Mars?”

  “I don’t know. Mars was crying from the noise and the sound made some of the ferals nuts. Micah ran out of bullets and they started chasing her. I never saw what happened to Austin. He just vanished. Maybe he went after her and I didn’t see.” But he would have taken his flashlight. Austin wasn’t the calmest person to have around in a crisis, but he wouldn’t have dropped his light and rushed off into the darkness unless a feral had targeted him for that beam, and he had had to abandon it to hide. That seemed very likely.

  The open skin was no longer bleeding. It was just a little ragged, something that would be healed in no time. That didn’t mean she was safe. Corbin dumped out the contents of his backpack and yanked up the sealed plastic sandwich bag in which he kept his emergency Zyllevir. Opening it, he dug out a pill and pressed it into her palm. “Take it!”

  Zaley glanced at the tiny cuts on her leg. “I don’t think-”

  “Zaley, take it!” He was almost screaming. They couldn’t assume that she was healthy. If she didn’t get the fever, if she didn’t have any obvious signs to belie the infection in those first few days, by the time Sombra C began to affect her, there would be some measure of irreversible damage. When she opened her mouth, not to take the pill but speak, Corbin said, “Please, please do as I say and we’ll talk about it afterwards, as much as you want. I promise. Just trust me, if you love me at all. Take the pill.” The reason his infection was at such a miniscule level was due to receiving a dose of Zyllevir within hours of the attack at the holiday party. Sombra C had had little opportunity to settle into his system before the antiviral froze it.

  Zaley put the pill in her mouth and swallowed. Without water, she choked on it and swallowed hard again. Corbin uncapped a water bottle. He gave it over and at last the pill went where it had to go. She returned it and said, “I don’t want to waste your pills!”

  “It’s not a waste if you’re infected,” Corbin argued. There were still a few left in the sandwich bag. He was afraid to count how many. Oh God, if Zaley was like Elania . . . or if Zyllevir never worked even for a short while on her . . . those were things he didn’t control. But to not give her the drugs just because they wanted to believe she was healthy, that was a foolish risk to take.

  All of these fears he could worry over later. Right now, he and a half-dressed Zaley were out in the open, the contents of his backpack all over the rocky ground. He wanted to go back to their campsite for her belongings, but hunters and ferals were out there and she needed to be covered. Micah’s raids of Sausalito homes had supplied him with a pair of black sweatpants. “Put these on.”

  First they had to spend time mopping up her cut knees. The wounds were much deeper than the one on her lower leg, yet these had just come from rocks. Not teeth. Then she pulled on the sweatpants without getting up, which told him the amount of pain that she was in from her ankle. What she needed was an athletic wrap, but he didn’t have anything like that.

  Once she had a sock of his on to replace her contaminated one, she eased her sneaker over her left ankle while he dunked her jeans into the pool below the waterfall. The night was far from quiet, and he hoped that the noise stayed far off. As he wrung out her jeans, she packed up his backpack.

  His movements were jerky. Although he didn’t hear anyone approaching, he felt like their time here alone was running out. The damp clothes were draped over a rock and he swiftly moved to the problem of his arrows. Going from body to body, he rolled them over and pulled out the arrows, discarding ones that had broken and piling up the others by the pool. Most were all right, but they were covered in blood and tissue.

  One by one, he washed them and slipped them still wet into his quiver. His body was starting to hurt, especially from rolling on those sharp rocks. When they got somewhere safer, he’d have Zaley shine the light on his back and tell him what she saw. If she was careful and covered her hand, she could rub an alcohol wipe over his punctures and clean up the blood. The leftover antibiotics in case of infection were in someone else’s backpack.

  As he washed off the last arrow, Zaley said, “Should we look for the others?” Then she answered her own question. “We can’t. Not in the dark. And I can’t go far on my ankle. I don’t know where we should go to hide.”

  “Somewhere quiet. The water is going to attract thirsty ferals.” Corbin took the mostly empty water bottle and held it directly under one of the three falls
. They’d just have to risk whatever parasites could be swimming around inside it.

  They left the area, Zaley hobbling along beside him. Taking shelter on the ground wasn’t smart, and climbing up a tree was impractical with her ankle. The beams of their flashlights swept over the terrain. Corbin startled at a figure slumped over by a tree, but the man was dead.

  “There,” Zaley whispered. An old wooden staircase led up a giant boulder. Some of the steps had broken and the others looked frail. A trail led to the base of the staircase, but it had nearly been obliterated by time and no maintenance. A rusty chain was across the stairs at both the top and bottom to keep people from using them.

  “You want to go up there?” Corbin asked.

  “No. There.” She moved his light. Beneath the stairs was a crevice in the boulder.

  Corbin went first to make sure it wasn’t already occupied. Flattening himself between the rock and stairs, he moved in and bent down. No one, living or dead, was inside. He brushed down the cobwebs and beckoned to Zaley, who staggered to the staircase and wriggled past it. It was a small space, just enough to contain them and nothing more. The ground was a mat of dead leaves gone soft. The waterfall was still audible, as were gunshots.

  She checked over his back and disinfected the small injuries there. Corbin buried the used alcohol wipes under the leaves. His shirt was stained and torn, as was his sweatshirt. Until it dried, it was a hazard. They propped the backpack against the back of the crevice as a pillow and laid down facing one another so his bloody clothing would only touch the rock behind him.

  Sleep wasn’t going to come for a long time and it was so cold here, even for July. Corbin took out a pair of socks. They each got one for a glove and he pushed his bare hand under his clothing and into his armpit. That was warmer than his hand in the sock, so he pushed that one into his other armpit.

  “You saved me,” Zaley whispered. He was trembling deep in his body. It never reached the surface. “I thought I was going to die. And it was stupid what went through my head.”