by Joe McKinney
She didn’t make it far.
The Red Man was on her like a cat on a bug. He grabbed her shirt, her hair, her shoulders. He threw her back onto the platform and she landed in a heap against the metal railing.
The Red Man was standing over her, breathing hard, but the significance of it didn’t make sense.
At least at first.
His gentle demeanor was gone. His eyes were bloodshot again, and he was looking at her like she was food.
“No,” he said, and shook his head violently from side to side. “No.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, what he was objecting to, until the sense of calm overtook her once again. And that’s what it was too, a sense of calm. She had feared it earlier, but now she was better. Suddenly the calm seemed welcoming, not something to be feared.
No, she thought. No, something’s wrong.
But it was the kind of wrong that she couldn’t put her finger on. Every part of her was screaming that something was seriously off, but her mind wouldn’t be bothered by it. All she wanted to do was drift away, like she did when she heard some old song she’d loved so long ago.
And that’s what it is, she realized. It wasn’t fear; it was movement. Her mind was drifting into forever, while her body waited patiently somewhere far behind. A comforting stillness fell over her, and the urge to let go became overpowering. There was no need to be afraid. All this was going to be okay. Avery would be okay. Even Niki, so angry and so violent all the time, would be okay.
All she had to do was let go.
For a moment, she fought it. She rallied. She willed the fog from her mind. But there was never really any chance of clearing her brain. She was slipping beneath the waves, and it only hurt when she fought.
Stop fighting. Make the pain go away.
Stop. . .
For a moment, there was nothing. Not even any pain. There was only a need to stand and wait.
The Red Man would move her when he wished.
There were mangled faces huddled above him. Hands reached down. They scratched and tore at Nate’s face and what remained of his clothes. He twisted left then right in the mud and swatted at their hands, kicked them when he could. And then, between their legs, he saw a flash of daylight.
It had been like this once before, years ago, when he was still running track in high school. He’d been racing a senior from the nearby town of Gatlin on a cross-country course through the forest out behind the high school. They rounded the last bend, neck and neck, the opening out of the forest just two hundred yards ahead. Nate saw the patch of daylight at the edge of the trees and a thrill went through him. He’d heard the note of exhaustion in the other boy’s breathing, but Nate knew he had more. He had this. Run to daylight, he’d told himself. Run into the daylight.
Now, with a mountain of sin and shame behind him, he was seeing that daylight again.
Run, he told himself. Run into the daylight.
He flipped over onto his hands and knees and scrambled through mud, clawing his way through the forest of legs, until he came up on the other side. Nate was covered head to foot in brown mud. He stood on shaky legs and pivoted in a circle until he found the Red Man’s platform again.
A man with long wild hair lunged at him. Nate stepped to one side and pushed him down into the mud.
Nate’s hand slid across his waist and touched the blackjack’s hilt. He had forgotten about it again. Another zombie, this one a woman with deep black gashes down her cheeks, like deep fingernail scratches, tried to take a bite out of him.
Nate swung the blackjack, intending to catch her right above the ear, but caught her in the mouth instead. Her teeth shattered with a nasty crunch he could hear even over the collective moaning of the crowd and she staggered back. Nate advanced on her again and this time got her right above the ear, dropping her to the mud.
They were all around him, a blur of faces.
Nate didn’t stop moving. He knew stopping would get him killed and he had no intention of dying just yet. He twisted away from another zombie, put his hand in a woman’s face to block her snapping teeth from his neck, and pushed on.
One of them got its fingers caught up in the tattered clothes hanging around Nate’s waist and he had to spin around in circles to try to throw the zombie off balance. “Let go,” he said, and slapped at the zombie’s arm with his weapon. But the zombie’s grip was strong and when Nate finally shook it loose it came away with a muddy clump of his shirt in its fingers.
“Fucking bastard,” Nate screamed, and swung his blackjack overhand, coming down on the zombie’s head. It hit with a crack as the scalp split in two and fell away from the skull.
At the same time, more hands were reaching for him. Nate hit one of his attackers in the face with the club. It was an awkward swing, and he lost his footing in the slick mud. He landed on his side and felt the air rush out of lungs.
He gasped for breath, and was still fighting to pull air into his lungs as he scrambled away on his hands and knees. A moment later he was on his feet again. There was a gap between the two zombies directly in front of him and he ran for it. They clawed at his face but he didn’t let them slow him down. The Red Man’s platform was less than a hundred feet away now. He was close.
A man tried to wrap his arms around Nate’s neck, but he ducked and twisted around, coming under the tackle. Nate swatted the man in the groin with the blackjack and almost laughed at the grunt that came from him. The zombie pitched over forward, but didn’t stop. He kept kicking its knees at the earth, swaying from the blow, trying to climb back to his feet.
But if he ever made it, Nate didn’t know and didn’t care. He was already pushing his way toward the platform again, pushing bodies aside, swimming over those he couldn’t move and crawling like a worm under them.
Then—there was daylight again!
He was through the crowd and standing at the foot of the metal stairs that led up the front of the platform.
Nate stumbled up the first few steps and stopped.
He looked back.
The zombie crowd was a riot slowly pushing itself toward his position.
He stood there, his chest heaving, watching them surge forward, not quite believing that he’d come this far. It didn’t seem possible, even though his body was screaming from a thousand cuts and bites and scratches.
“Nate!”
He looked up. That was Avery’s voice! He turned away from the crowd and started up, crashing into the railing like a pinball as he tried to clear his head. The zombies hadn’t killed him, but they had torn into him, and his mind felt like a soupy mess from the pain.
He was still four or five steps from the platform when he saw the Red Man staring down at him, his bloodshot eyes seeming to blend in with the paint on his skin. But Nate could still recognize the look of shock on the Red Man’s face. The Red Man looked at the stub of his finger and then at Nate.
“You,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
“I guess this ain’t your day,” Nate said, and raised his blackjack.
He was about to swing when a woman stepped in front of the Red Man and fell forward into Nate’s arms. Nate stumbled backward a few steps while struggling to keep the zombie at arm’s length. Only then did he recognize Sylvia. The side of her face was a mixture of fresh and dried blood, the frizzled gray hair there matted and sticky. Her mouth curled down at one side where the lip was busted. Her teeth were red with blood.
“Sylvia,” Nate said. “No.”
She snarled and lunged for him, teeth snapping. He was caught off guard, and she nearly got his upper lip. But Nate recovered in time to throw her to one side. She staggered, caught herself on the railing. Nate punched her in the nose with his free hand and knocked her off balance enough for him to get his foot up to her chest and kick.
She tumbled down the stairs and into the arms of the zombies coming up from the field.
Nate headed back up the stairs, the blackjack raised high.
He swung with everything he had, but the Red Man had the advantage of height and he blocked it by throwing his left forearm across Nate’s wrist.
Nate teetered on the stairs, off balance.
The Red Man lowered his arm and then hit Nate in the mouth with a fierce left jab. Nate’s vision turned purple for a second and he felt his legs turn to water. He couldn’t remember ever being hit so hard, and as he started to fall backward he pleaded with himself to keep his feet, keep his feet.
But it was no use.
His body wouldn’t cooperate, and he fell over.
A pair of arms fell on his shoulder and Nate blinked up at the torn and bleeding man who held him fast.
“Ben!” Nate said. “Oh Ben.”
But this wasn’t Ben anymore. The body was the same, but the eyes were vacant and dead. His face was a crisscross pattern of dried cuts and there were deep bite marks all over his arms and legs.
He staggered toward Nate, a gurgle in his throat as he pawed at the space between them.
Nate tripped on the stairs and landed on his butt.
Then his eyes caught a flash of something protruding from the holster on Ben’s hip.
His pistol!
The next few moments were a blur.
Nate reached for the gun and pulled it.
His gaze fell on Ben’s dead eyes and he said, “I’m so sorry, Ben. You deserved so much better than me.”
The shot.
Ben’s head snapping back.
A spray of blood and bone and bits of hair flying out behind Ben’s head, covering the zombies behind him.
Ben’s body flying backward, knocking the zombies there down like bowling pins.
The echo of the shot rolling over the open field, drowning out the moans.
Then Nate looked down at the gun in his hand and for the first time in his life he knew without a doubt what he had to do. He turned and headed up the stairs. Avery was huddled against the railing in the far corner. The Red Man was standing in the middle of the platform, staring at him.
“Put the weapon down or they will kill you,” the Red Man said.
Nate didn’t answer. He stepped forward and raised the pistol.
“Stop. You’re a dead man if you do this.”
Nate smiled.
“You’re wrong. I just started living.”
He fired twice, hitting the Red Man in the chest and sending him backward, his arms pinwheeling madly.
The Red Man landed with his back on the railing, his bloodshot eyes staring up into the rain, his mouth opening and closing, opening and closing, as though he were trying to speak but couldn’t get the air in his lungs to do it.
Nate closed the gap between them and fired again, this time hitting the Red Man in the crease between his nose and upper lip.
The Red Man’s head snapped back just as Ben’s had and he died, curled backward over the top railing, body slack, his arms spread wide and hanging into the open air, rainwater dripping from his fingertips.
Nate stared at him, fascinated.
The whole world seemed frozen around this moment, and for a long time Nate had the feeling he was floating through a forest in Pennsylvania, a patch of daylight at the edge of the trees looming ever closer, his lungs bellowing in his ears, the feel of daylight on his skin and its warmth welcoming, like it would pull out of all this death and propel into a world that finally made sense.
A moaning from behind him shook him from the reverie.
“Nate!” Avery said.
He looked at her, and then followed her gaze toward the stairs.
Sylvia, bloody and vacant-eyed, was standing there.
“Back away,” the man said. He waved Niki toward the port side with the barrel of his pistol. “Over there.”
Niki glanced over her shoulder, where the zombies were wading into the river. There wasn’t going to be much time, and she was only going to get one chance to do this right. But his gun hand was just out of reach. Maybe a kick, she thought, then dismissed that idea. The man’s eyes were hard and calculating. He looked ready for something like that, almost like he was hoping she’d do it. He had orders to get her to the Red Man, she was certain of that, but a part of her couldn’t help but wonder if he really cared about orders. Was he just looking for a reason to put a bullet in her?
She thought so.
And she was not going to die that way.
“Move it!” he said.
“Okay, okay,” she said, and stepped where he wanted her to go.
He got the AR-15 from the captain’s chair and laid it down in the puddle of blood on the deck.
He was smart about that, at any rate. Only an amateur would try to use a rifle in the close confines of the boat.
But then she looked at his face again, at the blood crusting in his beard. At the pink rivulets of bloodstained rainwater dripping from his chin.
“You don’t care about the Red Man,” she said.
She could hear the moaning over her shoulder. The zombies were getting close now. The man didn’t look at them, though. Instead, he smiled at Niki, playing the game with her. He wasn’t going to betray his fear by looking at the zombies, gauging the distance. He went on smiling, and the look seemed to say, Fine, you want to play chicken. Let’s play.
“You don’t serve him because you care about what happens here,” Niki said. “You do it because you’re scared. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re scared.”
The smile slid away from his face.
She took a quick glance to her right. The first three zombies were less than ten feet away now.
“That is it. You’re scared. That’s why you played dead, isn’t it? You weren’t trying to trick me. You were hoping to slink away like a coward. I thought I saw the killer in your eyes, but that isn’t you, is it? You’re just a coward.”
“Bitch, you’re gonna get a bullet in your head.”
“Then do it!” she snapped. “Come on, coward. Do it!”
The rain fell.
They stared at one another, and for a moment, she thought she had him. But then the smile came back, sinister and cruel.
“No,” he said. “Not yet.” He flicked the barrel toward the captain’s chair. “Over there. You’re gonna drive us over to the platform.”
“Just like that? You don’t want to play anymore?”
“Nobody’s playing any games here.” He motioned to the chair again. “Move.”
She shrugged, then walked over to the chair, but didn’t sit down. She focused on the sound of the rain pattering against his coat, gauging his location. He was behind her, just a little to her left.
Just about perfect.
Suddenly she rocked forward, simultaneously throwing a mule kick in his direction.
But something was wrong. Her aim was true. She had gauged the distance right. She should have connected. Only the man wasn’t there. He had side-stepped her at the last second and now he was right up on her, one hand balled in her hair, the other jamming the barrel of the gun into her broken ribs.
She screamed from the pain, unable to control it.
Her pulled her away from the captain’s chair and threw her onto the gunwale so that she was bent over the side, her face right above the weeds poking out of the water.
“You want to play games with me, bitch? Huh? That what you want?” He pulled back on her hair so she could watch the zombies closing on the boat. “How’s this? Let’s see how you like this.”
She tried to kick and buck him off her, but he jabbed the barrel into her ribs again and her legs turned to water.
But she had to act.
The zombies were almost on them, closing in.
She bent her knees slightly, just enough to get some leverage against the floor. He was leaning over her, using his weight to pin her over the gunwale. As soon as she felt the gun pull away from her ribs, she jumped up and forward, carrying him on her back over the side of the boat.
He let out a grunt of confused panic as he splashed into t
he water and weeds.
He came up spluttering.
But Niki didn’t give him a chance to react. She swatted the gun from his hand and then grabbed the sides of his head and jammed her thumbs into his eyes, digging into the oozing jelly with everything she had.
He screamed and grabbed her wrists, but there was no strength in his hands. His whole body seemed to tense, and then sag into itself.
Niki shook his hands loose from her wrists and pushed him into the approaching zombies. His screams started anew as she backed away. He was still screaming when they pulled him down into the weeds, a dark red shadow spreading out from the huddle.
She stood there, trying to catch her breath, eyes tearing up from the pain in her side.
A shot echoed across the river, and Niki turned sharply toward the platform.
It was followed by two more, and then a fourth.
“Avery,” she said, and jumped into the captain’s chair.
Sylvia pulled herself up the stairs. She could barely stand and had to lean on the railing for support, but she kept coming, wobbly legs shaking beneath her. Her moaning was a choppy, breathy gurgling, like there was fluid in her throat. There was unmistakable hunger in her eyes, though.
Behind her, the stairs were crowded with zombies. The entire field was closing on the platform now.
Nate raised the pistol and sighted it on Sylvia’s forehead.
“Nate, no!” Avery shouted.
“That’s not Sylvia,” he said.
“Don’t.”
She shook her head, pleading with him.
He lowered his pistol and pulled her to the back of the platform, next to the Red Man’s corpse, his eyes still open and staring up into the rain. Far out on the river Nate could see the Red Man’s fleet coming back to the hotel docks. He looked down at the water two stories below and shook his head. With the way his head was swimming, he doubted he could clear the short stretch of grass between the platform and the water.
“Avery, we’re gonna have to jump.”
She looked over the railing, her face stricken.
“I can’t.”
“You’re gonna have to. We can’t go anywhere else.”