Impact

by Chrissy Peebles

  “Let’s send these devils back to Hell!” I fumed.

  Bodies dropped in the hail of gunfire, black blood pouring out of all the bullet holes. Explosive ammo found its mark, and round after round slammed into their heads.

  One lumbered toward me, as if it thought it had some kind of chance. I almost laughed at the pathetic thing as I squeezed the trigger and drew black blood from its mouth. Three more shots quickly resulted in three more kills.

  We all let off a couple more rounds, till every last corpse was piled on the ground.

  “Cease fire!” Nick shouted, holding up his hand like a military commander.

  I let out a long breath, ejected a spent clip, and slammed in a new one. Just as I did, a couple splashes made us all turn.

  Lucas shined his flashlight. “All right. Who called for a doctor?”

  Some of the freaks in white scrubs had fallen through the hole and plopped into the water, but we had no time to worry about them. They were far too clumsy and stupid to maneuver out of the pool anyway, and even if they did manage, they’d slip and slide all over the place.

  I peered straight ahead.

  “They’re all down,” Lucas said, lowering his gun.

  Buddy peered at Lucas. “That was brutal.”

  “Brutal? Those things are brutal,” Rex said. “Those gut-munchers deserve to be turned into mincemeat.”

  More zombies fell through the hole from the ceiling and landed in the pool. They splashed and moaned, setting all our nerves on edge.

  Buddy seemed to be having a nervous breakdown. “This is crazy,” he said, his hands shaking. “Going deeper into a zombie-infested building is nuts. We need to leave, to pull out now!”

  “Man up, Buddy,” Rex said. “We gotta move, and we’re going this way, whether you like it or not!”

  Nick gazed into Buddy’s eyes. “Listen, I need you to pull it together.”

  “Just let him go,” Val said. “Risking his life has to be his own decision.”

  Buddy drew a deep breath. “No, you’re right. I’m fine. Let’s just go and get it over with.”

  I walked carefully around the labyrinth of dead zombies, poking all of them with my foot to make sure there’d be no surprises.

  Nick motioned for the girls, constantly sweeping the area with his gun. “Hey, use that night vision of yours and take a peek,” he said.

  I drew my gun and opened the door, keeping an eye out for clear and present danger. Nick got in firing position, and Lucas pointed his gun straight ahead. Kate shined her flashlight around, and Asia swiveled her rifle toward the door and peered ahead. The hallway was dark and dreary, but the girls deemed it clear. The floor was covered with glass and seemed to moan and groan with every step I took. Flickering shadows made me nervous. I couldn’t help but notice the stink of death lingering in the air. I knocked off a few more oncoming moaners, then pressed my aching body onward. Jackie led the way, and I followed her through the rubble. It was best to let her be in the lead, since she knew the quickest way to get to those notes.

  The ceiling shifted and creaked, and the falling debris raining down on us began to really rattle me. I sidestepped as chunks of mortar, steel beams, and concrete slabs crashed to the ground. A second later, I froze, realizing I’d almost been crushed.

  “This place is gonna bury us,” Rex said. “We have to get the heck outta here.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Just keep moving.”

  “I’m hit,” Kate said, holding her head.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “I’m seeing stars, but I’ll be fine. Like you said, let’s just keep going.”

  I tried to calm my breathing and started to walk again. There was dust of all kinds in the air, and my eyes began to water. I pushed debris to the side, unsettling the thick coating of filth, and I could taste dirt in my mouth. We climbed over beams and slid under them as we walked through the tangled maze.

  My eyes flew open at the sound of hissing to my left. I lunged at a snarling zombie and kicked it backward, forcing it to haphazardly stumble over a metal beam. Asia reached for a large rock and put the thing out of its misery with a quick bash to the skull.

  When we turned the corner, we were horrified to see a zombie pulling out a man’s pale, bluish, slimy intestines. It was beyond disgusting. I whipped out my gun and aimed it at the thing, which growled, with innards hanging out of its mouth. I fired at the zombie. Meanwhile, Lucas shot the unfortunate, gutted gang member in the head so he wouldn’t join the ranks of the undead. Lucas had more of a heart than I’d realized, and he wanted to put the man out of his misery, as well as ours.

  “You shoulda let him become a rotter,” Rex said. “He didn’t deserve your generosity.”

  “He was human,” Lucas said.

  “Barely,” Rex spat callously.

  “Nobody deserves a fate like that. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

  Approaching with caution, we made our way to a door at the back of the hall.

  “That’s his office,” Jackie said.

  “Finally,” Asia said.

  Kate wrapped her fingers around the golden doorknob. “It’s locked.” She looked at Lucas. “Do your thing.”

  He roughly slammed his shoulder into the door, ramming it with all his might. When the door didn’t budge, he tried again, grunting with every hard blow he delivered. Finally, the wood cracked and splintered, and Nick and I helped him kick it the rest of the way in. Quickly, we all scrambled into the office.

  Lucas planned to crack the safe. He had the know-how and was sure he could open it without having to drill it or blow it up. Like some kind of professional bank robber, he pulled out a pen, a notebook, and a stethoscope. He placed the stethoscope against the surface, near the dial.

  The process wouldn’t take as nearly as long because Jackie knew half the combination from closely watching Charlie one day. She gave Lucas the numbers, and he wrote them down.

  “I thought they only did that stethoscope thing in the movies,” one of the men said.

  “Professional locksmiths use this method,” Lucas answered. “It amplifies the sound as I listen for the right clicks.”

  “Just do your thing...and do it fast,” Buddy said, huffing impatiently.

  A few minutes went by, and I was getting more and more antsy with every dreaded groan the building made. I could tell Jackie was just as uneasy as I was; we were a bunch of nervous wrecks packed into an unstable building like sardines. I took a deep breath. Control the stress. Control the fear. Control the emotions.

  I tried to focus on something else other than that tense moment. I thought about everything we’d been through, clear back to the beginning, from shattered dreams to crushed hopes. The journey had been crazy, to say the least, but I was a fighter, a survivor, and I planned to fight to the very end.

  I also thought about my family and friends, my parents, and my grandmother. My high hopes of being reunited with them gave me the strength to keep going. Having someone to fight for gave my life a deeper meaning. Being there with my brother and sister and our friends helped, for we had the strongest of bonds, and I knew our close-knit group would stick with me to the bitter end. They were always there to give me encouragement and hope. Even when things threatened to become too overwhelming, which was quite often, I tried to stay strong. All of us had to accept the way things were and adapt the best we could. We were only human, though, and sometimes the negativity crept in. All we could do in those dark times was try to focus on the positive. I knew I was still alive for a reason, and I wasn’t about to give up.

  One struggle I did face was a bit of an identity crisis. I supposed all young people went through it, as I had heard adults talk about how hard it was, but it was even more difficult to find myself in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, when nothing was normal. Who am I now? I wondered. I sure wasn’t the same kid I’d been before the helicopter crash.

  I felt cold and numb, disconnected and confused. I even felt i
ncomplete, but at the same time, I had so much more to give, and I felt I could make a real difference in the world. I knew I was capable of so much more; there was so much potential lying dormant inside me. I’d been hiding on that island, laughing and smiling, but my true destiny was to be out there with my brother and sister, helping to save the world. The helicopter crash showed me what I was meant to do. I knew I wasn’t meant to be a leader, like Asia had once suggested on the rooftop of one of our previous hideouts. I wasn’t a bully, and I would never take advantage of others or prey on the week. I wasn’t out for myself. I had learned all about myself, and I knew that the journey I’d taken had revealed and secured my destiny.

  I’d been through so much. I was happy that I still had Jackie, but I was heartbroken over our sad loss of innocence. My childhood, my teen years, had basically been stolen from me; I was a psychological causality of the zombie apocalypse. What role am I now destined to play? I wondered. I wanted to become the man our group needed. I refused to be the idiot kid I used to be, the one who had kissed Jackie behind the nursing home when a zombie sneaked up on us. I was a lot wiser now, more grown, more mature. Because of all that we’d been through, I would be a stronger man, a better person, a better team player, a better survivor. I wouldn’t allow myself to ever be possessed by evil. I had faith that I would make it through all the horribleness and come out shining on the other side, a better Dean than I’d ever been before, and I wasn’t about to abandon that faith.

  I was scared; there was no denying that. Deep down, I feared that my parents and grandmother might actually be dead. Grief tore through me as I pondered that possibility, and it was a struggle to cling to any hope that they were okay. Losing them would gnaw on my heart, and that would be far more painful than any zombie gnawing on my face.

  The building groaned again, and we could have cut the tension with a knife. Lucas worked furiously, Nick paced like a caged tiger, Kate kept nervously clenching her hands into white-knuckled fists, and Buddy kept mumbling complaints.

  When I heard nails raking across the wall, I knew we had a zombie problem.

  Asia peeked out the door. “It’s just one. I can handle it.”

  “Don’t you watch horror movies?” Kate said. “Nobody ever goes off alone. I’m coming with you.”

  “She’s right,” Nick said, then gestured for us to join them.

  “No, we’ve got this, guys,” Asia said, stopping us.

  “Can’t you hurry this up, safecracker?” Buddy asked.

  “I’m trying,” Lucas answered, graphing the number of clicks he heard.

  “We shoulda brought a torch or saw!”

  Val looked at Buddy with a scowl on her face. “If you’re in such a hurry, just go. Nobody is making you stay here.”

  “Yeah, nobody is holding a gun up to your head,” Claire said. “Just go, like Val said.”

  “Not a chance, sweetheart. One day this could be history, and I want my name attached. I want it known that I helped land that cure into the proper hands.”

  Val rolled her eyes. “Fortune and glory, huh?”

  “I’m gonna get my due, little lady,” he said.

  “Be careful calling me that, or you might get your due quicker than you think,” she said, glancing down at her gun and back up at him.

  Nick and I peeked out into the hall to check on the girls. Like true zombie warriors, they had killed the zombie without firing a single bullet. It was brilliant, considering that the last thing we needed was any kind of dinner bell alerting the others to the presence of fresh meat. Asia and Kate took a quick glance around, then starting rushing back.

  “We need you guys down here right now!” Kate said frantically.

  I didn’t like the grim tone in her voice. Instinctively, I knew something was wrong.

  Chapter 4

  Asia seemed rattled as she came back inside the room with Kate.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I thought I saw something trying to hide from us, and we all know zombies can’t do that. We didn’t go investigate. If it’s a hybrid, we need backup.”

  “Good call. Don’t ever take unnecessary risks,” Nick said.

  “Maybe you oughtta learn to practice what you preach, boy,” Buddy mumbled.

  Nick marched right over to him. “What was that?”

  “Nothin’, man. Nothin’,” Buddy spat, pouting.

  “It could be a gang member,” Kate said, “but if it was one of them, I don’t think he’d hide. He woulda just seen two girls alone and tried to ambush us.”

  “What did you exactly see?” Nick asked Asia.

  “Something moved in the shadows and ducked into the darkness. It happened so fast that I couldn’t tell if it’s human, hybrid, or what.”

  “If it’s a hybrid, we need to put it down,” I said.

  Nick nodded. “I agree.” He peeked his head into the hallway. “I’m gonna go check it out.”

  “Not by yourself, you’re not. I’m coming with,” Lucas insisted.

  “No, you need to keep working. You gotta crack that safe.”

  “Fine, but take a couple of guys. Just leave somebody here to watch my back while I’m trying to figure out the rest of the combination.”

  “Right,” Kate said, patting his back. “Can’t have anything sneaking up on you.”

  He stood and gave her a quick hug. “Be careful,” he said, “and remember that those hybrids can be sneaky. Don’t let it lead you into any traps.”

  “We’ll be fine,” she said.

  I could see the hidden emotion behind Lucas’s words. Val swallowed hard, and I knew she noticed it too. I hated all the drama and wished Kate and Lucas hadn’t hooked up. It made everything weird and awkward for Val, and we didn’t need a soap opera getting in the way of our fight for survival. None of us could afford to be distracted. She pretended she didn’t care, but the look on her face when Kate and Lucas were flirting made it obvious that she cared a great deal. Tension was definitely in the air between Val and Lucas. I didn’t know exactly what had happened between them, because they didn’t exactly blurt everything out into the open. I wasn’t even sure why they’d broken up, because they both seemed to care about each other, even though they both denied it.

  “Right this way, folks,” Asia said.

  Our group followed her into the corridor. I stepped over a few beams and some loose concrete, wondering why a hybrid would stay in a building that was obviously about to be turned into ruins. Surely it’s got something better to do than stalking us and risking being crushed, I thought. On the other hand, I was glad it was there so we could dispose of it; we couldn’t let one of those things get loose. Hybrids were dangerous, and they could stalk humans like no other zombie, even plan a premeditated murder. Not only did I want to save some unsuspecting human from its attack, but we also had to prevent the virus from spreading. We weren’t sure how all of it worked, but it was far too risky to let a known hybrid wander around in the world. For that reason, we had to try to kill every one we saw.

  When we got to the end of the hall, I shined my light down on the floor and spotted a bunch of footprints in the white dust.

  “Look at that,” Nick said. “Those prints are fresh.”

  “And they’re not ours,” Kate said. “We didn’t even walk over there.”

  “Something is up here with us,” Asia muttered. “From the looks of it, there’re more than one.”

  I was unsettled by the thought. We’d killed their creator, and I was sure they were out for revenge—not to mention a fresh meal.

  “They’ve gotta be hiding somewhere, and I intend to find out where,” Nick said, pointing his gun down the corridor that swung to the left.

  “I’ll wait here,” Jackie said.

  “No, Jackie,” I said. “Come with us. It isn’t safe for you to be alone with—”

  “Somebody needs to stand guard. We can’t have one of those things creeping down the hall to where Lucas and the others are.”

>   I turned to face Nick. “If she’s staying, so am I. You have more than enough manpower, and I won’t leave her here by herself.”

  “You should go with them, Dean,” she urged. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No,” I retorted, refusing to budge. “No one can be left alone.” That was true, but she had that calculating look on her face, and I also had to wonder what she was up to.

  “Okay,” Nick said. “You two stand guard here. Holler if you need us.”

  With that, the group took off down the hall.

  A door creaked open. My breathing quickened, and I pointed my gun.

  “Jackie...” a voice whispered.

  “Get back inside,” Jackie said.

  “You know her?” I asked. “Is that why you were trying to get rid of me?”

  “I just saw her,” she replied. “I have to meet with her alone.”

  “Just bring her with us. If she’s your friend, the others will—”

  “They won’t understand,” she said, grabbing my arm and staring at me intensely. “She’s a hybrid, Dean. They’ll kill her.”

  “But—”

  Before I could say another word, Jackie rushed into the room, and I was right on her heels. I shined my light around and caught sight of the hybrid, the zombified person who had called Jackie’s name. Instinctively, I pointed my gun.

  The hybrid covered her face, and Jackie stepped in front of her, as if to protect her.

  “Move, Jackie,” I said. “It isn’t safe. We have to do this.”

  “No! She’s just a victim of Charlie’s, like me. She’s not like the others.”

  “The others were trying to get you,” the hybrid said. “I led them off your trail, sent them the wrong way. Charlie was their only hope, and you took that away from them. They want revenge, but I’m not like that. When I heard Jackie’s voice, I knew I had to get her alone. I knew the rest of you would want to shoot me on sight, whether I saved your lives or not.”

  I met Jackie’s gaze. “This is what hybrids do. They trick you and get your guard down.”