When everything goes to hell, the only thing you can do is put one foot in front of the other and hope for the best.
“Jesus, you’re heavy,” Tabby said as we stumbled through the woods. She was supporting some of my weight, more for helping me keep steady than actually holding me up, but every once in a while I lost balance and she had to right me. I didn’t remember her doing that. Things were fuzzy. My right foot squished wetly, though my boots were waterproof.
“Did I step in a puddle?” I asked. It came out muzzy and distorted. Distant, too. Well, shit. I was starting to go into shock.
Tabby hauled me to a stop. I resisted for a second, still acutely aware of gunfire behind us even if it wasn’t super close. “Hold still, dammit. I think you got hit with something.”
She let go of me to crouch and I put a hand to the nearest tree to keep from toppling over.
“Fuck, I think you were shot,” she said. Then she grunted, did something at her waist, and suddenly my leg was on fire. More accurately, it felt like someone—not gonna name any names—jammed a red-hot poker into the meat of my outer right thigh.
“Ungh,” I grunted, barely audible. When getting away was the goal, silence equals life.
Tabby stood and brushed bloody hands against her jeans to clean them off. “I bunched up one of my socks and used my belt to hold it in place, but we’re gonna need to take care of that sooner rather than later. The good news is there’s a little town on the other side of these woods. Real close. That’s where the access road for whatever this place used to be leads to.”
I nodded, sending a small rain of sweat cascading off my face. Wow. I really was not in good shape.
I’d love to give a blow-by-blow of the trip through the woods, but it’s all a blur. I remember Tabby leading me off to make a wide circle around the access road. It was a good call; the enemy would definitely watch it. I know I passed out once, because I woke up to her slapping the daylights out of me and seeing the fearful look in her eye when I grabbed her wrist out of pure instinct.
Eventually we made it to a clearing and worked our way along its edge. This was not ideal for hiding, but it let us move faster than the woods allowed. The area wasn’t industrial by any means, but the nearest houses were a quarter mile away. The best they’d be likely able to offer was shelter. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Sons would have pilfered them from top to bottom.
Then I noticed the frankly obscene number of zombies wandering between the homes and reconsidered that idea.
“How are we getting in?” Tabby asked as we stopped to rest just inside the tree line.
I shook my head. “No easy way. We’ll pick one and try the door. One with a window near the lock would be ideal. Whatever we do, it has to be fast. Those things can already smell us. Me especially since I’m bleeding. They’ll get a bead on us in no time.”
Tabby blanched. “What if they’re inside the house?”
“Oh, they’ll be inside,” I confirmed. “Just assume that off the bat. We’ll deal with it. Now, pick a house and lead the way. I’ll be right on your heels.”
I tilted my head in thought. “Just stay clear of the door.”
It’s generally a good idea to conserve your strength in situations like mine. There are factors you need to take into consideration, and for me the big one was how quickly I was weakening. My arms and legs were leaden, my head swimming. We needed to get inside quickly and get ourselves safe. Or at least as safe as we could manage.
Tabby ducked low as she ran toward the door. She approached without slowing much, eyes locked on the window. “Yeah, there’s at least one inside. Probably been there for years.”
I didn’t say how that was impossible. Zombies weren’t magic. They needed food, if much less of it much less often than regular humans. A few pounds of flesh would sustain them for weeks if they went inert between hunts. More than likely, the dead person inside had wandered through an open door and bumped it shut while shambling. That meant it was probably unlocked.
I made sure Tabby was off to one side, tried the handle, and threw myself into the darkened kitchen beyond with abandon. The zombie saw us coming and lunged for me. I let it have fun with that, clawed hands scraping against—and then through—my shirt to rake at my ribs. It was a sacrifice move, letting me slide my own hands around its jaw and neck.
It might be damn near impossible to break a neck by twisting it, but one reliable way was to mimic the angles and forces of a human head striking a windshield. When the forehead suddenly stops but the body forces the neck forward, it can do catastrophic damage to the vertebrae.
I slammed my palm against the point of the zombie’s jaw and shoved up and back while grabbing the back of its neck with my other hand. It takes precision and strength, both of which I was running short of. Luckily, desperation is a nice substitute.
Hot streaks blossomed on my sides as the zombie died, all the fight going out of it as I somehow managed to succeed in severing its spine. A wave of exhausted dizziness crashed over me, nearly driving me to my knees.
Then the second zombie appeared from an adjacent hallway.
“Oh, come the fuck on,” I said in a reedy, whining voice. “I just want a nap.”
Incensed by the fresh blood spilling from my sides, the dead...woman? I’m gonna go with woman. The thing was old, maybe old enough to be an original zombie, its flesh worn down in all the spots that would rub and brush up against things and replaced with the weird off-white material grown by Chimera. It was entirely naked, as zombies often were after their clothes fell apart—imagine wearing the same shirt and pants for like five years—and about half its long, filthy blonde hair was gone along with most of its face.
It came at me straight through the kitchen, so I ducked around the island to put a barrier between us. Without looking, I snatched the cast iron frying pan I’d spotted off the stove and swung it around while I tried not to think about the disgusting mass inside it.
I brought the pan in with a sideways swing, crashing the edge into the dead thing’s cheekbone as it reached over the counter for me. It wasn’t enough to kill the zombie, but it sure knew it was having a bad day. Flesh ripped away like wrapping paper exposed to an excited child at Christmas, chips of bone flying off to click against the fridge. The zombie’s head snapped to one side, and then—I swear to god—it tried to shake it off like any regular person would have.
During that moment of confusion, I grabbed the zombie’s wrist and yanked. It jerked forward and fell flat on the island. I brought the pan down in a wild overhead strike and smashed in the dead woman’s skull. Took me three tries to be sure, but she wasn’t up for much resistance after the first one.
I leaned against the counter and panted. No more zombies showed up in the time it took Tabby to come inside and lock the door.
“You look really bad,” she said, eyeing me critically. “We need to lay you down somewhere so I can have a look at your injuries.”
I shook my head. “Have to check the house first. Could be more. Could be a dozen, we don’t know.”
“I’ll look,” she said, her tone brooking no argument. “Give me the knife and wait here. Don’t bother putting the bodies outside. The other zombies are on the way. Though if you can push the fridge over in front of the door, that would be helpful. If not, just wait until I get back and we’ll move it together.”
I wanted to argue, but found myself unable to summon up the words. It wasn’t pride that drove me, but practicality. I had no idea whether Tabby had spent the years since the Fall hidden in a bunker or out in the world as a survivor. She didn’t have the reluctance of a vault dweller, though it was possible she’d lived out in the open for only a little while. You could never tell with people from New America.
The fridge wasn’t all that hard to move. It sat on furniture coasters, so all I had to do was unplug it and lean against it while aiming. The zombies outside weren’t yet beating on the door, and hopefully they wouldn’t attract to
o much attention. A house being consistently mobbed by the dead would certainly draw the interest of anyone looking for us. Thankfully we were at the very back of a neighborhood off the county road leading to their base, the area was overgrown as all hell, and the kitchen was on the back of the house. They’d have to drive right in front of the place to notice, and even then slowly enough to catch the density of the swam compared to elsewhere in the neighborhood. It was a detail many people would overlook.
Which was what I hoped for.
“One more,” Tabby said when she came back a few minutes—or an hour, I don’t actually know because my sense of time was completely fucked by that point—later. “Locked itself in one of the bedrooms, so I just closed the door real quick and let it be.”
“Cool,” I said. “I’m just gonna lie down on the couch or maybe the floor. Whatever works is fine.”
Tabby slid a shoulder beneath my arm and helped me to the living room. She didn’t let me lie down, however. Instead she stripped me to my boxers with surprising efficiency, and then produced a plastic bin full of the usual lightweight medical odds and ends any home accumulates over time.
“Found it in the hall closet between the bedrooms,” she explained. “Not much in here but the usual stuff, but there’s some gauze and antibiotic ointment. Tape, too, so we can maybe secure some of those wounds.”
I nodded, too deeply tired and hurt to explain that the antibiotics probably weren’t necessary. The Chimera in my system saved me from an infection that turned my entire right side black as it ate away the flesh. A little dirt from zombie claws wasn’t likely to do much damage to my immune system.
“I won’t turn,” I said.
Tabby’s head angled toward me sharply. “What?”
I nodded at the knife sitting on the glass-in-wood coffee table, stained and ugly. “If I die, I won’t turn. I’ve had the cure. You can just take my stuff and leave me. Make your way to Haven, maybe.”
As consciousness faded away, a moment of clarity cut through the fog when I saw her face. The expression was thoughtful. Considering. And why wouldn’t it be? Leaving me was by far the best option for her in the short term. It was a smart move. The idea that this might be my last moment on Earth wasn’t so bad. My share of close calls was not small. I’d faced that crossing before. When you bump up against death as many times as I have, you begin to lose any existential fear of it. If I had to go out after killing some bad guys and helping one person get free, I was okay with it.
So long as I got some rest.
15
This is the part in the story where the dauntless hero awakens after a few fitful hours of sleep, the bandages acting as miraculous cures for his many injuries, and moves from his makeshift bed to find a new enemy hovering over him.
Instead, I woke up slowly and in a lot of pain. I’d been in and out for about twelve hours. Some of that was spent being stitched, and I was too out of it to even think to ask where Tabby got the supplies to do it. Or the skill, for that matter.
“I got a couple cans of beef stew here,” she said, handing me an open tin. “It smells okay. I don’t think it’ll kill us.”
I sat up slowly, wincing with every millimeter of travel. Far from feeling heroic, I was weak. Almost kitten like. Losing a lot of blood will do that to you, especially when paired with as fine a vintage of excitement as fighting and running for your life. Adrenaline will take you a long way right until it doesn’t.
“Should be fine,” I grunted as I slowly shoveled decade-old meat and potatoes into my gullet. “Read a study just before things went sideways about canned food. These scientists took a bunch of canned food and let it sit in like five groups, opening them every five years. The last group was more than twenty years old and still good. Not very tasty, but edible.”
Tabby looked at me in horror. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. That’s disgusting.”
I gave her an astonished look, then pointed with my spoon and sent a few drops of gelatinous gravy spattering across the coffee table. “There’s a dead woman with a smashed skull like ten feet away from us laying across the counter. I can see her feet from here. And you think talking with my mouth full is gross?”
“You’re still doing it,” Tabby said. “Other disgusting things don’t make what you’re doing any less bad. That’s sort of applying moral relativism to things that make you nauseous.”
I shook my head, mostly in wonder. Some people were just wired the way they were wired, and no force short of death could reroute those connections. “You’re a weird chick, Tabby.” I tucked in to the rest of my food with unusual gusto. My body was busy trying to make new blood and it needed material. Same for the healing going on. Chimera would help me there—or at least I hoped it would, after taking the cure—but the lion’s share of the work was still up to my factory parts.
Tabby finished her meal before me, which made sense considering she was already eating when she woke me up. She produced another pair of cans and slid them across the table to me along with a can opener. “Eat all you want. You need to recover.”
I nodded thankfully. What? Did you expect some bullshit chivalry here? No. Practically speaking, it just made more sense for me to prioritize myself. Firstly, because while I didn’t want her to die, Tabby had tried to trick me back in the torture room and before. Under duress, sure, but it was still there. If it came down to a choice between us, now that I was conscious and mentally back to my usual self, I’d pick me.
I didn’t want it to come to that, which was why I ate like a horse. I’d get Tabby to Haven or at least to somewhere safer than here if I could, and I needed to be healthier to do it. If she got hurt, I could carry her. If I was too weak to properly defend myself, no way could she haul my big ass around. Practicality trumps all.
“Where did you get this?” I asked when I had swallowed my last bite, gesturing at the food. “I’d have thought this place would be cleared out.”
Tabby slowly picked herself up and flopped into the recliner sitting at a right angle to my couch. “This house was empty, mostly. The one next door wasn’t. I picked up a few things there, like the fishing line I used to do your stitches. The needles I got from your kit.”
Now fully alert, I studied her. Tabby’s knuckles were red and a little swollen. She rubbed them absently, the way you do right after a fight when the tendons and skin are still freshly aching. There was no blood on her, but the dust on her skin had trails etched through it where sweat had poured not much earlier.
“What did you do? Before, I mean?” I asked it as casually as possible, as if trying to fill the silence as I opened up one of the other cans, which was—ugh—pears.
Tabby, who had been gazing off with her eyes unfocused, brought her attention back to me. “Hmm? Oh, I was a network engineer for a data center. That’s actually how I made it to New America. Our data center was about fifty miles from there, and a bunch of us spent the first few months holed up in it. Kind of as our base, you know?”
That was surprising. “I’d have thought military. Maybe a combat medic, since you stitched me up.”
Tabby shook her head. “You Haven people. After the peace talks, we exchanged information. You have doctors there teaching classes on battlefield medicine, all kinds of stuff, right? Did you think you were the only ones learning new skills? I used to spend ten hours a day troubleshooting high-tech problems, but in my free time I did everything from yoga to about ten weeks of Okinawan Karate. Learning how to stitch a cut from one of our group wasn’t exactly rocket science.”
“Sure,” I said, a little embarrassed. There probably was a fair amount of arrogance in Haven. In all of the Union, really. Because the communities inside it were so many, varied, and spread so far geographically, it became easy to forget there were other people out there with survival pedigrees at least equal to our own. “You must have been on your own for years, though. Rebound didn’t open up their bunker for a long time, and it was a while after that before they founded New Ame
rica.”
Tabby shrugged. “Yeah, but that part of the country wasn’t as bad off. Not as many zombies. We stayed close to the coast in North Carolina, even though we had no idea Rebound was there. Zombies tend to move away from open water, especially oceans. They know there aren’t any people there. Which means if you stay undetected, you can generally handle the stragglers. Gives you the time to set up good defenses and build something, you know?”
The fork in my hand froze midway to my mouth, the limp pear slice quivering in place. “Wait, what? I had no idea about the water. How could we not know that?”
Tabby feigned shock. “What, little old me, knowing something the great Mason didn’t? Why, I’ll have to tell all my girlfriends.”
I snorted a laugh. “Yeah, okay. Message received. I’m an egotistical dick.”
“Nah,” Tabby said with a dismissive shrug. “Just different conditions. Are any of your communities on a lake or ocean?”
I thought about it. There was one on a lake, but it was also centered in the remnants of a large town. Zombies showed up there regardless. The pheromones the dead laid down like invisible signposts were well established there before the Fall was even complete. One of the factory communities was in Florida, and it butted up against the ocean, but it too was in what had been a major population center. Same problem.
“No,” I said. “I mean, yeah, but none in places where people could have avoided zombies long enough for them to get bored and leave.”
“Right,” Tabby said. “Like I said. Circumstances. Now you know the trick. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
I held up the can of pears. “You gave me breakfast, which I’m pretty sure you brought back over the corpse of a zombie or two you had to beat to death with your bare hands. I’d say I owe you one.”
She smiled, and there was nothing demure or humble in it. “This place and the house next door are only about ten feet apart, and there’s a fence covering one side of the space. Just one zombie between them, so I risked it. Not a big deal. But I’ll totally take that favor.”
Beyond The Fall (Book 1): Relentless Sons Page 10