She was suddenly reminded of her radio. In all of the excitement, she had forgotten all about it. She reached for her shoulder, but there was only a dangling wire. It had been ripped off in the pool by one of the dead.
Great. Now she was cut off. “Do you think you could help me get back to the station, Sam?”
Sam’s grin widened. He was practically giddy over the notion of helping her. “It would be my pleasure, Lt. Michaels.”
“I need a clear path of escape.” She looked around. This motel didn’t have a back door.
“Maybe if you wait them out, they’ll go away.”
“I don’t know. There’s an awful lot of them. I just need less of them. They’re slow and clumsy. I can run around them.”
Sam looked like he was pondering something. “Do you have a car?”
“No, my car was part of the barricade just off the boardwalk.”
“Even if you get out, how are you going to make it back to the station? On foot’s a bit dangerous.”
“You don’t have a car?”
Sam shook his head. “Do I look like I can afford a car? I moved here because it’s a small town. Everything’s in walking distance.”
“What about the other guests? One of them must have a car.”
Sam shook his head again. “There only two others, and they’re both like me. The rest of the motel is empty.”
Becky paced back and forth, her mind racing to find options. She suddenly stopped. “Have you seen or heard from any of these other residents? Are they okay?”
Sam shrugged. “I hear sounds next door, as if someone’s there. He’s a man, a bit older than me. Really scraggly looking. He always is wearing stuff from the Army-Navy surplus store. The other is a girl, young, like early twenties. She’s across the way, on the other side of the pool. I haven’t seen anything of her.” He stepped back to the window and peeked out, careful not to disturb the vertical blinds. “Her light’s been off the whole time. She’s a recovered drug addict, or so she says.”
“You don’t think she’s clean?” asked Becky.
“She leaves her room even less than I do. Once in a while, a man drops by to pay her a visit, but the landlord spoke to her about that. We’re not really allowed visitors.”
“Well, we need to get to a safer place. You can come to the station with me.”
“This, here, seems pretty safe,” explained Sam. “So far, they haven’t gotten in.”
Becky shook her head. “They will eventually. Even with your barricade, that door is real flimsy. Plus, there’s the large window. If enough of them press up against it, it’ll break.”
“If they don’t know we’re in here, we’ll be fine. I have plenty of peanut butter for the both of us. I have a big bag of Doritos, too. Party sized. I’ve got some soda in the fridge.”
Becky approached him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate your hospitality, Sam. I really do. I know you don’t have much, and I’m touched you would share with me. But, you were right. This is much bigger than two years ago. If this is a major attack…”
“An invasion!”
“…yes, an invasion, then we need to make more long-term plans. Peanut butter and chips won’t last us. We’re going to need to get to some help, whether it’s police or military. It’ll be safest there.”
Sam listened to her well-reasoned argument. “I see. You’re right.” He walked over to the window and looked out. “We need to wait till some of them move on. Then we can go.”
“So, you’ll come with me?”
“Yes. I will. You’re right. It won’t be safe here for long.”
“What about the other two? The man next door and the girl across the way.”
This suggestion seemed to upset him. “No. No. The girl across the way may not even be there. Or she may be lying dead on the floor with a needle in her arm.”
Becky placed her hand on his shoulder again. “We have to check, Sam. I’m a cop. I protect people.”
Now Sam was pacing. Becky wondered what had him so perturbed. “Sam, did you have an argument or a fight with either of the other residents?”
Sam stopped pacing a looked at her. As a cop, she knew a guilty expression when she saw one. “No, why would you ask that?”
“Sam, you seem upset when I brought them up. Whatever happened between you and them, you have to let it go. It’s now the dead versus the living. We have to pull together, or we’re all going to die.”
Sam sat down on his bed, shoulders slumped, like a pouting child. “Well, there’s no way for us to contact them. We can’t exactly go out and start knocking on doors.”
“Well, we’ve got to do something. Strength in numbers, know what I mean?”
Sam smiled, but it was a pensive smile. “Funny how the apocalypse is the great equalizer.”
Beck was pacing back and forth, pondering a way for them to get the others and get out. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Sam.”
“Look, if things were normal, you and I wouldn’t be in the same room together. Now that all hell’s breaking loose, we’re stuck together in the same predicament. We have to rely on each other to survive.”
“If you say so, Sam.”
He smiled wider, encouraged. “It’s like our pasts, everything we’ve done up until this point, don’t matter. The slate is wiped clean. We are all reborn into this very moment, together.”
Becky didn’t like where he was going with this line of conversation. Apparently, he had a past he wanted to forget. Or he wanted others to forget. She wasn’t thrilled about him placing the two of them on the same level.
She snapped her fingers, as if a sudden revelation had just dawned on her. “These walls are paper thin. We can bang on the wall to get the guy next door’s attention.”
Sam perked up. “The zombies will hear it. They’ll come crashing in.”
Becky thought. Past. Army-Navy. “Okay, so I won’t bang. I’ll tap. Maybe it’ll get his attention, and he’ll come to the wall.” She wished she had her retractable baton, but she had dropped it in the scuffle at the barricade when they were overrun.
She looked around the room. She saw a dingy metal fork lying on top of a small table next to a box of cereal. She walked over to it.
“There’s no more cereal.” Sam looked sheepish. “I ate it all before you got here.”
Becky pushed the empty box aside and grabbed the fork.
Sam looked perplexed. “What are you going to do with that?”
Becky placed the fork flush against the sheetrock. She pressed down on the curved prongs, popping the handle off the surface of the wall. With her other hand, she began to press the handle against the sheet rock, tapping hard so that it would likely be heard on the other side.
“What are you doing?”
“Morse code,” said Becky.
“What if he doesn’t know Morse Code?”
“I’m hoping he does. You said so yourself, he’s always dressing like a soldier. Maybe he’s a vet. At the very least, it will get his attention.”
There was tapping on the other side of the wall. It was definitely Morse Code.
“He’s answering.”
“What’s he saying?” asked Sam.
“Shhh. I’m trying to listen.”
Sam backed off and began pacing back and forth, biting his fingernails.
Becky listened carefully. Then the tapping stopped. “Something about dangerous.” She tapped a reply.
Sam frowned. “Duh. Captain Obvious over there.”
“Shhh. I’m trying to concentrate.”
Sam threw his hands up in exasperation. “Okay. Okay. Jesus Christ.”
She tapped back, ‘Safe for the moment.’
When she finished, she waited a moment. There was a brief pause, then the tapping on the other side started again.
‘You…are…not…safe…’
Sam was silent behind her as she concentrated on deciphering the message. She didn’t relay this one to Sam, and he didn�
��t ask. She shot him a glance. He was still pacing and chewing his fingernails.
She tapped a reply. ‘Why…not…?”
After a brief pause, the tapping continued. ‘Sam…dangerous…rapist…’
* * *
Lena and Tara collided with the crowd of dead, who reached out for them, unafraid. Tara’s car jerked as zombies crunched under its wheels. The front right tire slipped in the gore, causing the car to veer to the left and right into the cement divide as Lena raced forward in her police cruiser.
Tara felt the car partially climb the divider and then slam down hard, the right wheel catching on the bodies of the dead. The car flipped on its side.
Metal scraping on pavement, the car skidded to a stop and rolled over onto its roof. The whole thing had happened so fast, that all she could get out was, “Ty, hold on!”
Upside down, she shook her head, and shards of safety glass from the shattered driver’s side window shook out of her hair. “Ty! Ty, are you all right?”
She heard moaning from the back seat. “Mommy.”
Tyrell, no longer considering himself to be a little kid, usually called her ‘mom.’ He only used ‘mommy’ when he was really upset. Or scared.
“Ty, honey, are you hurt?” She tried to turn around at look at the back seat, but she wasn’t able to. She unbuckled herself, and she fell to the car ceiling, raining more safety glass down with her.
She looked at Tyrell, who was upside down, the side of his face cut from his passenger window being shattered. An icy chill shot down her spine. She saw two zombies, their legs crushed from the weight of her car, dragging themselves on the pavement towards the car. They were only twenty or so feet away.
She quickly looked the other direction and saw Lena’s squad car slow down at the bottom of the approach to Smuggler’s Bay.
Tyrell saw the look of concern on her face and tried to turn around to look. There were growls and snarls in the near distance. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”
“Look at me, honey! Don’t look over there!”
Horrified, Tyrell obeyed his mother, but his body tensed up, bracing for whatever his mother was looking at. He knew it only had to be one thing. “Is it them? Are they coming?”
Tara commando crawled to the back of the car, and she pushed herself up with her hands. An intense pain radiated through her right arm, causing her to go down again. She cried out from the agony.
“Mommy, are you hurt?”
“I’m okay, sweetie.” The pain nearly took her breath away, but she had to put up a brave front. Again.
The gurgling and growling grew closer. One of the monsters let out a blood-curdling shriek.
Tyrell went rigid. “Help me, Mommy! Help me!”
“Hang on, Ty!”
She pushed herself up on one arm and got to her knees. She sat up on her haunches, hunched over, and fumbled with his seatbelt. “Hold on, honey.”
In the corner of her eye, she saw dead fingers gripping the edge of the car window. A head with raccoon eyes popped inside, looking first at her and then at Tyrell, baring broken teeth.
The belt buckle disengaged, and Tyrell fell to the car ceiling. Tara threw herself on top of him to protect him from the lunging zombie that was now part way into the car.
“Mommy, no!” He squirmed underneath her, but she did her best to cover him.
The zombie sunk his teeth down into her arm, and blood welled up around its torn lips. Tara cried out in agony, but she didn’t dare pull herself away, lest she expose her son.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was supposed to keep herself alive to keep Tyrell alive. The teeth sinking further into the flesh of her right forearm reminded her that this was no longer to be.
She heard a car engine race, tires skid to a stop, and a car door slam.
“Tara! Are you all right!”
Tara moaned as the zombie pulled away a chunk of her forearm and began to chew on it, its chomping wet and breathy. “Grab my feet! Pull me out!”
She felt hands—human hands—grab her ankles and pull. Tara grabbed onto Tyrell, and both of them were dragged out of the car together. Tyrell was embracing his mother, crying.
Lena was standing over them, the shotgun from the police car lying at her feet. “Are you guys okay?”
*
There was shrieking from inside the overturned car. Lena quickly crouched, grabbed the shotgun, and aimed it at the car window as Tara and Tyrell squirmed away from the car.
A head peeked out from the car window. It looked up, opening its mouth to shriek, but Lena pulled the trigger. The zombie’s head burst open, spraying its blood and brains all over the side of the car and the pavement.
Lena was not experienced with guns. The kickback from the shotgun caused it to fly out of her hands, and she stumbled backwards, almost losing her balance. Her ribs hurt from where the stock banged into her. She clutched her ribcage.
“She’s been bitten.”
Lena turned around a saw Mrs. Holly standing there, pointing at Tara. Lena looked back at the squad car. Robbie and Lenny were looking out the back window, but thankfully the car doors were shut. There were no other zombies by the car.
For the moment.
Tara was cradling her forearm. Tyrell was watching her, tears streaming down his face. He knew she had been bitten, and he knew what it meant.
“Give me the shotgun,” said Tara through gritted teeth.
Lena looked at her perplexed. There were more snarls coming from inside the upside-down car.
“Now!”
Lena grabbed the shotgun off the ground behind her and handed it to Tara.
“Go by Mrs. Holbrook, Tyrell.”
“But Mommy…”
“Do as I say!”
Lena reached down and snatched him away, unsure of what was about to happen.
Tara held the shotgun in her good arm. She lay the broken, bitten arm down on the pavement and placed the end of the barrel on the crook of her elbow.
Lena knew what she was about to do and pulled Tyrell away, shielding him from it with her body.
*
Tara took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and pulled the trigger. The shotgun jumped back, out of her hand, nearly breaking her right index finger on the trigger in the process. Her elbow exploded on the pavement as she felt her tendons snap.
She sat up, her arm still dangling as it had not become completely severed. As her head swam and adrenaline pumped throughout her body, she knelt down on her dangling forearm and pulled, screaming, as she separated herself from her damaged forearm.
She stumbled away from it, slamming her face onto the pavement as a second zombie emerged from the car window. It grunted, seized Tara’s severed forearm, and pulled it back inside the car.
*
Lena passed Tyrell off to Mrs. Holly, who embraced him firmly as his body shook from sobbing. Lena grabbed Tara under the armpits and hoisted her to her feet. Lena threw Tara’s good arm over her shoulder and walked her over to the police cruiser as Tara bled all over the pavement.
Mrs. Holly was standing there, eyes alert. They eyed Tara’s torn arm. “She needs a tourniquet, or she’ll bleed to death.” When Lena looked at her, stunned, she added, “I’m a retired nurse, remember?”
Lena nodded, thankful for that fact. She was also grateful that Mrs. Holly had apparently snapped out of her shock.
Mrs. Holly walked up to Tara and examined the bloody nub at her elbow. “I’ll need a belt or a long piece of fabric.”
Tyrell took off his T-shirt and shoved it into Lena’s arms. “Here. Use this.”
Lena took it and handed it to Mrs. Holly.
“Lay her down,” said Mrs. Holly.
Lena helped lower Tara to the pavement and lay her down on her back.
Mrs. Holly knelt beside her, her knees complaining, and slipped Tyrell’s T-shirt around it. She tied it high up on Tara’s arm, close to the armpit. “I’ll need a dowel, and something to secure it once I’m done twisting.”
Lena got to her feet and reached inside the squad car. She emerged with a few zip ties and a retractable baton. She handed them to Mrs. Holly. Her eyes darted over to Tara’s overturned car. Whatever was inside was still inside, feasting on Tara’s severed forearm.
Mrs. Holly tied the zip tie around the T-shirt next to the first knot, but left it loose. “We occasionally used to see these kinds of wounds when I worked in the ER.” She then tied a loose square knot, slipped the retracted baton inside it, tightened the knot around it, and began to twist. Tara winced and yelped, trying to sit up.
Mrs. Holly looked up at Lena. “Help me hold her down.”
Lena got to her knees and firmly pressed Tara’s torso back to the pavement, holding it there.
Tyrell knelt next to his mother’s head. “It’s okay, Mommy. They’re trying to help you.” He stroked her hair.
Lena had to fight back tears as she watched Tyrell try to comfort his mother. The back door to the squad car opened behind her. “What’s happening, Mom?” asked Robbie.
“Get back inside the car and look out for more zombies!” she yelled over her shoulder. She heard the door slam shut.
When Mrs. Holly finished twisting, she held the dowel in place. She slipped it under the zip tie. “Tighten the zip tie.”
Lena reached out and tightened the zip tie around the baton, holding it and the tourniquet in place. Tara was now still.
“She’s in shock,” said Mrs. Holly.
“Let’s get her in the car,” said Lena.
Lena stood up and helped Mrs. Holly to her feet, her knees creaking. Lena grabbed Tara under her armpits and dragged her over to the rear driver’s side of the squad car, Tyrell following beside her, still stroking his mother’s hair. Lena thought it was quite the pitiful sight.
Mrs. Holly opened the door and helped Lena slide Tara into the back seat. “Slide over by her feet. Keep them elevated,” she told Robbie and Lenny. “Let her head rest on the seat on the other side.”
“Wait a minute,” said Tara. “What if she wakes up as…?”
Mrs. Holly frowned. “You mean what if her field amputation didn’t prevent the spread of the virus?”
The Creeping Dead: Book 2 Page 18