Scarlet slammed a hard knee into the things groin and felt the pelvis break. Adrenaline jacked her strength up and she tossed the flailing woman aside, into the snarling clutches of more of them streaming into the alley. She tried to jump to her feet, to start swinging her batons but was flattened by a snuffling farmer who was snapping at her throat. He couldn’t smell her blood but instinct told him she didn’t move like one of them, she didn’t sound like one of them so she must be prey. More hands grabbed at her and she shattered them with desperate swings. Bodies fell on her, biting at leather and skin and hair and she threw them off, her powerful muscles breaking jaws, smashing skulls, splintering bones. But they kept coming, pouring into the alley from both sides. Fingers ripped at her throat and a stub toothed mouth found the bare skin of her wrist and bit down, all the way to the bone before she crushed his head and knocked him away. Stumbling, shambling husks went insane with need when the warm, red blood started spurting out. There was no masking the scent when it hit the open air. They attacked anything that had been sprayed, zombies were biting zombies and the man who had bit her, his mouth dripping blood, had most of his face torn away in a feeding frenzy. Blood splashed from her wound and they assaulted anything it touched.
Rotting fingernails were torn loose with tufts of her hair as she fought and swung and elbowed and kneed her way out of the pile. She flung the blood from her wrists in to starving, hallowed faces and they destroyed each other. Teeth clamped down hard on her arms and legs, leather saving her from rips and tears but not from the pain and bruising. They kept coming, kept piling on, kept attacking anything with a drop of her blood if they couldn’t get a hand or mouth on her. She couldn’t swing the batons, there was no room, so she collapsed them, bludgeoned faces, cracked skulls and broke bones. She fought like Bastet, like a super human Egyptian Goddess, tossing bodies and ignoring the pain. She fought like a warrior queen, killing undead creatures to her front and killing undead creatures to her rear. Once she finally managed to get to her feet, her fists were steel hammers crushing everything they touched. Her mind raced, always one step ahead. They couldn’t win she told herself. They were too slow and she saw every move they were going to make long before they made it. She spun and whirled, a deadly electric ballet dancer with shattered teeth and sprays of poisonous black blood following her, covering her.
She got her back against a wall and fought. Punching and kicking, stacking bodies and trying to edge towards the entrance of the alley. They kept coming, kept following the keens of the dinner call. From both ends, they kept pouring in. She was already stumbling, trying to keep her feet on the ground and not on top of the dozens of fallen bodies. A big woman, easily four hundred pounds when she was alive, dove for Scarlet and she struck at her with lightning speed, driving a baton through her forehead, sending brains and blood shooting out of both ears. Their dried-out screams never stopped and the others never stopped following them.
Jessie noticed that the tail end of the pack behind him was giving up and turning back towards town. He frowned. He’d never seen that before. He hit play on the iPod and flipped on the loud speakers. Ukrainian Black metal from Drudkh split the day with thundering bass, staccato drum beats and a wall of guitars but they kept peeling off and they weren’t aimlessly wandering back, they were running for something.
Scarlet.
Jessie reacted instantly, floored it and cut the wheel, bouncing off the road and into the overgrown field. The car got sideways in the dirt and he let off the gas, got it straight and hit the juice again. He got around the main mob, left them in a cloud of dust and shifted up a gear. He dodged around the runners, most of them going so fast, leaning so far forward in their hunger they kept overbalancing. Their withered legs couldn’t keep up and they smashed face first into the asphalt. If they were down, he tried to avoid them. If they were up and running, he sent them pinwheeling into the grass or over the roof.
There was only one reason a zombie would abandon the chase. There was something closer and more appealing.
His heart raced, he kept telling himself it was fine, she was a better fighter than him, nothing would happen to her.
He didn’t believe it.
He hit the edge of town going eighty-five and didn’t slow down for the stop sign. He could see them converging towards the courthouse square, stumble-running from between houses, coming out of side streets and streaming towards the vision center.
Jessie plowed into the backs of a running mob, they didn’t even turn to see what was killing them. They were in a frenzy, they smelled blood. Bob barked his hatred at them and Jessie could hear an edge to his voice, too.
He knew.
He knew she was in trouble. He could smell her blood, the only fresh thing there was to smell in a town of rotting dead.
Hurry. Bob urged him with his barks. Hurry. Hurry.
Jessie followed the dead, killing them as he went.
They were headed for the back of the store, back into the alley, and he showed them no mercy as he ran them down and cut to the head of the line. The motor roared and deep treaded tires spun chunks of muscle and skin from emaciated bodies as he bounced over them, tearing apart tendons and bone. The undead screams were constant and hungry and he saw where they were attacking. She had her back against the wall and her body was a blur, dealing out death but she was being overwhelmed. They were stacked waist high around her, a wall of broken, barely moving dead was piling up. Soon they’d be tumbling down on top of her, their sheer weight and numbers crushing her into submission.
Jessie put the hammer down and started plowing a path towards her. Bodies stacked up over the hood, slammed against the cage over the windshield and he kept pushing. His tires found purchase in the Nebraska dirt and he kept moving forward. When he got close, was afraid of crushing her if he kept going, he lowered the bars on the windows and started carving a path to her one shotgun blast at a time.
Bob bounded out after him and ignored the undead reaching for Jessie. He leaped over the stacked, crushed and struggling bodies, snarling his rage and fighting his way toward Scarlet.
To his master’s mate.
She must be protected. She was the weakest. She fought for her life with only her hands and he could sense her weariness. Master didn’t need help, he had the firesticks that ended all life. The mother of their pack was wounded and tired. Her blood had been spilled and the dead things that wouldn’t stay dead must pay. They must not harm the Mother. He would teach them. He would destroy them all.
Jessie cleared a path to the wall of dead built up around her, walking on bodies two and three deep. The deafening blast of the shotgun killed three or four with every trigger pull, exploding heads adding their own stench and slippery mess to the chaos. Bob was ripping out throats and ripping off faces, his snarling, guttural growls coming deep from inside him. He fought the horde directly in front of Scarlet and at his side was a hissing, screeching mass of yellow fur clawing out eyes and spitting her anger. Nefertiti had joined the fight and looked double her normal size with her fur standing straight up. It was getting too close for gunfire and when a lunge from Bob knocked a zombie out of the way, Jessie reached for Scarlet and pulled her out of the hole she’d built. They fought their way back to the car, stumbling over stacked bodies the whole way, finally making it to the roof. Hundreds were all around them, clawing their way towards the fresh red blood, keening their hunger and screaming their frustration.
Bob leapt on to the hood and started ripping apart the reaching arms, tearing off searching hands and casting them aside. Nefertiti leaped from face to face, scratching and spitting, leaving ribbons of flesh dangling and punctured eyeballs leaking down sun baked cheeks.
“Hold on!” Jessie yelled and Scarlet grabbed on to the straps of the extra fuel tank, panting and out of breath. The mob was pressed hard against the car all the way around, jammed in tight, crushed from behind. He threw himself at a woman blocking his window. Both boots crushed her back into the crowd just enough
as he bounced off of her and through the open window. Hands reached for him and he ignored them as he banged reverse, let the clutch fly and put the go pedal to the floor.
Big tires churned the dirt and the car only moved a half dozen feet before grinding to a halt. Too many behind, it couldn’t muscle through hundreds of bodies. He grabbed first gear before the hole could be filled and slammed into the horde to his front. The car started spinning and he threw it in reverse again. The bodies he’d crushed had fallen to the ground in broken heaps and those behind stumbled and tripped over them. Jessie hit the human ramp with both wheels clawing for traction and launched up it, his back bumper taking off heads, matted, greasy scalps yanked loose in the driveshaft and upturned mouths torn away by spinning tires. The horde thinned near the entry of the alley and the crowd surfing Mercury bounced to the ground on a pile of writhing bodies.
Jessie continued in reverse until he was a half a block ahead of the unbroken ones as they stumbled and ran towards him with Bob and Nefertiti leading the way. Scarlet slid off the roof and the two animals bound inside the open door. Jessie barely let her get inside before he was flat footing it again, leaving the town behind in a cloud of dust.
91
Jessie + Scarlet
Jessie pulled his bandanna from around his neck and handed it to her, dodged around another group running from a side street and headed for an exit to this deathtrap of a town. Scarlet wrapped her shredded wrist, put pressure on the wound and leaned back in her seat, exhausted.
Jessie drove hard, teeth bared, nostrils flared, seething with impotent rage. His face was a mask of black hate and terrible to behold as he white knuckled the wheel. He fed on it, the only thing he had left. His boiling, murderous fury. They had taken her. They had killed her. The one good thing in his world. He had so much venom in him, his blood was poison. If you drank it, you would die. He’d come back, he’d kill them. He’d kill them all. He’d burn this place to the ground and grind the ashes under his boots. He’d…
“I’m okay.” she said, reaching over to push a strand of hair out of his face. “I’m fine.”
Tears streamed down his splattered face, leaving clean tracks in the black blood sprays. His hands clenched the wheel so tight his knuckles ached and he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t answer. She’d been bit. How long did he have? What was he supposed to do?
She’d been bit.
It was payback, he knew it. It was justice and karma. He’d gotten those kids from the orphanage killed then he’d forgotten about them. He’d let go of the darkness he deserved and had the audacity to be happy. He’d found someone he loved more than life itself, some one he’d kill or die for, and now she was being taken away. Now it was his turn to feel the loss of someone so close. Everyone else had, everyone else had lost wives and husbands and children.
His turn.
Scarlet lay back in the seat and closed her eyes. Nefertiti climbed into her lap, ignoring the gore smearing her fur, curled up and purred as Scarlet absently stroked her.
Jessie drove. Even the cat knew she was dying, changing into one of those things, and wanted to spend a few minutes with her before she was gone. His mind was blank, he didn’t know where he was or where he was going, he just kept the wheels between the ditches. Should he pull over? Try to have one last meaningful conversation? He would only see her slip away little by little then. She’d been bit hard, not just a little nibble. He’d seen her wrist flayed open to the bone when he pulled her out of the piles of bodies. How long did she have? He wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t watch her skin go pale and her eyes go dead. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
It hurt. It was a physical pain, his heart ached with each beat and he wanted to scream until his throat was bloody and raw.
Jessie drove.
He couldn’t stop, couldn’t help, couldn’t do anything. She was happy where she was, he told himself. They had shared so much, got to know each other, laughed and joked and spent endless hours listening to music right where they were. In the machine. Curled up on the bed sometimes just breathing in each other’s scent, fingers running over skin, becoming so close they felt like one being. The car had taken them places, kept them safe, let them learn how to love as the miles passed under the tires.
She rested, cat in her lap, eyes closed and Jessie drove.
He wouldn’t stop. When she changed, he wouldn’t let go of the steering wheel, he’d go with her. He’d let her do what ever she wanted, feed as much as she wanted. He could take it. The pain of torn flesh would be nothing to the pain he felt now. He probably wouldn’t even feel it.
She stirred and he prepared himself. He wouldn’t look at her. He wouldn’t see what she became, he would only remember who she’d been. He gripped the wheel tighter. He wouldn’t let go. He wouldn’t fight her. He was tired of this world and would follow her into the next.
“I love you.” he said, his voice breaking, saying goodbye. “I love you so much.”
He was ready and stared out of the windshield, at the impossible blue sky. It was a good day to die.
“Aww, that’s sweet, Jessie.” she said “but I’m hungry. Do we have any of that chunky steak and potatoes soup left?”
He jerked his head around to stare at her. He’d expected a guttural growl or a screeching keen to come from her lips, not a request for Campbells soup.
She was rewrapping her wrist with a clean bandage from the first aid kit in the glove box. It had nearly stopped bleeding.
“What?” she asked at the look on his face “It’ll be fine. It bled a lot but he didn’t get the main vein. Going to leave a scar, though.”
“You got bit!” Jessie said, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, so?” she asked. “It’s not that bad. Better than getting shot. Do we have any of that soup or not?”
“Yes.” Jessie said. “Or no. Didn’t you give it to Darren? Hell, I don’t know. Scarlet, you got bit!”
She looked up from tying off the knot with her teeth, at his anguished face and tear stained cheeks.
“Jessie.” she said softly, suddenly understanding. “We’re immune. We already have the zombie virus in our systems, it’s in the shots. Like a vaccine of sorts. That’s why they usually don’t attack me, I smell like them.”
Jessie stared at her until the car drifted to the edge and he jerked it back on the road then stared out the windshield. His brain seemed to be moving in slow motion. They were immune?
“You don’t smell like them.” he finally said “You don’t smell like moldy people’s feet.”
“You know what I mean. They sense I’m like them, that my blood has already been infected.” She touched the bandage gingerly.
“Usually.” she added.
Jessie just stared at her.
“You’re immune, too. You’ve never been bit?” she asked.
“It’s something I try to avoid, duh.” he answered, starting to feel silly.
“You really love me?” she asked, smiling impishly “or only said that because you thought I was dying?”
Jessie didn’t answer, just opened and closed his mouth a few times then concentrated on the road. Of course, he loved her! God! He was going to let her kill him rather than lose her. But he couldn’t tell her that, now that the moment had passed, it all seemed so teenage angsty, so melodramatic.
“He loves me.” she told the purring cat. “Did you hear? Jessie loves Scarlet. I’m going to carve that on a tree.”
Jessie was getting embarrassed. He’d never said those words to a girl before. He wiped at his cheeks, smearing drying tears and undead blood and tried to change the subject.
“Your cat is pretty badass. I’ve never seen one act like a dog before and protect its owner.”
“Cats are smarter than dogs.” she said, stroking the furball, ignoring his snort of derision. “Besides, I gave her what was left in the injectors back at the farm.”
“Really?” Jessie asked, looking at the barn cat again, seeing it with new eyes.
“I thought I’d give it a try, there were a few drops left in each one. I think she’s smart like Bob now. And very protective.”
She picked up the cat and rubbed their faces together.
“She’s a good kitty, aren’t you?” she asked “You helped save Scarlet, whom Jessie said he loves very much and would do anything for.”
“Jessie didn’t say all that.” Jessie said, squirming a little in his seat.
“Such a good kitty.” She snuggled her close “You’ll be the queen of the castle Jessie said he would build for the love of his life.”
“Pretty sure I didn’t say anything about building you a castle.” Jessie said.
“You can be a high minister in the religion Jessie said he would start to honor his one true love. We’ll give you the keys to the city Jessie will build and call Scarlet so her name will live on forever, proclaiming his eternal love.”
“Yep. No cities.” Jessie said. “Are you sure that zombie didn’t bite you in the head? Maybe eat some of your brain?”
The miles rolled on, their close brush with death willfully being forgotten and Scarlet directed him to a river crossing out in the middle of nowhere. It hadn’t rained recently and the waters were slow and clear. A perfect place to take a bath, fix an early dinner and really unwind. He cleaned and dressed her wound, poured liberal amounts of hydrogen peroxide in it and used super glue to put the skin back in place, a trick he’d learned in one of the field medicine classes. They joked about it, tried to make light of it, but it had been a close call. The undead would have torn her to pieces, vaccinated blood or not. It was warm and red and they were in a frenzy
Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet Page 59