by Dana Fredsti
I registered the concern in his voice, but didn't have time to enjoy it. “I'm fine, but Kaitlyn … her neck. He bit her.”
Gabriel started to reply, then tensed.
“What—”
He shushed me with a slashing hand gesture, his posture one of intense concentration. Then we all heard it: rising moans coming from all directions, the sound muffled, yet echoing all around us as if rebounding off the thick fog. Nothing was visible yet, but they had to be close.
Gabriel didn't waste any time. “Get to the truck.”
“You're not leaving me here…” Jake pushed himself up on his hands, blood streaming from the wound on his head. I thought I could see brains through the blood. How was he even alive? He raised his head slowly and saw me. “You can't leave me… please, help me!”
I hesitated as zombies appeared in the woods behind the cabins. We needed to take him with us. Didn't we?
“Please…”
I took a step towards him, one of those stupid “yeah, I know better, but…” moves we all do on occasion, but Kai grabbed my arm and yanked me away, hard.
“Leave him.”
“But—”
Kai shook his head. “I don't care if he's a Wild Card. He nearly killed Kaitlyn. He can stay here and get ripped to pieces. You got me?” He stared me down until I nodded. He was right, but I didn't have to like it.
Kai let go of me, then helped Mack get Kaitlyn, Mack keeping the pillowcase clamped to her neck as they half carried, half dragged her between them to the truck. The rest of us formed a loose half circle around them as rotting figures began shambling towards us out of the fog.
“Please!” wailed Jake from behind us.
I risked a look back and saw zombies converging on him, then lurching right by as if he didn't exist. Jake continued to holler even though he remained untouched. And suddenly the missing piece of info that had been nagging at me clicked into place. There hadn't been any zombies trying to get into Jake's cabin. They would have known there was prey in there and would have been pounding on the door and walls to get at it. Jake wasn't just crazy, and I didn't think he was a Wild Card. Kai had been right to leave him.
In the meantime, zombies continued to pour out from the trees. Time to get the hell out of Bigfoot's Revenge.
“Don't try to take them all out!” Gabriel shouted even as he took out three zombies in rapid succession with precision headshots. “Just get to the truck!”
Zombies staggered out from the other side of the truck as we sprinted towards it.
“Someone get the door!” yelled Mack, stumbling under Kaitlyn's weight as she started to lose consciousness. Kai helped prop her up, but the three of them were out for the count as far as fighting off the approaching undead.
Slinging his M4 over one shoulder, Tony retrieved his sledgehammer from the ground and swung it in vicious arcs as zombies closed in from either side, knocking them backwards and roaring like a wrathful god with each swing. He looked like a teenage punk version of Thor. Lil ran up next to him, ducking the sledgehammer with almost choreographed grace. She reached the passenger side of the truck and flung open the doors, Tony beating the zombies away as Mack and Kai got Kaitlyn inside the backseat. Gabriel reached the truck as well; he and Lil covered the rest of us as we scrambled inside. Gentry and I clambered into the rear of the Suburban, slithering over the back seat, Lil using her M4 with good effect if not with Gabriel's lethal precision. Tony in the meantime, swung his sledgehammer in rapid figure eights, like some sort of primitive egg beater. Can't make undead omelets without breaking a few zombie skulls, y'know.
I shook my head; my brain really had no sense of timing or decorum when it popped off these thoughts.
Gabriel slid across to the driver's seat and started the engine, Lil jumping in next to him as Tony continued to bludgeon the approaching zombies, his face a mask of primal, bloody rage. “Tony!” roared Gabriel, “Get your ass in the truck now!”
Swinging his sledgehammer one more time and cracking the heads of several zoms, Tony dove into the back seat, slamming the door behind him as Gabriel hit the accelerator and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving Jake still probably wailing on the ground as the zombies ignored him. Undead hands grasped at the vehicle. The sound of fingers squelching on the windows mixed with the thud of metal hitting flesh. The Suburban shuddered with each impact, but held the road. Talk about a great advertising opportunity for Chevy. “Chevy Suburban, the perfect family vehicle. Comfortably holds a family of eight while holding the road when mowing down zombies!”
Out the back window all I could see were zombies staggering through the fog after us down the road. Out the side windows I saw more flesh-eaters came from the mist-shrouded trees. Where the hell were they coming from?
Thank God for good suspension ‘cause Gabriel drove like the proverbial bat out of hell (and did anyone ever explain what the bat was doing in hell in the first place?) down the road towards the highway that would take us back to Big Red, barely slowing for turns or potholes. Gentry and I didn't have seatbelts and were rattled around like dice in a well-designed Yahtzee cup.
After about five minutes the zombies receded into the foggy distance and Gabriel slowed down marginally. He looked into the rearview mirror. “How's Kaitlyn?”
Mack glanced up at him, still firmly holding the pillowcase against Kaitlyn's neck. “The bleeding's slowing down, but we need to get her back to DBP. God only knows what kind of germs his teeth were carrying.”
“She's a Wild Card,” said Gabriel. “She can't get infected.”
I shook my head, then realized he couldn't see me. “The guy that bit her … he wasn't a zombie. He was still alive when we found him.”
“What?” The word was explosive, like a bullet.
“He'd been bitten,” I said softly. “He said he could feel himself rot. But … he was alive … and he was eating his wife and son.”
Gabriel blanched, his skin actually turning pale as I watched in the rear view mirror.
“Dude had to be fucking crazy,” said Tony.
“No. He wasn't crazy.” Gabriel spoke in a carefully controlled voice, as if he was certain of his facts, but some emotion lurked very close to the surface of his matter-of-fact tone. “Or maybe it would be more accurate to say he wasn't just crazy.”
Gabriel paused and through the rear view mirror I saw a play of emotions rippling across his face so quickly I couldn't identify any of them before he'd schooled his expression back into Stoic 101. He started to speak again, but whatever it was got lost in the next few seconds as the Suburban plowed into a knot of figures standing motionless in the middle of the road. Gabriel jerked the wheel to one side in a knee-jerk reaction. Guess he thought we'd left all of the zombies behind us.
As the SUV left the asphalt and veered off into the trees, I got a glimpse of the would-be road kill Gabriel had served to avoid. Zombies. At least six of them, just standing there as if they'd been waiting for us.
Then the vehicle bounced over uneven terrain and off redwoods before hitting something, maybe a stump, and rolling over and over, all of us inside thrown around like rocks in a tumbler, only without the shiny polished finish at the end of the ride.
Gentry and I had the worst of it, without any seatbelts or ‘Oh Jesus’ handles to hang on to, our weapons flailing around as we rolled. Gentry did his best to shield me by wrapping his arms around my upper body, one hand pressing my head against his chest. Something hard hit the back of my head, but my helmet protected me from more than an uncomfortable thonk and a little bit of brain rattling.
When we finally came to a halt, passenger side on the ground and the undercarriage pressed up against a huge redwood, Gentry and I were smushed up against the side window, limbs entangled with scabbards, M4s and one another. Pushing his forearm off my mouth, I said, “You okay?”
He nodded, wincing as he did so. “Yeah, I think so.”
The SUV's engine gave a final death rattle, then cut out.
&n
bsp; Assorted groans and little cries of pain filled the vehicle as the shock of the accident wore of enough to start moving around. We were all bruised and bloodied. Shaken, but not stirred.
Shut up, brain.
“Everyone okay?” Gabriel hung awkwardly from his seatbelt, suspended sideways next to Lil, now pressed up against the passenger door.
“Kaitlyn's in bad shape,” said Mack, voice thick with concern.
“Let's get her out of the vehicle.” Gabriel unlatched the driver's side door and gave a mighty shove. It swung open and then slammed shut again, gravity being what it is. “Shit. Lil, I'm probably going to step on you a little bit here.”
“That's okay,” Lil said bravely.
Gabriel unlocked his seatbelt and fell on top of Lil. I heard a small oof, but otherwise she didn't complain. The view from the back wasn't the best, but somehow Gabriel ended up feet first on the passenger window so he could use his height and long arms to open the driver's door with enough leverage to ensure it didn't slam shut again. He pulled himself out of the SUV, then reached back in and helped Lil out as well.
I heard the sound of his feet crunching on the ground around to the back of the SUV, where he popped the latch and opened the rear door, holding it as Gentry and I slithered awkwardly out into the fog, grabbing our guns as we did so.
Lucky for us they hadn't gone off during the accident.
I hit the ground, wincing as my body protested any movement after being put through an automotive spin cycle.
“You okay?” Gabriel put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“I think so.” I gave him a brief smile, more to reassure him than anything else. The relief in his eyes, however, sent a rush of warmth through me.
“Good.” He reached out and touched my face, so softly and quickly it might not have happened. Then he was all business as he leaned in the back. “Can you get Kaitlyn out through the back?”
“I think so,” Mack replied. “Tony, you go first, then we'll hand Kaitlyn to you.”
Tony gave a grunt of what must have been assent before squirming through the gap between the back seats and the roof, hunkering down as best he could against the side rear window while Mack and Kai did their best to pass an unconscious Kaitlyn through to him.
Tony emerged back first from the rear of the SUV, hands hooked under Kaitlyn's armpits as he dragged her outside, the pillowcase, now tacky with blood, still pressed against her neck. He stretched her out on the ground as assorted thuds and grunts preceded Mack and Kai's exit from the vehicle.
We did a quick inventory for injuries. Blood dripped from Gentry's nose where something—probably my head—had clipped it during the roll and Tony had a gash across one cheek. We all could have used a bucket of ibuprofen but, all in all, we'd gotten lucky and escaped without any broken bones.
Kai thumped his helmet. “Guess there's a reason for these things after all.”
I did a quick check of all my weapons, gratified to find the various sheathes and straps had held.
Kaitlyn groaned, eyes fluttering open. “Wha—what?” Mack immediately dropped to her side.
“You're okay, sweetheart,” he said gently. “We're getting you back to Big Red, okay?”
Kaitlyn looked up at him, eyes glazed with pain and shock. Then she gave a small smile. “You're a liar, Postman.” Her voice was weak, but the words clear.
Mack smiled back. “I don't lie. It's part of the whole ‘neither rain nor sleet’ oath, didn't you know that?”
Her eyes shut again, the little smile still on her lips.
Mack looked up at Gabriel, his worried expression totally at odds with his confident words to Kaitlyn. “How far is it back to Big Red?”
“We're at least twenty miles out.” Gabriel shook his head. “We'll have to call for extraction.”
Gentry nodded and reached for his walkie-talkie. Before he could unhook it from his belt, the moans of the undead penetrated the fog. The sound of unsteady yet relentless footfalls headed our way through the trees.
Gabriel tensed. “We don't have time to wait for extraction. We'll have to run for it, find some kind of protection where we can make a stand or hole up until help can reach us. We'll have to carry Kaitlyn.”
“I can walk,” Kaitlyn said faintly.
“Sure you can walk,” said Mack as he and Kai helped her to her feet, supporting her weight between them. “You just can't stand.”
The moans and shambling footsteps grew closer, the dripping fog and echoes from the trees making it hard to tell exactly how far away they were and from how many directions they approached. The situation felt uncomfortably close to Lil's and my near-fatal encounter in Redwood Grove, except we weren't surrounded. Yet.
“This way!” Gabriel bounded in the opposite direction of where we'd gone off the road, the rest of us following as closely as we could given the thick undergrowth of bushes, saplings and other plants.
Trees, trees, and more friggin’ trees. It was so easy to forget how big the redwood forests were when you just drove through them now and again. Being smack in the middle on foot made me aware of how very small I was in comparison to the giants around me, and how easy it would be to get lost. Hopefully the zombies would find the mist-shrouded woods equally confusing. Gabriel kept up a good pace, but made sure not to outstrip the rest of us. It would have been all too easy for stragglers to get disoriented and separated in the fog, especially Mack and Kai as they did their best to support Kaitlyn, who tried valiantly to walk, but was practically a dead weight between them.
A low hanging branch smacked me in the face and I had to stop an irrational impulse to smack it back. I was tired, hungry, and had to pee.
My breath came in shorter gasps as the ground suddenly rose up in a steep grade, moist pine needles and mud slowly giving way to eroding granite and rocks, all of it slippery beneath our feet. Lil sprinted just ahead of me while Mack and Kai struggled to maintain their footing as they now dragged Kaitlyn between them. Tony and Gentry brought up the rear, helping Mack and Kai when they stumbled.
Even with our added Wild Card advantages, we couldn't go at this pace for much longer and the moans of the undead weren't fading off into the distance. They were tracking us, whether by smell or sound or both, and they had the advantage of never getting tired or needing a bathroom break. We needed to find shelter, and quickly.
We reached a particularly steep and treacherous slope, clumps of earth and rock crumbling beneath our feet as we clambered up, using scrub brush and trees as handholds. Lil slid back into me once, nearly sending us both tumbling back down the slope, but I managed to grab a nearby tree and dig my feet in until she regained her footing.
“Over here!” Gabriel's voice came from ahead, further up the slope. The rest of us scrambled our way up, finally hitting level ground—and a high chain link fence. About three feet of packed dirt and pine needles separated the fence from the slope in what looked like a well-worn path.
“This way!” Gabriel shouted. “There's a house over here!”
We followed the path along the fence towards the right and the sound of Gabriel's voice, the flat terrain the first break we'd had since the accident. Mack's face was red with the effort of hauling Kaitlyn up the slope and Kai didn't look too fresh either. Kaitlyn's skin looked moist and the pale, almost bluish tinge screamed “shock.” We had to get her inside and warm quickly because if the blood loss didn't kill her, the shock might.
I nearly ran into Gabriel where he stood in front of a locked gate, a narrow dirt road leading up to it from the woods below. Beyond the gate I could see what looked like an adobe structure, set back against a steep tree-studded hillside, really almost a cliff. The color of the building blended in with the rocks behind it, looking almost like part of the natural environment. The walls were gently rounded, reminding me of the hobbit houses in Lord of the Rings, and followed the curve of a rocky overhang, which sheltered the house and gave the impression of a very deliberate choice when the place was built. T
he chain link fence ran the perimeter, both ends butting up on either side of the hill. Both fence and gate were at least six feet tall and had barbed wire strung across the top. The words ‘fortified’ and ‘strategically placed’ sprang to mind, like a hobbit dwelling during wartime.
To the right of the house was one of those portable garage thingys, a metal frame structure covered by canvas. To the side of that was another, smaller portable shelter, this one surrounded by pieces of redwood: burls and cross-sections stacked like wooden cucumber slices.
The gate itself was your basic tubular bars made of galvanized steel, like a horse corral gate except the bars were set too close together to allow a person to climb in between them. A thick U-shaped latch flipped down around an equally sturdy metal post on the side. A heavy-duty padlock locked the two together.
“Can you open it?” I asked as Gabriel examined the padlock.
He shook his head. “It's a Medeco lock. The military uses them because they're near impossible to cut through them. We'll have to climb over.”
The rest of the team reached us.
“No way we can get Kaitlyn over this,” said Gentry. He wiped sweat from his forehead as it drizzled down beneath his helmet.
“You got any better ideas?” Gabriel snapped.
A fresh wave of ululating moans rose from the trees below us.
“Yeah,” I said. Grabbing the gate, I started shaking it as hard as I could and yelled, “Help! If anyone's in there, please let us in!”
The look on Gabriel's face was almost comically surprised. I shrugged and continued hollering. It only took a few seconds before Gabriel, Gentry, Tony, and Lil joined me in rattling the gate and adding their voices to mine.
The sound of metal rattling combined with our raised voices excited the zombies, the commotion causing the volume of their hungry cries to ratchet up a level as they blundered upwards through the trees. It couldn't be long before the first ones reached us.