Resurrection (Eden Book 3)

by Tony Monchinski

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Triumph had a song too. ‘You just wait for the wheel of fate to turn and the wind of the wolf is gonna blow it all down.’ The wolf blew down the little piggy’s houses. Why’d he do that?”

  “I don’t know, Gary.”

  “Were there three little piggy’s? I thought there were ten little piggy’s. They went wee-wee-wee-wee all the way home, but when they got home they didn’t have any homes. Did you know U2 had a song with the same title, too? Did you know that? U2. What was the lead singer’s name? Bono?” Gary laughed. “Bono sounds like Boner. Doesn’t it sound like Boner?”

  “It does,” Gwen granted.

  “I’m going to miss him.”

  Gwen looked at the man seated across the room. He looked down, rubbing the sides of his head furiously before lowering his hands to his lap where they wrestled with one another.

  She looked over to Mickey on the bed.

  “I’m going to miss him too.”

  * * *

  “Riley…” Anthony shook her. “Time to go. Come on, sis.”

  She sat up and got her bearings. It was barely dawn. The fire had burned down and Evan was stomping on it, damping out what flames were left, thick grey smoke curling up from it to the sky. Troi squatted off to the side looking around them, concerned.

  Riley’s clothes were wet and dirty and she was cold. She did not feel rested.

  “We ready?” Evan pulled his black skullie down over his head.

  They started off at a fast pace, Evan in the lead. He seemed more confident since traversing the swamp. They had come this far and survived. There was no sign of their pursuers. Each knew, and it went without saying, that that didn’t mean anything. They were out there somewhere now—the old man Thomas, little Red, and who knew however many else of them. And the four friends from New Harmony were aware that the hunters did not think they could be beat.

  They had been walking for an hour and a half through sparse trees, up a slope, when Evan stepped onto the branches concealing the pitfall and nearly plunged headlong to his death. At the last moment he stepped off the edge of the concealed hole, launching himself forward over the gap that opened up beneath him as the branches and bushes collapsed into it. He landed on the other side, flat on his stomach, his legs and hips hanging down into the dug out pit.

  There was a frenzy of activity from below as—eight feet down—a zombie, stirred from its torpor, reacted to the falling branches and sought the cause, reaching for Evan’s dangling feet. Evan felt it groping for him and kicked out violently, scrabbling with his hands to drag himself up and out of his precarious position, but his frenzied kicks only threatened to sink him farther.

  Before that could happen, Troi and Riley reached him, each grabbing a wrist and dragging their friend out of danger.

  “Man!” Evan gasped, genuinely unsettled.

  The four stood above the pit, looking down into it at the zombie staring back up at them. The thing had the remains of a noose around its neck and its head was canted at an odd angle, but it was still standing, still reaching for them, still growling as it showed its teeth.

  “I almost died there.” Evan sounded like he didn’t believe it. “I came that close. Sons of bitches.”

  “How crazy are these people that they set traps with Zed?” Troi asked. No one answered because they all knew. These people were very crazy—crazy enough to hunt human beings in the first place. And that was very crazy all by itself.

  “Should we cover it up?” Anthony referred to the pit.

  “No, they know its here,” replied Riley. “They’re the ones who dug it. I’m in the lead.”

  “Yeah…” Evan was looked down into the hole, and the lynched zombie looked back up at him. “You lead.”

  The slope they climbed ended at the top of a slight hill. Ahead of them, trees in all their magnificent autumnal colors spread for kilometers.

  “Is that a river off that way?” Troi pointed ahead in the direction they knew they had to go.

  “Hard to make out from here…” Anthony said

  “Yeah, well I’ll tell you what’s not.” Evan was turned, looking behind them at the way they had come, back towards the swamp which was barely visible from this distance. “See them?”

  Riley, Anthony, and Troi stared off in the direction he was looking.

  “I don’t see—” Troi began but then she saw them. “Oh damn. Oh damn. Oh damn.”

  From this distance their pursuers were miniscule, barely discernable as people. It appeared they had skirted the swamp, because they were coming from the east.

  “How’d they find us?” asked Anthony.

  “Maybe they haven’t yet.” Evan thought he was wrong. He thought he knew why he was wrong, and how they had been found.

  “No. They’re coming this way.” Riley didn’t sound scared. She sounded determined. “How many do you see?”

  “Ten, fifteen?” Anthony said.

  “No,” Evan corrected. “At least fifteen, maybe twenty.”

  “Twenty,” Troi sounded dejected. “Why’d they have to go and bring that many?”

  “They get off on this crap,” said Evan.

  “I can’t see that good from this distance,” admitted Riley. “Are those zombies they’ve got on chains?”

  “What?” There was new fear in Troi’s voice.

  “Shoot.” Anthony could just make them out. “Yeah, they are.”

  “They’re tracking us with Zeds…” Riley started to say, then noticed how Troi was looking at Evan and Evan’s leg. The leg where Red had cut him.

  “Well,” Evan concluded with some finality. He’d seen the others looking. “I guess now we know why she did that. And it wasn’t just because she’s a little sicko.”

  “What do we do?” Troi asked.

  “We get moving,” said Riley. “Five minutes ago.”

  “No. This is stupid.” Evan stood staring at their hunters. “No matter where we go, they’re going to find us as long as we’re together. Zed smells me.”

  “Ev?” Anthony wasn’t sure where his friend was going with this, but he didn’t like it at all.

  “We have to split up. I need to go off by myself, lead them away.”

  “You’re crazy,” Anthony protested. “We stick together. You almost fell in that hole back there.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. But it’s what we’ve got to do. Tell him I’m right, Rye.”

  Riley looked from Evan to her brother. “He’s right.”

  “Just like that?” Anthony sputtered, his face turning red. “Just like that? After all we’ve been through? We’re going to abandon Ev? Our Ev?”

  “You’re not abandoning me. Think of it as me throwing them off the trail. And I have no intention of letting them catch me, thank you.”

  “Ev, you keep north,” instructed Riley. “We’ll turn west here and turn back your way a few kilometers up. If we keep parallel to one another, we should all be able to meet up by that river, if that’s what that is, maybe even by tonight.”

  “I don’t want to be out here another night,” said Troi. “Especially not if they’ve got zombies hunting us.”

  “We won’t be if we get moving now,” contended Evan. “Anthony, don’t think of it as goodbye,” he held out his hand, “but just in case. It’s been real, man.”

  Anthony looked like he was going to cry. “That’s it then?” He looked from Troi to Riley to Evan. “That’s how it’s going to be?” He took Evan’s hand and pulled him close, wrapping an arm around his upper back in a bud hug. “I’m going with you. You’re not going alone.”

  “That’s right,” said Troi. “He’s not. But you’re going with Rye, Anthony. I’m going with Evan.”

  “What?” Riley looked at her friend.

  “You know you’re not going to let your brother go off with Ev without you…” insisted Troi “…and I’ll be damned if I’d let the three of you abandon me alone out here. We’ve all got a better chance of maki
ng it if we split into two groups of two. Two sets of eyes are better than one.” Forestalling any further discussion on the matter, Troi hugged Riley tight. “You know I’m right.” Riley hugged her back, pulling her close.

  “Yeah, you are.” Riley sniffled and wiped a lone tear from her eye. “Come on, Anthony.”

  “Hey, brother?”

  “Yeah, brother.”

  “Mind if I ask you a question?” David asked.

  “Not at all,” replied Keith.

  “You ever, when we were younger…you ever, you know, take matters into your own hand, thinking about any of our female relatives?”

  “What is it you’re asking me, David?”

  “You know.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “I mean, did you ever, you know, relieve yourself thinking of someone related to us?”

  “David, are you asking me if I ever jerked off thinking about one of our aunts or cousins?”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Well, that is a peculiar question.”

  “I know it is.”

  “But I’ll tell you, David. The answer to your question is yes.”

  Red often got a kick out of the brothers’ raillery. But not today. Not after listening to Cosmo and his folk rampaging and presumably destroying their camp. Their home.

  She concentrated on the path ahead of them. Rodriguez and MacKenzie led with the zombies, the undead smelling their way. The trail had split about an hour before, with two sets of boot prints heading west, the other two north. In each set was a pair of larger feet and a pair of smaller feet, so Red knew they had coupled off, one man and one woman. She figured the brother and sister were sticking together, so that meant the trail their zombies followed belonged to the other woman and the man Red had promised to kill.

  “You did? Damn, Keith. Which one?”

  “Aunt Emma.”

  “Aunt Emma.” David snickered to himself. “I remember she had a great ass.”

  “She sure did. Nice tits too.”

  “Did you ever feel…I don’t know, guilty afterwards?”

  “Oh, there was only the one time. And I can’t be sure it was her.”

  “What are you talking about, Keith?”

  “You remember that costume party—the masquerade when we were, what, seventeen, eighteen?”

  “Yeah. I dressed up as Deney Terrio.”

  “Right. Well, I…how should I put this? I had relations with a woman that night, and I’m thinking it must have been Aunt Emma.”

  “What do you mean you’re thinking it must have been Aunt Emma?”

  “Well, we were all in costume, right? So I don’t know for sure that it was her.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, you’re not going to make me go and reveal all the sordid details now, are ya?”

  “You’re damned right I am. I asked you if you ever jacked off thinking of someone related to us, and you admitted you fucked Aunt Emma. Do tell.”

  “I said it might have been Aunt Emma. Probably was,” Keith granted. “And I didn’t fuck her. She blew me.”

  “Keith, brother, you are fucked up.”

  “We were all drinking. It was dark. I didn’t know who it was. She had on that bustier and masquerade mask…”

  “You guys are sick,” MacKenzie yelled back to them.

  “No keep going,” encouraged Rodriguez. “I’m loving this.”

  “I was only, like, what?” Keith scratched his temple. “Seventeen, eighteen? What’d I know? I sure made that pussy hum though.”

  “Did you? How’d it sound?”

  “Like this: hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm—”

  “Would you two shut the hell up?” Red snapped.

  “Hey,” Keith sounded stung, “he asked me.”

  * * *

  “Even if we get away,” Troi said to Evan a few hours later, “…we don’t have our Geiger counters. We have no supplies. How will we know—”

  “Don’t worry about that now.” Evan sipped water from his hydration pack.

  The path they followed wound its way through a thicket of trees, bordered on one side by the exposed granite facing of a rock outcropping. There had been no traps, no zombies, no sign of whoever might be following them.

  Evan would never admit it to Troi, but he was scared. He was wounded, and though the wound caused him no real pain, he knew it would give them away wherever they went. Zombies could smell wounds. They could smell blood.

  Troi had been very brave tagging along with him. He could tell she was frightened, even more so than he. But her presence here on the winding path reassured him. They had both worked up a sweat and were warm, though the day was cool. Troi had removed her hoodie and Evan was struck again by the size of her breasts.

  “Do you really think we have a chance, Evan?”

  “Whu—? Yeah,” Evan shook his head. Thinking of Troi’s bust at a time like this. What the hell was wrong with him? “Thing is, we have to keep moving, no matter what. We can’t stop.”

  “We can’t stop.”

  “We stop, they catch up to us.”

  “We can’t stop.” Troi repeated it like a mantra.

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ve come this far,” Troi said sometime later. “And nothing bad has happened to us.”

  Evan agreed.

  “We’ve seen all sorts of…bad things,” Troi worked it out. “But you, me, Anthony and Rye, we’re all okay still, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I do feel bad about Krieger. I feel really bad about him.”

  “I know you do,” Evan paused to tie his bootlace. “I do too.” Troi slowed somewhat but pressed on ahead of him.

  “You were very brave back in that barn, Ev. When you were ready to trade punches with that thing after you’d stuck it in the back with the pitchfork.”

  “I didn’t have anything else to hit it with.”

  “Still, you were very brave.”

  “Look who’s talking. You know how brave you are coming with me?” Evan touched his leg. “This is leading them right to us.”

  “It’s not you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re not the only one bleeding.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s that time of the month.”

  “Oh.” He thought about it. “Oh. So maybe it is better that you and me stick together.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  The deadfall trap was triggered when Troi unthinkingly brushed a low lying branch out of her way. Evan heard the snap and rumble and lunged forward, pushing Troi out of the way. The boulder had looked relatively settled on the granite outcropping above their heads, but as soon as Troi kicked the insignificant-looking limb, the stone shifted, gravity did its thing, and tons of solid granite came rolling down on them.

  Troi was knocked down as the boulder tumbled away. She pushed up onto the palms of her hands and her knees and wiped the dirt from her nose and mouth. She stood and looked for Evan, fearing unreasonably that the boulder had somehow picked him up and carried him off along its path into the trees.

  It hadn’t.

  Evan lay, broken, on the path. The rock had crushed him as it came down. It had run him over, pressing him into the earth, but somehow he was still alive.

  “Ev!” Troi sat down beside him, afraid to touch him, thinking he was dead. When he sputtered, blood flecking the sides of his mouth, she knew he wasn’t.

  “Ev? Ev?”

  “Troi…” He looked up at her. “I can’t…feel nothing.”

  Evan’s body was bent at an awkward angle, his legs mashed into the dirt. His arms were bent in places and directions they shouldn’t have been. His head wasn’t moving. Only his eyes were. And his mouth, barely.

  “Ev, that should have been me—that should have—” Troi quieted to hear what he was saying. Evan’s voice was little more than a murmur.

  “…gotta go, Troi…”

  “I can’t leave you her
e. I can’t just leave you here.”

  “Finished…I’m…done.” Evan coughed feebly and more blood spotted his cheek in the direction his head was turned.

  Evan went silent, and Troi thought he had died.

  “Get out…Troi…go…”

  He had not died. Yet Troi knew he would soon. She had never seen a living person contorted the way Evan was.

  “Oh, Ev…” She reached down and touched his forehead, and as she did so he closed his eyes, a relieved look stealing over his face. Unsure whether he was dead or alive, Troi scampered away down the trail.

  * * *

  “Well shit,” said Keith. “Here’s one we won’t be killing anytime soon.”

  “Anytime at all is more like it.” David sounded disappointed.

  The brothers stood on the trail, above Evan’s smashed body. Red, MacKenzie, and Rodriguez came and stood with them. MacKenzie and Rodriguez pulled back on the chains securing the two zombies they handled.

  “Keep those things the fuck away from me,” David said. It didn’t matter to him that they were muzzled.

  “Boulder?” Red looked at the indentation in the path, an indentation that included Evan’s broken form.

  “Yeah.” Keith looked off into the trees, looking for the rock. “I can’t believe they fell for that one.”

  “Remember how long it took us to get that rock up in place?” David asked him.

  “Yeah, I certainly do.” Keith smiled because he could smile about it now. Back when they’d had to reset the trap—how long ago was that? A year or two?—it had been hard work that brought no smiles with it.

  Red was livid. She’d wanted to finish this one herself. It’d been personal. And here he was, dead before her. Squashed like a bug.

  “I like his hat.” Rodriguez sounded like he wanted it.

  “It is nice.” MacKenzie frowned, having to yank back on the chain he held securing the zombie.

  “Well,” said Red. “This was the wounded one. The other one went up the trail that way.”

  “You thinking it’s the girl with the big jugs?” The way Keith asked it, Red knew he wasn’t interested in the woman’s breasts in some salacious way. He was just cracking wise. But the way Rodriguez’ face lit up when Keith said it—it obviously meant something different to the other man.