Dead Soil (Book 2): Dead Road

by Apostol, Alex

  Olivia looked up from the glass of water in her hands to lock eyes with Lee. He swore he saw red flames burning within. Again, he hung his head, staring at his clasped hands. He couldn’t save anyone, even when he tried.

  Carolyn Bock made her way over to Luke, the only familiar face she could find not involved in what was happening. She stopped short when she saw the little girl in his arms, her small pale arms clinging to his neck as she sobbed from being woken up.

  “What’s going on?” she finally asked.

  Luke jumped slightly when he heard her voice. “What? Oh, Lee beat up Rowan pretty bad. They’re saying he might not make it. One of the guys in there with him now is a vet, so he knows injuries pretty well.”

  “Yeah, animal injuries. Rowan needs a doctor,” she said with a furrowed brow.

  “The closest thing we have to one is Lee, but since he’s the one who did it, I doubt anyone will let him near the boy again,” Luke shifted the child in his arms to his other hip, revealing her tear-streaked round cheeks and sleepy eyes.

  “Who’s this?” Carolyn asked. She ducked down and around to get a closer look at the beautiful girl’s face.

  “Oh, this is just one of the, she’s just—” Luke started to stumble.

  “I’ve seen her before,” Carolyn said, this time reaching out to brush the child’s thin honey hair from her brow to tuck behind one ear.

  The little girl allowed it, but still cringed away ever so slightly into Luke’s shoulder.

  Carolyn’s eye’s widened as her jaw fell open. “Luke!” she said, almost yelling his name.

  He looked to her with pleading eyes, begging her to stop there and say no more.

  “Luke!” she said again, this time closing the gap between them so she was standing face-to-face. Her eyes burned with an unbridled anger.

  “What?” Luke asked, feigning innocence as he shifted the girl in his arms again away from where Carolyn stood.

  Carolyn forced herself to soften her expression and smile. She leaned down again to get the little girl’s attention and hold her gaze. “What’s your name, sweetie?” she asked in a honey-dripped, sweet voice.

  The girl leaned back into Luke more and turned to look at him. Luke’s face fell, his eyes closing, as he let out a defeated sigh. Carolyn leaned in closer and smiled bigger before asking the girl her name again.

  The girl lowered her head, raised her eyes to Carolyn, and said, “Lilly.”

  Carolyn took a stumbling step back, not wanting to believe what she’d just heard come from that little girl’s rosy pink lips.

  “Carolyn, please, I can explain,” Luke started, but quickly closed his mouth when he saw the fury in Carolyn’s face.

  “Lilly?” she almost yelled. “Lilly Sherman? Christine and Zack said she was dead, that they found Ralph tearing apart his wife and there was no trace of Lilly anywhere. You took their kid?! How?”

  Luke said nothing. He let his gaze fall to the dirt floor as he brooded over a good explanation, but there was none. All he could do was shrug his shoulders and shift the little girl’s weight again. “Please, don’t tell anyone,” he pleaded one final time, but it was too late.

  Carolyn was gone.

  IX

  Christine Moore woke to a rustling sound outside the window she slept under. The house they’d taken shelter in was rundown with musty furniture and no food in the cabinets. Exhausted from the close encounter earlier, she had curled up on the couch, a cloud of dust puffing up into the air when she flopped down. It was now the middle of the night. The house was pitch black except for the sliver of moonlight that shone through the break in the curtains.

  With a quick rub of her eyes, Christine rolled over and looked at Zack, who was sprawled out on the floor. His sword lay ready by his head. When he breathed in, she heard the faint rumbling of snoring. It brought a smile to her lips before she remembered an unusual sound had been what woke her up. She sat up on the couch and turned to look out the window, the curtains parted just wide enough for one eye to peer through.

  She jumped with a gasp when she saw a large eye looking back at her.

  “Zack!” she yelled in a strained whisper.

  He rolled over, stirred, and then jumped up to his feet within seconds, his longsword gripped tightly in his hands, ready to unsheathe it should the situation call for it.

  “There’s something outside,” Christine said, standing up and clambering over to her friend, almost tripping over her backpack that lay on the floor. She bent down and picked up an arrow, for good measure.

  “What’d you see?”

  “It was…” Christine hesitated while she processed what she saw. “It was an eye.”

  “What? Like just an eye? Floating there?”

  Christine sucked her teeth before giving Zack a smack on his arm. “Not a floating eye. An eye attached to someone’s face, you dummy.”

  “Okay, okay,” Zack said with a small laugh. “I’m still waking up here. Was it alive?”

  Christine turned to look out the window again, but there was nothing there. “I don’t know.”

  Suddenly, there was an uproar from Blue, whom they had stuck in the fenced-in backyard. The fence was high enough Christine was sure nothing would be able to see the poor animal resting there, but it sounded like something had found him after all. Blue snorted and squealed in fear as he ran for his life in circles around the large yard.

  Christine and Zack rushed to the sliding patio door and threw it open.

  “Whoa, boy,” Christine said as she tried to approach the frantic animal.

  He galloped past Christine, his dark eyes wide with fear. His normally perky ears were pinned back against his head as he charged forward without a thought for where he was going. But what was he running from? Christine stepped back next to Zack and scanned the yard for any movement. It was hard to see anything with the thick-bellied horse kicking up dust and snorting so loudly they couldn’t hear anything else.

  “Blue!” Christine hissed. “Calm down, boy!”

  The horse looked at her, but continued right past in his never-ending circle.

  Christine reached in her pocket and pulled out a granola bar, crinkling the wrapper loudly as she opened it. “Look, Blue. A treat.”

  The stocky gelding stopped in his tracks and sniffed at the air toward Christine. His ears perked back up as his nostrils flared widely. With nothing more than two seconds of thought, Blue walked over to Christine and grabbed the snack from her hand with his teeth.

  Christine rubbed him on the white patch on his face and pat his neck. “Good boy.”

  Now the yard was silent and still. The two friends glared outward, their eyes adjusting to the darkness of the night.

  “I don’t see anything,” Zack said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe this horse is just crazy.”

  “He is, but that’s not why he was scared.” Christine squinted her eyes and strained her ears.

  Just when she was about to give up and turn around to go back inside she heard it; a footstep outside the fence. She ran to the gate, unlatched it, and threw it open, a single arrow clutched in her hand and ready to strike.

  “It’s me!” a woman yelled.

  Christine stopped herself, the tip of her arrow just inches from her sister’s eye, the same eye that had peered through the front window.

  “Gretchen!” she barked in anger and relief. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay at the bunker. It’s too dangerous.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” the young blonde said as she lowered the arms she’d thrown up to protect her face. “I want to help you. I could be useful.”

  The old Christine would have narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, and refused to listen to a single word Gretchen had to say, not because she couldn’t be useful in their quest or that she was incompetent, but purely because of the hurt she’d caused her when they were younger. But things were different now. Christine had forgive
n Gretchen and learned to let go of the bitterness and resentment she felt toward her. That’s why instead of treating her with contempt and sending her away, Christine just smiled, wrapped her arm around Gretchen’s shoulder, and turned to lead her inside the house.

  “You nearly gave Blue a heart attack,” Christine laughed as she looked over her shoulder at the round scruffy horse sniffing the ground for luscious grass to eat.

  Christine didn’t even notice Zack had left the two of them alone and went back inside. As she approached the door she saw his feet sprawled on the floor already as he lay down to sleep.

  “I’m sorry, Chris. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay,” Christine said, stopping to look at her sister. “I appreciate you wanting to help. It was a brave thing to do, catching up to us all by yourself.”

  Gretchen smiled and looked at the ground, a little uncomfortable at the compliment, at being called brave. She never once thought of herself that way, but it was nice to hear all the same. Her cheeks turned a bright pink as the two sisters smiled at each other, caught between the cold outside and the warm, stale inside.

  “Look out!” Christine tried to grab Gretchen’s shoulder to pull her out of the way, but it was too late.

  A searing pain erupted from Gretchen’s shoulder and shot through her neck, her arm, and then her entire body. She felt like her very veins were on fire, like lava flowed through them.

  “No!” Christine shouted as she charged forward with her arrow.

  Gretchen crumpled to the ground in a twitching heap. The fire inside her subsided as a hollow numbness took over. The spasms in her muscles faded away to leave her motionless on the moist midnight grass.

  Christine plunged the tip of her arrow through the eye of a stinking, rotting corpse that was once a young woman in her twenties. The arrow went straight through the pupil and out the back of its head. Its dark mouth hung open, slathered and dripping in fresh blood; Gretchen’s blood. Christine pulled the arrow back and the zombie fell to the ground with a thud.

  Zack showed up in the doorway, his own mouth hanging open in shock.

  “We have to help her!” Christine said as she rushed to her sister’s side and knelt over her body. “Do something! What do I do?”

  “Chris, I don’t think there’s anything we can do. She’s been bit.” His voice was hallow as his eyes clouded over.

  “No!” Christine shouted through the tears. “There has to be something. We can’t just let her die or turn into one of those things! There has to be something we can do!”

  Zack stood over Christine, unsure if he should rest a hand on her shoulder for comfort or not. He wanted to scream and curse, kick anything he could, cut the head off a thousand zombies, as his eyes welled up with hot tears. He shouldn’t have gone back inside, assuming they were safe. Nowhere was safe anymore. He knew that. Why had he left them alone?

  Christine sobbed as she threw herself onto her sister’s chest, fresh warm blood soaking through the flannel shirt that covered her wounds.

  Blue moseyed over from the farthest corner of the yard where he’d run for shelter and stood as close to Christine as he could get. He lowered his head slowly to hers and sniffed at her hair, sending gusts of warm breath over her. But Christine took no notice. How could she as her sister lay dying?

  X

  Gretchen writhed on the damp ground, moaning with each twist of her bloodied body. Her skin felt hot to the touch, as if a raging fire scorched just beneath. No amount of sweat seemed to cool her as it poured down her face and neck. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, praying she would die right then. Anything would be better than becoming one of the walking dead, doomed to devour the living. But death wouldn’t submit to her will. She persisted in pain as her sister watched over her, hunched and concerned.

  “We have to do something,” Christine Moore whispered to Zack for the hundredth time. She swiped a tear from her eye and flicked it at the ground.

  “What can we do? There’s nothing that’s going to save her. Come midday, she’ll be one of them if we don’t put her out of her misery.” He wished it wasn’t true. Sure, when he first met Gretchen he didn’t like her. She was guilty by association, a friend of the man who killed Anita. But he’d warmed up to her and her ways; how she tried to be on everyone’s side and make peace where she could, how she cared for everyone in their group without discrimination, even Zack after he’d been cold to Dan with no regard, how she would bring him a cup of coffee with a bit of whiskey in it to calm his nerves back at the apartments, the way she smiled with all her teeth, reaching all the way up to her brilliant blue eyes. And that kiss. It made him feel like he was finally coming back to life again. He didn’t want to say goodbye to this wonderful woman who had entered his life when he least expected it, but what else could he do?

  But Zack’s truth about Gretchen’s state felt like a knife to Christine’s heart. She wanted to cry out, but knew it would accomplish nothing. Gretchen didn’t need her sadness or her sympathy right now, she needed her little sister to do something to save her from a fate worse than death.

  The sun had broken the surface of the horizon moments ago, splashing the sky with streaks of gold and and pink. Dew settled on the long blades of grass. The morning air still had the cool bite of early Spring, giving Christine goosebumps on her arms and neck. Or maybe it was the sight of her sister’s transformation. It looked more painful than anything Christine had ever endured, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Gretchen’s skin had lost all its color, settling on a ghostly white, exposing all the dark purple veins under her almost translucent skin. She shivered and shuddered from the fever threatening to overtake her completely; body and senses.

  How much longer until her brain boils from her temperature? Christine wondered as she stared. Was that what made the zombies into what they were? If it were that simple, wouldn’t there be a simple cure? Or was the damage permanent?

  As if Zack could read her mind, he said, “If there was a simple cure they would have found it by now. This is anything but simple, Chris, and there is no stopping it.” He placed a hand gently on her shoulder and took a deep, ragged breath that told Christine he was struggling to fight back a pain she wasn’t aware he felt. “We need to do the right thing here,” he said finally.

  She turned to look up at him, her eyes wide in disbelief at what he was suggesting. His own eyes refused to meet hers, turned down to stare at his heavy boots.

  Christine spoke just above a whisper so there was no chance her suffering sister would overhear them. “You want me to kill her? Are you serious? No, I can’t do that!”

  Zack’s gaze finally met hers. “It’s for mercy, Chris. Mercy is what you gave Liam. You spared him from becoming one of them and you can do that again for her.”

  “But we hold a journal that might have the answer to stopping this and we are this close to delivering it into the right hands. I wish I never killed Liam. If it wasn’t for me, he might have been restored back to himself. I could have saved him, but instead I ended his life.” Tears welled up in her eyes. She refused to blink in fear they would come streaming down her cheeks again and she’d be unable to stop them.

  Zack took a deep breath and held it while he thought what to say next. “You didn’t kill Liam, Chris, and you know it. The zombie that bit him killed him. There was nothing you could do to save him because he was already dead, and Gretchen will be too in just a few short hours. What are you wanting to do? Tie her up and bring her with us to the research facility? What do you think they’re going to be able to do for her?”

  Christine’s entire body stiffen as her lips pursed. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do!”

  “What? No. You can’t just—”

  “Watch me!”

  Christine took off into the house without another word. Zack heard her throw open cabinets and knock stuff around as she searched for something. He heard her make her way to the
garage where she did the same, on a mission to find whatever it was she was looking for all of a sudden.

  “Aha!” she said in triumph. She appeared in the open doorway of the sliding back door with two brightly colored jump ropes in her hands. “That’ll do. Now help me tie her up, please.”

  Zack wanted to shake his head and protest the idea as loudly as he could. It was dumb. It was reckless. It could get them killed and anyone else they happened to meet on the road. It could be the end of them. But when he looked into Christine’s big blue eyes he saw nothing but love and hope. He never realized before, but they looked like Gretchen’s eyes, so big and beautiful and innocent, maybe a little naïve.

  “Okay, fine,” he said, taking a rope from Christine’s hands. “I hope you know what you’re doing, though.”

  “Me too,” she said as a smile spread across her tear soaked face.

  XI

  Zack and Christine worked together to lift Gretchen’s body up and over the back of the horse like a sack of grain, face down. By the time the two had secured her, gathered their belongings, readied Blue after allowing him to rest for the journey, Gretchen was farther along in her dissention. She no longer spoke words, but only let out groans of pain and anguish. Her eyes had started to glaze over, turning her once brilliant blue irises a milky pale gray. Every few seconds her rigid body convulsed and twitched, her muscles tightening beyond anything Christine or Zack had seen in a living human being.

  Christine Moore balanced her sister on the back of the horse, not wanting to take her hand away in fear she’d fall. She fought harder than she ever had before at keeping her tears at bay. The lump in her throat threatened to suffocate her if it grew any larger. How could she have let this happen?