“Got ‘em. Fire!” he called out.
I watched in horror as the soldiers in Keel’s unit began to fire at the crates where Dave and our friends were hiding. They reacted fast, of course, firing back around the sides of the crates, but they were pinned down now with bullets bouncing off the sides of their crate.
To make things worse, the zombies started to swarm in, moving toward Dave and the others first so that they had to split their fire between the two groups.
“I have to help them,” I said, more to myself than to Nadia since I didn’t think she’d help me… not with this.
To my surprise, she nodded. “If we could swing around and start taking out some of the soldiers, they could get out from behind that crate,” she suggested.
“We don’t have weapons, though beyond my railroad tie and your… what do you have?”
She lifted a blade she’d made out of a rusty piece of metal attached by rope to a handle of some kind of broken tool.
“Yeah, whatever that is,” I said. “It’s a risky thing.”
She arched a brow. “Zombie apocalypse. Everything is a risky thing. Besides, if we can take out a couple guys before we’re detected, we’ll have their weapons.”
“Let’s do it,” I agreed.
“Stay low and follow me, I know the best routes through here,” Nadia said as she started crawling toward the soldiers.
I didn’t have much choice but to listen and follow. After all, it wouldn’t make sense for her to turn on me now. Even if she did, I couldn’t exactly stop her.
We belly crawled for a while (which Little Z didn’t really care for, if his kicks and movement inside of me were any indication). Then, when we were situated at some crates just behind a few of the soldiers firing at Dave and company, Nadia made a few hand motions. I couldn’t be sure, but I figured she was saying, “Sneak up behind them and bash their heads in.”
It was either that or something about Martha Stewart shouldn’t have gone to jail for that fraud thing. But I was going to stick with the first one since that was in my best interest.
We ran up silently and I swung the railroad tie. It hit one of the soldiers directly in the back of the head and he lurched forward and smashed the front of his head against the box car they were sitting behind. He was dead in the same moment Nadia swung her cobbled together blade at the second one, half-cutting off his head in one stomach-turning slice.
The third soldier started to turn, but I didn’t give him much chance to turn his weapons on us. I smacked him hard across the face and Nadia did the rest with her blade. Once they were just bodies in a pile, we went to work pulling their weapons and ammo from various pockets in their uniforms.
I loaded up one of the dead men’s carbines and grinned.
“Much better,” I whispered.
She nodded as she loaded herself up with a couple of 9mm.
“The rest of the soldiers are going to figure out what’s going on in a second. Best alert David as to what’s going on while I cover our backs.”
I sent out a shrill whistle and then made a sound of a dying giraffe. Okay, it wasn’t a real giraffe sound, but an in-joke from a favorite utterly vulgar movie of ours from years ago.
To my relief, Dave’s voice called across the void. “Sarah?”
“Yes,” I called back. “Nadia and I disabled the men firing at you, but there are at least…”
I shot Nadia a look and she nodded. “Eight.”
“Eight more men to contend with, one of whom is General Keel. Have you taken care of the zombies?”
“Most of them,” Nicole called back. “Nice to hear your voice.”
“Yours too. Now move forward while you can,” I encouraged them.
“Wait, is Nadia is helping you now?” Dave asked, his voice coming closer as their group dodged through the containers.
“Can we talk about it once we’re heading home?” I asked. “Time and place, babe.”
He might have said something in response, but I didn’t hear it. The sound of Nadia grunting in agony, then firing her weapon overshadowed everything else. I spun around from facing the direction of Dave’s voice and found her slumped back against our hiding place, blood gushing from a wound in her shoulder.
“Fucking sniper,” she growled out, her voice strained by pain. “I saw him just as he fired.”
I looked up. “Did you get him?” I asked.
She motioned upward and I followed her indicating finger. There, perched on some high equipment, was a dead body draped precariously against a metal piece.
“Nice.”
“Not nice enough.”
I looked up to find General Keel moving toward us, low and slow, his gun trained on me.
“Aw shit,” I muttered.
“Set your gun down,” he ordered.
We had no choice but to do so. As soon as Nadia’s was set aside, Keel fired, putting a bullet between her eyes.
“No!” I screamed as she slumped, dead before she even hit the ground.
“What’s happening?” Dave called out, voice laced with fear. “Are you okay, Sarah?”
“David, I presume,” Keel called as he reached out to pull me toward him, human shield style. “What’s happening is that I’ve shot Nadia and I have your wife. This could turn out well, indeed. You see, I would greatly love to have both of you for our collection of oddities.”
I heard Dave swearing, but other things were catching my notice now. Movement in the cluttered spaces between the containers. Keel’s men, working to flank Dave, McCray, Nicole and Lisa.
“They’re coming around,” I called out. “To flank you.”
“Fuck!” It was Lisa’s voice this time.
“Indeed, you most definitely are fucked. But everyone doesn’t have to be captured in this scenario. If David and Sarah were to come with me, I don’t see any reason not to let the rest of your party go,” Keel offered.
“He won’t do it, he’s a double crosser,” I called out, but he clamped a hand over my lips to shut me up.
“Or you can fight and all end up like poor Nadia,” Keel said. “Dead because of poor choices just like hers.”
My eyes welled with tears. Nadia was the reason I was in this mess, but I didn’t want her dead, staring up at me with blank eyes. The girl had only wanted to go home and like it or not, I totally got that drive.
“So are you going to come out on your own, David?” Keel pressed. “Because my men outnumber you, even after the three killed by your not-so-lovely wife. And they may shoot to kill without thinking, you see.”
There was a long pause and I knew Dave was considering the lives of our friends, the life of our child, as well as our own lives. Damn, but being a grown-up sucked sometimes. There was so much bullshit to consider.
“Dave,” I called around Keel’s meaty hand. “Don’t do this.”
“Sarah, you weren’t vaccinated,” he called out.
I wrinkled my brow. What did that matter now? “So?”
“There’s something I have that could get us all out. But it might… it might do something bad to you.” His voice quavered.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Something? Something from our lab that could save us, but might hurt me could not be good. And judging from the fact he’d talked about vaccines, I also had to assume it was something zombie-related.
“What about the baby?” I asked.
“It shouldn’t hurt the baby. Worse case, the lab rats could extract him.”
I saw the men from Keel’s unit easing ever closer to cutting Dave and our friends off. There was no time to think beyond the safety of my husband and our child, of our friends, no time to question what it could all mean for me.
“Do it!” I ordered. “Now!”
He cursed and then a canister clattered down in front of Keel and me. It popped open and gas started leaking from it. Grey gas this time, rather than the purple for the cure. I heard another clink of metal against the ground somewhere behind where Dave and the others we
re gathered, I assume for the approaching platoon of soldiers bent on killing them all.
I couldn’t worry about that, though. The gas poured from the canister in front of us. Keel released me, backing away from it as his eyes went wide.
“What is that?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. First, because I didn’t really know. Second because I was trying to hold my breath. The gas twisted toward me, around me and I couldn’t wait anymore. I gasped in a breath and tasted a metallic flavor as the gas entered my mouth, my lungs.
Keel was already thrashing on the ground, vomiting green and black as his eyes bugged out and his weapon clattered away from him. My vision was starting to blur, but I staggered to my feet and started toward David. I had to get to David. There was only David now.
He popped up and rushed toward me, grabbing me as I collapsed into his arms, my breath coming in shallow panting, my blood burning in my veins as the gas permeated every part of me.
“Oh shit, Sarah,” he wailed, smoothing hair away from my forehead. “What did I do? What the fuck did I do to you?”
I smiled up at him. “I really love you. I hope you remember that.”
Because I had a feeling that in a few more minutes, I wouldn’t remember it. Or him. Or anything except how much I wanted brains.
Chapter Nineteen
Goodnight Zombie Moon.
Dave stared down into Sarah’s face. She was graying rapidly, her eyes dilating, rimming red and his heart felt ready to burst from his chest. The Kid had said the baby’s special abilities might protect her, but she was turning into a zombie right before his eyes.
He had made her into a zombie.
“What did you do? What did you throw?” Lisa asked.
He never took his eyes off Sarah.
“It was a zombie serum bomb from Robbie. He thought Sarah might be protected because of the baby if we had to use it. We had to use it.”
“Well, that explains why all of Keel’s men are reanimated as zombies and they’re coming!” Lisa screeched.
He didn’t look up. He could hear zombie growls from the soldiers who had breathed in the zombie serum gas. But who gave a fuck?
“Just cover them!” Nicole sobbed.
She was firing her gun right next to his ear, but he hardly heard it. All he could hear was Sarah’s shallow breathing.
“Please don’t do this,” he murmured, holding her against his chest. “I can’t do this without you.”
She smiled as she looked up into his face. “That’s just what I said when you got bitten back in Phoenix. But you’re much tougher than I am. You’ll do fine. Just make sure I don’t bite McCray or Nicole or Lisa on the way back to the lab to rescue Little Z from his zombie Mommy womb prison. Tie me up if you have to, baby. I don’t want to hurt anyone who risked their lives to save me.”
“Fuck that, Sarah, you aren’t turning into a zombie,” he sobbed.
She smiled that annoying ‘Sarah knows best’ smile she sometimes got. “But I am. You’re right about the brains. You can smell them. Hey, Dave?”
He nodded, unable to get enough breath to speak for a second. “Yeah,” he finally managed.
She didn’t answer. She just hissed out breath from her lungs and died. In his arms. She died.
There was screaming in the air. Screaming he wanted to silence but he couldn’t. And then he realized it was him screaming. Howling out every bit of pain he felt that he had just killed his wife in a last ditch effort to save his own ass.
“It’s not your fault.”
He glanced up. McCray was standing there, squeezing his shoulder. The once coked up rocker had been a borderline narcissist when they first met him, but now he wept along with Dave. And so did Nicole. Even Lisa swiped at her eyes.
“What about the zombies?” Dave murmured, looking around.
“Dead. We’ve got your back this time. You’ve certainly had ours more than enough,” Nicole reassured him as tears smeared down her face and smudged her eyeliner. Sarah had always made fun of her for that damn eyeliner.
How was this happening? How was the dead woman in his arms his wife?
“We’ve got to tie her up before she reanimates,” Lisa said, all business again as she pulled some rope from her pack. “And get back to the lab right now.” Dave must have looked rather blank because she stepped closer and added, “To save your kid, David.”
He blinked. The baby. His son. If that was going to be the last vestige of what he’d shared with Sarah, he had to save him.
“Tie her up,” he said, positioning her so that they could get the rope around her body. “And hurry.”
Nicole and Lisa worked together with swift, rather cry-y efficiency and soon he was able to sweep Sarah into his arms, all bound up in rope. He stared down into her face and frowned. She looked a little less… gray. There wasn’t even sludge around the corners of her mouth or anything. She should regenerate at any moment, become a zombie and-
He didn’t even finish the thought when her eyes opened and she sucked in a gasping breath that cut through the air like his screams had moments before.
“Sarah?” he asked, even though he knew she wouldn’t answer.
God, this was the worst thing ever, to look down at her, still Sarah in body and know she wasn’t Sarah in mind. Know she’d never look at him and say-
“Oh my God, that sucked!” she gasped, wiggling in his arms against the restraint of the ropes. “Shit, that was fucking awful.”
Dave stared at her, just stared. The warmth was re-entering her skin, the light was in her eyes. Eyes that weren’t red and searching for brains and flesh. Eyes that looked at him, not through him.
“Sarah?” Nicole screeched, rushing to his side. “Oh my God, are you alive?”
She coughed. “I think so. Was the alternative an option?”
“Yeah,” McCray said, eyes wide. “Since you stopped breathing for like four or five minutes.”
“Ew.” She looked at Dave again. “Sorry, that must have freaked you the fuck out.”
“But how are you… what are you… what the hell?” Lisa stammered.
“If I’ve stunned you half-speechless, it must have looked dire,” Sarah laughed.
“If you die after a zombie bite, you’re supposed to be brain damaged beyond repair,” Lisa said, still shaking her head.
“The Kid said the baby might protect you,” Dave muttered. “That he had antigens thanks to my exposure to the cure and those could be shared in your blood. He must have… he must have saved you once you started to turn.”
Sarah looked down at the stomach hidden under layers of rope. “Wow. I guess he’s going to hold that over me when I threaten to ground him, isn’t he? Can you guys untie me now?”
Lisa hesitated. “Um, are you going to eat us?”
“Do you know any zombies who can hold a rational conversation?” Sarah asked, eyebrow arching.
Lisa shook her head. “No. Well, except for Dave.”
“Of course, except for Dave,” Sarah laughed.
“I’m not a zombie,” he said, his tone flat as he set her down and untied her.
She wrapped her arms around him, tugging herself so close to him that they were practically one body (except for that pesky baby bump).
“Turns out,” she whispered. “Neither am I.”
#
Zombie benefits or not, having a baby really hurts. I found that out about three weeks after I was turned into a zombie by my husband and saved by the same baby that was now determined to rip me in half as he made his grand entrance into the world.
“Push,” Dave encouraged, clinging to my hand.
He’d actually been holding my hand pretty much nonstop since that afternoon when I’d come back to life, new and improved. Not that I blamed him. I knew what he’d gone through, having watched him start to change myself. I could forgive him the constant bodyguard routine.
For now.
“I’m pushing as hard as I can,” I panted. “Isn’t he o
ut yet?”
“I see his head,” Nicole told me, looking up from between my legs. Drea stood beside her, assisting.
Thank God it wasn’t Robbie. There were some things no one should have to endure.
“How does he look?” Dave asked.
“A little gray,” Drea admitted. “But considering that he saved his mama from zombieism, let’s reserve judgment.”
Her tone was very perky, but my heart rate increased a little anyway. After everything we’d gone through to get here, there was no way we weren’t coming out with a healthy half-zombie baby. No. F’ing. Way.
What? I had to start working on my language sometime.
“Come on Sarah, give it another push,” Nicole said.
I bore down and pushed with all my might. The pressure I felt gave way and then there was silence in the room. The baby was out.
“Why isn’t he crying?” I asked, sitting up straighter.
Drea and Nicole were fussing over him, wrapping him in a towel so I couldn’t see him. I didn’t even know if he was alive.
And then he let out the cutest, most normal baby squeal ever.
“Is he okay?” I asked. “Please!”
Nicole turned and held out my son, placing him on my sweaty chest. We looked down at him and saw that he was perfectly pink, with ten fingers and toes. He opened his eyes and they were brown. Brown with just the slightest, faintest tinge of red.
I looked up at Dave. “Um, he gets that from you.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I’m okay with it.”
“Me too,” I laughed and nearly passed out from joy and relief. He was here. He was okay. He was ours.
There was a sound outside the window and I lifted my head. “Is that them taking off?” I asked.
Nicole moved to the window and lifted the shade in time for us to see several helicopters and planes buzz the lab. In the weeks since our return, the inoculation had been finished. The first phase of our plan was to crop dust everyplace we could, wiping out zombies and dropping leaflets so that people could come to our stations and get inoculated.
“That’s them,” Nicole said with a nervous smile. “They’re off.”
The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) Page 15