Mad World (Book 3): Desperation

by Samaire Provost

  It had once been a woman, but was now a zombie, just newly turned. It looked like it had been a week or less. In her arms she held a bundle of rags, close to her chest. She seemed to know where we were. Her dark grey face and milky eyes looked straight into the dark corner where we were hiding, and she shuffled closer.

  When she was directly in front of us, so close we could have reached out and touched her, she stopped. Her face was a zombie’s, but behind this death mask were human emotions. Sorrow, grief, and despair. She slowly stretched her arms out, and we saw what was in the rags she held. We both gasped in horror.

  It was a baby. Dead. It looked to be near term. Its greyish skin hung limply from its face, its mouth was open, its fingernails were black, and its eyes were sunken.

  The zombie girl whimpered softly and then held the baby close again, lowering its head to give the pitiful corpse a kiss. What was remarkable was that she did not make normal zombie groans and growls; her cries and moans sounded eerily human.

  “Jesus…” Risa whispered.

  I just stood there, looking at the two figures, mother and child. She’d probably been attacked and turned and then her body had expelled her dead, unborn child. The baby looked like it had been rotting maybe a week. I looked into the zombie girl’s eyes and felt silent tears run down my cheeks. I thought of my birth mother, Holly, and how I had been born just as she’d turned.

  The zombie girl backed up and dropped to the ground, huddled over her baby’s corpse, and cried softly.

  Risa grabbed my arm. “Come on, let’s go.” With one more glance back at the pitiful scene, I wiped my eyes and we ran onward. Faint explosions resounded behind us as we quickly left the horror behind.

  TEN

  Risa and I hurried along down the rocky tunnel. We’d encountered no more obstacles, zombie or otherwise.

  “I think we may just have luck on our side,” Risa said. “We may yet get out of this alive and unscathed.”

  I nodded and added mentally, “Well, physically at least.” I was still thinking about the young zombie mother holding her dead baby and crying, sounding so human. I was sure the image and sounds would haunt me for a long time to come. I had taken it for granted, what had happened to my family before my birth, and afterward. My parents had told me the whole story, with DeAndre and Caitlyn filling in any blanks. Even Risa remembered most of what had happened and had passed along her memory of the events. I had never thought too deeply on how I was born, what had happened to my birth mother, Holly, and what had almost happened to me.

  Seeing that zombie mother and her dead baby had brought home everything that could have happened, and also how lucky I’d been. I swallowed back a fresh wave of tears as I hurried along behind Risa in the tunnel. I was deep in my thoughts and just blindly following her when all of a sudden, a nagging realization came full force into my brain. I grabbed Risa’s arm and pulled her to a stop, my finger at my lips. I had heard voices up ahead. Zombie voices.

  They were pretty loud. I mentally berated myself for not noticing them sooner. I had heard the faint noise but had been so lost in my own thoughts as we’d hurried along that now they were quite close. Too close.

  They sounded like they were getting closer, and fast. From the sound of them, there had to be a lot, at least several dozen. Possibly more. They were probably driven by the faint explosions behind us.

  This was bad… very, very bad. Risa and I looked at each other, then began running back the way we’d come. We looked desperately for another tunnel branching off this main one, a nook, anything where we could hide while they went past us.

  We’d gone maybe a hundred yards and then…

  “Here!” Risa whispered urgently, grabbing my arm and pulling us down a small side tunnel. We had to crouch and then drop to our hands and knees to get through it. It didn’t extend far, maybe thirty or forty feet, before tapering down to nothing. I doubted it was far enough away from the main tunnel to hide us for long; I’d just have to keep my fingers crossed.

  With Risa behind me, I crouched in the dark, my shotgun loaded and at the ready. We waited.

  But not for long. Within minutes they began to pass us, more of them than I’d initially thought. It was probably the main horde, or a good part of it. They were mostly silent as they passed; there were only a few grunts and groans as they ran. It took them a good four or five minutes for the whole group to pass, and even then I wasn’t sure they’d all gone. I kept thinking I heard noises coming from the main tunnel, so we waited. And waited.

  A half-hour later, after hearing no noises for a good twenty minutes, Risa gestured and we began crawling and then pulled ourselves upright, taking a few more steps until we emerged from our little side tunnel hideaway. Peeking out, I saw the coast was clear, but still hesitated. Something was bothering me … I looked back at Risa, and she shrugged. Retreating back into the side tunnel, we settled in to wait some more. We waited an hour longer, just to be sure. I had a pretty good idea that the zombies wouldn’t be so forgiving to us, now that we’d escaped. Creeping forward again, I once more peered around the edge into the main tunnel. It was dark and still and quiet. I sniffed the air. It smelt of musty dirt, rock, dust and zombies. Of course, I thought. These were their traveling tunnels. Of course it would smell of them, and strong now; after all, they had just passed by less than two hours before. Quite a lot of them: maybe a hundred or more. I still wasn’t sure, but I had to get out of there, and now. I didn’t want to be underground another minute. Looking back at Risa, I nodded and we started forward again, as silently as we could.

  It was a trap. They had lain in wait for us, patient, sure we were there, probably from our smell. I cursed myself for not thinking of that. I smelled unique to them, and they had a keen awareness of my scent. At the front of the pack were several large zombies I remembered from the horde in the main cave. They came rushing at us from behind, out of a side tunnel we hadn’t seen in our mad rush to escape the first time.

  “RAWR!”

  “RRAWWWRRRRR!!!”

  The sound of their screams was deafening in the narrow tunnel. We ran forward, as they came at us in a rush. I just got one glimpse of them as they surprised us, I jumped about a foot, and saw there was at least thirty or forty of them. And two of us. Two humans, two shotguns, and two large Bowie knives. Against twenty times as many zombies. With more possibly coming.

  Oh. My. God.

  We ran for our lives. Knowing how badly we were outnumbered and hearing them scream for our blood, we ran faster than I thought possible in that small tunnel. I had my little flashlight out, but it didn’t help much, the small beam of light bouncing along the floor as I ran. Risa was right behind me, and I held her hand as we ran. I knew, just as she did, that we had to keep each other safe. If wishes had been enough …

  It was bound to happen. We couldn’t keep running blindly in the mostly dark tunnel, with these minions of the devil chasing us, for long, without…

  Risa stumbled and fell hard, and they were upon us. I began shooting wildly into the mass of growling rotted bodies, but there were so many. Risa had gotten to her knees and was firing too. The narrow tunnel kept too many of them from advancing on us at once, and we had years of training on our side, too. I had to reload first, she held them back while I did; then, a minute later, I did the same for her.

  And for a while it looked as though we were making some headway. Then they rushed us, en masse. Maybe fifteen of them ran madly at us, scrambling past each other and through the narrow passage, almost falling over one another to get to us, growling and screaming all the while. We might have shot down ten of the creatures before two of them got ahold of Risa and pulled her into the mass of zombie flesh waiting behind the first wave of them. She screamed and shrieked. I heard her shotgun go off twice, then nothing. I couldn’t see her; they’d covered her, but I could hear her piercing screams. They sounded like they were tearing her apart.

  “RISA!!!” I screamed. I heard another of her screams, m
ore muffled this time, then she was drowned out by a dozen zombie groans and roars.

  I went wild. That was my big sister they were tearing apart. Like a madman I shot and shot, bringing half of them down, then I grabbed my knife, the huge fifteen-inch blade, and started cleaving heads from rotted torsos. I went berserk.

  “AHHRGH!!!” I screamed louder than any of them. I roared my rage at them all. For what they were doing to Risa, for what they did to that zombie mother with her dead baby. For what they’d done to my birth mother, Holly, and my mom, Alyssa. I was raging.

  Stumbling forward, sometimes half falling, sometimes surging forward into them so much my body pressed against zombie flesh I shoved forward with my chest, I cleaved and cleaved, slashing and moving forward in a whirlwind. I had never moved so fast in my life, but I was filled with an urgency and ferocity I had never quite felt before.

  Up until now, I had fought zombies alongside other Sanctuary team fighters, with strength and determination, yes, but never with the sense of desperation as I felt now. My mother lay dying back in Winnipeg because of these monsters, and now they had taken Risa. Risa, my sister, my friend, the person I looked to for guidance. They had her. And they were killing her.

  “GAHHHH!!!!!!!! RAHHH!!!!!!!!!!” I screamed as I swung my knife again and again. I cut them and chopped them, and pieces of zombie flesh were flying everywhere. They tried to fight back, but their brutish assault was nothing in the face of my fury. All my sorrow and frustration and anger at the damnable black plague and what it had done to my family, and my world, came rushing out at once. My hybrid strength and training came together in a huge berserker rage that didn’t stop until they were all in pieces.

  Everything was suddenly silent. Tunnel walls were covered in their black blood, and pieces of zombie lay everywhere, flesh cleaved from bone and bone cleaved from sinew. I was covered in the stench of them. Black zombie guts were all over me, in my hair, everywhere. I couldn’t have cared less. I rushed to the pile of bodies and started digging. Risa! A sob escaped my chest. NOT RISA!!! Another sob left my body and tears fell liberally as I lifted and threw zombie body parts dripping with black zombie goo. My eyes searched as my hands lifted and threw body parts far and wide. A low moan escaped my chest as I caught a glimpse of Risa’s body through the crud and rot she was buried under.

  There she was. Risa. Under several layers of dead zombie pieces.

  “NO!!! No No No No nononononono...” my voice trailed off in a sob. Frantically, I heaved zombie parts off her body, and at last cleared it all away and grabbed the front of my shirt and wiped her face clear, so she could breathe.

  This couldn’t be happening. This just could not be happening. Risa was the strongest among us. The toughest. Trained personally by my mother, she had fought alongside me for years.

  “Please be alive…” I whispered, a prayer to I don’t know who. “Just please… please be alive.”

  I began to cry softly as I knelt beside her. My eyes flew over her and assessed the damage. Her body looked half torn to pieces. She had bite marks everywhere, and some looked to be very deep. Her arm had been clawed and chewed and ripped open so badly I could see the bone. Her left leg was bent at an angle that was just wrong. I put my ear to her chest but couldn’t hear over my sobs. Calming myself, I tried again. I thought I could hear a faint heartbeat at first, but then nothing. I checked to see if she was breathing, but couldn’t tell.

  “Risa?” I whispered softly.

  I felt hot tears run down my face as I noticed her heartbeat was very faint but rapid, and she wasn’t breathing.

  “Risa??!”

  I straightened her neck and tilted her chin up and began CPR on her, and watched her chest rise slowly and fall again as I blew hard into her mouth. Still, after ten minutes, she hadn’t so much as moved.

  “Oh, Risa...” I moaned softly as more tears came. I kept up the CPR; I could keep it up for hours if need be. Breathe in hard, tilt head to watch her chest fall as the air whooshed back out. Every now and then, I did some chest compressions, in the hope that it might help her regain consciousness.

  After a while I began to cry great wracking sobs that shook my whole body.

  “Risa ...No ...” I paused to wipe my face on my sleeve again before lowering my mouth once more to blow into her. She was the toughest Sanctuary soldier I knew. As tough as my mom, and tougher than most of the guys.

  “Come on... You’re not a quitter... Breathe! Come on, dammit! BREATHE!!”

  But she remained silent, her body unmoving, still as a corpse.

  I continued the chest compressions and mouth to mouth resuscitation, desperate to save her. Tears mingled with sweat, blood and zombie guts. Her wounds were catastrophic, and in the back of my mind I knew she was not likely to survive such tissue damage, much less the plague infection, but I kept pumping her chest and blowing into her mouth. For a good twenty minutes I went back and forth, trying, hoping. Until…

  Suddenly, she coughed violently, and abruptly heaved to the side and spit up blood. My heart nearly stopped. Jumping up, I ran back the dozen feet to her pack, dropped in the tunnel and forgotten in the attack, and fished inside for a water bottle. Rushing back and unscrewing it, I splashed a bit on her face, and poured a bit in her mouth. She swallowed a little, then lay still again, her breathing very shallow.

  “Oh, Risa,” I said softly, looking down at her broken body. “What have they done to you?” I straightened her hair and brought both her hands to her lap. Holding back a sob, I closed my eyes for a minute, tears falling silently onto her face. Opening them again and looking at her once more, I said, “You look awful.”

  “I bet… I look a sight better than I feel,” she mumbled softly.

  “Risa!”

  She opened her eyes slowly and looked at me. Groaning, she tried to sit up, then fell back down again and passed out. Her heartbeat was weak and her breathing shallow, but she was out cold.

  There was no time wait for her to regain consciousness. I could hear the sound of far-off zombie growls and screams, getting louder. They were coming to finish us off.

  “Like hell,” I mumbled, and then, grabbing the pack over my shoulder, and slinging the guns and knives through their holsters, I reached down and picked my sister up in a fireman’s hold. Laying her across the back of my shoulders and taking one last look behind us, I began trotting down the tunnel, my flashlight beam weak but clear enough for me to see the ground. Not for the first time, I mentally thanked my extra strength and providence for keeping Risa alive, and sent a prayer up to my mother Holly to watch over us. We were going to need it.

  ELEVEN

  The explosions and zombie voices had long since faded behind me, and I ran through the tunnels in a desperate attempt to get Risa to safety and medical care. She had grown weaker during our flight, and several times I had had to lay her down and pump her chest again. I tried to be as gentle as I could, but it was hell on her, with the extent of her injuries, to be bounced and carted like a sack of potatoes through miles of dark, dank tunnels with a murderous horde of zombies after us. A steady drip of Risa’s blood ran down from her body, down the side of my torso and onto the ground, leaving an easily traced trail a child could follow.

  I alternated between trotting and all-out running when I could. Sometimes the tunnels and caves I ran through were low, and I had to crouch just to make it through. But sometimes they opened up and I could run. I felt really lucky when the tunnels were high and the trickling water with bioluminescence lit up my path. I practically sprinted during these parts, which were few and far between. Soon, I entered a large cavern, maybe twenty-five feet across. Picking my way through the dirt and rocks, and more than a few bones, I searched the glowing, wet cave walls for a tunnel out.

  Suddenly, up ahead, I could see more than just the faint glow of the tunnel walls. Several passageways branched off from the main tunnel, and the light coming from one of them was brighter than the others. I sprinted for that one, hope invigorat
ing me as I picked up my pace. When I got to the brighter passage, I turned in and could tell immediately that the ceiling stretched upward to a significant height. There were some openings high above me, and through some of them I could see daylight. A big grin crossed my tired face. I was close to the surface.

  I heard several percussion grenades going off far behind me, and I wondered if they’d been dropped through similar holes. However they’d been delivered, I knew those sounds meant Sanctuary forces were trying to drive back the zombie hordes. I ran onward, through more low tunnels, scampering almost bent at the waist, Risa shifted to my middle back as I hurried along.

  After a long half-hour or so, the light got brighter, and I could hear faint voices. Human voices.

  “HERE!!!” I yelled as I ran. The tunnel ahead of me was opening up into another cavern, and as I approached and peered out, I could see the cavern was open to the outside world. The far side was maybe 100 yards away, the length of a football field. And gathered at the other end, the sunlight behind them, were DeAndre and my dad, Jacob.

  “HELP!!!” I yelled as I ran down the slope and toward the other side. “RISA IS HURT BAD!!!”

  DeAndre and Dad ran toward me, and before I knew it, Risa was gently being lifted off my back. They both carried her out of the cave entrance as I followed. I could see the road about a half-mile away, and the SUV parked right along the edge, looking like a godsend.

  “Jonathan and Zach are off searching and should be back soon,” Dad said as we ran.

  DeAndre looked back, checking to make sure I was there. “Luke, you okay? You’re covered in blood.”

  “It’s all Risa’s,” I choked back a sob as I ran alongside them. “She is really hurt, she needs medical help now. We were attacked. Ambushed. They came at us in huge numbers,” I sobbed again. “I couldn’t hold them back. They took her. Started tearing her apart.” Tears rolled down my face. As I ran, I looked at Risa, and reached out and touched her with my hand. She was deathly still, a limp body in their arms as we ran.