“I know what you did,” Denise said in a choked voice. For hours on end they had sat on dreadful thin perches, which threatened to give at any moment as the wind swung the tree back and forth with a fearful creaking. And only now her mother spoke.
“I had to,” Sarah replied, unable to look at her. She hadn't once glanced Denise's way. Not once in all the long night. And now with the sun threatening to reveal the scene of Gary Rivers' murder, Sarah chose to shut her eyes instead.
Denise let out a hacking cough and said through rattled lungs, “You were right to do what you did. You kept him from pain. You kept him from becoming one of them. And I know you'll do the same for me.”
Sarah's eyes were red and they burned and she wished for tears to relieve them but they did not come. “I will if I have too,” she finally spat out.
“It's time, now.”
“No. We're not going to just give up,” Sarah said with anger and harshness in her words. “I didn't give up on you before, despite what they wanted me to do and I'm not...”
Her mother interrupted in a tired voice, “I'm not giving up. It's time. The fever has run its course.” With a start, Sarah now looked up to see her mother's face alive with the heat that baked her from the inside out. “One of them got me,” she whispered. “Just a scratch, I barely even felt it with all the excitement.”
“No,” Sarah said, breathlessly. “Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's tetanus, or a normal flu. We've been up here all night. It's a cold, only.”
“It burns like fire. It's the virus, I know the symptoms. Harry Jenkins got bit, remember? It's the same, and now it's coming on worse. Please don't let me go through this just so you won't have to feel bad about killing me. It's what I want.”
“Mom...”
“I love you,” Denise Rivers said. “Now come up above me. And please don't make me beg. It hurts too much.”
Sarah climbed with numb hands and without care. If she fell she didn't think she would mind a bit, in fact it would be an act of mercy. She climbed and couldn't look at her mother as she passed, and Denise wouldn't look at her. The older woman stared at the bark of the tree with a look of dread fear on her face.
“I love you so much,” she said again with more life. Her wrinkled hands gripped the trunk with all her might so that little chips of it fell away. “Make it fast, please. It's in my head and it hurts so bad. Hurry.”
“Love you, Mom,” Sarah said and then took a deep breath and then another, and tears dropped where she was aiming, right at the top of her mother's head. Sarah's hands began to shake so badly that she had hug the tree with her arm and neck to hold herself steady and still she couldn't pull the trigger.
Below, zombies began to gather, looking up, as if hungry for their prize, like dogs would after treeing a cat. Denise started to look up at her too and Sarah screamed with rage and pulled the trigger, and then she screamed and screamed to drown out the awful sound of her mother falling from the tree, smacking against branch after branch before thumping to ground.
And Sarah screamed hate and shook the tree because the zombies ate loudly. The wet sounds of her mother's flesh being pulled apart and the snap of her bones and the sucking of her marrow had Sarah rocking against the tree as her vocal cords began to tear in her misery.
She went on so long that as the first light of day came, the tree itself took up the cadence of her misery and swayed back and forth. Soon the swaying became somewhat dangerous and Sarah didn't care. What was left for her? Her parents were dead and her life was ruined...even her life as a whore was out the window. She had seen the sharp anger in the colonel's eyes when she had disobeyed his orders. No one disobeyed him.
Not that she would consider sleeping with him even for a second now.
It was he who had stolen their food and weapons. It was he who had turned her into a whore just so she could save her parents. And it was he who had allowed them to die by cutting the bridge. Her hatred for him twisted her face and she felt a need to kill that would have shamed the zombies below. It fueled the swinging and now the tree tipped so far over at the end of each of its inverted pendulum like swings that she unexpectedly saw how she could get off the island with her life.
At the end of each swing the tree hung out further and further over the river, which was thankfully empty of the living corpses that had choked it the night before. Sarah swung harder and then as the tree reached out beyond the wires, she let go, dropping with a light splash.
The water was beyond cold, yet the air was worse and so she felt somewhat of a relief as she let the current drift her along. She went for a few miles in this way, lazing, barely doing enough to keep afloat, letting the cold match the numbness she felt inside. Unfortunately her reality came back to her as she saw zombies along the western shoreline ahead.
Keeping low, she paddled to the other edge of the river and was surprised to see more of the creatures. They stood beneath the trees as though they didn't care for the sun that was only then crawling into the sky and even as she watched they began to drift deeper into the forest.
With the air heating up with the Indian Summer, Sarah left the water and crept along the bank of the river, leaving her small prints in the mud. And then she heard actual people: a cry and then running.
Using the brush for cover, Sarah came closer to the sound, following behind a group of zombies who were hurrying forward in anticipation of a meal. She hoped they would feast. That hope boiled up from a place of hate. It was rancid within her and the sick feeling had her wishing it was a group of soldiers who were being attacked.
However it wasn't. It was a man and a woman...or rather what looked like a man and his daughter...or so Sarah hoped. The girl was Brit's age and the idea that this guy was trying to stick it to her was revolting. She almost turned away at the thought, leaving them to their fate, but then she saw the slight man brain a zombie with a rock with one hand as he pushed the girl behind him with the other.
He was protecting her, like Sarah should've been doing for Brit all along.
“But Brit is dead,” Sarah whispered aloud in an attempt to wrest her heart from the quick guilt that had infested her. Brit had to be dead. She was one of eight million zombies in New York City—that was a sad fact that Sarah had tried to pretend wasn't, only now, after the death of her parents she couldn't pretend any longer. The real truth was that Brittany was like all the rest. She had been eaten and turned into a soulless thing weeks ago. Just like all the rest.
Just like this girl would be if Sarah didn't do anything.
The thought sent a spark through the cringing woman and before she knew it, she charged the zombies from behind. At close range she plugged two of them with shots that were like explosions in the quiet morning forest. The sound had the creatures turning and Sarah shot another, making a hole for the trapped pair to dash through.
And then they were all running, humans and zombies alike.
“To the river,” Sarah said, pelting barefoot and free with only the rifle to slow her. “The stiffs can't swim.”
The slope of the river came up fast and the young girl flashed ahead and leapt far into the water with her momentum, coming down feet first. This was in direct contradiction to the man who stopped at the edge to take off his shoes. Sarah took him by the pack and pulled him backwards while he gasped at the cold and spluttered something about not being able to swim very well.
“You can swim better than them,” the girl said, making an easy time of the river. She turned on her back and did a gentle backstroke and introduced herself. “Hi, I'm Sadie.”
The man cleared his throat and said in little more than a whisper, “And what do you say?”
Sadie smirked at him before adding, “Thanks for saving us. This is Neil. He thinks he's going to turn me into a lady one of these days.”
“Manners don't go out of style just because of a zombie apocalypse,” Neil replied. He then stuck out a small hand and said, “We really do appreciate the help...”
Chapter 29
Ram
Western Desert
Standing in the doorway of the kitchen, Ram stared at the onrushing zombies and could not seem to connect them with reality. Where was Cassie? Had they eaten her in her sleep? Why hadn't he heard her scream or cry out?
Maybe it was because she didn't scream. Maybe she let the zombies in. Maybe you far underestimated what a woman scorned would do.
These thoughts smote his consciousness and just like that he felt the electric flash of adrenaline all along his skin; goose bumps materialized an instant later. Then he was running back down the hall, but zombies were there as well. He was trapped and empty handed, with just the dining room as any shelter and since the room was only fortified by a swinging door, it wouldn't be much in the way of shelter.
“There's stiffs in the house!” he yelled to Julia and then threw himself against the door, which swung in fast. It banged up against the wall behind and swung back nearly opening the wrong way into the hall. This was one problem with swinging doors. If Ram pushed too hard the zombies would be able to pull it out of his grasp—of course the larger problem with a door that swung both ways was that there wasn't any way to lock it, or even to barricade it.
Ram could only stand there waiting for the onslaught which wasn't slow in coming. In seconds the zombies pushed against the door and at first Ram held it closed with a minimal of effort, but then the creatures began to pile up against it and their combined weight and strength pushed him back inch by inch. When it was clear to him that it would only be seconds before they were fully into the room, and when he saw the futility of resisting any longer, he jumped away suddenly and half a dozen bodies piled into heap at his feet.
With no other weapon at hand, Ram picked up an old Ethan Allen dining room chair. It was solid workmanship and it proved itself when he bashed it three straight times into the incoherent pile of undead, before it came apart in his hands. Left with just a sturdy leg—a better weapon than the chair since it wasn't nearly as clumsy—he plied the hunk of wood with gusto, feeling it bite into his skin with each strike.
Beneath the wood he could feel skulls cave. Brains and black blood decorated the room and he could've attacked all day like that, but one of the zombies was a big boy with a head like cement; the leg of the chair snapped square in two, though luckily the zombie dropped at Ram's feet as it did.
“Shit!” Ram swore. Even as he said it he heard a scream from the second floor and then a door slammed above him.
Trapped as he was, Ram had been well past the point of fear; he was on to panic, but that scream erased all that. In the instant that followed he forgot himself and his fears and the stress of the last few weeks and days unnumbered. He only knew that Julia was in trouble.
In a quick move, he snatched up another of the chairs and this he used as a battering ram to clear the doorway of the creatures. The clumsy things fell back and then he was in the hall where more zombies stood confused, wondering which way to turn—toward the scream from above or to the man just a few yards away. Ram didn't give them a choice. He charged with his chair held out in front of him, bowling them over, before he paused at the front door.
“Hey you sons of bitches!” he roared at the zombies. This got their attention and the ones on the hardwood floors scrambled to their feet, while the ones on the stairs turned to come down for him. “That's it. Come on. Come on.” He waited until the closest one was just out of reach before backing onto the porch.
“This is what you want,” he crooned to them, checking his six to make sure he wasn't backing right into any others. Like the pied piper he jogged away from the house leading on thirteen of them and then when he felt he was at a safe enough distance he ran in an arc around them and sprinted back to the house.
“Julia? Cassie?” he called out as soon as he had entered.
Wearing nothing but a grimace and carting a honking big .44 caliber pistol, Julia came down from the second floor, tiptoeing. “Are they all gone?”
Ram locked the door behind him before replying, “I don't know. Here let me take that. I'll secure the house.” Even as he said the words the zombies that had taken part in his parade came banging at the front door. “Get dressed,” he whispered and then crept down the hall looking for strays.
There were three lifeless corpses in the doorway to the dining room and one that was nearly so. Ram had broken its collarbone in the melee a few minutes before and it was now trapped beneath the “Bog Boy” that had broken the table leg. He left it for the moment and went to clear the kitchen and the downstairs study.
These were empty. On his way back to the hall, Ram grabbed a claw hammer from the kitchen junk drawer and seconds later left it sitting in skull of the zombie. Killing the zombie had been easier than he expected...only the sound had been a wet, nauseating “chunch” which made the idea of pulling the embedded hammer too much for him.
“There are other hammers,” he reasoned.
Julia met him at the bottom of the stairs and she had graduated from naked to wearing only a pair of panties. In her hand was his Beretta. “It's empty!” she hissed. “Cassie took a pistol and your M16 and all the ammo!” He began to check the .44 in his hands, but she stopped him. “That was in my room, but the rest of the ammo was in Papa's dresser and it's gone too.”
She was getting loud and the zombies began to go at the door again harder than before. Ram took her by the hand and led her back upstairs and then sat on her bed thinking. “That bitch tried to kill us.”
“Maybe,” was all Julia said. She avoided Ram's eyes, only staring down at her pale knees.
Ram exhaled angrily. “There's no maybe. She stole all our ammo and then let a bunch of zombies in the house. That's murder one in my book. It's premeditated all the way.”
The blonde went to her dresser and pulled on a pair of jeans; stepping into them easily. “Leaving a door open doesn't mean murder. If there were any zombies around they would've went after her. Maybe that's what happened.”
“And the stolen ammo?” he asked, though in a less heated of a voice. He couldn't stay angry and watch this fine woman get dressed. When he first met her he had thought her skinny but the night before he had felt the smooth play of her tone muscles. She was fit and trim, but not skinny.
She saw his eyes on her and she gritted her teeth. “This is my fault. I shouldn't have let you last night. It was wrong.”
“Let me?” Ram asked, his eyes narrowing. “You didn't let me. We allowed ourselves to. And it wasn't wrong. How could you call it wrong?”
“Don't be mad,” Julia said alarmed at his sudden anger. “I meant we should've been more discreet. We both knew how she felt about you. It was mean of us.” Glass broke somewhere below. Ram began to get up, but Julia held him back, saying, “That was the little window in the front door. They can't get in through it.”
He went to her doorway and then turned. “You don't know how Cassie really feels and neither do I. And I don't know what you mean by being discreet, she wasn't going to let go of me until she had claimed me for herself. She's a scary one and worse, she's unpredictable.”
He began to walk away and she caught up quick. “What are you going to do?”
“Get our ammo back,” he said. There was a creak of wood splitting below which they both recognized as plywood being torn from one of the windows. Glass breaking came next. “I'll deal with them first, don't you worry.”
After facing the infinite hordes in L.A., dealing with thirteen zombies was not all that difficult, especially when he had a Ford Bronco parked out front and the keys in his hand. He charged out the back door where there was but a single zombie and then ran around to the front. Starting the Bronco was all it took for them to swarm the 4x4. He then backed down the road slowly, once again enticing them
away from the house.
When he was a good two-hundred yards away he simply plowed into them and then backed over any that still moved, and then he drove back to the little house in the desert, though when he did it wasn't with the same casualness. Something was attracting the undead to them. Ram could see them all over the desert heading their way.
He jogged inside calling to Julia. “I'm afraid this house has outlived its usefulness. There are all sorts of stiffs coming right at us. I need you to pack.”
When she saw the numbers, she didn't argue. Together they loaded up what supplies they had: food, water, tools, medicine, clothing, even old camping gear. The zombies were coming on so quickly that he sent Julia out in the other truck, a beat up F-150, to distract them. She turned circles in the dun colored scrub and secretly Ram thought it a waste of diesel—she could've been running them over.
When he had the Bronco packed, he left the front door open with the keys on the porch rocking chair. It made no sense to lock the place. Zombies were far less destructive just shambling around, and if some stranger wanted in, they'd find a way.
A minute later, Julia joined him in the Bronco, watching the house grow little in the distance and crying as it did. He took her hand, worried that she would pull away after what she had said earlier, but she gripped him tightly.
“She went on foot, which doesn't make any sense,” Ram said, squinting through the desert heat.
“It does if she wanted us to find her,” Julia said. “Think about it. If she just left with a single gun and a few bullets you would probably say good riddance. She's basically made it so you have to come for her. It would not be out of the realm of possibility that she'll even set herself up in some way so that you'll have to rescue her. It's a cry for help.”
A snort of disbelief escaped Ram. “I keep telling you, this girl isn't normal. The first night I met her, she let all six of those gang-bangers rape her. Didn't say a word, except to chastise one of them for being too slow.” Her grip loosened suddenly and she gave him a look, which he interpreted correctly. “I didn't join in. I could've if I wanted to, only that's not my thing, in fact I wanted to stop them but she practically invited them...”
The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse Page 20