by Ricky Sides
Bill shook his head, indicating that they hadn’t followed him, and then he said, “I was behind this bunch yesterday. I recognized a couple of them I saw when I was waiting at the gate. They were following Dana and me, but we separated when I couldn’t keep up with her.” He then went on to explain what had happened to him the previous day, including his narrow escape from the zombies.
Herb continued petting the new dog in an effort to bond with the animal to gain its trust while Bill was explaining what had happened. When Bill finished his explanation, he said, “We’ll send out a patrol then. It’s possible the woman is hiding somewhere out there in the woods. She wouldn’t be the first to try to lose them in that area.”
Herb nodded to one of the guards and said, “Escort Bill and Erma to the clinic and stay there until they know whether or not he’ll need to go into quarantine.”
“You’d better be careful with that animal,” Erma cautioned her husband as she was leaving with the two men.
“I will, but save a place for me in the clinic, just in case this doesn’t go well,” he replied. The worry he saw on Erma’s face made him regret the flippant response. “I’m just kidding,” he added. “I think we’re going to get along just fine, don’t you, girl?” Herb was continuing to stroke the dog’s back as he spoke to her.
“Don’t forget to decontaminate when you’re finished,” Erma cautioned over her shoulder, and then she hurried to catch up to Bill and the guard.
Herb began to gather a section of the dog’s skin, above its shoulder, into a fold and release it. He scratched her in the same area to get her accustomed to his hand being there. He gathered that fold and released it several times. The Mastiff had her attention focused on Ox, but it was clear to Herb that she was accustomed to being handled by humans. He pulled the protective cap off the needle of the syringe and then he once more gathered the fold. He injected the vaccine in a smooth motion and then he withdrew the needle and stood up. The dog hadn’t reacted to the shot at all, which he considered further proof that she was accustomed to being handled by people.
“Good, girl,” Herb said to the dog in a pleased tone of voice. “I think I’ll name you Sheba,” he added. “Do you like that?” The dog chose that moment to squat down and relieve herself.
Randy laughed and said, “I guess she answered your question.”
Herb picked up her food and water bowls and said, “I’d better quarantine her in the kennel and give the vaccine a day or two to do its work before giving her the run of the refuge. See to it that someone decontaminates this spot, and form a decontamination team to handle the bodies outside the fence. Those things are stinking up the whole refuge. I’ll be back soon, and then we’ll go out to see if we can find Ms. Rainey.” Then he said, “Let’s go, Sheba. You too, Ox. We’ll get you settled in, and then I’ll get you some more food.”
Ox fell into step alongside Herb. Sheba watched the pair with a slight tilt to her head for a moment, but then she followed them toward the fenced in kennel area that they had constructed to hold dogs and other small animals until they had served their quarantine time.
Chapter 3
The search.
Herb, Randy, Jason Wiley, and Ed Rowe were in the woods looking for any sign of Dana Rainey. Their search was complicated by the fact that they had to watch for anizombies as well as zombies. Besides the bears they had dealt with when they first established themselves at the cabin, there had been encounters with two raccoons, an opossum, three coyotes, and several dogs during the past few months. All of them had either been in the last stages of their lives before being turned, or had died and become undead creatures by the time they arrived at the refuge.
The men entered the woods as the cleanup crew was dealing with the bodies of the zombies under the watchful eyes of the guards. As the months had progressed, the zombies had changed little by little. Now, it was rare to see one fully clothed. Their attire had begun to rot away due to exposure to the elements, leaving their clothing as little more than rags that exposed their filthy, discolored, flesh.
The men going out to search the woods didn’t envy the burial detail. Although the Akins’ parasites preserved the bodies of the corpses to some extent, they were far from normal. The main muscle tissue, skeletal structure, and ligaments were necessary for the host to gather food and spread the parasites. The skin wasn’t, and it did decay to some extent, due to the lack of a heartbeat, but the parasites somehow kept it from putrefying.
A zombie’s skin was a uniform grayish-white. It did not heal, therefore, any scratches, cuts, or tears they suffered were permanent. The average human suffers numerous small cuts and scratches every month and the undead were no exception. Because they were predators who stalked intelligent prey, they were prone to receiving many more than the average person did per month. Many were wounds, inflicted by their victims, and they never healed. Those wounds festered and often stank. The parasites did prevent the infections from moving into the muscle tissue, but seemed incapable of stopping it in the skin. As a result, the undead looked and smelled horrific.
Herb shook his head in a vain attempt to rid his nostrils of the odor as the four men passed from the clearing into the woods.
“I’m glad I’m not helping with the bodies,” Ed said. “Even in their decontamination gear, those guys will smell that odor for hours when they finish.”
“Yeah, and even showering doesn’t help,” Randy agreed.
Jason turned and stared at the two men who had spoken, prompting Randy to whisper, “Sorry, I’ll shut up.”
There was no need for Herb to issue instructions. Their team had patrolled these woods so many times in the past that they were intimately familiar with the routine that they would follow. Ed moved out as point man. He would follow the tracks left by the undead. Next in line was Jason at an interval of ten feet. Randy followed behind Jason by a similar gap and Herb took the rear position.
After the refuge was established, Herb and the other men explored the woods and learned every square foot of the land. They knew that fences would help prevent the human zombies from approaching, but fencing in that much territory was a monumental task. There were several miles of road frontage that would need to be secured. The reality of the situation was that they might never be able to complete the work. There was simply too much to do for their small group to handle the job of erecting a barrier that was zombie proof, and would cover all of the forest. Besides, placing a new fence out beside the road would announce to anyone passing through that people were organized in the area, and that they had abundant supplies. That would be advertising to raiders, which was not a good thing from a security standpoint.
The team made their way along the trail left by the zombies until they came to the highway. There, they found a discarded bicycle. “It looks as if she made it this far and ditched the bike,” Herb observed. “She probably went into the woods near here and they followed her, or tried to at any rate. We didn’t see her body along their trail, so obviously she lost them.”
“Why didn’t she come back for the bike?” Randy asked.
Herb shrugged and said, “She might have been too afraid to come back this way. The stragglers are always a concern,” he pointed out.
“You’ve got that right,” Randy responded. “The damned stragglers and strays come out of the woodwork all the time.”
“Why didn’t she come up the dirt drive?” asked Jason. “She’d have passed by it to get here.”
“Maybe she thought it dead ended at some little house or something,” Ed suggested. “It could be that she didn’t know it was the drive to the refuge.”
“Possibly,” concurred Herb. He added, “She could be lost in the woods, or one of the zombies may have split off from the main group and found her.” He glanced at the sky and noted that it was getting late. “It will be getting dark in another hour. Let’s head back for the refuge along the trail they left. Ed, look for any sign that someone left that trail and went elsewhere.”
“You’ve got it,” Ed replied.
They started back toward camp, following the signs of passage that the undead had left in their wake. They had been on the move for ten minutes when Ed held up a hand for the others to stop. He stared at the ground about ten feet away, and to the right. He moved over to look at the spot on the forest floor. He stared at the ground for a moment, and then began to look further to the right. He moved once more, prompting the others to follow in order to maintain their intervals.
Ed stopped and came back to make a report. The four men converged and the others listened as he said, “It looks like she ditched them and headed away from the refuge.”
“We’ll follow for another fifteen minutes. If we find her, great, but if we don’t, then we’ll have to turn back,” Herb said.
“Okay,” Ed responded, and then he resumed tracking the woman.
The four men moved to the northeast for several minutes, and then they came to a ravine. Ed made his way to the edge and looked at it. Then he looked down. He saw a crumpled form lying twenty feet below on the rocky soil. “It looks like the edge gave way here and she fell,” he said.
Down below them, the woman groaned, as if in pain. She was in the prone position on her stomach, facing away from the men. The left side of her face was pressed against the ground.
“Do you think she was bitten?” asked Jason.
“We’ll have to find out,” Herb said. “Let’s make our way around to the shallow side. Jason, you and Ed will go in and check on the woman. Randy and I will stay up topside, so we can see the surrounding area and cover you two.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Jason said.
The four men made their way along the edge of the rift until they came to the shallowest portion, which was only about four feet deep. Ed dropped down onto the rocky bed of the gulch. Jason soon joined him, and together, the two men moved toward the woman. Herb and Randy moved back along the edge at ground level, keeping pace and on the alert for any threat to themselves or the men below them.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Herb heard Ed ask. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath and looked down into the ravine to see what had alarmed one of the men. “Jesus, would you look at that,” Ed said as he backed away from the woman’s body.
Herb stared in disbelief. Ed had turned the woman over on her back. The left side of her face that had been pressed to the ground had been gouged by a sharp rock during her fall, but it wasn’t the wound that had alarmed Ed. They had all seen much worse. No, what had unnerved the man was the large grey colored worm that had partially burrowed into the woman’s wounded face. Herb felt an instant revulsion and knew how Ed felt. “Grab it,” he instructed the men below.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Randy exclaimed. “Really? A zombie earthworm?”
Jason rushed forward when he saw that Ed, who was closer, was reluctant to grab the worm and pull it out of the woman’s face. He grabbed its body between the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, and then he tried to extract it from the woman’s face. The worm didn’t budge. It had embedded itself firmly in the woman’s flesh.
Dana’s eyes snapped open and she began to scream. That caused Jason to pull harder on the worm and its body tore apart just below the portion he was holding in his hand.
Herb saw the remaining visible portion of the worm slither out of sight inside the woman’s face. “Shit!” he said. He opened a pouch on his tactical vest and extracted one of the vaccinations. “Ed!” he shouted to get the man’s attention. When he looked up at him, Herb said, “Catch this, and don’t drop it,” and then he dropped the syringe.
Ed caught the hypodermic and uncapped the needle with practiced ease. He was a professional. Prior to the fall of America, the former Afghanistan war veteran had been a paramedic, and now that the initial shock of what he had seen had passed, he went into action in an attempt to save the woman’s life. He knelt beside Dana, hoping that none of the worms would attack him as he did so. “I see several other entry holes. More of the things got inside her.”
“Inject her near the wound. Do it now, before those things can get to her brain and shut down her nervous system,” Herb ordered.
“It burns!” Dana yelled at the top of her lungs and then she began to thrash about spasmodically.
Jason grabbed the woman’s shoulders to hold her still while Ed attempted to administer the injection, but Dana was fighting too hard for the men to succeed. Jason dropped to his knees with his legs bracketing the woman’s head. He managed to control the movement of her head for a few moments, and Ed administered the vaccine. Dana tried her best to bite Jason’s hand as he withdrew the syringe. Ed fell back on his butt and scrambled away from the woman. “Has she turned already?” he asked.
“No, asshole,” she responded. “I’m just pissed off, and in about ten seconds, I intend to take a plug out of this jerk’s leg.”
“You bite one of my men and I’m going to take it personally,” Herb said from his position above them at the edge of the ravine. “Calm down and we’ll take you back to our refuge. Keep acting this way, and we’ll leave you here to fend for yourself.”
“You’re from the refuge?” the woman asked.
“We are. When the zombies attacked us, we decided to see if someone was in the woods,” Herb replied. Then he asked, “Is it still burning?”
“No. Hey, how did you know?” Dana asked. Then she frowned and said, “Never mind that. Get your goon off me.”
Herb shook his head in disgust. “Let the woman go, Jason, but be careful. She might try to make good on her threat.”
“What was in that shot you gave me?” Dana asked Ed. “It better not be some date rape drug.”
“Jesus, lady, I...”
“Don’t act all innocent with me. You had your friend hold me down while you gave me a shot. What the hell am I supposed to think?”
“He gave you a vaccine that will kill the parasites,” Herb explained.
“I wasn’t bitten by the zombies, Einstein.”
“Get that woman out of the gulch before more of those worms decide to attack you guys,” Herb said, ignoring Dana’s latest insult.
“Worms?” she said. “I used to go fishing with my dad. I’m not afraid of worms.”
“That’s good,” Herb said. He was tempted to tell her that she had several zombie worms inside her face, but decided against it because it would be an act of cruelty. Instead, he motioned for the men below to get her to her feet and lead her out of the ravine.
“Oh shit,” Randy said.
Herb spun around expecting to see zombies, but saw nothing alarming in the growing twilight. “What is it?” he asked his friend.
“I was just thinking about all those zombies we’ve buried at the refuge.”
“Yeah? And?” asked Herb impatiently.
“Worms eat bodies.”
Well, of course they do,” Herb said. His eyes grew larger and he said, “Oh shit.”
“Yeah, man. That’s what I said when it occurred to me. We’re going to be up to our necks in zombie earthworms.”
“Yeah, and flies. Hell, there are probably even some zombie mosquitoes,” Herb stated.
“Can you walk?” Ed asked the woman.
“Yeah, I think I can. I slid down some of the embankment, and only fell about six feet to the ground.”
Ed helped her get to her feet, and then turned to lead her out of the ravine. Jason took the rear position. Dana took a couple of careful steps, testing her body to determine the extent of her injuries. She soon found that she could walk adequately, and she increased her pace to keep up with Ed who had drawn ahead of her.
Once they were out of the gulch, Herb got them headed back for the refuge. A couple of minutes into the journey, the woman said, “My face is bleeding! Why didn’t you guys bandage my face?”
“We’re hoping the worms won’t like the vaccine, and will come back out,” Ed replied before Herb could stop him.
“Out of what? My face? What are you talking about? Are you saying I have worms in my face?” Dana asked. Her voice indicated her innate disgust at the concept.
“I’m afraid so,” Ed said. “I counted five entry holes.”
“What about my cut?” she persisted.
“It’s not bleeding now. Well, not much at any rate. It would be best to wait to cover it until we get you back to the clinic. The doctor will see to your medical needs there.” Herb said as Ed led them up to his position.
Herb and Randy helped the two men out of the rift in the earth, and then they pulled Dana out. “Hey, I feel something moving in my face,” the woman said.
Ed took a small flashlight from a pouch, switched it on, and aimed it at Dana’s face. “Close your eyes and be still,” he warned Dana.
“What for?” she asked.
“So he can do his job,” Herb said. Dana’s belligerence was beginning to annoy him. He turned to Ed and said, “If she won’t cooperate, then we’ll let her wait for the doctor to help her and get moving. We need to get out of the woods anyway.”
The worm that had been making its way out of Dana’s face had managed to emerge completely. It began to crawl down the side of her cheek, toward her chin, causing her to brush her face with her hand. It fell to the ground at her feet. “What was that?” she asked.
Ed surreptitiously stepped on the worn with his combat boot. “It was nothing. I thought I saw something, but it must have been a shadow,” he lied. Like Herb, he was getting tired of the woman’s attitude.
“Lead on, Ed,” Herb ordered. “We’ll have to use flashlights as it is before we get out of the woods. I’d like to be close to the refuge before we do that, so let’s make time.”
Herb stayed close to the woman as they made their way through the woods. He saw two more of the worms emerge from her skin. In both cases, the woman rubbed her face and looked annoyed. She didn’t realize that she was dislodging the dying zombie worms. Then it got too dark for him to see what was happening with her. The men had to use flashlights fitted with red lenses to mask the light.