Either Serg had been listening or understood what was happening, because he crouched down and offered Max a piggy-back ride. Max gladly accepted, and we continued walking.
The mountainous terrain was smoothing out more, which was a nice reprieve for our legs. It probably made it easier on Boden and Serg to carry Stella and Max, too. The trees were spreading out a bit more, and we stopped seeing Bishop.
I’d begun to hope that she had turned into a zombie, a crazy one that gnawed off her own leg. If we were lucky, we’d never see her again. And our luck seemed to be changing.
It began to snow, which in and of itself was neither a hindrance nor a benefit. But we hadn’t heard any death groans since the morning. We weren’t to Canada yet, but maybe we were far enough north that the zombies wouldn’t follow.
We stopped to check the map at a house on the side of the road. The garage door was wide open, so we sat down on the concrete floor. The roof provided enough shelter from the elements, and I could see everything in front of us. The snow was coming down heavier, but it was turning into slush on the ground, making our pants and shoes damp and cold.
It was too early to camp for the night, but Boden and Daniels had done a quick sweep through the house to see if anyone was there and check for food. It was empty of people, zombies, and anything worth taking. The only thing it had going for it was that it was warmer.
“I’m gonna take the kids inside to warm up and eat something,” Daniels said after Boden pulled out the map. “Do you guys want to come in?”
“Nah.” I shook my head. “We’re good.”
I didn’t want to go inside to warm up just to cool down. Truth be told, I was running a fever, and the cold actually felt good. Besides that, I liked being able to see everything with the garage door open.
I think that’s why Boden stayed outside, but I’m not completely sure. He had the map unfolded in front of us, and we were both studying it when Daniels, Serg, Max, and Stella went inside the house.
“We’re coming up to the city,” Boden said. “We’re going to have to go around it.” Using his finger, he drew a half-circle on the map around the dot on the map.
“Do you think that’s far enough away?” I asked. “Or should we go more like this?” I drew my own half-circle about a centimeter out from his.
Boden shook his head. “I don’t think we need to go out that far. We’ll just be wasting time.”
“But after what happened last time we tangled with zombies, I don’t really want to go through that again,” I said. “We’ve lost three people in the last two days, and all our guns. We couldn’t handle something like that again.”
“I don’t want that either,” Boden said. “But it’s getting colder. How much longer do you think Stella can handle walking around in this without getting sick? She’s malnourished and exhausted as it is. Do you want to add pneumonia on top of that?”
“No, of course not, but I think that a zombie attack is more imminent than an illness.”
“This is a safe enough distance,” Boden insisted. “But it will cut half a day’s walk off our trip.”
I opened my mouth to argue more, but there was a commotion inside the house. Banging, grunting, and Stella screaming. Then Max began calling my name.
“Max!” I shouted and was instantly on my feet.
I raced toward the house, my feet slipping in the slush. The few steps up to the front porch were horribly slick, and I almost fell on my face before regaining my footing. The handle to the front door turned, but the door itself wouldn’t budge. It was stuck.
Max had stopped yelling for me, which only made me panic more. I slammed my shoulder into the door as hard as I could, but it still wouldn’t move. Then Boden was at my side, hitting it with me, and the door finally flew in.
“Max!” I yelled and dashed through the house, racing through the empty front rooms.
“Remy,” Max said, and I saw him standing in the kitchen doorway at the back of the house.
I ran over and picked him up. It wasn’t until then, when I had him safe in my arms that I really looked around. Serg was lying on the kitchen floor, bleeding. Daniels was bent over him, pressing an old towel to the wound on Serg’s stomach, but the blood was seeping around it.
“She took her, Remy,” Max was telling me, his voice thick with fear.
The house’s back door was off on the kitchen, and the door was wide open, letting snow blow into the room. Boden went over to it, peering outside, but he must not have seen anything, because he turned back to face us.
“I tried to stop her,” Serg said, wincing as Daniels put pressure. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Daniels said, trying to comfort him. “You did the best you could.”
Somewhat reluctantly, I put Max down. He was getting heavy, and he didn’t really need me holding him.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Bishop came and took Stella,” Serg explained. “She tried to get Max, too, but Daniels held her off. Then Bishop got my hunting knife from me, and she stabbed me with it.”
“She wasn’t a zombie yet?” Boden asked.
Daniels shook his head. “Not yet. But she grabbed Stella and took off out the back door. I don’t know what she plans to do with her.”
“And she has your knife now,” Boden said.
“No, she dropped it over there.” Daniels pointed to a bloody knife on the floor.
Serg grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t – ”
“It’s fine.” Boden waved at him, but his eyes were on me. “What do we do?”
“She couldn’t have gone far,” I said. “Not yet.”
“I didn’t see her out there.” Boden motioned to the open door behind him. “Bishop was always fast. She’s probably even faster and stronger if the virus has started taking effect. Not to mention she’s infectious.”
“You have to go get Stella!” Max sounded appalled that we were even talking about this, and his brown eyes were wide. “You can’t leave her out there!”
“Max, can you go find me some thread?” Daniels asked, cutting his protests short. “I need to stitch up Serg. I have a needle, but I need some thread.”
Max hesitated, looking between Boden and me, but when Daniels said his name again, Max moved. He ran through the house, and I heard him throwing things about as he searched for it.
“How is he?” Boden asked, turning his attention to Daniels and Serg.
“He’ll be fine,” Daniels said. “I think she missed all the major organs. A few stitches, and he’ll be right as rain.”
“She didn’t bite him, then?” Boden asked quietly.
“No.” Daniels shook his head. “Serg’ll be fine.”
I stepped over Serg and brushed past Boden, walking out the back door. Boden followed me.
“Remy,” Boden said, so I stopped and turned around to face him.
“I’m going to find her,” I said firmly. “Even if it’s too late, I have to try. You’re the one that said you don’t leave anyone behind.”
“I did say that,” Boden agreed. “But when I said ‘left behind’ I didn’t mean ‘hauled off by zombies.’”
“Bishop’s not a zombie yet. She’s just insane.”
“Like that makes it any better,” he muttered. “I should go with you.”
“You can’t.” I shook my head. “They need you here.”
Serg was injured, Daniels was no good in a fight, and Max was just a kid. Without Boden, they were easy targets for any crazy person or flesh-eating monster that came along.
He nodded grimly, realizing the same things I had. “How long do you want me to wait for you?”
“It’s not that long until it’s dark.” I looked up at the cloud-covered sky. We had maybe a few more hours until nightfall. “And Serg could use the rest. Wait until morning, but no longer than that. If I’m not back, go on without me.”
“Okay.” He looked at me a moment longer, like he wanted to say something more.
But he didn’t, so I started to walk away from him.
“Remy,” Boden called after me, and I turned back to see him walking backwards toward the house. “Don’t do anything stupid. Stay safe. And… come back in one piece.”
24.
If the snow had been real snow instead of the mushy gunk it was, it would’ve been easier to follow Bishop. She would’ve left tracks for me to find. Every now and then I would catch one – a smashed imprint in the grass and snow. But I was mostly following my gut.
The area around the farm was tree lined enough that she was hidden from sight. If it had been all flat land, I would’ve had a clear view of her running with a child. But I didn’t.
I started off running at first, but then I became paranoid I’d miss a footprint or lose her track if I hurried too fast. Slowing down might have eased my paranoia, but it was only widening the distance between myself and Bishop. That gave me a whole different kind of panic.
I’d left the map at the farmhouse with Boden, but I’d looked at it enough to know that I was heading in the direction of the city. That made some sense. If Daniels was right about the virus calling out to the infected, the large zombie population of a city would be telling Bishop to join them.
If that happened, though, if Bishop met up with the zombies before I got to her, then this would no longer be a rescue mission. There’s no way a little girl like Stella could survive a mob of zombies. I was pretty sure that even I couldn’t do that.
My only hope was that Bishop wasn’t a zombie yet, and I’m pretty sure she’d taken Stella to protect her. In her mind, she was the only one who could do it, and as long as she still had some of her faculties in place, her goal would be keeping Stella safe.
I’d been trudging along for some time, and the snow was sticking more. It’d gotten cold enough that it could actually stay frozen on the ground instead of melting in to a slick mixture. That made Bishop’s tracks easier to follow, but that was the only good thing.
My legs were frozen from the knee down. The slush had been melting against my pants and shoes, soaking them, but now that it was colder, my jeans had literally frozen around my legs. Like my leg had become the clapper inside the solid bell of my pants.
My head and stomach still felt very hot, despite the cold snow blowing against them, and I knew that wasn’t a good sign. The incision had actually begun to throb the last few hours. I could feel it pulsating under my shirt. I hadn’t looked at in a few days, because I didn’t want to.
The infection was getting worse. It wasn’t the zombie virus, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t wreaking havoc on my body. The fever was growing, and I felt weaker. Between the cold, the infection, the borderline starvation … I was not doing so well.
I began to regret going after Stella. I didn’t know if I was strong enough to save her, assuming she was still in a condition where she could be saved. All I was doing was getting myself sicker, possibly killing myself, to rescue a child I barely knew, a child that probably couldn’t even be rescued.
I stopped walking, and for an awful minute, I seriously considered going back. For one moment, I considered leaving a child to die. I didn’t want to, and I felt guilty even considering it.
But would it be worth me dying to go on a futile mission for her? Was I willing to give up everything on the small chance that I could actually help her?
Then I heard Stella crying, and I had my answer.
The whole time I’d been walking, I hadn’t her cry, which had alarmed me. My only reasoning for it, other than her being dead, was that Bishop comforted her. Stella liked and trusted Bishop.
So if Stella was crying now, something had changed.
I was getting closer to the city. I could tell because more and more houses that were popping up around me. If the snow hadn’t been coming so hard, I might have been able to see the skyline of the city in the distance.
Instead, all I could see was a large concrete box off the side of a highway. It was an old factory, and based on the sign hanging from it, I wouldn’t have known for sure what they built. But from the rusted green combines parked in front, I guessed that they built farm equipment.
That was where Stella’s cries were coming from. An old factory full of sharp, monstrous machinery.
I ran toward it without hesitation. She was still alive. I could still save her. And nothing would stand in my way.
When I got closer to the factory, I slowed down. There were a few windows around the building. They were covered in dirt and muck, and I wiped it off so I could peek inside. The first window I looked in only showed me the inside of a ransacked office, which really wasn’t much help, so I moved on to the next one.
This one gave me a view of the inside of the factory, but there were large, dusty machines all around, so I couldn’t get a clear view of anything. I could see movement, flashes of fabric between two machines, and a hanging chain that swung back and forth, but I couldn’t really see anybody.
Stella was still crying, a plaintive mewling sound, but I couldn’t determine where it was coming from. I could hear someone else, someone who might have been Bishop, but the noise they were making sounded weird. It wasn’t a death groan or that bizarre retching thing zombies sometimes did.
It reminded me of the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes. It was a strange blathering of sounds that were completely unintelligible.
The windows were divided up into eight smaller panes, each one roughly two feet wide by three feet high. One of the bottom panes on the window had been broken with the top half complete missing.
Carefully, I grabbed the glass and pulled out the pane, trying to be as quiet as possible. Once the glass was free, I dropped it in the snow and hoisted myself up. I had to go on my side, sliding through the panes silently.
I almost tumbled to the floor headfirst, but I caught myself on the ledge. I pulled my legs through, and then dropped quietly onto the floor.
I’d landed behind a large machine with massive rotary blades. I’m not sure what it was for, but I was thankful that there was no electricity to turn it on. I didn’t want to see it in action.
I was still catching glimpse of movement, and the garbled noises were louder and rather panicked. I crouched down and crept around the machine.
I had to stay low, nearly crawling to get underneath a lineshaft roller conveyor belt. The bars above me kept me somewhat hidden, but I could actually see what was going on from that vantage point.
It was Bishop pacing and making all those weird sounds. Her head twitched, like she’d suddenly developed Tourette’s, and her movements were jerky. Her hands and arms moved sporadically beside her, not like they were flailing, but like a malfunctioning robot.
When she made the noises, the garbled cartoon grunt, spittle would fly out from her mouth. Her eyes were wild and crazy, but there was a hint of something in them, a consciousness that a zombie didn’t have. She was aware of what she was doing, but based on how terrified she appeared, I didn’t think she had any control over it.
I realized that I was seeing something I’d never seen before. She was turning into a zombie. I’d seen humans, and I’d seen them as zombies, but never the actual act of turning.
Stranger still, Bishop appeared to be trying to fight it. She couldn’t, of course, not any more than a person could will away AIDS or stop the common cold. It was a virus, and it would win.
As fascinating and painful as it was to watch Bishop transform, she wasn’t my priority. I needed to figure out where Stella was, so I could get her out of here, maybe without Bishop even noticing us escaping.
I moved away, staying underneath the conveyor and followed the sound of Stella’s crying. I’d walked a few yards across the factory when I spotted Stella. If I hadn’t been crouched down, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to see her.
There was another huge machine across from me, sitting only a few inches off the ground. That’s where Stella was, squished underneath. I’m not sure how she even had room to
get under there. Even the teddy bear she always carried with her look smashed in the tight space.
I was about to crawl out from under the conveyor belt and let Stella know I was here, when I heard Bishop start making a retching sound. It was the inhuman coughing that I’d only heard zombies and movie monsters make before.
Bishop had had her back to me, but when she slowly turned around, there was no mistaking she was a zombie. Any consciousness or intelligence had been erased from her face. And she fixed her bloodshot eyes directly on me.
25.
I did not want to fight. I wasn’t sure I could win. But when Bishop ran at me, I realized I had no choice.
I ran out the other side of the conveyor belt, so that would be between us. That didn’t really stop her, though. She dove at it, flying over the rolling metal, and landing on the floor. I kept running, looking for something to fight her with.
The factory was full of deadly machinery with sharp edges, but I had no idea how to use that against her. Bishop would be ridiculously strong and fast. It wasn’t like I could just grab her and hold her down against a rotary blade.
Sheets of metal hung down from the ceiling on thick, rusted chains. Farther down the line, the sheets of metal had been pressed into doors and sides of combines and tractors. They moved across the factory on heavy metal hooks.
Bishop was right on my tail, so I jumped up onto the conveyor belt. I stumbled quite a bit on the lineshaft rollers, so I ran on the side. Because it was like walking on a balance beam, I had to go slower than I would’ve liked.
But Bishop had gotten up on the conveyor behind me, and she was doing much worse than I had. She crawled along on her belly, grabbing at me with her outstretched hands, but I always managed to stay a step or so ahead of her.
When I was close enough, I leaped up and grabbed onto one of the hooks. The thrust of my jump propelled it along, sending me flying across the aisle. It stopped short above the top of a machine, and jerked me back, nearly giving me whiplash.
I dropped down on the machine, still hanging onto the chain, and the hook came down to my waist when I stood. I’m not sure what the machine below me was supposed to do, but the conveyor belt ran through it. The top was flat, and it was about ten feet off the ground.
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