He turns his head so he can see me more clearly. “Yeah, I just bet you can.”
He’s looking at me so intently I think my heart might have just skipped a beat. Oh god, I’m becoming that girl.
“All right, I’m figuring you can’t ride, so I’m going to play bait while you take the rear. Climb off.”
I do as he says and hand him back his helmet, but he shakes his head and laughs before reaching down to the side of his bike where a shotgun is strapped. I hadn’t even noticed it there, it was so well camouflaged. Color me impressed. He pulls a small handgun from his hip and hands it to me.
“Take this so you’re plenty loaded up. I’m going to lead them away with the noise. Get out of sight and don’t move until you see them following me. If they see you, they’ll turn back. Any that don’t follow me, you take out. You good with that?” He checks the barrel of the shotgun, making sure it’s loaded, and waits for me to answer.
“Where will you lead them?” I ask. “Won’t they just turn back around at some point?”
“Nah, there’s an old ravine we’ve been leadin’ ’em too. We take ’em there and let them drop in. It’s all good.”
“Okay, that works.” I look down at my feet, debating asking the one question I need to ask but don’t want to. I pluck up my courage and just go for it. “How will I find you again?”
Shooter looks up at me, his hair falling around his face. He looks so serious, his expression hard and genuine. “Just keep going straight, you’ll come to me. And if you don’t, then I’ll find you,” he replies.
I nod. I feel like I should do more. Like maybe kiss him. A hug perhaps/ Hell, even a friendly high five would be something. And the way he’s still staring at me, I know he’s waiting and wanting me to do something like that. But I don’t do anything. I can’t, for some reason. Instead I nod and take a step back from his bike—from him.
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve done to Gunner now?” I ask.
He sucks in his lower lip. “No time for small talk.”
His expression changes slightly as he turns away from me and looks toward the horde. In the time it’s taken for us to come up with the plan of lead and go fetch, even more have attached themselves to the group of dead, meaning there’s around twenty or thirty now. They’re a rag-tag bunch of zombies if ever I saw one. Everything from old ladies to young kids to an emaciated-looking…clown? Jesus fucking Christ alive! A clown? Really? It’s every person’s worst nightmare made reality, and it’s heading in my direction.
Shooter revs his engine loudly and draws my attention back to him. “Gotta go, woman. Keep that sweet ass of yours safe.” And then he heads off toward the horde.
I watch him for a couple of seconds weaving in between them and shooting at any that are too close with another gun he has. I’m nervous, but watching him, I know he’ll be okay; it’s me that I need to worry about. I’m not normally a hiding-from-danger sort of woman—I’m more of an accidental dive-headfirst-into-danger type—but since I’m supposed to chop up any that don’t take Shooter as bait, I don’t feel that I’m hiding so much as lying in wait. Yeah, that sounds much more badass.
I find a safe hiding spot somewhere discreet and clever, and I duck behind it. It’s a seriously cunning hiding place that I can easily get out from when I need to. I mean, my genius is sometimes astounding… My hiding place is a giant rock. I know, right? I’m way clever.
I duck behind my super, awesome rock, peering around every now and then to see how many deaders are following after Shooter. He shoots his gun up into the air and revs his bike to get their attention when any start to sway away from him. A couple lose interest when he gets too far away, and turn back the way they were coming—toward me—but thankfully most follow after Shooter like he’s a prime rib at a barbecue.
When he gets far enough away that I can only just about see him, and the sound of his bike is barely audible, I step out from behind my awesome hiding place and assess how many are still en route to Camp Hell’s Highwaymen.
Luckily there’s only three or four; any others that are coming out from the tree line are following after the main horde like sheep following their shepherd. The bikers at the camp can probably handle these three and I consider just leaving them to do just that, but decide after a moment’s consideration that I can’t. Shooter trusted me to take care of them. Besides, I know how quickly three or four deaders can turn into ten and fifteen.
The deaders are spread out pretty thinly, so that’s a win. The main problem is that one of the deaders is the disgusting clown one, and as he’s getting closer I’m becoming more aware that he’s even grosser than first expected.
He’s a little overweight for a deader; normally the fat ones have erupted by now, their stomachs becoming so filled with gasses because they’re literally rotting from the inside out that the skin can only take so much and they split wide open and pop! It’s gross. I’ve luckily never been there when it’s happened, but I’ve seen the aftereffects and it’s not pretty in the least. Today, however, I feel is not going to be my lucky day.
His stomach is swishing and swaying like he’s a kangaroo carrying a baby in his pouch, and I’d have honestly believed that may have been the case if it weren’t for the fact that, well, he’s a clown and not a kangaroo, of course.
I step further from my rock and the other two deaders notice me. One’s a sexy businessman with what were probably once very expensive Italian leather shoes. And he’s also not sexy anymore. Not unless missing half his throat and cheek is what you’re into.
The other is a standard deader—or a blender as I sometimes thought of them. I call them that because it’s just like most every other deader that you bump into: rotten, with graying flesh, straggly hair, and torn clothing, with nothing personal about it that would make you recognize it from any other.
I don’t want to use any of my guns if I can help it; the sound will only attract more deaders to my location. So I pull out my machete from its sheath and round on the Christian Grey wannabe and his expensive shoes. I manage to get behind him and slam my blade up through the back of his head in a moment’s notice, causing him to stop in his tracks and then drop to his knees. I yank my machete free from his skull and move to the second one. The clown deader is moving closer, but it’s still far enough away that I can deal with the standard before him, which is good because I’m going to need all of my wits about me for that one.
I swing my machete sideways and hack through the side of the blender’s face, but it’s not a clean through-and-through and my machete gets stuck around the nose area, leaving the brain intact. Not good.
“Fuck,” I cuss as it reaches for me and I desperately try to pull my machete back out. But with the deader continuously moving I can’t get a good enough grip on my machete to pull it out, so I grab the shotgun and swing it at the blender’s head like I’m trying to bash in a watermelon.
I swing once, twice, and on the third time I hit the sweet spot and the skull cracks open, leaving the rotten brain ready to turn to mush. I swing again, praying that I don’t break the shotgun but the brain. The blender’s movements become jerky and it twitches. Its jaws continue to snap at me, but it’s no longer moving forward, even if its arms are still reaching. I swing one last time and it collapses to the ground like a sack of rotten meat. I mean, I guess that’s a pretty perfect analogy since that’s basically what it is.
The clown deader, by this point, has finally reached me, but I’m breathless from my crushing in the blender’s skull so I quickly sidestep and jog forward to put some distance between us both. It follows—of course it does—but by the time it reaches me, I’ve taken off in the opposite direction and gone back to retrieve my machete from the other deader’s face. I put my boot on its head and grip my machete with both hands and pull with everything I have, and finally my glorious weapon comes free.
Armed and ready to go, I take a deep breath and turn to face the clown deader, knowing that there’s nowhere
left to go, and no other distraction to put this moment off anymore.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I mutter as he comes closer.
I presume it’s a he, but I could be wrong. The thing is barely describable as male or female anymore. Its stomach is so bloated and the stench of it so strong that I feel like I need to heave. It looks like it’s been mostly underwater for some time, because the lower half of it is stained with mud and filth whereas the top half looks dried out and like bacon cooked in the sun too long.
I peer closer, deciding immediately that this is number one on the Worst Deader I’ve Ever Seen list. It has no eyes. Like, none at all. In fact, it looks like they’ve been pecked out by birds, which is worrisome on a whole new level.
I mean, birds eating deaders… There’s gotta be some cross-mutation thing going on after that, right?
I swing my machete, but when it gets close to the deader I lose all strength in my arms and stagger backwards. Because I know what’s going to happen. I can see it like a slow movie at the theater, and I really don’t want it to happen.
The deader growls impatiently, his dried-up hands reaching for me as it comes closer again.
“I do not deserve this,” I grumble as I swing my machete again.
This time I don’t hesitate.
This time my machete makes contact.
It hits the deader’s skull, slicing clean through to the brain and making it stop dead. Like, re-dead, I guess.
As it begins to fall forward, I pull my machete back out—with thankfully minimal effort this time, because its skull has been baked in the sun so much it’s crumbly and dried out—and I dive back to avoid the obvious pop that’s going to happen as the deader hits the ground stomach first. And what I think is going to happen, happens.
The clown deader explodes in a flurry of liquefied innards and rotten, partially eaten body parts. I feel the splash splatter the backs of my legs as I stagger forward. And then I just keep on walking and I refuse to look back. Because if I do, I’m going to freaking hurl.
But at least I can say I faced my fears and lived to tell the story. Even if the story left me covered in rotten deader guts.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It’s easy to follow the path that Shooter takes from the line of deaders along the road. Like Hansel and Gretel following the breadcrumbs, I follow them to get to him. About three long-ass miles up the road the dead bodies come to a stop, but there’s a turning to the left that has been made by the continuous trampling of the earth, and I’m guessing it leads to the quarry. The path is lined with trees, but it’s thankfully not so dense that I need to worry too much.
I see Shooter’s bike up ahead and I move toward it while still keeping my wits about me in case any deaders sneak up on me—that’s happened before, and it was not fun. I totally thought I was going to end up as zombie chow for sure.
The sound of deaders can be heard in the distance, but I sure as shit can’t see any of them—though I’m not certain if that’s a good thing or a bad thing yet. It’s the middle of the day and it’s as hot as hell, and after walking I’m sweaty and tired. I run my hand across my forehead and clear the sweat that’s about to drip into my eyes. I hear a noise behind me, and I swing around with my machete raised, sweat forgotten and ready to chop the head off of whatever is behind me, but there’s nothing there.
“Goddamn it,” I murmur, feeling jittery.
I swing around to look the way I was going, and then turn in a slow circle but keep walking through the trees and toward the clearing, hoping that’s where Shooter will be. He said he’d find me, and I can’t deny that it feels kind of thrilling knowing how surprised he’ll be that I was the one to find him. A slow smile rises to my dry lips as I take a step backwards. My gaze is everywhere barring the way I should be looking until it’s almost too late.
“Nina!” Shooter yells my name and I look up to where I heard him call me and see him climbing down the tree. “Don’t move!” he yells, and he’s not even trying to be discreet, which is worrying.
“Don’t tell me what to do!” I call back. “And what the hell are you doing up a tree, dude?” I scowl up at him and take another step backwards so I can see him more clearly, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the sun’s glare.
A chorus of growls behind me has me turning quickly in a circle and making my foot slide on the uneven ground. Of course there’s nothing behind me, but I can now see the edge of the quarry. I take a small step forward, my heart thumping in my chest, and I peer over the edge to get a view of what’s down below. It’s pretty horrifying. I wish I wouldn’t have looked, because the more I look, the more I’m horrified.
I turn around to get away from the image, even though it’s probably now burned into my retinas for all eternity—or at least until I die—but I slip on the loose gravel of the quarry ledge and feel myself going forward. Well, forward is better than backwards, right? It’s a little bit like a comedy sketch as I fall forward, almost sliding off the very edge and into the horrors beneath. I somehow manage to stop myself from plunging to my inevitable death by clinging onto some bare roots that are sticking out of the edge.
I hear a hard thump as Shooter jumps down from the tree just as I feel the ground give way beneath me and I start sliding backwards.
“Help!” I scream, panic rising in me as I scramble to get up even as the ground falls away beneath me. “Help!” I call again as I begin to fall backwards.
Shooter comes into view and slides down to his knees, giving me a face full of dirt that I could have done without. But he’s grabbing my hands and pulling me back up from an almost certain death, so I decide not to complain too much. He drags me up to my feet and shakes his head at me, his eyes wide in horror and the anxiety that I just very nearly died.
“Woman!” he yells in my face and then pulls me to him harshly, slamming my body against his.
Me, I’m used to these life-and-death moments so I’m totally fine. No, not really. My heartbeat is ramming against my ribs and threatening to break them, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling just a little bit tearful. I grip hold of Shooter, feeling safe as his heavy arms wrap tighter around me and pull me closer, and I place my head on his chest and try not to be a baby about it all. But, you know, almost certain death can make even the bravest pee themselves a little.
“Are you okay?” he says, his voice deep and throaty.
I nod, but don’t move. He smells good and I’m still trying not to cry.
“You almost died, woman.”
I nod again. “Yeah, I do that sometimes,” I joke without any humor and I cling tighter onto him.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” he says, and I think he kisses the top of my head.
And he does have me. Those thoughts are what are going through my mind as I hold onto Shooter, letting myself be vulnerable with him for a moment while I catch my breath and try to control my hyper emotions.
“We should get going,” I murmur to Shooter, pulling away from him finally.
His frown deepens. “You good?”
I nod my head yes, feeling my own frown forming on my forehead, and I pull away from him even more. My gaze goes to over his shoulder and I quickly pull out my machete and dive around him, swinging my machete out to chop the arms off the deader reaching for Shooter.
The deader stumbles but doesn’t fall, and I swing back again but Shooter pulls out his gun and fires, getting it right between the eyes. It drops to the ground and Shooter puts his gun away.
“Lost one or two on the way, but knew they were around here somewhere,” he says by way of explanation. “Waited in the tree for them to find their way here.”
“Well, you got it this time,” I say, glad for the change of subject.
Shooter steps away from me and reaches down for the deader we just killed, and then he drags it to the edge of the quarry before kicking it the rest of the way in. I walk over, slowly, not wanting to get too close in case I do something stupid—you know
, like fall in and almost die. And of course the edge is now falling away, so we stand to one side, where Shooter shows me it’s more secure and less likely to fall away under my weight.
Shooter grabs me by the waist when I get close enough. “I won’t let you fall,” he says in his gruff tone and takes a step closer to the edge.
I’ll admit that I hadn’t realized we were so high up, and I feel dizzy when I look down. But it’s not just the height that makes the world spin and my stomach turn. It’s the quarry full of deaders that gets me once more.
The quarry is half filled with water—possibly rainwater or from a spring somewhere, who knows. But in that water there must be five hundred or more deaders, easily. All swollen and water-filled. Their skin stretched to the limits, the water murky with their putridness. It’s disgusting. Possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve seen before.
Though it shouldn’t be. I’ve seen something similar before, when we helped two kids back at the town with no deaders in it. But that quarry wasn’t filled with water, it was filled with rocks and stones. The deaders that fell in there mostly got smashed to pieces. Not many could have really survived, and if they did, so be it. It was nothing compared to this.
“It’s a nightmare,” Shooter says, still staring down into the teeming undead. “A livin’, breathin’ fuckin’ nightmare.” He turns to look at me. “But at least it’s down there and we’re up here. Right?”
Shooter is a strong and capable man. There’s no denying that. He’s led a life that many people would cower from; I know that without even asking him, because I know what biker gangs used to be like when the world had some form of control.
They were the wild ones. The ones that broke the law without regret. That lived the life they wanted, and filled it with as much spontaneity as they could. Yet looking at Shooter now, I can finally see the cracks in him. The splits that form great chasms that run all the way down to his humanity. To his soul.
He’s tried to be a better man, even when others have lost control. But it’s not that that gives him nightmares, or that haunts his dreams.
The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V Page 16