Refuge From The Dead | Book 3 | Dead Fall

by Masters, A. L.

  Angie

  Angie was getting very anxious about Jim and Nick. They had left three days ago, and it was only supposed to have taken a day, two at the most!

  Where the hell are they?

  “Jack, do you think they are all right?” she asked yet again as he was transferring loose supplies to the crates they had kept.

  They had all started packing up yesterday.

  Jack wanted to be ready when it was time to move out, not wait until the last minute. Cam had dictated that they leave here at the end of September, and he was going to make sure they did. No matter what.

  “I think they’re fine. They probably ran into a herd and decided to hole up somewhere until they pass by. I wouldn’t worry. They can take care of themselves.”

  “I just feel like something is wrong. It’s a terrible feeling,” she told him.

  He stopped packing and went over to her, putting his hands on her shoulders.

  “I think you’re just anxious. Anyone would be, but I really don’t think there is anything to worry about. If they aren’t back in a few days, then I’ll go out and look for them, okay?” he offered.

  She bit her lip, then nodded. “Okay.” She decided that she wouldn’t ask him to go.

  “Now, let’s get this stuff packed up and get our PT and weapon drills done. Then maybe we can take a day off tomorrow and have a rest.”

  “Yay,” Monica said sarcastically.

  Angie was getting pretty fed up with her negative attitude about everything. She was still wary of her feelings for Jim. Angie was well aware of her conniving character.

  “Sarcasm isn’t attractive in a young lady. If you really want to catch a young man, you need to be more cheerful. No man wants a grumbler for a wife!” Jean said, offering her wisdom.

  Angie snickered and lowered her head.

  “What young man?! Look around Jean, most of them are dead!” she shouted, raising her arms in exclamation.

  “Nick and Bradley are perfectly good young men, and they aren’t dead, though Bradley may be a bit young for a woman of your age,” she said, frowning and putting a finger to her chin. “Huh. Maybe we should send a team out to find you one.”

  “I don’t want the team to go out and fetch me a man. What the hell, Jean? I think you’re getting more senile every day,” Monica said, then took off toward the front of the lodge with a full crate. They were stacking them there for now and covering them with tarps.

  “Jean, you shouldn’t have done that,” Jack said.

  “Done what?” she asked innocently.

  “Antagonized her. She is difficult enough without stirring her up.”

  “Who else am I going to irritate? Cam hasn’t fetched Ed back here yet. I get tetchy if I can’t pick on someone.”

  “Just get back to work,” Jack said, leaving to carry another full crate.

  Angie finished hers as well and stacked it with the others. She decided to go see Jess while she had a spare moment.

  Poor Jess had been in bed since the men left to get her medications. She was throwing up all day and constantly nauseous. It was a full-time job for Brad just to keep her hydrated. He had even given her an I.V. yesterday evening, it seemed to help a little, though she was still sick.

  “Jess, you in here?” she asked, knocking lightly on her door.

  “Where else would I be?” she said, her voice muffled through the door.

  Angie opened it. “The bathroom?”

  “Ugh, yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “You look like hell,” Angie said.

  She did too. She was stick thin, pale, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was dull, and she just lacked the vitality that she once had. Angie was starting to get seriously worried.

  “Gee, thanks. That makes me feel spectacular,” Jess joked.

  “I’m sure they’ll be back soon with the medicine. Then you’ll feel one hundred percent better.” She patted Jessica’s leg.

  “Is there anything you need?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m just going to lay here for a while before I head back to the bathroom,” she answered.

  Angie left to find Brad. He was still out packing, so she veered off toward the back of the lodge to the tents.

  “Brad, can I talk to you a minute?” she asked.

  He dusted off his hands and straightened up. He looked so different from when he had first shown up with Cam and Ed back at the store. He had muscle now, for one, and he now had dreadlocks. They looked good on him.

  He had allowed his mustache and goatee to grow out, and Angie noticed that he seemed much more suited to this look than the hipster thing he had going on before.

  “I’m worried about Jess,” she said, getting straight to the point.

  “Me too, but there is only so much I can do. I’m not a doctor. Heck, I’m barely a medic.”

  They walked toward the trail in silence for a few minutes. The leaves were still green, but they were getting that old look. They would start turning in a few weeks. Everything would start dying.

  Fall used to be one her favorite times of year. Halloween, Thanksgiving, brisk weather, hot cocoa…now it seemed really depressing. Those activities were for a different kind of life.

  “If Jim doesn’t get back soon with that medication, then I’m going to try giving her a different kind. It doesn’t say that it is harmful, but it hasn’t been tested like the one she was taking. Right now, she needs to stop vomiting. Period.”

  Angie agreed. Perhaps they should just go ahead and give her a dose of it, just until they got back with the good stuff.

  “Should we give her that now?” she decided to ask.

  “I just don’t know, Ang. Let me look it up again and think about it. We should talk to her and Jack as well, find out what they want to do.”

  After reaching a consensus they went back to the others. They started their training for the afternoon, and by that evening were thoroughly worn out. Jean had cooked up a fantastic supper, but Angie just wasn’t hungry.

  She missed Cam and Jim terribly, and she hated sleeping alone. She missed their comfort, and even their bickering back and forth.

  She needed something to occupy her mind until their return…and she had an inkling of an idea.

  ◆◆◆

  “What?! No! Absolutely not!” Jack said when she told him what she wanted.

  “We’ll need them!” she argued.

  “Yes, but that isn’t the point. The point is you aren’t going out there alone!” Jack answered.

  “I wouldn’t be alone. Monica can go with me.”

  “If I let you leave here, Jim and Cam will both kill me slowly when they get back. I might as well beat the crap out of myself right now.”

  “What if I take Brad instead?” she asked.

  She wasn’t giving up. This was important.

  Jack sighed and rubbed his eyes. He was worn out with worry over Jessica and the baby, and she knew he was worried about Jim, even if he didn’t say so.

  “Fine. Plan out a short mission within a ten-mile radius of here. No further out. I want you to brief me on it tomorrow…and that’s if Brad even wants to go,” he warned.

  “Okay,” she said and hurried away to begin her task.

  ◆◆◆

  Later that evening Angie was sitting with Brad on the sofa in the living room. The others had finished supper and wandered away to do their own things. Jack was taking the first watch that night, so he was up on the top deck. Later, he would do a patrol of the island.

  Angie thought they could probably relax on the nighttime security now, but Jack was adamant that Cam’s orders be followed to the letter.

  “You do realize that the odds of finding any animals still living are extremely slim right?” he said in response to her proposal.

  “Yes, I know that. We really need to find some goats and chickens though. If we don’t then we won’t have any source of eggs, milk, butter, or cheese. We need to find enough to breed them. I’m se
rious, Brad. We should have done this weeks ago.”

  “What do you know about making cheese or breeding goats?” he asked with a smile.

  “I know enough!” she replied.

  She didn’t.

  “And what I don’t know I can learn. We have plenty of books, and we can find the supplies. Come on Brad, please?” she begged.

  “Ugh. Fine! When do we go?” he asked.

  “Day after tomorrow?” she questioned.

  “Okay. I want to plan this out with you though. You know that if anything happens to us, then Cam will kill Jack.”

  “I know. That’s why we can’t let anything happen to us.”

  Jim

  Jim and the women spent three tense days and nights waiting for Nick to turn into a flesh-eating monster.

  It didn’t happen.

  What had happened was bad, but at least he was still alive.

  They had gotten Nick laid out on the couch in the living room and Jim had liberally applied antiseptic and bandaged up the wound as best he could. There was nothing else he could do. He went through their loot from the pharmacy and had given Nick the first of another round of antibiotics, but at this point he was just hoping to keep his arm from getting an infection and hastening his death.

  “How are you feeling?” Jim asked him the second night after he had been bitten.

  They were sitting on the couch while the women were upstairs sleeping. Nick had developed a fever. His arm was infected. It wasn’t looking good. The skin around the bite was dark red and swollen. It was hot to the touch. Jim had decided to leave it uncovered so they could watch it more closely.

  “I’m tired of fighting off this zombie virus is how I’m feeling,” he said irritably. “Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with?”

  Jim could tell he was in pretty severe pain. He wasn’t coping well. Jim refused to consider the fact that Nick may not make it through this.

  “Nope. Let me get you something for the pain, and maybe something to eat?” he asked him.

  “Whatever,” was Nick’s reply.

  Jim found him some pain medication and opened him up an MRE side dish and took them back into the living room.

  “What, are you trying to kill me?” he said in disgust, shaking the MRE.

  “Yes. I’m tired of your complaining. Shut up and eat. You need your strength.”

  The third night Nick was unconscious.

  His fever spiked and his arm started leaking bright yellow pus. The infection had definitely set in, and Jim was scared that they didn’t have the correct antibiotics for it. Amoxicillin was all he had and while he knew it was the correct drug for a regular infected wound, he had no idea how these bacteria would respond. Maybe he should have gone to medical school instead of the police academy.

  Jim kept cool cloths on his head, and the women took turns sitting with him and keeping watch from the upstairs windows. Jim had learned more about them during that time. The first day he had learned their names, but that was all. They seemed wary of giving him too much information.

  Cara was twenty-three and obviously the leader of the group. Lane was the one with short, black chin-length hair. She was twenty-one. Sasha was the quiet one, she was eighteen. Her fraternal twin, Natasha, tended to joke around lot. Jim thought she used it as a defense mechanism.

  Hell, whatever worked…

  The curvy redhead was Lily, and Jim had discovered that she said whatever was on her mind at the time. That girl had no filter whatsoever. The others seemed used to it, but she still shocked Jim.

  He hoped to hell that they would integrate well with his group back home. Maybe he had made a mistake. Angie and Monica probably weren’t going to take this very well. Shit, Cam would probably kick his ass too. He couldn’t have left them out here alone though.

  He was stuck.

  “So, how did those assholes get you?” Jim asked Lane that third night.

  They were sitting together in the living room, watching Nick. Lane looked up from her book. She had found it upstairs somewhere. She seemed to carefully consider her response before she told him.

  “I was in a sorority when everything happened. Our house was pretty well-stocked, so I was just going to stay there until I could find a ride home to my parents. The others were sorority members as well,” she said, nodding upstairs where the others were sleeping.

  “A sorority!” Jim said in disbelief.

  Of all the things he expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them.

  “Yep. We were getting ready to leave for the summer. Not everyone, but some of us. Then the whole apocalypse thing happened. Anyway, a couple weeks later those guys followed us back from the gas station where we scavenged some supplies. They came in with guns and took us back to their house.”

  She stopped and got quiet, a frown on her face. Jim could tell she was thinking about something painful.

  “Well, we found out that it wasn’t their house. They had…taken it over…from the family that lived there before.”

  Jim stayed silent. He could imagine what they had done to the family. He wondered where all the good people were. There had to be plenty of good people left alive, surviving like they were. Did they just stay hidden?

  So far, they had only come into contact with psychotic, murdering, rapist creeps…

  “When are you supposed to get back to your unit?” she asked him.

  “Oh. Well, that’s complicated.”

  He wasn’t sure how to respond really. Would they freak out when they learned that there was no army unit? Or would they be okay with it? He didn’t know what the best course of action was here.

  Probably the truth.

  “Listen. I made that whole army thing up. There are no soldiers going around cleaning up towns. At least, not that I know of. I said that so those guys wouldn’t think they could get rid of us without consequences.”

  She looked a little perturbed. She sighed and leaned forward.

  “So, who are you guys?” she asked.

  “We’re members of a group. Our leader is…was…in the military. We are a kind of unit, though more like a militia than anything else. We do have some training and can take care of ourselves. I was a cop before all this,” he added.

  “We all started out together when this shit first happened. We lost a couple of people since then. There are some really bad people left in this world, and some of them managed to find us. They’re gone now.”

  “Are there really other women in your group or did you just make that up too?” she asked.

  “No, I have a…friend, Angie, and there is an old lady named Jean. She’s a character. Monica was a cop too, she worked at the station with me. Then there’s Jessica. She’s the girlfriend of a friend of mine. He’s also a cop.”

  “So, your leader guy was a cop too? I mean, did your whole department stick together or something?”

  “Nope. Army. He knows his shit. He’s pretty badass actually. Shortly after we got to the place we are staying now, a herd surrounded our only exit. There must have been a hundred or more corpses walking around out there. This guy, he took them all out by himself...with an axe. That’s legendary level right there.”

  She had widened her eyes at Jim’s story. He wasn’t sure she really believed him. Hell, he wouldn’t believe it himself if he hadn’t seen it.

  “That’s crazy,” was all she said.

  Nick started to stir, and Jim leaned over and felt his head. Still hot, but maybe it felt a tad bit cooler than it had been earlier? He wrung out the washcloth and placed it back on Nick’s forehead.

  “How is he doing?” she asked him. She looked worried.

  “Same. I’ll give him some more medicine in a little while.”

  “If he turns, will it be fast? Like suddenly?” she asked frowning.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. He was scratched by one of those things a while back. He got really sick. We thought he was going to die. You noticed he never took his glasses off, right? Eve
n at night? It’s because that virus changed his eyes, left them looking like the eyes of the dead out there.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. So when you see them, don’t say anything. He’s a bit sensitive about it. Tell the others too.”

  She nodded and went back to reading her book. Jim thought perhaps he had given her a little too much information, but he didn’t know how else to put her mind at ease.

  He sank back into the couch and rested his hands behind his head. As soon as Nick was well, they would finally get home. He was worried about what Angie was thinking. She was probably worried.

  Chapter Twelve

  On the Way Home

  Jim

  On the morning of the fourth day after the bite, Nick woke up.

  His fever had broken. His arm was healing. The girls were ecstatic.

  They had become fond of him during his illness, though Jim didn’t know how or why. He noticed they treated him with more deference and caution, but Nick? Nick got their caring and their warmth. Only he didn’t know about it until he finally regained consciousness. Jim supposed Nick was less intimidating to them.

  Who the hell knows with women?

  “Hey man, glad you decided to finally wake up. I thought we were going to have to carry your ass home,” Jim teased.

  “Hey, I don’t see a Z bite on your arm. Give me a freakin’ break,” Nick grumbled back.

  Jim could see that Nick was still very weak. He needed to rest for today, maybe eat something, then tomorrow they could finally leave. This place was starting to get on his nerves.

  The women walked on eggshells around him, and he wasn’t even half as bad as Cam. God only knew how they were going to react to him…

  “Cara, could you guys get your things ready to go? I want to leave out in the morning if Nick is strong enough. We’ve been gone too long already. Our people are going to be worried about us. I don’t want them sending out a search party or anything.”

  “Sure. Are we all riding with you?” she asked.

  “No. You won’t all fit, but you guys can follow in another car. We’ll find something later.”