At some point the bike leaned dangerously to the side, and the henchman reacted almost too late to avoid them falling. If Vlad hadn't put his black boot on the dusty ground, they would probably have both fallen, since the short legs of the old Administrator wouldn't have helped. The boot lifted a great cloud of brown dust and finally they almost stopped.
The gunman throttled back fully, pain visible on his face, and they began to go in circles around his boot, which was still on the ground. Adams opened his eyes wide as he and his "chauffeur" were caught in a sort of infernal merry-go-round, raising even more dust. They received the dust in their faces and, quickly, found themselves in a kind of beige fog.
The dust made the old man cough strongly.
Then the motorcycle leapt out of the cloud of dust, and rolled up a small neighboring hill.
"What made you turn in circles like that, Vlad?" Adams cried. It made him cough loudly again, as if he was going to vomit up his lungs.
"You haven't understood or guessed why I did that," the henchman exclaimed, irritated while he drove the motorcycle toward the top of the hill. "I created this cloud to try to slow our pursuers. You know the octopus that throws ink around it when it's going to be caught by a predator?"
"Ah... Uh... I think..." said the old man in white, who was interrupted in his sentence when the motorcycle arrived at the top of a grassy hump and then fell abruptly.
They were shaken so violently by the impact that Adams nearly let go of his embrace around Vlad's abdominal.
The shock was a tough blow on his testicles. He suspected that the man who was riding the bike had done it on purpose. But he resumed and, looking at the cloud behind them, as they were now rolling over a more flat area of land, he continued: "Oh, you're going to lose them in that cloud of dust! Excuse me, I didn't understand... You're awesome!"
"That's why you hired me to ease your little tricks, right?" said the henchman, a mocking tone in his voice. In fact, he had been astonished, because the Administrator had always been sparing with his congratulations.
"Hmmm... Yeah..." mumbled the old director, who never wanted to admit the level of unpunished illegality to which he had devoted all these years.
"Where are they?" Johnny shouted, making their van stop abruptly in the cloud of dust, having been on the verge of bumping into a nearby bunch of trees in a grove.
Now he couldn't see anything on the left or the right, the dust clearing very slowly.
Red, near him, twisted her neck to look at both sides, but she couldn't see anything better than him in the beige 'fog'.
"I only see one solution so that we have a chance to catch up," she said, rummaging through one of her pockets.
"Yes?" Johnny asked, his face lightening with a smile as he saw the red-haired girl get out of her pocket... a coin.
The young man's smile disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
"Heads or tails?" Red asked, looking sly, adding, "Tell yourself that as far as we know, we still have a fifty percent chance of finding them, depending on where we are going." The young black man made a grimace, and then nervously pointed a finger to the feminine visage on the visible face of the coin.
"Wrong turn again, Vlad!" exclaimed the Administrator, more than ever clinging to the motorcycle. "Are you sure you know where you're going, idiot?" he asked in a stern tone.
"I thought, boss… I thought," replied the henchman, his voice plaintive, "If you knew how uncomfortable I feel... It's a pain, and it invades my whole body. It disconcerts me, at times! "
"Don't worry," said Adams, his voice full of warmth, in an almost paternal, unusual tone, "as soon as we arrive at the Community, the good doctor will treat you, and all these pains will, soon, be nothing more than a bad memory. "
"I wish it well," said the biker, his voice loud with sorrow, before becoming silent again and focusing on the dirt track. An umpteenth pothole followed by a natural speed bump, which he took once again harshly, shook the two men seated on the machine.
The old man looked at the naked back of the henchman and said cynically within himself, If he can cure you...
The hum of an engine got his attention and, looking behind them, he saw the van of their pursuers arriving, jostling the bushes and zigzagging between the trees.
"Vlad, they're coming, try to lose them!" cried Adams.
"Impossible, the wood closes in farther away," roared the henchman, who throttled back fully.
The bike made a lurch under the acceleration, its front wheel losing contact with the road. The two-wheel-drive vehicle continued to roll on the rear wheel and the old man shouted, eyes bulging with fear.
"We'll get them!" Johnny shouted happily, as they saw the distance between them and the motorcycle becoming shorter. He grinned, showing a carnivorous smile worthy of his father's, and said, "I'll hit them so hard that they'll have to stop, you're gonna see!"
Having said this he put his foot to the floor, making the engine of the old vehicle roar like a raging beast. They arrived at the level of the old Administrator's back, while the motorcycle...
... disappeared on the right side!
Johnny stepped on the brake pedal and the truck was about to stop, when they heard gunshots.
Looking in the right mirror, Red and Johnny saw that the two men on the motorcycle had stopped near a group of standing armed men…
And the latter were shooting at their van!
Its rear window, protected by a grid, was crossed by bullets as broken glass sounds were heard.
"Oh no!" shouted the young black man, giving a violent blow to the left while jamming on the gas pedal.
They saw the world swing to the side while the shots continued and glass breaks were still heard.
Johnny shouted, "Aaarrgh, the van rolls on its left wheels, brace yourselves!"
***
Destiny
"They know too much, shoot them down before they approach the outskirts of the Community!" cried Adams, continuing to point with a fat finger to the unbalanced van, his voice hard to hear because of the gunshots.
"Don't worry, even if they approach it, instructions have been given to shooters on the ramparts," said one of the men, who stood near the Administrator and Vlad, still seated on the saddle of the motorbike. The other two men, near him, were firing, completely concentrated on the van, which was zigzagging away.
"Look at them!" exclaimed, mockingly, one of the men, a fat bearded man with scanty red hair, who had just lowered his rifle. "They've lost control of their vehicle and are going to overturn in the mud. What a bunch of clowns!"
The old Administrator gave him a bad look and then shouted at him, "Shut up and don't stop shooting, or they'll escape!"
The man made a grimace and, shrugging, raised the rifle and aimed carefully. From where he was, he was able to shoot the van's tank, telling himself while smiling, There's going to be a helluva of a bonfire...
He was snapped back and shot in the air, while with his gun he was knocked down. The same applied to his companion next to him who shouted, having fallen in the grass, feeling that he was being grasped.
Then the man shouted, terrified, as he saw a crowd of zombies gathered around him, pressing him to the ground. He tried to grab the rifle but it had slipped away from his hands. As he felt the amount of hands with bony, sharp fingers lacerating his stomach, pain made him shuffle his head right and left. This gave him a glimpse of his bearded and bald fellow who was also struggling with numerous undead. They, too, had come out of the bushes behind them, and had caught him by surprise.
He saw and heard his companion shouting as jaws opened around his head. He also heard the cracking sound as they crunched the bones of his skull, and greedily plunged their teeth into the bloody scalp.
The man who had witnessed the end of his companion felt a bunch of hands pierce his exposed belly and solar plexus like so many knives cutting butter.
He shouted when his heart and lungs were unceremoniously torn away, together with his
intestines, in which the undead plunged their rotting teeth.
"Let's go!" squeaked Adams, looking at the scene with horrified eyes.
He stroked Vlad's back, who, with his head bent forward, seemed to be falling asleep.
The henchman, startled, caught up, however, and started the bike.
That's when a zombie put a hand on his shoulder.
The man reacted by striking the creature's temple with the back of his fist.
The creature coped with the blow with its head bent back and perched to one side, while the rider and his fat, panicked passenger behind, whizzed away.
Its hand still resting on Vlad's shoulder, the undead was dragged with them before falling, carried away in an uncontrollable rotation.
The zombie fell on the ground as more zombies arrived at its level, clumsily walking behind the Administrator and his henchman, who were heading toward the Community and its immense dome.
"We're going to get home!" shouted the old man, clinging to Vlad with all his strength. He noticed that watchmen on the ramparts had noticed them, pointing index fingers toward them.
Adams heaved a sigh of relief as he saw the two gigantic doors beginning to slowly open.
Vlad stopped the motorcycle just in front of the opening, which was widening from second to second.
Two men with guns slipped through the opening and approached them, while the old Administrator waved at them. They saw Adams and one of them said to his colleague, "The Boss's come back."
As they reached their level, their attitude changed completely.
They opened wide-eyed eyes, and Adams realized that they were looking at Vlad.
The latter grabbed one of the men by the throat and pulled him forcefully toward himself. Under the violence of the action the man lost his rifle, which fell to the ground.
The henchman brought the guard's face to his level and snatched his jugular with one big bite.
"Close, quickly!" shouted the other armed man, who, shrinking back, fear on his face after having seen the scene, repassed quickly between the half-open gates.
With his heart beating violently in his chest with fear, Adams stretched out his right leg to try to touch the ground, while he saw Vlad, from the back, literally plunging his face into the half-open throat of the look-out man he had just killed. Still sitting behind the henchman who kept the bike in balance, Adams wanted only one thing: To not draw attention to himself.
With his chubby legs which were too short, the Administrator could only touch the floor with the tips of his beautiful white shoes.
In desperation, he dropped to the side.
Thus he fell into a puddle of mud. This made the color of his costume, once pristine white, change to a brownish-dirty one.
A groan came out of what had replaced Vlad. The old man in the mud was startled by the sound, realizing that this new zombie had heard the sound of his fall. Pulling his saliva, he saw that the ex-henchman had stopped, looking in front of it. Several seconds passed, which seemed to last for centuries to the man lying on the ground.
Suddenly the thing sitting on the motorcycle plunged again its jaws into its poor victim's neck, while the prone Administrator was looking the bloody scene with disgust.
He became even tenser, when he saw what had been Vlad in the past stand up, while lifting from the ground what remained of his prey, as if it was a little doll.
No longer held back, the motorcycle, carried away by its weight, began to fall on its right side and leaned towards the inside of the right thigh of the zombie, pressing it. Grumbling because of the weight of the two-wheeler, the Vlad-zombie spread its right leg and began to fall.
The ex-hit man then fell to the ground on its side, with what was left of its slaughtered prey, the motorcycle falling brutally on Adams' chubby legs.
The latter uttered a muffled cry from the shock, biting on his lips so as not to be noticed by the ex-Vlad, that he observed with burgeoning eyes, his heart pounding in his plump chest.
The latter didn't react to the sound, to the great relief of the old man, who was sweating abundantly inside his now heavily tainted white suit.
Still looking away from him, the new living dead was only trying to get out from under the heavy two-wheeled vehicle. While at the same time as it was finishing eating some bloody meat extracted from the poor guard's body, the thing was pushing back the heavy saddle on which it had been sitting. That way, slowly but surely, it was extracting itself from under the vehicle. It groaned as it struggled once more to get out.
The living dead was finally able to stand up, its very slow motion while it was rising seeming to last centuries, for Adams, who was observing it. The Administrator noticed that the Vlad-zombie had stood up while lifting again the dead guard's corpse.
The undead then stopped masticating and became motionless like a statue.
It drew back its head, pulling its mouth from the dead man's throat with another piece of bleeding meat. The poor guy, with his eyes wide opened as if he was still surprised, was manipulated like a toy while being sustained by the creature's tight grip.
Adams was at the same time horrified and impressed by the enormous gaping wound left in the poor lad's throat. A bloody gulf more than a single wound, while the dead man's head leaned back, drawn back by its own weight. It was as if the neck was going to stretch even more, and the head was going to fall off.
Suddenly, without warning, the zombie violently threw the body away, as if it were an empty package of cigarettes.
The inanimate and seemingly thwarted body fell on its back, and due to the shock the head, which no longer held to the body except by a piece of skin, detached itself, and went on rolling.
The former thug turned around and looked behind, toward the back of the motorcycle.
It saw nothing other than the bike which had fallen on its side, its big saddle partly soiled by dust.
The creature, spreading its right leg even more, finally disengaged it completely from the motorcycle, and then walked awkwardly towards the back of the motorcycle.
Adams, hiding behind the other side of the big bike, did not move a bit, lying closely against the collapsed two-wheel vehicle.
He heard the ex-Vlad make a grunting noise, as it approached the back of the two-wheeler.
As the creature slowly went around, Adams crawled, taking advantage of his small size to continue to be well hidden by the mass of the big motorcycle, while he silently turned around it.
This little deadly game lasted for a moment, the old man continuing to crawl in the dust, feeling more and more panicked.
Finally, the Vlad-zombie stopped.
It raised its head, as it slowly turned to the right, then to the left.
Still coiled behind the bike, trembling with fear, Joshua Adams ventured briefly to glance over the edge of the saddle.
He found Vlad's face unrecognizable.
The creature's features had become gray, and its empty eyes, which were deep red, had a dead look. It had its lips reddened with the blood of the victim, blood that had flowed over its bare chest. The visible veins of its athletic body had assumed a somber color. Dark veins were also visible on its face.
Suddenly the gruesome head turned in the direction of Adams.
The thing that had stood up, a little shaky, didn't see him.
Adams had squatted in time.
It was then that the old man heard a snort.
Looking at the ex-Vlad, Adams understood that the noise had come from him.
It was the nostrils of the zombie, which, alternatively, opened and closed.
Adams swallowed his saliva and shivered.
He knew that the undead had an excellent sense of smell, and that this one had felt his presence... The old administrator was all at once frightened and demoralized. Would he have to drag around the bike, like he had done, for a long time?
Vlad, or at least what was left of him, still looked at the motorcycle on the ground behind which Adams literally buried himself
in the mud, on which it was lying.
Then the creature turned its head slightly, towards the surrounding woods.
A little noise of rustled leaves made both the old Administrator and the undead become tense.
The latter looked in the direction of the woods whence the noise had come. A hind that had been eating grass was hiding behind a bush, but it was too late for it.
The animal had been seen. Its fate is sealed, Adams said to himself, still hidden, as he contemplated the scene, relieved to not be the hunted one.
It was with relief that he actually saw the ex-Vlad moving towards the bush, with heavy but firm steps. The old man knew that this new undead, like all the others, would follow the deer's scent. This day and night, for hours, days, weeks, if necessary, until, finally, exhausted, the wild animal would fall on the ground, and be eaten alive...
He knew very well that the zombies were relentless: whereas the "normal" human being was a slow runner compared to many other animals, some of them being the cheetah and the ostrich, they had a great gift: they were much more gifted than others at marathon-type jogging.
No animal was able to outpace a sufficiently young and trained human being runner.
And the living dead, who normally only walked, despite being slower, had a hundredfold the endurance capacity as humans.
The doe, never finding rest, never finding tranquility, leaving on its way its scent that the undead would follow, it would one day be caught, and then devoured...
Its fate was sealed.
While the Vlad-zombie had disappeared among the trees, farther behind the bush, Adams, having struggled from under the motorcycle and, his legs aching because of the weight of the motorcycle they had to support, walked awkwardly towards the double door. Hoping that his slow walk wouldn't make the guards confuse him with one of the zombies, he approached cautiously the Community's doors, trying uselessly to see a guard on the ramparts.
Hungry Series: Tomes 1 & 2 Page 30