“Oh shit is right. I killed him. I thought he was a zombie and I killed him. But I thought he was a zombie and I thought he was coming for my sister and my niece and my nephews and I killed him. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. If I’d thought you could draw their attention I would have left you on the roof of that bus, like Maurice.”
“Damn, you are cold—what? Maurice? What are you talking about?”
“Maurice showed up. He drew them to him. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
Lauren closed her eyes.
“Oh Jesus. They got him then?”
“Unlikely.”
“What do you mean, unlikely?”
“Last time I saw him he was standing on top of a dump truck shooting it out with them.”
“Oh my God.”
“He told me to get out of there, to catch up to Sonya and—”
“So he’s still back there? Alive on that road?”
“Yeah, I suppose. He told me to tell you—”
“You suppose?”
“Look, that shits not my concern. My concern is right here.” She nodded towards her sister and the children.
“You’re a cunt. You know that?”
She didn’t say anything.
“I can’t believe… Well, fuck you.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going back. To get Maurice.”
“You can’t be serious, Lore.”
“Fuck you. I am. And if you don’t shut up we’re going to wake up Sonya and the babies.”
“Think about what you’re doing,” Eva took a step towards the woman. “It’s crazy. Maurice sacrificed himself so—”
“Maurice may have sacrificed himself, but we don’t have to sacrifice Maurice.”
“He’s dead.”
“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.”
“Yet.”
“Fuck you, Eva. Goodbye.”
“Wait. If you come back, keep heading in this direction. We’ll stick to this path. Here, take this.”
Eva threw something to her. It landed in the dark near her feet. Lauren considered ignoring it and continuing on but her curiosity got the better of her. She paused, crouched down and ran her hands over the earth until she came up with it.
The flashlight.
“The batteries don’t have much left in them,” Eva warned.
“Thanks,” Lauren said, her tone softening. “But you’re still a major league cunt.”
Eva didn’t say anything to her. She listened as Lauren went back off into the night, in the direction in which they had come, and very quickly she could hear her no more.
Lauren stumbled through the night, trying not to use the flashlight, using it more often than she wanted to. She worried about draining the batteries and she feared drawing the attention of anything out here in the dark. From her experience, most zombies were none too delicate and made a good deal of noise, but the ones they called brains… Brains had set the trap back on the highway—the trap they’d walked right into.
As she walked she listened to the nighttime and thought about Eva and Sonya and Sonya’s kids and a little boy who had gotten separated from their group, who might be wandering in the night just now like she was. She thought of Maurice and wondered what she would do when she got back to the highway, if she could even find him.
She came out onto the road in the middle of the night. There was no visible moon. Around her came the sounds of nocturnal things, things that might have scared her once, but she knew there were other things out here in the dark, things worthy of fear.
She considered the wall of cars stranded on the road, stretching out in both directions. She wondered where she had emerged. Had they left the road farther to her right or to her left? She listened to the night but it gave her no clues. After a few minutes she decided any action was better than none, so she turned to her right and walked, sticking to what pavement was left, overgrown as it was with grass and weeds, the clear demarcation of the road and its shoulder eroding.
She had gone far enough to wonder if she had gone too far when she heard them. Faint at first, but no mistaking the source of the clamor. Zombies. She proceeded with more caution, aware of her surroundings. The cars cast dark, ominous shadows. Lauren wondered if a brain might be lurking between them, waiting for someone like her to pass by in the night.
Silly. She banished the thought from her mind. Even the smartest of the undead found whatever rudimentary intelligence they still possessed trumped by their hunger. If Maurice were still alive, all the zombies in the area would be where he was.
It took her another ten minutes of walking, drawing closer to their calls and chortles, to confirm her suspicion. She became aware of movement ahead so she stopped where she was and stared off into the gloom. She could not discern details but she could see a bit. A mass of them circled a vehicle that was higher up off the ground and bulkier than others surrounding it. Eva had said a dump truck or something.
Lauren climbed on top of a station wagon as quietly as she could. She stood on it and looked around. She had a better view of the undead throng ahead. To her left she could just make out a sole shape atop the bulkier vehicle. That had to be the tow truck or whatever Eva had said she’d last seen Maurice atop of.
She held the flashlight above her head at arms length and flashed it repeatedly. There was a stirring among the undead and their noise picked up, the flashing light drawing their attention. First a few then several broke from the group, staggering off to investigate. Lauren was down and moving away from the station wagon as quickly as possible, stopping only when she was on the other side of where she presumed Maurice was, again climbing on top of a vehicle and signaling with the flashlight. More zombies hissed and cried out and left the main group, heading in this direction.
She circled around Maurice’s position, close enough to hear zombies stumbling through the nighttime towards the spot she had just vacated, close enough to yell out to the man if she’d wanted, but she knew to do so would bring hundreds of zombies down on her immediately so she kept her mouth shut. When she’d reached a position directly across from him she flashed the light and rested it on the roof of a luxury van, leaving it on. It was a calculated move and she continued her progress in the pitch black of night, praying she wouldn’t walk right into a brain or a booker coming out above Maurice’s position on the hill that led to the trees. The hill she’d watched all the zombies pour down earlier the day before.
She couldn’t see the zombies in the dark but she was equally certain they couldn’t see her. She knew they were down there. Maybe thousands of them. It sounded like thousands. Grunts, cries, screeches. And that only from the ones that made noise. If she could avoid them she might be okay. They had an advantage in the night: their sheer numbers. She steeled herself for what she was going to do next and switched the selector on her M-16 to full-auto.
“Maurice!” she screamed, hoping he could hear her from the distance and above the clamor of the undead. “Get ready to run!”
Lauren aimed up into the sky and depressed the trigger and the M-16 spit out a stream of shell casings, the muzzle flash lighting up the night, and in the space of a couple seconds she had spent an entire magazine.
She didn’t wait around to see what the undead did next. She ran back towards the cars and into their midst, sticking farther to her left, farther away from where Maurice was, reloading on the run, then putting one hand out and feeling her way through the cars. She had a general sense of where she was and the cries and yelps of the zombies were uncomfortably close, but seemed to be moving away from her.
Lauren hoped they were confused, moving towards her former position on the hill or one of the places she’d flashed the light. She hoped enough of them had dispersed to allow Maurice to escape. She heard no gunfire from his position which could mean he was dead or out of ammo or purposefully not firing, and she wondered if he was still alive, if he was down among the car
s as she was, creeping through the night.
She stretched across the hood of a car and fired out another magazine, aiming slightly above the roof line of the vehicles. If Maurice was somewhere out there she didn’t want to accidentally cap him. The screams of the undead closed fast but she was moving again, reloading as she went, passing over the thicker grass of the median, not stopping until she reached the other side of the road.
She turned, facing the silent wall of cars, and the lack of visibility was disconcerting. Where was he?
“Maurice!” she called his name as loud as she could. As she did so she knew she shouldn’t, she knew they would come for her en masse, drawn by her voice. And though she could not see them yet, sure enough, she could hear them. They were coming for her, bouncing off the cars, off each other in their greed to reach her.
“Maurice! Over here!” she held her ground and got ready to shoot it out with the first zombies but then she heard him. It was Maurice and he was calling out her name.
“Maurice!”
“Lauren!”
“Over here!” She aimed the muzzle of her rifle into the sky and fired one round.
“It’s me! It’s me! Don’t shoot!”
In less than a minute he was standing next to her. She wanted to embrace him but there was no time. They turned together and ran as fast as they could, sticking to the shoulder of the road for awhile. This allowed them to put a little distance between their nearest pursuers. Then when they both sensed the time was right, they slowed slightly and plunged through the trees.
“I had a flashlight,” she said.
“Here. I got one.” He handed her the one he held.
They ran. When running in the night became unsafe they slowed to a fast walk and felt their way through the trees and brush, the howls of the undead receding behind them. She used the flashlight sparingly, fearing it would draw the undead right to them.
“Lauren, here!” They had become separated by only a few feet in the dark and she made for his voice, finding his hand reaching out in the blackness. She took Maurice’s hand in her own and they continued together in this way.
After some time he spoke and there was a weariness in his voice and something else. “Let’s stop here…for awhile.”
“Here?” Lauren looked around. They were in the middle of a copse of trees. She had no idea where they were headed. She just knew they were heading in a general direction away from the road and back towards the course Eva and the others were following.
“Yeah, here.” Maurice didn’t wait to talk with her about it. He sat down in the dark and she could barely see him.
“Maurice,” Lauren felt about and found him sitting against a tree. He was panting. For the first time she noticed she was out of breath herself.
She turned on the flashlight to get a look at him but he immediately covered the beam with his hand. “No, they’ll see it. Keep it off.”
“Right, okay.”
“Water?” He passed her a two-liter bottle from his knapsack and she drank greedily.
“I think,” he said. “I think we’re safe here…for a little bit.”
“Okay,” she agreed. She tried to hand him back the bottle of water but he said, “You keep it.”
They sat side by side in the dark for a bit. Maurice said, “Lauren. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The others?”
“Eva and the Greek are with Sonya and the kids.”
He asked about Zach.
“I don’t know what happened to him. He’s just…gone.”
“Damn.” He sounded dejected.
Impulsively she leaned over and hugged him tight. At first his body was rigid but it quickly loosened in her embrace and he hugged her back, pressing her to him.
“I didn’t want—I didn’t want to just leave you out—”
“It’s okay. You didn’t, you didn’t. Be quiet. Just hold me, okay?”
They sat in the night clasped in each other’s arms. When they finally disengaged she sat back, her shoulder and arm pressed against him, and she became aware that she was wet, the whole front of her shirt and jeans. She brushed a hand over the wetness and smelled it, but couldn’t see what it was. Before she could turn the flashlight on Maurice spoke.
“I got bit.” In his voice was a resignation devoid of hope.
“Bit? Where?” She turned to face him and she was near hysterical.
“Lauren, shhh. Sit back down next to me, okay? Here, hold my hand. Please?”
Maurice had been bitten. Lauren didn’t want to think about it. She resumed her position at his side and clasped his hand in both of her own, sobbing silently.
They’d been resting for several minutes but, if anything, he was breathing heavier. He squeezed her hands and she squeezed his back.
“What about,” he spoke through a cotton-mouth. “What about the boy? Stymie?”
Lauren knew the truth wasn’t something he needed to hear.
“Farina? He’s with Eva and Sonya and the other kids. He’s okay.”
“Good.” He snickered slightly about the whole Farina-Buckwheat-Stymie thing and it hurt him when he laughed.
In the distance came the faint rustle of foliage.
“I need you to listen to me now, okay?”
“We’ve gotta go—”
“No, listen to me first, ‘aight?”
She held back her tears and mumbled okay.
“That shit in the sky? Avoid it. Stay the hell away from it. Get yourself away from here, as far away as you can, ‘aight?”
The rustling amongst the trees was still far off but closer now. She knew it was the undead come for them.
“You have to keep yourself safe, okay?” Maurice said. “But more than safe. You need to be happy, too? Right? Do you understand me?”
She let go of his hand long enough to wipe the tears off her face. Part of her felt selfish to be crying around him, knowing he was the one bit and dying. Part of her wanted to throw herself on him like a child and cling to him and tell him how she really felt for him and how things could have been different for them if only—
“Happy, right? Do you understand me?”
His voice was clear and calm but there was great pain behind it.
“Y-Yes. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Okay. Hey, get my machete for me.” He squeezed her hands again. “I dropped it over there.”
He said “over there” and she assumed he motioned but she couldn’t see anything in the dark. She let go of his hands and leaned forward on her hands and knees, feeling around for the machete, even turning the flashlight on briefly. While she did so Maurice stuck the barrel of his pistol in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.
“Mo—Maurice!” She scampered back to where he was and couldn’t talk. Her throat went hoarse. The voice gone from her, she hugged his limp body, vaguely aware of the pistol still clutched in his one hand.
A nearby growl in the dark made her sit up and take notice.
Zombies. Out there. With her. In the night. She rubbed the snot off her upper lip with the back of her wrist. She ran her hands up and down Maurice’s body, but it was a mechanical action now, bereft of any emotion. She unbuckled the utility belt he wore with extra magazines for his pistol and pulled it off his body. She found the machete he spoke of and pried the pistol from his dead fingers.
She shouldered his pack and took up her own rifle and left his body alone in the dark, the undead closing in. She bit her lower lip and didn’t look back.
Clavius City
The path was unmarked. As they trekked through countryside the snow was almost as high as their knees in places. A bitter wind blew wisps of white stuff in their faces, obscuring their vision.
Crusade (Eden Book 2) Page 19