They had made her hurt the baby. They had made her hands dirty. So they were going to beg her for mercy when her blade picked their skin from their muscles, their muscles from their bones. They’d scream to save their eyes. Stop! They were sorry! Oh God! Oh God, they were sorry! Please, please, they’d do anything to make her stop!
Anything?
Anything! We swear. Anything at all!
They could dig up the earth from that tiny grave by the water and pull her living son into the light, press him into her arms and brush the crumbs of dirt from his blond hair. This was what they could do for Micah. What they had taken away from her, they would return. And if they could not do this, then it wasn’t true that they would do anything for their lives. This was all she asked of them, one very little thing, and they weren’t willing to grant it.
So they would lose their eyes, to roll on the ground among their fingers and toes. She would take their ears and balls, their nipples and tongues. String them up and make waterfalls of their blood run down to pool at their mutilated feet. She’d split the skin of their right arms and peer inside to see what muscles should be like when bullets hadn’t gone through them.
She could do whatever she wanted. There were no rules now.
Had she lost the way to their camp? She turned around and recognized a fallen, gnarled tree. It was the right way. She kept going. So afraid, these men were so afraid of Sombra C that they would shoot a baby who hadn’t even been infected! Micah was going to use pointed sticks to prop open their mouths and piss down their throats. Lick their open wounds and cut open her flesh to trade their blood for hers. Open up their skulls and shine the light upon the rotten places within. She would count how many times a man could scream before he lost his voice, and estimate how much blood a man could lose before he died.
The world kept making Micah into a monster, so she would embrace it.
Closing in on the campsite, she quieted her steps. The others would give her the same recompense as these two. As they chased ferals around the mountain, Micah would chase them. These were her hunting grounds. She’d kill them one by one until someone among them gave back her baby boy, who shattered the sky with his scream so his mama would come to him. Until they returned Austin and rounded up Zaley and Corbin from wherever it was they had gone. Then she would take her family and continue on to Arquin. No one would chase after them once they saw how much blood Micah was leaving in her tracks.
Twenty feet from the tents, she took out her knife and doused the flashlight. What light was coming from the moon would do. There was no need to brace herself or psych herself up. She existed only for this purpose, and all of the world had fallen away.
Scream for me, Mars. Please scream.
Scream and they lived; scream and Micah was clean again. Her toes flexed in her shoes as she envisioned her frantic dash to the grave. Her fingers dug into the earth and destroyed the unnecessary epitaph. He would be back in her arms, warm and dirty and hungry and wriggling, and they would move on to the coast to travel north there together.
He didn’t scream.
That was the only sound that would make her stop. Mars didn’t scream, so these men were going to scream. And when they did, she would pinch their mouths and noses closed. She should have heard her mothers’ horrified honey in her head. But there was nothing. This was an empty space where no one was real but Micah.
She was free. Her only limit was her imagination, and she was going to make these two sorrier than they had ever been in all of their despicable, worthless lives. They were snoring almost in tandem from their hard day of work. A harder night was about to start for them.
Not for her. She was cold.
This was for Micah and Austin, for Zaley and Corbin, for the ferals on the mountain, and for Mars most of all. She stormed from the woods with all of its shadows following in her wake.
Austin
Austin woke up at sunset, his body still caught in the brush and a black chicken staring at him. It was quiet from the road. His left side was on fire under his rib cage, and it only grew hotter when he fought out of the brush to sit up. There was a bloody hole in him, piercing through his jacket and his sweatshirt, his T-shirt and his skin. He couldn’t see the layers underneath, but there was another hole in almost the exact same place on his back that had pierced through his clothing in reverse.
If it had hit anything that major inside him, he wouldn’t have woken up at all. Another inch and the bullet would have missed him altogether. His body was still hurting from the fall over the slope, and then the second fall down the next slope. A feral had gone over with him. When Austin had landed and heard the voices in the road only six feet away, he’d stayed very still. They could hear anything he did. So he breathed and bled as they shouted at one another (Do you hear something? Did you get him? Tell Sandeep to take his people on that trail! Hey! I said, get Sandeep and his squad! Did you hear that? Over here! I think one is . . . Oh God, there’s one coming through right here!) That had been the feral that fell over the slopes with Austin. The woman burst out of the bushes and a bullet burst out of a gun. Thud.
That had been lucky. The sounds of them crashing down the slopes had been attributed solely to her. No one fought through the trees and brush to find Austin there. The voices went on all night and through the morning. He’d gone in and out of consciousness. Every time he woke up, his throat hurt worse from thirst. Now it was scorching. Pressing his hand to his side, he listened to the sounds of the wilderness.
The chicken had backed away when he sat up, and now it was heading for the road. He peeked through the leaves to watch. It dashed across the empty lanes to join more chickens pecking around on the opposite curb. There were six of them altogether, and all different colors. After a few pecks at bugs and each other, they pressed into the brush and vanished as a group.
The backpack. He had fallen off the slope still holding onto it. It wasn’t in the brush where he had landed, nor had it landed closer to the road. Thinking it could be on that thin plateau between the two slopes, he struggled up to search. There it was. Everything had spilled out of it and the zipper on the pouch had broken. He gathered the items, desperate to come across a bottle of water. But he had taken those out in the tent while trying to find something for the baby. The slope that led up to the tent was far too steep for him to climb. The kid’s rifle wasn’t anywhere to be found.
He didn’t hear anything from above, nor did he dare to call. The ferals had gushed over the ledge like a dam had broken and released them. If his friends had grabbed up their stuff to move on, they wouldn’t have seen Austin had they looked over the edge. He’d rolled too far. If the ferals hadn’t killed them.
When the backpack was restocked with his clothes and crackers, the Pocket Animal and a random collection of items like the stag carving and Elania’s college acceptance letter that was tied to it, Austin didn’t know what to do. Water. That was the only thing his body would allow him to think about. He slid down the slope, hearing the chickens cluck at each other from farther away.
The only person on the road was beside it, and that was the dead woman from the night before. A line of ants was walking into her open mouth. Austin hobbled across the road to see where those chickens were going. They had to drink. They might lead him to water.
The scrub was tall, but he was also tall. He walked bent over almost in two, concerned that there were hunters around here. Sometimes he thought he heard voices, but he never could be sure. One of the chickens was being noisy and telling him where to follow. Even though his stomach was empty, he couldn’t think about food. Water. It was such a strong craving that it wiped out everything else.
The chickens were headed to a fence. It was only four feet tall, and on the ledge were spikes. One at a time, the chickens flapped up to the wooden ledge among the spikes, and then flapped down on the other side to campgrounds. Dozens of chickens were already in there. The escaped ones that had returned were meandering over to a huge coop, one jumpi
ng on the ledge to go inside and then standing on it and blocking the others. Another chicken made a pissy sound about it. There was a water dish beside the coop. A thin scab of water was at the base; the dispensing container above it had gone dry.
Tents and coolers were everywhere, and so were people. They had transformed the eastern shore of the lake, a picnic area, and a parking lot into their home. A fence outlined much of it, extending from the parking lot to the lake and partially around it. Most of the people were men, but a few women were pushing through the tents and others were sitting at tables. A child was laughing.
They had food. He could smell it. Cook fires blazed down by the water.
Austin ducked behind scrub at a scratching sound. A man was walking along the fence. He looked out to the shrubs and kicked at a chicken that didn’t move out of his way. It squawked in protest. Austin didn’t rise until the man was long gone down the fence line. In some places it was taller, made of wood planks standing straight up in the air. It had been built with whatever materials these people could get their hands on.
Someone was shouting not to burn the fish. Austin’s throat stung. He didn’t want fish. He just wanted the water it had come from. He wasn’t going to get water here, but he wasn’t strong enough to walk away from it. His eyes were riveted to the coolers beside the tents.
It was growing darker. The man came by the fence again. The chickens were all in the coop at last. Stopping to close the door, he leaned the ramp against the fence. Then he reconsidered, and leaned it against the side of the coop. He checked back at the fires wistfully, glanced around at the fence, and headed to the glows. No one was going in and out of the tents now. Everyone was down at the lake and the fires.
Austin’s body wasn’t going to allow him to wait one minute longer. Coming out of the scrub, he braced his hands on the base of the spikes and lifted himself up. The tip of a spike tore at his jeans when he pulled his leg over. He freed it and hung there, a spike perilously close to his crotch, and forced his other leg over. His side hurt like hell.
Of the closest tents, two had coolers by the flaps. He slunk over to the first one and opened it to a stockpile of ammunition in freezer bags. Letting the lid fall shut in disappointment, he scuttled over to the other one. That also had ammunition, tons of boxes and all of them with dates written in black ink. On the underside of the cooler lid was a taped up piece of paper admonishing to use the old ammo first. Austin felt frantic. He peeked into the flap of the tent and almost jumped at the mug by the sleeping bag.
It was day-old coffee, rank and unpleasant. He drank it and sneaked over to another tent to peek in. That one didn’t have anything but a man fast asleep on an air mattress. Startled, Austin moved on to the next one. Inside was a water bottle that still had a few sips at the bottom. He drained them and took the bottle.
Another cooler had soda. One of the cans of Pizoom he drank on the spot and the other three went into his backpack. The sugar hit him and he started to feel a little better. His side still hurt terribly though, and scuffling along low to the ground was making it mad. Even with the soda, his body craved pure water.
Only daring to check out the tents at the periphery of the camp, he worked his way across to the parking lot. Tents were set up there too, even though a sleeping bag on concrete had to be uncomfortable on the back at night. He opened up a tent flap and stared right into the face of a little girl. Her brown hair was in ponytails on either side of her head. About three years old, she was dressed in pink princess pajamas and was sitting on top of a mussed sleeping bag. A dim camping lantern was beside her. Gasping guiltily, she shoved a coloring book and markers off her lap and said, “I’m going to sleep, Da . . .” Then her eyes widened upon Austin.
He put on a comical face, backed away a few inches, and whispered, “Whoops! I’m sorry. I got mixed up. This isn’t my tent!”
She matched his whisper. “No, this is mine and my daddy’s!”
Worried that she would scream, he asked, “What are you coloring?”
She lifted up the coloring book to show him a picture of a wildcat that she’d been clumsily filling in. “Amminals.” Behind her was a cardboard container packed with water bottles. If the kid hadn’t been here, he could have taken all he wanted.
A little finger lifted and pointed to his neck. “What’s that? You got a zombie stamp?”
His cosmetics! He had put those into his backpack and not thought to put them on. Clapping his hand to his neck, Austin thought quickly and said, “Did Bobby do that again? That was mean!”
“What did he do?” the girl asked in concern.
“When I go to sleep, he draws a big red circle on my neck with his markers. He did it again, didn’t he? I told him to stop that.” Austin shook his head. He was thankful the kid was so young.
The girl was laughing. “Bad Bobby! You’re not a zombie!”
“Could I have some of that water to wash it off? I don’t like having ink on my neck,” Austin said. The girl kicked aside the sleeping bag covering her feet and crawled over to the water bottles. Pulling one free of the plastic, she crawled to the flaps and handed it to him. Austin accepted it and said, “Thank you! I’m going to take a bath with this.”
She giggled. “You should go to the showers. But the water is all cold. I don’t like it.”
“That’s why you should wear a jacket when you shower like I do,” Austin said. She laughed loudly and he added, “Quick! Go to bed and I won’t tell your daddy that you were coloring. You don’t tell him that I got mixed up in the tents. We both have a secret.”
“Okay.” She flicked off the camping lantern as he lowered the flaps. Uncapping the water, he drank deeply and then put the bottle in his backpack. Sense was returning to him. He had to get out of the camp. There were a hundred dark shapes gathered around those fires, a few more sleeping in the tents, and these people had so much ammunition that they just left it sitting about in coolers. The only one of them he’d ever fool with his ink and naughty Bobby story was that three-year-old girl.
Someone was walking to the chicken coop where the fence was easiest to climb. Austin slipped deeper into the parking lot and hid among the cars. A lot of them had been set up as homes, the back seats turned down to make a bed with the trunk, sheets and clothes strung up in windows for curtains. They all appeared to be unoccupied at the moment.
Lanterns were strewn among the vehicles in the lot to make it easier for people to see. Not as many were by the fence, so he edged over there and prayed it lowered soon to another barrier only four feet high with spikes on top. He’d scoot over it there and get away. A cooler was sitting by a motorcycle and he opened it. All it held was ammo.
From the mountain came the cries of ferals and gunshots. Jesus, don’t let those guns be aimed at my people. A commotion broke out at the fires and people hurried to the southern fence line. Austin pressed north through the cars and ducked as a man charged through the lot, shouting, “You got it? You need me?”
Guns fired in rapid bursts. Austin peered under the car he was hiding behind. Beyond it were bicycle tires. The noise faded and he got up. There were a dozen bicycles, two of them for little kids and a yellow-topped plastic car for a toddler. Mars would like that in a year or so. The fence rose up not far away. It was still high. He couldn’t get over that.
He turned. The parking lot led to a driveway, which ran up to a gate. A big lock was slung through the handles. Attached to the fence was a lit glass box with a key in it. They were worried about ferals getting in, not anyone trying to get out. A bicycle would help him get away faster. Lined up in a long metal bike rack, only half were locked to it. He pulled out a black bicycle with blue stripes on the aluminum bars and down on the tires. That was the darkest one of the bunch and the tires were fully inflated. With a nervous glance to the sea of tents and the fires, he rolled the bicycle to the gate.
His side throbbed. This was what Zaley had felt in her arm at the party, a deep burn and sharp stabs at movement. Now
that he’d had water, his body wanted him to know that he was hungry, too. He couldn’t do anything about that here. His fingers pulled at the cover of the glass box. It was locked. A sign beside it said to contact The Honchos.
No, Austin wasn’t going to do that. Bracing himself for the box to be attached to an alarm, he picked up a rock and hit the glass. It broke and he whipped out the key. No alarm sounded. When the key slipped into the lock, he didn’t expect it to work. But it did. He pulled out the lock and put it down silently on the ground. Then he pushed at one side of the gate. It groaned when it opened.
He rolled the bicycle out onto a dark road. A dim light came around the corner of the fence and shocked him. From only inches away, a woman snapped, “What are you doing?”
Her hand went to her holster. Austin dropped the bicycle and attacked her. Knocking her to the ground, he grabbed her head in his hands and bashed it into the pavement. Her body went limp beneath him and he got off in revulsion. He should take her light. Prying off her headlamp and pulling out some of the hair tangled in the strap, he put it on his head. It was surprisingly heavy for such a little thing.
He got onto the bicycle, his wounded side crying out the first time he used his left leg to push down on the pedal. The pain was so intense that he kept that leg high and pedaled only with his right.
He should have taken her handgun. He had just been so eager to put distance between him and those loons that he hadn’t thought about it. And one handgun wasn’t going to do shit if the hundred people in that campsite spotted him returning. They could blast him to tiny bits of meat scattered on the dirt with all that ammunition in the coolers. Blast him to atoms.
His friends had to have assumed that he had died. So they would have kept going to Arquin, leaving Austin a whole day behind. They were going to be so surprised when he rode up behind them, whatever path they were on, back from the dead and they’d be distressed about how they had thought he was gone when he was fine. More or less fine. Mars would yell to be held and Austin would carry him a little of the way. He hurt too much for more than that.
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 144