At the first set of pylons, I stopped and looked at the river. It was very peaceful, and this would have been a nice place to live before things had ended. However, my reflections were interrupted by Julia bumping into my back and giggling.
“Keep going, doof,” she said affectionately.
“Don’t stop, dumbass,” Jake added, not so affectionately.
“Quiet, the two of you,” I replied, moving forward again.
At the second pylon, my sword bumped into something. I signaled to the others and they immediately went into ready positions. I explored what I hit with the tip of my sword, and figured out that whatever it was, it was about four feet long, and not moving. Reaching down carefully, I touched the obstruction and found it to be covered in fur.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I turned back to the other two. “Just an animal. Moving on.” I stepped to the left and around the thing on the bridge, figuring it was someone else’s problem to get rid of, not mine. Jake and Julia followed my steps, and as far as I could tell, no one tripped on Fuzzy.
Chapter 3
We reached the far side of the bridge without incident, and found ourselves in a small subdivision. There were small cottages along the river, and further to the west, there were some larger homes. Large trees lined the streets, and small fences separated the yards. I was sure that in the daylight this was a very beautiful place, one I might have only seen pictures in some of the books mom used to have.
We walked north, passing under the big tunnel that connected the north and south ends of the subdivision on either side of the tracks. The homes were quiet, the people either asleep or absent. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, even thought we were looking for zombies. Jake, however, didn’t miss much.
“Aaron, what’s strange about these houses?” He asked.
I looked at the homes and didn’t see anything really out of the ordinary. “I’m missing it. What is it?”
“The front doors are open on every other one on the river side,” Jake said, pointing with his mace.
I’ll be damned. He was right. It was like clockwork, and very, very weird. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I said.
Julia nodded in the dark. “Me, too.”
“We’d better have a look,” Jake said.
“What are we looking for?” I asked, stepped over a small fence that blocked off the yard from the street.
“Something that might tell why there was an outbreak up here,” Jake said. “They don’t just happen on their own these days.”
That was true. Actual accidental outbreaks were very rare, and we had found that recently someone was causing them deliberately. Why, we had no idea, but we knew we had to stop them for the simple reason we were the only ones around that could.
I reached the door and waved back the other two. “I got this. Just hang on.”
Julia frowned but didn’t say anything. I knew I might have to soothe some feelings later, but right now, I didn’t have the time. I left my sword on my back, since it was almost useless inside a room that wasn’t as big as a classroom.
I stepped through the door and looked around carefully. The house looked like it was lived in, but there wasn’t any activity. I moved through the living room and looked into the kitchen. The place was neat and clean, so someone must at least take care of it. I carefully opened a cabinet and found canned food there, so I knew somebody had to call this place home.
I stepped back into the living room and moved towards the hallway that led to the bedrooms. At the nearest door, I looked in and saw a small form sleeping quietly on a bed. The little one was snoring softly and it was blissfully unaware of any danger.
I closed the door carefully and stepped across the hall towards the other bedroom. I felt a little weird, since I really had no real explanation as to why I was there, except for the fact the door was open. Someone could seriously take a shot at me and no one could blame them.
In the other room, things were very different. A man and woman lay on the bed, and both were breathing heavily. They were on their backs and covered in sweat. Their eyes stared blankly towards the ceiling, and didn’t respond when I tapped carefully on the dresser with my tomahawk. I stepped closer, and then pulled out my small flashlight. I had a bad feeling about these two and needed to be sure.
Replacing the clear lens with a blue one, I shined the light carefully on the couple’s faces. Their skin glowed yellow under the blue beam, a sure sign they were infected with the virus. I had very little time, as their breathing was slowing down, and soon they would slip away, their bodies reanimated by a virus that just refused to go away.
I pulled a length of cord out of my pack and tossed one end under the bed. Circling around, I pulled it up and stretched it across the pair’s necks, effectively pinning them to the bed. I flipped it under the bed again, and this time stretched it across their stomachs, keeping their arms from rising up. As I finished, their breathing stopped. From this point, I had about an hour.
I ran outside and grabbed Jake and Julia. “We have a problem,” I stated, and filled in the other two. They were shocked at first, but got serious enough when I mentioned the child. “We have to check the rest of the houses with the open doors. I have a feeling we’ll see a lot more of this. “
Jake bared his teeth slightly, a sure sign he was pissed off. “We have to get the kids out if they’re uninfected.”
“Quit talking to me and move, then,” I said. Jake threw me a look, and then was off down the street.
Turning back to Julia, I said, “Take care of yourself. I don’t know what’s in the rest of the houses, but chances are they’re infected.”
Julia nodded and was off like a wraith. I went back into the house and checked on the couple. Their eyes were still closed, so I used my tomahawk to send both over the divide fully. Once that was done, I went back to the other bedroom and carefully gathered up the small sleeping form into a snug bundle. The little guy, who couldn’t have been older than three years, slept through the whole thing.
Leaving the house, I moved towards the next one with an open door, and waited until Jake came out. He was leading a teenage girl and a small boy, both of whom were trying to hold back tears. I spoke to the girl and got her to take the small bundle from me.
I motioned Jake to the side. “Same thing?”
“Looks like it. Both parents were infected and about to turn.”
“Way too coincidental. You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“If you’re thinking about Julia’s ass, no, I’m not,” Jake said casually.
I almost missed what he said, and when I had finally processed it, he was already off, heading towards the next house in the line. I bit off my retort, especially when I realized I was actually thinking about Julia’s rear end. Shaking my head, I went past the third house down the line just as Julia exited, carrying a small bundle. It was a little boy, no older than three months. I exhaled slowly, trying to contain my rising anger. If his parents had turned and found him, likely they would have consumed him entirely. Not a fun thing to think about.
Chapter 4
Julia looked up at me and frowned, and I was about to speak when Jake waved me over to the last house on the row. I ran over quickly, followed by Julia and a small collection of weepy, sleepy kids.
“What’s up?” I asked, wondering what the trouble was.
“Need you to see something, then tell me what you think it means,” Jake said.
“Lead on, old son,” I said, gripping my weapons. I was actually looking forward to some kind of activity. My blood was up and it wasn’t going to go well for any undead I might encounter in the near future.
Jake led me to the back bedroom, and there was a woman lying on her side. Her labored breathing filled the air with a promise of death, and I had to keep from slamming my tomahawk down on her temple that instant.
“Look by her collarbone,” Jake said.
I leaned over, careful not to disturb her in any way. I look
ed her up and down, and didn’t see anything unusual on the first pass. On the second, however, I saw what Jake wanted me to see. At the base of her neck, there was a circle of veins, black in color and fanning away from a central dot in an almost lazy pattern. I wasn’t fooled. We’d seen enough infected flesh in our lives that we were almost immune to it. This woman hadn’t been bitten. She had been deliberately infected with the virus.
I turned back to Jake and stepped aside as his mace descended down. It finished off the woman with a heavy crunch, and then Jake stepped to the side.
“Any ideas?” He asked.
“Well, the what is that she was infected, and the how is through a needle in her neck. The big questions are the who and the why,” I said, looking out the bedroom window.
“Exactly. This wasn’t a random outbreak, and it sure wasn’t anyone messing around with one of the old zombies that got careless,” Jake said.
“Well, what can we do…hang on.” I stared intently, wishing like crazy it was light out. I thought I saw movement across the road, and I was hoping to have a clear vision of what it was.
As I stared out the window, I saw a subdivision across the street buried in darkness. The trees were very grown over there, blocking out any moonlight that might have made it to the ground, and since it was overcast, the darkness was almost tangible.
“There!” I jabbed a finger at the glass, and showed Jake what I had thought I had seen earlier. A man was leaving a home, jogging quickly across the street. He didn’t look our way once, which was probably a good thing since we should have attracted attention with all of the castaways we had rounded up.
The man stopped at a home and squatted down by the front door. From our vantage point, we could see him working the door quickly and quietly. By his feet there looked to be a bag, but it was too hard to tell in the darkness what it really looked like.
In a few minutes, he had managed to open the door on the house and slipped quietly inside.
“Come on!” Jake said, turning and running for the open door.
I was right on his heels and stopped only briefly to tell Julia to head for the rest of the community and drop off the kids. I told her not to tell them what had happened until we could get this thing settled down. In the back of my mind, I was thinking about the rest the zombies we hadn’t accounted for.
Jake was down the street and approaching the house when I showed up on the sidewalk. Jake was crouched low, swinging wide and coming up around the garage side of the house, trying to stay out of sight of the windows. I went over to the house the man had exited, walking through the open front door. This subdivision was larger than the other one and I found myself inside a split-level home. I checked the downstairs quickly and headed for the upstairs bedrooms. I was hoping whoever lived here didn’t have any children.
A glance into the nearest rooms revealed a library and a workout room, so I reasoned whoever was in here probably didn’t have kids. The last bedroom door was ajar and I made my way slowly, keeping my Ka-Bar knife out in front of me, my tomahawk held back and ready.
Pushing the door open slowly, I eased into the room. I was expecting to see another couple lying on the bed, quickly succumbing to the injected virus. What I got, however, was a naked woman lying on her stomach, her head buried under a couple of pillows. I flicked on my light, and she lit up as if she was infected, so that was that. As I approached to finish her off, I noticed a blemish on her left buttock. I shook my head as I figured out that whoever had broken in here, they had found a woman who slept in the nude, and injected her through her butt cheek. The humor of it escaped me as I pulled the pillows away to expose the back of her head. A quick punch with the knife and I was out the door again.
When I reached the front door, I heard a lot of grunts and sounds as if someone was hitting a bag of sand. I stepped outside and found Jake engaged in a serious fight with a man who clearly didn’t want anyone to have found out what he was doing.
Chapter 5
Jake and the man circled each other, and I could see the man had some kind of training. He held his hands open, about level with his face. He kept his eyes on Jake, and I could make out a dark line by the corner of his mouth. It looked like Jake had scored at least one hit.
The man’s eyes flicked over to me, and Jake took advantage of the opportunity to lash out with his left hand, striking the man’s right forearm and knocking it into his face. The bigger distraction allowed Jake to step forward and land a blow to the man’s midsection, eliciting a grunt and a roundhouse that missed by a mile.
The man jumped forward suddenly, shoving a right jab towards Jake’s face. Jake slipped the punch and uppercut the man’s arm, pushing it up and opening a chance to strike at the man’s exposed ribs, which Jake did with a crack that I heard from across the street.
The man backed away, holding his side and staring hot murder at Jake, who stepped away from the clumsy punch that missed by a yard. Jake tried another punch at the man’s head, but got his fist blocked and a return jab turned Jake’s head an inch. The older man grinned and tried a duo of jabs, but Jake slapped them away and landed a punch on the man’s nose that started another dark line to trickle down the man’s angry face.
The man stepped back, shaking his head and wiping the blood off his nose. He reached into his bag, and Jake stepped away, his hand pulling out his knife as he got a good look at what the man was holding. From my position, I couldn’t see anything, but it looked like it was a small knife or something.
Whatever it was, Jake was very cautious about it. He held out his knife in front of him, slowly sliding his feet forward, making sure his footing was secure. I wondered what the man was holding, and it suddenly dawned on me.
It was a syringe of zombie virus. One scratch from that evil thing, and Jake was a dead man. The other man thrust the needle towards Jake, and Jake jumped back, keeping his knife out. The man stepped forward, but stopped when Jake said something low that I couldn’t hear. The man with the syringe moved back a couple of steps, keeping an eye on Jake and his knife.
It occurred to me that Jake had an infected knife, since that was what he must have used to kill the sleeping zombies. So the two men were facing off with deadly metal in their hands. In a strange way, I actually found the conflict ironic. However, the feeling lasted a fraction of a second and I ran over to the combatants, tomahawk at the ready. At this distance, I could easily plant the blade in the man’s forehead without much trouble.
The man backed away, the prospect of facing two men too much, and he suddenly bolted for the side yard. I wasn’t about to chase him down, so I let fly with my ‘hawk. The weapon sailed across the grass, and the axe blade buried itself in the calf of the fleeing man. The man cried out and went down in a heap, pulling at the weapon that had brought him down.
I ran over with Jake right behind me. As we approached the man, he lunged at us, striking out with the virus. I danced back, bumping into Jake.
“Watch it, he’s still got that syringe,” I said, pulling out my falchion. With that needle around, I wanted to be able to do damage from a distance, and three feet of sharpened steel could do just that.
The man’s eyes grew wide at the sight of my sword, and Jake pulled out his mace as well. The man saw that we could kill him without threat to ourselves, so he did the wise thing and dropped the syringe.
“Back up,” I said, indicating movement with the sword.
“I can’t! My leg is bleeding!” The man touched the tomahawk sticking out of his calf and hissed in pain.
I stepped close and kicked him in the chest, pushing him back several feet and dropping him to the ground. He cried out in pain and tried to sit up, but the point of my sword touched his throat and he stayed where he was. All I needed to do was lean forward two inches to kill him and he knew it.
Jake carefully retrieved the hypodermic and walked over to the man on the ground. He yanked the tomahawk out of the prone man’s leg, earning a short bark of pain and a murderous gl
are from the recipient.
Squatting down, Jake wiped the blade of the axe on the man’s shirt. Scared eyes followed Jake’s moves and it was a full minute before Jake spoke.
When he did, it was right to the point. “Why are you turning people into zombies?” Jake asked, holding the syringe out over the man’s face.
The man stared hard at the deadly thing above his face, and then swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I live in this house. I just forgot my keys and had to break in. Why did you attack me when I came back outside?” The man tried to sound indignant, but it was tough when Jake laughed in his face.
“Really? You live here?” Jake chuckled. “So what’s this then?” Jake waved the needle over the man and then placed his hand in a position to use it as intended. “Why did you try to poke me with it?”
“You were attacking me! I don’t have any weapons! What was I supposed to do?”
I had to admit the man could make a convincing argument. However, we knew what he was up to, so it didn’t matter. “Who sent you to do this?”
“I live here! No one sent me! Who the hell are you?” The man gave it his all, and I had to admire the arrogance of him.
“What’s in the syringe?” Jake asked.
“Nothing bad. You can inject yourself and see.” Scared eyes gave way to crafty ones, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight.
Jake chuckled. “Here’s the problem as I see it. You’re not complaining enough, and you’re not yelling for your neighbors to wake up and help you. When we fought, you were silent. In fact, you went out of your way to be quiet. So I’d guess if we woke up your neighbors, not a single one of them would know who you are. If the stuff in this needle is safe, we’ll give you a little poke.”
Generation Dead Book 2: What You Fear Page 2