She turned to Russ, still crouched in a ball.
“She's why I wanted to go into medicine. I wanted to see if I had it in me to look into the face of sickness, desperation, and even death-and still have a smile on my face. I think I have my answer. Your mom helped me see it, too.”
Russ finally responded. “How?”
“This place. There are a million things your mom could have done to save herself or save you alone. She could have run for the hills, or swam down the river. Maybe you all could have hidden in this shed forever and not be bothered. But she chose to help the women who came to her in the best way she knew how. I might disagree with all my heart about whether it was right or wrong, but I don't think she did it because she hated these girls. She loved them. She loved you.”
There was no way to know what was in Margaret's heart, but it didn't matter. She was trying to convince Russ the fiction was true.
“And I'm sure she had no idea what was in these vials. FEMA probably told her it was protection from the plague, or maybe that it was the cure. I've heard a lot crazier things over the past three weeks. The government is tracking down 100-year-old women for experiments, there are rebels called Polar Bears running around St. Louis, and all of the East Coast is in a convoy heading this way. Crazy stuff, all of it.”
“Am I infected,” he said in a muffle.
“Who knows. Maybe these vials are all a placebo. This is some kind of control batch for a country-wide experiment. You have to understand there are a lot of things it could be. We just don't know.”
Russ cried softly, and this time when Victoria put her hand on him she wasn't rebuffed.
Take small steps. We'll get there.
Propane accessories
Liam watched with a feeling of futility as the zombie men and women kept forcing their way through the collapsed garage door. Someone was still alive because gunfire continued over there, but it was losing steam fast.
The zombies below his window stood shoulder-to-shoulder as far as he could see in the orange haze of the dust cloud. He figured most of them would be trying to get the people in the outbuilding, but the nearest ones reached up and pined for him like spurned lovers.
“I don't see how we can get over there,” he said while cupping his chin in thought.
Sabella's daughter was stuck on the other side of that river of dead. He was more than willing to help with any rescue, but only after he knew Victoria was safe. It was past time to get downstairs and check on her.
He sighed.
“OK, the first things we need are some weapons.” He turned around to find Sabella and her daughters had left the room while he was lost in thought at the window.
“Hey, wait up,” he called, unsure if he should shout or remain quiet. There were at least two dead men on the upper floor, but there was no way to know if there were others. The thought of the pair of armed women downstairs encouraged him to stop at Wilder's body. The dead man had numerous cuts down his back as well as the final one on the side of his head.
Liam needed that knife, so he pulled it out of the bone. The vibration sickened him as it rubbed the man's skull on the way out. He wiped the blood from the blade using the ruined mattress. Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed the empty revolver from where it had fallen near the bed. Finally, he stood up, jumped over the man's legs, and went out the door.
There were four bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor, along with a large utility closet at the end of the hall. The door hung open and the girls stood around putting on clothes. Sabella looked at him with concern, and once he understood what they were doing, he turned his back on them.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“It's all right, Sam,” Sabella said in a kind voice. “I know you aren't the kind of person who would make us wear these.”
He glanced back to her briefly. She held up the horrible dress she'd been forced to wear and showed him the word SLAVE again.
“He enjoyed watching us suffer both mentally and physically,” she spit out. “This was his idea of sticking it to us, but we're no one's slaves.”
“How long have you been here?” he asked to try to change the subject.
The mother and her girls continued to get dressed and Liam didn't get his answer. He figured it was none of his business, so he reoriented on the nearby stairwell to listen for Victoria. The noise of the horde outside was as constant as a Spring downpour, making it hard to hear anything else. If anyone inside the house was talking below, he couldn't hear them.
“I have to find Victoria, my, uh-” Too late, he used her real name. Somehow, he didn't think Sabella would care if he told her the truth. She didn't seem like a government spy. “Girlfriend. And my name isn't Sam, it's Liam. I used Sam because we're, uh, on the run and I didn't trust that guy. We came in here to escape that horde from St. Louis.”
Among the swishing of clothing and grunts while getting dressed, Sabella finally replied. “Ha! I didn't trust him, either. How do you know they are from St. Louis? That's a long way from here.”
“I don't know how to explain it. Some bad people sucked them out of the city and made them come here. To what end I have no idea. How they did it ... ” He knew the old people in the boat had something to do with it. Mind control? A manipulation of the quantum computer? Pheromones? Was anything too crazy in the Apocalypse? “ ... I don't really know, either.”
“Sounds made up. This has to be every dead person in the world. There are so many.”
He thought of all the zombies he'd seen over in Cairo. Though the fields around them were vast, there were far more zombies on the other side of the river right now. Would Sabella believe him? Did her girls need to know of such titanic threats out there?
“There are a lot,” he said with a settled voice.
Minutes later, and still without any noise from below, the girls and their mom were fully dressed again.
“You can turn around. Thanks for that. We haven't had much in the way of courtesy lately.” The mother pulled a scrunchy from her black jeans and used it to gather her hair behind her. Only a few long, curly bangs managed to escape that fate.
She saw him watching. “My hair hates this humidity, but I'm not brave enough to cut it short like this one.” She meant her older daughter.
Sabella and her girls were dressed in typical suburban fare-mostly jeans and airy tops suitable for the thick Missouri air. Sabella's cross remained visible on her exposed neckline and now both girls displayed similar pendants around their necks. She'd said they'd fled from Egypt because of their religion, so it was no shocker they were pretty serious about it.
“You ready?” Sabella asked.
“Yeah, but I was thinking ... “
He intended to explain his own situation further and what might be downstairs, but she clomped down the steps like she owned the place. The girls trailed down after her like a couple of ducklings. Susan, maybe seven years old, held onto the older girl's shirt ahead of her. The youngster waged war between letting out heavy sobs and keeping it in.
“We're coming down,” Sabella shouted.
He tucked the knife in his pocket and followed down the steps. From the stairs he saw into the kitchen, a dining room, and part of the front family room where he'd come in with his girlfriend.
“This way,” he said, taking the lead from Sabella.
Liam strode into the family room, but Victoria and her captors weren't there. He searched behind the loveseat and behind other furniture just to satisfy himself she wasn't being hidden from him. There was one more room upstairs he forgot to check. Could she have been taken up there? Was there a basement?
Liam froze when he saw the faces in the front window.
“Stop!” he hissed. “They see us.”
To their credit, the girls stopped immediately. Like they'd been trained in the art of zombie evasion. Sabella also made a respectable effort to halt, though she was closer to the window than anyone. A gauzy set of drapes blocked the panes of glass, but
it wasn't hard to identify the shapes moving around out on the porch.
Slowly, he knelt on the floor and crawled to the sofa-putting it between him and the windows. Seeing his example, the others did the same. It was just long enough they could all huddle there.
“Where would they have gone,” he asked. “My girlfriend isn't here.”
“Was she pretty or pregnant?” Sabella asked seriously.
“Um, yeah, I like her,” he said as if unsure what she was asking. “She definitely isn't pregnant. No way.”
“Of course you like your girlfriend,” she whisper-laughed. “Was she pretty enough that maybe they took her from you for her looks?”
Liam studied the olive-skinned beauty and put two and two together. Sabella continued talking when she saw it click in his mind.
“Margaret and her son must have taken her out to the shed we saw in the window. That's where Elise is. That's where they take all the new girls.”
He was afraid to ask but had to. “What do they do to them over there?”
“If a girl is pregnant, Wilder or his nurse will rip it out, but I'm not sure where that happens. That fat loser said they make the girls visit with patrons in that garage, and I have a pretty good idea what that means. All I know for sure is what they were going to do to me and mine in this house before you saved us. There isn't anything good going on in either place. Since your friend is with my daughter we have to save them both.”
She began to slither on her belly toward the back of the house.
“Where are you going?”
“To save my daughter,” she said just loud enough to be heard over the horde. A few zombies knocked on the glass and the exterior of the house, but it seemed uneven, like they were just doing it because that was their “thing.” Not because they sensed anyone inside. He figured they'd come through the windows if they knew for sure there were living people in the room.
The two daughters held their ground behind the sofa.
“Aren't you going to help my mom?” the older girl said in a snarky voice that reminded him of Victoria. Her glasses sat low on her nose like a librarian glaring at a noisy patron.
It caught him by surprise.
She huffed as if Liam was on the clock. “Are you going to help her, or not?”'
The look in her eyes said he better get his butt in gear.
2
“What are you going to do?” he asked Sabella as she stood next to the back door. Zombies hovered near the back windows just like they did in the front. More drapes covered the glass, making it difficult for anyone to see in, but he never wanted to underestimate how fast that thin glass would break if they were spotted. He crouched down to get out of the zombies' lines of sight while he chatted.
Sabella hadn't let up for a moment since he met her, so it didn't surprise him she was trying to solve the riddle of how to get across the ocean of plague victims. He tried not to take it personally that she wasn't asking him for his advice, but he had to admit he had no idea how to get across, so he was happy to see what she had in mind.
“See that barbeque pit?”
He saw one out the back door, but he couldn't look for long.
“Yes.”
“I'm going to open this door and you're going to wheel it back inside. Can you do that?”
“I think so. Yeah. But why?”
“I'll show you when you get it in here.”
He peeked out the window of the back door to get a better look at the outside. The rear patio was separated from the parking area behind the house by a small hedge, so it was nowhere near as crowded. There were one or two infected milling about near the grill, but it could have been much worse.
“Can your oldest daughter help me?” He pointed to the living room where the pair of girls had stayed.
“My oldest is over there,” she pointed to the people on the nearby roof. “My girls have done enough. You'll be fine. Have a little faith.” She chucked him on the shoulder.
If you only knew what I've seen.
He didn't argue because he trusted her for some reason and because there was no time to wallow in indecision. The patio was practically zombie free at the moment, and it could fill up in seconds if they weren't careful.
“One sec,” he whispered while holding up his pointer finger. There was no way he was going out there without some kind of serious weapon. The knife in his pocket was fine for what it was, but a farmhouse kitchen probably had something a little more substantial. He skidded on his hands and knees into the kitchen and it didn't take him long to pick out a big meat cleaver. It felt balanced and heavy in his hand and appeared to be extremely sharp.
When he got back to the door, Sabella gave him a grim smile. He felt like he'd earned her approval.
“Ready?” she asked.
He peeked over the bottom edge of the window again and still only saw the two zombies-both men-wandering around the secluded patio. A nearly infinite number of them were everywhere else, but he made a conscious effort not to notice them.
He took a deep breath. “I'm ready.”
“Remember, run out there, pull it back in. That's it.”
Somehow, he didn't think it would be that simple, but it was a goal.
She pulled opened the door just enough to let him out. The two drifters weren't facing his direction, so he had a couple of seconds to really taste the air and think about how his plan was going to work. Unfortunately, he came to the conclusion that no matter how fast he was getting the grill, the two would be on him before he could get back inside. Sabella, for all her planning, didn't seem like she was going to run out and help him.
The grip of the knife became slippery as his adrenaline kicked in. His breathing became short and labored as his heart got a running start for what was about to happen.
The nearest zombie remained oblivious, but the far one was turning toward him.
“Shitballs,” he said under his breath.
The cleaver felt heavy as it became certain he'd need to use it. He judged the distance to the nearest zombie-an older man a foot taller than him-and sprang up. His instinct was to swing the cleaver sideways, but he knew better. Instead, he raised it and then cranked it down on the man's head with everything he had. True to its name, the cleaver hit hard and sank several inches into the zombie's brains.
Brains!
The man fell in a heap to the patio pavers without making a sound. The zombie took the cleaver with him, because it was stuck in the bone. The second zombie raised the alarm, however, as it came for him. In those few seconds Liam had to decide if he should mess with the big blade, pull out his smaller knife, or run for the grill and just get it over with. He selected the grill, which sat about the same distance between him and the zombie.
It was no contest because this wasn't one of the fast zombies. Liam made it to the stainless-steel barbecue grill a couple of seconds before the walking zombie was going to reach him. The cooker was on rollers, which made it easy to get it going.
A howl went up from the infected on the other side of the row of shrubs. He was now on borrowed time because they'd definitely come for him.
“Run, the white elephants are loose!” he said as he remembered something random his dad used to say.
The pursuing zombie man was shorter and heavier than the first. It walked surprisingly slow, giving Liam the time he needed to make it to the door. The grill would roll in just ahead of the zombie-if he was lucky.
But when he got close to the door, Sabella remained parked behind the glass. She pointed off to the side. He let the unit slam into the closed door, then pulled out his knife. His anger swelled as he turned to meet the ashen-faced man.
The swirl of colors beyond the hedge wasn't his concern. The red-shirted man was.
They met right behind the grill, and the man's momentum carried them both into the cooker's lid, nearly tipping the whole thing over. In seconds he had two hands attached to his arms as he fell sideways. The knife remained in his hand, but he cou
ldn't get it to a position where it would do any good.
He slammed to the stonework of the patio and tried to keep the zombie from getting directly on top of him. They rolled back and forth as he tried to maintain the upper hand. Whatever the zombie thought about the strategy of the fight, his main concern appeared to be getting his jaw closer to Liam's neck. That's when he pulled up his knee to the man's stomach, attempting to use it as a wedge to maintain some distance. When he forced his knee upward, it induced the rotting man to unload the contents of his stomach right on Liam's chest.
He didn't look at it. Whatever it was, the stuff was cold and smelled exactly like a dead animal on the side of the road. It took all of his strength to hold the sicko at bay, but his real surprise came as the grill chassis rolled away-into the house.
“Help!” he called out.
The zombie used its own stomach contents to grease the skids and get his face ever closer to Liam's. For the first time since the sirens, he got a good look at the diseased gray skin, the pockmarks of broken blood vessels everywhere possible, and eyes that were bright red from so much blood running from them. The man wasn't breathing on him, which was a relief, but the proximity of his horrible mouth was enough to make him queasy.
“Don't leave me out here,” he said with declining strength. The fight with the zombie was at a stalemate, but he knew only one of them had unlimited energy.
“Help me!” he squawked.
3
The knife was still in his hand, but there was nowhere to stick it that would hurt the creature. At best he might inconvenience him with a poke in the side of his rib cage. Maybe that's the way he was meant to go out. Always fighting until the very last moment.
Zombie Escape_More Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse Page 8