Nowhere to Hide

by Tobin, Tracey

  They were floating close to a group of small commercial buildings, including a convenience store that had a strange bit of graffiti on it in neon yellow spray-paint. It was an enormous heart with with “N+K” written in the center. Nancy had to fight the urge to laugh out loud. Ken muttered, “Cute, Greg, cute,” under his breath with a twitch of a smile on his lips.

  They looked at each other and smiled, and for a moment they both truly believed that they were about to catch up with Greg and Sarah and all would be right again for a while.

  And then the canoe suddenly shifted beneath them and they were tossed into the freezing water.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It felt as though all of Nancy’s senses had been striped from her and she was simply floating in a void. Then the bitter chill of the water surrounded her body, the salty burn of it found her lips and nostrils and stung her eyes. Her ears filled with the steady thrum of water pressure, but underneath there was something else: a low, constant moan.

  Panic set in as she realized what was happening. They’d floated into shallow water. Above her, a mere foot out of reach, was their overturned canoe. Beside her, red in the face and looking as though he was choking, was Ken. And all around them were the dead, oblivious to the water that filled their decomposing lungs. The murkiness of the water hid the zombies’ numbers, but she could see at least ten. She tried to swim away from them, but between her panic and the slow motion movements of being underwater she wasn’t fast enough. Before she had even come to grips with the situation one zombie had her by the hair, another by the arm. All she wanted to do was shriek, but when she parted her lips water rushed in and choked her.

  Then all at once the water exploded into brilliant flowers of red. Ken had hauled back with one of the rifles and shoved the barrel into the eye socket of the zombie holding Nancy’s arm. Moving as fast as he could under the pressure of the water, he then turned, ripping the rifle along with him, and thrust the butt of it into the face of the zombie that had Nancy’s hair.

  It was like moving through molasses. All Nancy could think to do was move, move as fast as she could in whatever direction was available. She chose to go up first. It was an immense relief to taste air again and to have Ken’s head break the surface next to her. That relief dissipated immediately as the clammy, dead hands continued to paw at them from beneath the gentle waves.

  “Swim!” Ken sputtered stupidly. He was coughing up what looked like buckets of saltwater.

  Shore felt like a hundred miles away and the zombies were everywhere, barely hidden under the dark water. Nancy kicked and screamed and cried while she swam, her boots connecting with jaws, her hands squishing past grimy hair that felt like seaweed. Several times she felt jagged, claw-like fingernails ripping at her skin, but she couldn’t stop moving. She had to keep going forward, to get to the shore where they could at least run. Her feet weren’t on solid ground for more than half a second before she was off at a sprint. It was several seconds later before her heart leaped in her throat and she turned around to find that Ken hadn’t yet followed her out of the water. In fact, he wasn’t visible at all. By the time she had sprinted back to the water line his head reappeared, but there was a great deal of blood pooling around him and Nancy couldn’t tell whether or not it was his.

  As Nancy threw her hand out to grab at her lover, a dozen slimy hands shot out of the water and tried to pull Ken down. For a heartbeat Nancy almost pulled her hand back and ran, but instead she threw herself at the water, snatched Ken by both arms, and pulled as hard as she could. Her arms and ankles flared with the pain of dozens of fingernails clawing at her as she and Ken tumbled backward into the rocky shoreline. Nancy scrambled to her feet. Ken didn’t. Nancy didn’t waste time to find out why. With her body screaming under the weight, she hauled him up under his arms and stumbled away from the death-filled water. She ignored the large amount of blood that was trailing behind them.

  “We’re going to make it to that restaurant,” Nancy gasped, willing her voice to be confident. She kept her eyes resolutely forward as they blundered toward the nearest building. She thought Ken said something, but his voice gurgled in a strange way so she just kept dragging him along and refused to look at him. She could hear the zombies getting closer, the water dripping from their shambling bodies. A hand that had very little meat left on it snatched at her sweater and urged her to push herself forward a little faster.

  If the restaurant door had been locked it would have all been over right then. The zombies were right at their heels, so there would have been no time to jimmy the door or smash the handle off. Relief filled Nancy’s throat and heart as the gold-plated handle shifted under her wet fingers. She tripped through the door, shoving Ken along in front of her, slammed it shut, and twisted the bolt against the outreached arms of the dead.

  “We’re going to be okay,” she huffed. She bundled a heavily-breathing Ken up against the nearby host podium and immediately began running back and forth to the door with bits of furniture. “It’s going to be okay, you’ll see!” she continued as she moved. She could hear the panic in her voice but she struggled to sound reassuring. “We’ll just hole up here until they go away, and-”

  “Nan-cy...”

  She stopped dead, facing the door with a wrought iron chair gripped in her hands. She squeezed the metal so hard that her fingers swelled red and then white. The voice that had called her name was thick and wet. She was afraid to turn around.

  “Nan-cy...p-lease...”

  She shook her head in defiance, but she couldn’t stop her body from turning. She looked at Ken for the first time since she’d pulled him from the water.

  There was so much blood that she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Some of it had to be from the zombies, she thought, but not all of it. Some was pooling around his body, seeping through a large tear in his shirt that he was clutching at with one soaked hand. He was slumped against the podium, and from the looks of things it was the only thing keeping the top half of his body from crashing to the floor. His face had become frighteningly pale, except for his eyes, which were glassy and had dark rings around them.

  He was dying, Nancy realized with certainty. There was no way to deny it. He was fading away right before her eyes. The chair fell from her hands and clattered to the floor.

  “No,” she whispered. She dropped to her knees and crawled toward Ken, one horrible movement at a time, until her face was inches from his. She blinked at the wet in her eyes and repeated, louder this time, “No!”

  Ken opened his mouth to speak, but he coughed instead. Speckles of blood went flying from his lips.

  Nancy’s whole body was shaking as she placed trembling hands on the cool skin of Ken’s face. “No!” she cried again, stubborn, angry, terrified. “You can’t leave me now! Now now! You can’t!” She couldn’t stop herself from weeping openly. She buried her face into his shoulder and clutched blindly at his hair.

  Ken raised a hand, pale and freezing cold, and gently stroked the back of Nancy’s neck. It was a futile attempt at comfort, but Nancy clung desperately to the feel of his skin against hers. “I’m...s-so...s-sor-ry...” his voice whispered in her ear.

  Nancy’s mind raced to find some hope, some way she could help him, something to stop this thing from happening. With each passing second her heart plummeted deeper because she knew there was nothing she could do. Instead, she sobbed, refusing to let him go. She tried to ignore the coppery scent of blood and the cold of his skin and remember what it had felt like when their warm bodies had rested side-by-side.

  “N-nan-cy...” His voice was getting weaker by the moment.

  Nancy forced herself to look up. Ken was holding something that he’d pulled from the remains of the pack hanging from his shoulder. At first Nancy didn’t understand what he was trying to show her, but when she managed to focus through the tears she saw what it was. A hand grenade.

  “F-found...c-ca-bin...” Ken tried to explain.

  Nancy found h
erself shaking her head vehemently. She didn’t need any explanation of what he was planning, but she couldn’t seem to speak either.

  Ken lifted his other hand, the one that had been clutching at the wound in his side. Nancy swore she could see bone beneath the blood. Ken didn’t seem to see anything anymore. He placed his wet, sticky hand on Nancy’s neck and guided her head down so that their foreheads touched. There were tears in his eyes, but also a fierce determination. Nancy thought that he looked like the bravest man in the world.

  “G-go...out b-back,” he told her. “W-while you s-still can. Ff-find...Gr-eg...S-sarah...”

  For the first time since she’d seen Ken’s wounds, Nancy realized that they were surrounded by the din of the zombies beating on the restaurant. He was right. She probably had only a small window of time in which she’d have a chance to escape the building before more zombies came and there was no way out. She had to go now if she was going to go at all.

  “I love you...” she whispered as tears dripped down her nose and lips.

  Ken blinked a few times. Nancy could tell that he was trying to be strong for her. “L-love...you...t-too,” he forced out.

  It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do, pulling herself away from him. For a moment she considered ripping the pin from the grenade and clutching herself to his body so that they could die together. Only the thought of Greg and Sarah kept her from committing suicide with her lover, the man she might have married and grown old with.

  She pressed her lips to his one last time, a good-bye kiss that was over far too quickly. And then, because she knew she wasn’t strong enough to look at him as she left, she stood and ran for the back of the building, weeping the whole way. Her heart struggled just to keep functioning, but somehow her body carried her through the restaurant, past the greasy kitchen, and out the fire exit. Her feet miraculously continued to move as the pavement flew away beneath her. A few zombies appeared in her peripheral vision and she jumped a short chain-link fence, hit the ground with enough force to send shock-waves through her ankles, and kept running.

  She was about a block away when the explosion rocked the air around her. She tripped and went tumbling down the road for a few feet before finding herself on her elbows, staring wide-eyed back at the devastation behind her. Several smaller explosions tossed shrapnel in every direction as the restaurant went up in flames.

  For a while Nancy lay there and stared at the fire. Though she tried as hard as she could she couldn’t banish the image in her head of Ken sitting in that restaurant, all alone with a live grenade in his bloodied hand. She felt like her heart was being crushed from within, like every breath of oxygen had gone from her body. She didn’t even have any tears left. All she could do was think about how Ken - wonderful, brave, kind Ken - was suddenly gone from this world. She would never see him again.

  Nancy might have stayed in the middle of the road and waited to die herself, hoping to join her lover in whatever afterlife might exist, but when a few shambling bodies, burnt nearly to a crisp, began to stumble out of the fires something inside took over and she stood up. Her legs moved of their own accord. She began to run again. She ran through empty streets with the threat of burning zombies only a few blocks away. Without realizing she was doing it she scanned the buildings for the signs Greg had left behind. When she saw one her heart gave a strange lurch. She adjusted her path to follow where the sign seemed to lead.

  Just as her body was beginning to wear down, heavy with fatigue both physical and emotional, she found herself stumbling into the marina. Her eyes scrutinized the wharf. Many docks were empty, but a few remained. Several of those vessels remaining were in shambles, but one in particular caught Nancy’s eye. It was fairly large fishing vessel that had been cut loose from the dock and moved about a hundred feet away from the shore. It seemed whole and unsullied. She was certain that this was the one Greg had chosen, not only because it had clearly been moved, but because the irony of the name emblazoned on the hull made her want to cry aloud: My Escape.

  From somewhere behind her Nancy could hear the distant, echoing moans creeping toward her. Frantic, she searched for a way to get out to the boat. There, she thought, spying a small rowboat with a yellow heart spray-painted on the inside. She forced her body to move forward and staggered into the little wooden craft. It was all she could do not to collapse into it head first. With the last of her energy she untied the rowboat and kicked the dock hard to send herself floating out into open water.

  Once she was away from the dock she allowed herself to collapse onto the floor of the little boat. Her body was broken, but her mind was alive and alert. It wouldn’t stop playing the scene over and over in front of her eyes. She was staring at the clear blue sky, but all she could see was the look on Ken’s face just before she turned and ran from his side. Her chest ached terribly. She should have stayed behind and died with him. But she needed to find Greg and Sarah. Ken didn’t deserve to die alone like that. But Greg and Sarah didn’t deserve to lose both of them in one fell swoop. She loved him. She loved them too.

  Though her muscles felt as though they’d been pumped full of cement, Nancy forced herself to sit up and dip the oars into the water. Moving forward was the only way she could get any tiny bit of relief from her thoughts.

  The access ladder was on the side of the boat that was facing away from the shore. Nancy rowed herself around the side of the vessel toward it just as the zombies began to appear from behind nearby buildings. She hoped they hadn’t seen her. Even though they seemed to be unable to swim properly, the thought of the hoard wandering around mindlessly beneath the water gave her no end of chills.

  She thought that her arms might give out on her before she could reach the ship’s deck, but somehow she made it and flopped over the railing with a thud. She may have laid there forever if not for the bright splash of red that caught her eye.

  There was a trail of blood all along the floor, leading down below deck. There was quite a lot of it.

  Only one possibility came to the forefront of Nancy’s mind. She found that she couldn’t breathe. She began to shake. She didn’t want to know. But she had to know.

  The stairwell was dark, but there was enough light filtering down for her to see that there was blood on the steps and along the wall. It might have been her imagination but it seemed much, much colder down here below deck.

  And there he was. Nancy stared for a long time, denying, bargaining, wondering if she was dreaming, praying that she was dreaming. After a while she walked forward and placed a hesitant hand on Greg’s cold, pale face.

  Nancy’s own body felt like ice. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t cry. She felt that the last little bit of her was shutting down. All she could do was stare at the pale, dead face of her friend, her brother. Gently, as though frightened that she would harm him in some way, she brushed a strand of hair out of his face and closed his eyes.

  Half of her mind was screaming to find the baby, that surely Greg would have used the last of his strength to ensure Sarah’s safety, but the other half of her mind was entranced in the scene before her. Greg was slumped in a chair behind a desk, his head covered in so much blood that she couldn’t discern where the wound was. The gun he had taken from the farmhouse had dropped to the floor beneath where his hand now hung limp. He’d shot himself, she realized, and found a flare of anger filling her chest. She wanted to scream, How dare he?! How dare he give up like this?! But a moment later she saw the bigger picture. There was a large gash torn across his chest, and upon further examination one of his arms was torn partially off at the elbow. After taking all this in it wasn’t long before Nancy noticed the note on the table in front of him. The paper was spattered in blood and the writing was wobbly and unsure, but she could make it out.

  Nancy and Ken,

  I’m so sorry. I was stupid. I let my guard down. The owner of the boat was here when I came aboard. I wasn’t quick enough. I got him and tossed him overboard, but I wasn’t quick en
ough. I’m dying and I’m scared. I don’t want to be one of them. I’m sorry, but I’m going to shoot myself. I can’t become one of them.

  Nancy, thank you for everything. I love you like you were my real sister, but if there’s a heaven I’ll be with my own family soon. I’m sorry I couldn’t hold out until you got here, but I can feel myself getting weaker. I just pray that you get here soon because Sarah needs you and I can’t be with her much longer.

  Please forgive me. I love you.

  -Greg

  A few teardrops landed on the paper and made the blood spots run.

  And then there was a groan.

  It took Nancy a long time to lift her eyes, to look up at the thing that had been Greg. It was staring at her with wide, lifeless eyes, it’s mouth hanging open. It lifted the arm that was still whole and reached forward.

  “You couldn’t do it,” Nancy whispered. She looked at his blood-soaked hair and realized that it wasn’t his, but from the zombie he’d fought. “You tried to kill yourself and you couldn’t do it.” Tears rolled down her eyes.

  He looked at her, moaned at her like a wounded animal who was hungry and confused. His fingers opened and closed as he reached. For just a moment Nancy imagined that he recognized her, saw a future where she somehow managed to cure him of this postmortem disease. Then he opened his mouth wider than a human mouth should open and screeched an unholy screech, and the image was shattered.

  He lunged over the table at her, and there was no time to think, no time to deliberate. She rolled to the side, snatched up the rifle that Greg had tried to use to end his own suffering, and fired.

  There was half a moment during which she thought she’d missed, during which the zombie that had been Greg stared at her with something like shock on it’s newly-bloodied face. And then the body crumpled to the ground.