Trepidation

by Chrissy Peebles

  Asia lifted her chin a notch. “We outsmarted them.”

  I gave her a high-five.

  Since everything appeared safe for the moment, she stopped to take a look at the map and compass, trying to get our bearings. While we were both studying the map, the wind threatened to whip it right out of our hands.

  I pointed. “According to this, Fairport’s not far at all.”

  “I’d guesstimate a couple miles,” she said. “We’ll be sitting by a warm fire in no time.”

  CRACK!

  “What the heck was that?” Asia said.

  When I looked down and saw the ice splintering apart, I realized we were right in the middle of a frozen pond or lake. Winter had sealed the water under a giant sheet of ice. Beads of sweat trickled down my face, but I did my best to keep my cool and think clearly, without panicking.

  “Thin ice!” she said in a terrified voice. “And I’m in no mood to go for an arctic swim!”

  “Don’t move,” I said, assessing our dangerous situation.

  She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “At least it’s not zombies.”

  “Walk to the right, away from the crack...and very slowly.”

  She looked at me, terrified, and didn’t move a muscle.

  “We can do this, Asia,” I coaxed. “Look what we’ve already overcome.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. This is nothing,” she said, her voice wavering even though she was trying to sound brave.

  The ice creaked and popped with every single step we took. When I looked ahead, I was none too happy to see zombies shuffling onto it. Their distorted echoes grew closer, and my heart pounded.

  “Dean,” Asia said. “this will never hold our weight and theirs, and if we try to fight them off, we’re gonna drown!”

  “We’ve gotta shoot them,” I said.

  “But that will just summon more flesh-munchers, and the ice can barely hold us. What do we do?”

  “You’re right.” I peered ahead at the approaching brain-eaters. “Let’s try to zigzag around them.”

  We took soft steps, trying not to break the ice, making our way closer to a snow bank in the distance. A zombie with long, stringy, black hair and a rotting face inched its way toward us. My stomach clenched. I knew trying to fight it might mean our demise, because the ice was far too thin for all that thudding and jumping around. We tried to zigzag away, but the thing was not deterred whatsoever; its sights set on dinner. The zombie slipped, and I sighed in relief, but that was short-lived, because three more were getting closer.

  I pointed my rifle and peered through the scope. “I could so take them out.”

  Asia’s face hardened. “And call twenty more? No way! If one more of those things steps on this ice, we’ll be screwed.”

  Knowing my friend was right, I lowered my gun and kept taking steps. The scent of rot filled the air as a corpse with brown, choppy hair reached for me from about ten feet away. I didn’t let it out of my sight, not even for a second. “If it gets a little closer, I can nail in one good whack,” I said.

  She glanced up at me. “But it’ll crash through the ice.”

  “Well what am I supposed to do, Asia? Hold out my hand and let it take a bite?”

  “No! Just move back.”

  The putrid creature reached for me with its skeletal fingers, and I quickly moved away. As I did, the thin ice cracked and gave way, and the zombie slipped into the dark abyss of the icy lake.

  The ice was so thin that I feared taking another step, but we couldn’t just stay where we were. I pointed to the left. “Let’s try that way.”

  “Wait!” Asia grabbed her knife and stuck it into the ice.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Ice has to be three inches thick to take our weight, and my blade’s striking water. It’s too weak here.”

  “Not good,” I said. “I guess we go the other way.”

  She tried ramming her knife through that ice, and it wouldn’t go through. “Okay. This is good. Let’s go.” After we took a few steps, she glanced over her shoulder. “Dean,” she said with a gasp, “there are dozens of them coming!”

  I turned, and my heartbeat stopped for a second when I lifted my gaze to the large group of salivating corpses. Pondering, I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Gurgling cries echoed in the air as zombies poured out of the forest like water from a running faucet. I blinked hard. “Why are there so many of them? Where are they coming from?”

  “The wind is blowing our scent toward them,” she said.

  “The ice won’t be able to hold them all.”

  She tried to shake away the horrible thought. “Let’s just hope they don’t make it over here before we get far enough away.”

  I looked at the first line of muscular zombies, a group comprised of dead police and firefighters. The one in the lead, in a torn and tattered blue uniform, seemed the most determined. Its bloodied flesh drooped loosely around a gaping hole in its chest, and half of its scalp was torn off. Still, those injuries didn’t slow it down, and I was really worried about it reaching us on the unstable ice.

  Asia shot me a look. “That’s not the 911 team we called for.”

  “Right. If that’s Fairport’s finest, count me out.”

  I watched as a few clumsily slipped and fell on the ice. Some couldn’t get back up, and they flailed around like Bambi, continuously falling down every time they tried. Others were stronger and managed to regain their balance and limp along toward us.

  As Asia and I tried to hurry across the lake, I contemplated shooting our followers, as I’d suggested before, but I didn’t have enough ammo to take them all down. If we could just get our hands on those police-issued guns, I thought. They’d multiplied in number and were still pouring in from the forest to the east.

  “Dean!” Asia shouted. “It’s cracking.”

  My mouth dropped open as her horrified gaze locked with mine, and then I stared down at the ice, breaking apart right beneath our feet.

  Chapter 24

  The crack was growing, radiating away from us, but as the ice seemed to cry out in pain, I knew we were in big trouble.

  A look of pure terror spread across Asia’s face. She leaned over, her voice urgent. “There’re too many zombies on the ice, Dean. Something’s gotta give.”

  A sinking feeling tugged at me. I knew if I didn’t act fast, we were all going to go for an impromptu scuba dive. “I’m gonna eliminate that problem right now.”

  “How?” she asked with a shudder as the blood drained from her face.

  I started to walk toward the zombie pack.

  “Wait! What are you doing? You can’t possibly fight all those zombies by yourself,” Asia shouted. “Plus, any kind of combat will compromise the ice even more!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, taking more brave steps toward the living dead. “I’ve got a plan.”

  She started to follow me, but I motioned for her to stop.

  “Stay there, Asia. The ice can’t hold both of us. Just wait where you are.”

  Confusion flooded over her. “What? Why? Where’re you going?” A heavy sigh escaped her lips; she clearly wasn’t happy with me.

  The crack seemed to web out and deepen with every step I took. I hated taking such a risk with my life and Asia’s. In fact, I hated everything about that entire zombie apocalypse, but I swore I’d outlive those dead corpses. I’d learned the hard way that the biggest challenge wasn’t surviving the zombie virus; rather, it was recuperating in the aftermath, waiting for them to rot and die out. We had to keep fighting, keep battling, until the zombies were nothing but a big huge pile of ashes and decaying bones. It would take a few years, but I was sure we’d triumph in the end. We just had to.

  “Dean,” Asia scolded, “get your butt back here now! I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but getting yourself killed isn’t gonna help our cause one tiny bit.”

  I pressed my mouth tight and said nothing. The zombies snarled at me with t
heir droopy skin rotting right off their bodies. The noxious stench of death assaulted my nostrils. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand and gagged. Pale, lifeless eyes stared back at me. With their jaws snapping and their arms outstretched, they shuffled closer. Sweat gathered above my brows and trickled down my face.

  “What in the heck are you trying to do?” Asia demanded.

  I heaved a sigh. “You’ll see.” I was ready to do whatever it took to save our lives, even if I wasn’t sure my plan would even work. When death’s dark shadow reared its ugly head, I had every intention of grabbing that scythe, breaking it in half, and shoving it right up the Grim Reaper’s crypt. I refused to go down without a fight. I let out a loud war cry like some kind of barbarian, raised my rifle high in the air, and smashed the ice with the butt of my gun.

  The ice started to crack, and a huge chunk fell into the lake. I stared down at the gaping hole and slowly staggered back as the ice cracked and shifted, moaning and groaning.

  A zombie took a step, and the crack grew bigger. The creature focused on me, presuming I was going to be its afternoon meal. It had white eyes and greenish skin, and no matter how many of them I’d seen before, my stomach still fluttered with fear and nausea when they looked at me like that. Dark blood, the consistency of dirty 10W-30, seeped from the zigzagging wound on its forehead. It mindlessly shuffled toward me while its comrades looked around in a daze, with the ice shifting under their feet like a funhouse floor.

  “Come and get it, boys!” I shouted at the freaks. “Your meal awaits!”

  It was easy enough to catch their attention, and as they moved toward me, the ice broke in a jagged circle around them with a shattering hiss. The zombie frontlines dropped right into the open lake. Yes! I thought, feeling quite victorious. A loud crack echoed in the air as the ice gave way, dropping more zombies into the watery grave. Once most of the herd had fallen in, I took some small steps back.

  Asia clutched her chest and let out a long sigh of relief. “I can’t believe you pulled that off, Dean. You’re lucky you didn’t go down with them.”

  “I had to chance it,” I said. “It was the only way to get rid of them.”

  She smiled. “Brilliant plan.”

  “What can I say? Ice, ice, baby! Now let’s hurry and get back to shore.”

  Asia shook her head at me, then took several small, hurried steps.

  Suddenly, the ice crunched beneath her shoes, and right before my eyes, she vanished into the depths.

  “Asia!” I hurried toward her in shock.

  Her hands were flailing around, frantic to grab onto something, anything, but all that surrounded her were water and jagged ice. Splashing, she anxiously reached for the edge of the ice, screaming for me to get her out. “I can’t feel my feet, Dean!”

  The ice under me started cracking, so I took a few big steps to the right, then flattened my body against the ice, spreading my arms and legs wide to evenly distribute my weight. I slithered over to her and threw my coat in, hoping we could use it as a makeshift rope.

  Just as I tossed the jacket toward my friend, a zombie hissed only inches away. Crap! When I glanced up, I saw two of them snapping at the air. The ice cracked, and the zombies reached for Asia as they fell in. Asia screamed, flailing wildly. They tumbled around in the swirling water and viciously tried to bite into her neck.

  “Asia!” I reached for my gun and aimed for a decaying forehead. I squeezed the trigger, and the zombie loosened its grip on Asia and floated to the surface.

  The other zombie sank, taking Asia with it. As they battled it out, bubbles rose to the surface for a second, but then all was unnervingly still.

  “Asia? Asia!” My eyes darted about nervously, and I was frantic with worry. I couldn’t shoot blindly into the water, for fear of inadvertently harming Asia. “Asia!” I screamed again at the top of my lungs.

  I set my gun down on the ice, but just as I was about to dive in to look for her, she popped her head up, bobbing up and down. Fear and panic loomed in her eyes as she floated in the water. “I-I killed it,” she said. “I literally ripped its rotting head off.”

  Asia was tough—that was for sure—but I was worried about hypothermia setting in. I knew I had to get her out of there fast. Raw fear gripped me, making my stomach churn. “Grab my jacket!” I said.

  Shivering and gasping for air, she reached for it.

  “Asia,” I said, “I want you to lift and kick.”

  She stretched her arms over the ice and shimmied up for me to pull her out. Her upper torso rested on the ledge. I gave her another tug with all my might, and she pulled with her arms and kicked her legs to propel herself out of the water. I slowly heaved her up over the edge. My stomach was in knots, and I took a deep breath to calm myself.

  Spluttering and coughing, Asia pushed the tangled, frosty hair out of her eyes. “I’m so cold,” she stuttered between shivers. Every muscle in her body trembled as she let out a shaky breath.

  I was freezing too. My jacket was soaking wet, and the wintery wind whipping across my body didn’t help. My voice wavered as I consoled, “It’s gonna be okay, but the ice is weak. I know you’re tired, but we need to roll away from the water.”

  She nodded, and we moved slowly away from the icy chasm, scooting carefully on our stomachs. I was so cold, and Asia looked miserable as water dripped off her dark hair. I knew she was freezing, even worse than I was, and my heart went out to her. We needed to get home fast as possible and get a warm fire going.

  “Approaching zombie princess,” Asia said.

  The zombie she was talking about was dressed in a big, puffy, torn, tattered dress and looked like it had stumbled right out of some kind of twisted fairytale. We scooted way over to the left and crawled past it. It was walking very slowly, either because the cold was taking a toll on it, freezing its already brittle bones, or because it was starving. As we passed, it let out guttural sounds and grunts. When I heard a splash, I turned my head and saw that the petrified prom queen had fallen through the weak ice and been swallowed up by the cold lake, just like the others.

  “Guess Cinderhella didn’t have her happily-ever-after,” Asia joked.

  “Yeah, well, maybe her Prince Charming is already down there,” I said.

  “I just want off this ice,” she said. “Part of me is tempted to just start running.”

  “You wanna end up like Seeping Beauty or that herd I took out?”

  “No way.”

  “Then keep shimmying across the ice,” I said, using my arms and elbows to slide along, knowing that keeping our weight evenly distributed was the key to staying alive.

  She shivered violently. “Survivors do what they gotta do.”

  “Yeah...and this beats running from cannibals,” I said.

  “How do we find ourselves in these situations?”

  Before I could answer, I was peering down at a sunken, hollow, diseased face with jagged, stained, yellow teeth. Its black fingernails scratched frantically at the ice. I froze, and my breath caught in my throat as I gazed down at the horizontal body, seemingly frozen right under me, flattened against the ice. When it opened its milky eyes and stared right into my soul from the other side of that glassy floor, I couldn’t do anything but gasp.

  Chapter 25

  One of the zombies I’d killed was floating directly underneath the ice. I stared in horror at the flesh-eating monster directly below me. Its hands pounded on the ice as it stared at me with those snow-white eyes. Somehow, the creepy thing had made its way over to where I was. How convenient, I thought, as a wave of nausea swept over me at the gruesome sight.

  Asia screamed when she saw her very own creeper staring up at her. “What the heck?” she asked, terror oozing from her voice. “They have this big lake all to themselves, yet they’ve gotta have their pool party over here.”

  Multiple dead zombies floated below me. It looked like the ones I’d just killed. For a minute, I was too terrified to even talk.

  “Dean?�
�� she said. “Are you okay?”

  My lungs constricted. “Yeah. It’s just...”

  “Yeah, I know. More Stephen King crap we could never dream up in a million years.”

  I placed a shaking gloved hand on the ice and moved on. “Yeah, something like that.”

  Even though the ice was weak, I knew there was no way the zombies could break through; they simply weren’t strong enough. Another zombie floated to the top, then another. In a matter of seconds, the whole herd seemed to pile up right below us. My imagination began to play tricks on me, and I imagined them pounding their fists through the ice, reaching right into my chest to rip out my heart. With so many now pounding on the ice, there was a possibility they could break it, and the thought of that made my skin prickle.

  “Asia,” I said, “what if they break the ice?”

  She let out a long breath, then threw a terrified glance in my direction. “Let’s scoot faster.”

  As I slithered as quickly as I could across the frozen lake, their haunting faces looked up at me while they floated around in the frigid water below. My heart drummed harder against my chest, and when I could finally breathe again, I let out another horrified gasp. The only thing between them and me was a thin sheet of ice. The whole thing felt surreal, as if we were acting out some horrible movie or videogame. I pictured the opening scene: Asia and I lying flat on our stomachs, spread eagle, inching our way across the ice. As that imaginary camera panned out, I imagined literally hundreds of zombies under the ice, fighting to break their way out. Shuddering, I shook my head at the thought.

  One particular zombie with swirling blond hair pounded so hard that the ice spider-webbed in a dozen tiny, radiating cracks.

  “The ice is breaking!” Asia shouted hysterically.

  I gasped for breath. I knew if we fell in freezing water, we’d be torn to bits like shark bait, even before we died from hypothermia or drowning. Hundreds of undead had floated toward us.

  One corpse moaned and snapped its teeth against the icy surface; the teeth shattered like glass. It wasn’t ready to give up, though, and when it started head banging the ice, I was mortified. Its face was so rotted that I could see every white bone beneath the skin and muscle. It kept hitting the ice with its head, and I could feel every vibration. My gut twisted. Will the ice give way? Am I gonna sink into that icy soup and be devoured, limb by limb?