by catt dahman
I don’t know a few things about Len, but something in his past haunts him. I see it in his eyes at times when he remembers and gets so angry and sad. Remember when he chained those people and let the zombies have them? I saw it then.”
“That scared me at the time ’til I did as bad.”
“I understand. But talk to Len about it.”
“You look gorgeous,” he said suddenly.
“Nah, but thanks.”
Doc came back in and checked the bandage that was not leaking blood and the IV that was securely taped, and gave Kim another shot in the IV.He noted that Beth had been crying.“Don’t upset her; I don’t want another false alarm.”
“Oh?”
“That baby needs to wait,” Doc finished straightening the covers and left again. “I don’t want Beth upset and stressed. That means you behave.”
“I hadn’t gotten to that part yet, Doc. Jeez. People have big mouths.”
“I gave you plenty of time.” Doc glared back at her. “Okay, I have a big mouth. Sue me. I figured he would have noticed your stomach,” he blustered out, blushing.
“No stress? Ha. What a joke,” Beth said, “and my stomach isn’t fat!” she yelled at the door.
“Baby?”
Beth shrugged. “Seems I’m pregnant. You know…with ummm…a baby.”
“I see. I guess it would be a baby. No shit. Okay. Well, you didn’t waste much time moving on.”
“You ass.”
“Just saying, it was fast.” He looked hurt and kind of drunk. “I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”
“Kim, you refused to come back. I was alone; one thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was with….” She was hurt and angry at the same time, as usual when it was related to Kim.
“With?”
Beth said softly, “Juan.”
“Juan. Ah. He’s smart, good looking, dependable, protective; I can imagine that. Juan. Wow. You and Juan, huh? He’s a good guy. And you’re pregnant. Hannah and Katie okay with all this?
“Yes. They love Juan and are excited about the baby.” She slumped in the chair, hand unconsciously rubbing her stomach. This was really not going well; Alex and Julia would think she was incapable of having a normal conversation. They would ask her why she didn’t say things she really wanted to say.
“Ummm…you’re showing.”
“He’s due in January. Or she.” She couldn’t even get a thought going in her brain now. “I’m not that fat yet.”
Despite the painkiller, Kim did the math in his head. “Ummm. Beth, you weren’t sneaking off with Juan behind my back, huh?” It was beginning to get through the fog of his mind. He could almost reason this out.
“No. Damn, Kim. You are dense.” She could almost see the wheels of his brain moving.
“Then, hells bells, Beth, you’re carrying my baby?”
She put her head down and cried again. Damned hormones. “Very dense. Stupid, really.”
Kim panicked. “Stop crying, or Doc will skin me alive.” He got her to settle down by patting her arm, and he looked into her eyes. “My baby?” He reached out and motioned that he wanted to touch her stomach. She stood and allowed him to tentatively touch her stomach. This was way too personal, but he put the baby in her belly, so she allowed it.
“We say it is Juan’s,” she told him. The hurt she saw in his eyes made her feel a little better about all the weeks he stayed away. “I’m with Juan. And people pretend they can’t count although your being here will remind them how to count again, no doubt. We just moved on when you never came back.”
“I see. Well.”
“And…besides that nutty bitch Carla said you weren’t staying here.”
“She did? I may.”
“Just repeating her; she’s rude.”
“I guess she can be; she’s not good with people so much; there’s a lot going on in my head right now. She doesn’t know what I’ll do, and it isn’t her concern anyway. She doesn’t speak for me. I do what I want and have no ties to her anyway.”
“Okay. Not my business.”
“A baby, Beth; that’s amazing.”
“Sure shocked me, a baby for real.I have Hannah, Jet, Katie, and this baby, so I have to be a mother to a bunch, never expected it.”
“Jet?”
“Don’t ask. I adopted him, it seems; he’s seventeen and a Gothic teen…smart and sweet…good kid. He and Hannah are like non-fighting siblings, and they adore Katie.”
“I missed that much? A baby. Wow.”
“Well, like I said, we say the baby is Juan’s,” she said again.
“It isn’t though. I have to think…wish Doc hadn’t loaded me up on that stuff, can’t think so good.”
Beth rolled her eyes, “You haven’t been thinking for a while, I guess. You sleeping with her?”
“Who? Carla? No,” he laughed, “that’s funny.”
“Just wondering.”
“I mean that’s really funny as hell.”
“’Cause you’re drunk on pain meds. So you may stay?”
“ I guess I need to see if my demons are exorcised, and I wanna think about the baby and you and us.”
“Kim….”
“You took off your rings.”
“Kim. You refused to come home. I didn’t take off my rings for a long time. I wasn’t going to sit and stop living and give up. I have two girls, Jet, and a baby on the way, and Juan and I have something good going. I don’t know what you’re thinking, coming back like this and trying to reclaim relationships after you just…didn’t come home when you could.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Whatever.”
“You want me to get gone?”
“No. I didn’t say that or think it.”
“If I asked you right now to be with me again, you’d say no?”
Beth stood up. “I can’t have this conversation. I made a vow to Juan that I moved on and was with him. This is really a shock to me.” She knew that it hadn’t quite escaped him that she didn’t answer his question. She refused to entertain the thought.
He was grinning at her again.
“Stop grinning. You’re drunk on whatever Doc gave you.” She wanted to slap the grin off his face. Or hold him. She wasn’t sure, but maybe both in some order.
“And you love me still,” Kim said, “and we have a baby….”
“You’re loopy; I am not talking to you anymore while you are on painkillers.” She didn’t answer that either but now was sure it was a slap she wanted to deliver to him.
“Chicken.”
“Get some rest; mind Doc. I have things to do. And don’t start this shit with Juan. I mean it.”
Kim grinned. “Not gonna start a thing. Seems fate owes me; I am fate; we’ll just wait and see how it turns out, but it’ll be with me.”
“You are such an ass.”
Beth spun, angry, closing the door hard behind her as she shook. Everything was so complicated all at once, and she couldn’t do a thing about it. How in the hell could she love two men? She walked all the way to the river’s edge where Juan sat peacefully. He smiled at her as she approached. Into his arms, she crawled, letting him hold her and rock her as the sounds of the water running over the smooth stones lulled her.
They would just see how it turned out.
13
Delta
“Oh, no, hell no, Mark….” Misty stomped her foot in frustration. She knew she hadn’t yelled loud enough for him to hear her, but she wondered how this was possible, shaking her head in denial. When things went wrong, they went very wrong.
They did not know if Jeff were infected; the wound could have been a cut from shattered glass and just did not show infection an hour ago. He had no symptoms of being infected, yet here he was in the bedroom shambling stupidly next to the bed, his bandage pulled off, his eyes milky with deep purple shadows underneath, and the small cut on his hand swollen up, dripping with infection. How did he go from not showing anything to being a
zombie without any notice and within less than an hour?
Did they know this was even possible?
It was one of those things about the infection: as much as you learned about it and knew how it presented, the less you knew in individual cases.
The smell of the thick yellow pus, his waste pooling down his pants, and the blood made a terrible stench in the room. Jeff would hate being in this condition.
Leo who went in with Jeff to rest and watch for any signs of infection shuffled over from the closet with both arms gnawed to the bone. Bones showed within scraps of hanging tatters of skin. Fingers clacked against the skinless thumb, bones tapping as he reached out to Misty. Both eyed her with pure hunger and a need to bite her. Maybe Leo was asleep when the infection set in.
It all happened in silence.
Misty raised her gun but intended to back out of the room and close the door. Behind her, a figure darted past, and she was knocked forward, the door slammed closed as Harold ran by, yelling that there was a group coming at them from the back. He hardly looked at Misty as he closed the door on her, eyes on the lurching pair that surrounded her.
If they had to deal with those in the bedroom, it might hold up their getting to safety. Harold wanted safety like an alcoholic wants a drink. It was all he thought of. It was all about looking out for number one.
A hundred zombies pushed against the back fence from the yard behind, toppling it as they filed into the backyard and up against the backdoor to claw and push to get inside the house. The noise and stench was over-whelming.
Misty rolled when she was shoved, her gun flew under the bed behind the two zombies, but she got back to her feet. Her knee throbbed, and she saw when she hit the floor that her knee came down right on a pocketknife someone dropped. The joint screamed as she stood. Without thinking about what to do, she first grabbed a vase from a table near the door and threw it at Jeff, knocking his head back. Leo swung around stupidly and managed to blunder his way into her route to the door.
She could call for help. She could also use a few things around the room for melee weapons. With two zombies coming after her and if she went after one, the other one would attack her. There was no panic yet, but she needed to think fast. Her knee was aching from the fall, and she mentally cursed Harold. He saw her.
“They’re all in the back, couple hundred,” Julia said as she ran to Manny to wake him. Having been knocked out deeply, he wiped his face as he woke from sleeping on the sofa. They ran up the stairs, calling for Matt and Walt who were asleep in a room on the left of the upstairs. The noise was so bad that it sounded as if they were right up in the next room.
Pan turned, “We have a bunch in the front too, looks pretty bad, folks. We need to do something.”
“Where’s Misty?” Mark barked.
No one knew.
From the bedroom behind them, they heard a duet of moans echoing down the hallway. The sounds seemed close. Were they in the house?
“Mis?” Mark called to the closed door of the bathroom.
“No, it’s me.” Harold said, opening the door. “Those things are everywhere. We’re in trouble now. We are trapped like rats, thanks to you idiots.”
Mark gave him a look of disgust. “So you’re hiding in the john? Smart. Sounds as if you’re the trapped rat.”
Drake went upstairs with Carl who went to wake him in the den area. He tossed a six-pack of soda on the bed, less the one in his hand. “Don’t we have enough ammo?” People grabbed for the quick caffeine.
“Not to hold this many off; that back door is already creaking. If we burn down five hundred; then, what about the next hundred?”
“We could handle it, but time is against us.”
A board whined, nails pulled out, and window glass broke.
“Misty?” Mark threw open the door of the bedroom and reeled from the stench. Two of the creatures moaned, grabbing at him. He saw Misty’s boots vanish over the window seal of the open window. “Jules, I need you.”
It took three shots; then, Mark added a shot for each to be sure before he ran to the window. Misty took his hand and crawled back in. “I thought it was best to get the hell out,” she said. Below her, several dozen waved bloodied hands to get to her. She balanced on a narrow ledge on the side of the house. “I didn’t want you all blundering into them, but you did anyway.”
“Lucky they were watching you instead. Are you okay?”
“Mostly. Harold knocked me in here, and I fell, bummed my knee.”
“He didn’t even show any signs of infection,” Julia said, looking at Jeff and the pus-soaked bandage. “It’s as if it went into hyper speed all at once….”
“And he got Leo,” Misty said, stepping around them both. “I didn’t hear a sound. Did we know the infection could hold off and then take over so fast?”
“I guess we don’t know much about it for all the time we’ve been around it,” Julia said, “now, we know.”
Big Bill and the others were launching furniture down the stairs to block the shambling creatures that tried to go upstairs. The zombies could get over the debris eventually, but it would slow them down a while. The back door crashed in, and moans filled the house.
“Why did you knock me into them? “Misty demanded of Harold. “You almost got me bitten and killed. Dumb ass.”
“Accidents happen,” Harold said, “I couldn’t help it.”
“He did what?” Julia had Harold backed against the wall in seconds.
“We need a plan.” Pan shoved a table down the stairs, knocking a zombie over backwards. “Bowling for zombies. Coolio.”
Pak opened the window, scanned the ground, and looked back at them. “Okay, it’s not great, but the houses are pretty close.”
“They are if we could fly.”
“Why did you push her?” Julia demanded of Harold.
“It was an accident.”
“An accident pulled the door back closed? You shit head,” Misty exploded. “You pushed me into them and closed the door. What kind of idiot are you?”
Julia sighed, “The kind who has done this before, pushed a woman into the Zs to save his own ass.” She backed off, eyes dangerous with fury, “Harold, seriously, did you get your winky diddled as a child? Did you wet the bed and hurt animals growing up? Did other kids piss on your PB and J sandwich? Really, what all is in your douche-bag past that makes you hate women so much?”
“Me killing him may be in his future,” Mark said.
“We’ll get him home and let Len know this,” Julia said as a threat.
“We have to get out of here,” Harold said, “can we just get out, and then I’ll fix things. I’m sorry I panicked and pushed her.”
“Pak has a plan,” Pan said. “I hope. Pak, tell me you have a plan.”
“They are all over. So what we do is run on this roof; it’s pretty flat, hit the porch over there, see? It’s not more than eight feet; they built them so damned close. Then look…run again to the third one. It’s got a good spot to land…then…off and to the truck at the corner; it’s right there.”
“Sounds easier than it’ll be,” Matt said.
“You have anything else?”
“I have nothing. Might as well start jumping; we’ve done worse,” Pan said.
“I can get the truck close, and you all jump right into the back,” Carl said. “But we need to get moving; they’ll be over that furniture eventually.”
“That’s how Len did at the school. That’s right. I heard that story,” Pak said.
“I think I preferred swinging on chains over their heads.”
“Yep, scared the hell outta Beth doing that. Okay, I’m going.Carl, you behind me?”
“Let’s roll.”
Pak crawled out the window, took a running start, and leapt for the porch roof of the next house. He yelped as skin peeled from both elbows and forearms. He held up palms that looked like raw hamburger, grimacing with pain. “The Asian guy sucks at parkour.”He made the third jump while so
me of the others kept the ghouls busy with shots to their heads.
Carl followed him and showed thumbs up. “The redneck has it going on, huh?”
Matt followed, skinning his knees through his jeans, holding back a cry of pain.”Must not be a redneck thing; shit fire that hurts.” He motioned to the rest that he would help them over and leap frog.
Manny went next, landing in such a way that he only scraped the edge of one hand. He shook it, wincing, knowing that the rest must be hurting a lot worse.
“What about my knee; it’s not feeling too good. What if I can’t make it?” Misty chewed her bottom lip with worry. Mark layered duct tape onto the knees of her jeans and then her forearms. She would need the dexterity of her hands, gloves or no gloves? He decided not to add them.
“If anything happens to you, I’ll feed Harold to them; that’ll keep them off you,” Mark said as he put on a final piece of tape and began patching Julia’s pants. “You don’t wanna get skinned. You can make it.”
“That won’t help me though if he gets eaten or if I get eaten, too,” Misty said, hatred for Harold boiling up. Usually things happened so fast that she never had time to worry, or it was about running and shooting. Jumping was a new problem.
Mark told her, “I’m going first, and I’ll catch you if you are falling short. You jump to me; let me take your fall, and you won’t get skinned. Reach for me. Misty, I swear, I won’t let anything bad happen to you, no matter what.”
He made it to the second house, seeing Matt’s pants wet at the knees with blood. “Can you jump?”
“Yep. It’ll just hurt like hell later; can imagine the sting of alcohol. Least, I hope I make it for that.”
Mark nodded. “You will. We all will. Come on, Misty.”
Harold was almost dancing in place to go. “Get out of my way; I’m next. Back water trash.” He took several steps backwards, and Misty shrugged, deciding to let him go next. She didn’t want him behind her where he could push her anyway. For one mad second, she thought about shooting him mid-air and letting the things down below have a snack. He shouldn’t call people names.
Harold jumped, yowling as he, too, lost the skin off one leg, his palms, and forearms on the rough shingles. Several of them smiled, despite themselves. “I’m not back water trash, either, you asshole. You better hope when I jump that I don’t accidentally kick you off the roof. Glad it hurt you,” Misty shouted. The zombies pushed harder at the fence, but she was too angry to care now.