by Karen Carr
Stan and Saudah approached next. He had big bags under his eyes and Saudah was leaning against him for support.
“You look exhausted,” Stan said to me. “You should get some rest.”
“So do you,” I said, touching him lightly on the shoulder.
“We won’t keep her long,” Hipslow said. “Once or twice outside the gym for good measure. Twenty minutes, tops.”
“You want me to go with you?” Saudah asked.
“With Stan holding you up?” I laughed. Stan smiled at Saudah and pulled her in closer. “No,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Come on, honey,” Stan said and took Saudah inside the gym.
Huck, Hipslow and I stood in a tight triangle while Galen guarded the entrance to the gym with two other men.
“I’m going with you,” Huck said.
When I opened my mouth to protest, Huck held up his hand, almost touching my mouth with is. I didn’t feel like arguing with him, I knew it was futile and I was too tired. He was always trying to protect me, but it wasn’t a bad idea to have someone who knew me intimately by my side. I felt safe with Huck, and trusted him completely.
“Fine,” I said, my tone a more begrudging than I meant it to sound.
Huck rolled his eyes. “Good girl.”
“Don’t call me girl,” I snapped. “I am not a freaking puppy.”
Huck put up his hands. “Relax, I’m sorry.”
“I am too.” I sighed. “I am just tired.”
Suddenly a man ran toward us. He was bleeding and had a ripped shirt. “Hipslow. We’ve had an attack, a dozen of them coming in from the south through the fields. We lost Thomas. He was taken by surprise. There are more coming, we could use your help.”
The man shot me a desperate stare while he tried to catch his breath. He was panting fast and hard and trying to stop the bleeding coming from his shoulder. I stepped a few feet away from him. The teeth marks were obvious under the moonlit sky. He had been bitten.
“Matthew, please,” Hipslow said. “Deep breaths.”
“It’s Mark,” the man said between pants.
“Mark,” Hipslow corrected himself and moved toward the man.
“Hipslow, don’t,” I said and pulled him back.
Mark staggered toward Hipslow with outstretched arms and grasping hands.
“He’s been bitten,” I said to Hipslow. “He’s turning.”
The man began to sweat profusely and his face contorted in pain. He howled and whimpered, dropped to his knees and began to cry. My heart reached out to him as both Hipslow and Huck stood in front of me like a barricade.
The man began to shake and then threw up on the ground. He regarded us as a human one last time and his soul left his eyes.
“Duck,” I hollered and dropped to the ground, covering my head.
Hipslow and Huck did the same, both covering my torso with their bodies. A loud pop filled the air and guts dropped all around us. Galen and his men shouted expletives and came over to make sure we were alright. I pushed free of my Hipslow-Huck cocoon as both men wiped of the remains of Mark’s head.
“We’ve got to help the others,” I said. “Where are they?”
“South fields,” Hipslow said. “Galen and John, come with us.” He pointed to the other man with Galen who was as large as an oak tree. “Frank, stay by the door and don’t let anyone in or out.”
“Got it, Governor,” Frank said. He held up his weapon and went back to the door.
I stared walking in the direction the man had come from.
“Hella, where are you going?” Huck asked, following me.
“We have to get started,” I said. “I have to walk to keep my virus protection. I don’t want anyone else to die.”
Hipslow started after us, followed by Galen and John. “Galen, John, run ahead and let the others know we’re coming,” Hipslow said. “Drive the undead toward Hella. We’ll join you as fast as possible. Five minutes, tops.”
Galen and John ran south, holding their guns in one hand and flashlight in the other. They would need those lights, it was night time now, the only light coming from the almost-full moon. Galen and John were fast and agile, jumping over piles of wood and stacks of crates like they had lots of practice.
Hipslow picked up a large flashlight from a wheelbarrow and turned it on, shining its ray after Galen and John. They were now distant specs in the field, but I could still see them move like gazelles. I wanted to run after them as fast as I could, but I knew that wasn’t an option. What good was I without my zero-killing abilities?
Huck, Hipslow and I walked south, past the agricultural fields where vines were beginning to twine on trellises and strawberries were already ripe for the picking.
A few crude scare crows had been erected in the field, casting ghostly shadows over the crop. They reminded me of Halloween and brought my memory back to the first days of the apocalypse when everything in Haverlyn Village had been decorated for the holiday. These days, we were living in a permanent Halloween. These days, everything was scary, especially shadows and dark.
It was the longest five minutes of my life. We heard them before we saw them, screams and groans and shouts vibrated through my skin, reaching my heart, making it beat all the while faster. Hipslow quickened his pace and when he saw I wasn’t matching his speed, he would slow down again.
“I don’t need you,” I said. “I know where to go.”
“You sure?” Hipslow asked.
“I’m sure. We’ll follow the screams.”
Hipslow handed me the flashlight, pulled out his gun—the steel flashing in the moonlight, and ran toward the mayhem.
“Huck, I’m scared,” I said, the words escaping my breath before I realized my mistake. I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t want Huck to know my true feelings.
Huck put his arm around me and pulled me close. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Hella.”
Being under his arm, our bodies touching as we walked, felt great but also made me nervous inside. We walked through the fields, the only sounds coming from our footsteps on the wet grass and the occasional blood-curdling scream. Every time someone screamed, I flinched and Huck pulled me in closer. Every time they stopped, I pushed away from him, but not far enough where I let his arm drop from my shoulder.
We kept walking this way for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. We arrived at the end of the field and stopped in front of the stand of trees lining the south end. I shined the flashlight through the woods, seeing nothing lighted tree trunks.
“Listen,” Huck said. His hand moved from my shoulder to my neck, sending goose bumps across my scalp.
I turned my ear to the woods. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly,” Huck said. “No more screaming.”
“Do you think?” I asked.
Huck nodded. My virus had kicked in. I shined the light through the woods again, this time feeling more elated, wondering which way to go. I screamed and dropped the flashlight as the rays highlighted a figure running toward us.
“Crap,” Huck said. He pulled me down and aimed his gun at the approaching man.
“It’s me,” Galen said.
Galen stepped out of the woods, followed by several other men, the last one being Hipslow.
“Galen,” I said. “Are you alright?”
“You did it girl,” Galen said. He tried to hug me, but I ducked out of his reach.
“You’re gross, Galen.” He had guts all over him. He must have been right next to the horde when they blew their brains.
“They’re all dead, just over there.” Galen pointed through the woods. “It was unbelievable. One moment the zombies are coming at us, and then, boom. Their brains are mashed potatoes. That is some hell of a virus you have, Hella.”
“I want to see,” I said.
“Why Hella?” Huck asked. “Come on. It’s over.”
“I want to see to make sure it’s over,” I said. “There might be ot
hers close bye. It’s best to make sure they are all dead.” Flashlight in hand, I started down the path through the woods, hearing Huck’s footsteps behind me. More footsteps, these jogging, and Hipslow appeared by my side.
“I’ll take you there,” Hipslow said. “And then you rest.”
We walked through the dense tree stand and out the other side. I was surprised to find a stately mansion glowing in the moonlight and a circular drive covered with bodies. Several of the corpses rested on the ground, some lay on their backs, others on their fronts, still more had fallen to a sitting position.
They all had one thing in common, their brains were oozing out of their eyeballs. I turned away in anguish. Once the zeroes were motionless, it was hard to think of them as anything else except regular people who became sick. This bunch had been out in the elements too long, their clothing was in shreds and they were missing most of their features making them seem a little less human. It was impossible to tell who they were or where they had come from, something that made me feel better and worse at the same time.
Huck pulled me away from the mess. “Come on, Hella,” he said.
Hipslow turned to Galen. “Let’s get everyone inside now, Galen. Take a spin around the campus and make sure everyone’s in until morning. I have to let this girl get some sleep.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Galen gave some orders to the group he was with and they all took off in different directions.
“Will you walk with me?” Hipslow extended his arm. I placed my hand around his biceps right above his elbow, feeling an extra-large muscle under his shirt. The man was old, but he was strong. “We’re going to take another path back, an arc around the place to get some extra protection.”
“You’re working her to death already Hipslow?” Huck asked, taking his place my other side.
“Thanks for caring, Huck,” I said. Huck, Hipslow and I walked in step together.
“We’ll get you home soon,” Hipslow said.
“I work on an hourly rate, you know,” I said. “Twenty four hours a day.”
“Negotiations tomorrow, Hella.” Hipslow began to whistle as he took us on a large arc around the south field.
It was dark but for the moon in the sky and our flashlights. The grass was damp on my ankles and made me long to take my boots off. I wanted to feel the cool grass in between my toes, to be reminded of my youthful camping trips with my family. The stars were brilliant but not as brilliant as the shining moon. It made me feel like I could live forever.
We walked in silence, meeting no one, seeing nothing except for a few corpses—one of which I almost stumbled over. This part of the woods facing the field smelled faintly of smoke and the underbrush was crisped in a recent, and most likely controlled, burn. It must have been part of Hipslow’s program, but why had he left the mansion hidden by such thick growth?
An animal howled in the distance, another one answered it.
“Foxes,” Huck said. More howling and more answers greeted our ears. “There must be an abundance of food for them now.”
“They can be annoying in the chicken coops,” Hipslow said. “The mothers and their babies come almost every night.”
“Luckily zeroes don’t like chickens,” I said.
Huck laughed. “Lucky they only seem to like to eat us, huh?”
I looked at Huck in the moonlight. Focusing on his nose, his jaw, the shape of his eyebrows and his hair covering his ears and touching his shoulders. He smiled when the foxes howled, and grinned when the bats flew above our heads. He seemed at one with nature, enjoying every little, living moment.
Chapter 4
The moonlight reflected through the tall pines and onto Huck’s strong jaw and straight and narrow nose, making him look like a nobleman. An image of him dressed in a suit and tie flashed through my mind, a very strikingly handsome image but all wrong. He was a country boy. A wanderer. A nowhere man.
“How did you and Ana escape Mace’s prison?” I asked, trying to take my mind away from Huck’s handsomeness and to remind myself that he was taken by someone else. Huck and Ana had been locked up for days together, just like Zeke and I were.
“With some luck and some skill,” Huck said. “Ana had been there before, so she knew her way around. Her brother is working for Mace…”
“Working for Mace?” I cut Huck off and stopped in my tracks. Ana had a brother who was working for the enemy? The guy who tried to kill us? She surely couldn’t be trusted. Suddenly my gut wrenched. Hipslow, who was a few yards ahead of us, stiffened as well.
Huck faced me, the moonlight hitting his eyes in a way that made them flicker like steel-colored flames. “Yea, I was surprised too. At first I thought she was leading me into a trap.”
“She wasn’t?” I asked, my voice filled with sarcasm.
We started walking again. Huck spoke softly. “She’s a good girl, Hella, I trust her.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. Was Huck for real or didn’t he want to let on too much in front of Hipslow?
“She was living with her whole family,” Huck said. “Her parents, four brothers and two sisters, in the Duke campus. They had a compound. There were others, too. They are all good people, that’s what Ana says. I believe her. When Mace Duce and Enroy came to Durham, they took over the campus. Ana’s small group, a couple of dozen people she said, fought Mace at first, but they were outnumbered and were soon captured by his army. They were going to kill her parents, but her brother, who spoke English, convinced them not to. She doesn’t know what he said to them, but shortly after that the whole group was part of Mace’s army, including her parents.”
“But what happened to her? She came to us with so many horrible stories. I thought she said she lost her whole family.” I wanted to scream out how can you possibly trust her?
“I’m not so sure,” Huck said. “She has trouble telling me the details. She was close to her whole family. Her brother, the one that spoke English, rose quickly in Mace’s army, and he started to change. The power, Ana thinks, turned him into a sadist. When they found out about some people being immune, Ana was bitten and survived, her brother began to seek them out. Ana’s immunity angered and excited me at the same time. Excited, because it might mean that he was immune too. Angered, because the only way to find out if he was immune was to be bitten. Of course, he didn’t want to risk his own life.”
“So what did he do?” I asked. Hipslow’s pace had slowed so much that Huck and I were almost walking on his heels.
“Ana’s brother thought to test the immunity out on one of his other siblings,” Huck said. “He reasoned that if more family members were immune, he would be too.”
“What an idiot.” My mouth gaped open and Hipslow stopped and turned around.
“Well, was this sibling immune?” Hipslow asked.
Huck shook his head. “No. It was her baby brother, the youngest in the family, her mother’s favorite.”
“That’s awful,” I said, thinking of my own sister. If she were still alive, she would be thirteen. I would never be able to let an undead monster take a bite out of her. “She can’t be trusted.”
Huck shot me an incredulous look. “After the story I just told you? Have some compassion, Hella. She watched her brother turn into a zombie.”
I put my arms on my hips, pushing Huck’s away. “Huck, come on. Her brother’s insane. It runs in families.”
“What do you know about insane families?” Huck said.
I glared at him. He was right, my family was perfect. I didn’t know much about his but I didn’t want to press the issue. I needed to know more about Ana’s family. Hipslow came in between our staring contest.
“Not now,” Hipslow said. “I’ll have to talk to Ana about that tomorrow. We need to know all of their names, all of them. Everything she knows. It’s imperative to get the details to keep this place safe.”
Hipslow ushered us forward and we began to walk again. Huck’s words about Ana put me on tilt. Every step we took echoe
d in my ears, the noise of the breaking branches startling me at every step, thinking that someone evil was sneaking up on us.
Soon, we saw the community college in the distance and I began to feel safer. I didn’t want Huck’s protection. It chilled me to think that he trusted Ana. People were loyal to their families not to complete strangers, especially ones who spoke a different language.
“Did you see Ana brother when you were captured?” I had to know more.
“Yea, Hella,” Huck said. “I did. He visited our cell to tell her that he missed her. He wanted her on his side.”
“Did she seem happy about that? Like smile and cry?” I gritted my teeth.
Huck let out an exasperated sigh. “She spit in his face. She hates him, Hella.”
We walked up to the gym where Galen waited with the two other men, Frank and John.
Hipslow came between Huck and me again. “Alright you two. It’s about time we called it a night. Best discuss these kind of things with a full night of sleep. Your mind will wander into unsavory places when you are tired.”
“You’re right, Hipslow,” I said. “And I am exhausted.”
“Me, too,” Huck said. “I should check on Ana to make sure she’s alright. Don’t say anything about what I said to her, all right Hella?”
“Inside,” Hipslow said. “And no more talk about Ana. I don’t want anyone else knowing. It is none of their concern.”
I resented the way Hipslow spoke to us, like we were children. I wanted everyone to know, especially if Ana was a threat. “Hipslow, can you give us a minute?” I asked.
Hipslow touched his beard and smiled before answering. “Sure, you have that right.” He walked inside the gym, leaving me alone with Huck and the guards at the door.
“Let’s go over here.” I pulled Huck into the shadows of a large truck. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and his tendons were standing out on his neck.
“You really care about her?” I asked.
“Ana?” Huck looked at me, more like through me like he was thinking of something else. “She’s been through a lot. I can’t forget that.”