“Wait, Ken-” Before Ehsan could finish his sentence, Ken charged ahead.
“I can’t let him go alone,” Mateo decided. He turned to Ehsan and Fatima. “Those sprinters are still distracted. Take ‘em out. I’m gonna help Ken.”
Before either of them could respond, Mateo sprinted away. Ehsan and Fatima exchanged glances. They approached the sprinters on the balls of their feet, slow and steady, eager not to make a sound. Once they got within striking distance they exchanged glances once more and nodded, each bringing their weapon down on the neck of a sprinter at the exact same time. Ehsan held his breath as his sore muscles brought his shovel head into the zombie’s neck. Both zombies crumpled to the ground. Now only one remained, which turned toward Fatima. Before it could get up, however, Ehsan attacked its legs. He then pinned it down while Fatima delivered the finishing blow.
Ehsan breathed a sigh of relief. He saw Hector reach the woman and help her comfort the kids. Hector held Juan in his arms while the woman did the same for Lucero and Andrea. Andrea was hysterical, while Juan looked numb. Lucero cried despite her best efforts, still trying to put on a brave face even after everything she’d seen. The woman looked like she wanted to tell Hector something but couldn’t find the words, opening her mouth to speak until her lower jaw started to quiver and she had to shut it.
“Ken, come back! We need a plan!” Fatima shouted.
Ken didn’t seem to hear her. As soon as he reached the horde he went to work. He possessed the grace of a ballerina, flowing between zombies like a leaf flowing between rocks as it travels downriver. He glided around effortlessly, able to fluidly change direction in a fraction of a second. Mateo looked like an arthritic retiree next to him. Ken peppered in swift combinations of three to four punches against each zombie, none of them with overwhelming amounts of power, but all of them with perfect form and precision. Mateo, meanwhile, used his usual combination of ax chops, elbows, and kicks. While he lacked Ken’s movement, his more versatile attacks allowed his dead zombie count to keep up with Ken’s.
“Damn,” Ehsan commented, his chest feeling light and warm upon seeing their success. The image of both Ryan and the dead boxer finally left his mind. “Maybe we really can do this.”
“As long as they avoid getting themselves killed,” Fatima pointed out after slicing the boxer’s throat to prevent him from turning. “We should go help.”
“Let’s,” Ehsan agreed. The two of them ran up the street, Ehsan feeling every bit of the soreness he’d earned from the previous twenty four hours, both physical and mental, though also buoyed by the display Ken and Mateo had put on. They’d already disposed of eleven of the thirty-something zombies before Ehsan and Fatima joined them.
“You MMA fighters need a lesson in footwork,” Ken said to Mateo.
Mateo grinned. “You boxers need lessons in everything else.”
Ehsan and Fatima reached the beginning of the small herd. Mateo nodded toward them briefly before chopping a short, middle-aged looking zombie square in the jaw with his ax and kicking it away as it writhed in agony. Ehsan and Fatima got to work. As they fought the zombies, Ehsan made an effort to remember what Mateo had taught him. He circled around the zombies to avoid getting trapped, tried to trick them by changing directions, and used push kicks to keep them away him and his sister.
The four of them soon eradicated the remaining zombies. Ehsan took a moment to hunch over and catch his breath. Before he could make a joke about how easy it had been, however, he saw the concern on Ken’s face as he sprinted toward Hector, the woman, and the kids. Ehsan, Fatima, and Mateo followed, though Ehsan and Fatima had trouble keeping up. Ehsan looked up the street to see Hector squatting down on the floor, hands pulling his hair, his eyes bulging. The woman paced back and forth next to him. Lucero and Andrea wept while Juan looked despondent.
“What happened?!” Ken cried as he closed in on the group.
“The clinic,” Hector muttered. “It’s gone.”
Ken’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t mean…”
“Yeah.” Hector started to breathe heavily.
“Breath, Hector, it’s okay,” Mateo soothed as he reached the group.
“What happened, Emma?” Ken demanded of the woman.
Emma stopped pacing. Her lower jaw trembled. “I-I don’t know, I was just checking M-Mike for laryngitis when I heard screaming. Next thing you know, th-there was a loud crashing noise. A few minutes later, they were in the room. Mike tried to fight them, and I tried to help, but…” She pulled out a small, bloodied scalpel. “We tried, but there were so many. After Mike got bit I took the kids to climb through the window. Tim c-covered us. We went around the back, s-so we didn’t see what the front looked like, but I heard enough screams to guess.” She shook her head. “I thought we’d gotten away when we made it outside, but then I saw the sprinters right behind us.”
“We need to go back,” Ken declared, looking over to Hector. “Hector, we need to go before it’s too late.”
Hector stood up, the uncertainty visible on his face. Before he could say anything, however, Emma spoke up. “Ken, it’s already too late. By the time I left every boxer except Tim was dead, and now he is, too. I’ve got the kids, so at best there might be a couple of the staff left, but I doubt it. Please don’t throw your life away, Ken. Please.”
Ken shook his head. “I have to try, Emma.”
Emma sighed. “I just don’t wanna see anything happen to you too, Ken. It was awful.”
“Ken, listen to her,” Fatima pleaded. She lowered her voice. “If you care about the kids, you cannot go.”
“I want them to still have a home,” Ken countered. He looked at Hector, pleading with his eyes for him to join, but Hector avoided his gaze. He sneered and ran in the direction of the clinic.
“So what do we do now?” Ehsan asked as he watched with dismay as Ken rushed up the street.
Fatima sighed. “We go investigate, I suppose. We cannot afford to have a fighter of his talents throw his life away. Plus, while rushing in recklessly is the last thing we should do, it may help us to scout the clinic for clues. The enemy may even still be in the area.”
“Let’s do this,” Mateo agreed as he slung his ax over his shoulder.
Fatima turned around to Emma. “Do you know how to get back to the school?”
“I do, but I’d rather not go alone,” she answered, gesturing over toward the kids. “I can handle a few normal zombies, but I don’t like running around knowing things like those sprinters are out there.”
“I’ll go with her,” Hector volunteered. Mateo looked at him in surprise. Hector sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t go back there. It’s not that I’m scared- I mean, I am, but that’s not the main reason. I just can’t stand the thought of seeing… well, seeing it the way it probably is right now.”
Fatima nodded. “I completely understand, Hector. Go ahead. Before you return, though, please look for Julie. Explain what happened loudly enough so that Deon and Sarah know to follow you back to the school. They will be able to help if you run into any serious trouble.”
“Gotcha,” Hector agreed with a determined nod. With one last look at Ken, who’d just turned the corner to get to the next street, Hector left with Emma and the kids.
The three of them ran back to the last row of houses before the clinic. Ehsan’s legs burned in protest at the effort it took to catch up with Ken, who saw them from the front porch of the house whose backyard contained the path to the clinic. He waited for them to catch up. As they avoided the car in front of the house and walked up the driveway, Ehsan could hear the zombies from the other side of the house. Ken tried to open the door, but it was locked.
“Let’s break it down,” he whispered.
“No, that would attract too much attention,” Fatima pointed out. “If whoever did this is still here, we want the element of surprise. We should go through the side.”
The four of them snuck to the side of the house, Ken
still leading the way. The brown wooden fence to the backyard stood about six feet tall. When they reached the gate, Mateo gave Ken enough of a boost to open the latch on the other side. The door creaked open. Up ahead another gate awaited them, this one to the full backyard. They crept along the side of the house, glancing at the windows to make sure no one watched them, before reaching the next gate. Ehsan could hear zombies directly on the other side. At least dozens.
“Get ready,” Mateo whispered. Once more he gave a boost to Ken. This time, however, as Ken’s eyes peeked over the horizon of the fence, his eyes widened with shock, then quickly narrowed with fury. All caution flew out the window. He noisily opened the latch and clumsily hopped off of Mateo’s hands. He swung the gate open and a sea of zombies locked eyes with them.
Ehsan froze. He scanned the scene in front of him until something in particular caught his eye: the walls. The front of a massive cement truck appeared through the remains of the wall to their right. Debris covered the truck while zombies poured in from either side.
Someone had destroyed the walls deliberately before launching their attack.
He looked back over to the horde in front of him. They started making their way toward the four of them. Fortunately, all of them seemed slow. Unfortunately, they filled the backyard so densely that none had more than a few inches of space between them. Ehsan’s heart raced for what must’ve been the hundredth time in the last twenty four hours, though the lack of any sprinters prevented the terror from becoming unmanageable.
“We need to get inside,” Ken began, raising his fists. “There’s-”
Fatima put her hand on Ken’s shoulder. “Ken, there are far too many. Plus, there is not nearly enough space for you to use your movement. We have no way to safely get through.”
“I have to at least-”
The zombie closest to Ken, its eyes terrifyingly lucid, pointed at him. “Food,” it growled. Its neighbor nodded stiffly. Ehsan felt light-headed.
“What-” Ken began, dumbfounded.
“Eat,” the other grunted. The two of them stood less than a yard away from Ken and Mateo, their less sentient kind right behind them.
“We have to go,” Fatima urged. She hated Ken’s unrelenting stubbornness.
Mateo remained in place. “Wait. I agree, but I also think we should see what they’re capable of.”
Fatima begrudgingly realized Mateo had a point. Fighting the sprinters had given them valuable experience. The same could happen here, as only Josue had fought the sentient variety so far. “I suppose it would be a good idea to figure out how these things fight, but please be careful.” Mateo nodded. He and Ken stood their ground. Fatima looked at Ehsan, hoping to convince him to move back. The color had drained from his face and he leaned against his shovel for support. “Ehsan. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he answered, trying to straighten up. He took a deep breath and smiled weakly. “Feel like I just ate at Denny’s, though.”
She ignored his joke and put her arm around him. “We need to give them more room.”
They backed up while watching Mateo and Ken fight the two sentient zombies. After his third step backward, Ehsan stumbled over. He would have fallen down had her arm not been there. Fatima helped him regain his footing, then looked over to Mateo and Ken. Ken went for a punch with his right hand, but the zombie brought its hands up to block. Ken’s right arm hit the zombie’s guard. The zombie then grabbed his arm before he could pull it away. He thrashed around impotently. The zombie’s grip proved unrelenting, no matter how hard Ken struggled. It tried to pull Ken’s arm to its mouth, but Ken had just enough strength to keep his arm from moving. He gritted his teeth.
The two locked eyes. Ken punched it in the face with his left arm while Mateo struck its arms with Nimbus, causing it to let go of Ken, who stumbled backward. Ken straightened himself up. The zombie horde behind the two intelligent ones closed in.
“Shit, they really are intelligence,” Ken observed as he backtracked.
“Looks like we have to use some fight science, then,” Mateo pointed out as he took a step back of his own.
Ken nodded. He went for another punch, which the zombie raised its arms to block again, but he punched its stomach instead of its guarded head. The zombie grunted, clearly not enjoying the strength of the impact. Ken threw another punch to the stomach. The zombie grimaced. Ken faked like he was going to hit the zombie in the stomach again and it flinched, bringing its hands down to guard its midsection instead of its head. Ken faked another punch for the body, causing it to drop its arms even further down to protect its stomach, but Ken punched it in the jaw. The punch caused the zombie to rock backwards while raising its hands to guard its face. Ken punched it twice in the stomach, causing it to drop its hands. Three rapid punches to the head sent it toppling onto the ground, landing on its back.
Mateo, meanwhile, kicked his zombie in the solar plexus, causing it to stumble backward into three of its less intelligent kind. It would have fallen to the ground if not for those three. It regained its balance and continued forward. Mateo kicked its legs, a dull thud echoing upon each impact. After a few kicks on each leg, the zombie could barely walk. Mateo kicked it one final time with as much force as he could, causing it to buckle, then hit it square in the knee with Nimbus. The zombie fell to the ground, no longer able to walk.
The zombies coming forward began to trip over the two sentient zombies Ken and Mateo had disabled. The sight of Ken and Mateo handling the sentient zombies gave Fatima a second wind. She also took note of the strategies being employed by each of them in their attacks. She turned to Ehsan to see he had regained some of his composure. The time had come for a clean escape.
“Good job slowing them down, you two. We should leave, now,” Fatima declared. She let go of Ehsan, who had regained enough composure to move on his own.
Ken shook his head. “I need to-”
“Ken.” Mateo grabbed Ken’s shoulder forcefully. “You’ve done all you can, but you’ve seen what’s left here. We’ve gotta go back. The kids are okay. You’re okay. For now, that’s enough.”
Ken brushed off Mateo’s hand and said nothing, but nodded. The four of them turned around and left the backyard, closing the fence behind them. Fatima thought about how poorly the fence would hold the horde. As they ran to the street, she looked to the nearest car.
“We should block the gate!” Fatima proposed.
Mateo shook his head. “Gas goes bad after a while. It wouldn’t start.”
“No need to start it,” Fatima countered. “We just need it in neutral.”
The realization prompted a grin from Mateo. “It’s worth a shot.”
The four of them ran up to the car, a decrepit silver Nissan Altima. Fatima got inside and saw that it had been left in drive when abandoned. The keys remained in the ignition. She switched the car to neutral and went outside to help Ehsan, Mateo, and Ken push it through the street and onto the front yard.
“We should’ve just called Triple A,” Ehsan joked as he pushed the car between gasps of air.
“Pretty sure you need a Premium Membership for something like this,” Mateo grunted as they got close to the gate. The zombies made it to the wooden fence and thrashed against it. The gate gave way just as the four of them rammed the car into it.
“Keep pushing!” Fatima instructed. “I need to put it in park.”
The crowd the fence only continued to grow. Fatima heard the crunch of the wood straining against their weight. Rotting hands reached through the cracks. Fatima jumped to the driver side door and opened it, one particularly long arm only inches from her face. She hopped into the driver seat and shifted the car to park, then pulled the parking break for good measure.
“Time to go,” Fatima declared after evacuating the car.
Ehsan felt knots in his stomach as the four of them ran back to the school. For all the questions that ran through his mind, one recurred more than any other: why would anyone do this? Ehsan couldn’t wrap
his head around it. They’d left those odd messages, killed Ryan, and taken down both the pier and clinic, but Ehsan and everyone else at the school still knew nothing about them. What did they want? What did they have to gain by doing this without revealing themselves? Would they ever offer the chance for some sort of truce, or would they keep doing this until the end?
Fatima decided they should forgo using the walkways. They powerwalked the rest of the way back. Ehsan’s heels ached. After finally rounding the corner, he saw Marcus and Manuel on lookout duty on the roof. It relieved him to see them well and the school intact, but it stung not seeing Josue and Ryan on that roof. It hit him that he’d never see Ryan waiting for them again.
“Es everyone okay?” Manuel asked as the group approached the front of the school.
“Sí,” Mateo answered. “Pero, la clínica…”
“Yo sé,” Manuel informed him. “El boxeador explicó todo, y Cecilia me lo dijo. Ella quisiera hablar en la biblioteca.”
Mateo turned to Ehsan, Fatima, and Ken. “Looks like Hector explained everything. Cecilia wants to meet in the library.”
The four of them went in through the gate and locked it behind them. They walked in to see Deon gardening, though his eyes and movement lacked their normal focus. He looked less like his usual master-artisan self and more like a teenager at McDonald’s waiting for his shift to end. He noticed the group and immediately abandoned his equipment to join them. “Y’all good? You learn anything important?”
“Yep,” Mateo answered. “To both questions. We’ll explain more in the library, but they plowed a damn truck through the clinic’s wall.”
Deon shook his head. “These motherfuckers ain’t playing.”
“Nope, and we better not, either.” Mateo looked in the direction of everyone’s rooms. “Where’s Sarah?”
“She went to update Cecilia.” He put down his shovel. “We oughta join ‘em.”
The five of them ran to the library. They entered to find Cecilia, Sarah, Hector, Emma, and the clinic kids inside. Cecilia, Sarah, and Emma spoke at the table while on the other side of the library Hector held Andrea, talked to Lucero, and tried unsuccessfully to talk to Juan. Ehsan, Fatima, Mateo, and Deon went to sit down, Ehsan thankful for the chance to finally rest.
The Human Spring Page 24