Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 3): Ashes in the Mouth

by Jeff DeGordick

  "I don't think I ever thanked you for helping me," Sarah told him.

  Dale turned his head away meekly and scratched the back of it. "Well, if it wasn't for our pit, you wouldn't be in the pain you're in."

  "You still saved my life. He was right behind me and he was going to kill me."

  His skin crawled every time she mentioned the killer, like the faceless image he pictured had turned into the actual boogeyman in his mind. "Well, we were happy to help. And when Jimmy comes back and we get you your medicine, we'll all sleep tight and sort this whole mess out in the morning."

  Sarah nodded. The thought of sleeping through the night hadn't crossed her mind yet, and she wondered what would happen to them. If someone could sneak up on four trained Navy SEALs, what hope did they have?

  But the pain was too distracting for her to think too closely about it, and they waited in relative silence after that for Jimmy to return.

  Three hours passed and Dale paced around the cabin nervously.

  The pain in Sarah's ankle was still intense, but it subsided slightly, and she was more present in her awareness. She watched Dale as he went back and forth, obviously beside himself with worry.

  "I'm sure he'll be back soon," Sarah said.

  He glanced at her, brought out of the frantic daydream in his head, and he nodded before turning and pacing back to the other end of the cramped space.

  He would periodically stop at the window and look out, seeing the dark and empty forest, before returning to his patrol. The wind picked up in the night and started to blow through the cracks in the cabin, creating a high-pitched whistling that would come and go with the waves of rushing air. The old wood creaked and shifted, and Sarah began to get scared. She knew the killer was still out there, biding his time to get to her. She didn't know who he was or what he wanted, and that made it more terrifying than anything. Every creak of the wood or whistle of the wind made her heart jump and her head would jerk back and forth like a bird, trying to determine the source of each sound.

  Dale stopped in front of the door. "Maybe I should go look for him," he said.

  Sarah's stomach lurched at the suggestion and the idea of being all alone and crippled in the cabin, but she didn't say anything.

  He started to reach for the doorknob, but he stopped himself, shaking his head. "No, no, no," he said. He looked back at her and added, "No, I can't leave you alone."

  Her tension eased at the words and she tried not to let her sigh of relief be too noticeable. She knew he was worried for his nephew, and she didn't know exactly what was in his head, but she had already started to fear the worst. She knew that Jimmy could handle himself with the average zombie, but she also knew that there were more than zombies out there.

  Dale stood at the window. "Come on, where are you?" he muttered under his breath.

  A strong gust of wind picked up and rattled the cabin, creating all sorts of strange noises. When it died down and everything fell silent, another noise took its place.

  Neither Sarah nor Dale noticed it at first and assumed it was caused by the wind, but when they realized the wind was quiet, their hearts started to hammer at the same time.

  The noise was coming from behind the cabin and it sounded like footsteps. The unmistakable sound of a patch of leaves rustling one after another came through the cracks of the cabin as the sound wound its way around the opposite side from the window.

  Dale pressed his face to the glass, hopelessly trying to catch even a tiny glimpse of movement outside. His heart was in a flutter knowing that Jimmy was back. He stepped away from the window and faced the door as the footsteps came around to the front. They were slower than Jimmy's footsteps should have been, but Dale was too excited to think about it. The wooden steps leading up to the door groaned under someone's weight, and then the doorknob jiggled back and forth. Dale went up to the door and pulled the chair out from under the knob, then he reached out to unlock it.

  Realizing what was happening, Sarah bolted upright on the mattress. "No! Don't!" she cried.

  Dale paused and looked back at her, confused.

  "Put the chair back!" she told him.

  He didn't understand her strange instructions that conflicted with his excitement to let Jimmy back in, but he did as she wished.

  The doorknob continued to jiggle, but there was no knock and there was no one on the other side asking to be let in; it just jiggled slowly from side to side.

  Then the horror dawned on Dale and he moved away from the door. The floorboards groaned under his weight, and he paused, trying to suppress the sound.

  The lantern was lit on the table in the corner, and it shone on the whole interior with its warm glow. Dale crept over and extinguished it, not wanting the person outside to be able to see them through the window.

  Darkness came over them, and it took several seconds for their eyes to adjust to it. Dale pulled out his pistol and crept over to Sarah. He knew the person outside was aware they were in there, but Dale didn't want him to know exactly where or what they were doing.

  "Is that him?" Dale whispered.

  "Yeah," Sarah whispered back. Her eyes were wide and she was propped up on her elbows, her hands clutching the sides of the mattress in terror. With the door locked and barred, and Dale armed, they should have been safe from the killer outside, but she knew they weren't at all.

  Dale sat down on the floor with his back against the wall and propped his elbow up on his knee, aiming the gun at the door. He glanced at the window periodically, ready to point and shoot in that direction if he needed to.

  Then the doorknob stopped moving and there was silence.

  The wind picked up again and made the cabin groan as the air whistled through the cracks. Dale winced at not being able to hear what the killer was doing outside, but then the wind finally died down and there was silence again. And then a bang on the door.

  The front door rattled in its frame and scared the hell out of both of them. Another bang shook the door, like someone was slapping on it with the palm of their hand. The sounds continued, slow and lazy. But it didn't sound like someone who was actually trying to get inside with very much effort.

  The fear swelling in their chests eased off as they became confused. Dale stood up and crept over to the door. The banging stopped and he pressed an ear to it.

  He heard someone breathing on the other side, drawing raspy breath in and out.

  Then the steps groaned under the person's weight as they turned and wandered away from the cabin. Footsteps shuffled through the leaves again, but this time Dale noticed the fine details of the sounds that he had been too excited before to catch. The footsteps were long and slow, almost like they were dragging along the ground.

  He went to the window and pressed his face against the glass, trying to see around to the front were the person had gone.

  "What do you see?" Sarah whispered. "Is it him?"

  A dark shape came into view at the edge of the window. It was far away and hard to make out; just a dark blob in the night. But he could see its vague outline as it sank down onto its knees in front of a strange mass lying on the ground.

  "Aw shit!" Dale cried.

  "What is it?" Sarah asked, her terror returning.

  "It's just a zombie," he said.

  "Well what's wrong?"

  "It's eating the deer that we bagged."

  "Can't you go outside and kill it?" she asked.

  Dale shook his head as he walked away from the window. "Nah, it's too late. The meat's spoiled now." He sat down on the chair next to the table and put his head in his hand. "What a waste," he muttered.

  Sarah watched him with concern, wishing there was something she could do for him.

  He kept his head nestled against his hand which was propped on the table, but he didn't move. He stayed like that for a long time until eventually his head suddenly slipped off his hand and he jerked upright in his seat. He was falling asleep, and no matter how much he tried to keep himself alert, hi
s eyes kept drooping closed and his head kept slipping. Every time his head would fall and he would wake himself up, he would mutter under his breath about looking for Jimmy.

  As Sarah watched him, she realized that she had been starting to fall sleep herself, as there were periods of blackness that suddenly fell over her vision. The pain in her ankle was still intense, but her sleepiness overpowered it.

  Eventually Sarah's eyes closed permanently for the night, and all her fears and worries were cut off, paused until the next day.

  If there was a next day.

  Sarah's eyes shot open, her heart already hammering without knowing what had startled her awake. After the first brief moment that it took for all her senses to come back to her, she realized that someone was screaming.

  Daylight came through the window and lit the cabin, and Sarah found that she was alone. The front door was open, and the tail end of the scream came from somewhere off in the woods.

  She looked around frantically, a million thoughts racing through her head about who could be screaming and why. She remembered Dale said there were crutches in the bathroom and she lifted her bad leg and spun around on the mattress, carefully pushing herself up on her other leg and bracing her hands against the wall to hobble to the small room at the foot of the bed.

  Her ankle felt much better than the night before, but she didn't dare to put any weight on it or move it around if she could help it.

  The bathroom was dark, but she felt around and her hand landed on the crutches propped in the front corner next to the doorframe. She pulled them out and shoved them under her armpits, then she made her way to the front door as another scream erupted outside.

  Sarah looked down at the floor in front of her, focusing all her attention to make sure she didn't trip on the stairs as she carefully hobbled down onto the leaf-strewn ground. As she made her way through the woods toward the source of the screams, she saw Dale kneeling down in front of something in the distance. At first she thought it was the deer, and she couldn't understand why he was so upset. But when she got closer, she understood.

  Jimmy's corpse lay on the ground in front of Dale. Sarah could see his arms thrown limply over his head and the lifeless expression on his face as she came around Dale's side and saw the body in full view.

  Dale sobbed and coughed between screams of anguish that now started to fade into painful wails.

  Jimmy's entire neck had been eaten through, leaving nothing but his spine at the back to connect his head to his body. His coat and shirt had been undone, revealing his bare chest. Shallow cuts were made into his flesh, spelling a simple phrase:

  THANKS FOR DINNER

  9

  THE BEST LAID PLANS…

  Dale took a long drag of his cigarette then pulled it out of his mouth and flicked the ash onto the ground. White smoke poured out through his pursed lips, floating and fading into the gray daylight.

  Sarah sat on the ground with her back against a nearby tree, her crutches neatly tucked beside her. She watched the dismal scene with a glumness that she hadn't felt in quite a while. Guilt ate away at her, again reminding her that she was the sole cause of the misfortunes of everyone whose path she crossed. A part of her wanted to run away, but it would have been a sorry sight on just a pair of crutches. She wanted to apologize to Dale in so many ways, but the words escaped her. She knew he wasn't angry at her, but the whole thing stung all the same.

  Dale took one last puff of cool smoke and tossed the cigarette away. He blew it out of his mouth as the wind took it up and twisted it away. He looked down at his nephew's body wrapped in the green tarp and said a final, silent goodbye. He hoisted one end of the body, dragged it over to the edge of the grave he dug, then he dropped Jimmy in feet-first, lowering the rest of him gently down. His body pressed into the soft dirt and settled into its final resting position.

  Dale instinctively put his hand up to his face to take another drag, then he remembered that he had finished the cigarette. He pulled the pack out of his coat pocket and flipped the lid open.

  One last solitary cigarette sat in it and Dale sighed. "Last one," he said. "Better save it." He talked aloud so that Sarah could hear him, but he was really only talking to himself.

  The two of them remained isolated from each other as Dale grabbed a shovel and filled in the grave, and Sarah continued to sit against the tree feeling guilty and depressed.

  When he was done, Dale helped her up without much more of a goodbye to his nephew, and he brought her back into the cabin. He sat her on a chair and told her to wait there for him to return. At first she thought he was going to leave her there, and she became anxious, but she heard him go to the shed behind the cabin and fiddle around with something before coming back holding a small armful of jerky and an empty plastic jug. He walked over to the bucket of water sitting between the mattresses and carefully poured it into the jug, filling it up to the top with only a little left over. He poured the remainder into two cups and handed one to Sarah, and they both drank it down without a word. Dale pulled the rifle off his shoulder and checked the ammo to make sure it was fully loaded, then he pulled a few clips out of his pocket to be sure he had enough. When he was through with this, he brought the jerky and the water to the door and put his rifle back over his shoulder.

  "We're going to take a little bit of a hike," he told her.

  "Where are we going?"

  "There's a motel down the road a little ways. It's not too far, so you should be able to make it okay." Before she could ask why, he added, "I'm going to kill that son of a bitch, Sarah. He knows we can't stay here anyway, but when he follows us, he's going to walk right into a trap."

  "What do you have in mind?" she asked.

  "I'll tell you when we get there," he said. "We've got to get going, anyway."

  Dale helped her get her coat on and walk down the steps outside. He kept a pace ahead of her as he walked through the woods, carrying the food and water with his rifle on his shoulder. Sarah followed behind, slowly getting used to her crutches.

  The cold wind blew in their faces as they left the cabin behind, carving a path through the trees until they got to the highway. There was no sign of the killer anywhere that morning—no strange shadows or noises or anything to indicate that he was following them. But they knew he was; that was part of Dale's plan.

  The walk took longer than Sarah thought it would, but she didn't complain. She still wasn't sure exactly what kind of mood Dale was in, and she didn't know how frosty he would be to her going forward. She counted any time at all where he didn't decide to ditch her on the side of the road and carry on his own way as a blessing.

  But he was focused, his eyes intense and trained on the road ahead like a laser. He kept his ears open and would take a sly look around once in a while to make sure the odd noise of a creature scurrying through the woods next to them was nothing sinister.

  Sunset came early, and shortly after that, the darkness took over. It was getting near the end of December, and it must have only been five-thirty. Storm clouds rolled overhead and looked down on them with nasty visages. Before long, a distant rumble of thunder echoed in the sky and icy cold rain fell down on them.

  Sarah began to shiver and Dale gave her a sympathetic look. "Not much longer now," he said. "Maybe half a mile, is all."

  They got lucky with the road, not running into any zombies or bandits. Dale had walked the path quite a few times to get some supplies from the edge of town, which was even farther than the motel, and he knew it was generally safe. But as they got close, the darkness cloaked the land and the splashing rain masked all kinds of small noises, and Dale started to be more and more on edge.

  They cleared a bank of trees tilting over the edge of the road and then they saw the motel ahead. It was barely visible through the darkness, but they could both make it out. It looked like paradise to them as the rain soaked their clothing right down to their skin and caused an icy shiver to rattle through their bones. It got so bad that Sarah almos
t fell off her crutches from shivering so hard, and Dale would periodically pause to make sure she was okay. He took it a little better, shrugging off the discomfort and keeping his razor-sharp focus and unshakable will.

  The two of them crossed an intersecting road and carried on into the parking lot of the motel. The building was only one story, completely deserted with no cars anywhere around and no sign of life. Ten rooms sat in a straight row, connecting to an office at the end. Everything was nearly as black as the night around it, and it almost seemed like if the killer were following them, he wouldn't possibly be able to even see them or where they were going unless he was stalking only a few feet behind them.

  Dale looked over his shoulder. The pounding rain only hampered his visibility further, and he couldn't see anything at all. He leaned his head toward Sarah. "You hear that?" he asked.

  She continued to move along, carefully placing the crutches on the wet ground as her tired leg swung through and planted itself again. She listened for a moment, but didn't hear what he was talking about. "Hear what?"

  "Exactly. Don't you feel it?"

  "You mean him?"

  "Yeah."

  She extended her arms forward and planted the crutches on the ground then swung her leg through again. "I do. He's here." She didn't know how, but she picked up on what he meant. It was almost like a sixth sense that she could feel—an intuition that told her the killer was prowling close by.

  "That's what I thought," he said. "Just keep looking forward."

  He led her over to a room near the middle of the motel and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and the door swung open into the dry refuge. He helped her inside, then he took one last look at the area around them.

  The rain came down even thicker than before and the pounding sound of it on the pavement drowned out everything else. But there was no visible movement and no sign of anything around. And somehow that was all the confirmation he needed that the killer was among them.

  Dale took off his baseball cap and stepped through the doorway, closing the door behind him and locking it.