by Powell, Lora
Fallon and Devon also sat together, not far from where Shawn and I were. And Maya had been pacing the length of the room while Bill leaned against the door jam and watched outside. But all of us had spent most of the night tracking Carrie’s illness with increasingly grim expressions.
When Maya looked at Carrie one last time and walked resolutely toward her husband, I knew something was about to happen. Nudging Shawn, I jumped to my feet and went to join them by the door. In a matter of seconds, we had all gathered.
“She’s infected.” Maya’s voice sounded hollow.
I felt myself nodding in agreement. “I don’t know what the right thing to do is.”
We stared at each other. No one knew the answer. How could we have prepared to have to make such a decision?
“I know I’m sick.” Rustling fabric and a raspy voice from Carrie herself put us out of our misery. Struggling to prop herself upright on shaky arms, she let us know that she had woken up.
“Carrie, don’t wear yourself out.” Maya hurried to help her friend.
Carrie waved her away weakly. “Don’t touch me. You shouldn’t touch me.” She finally managed to get herself upright.
“How are you feeling?” I edged closer to her.
“Like someone shattered every bone in my body.” She grimaced at me. “I know I’m infected. I saw it happen to someone back at the start. I know the signs.”
Abruptly, she started coughing violently. Hunched over, she rode out the wracking coughs while we watched helplessly from just feet away. When the fit finally ended, she sat back up even more slowly than the first time. Blood covered her lips and chin. More of it formed a puddle on the blankets. Maya whimpered and grabbed Bill’s hand.
Wheezing, Carrie looked at her friends. “I need to borrow your gun. Just for a few minutes.”
Maya objected to her request, but in the end, Carrie won the argument between herself and her worried friend. She knew she was going to die soon. She insisted on doing it on her own terms. At least.
While I didn’t blame her—I’d watched Evie die from the virus and it was brutal—I couldn’t stay and watch. I’d said my goodbyes and let myself and Rex out of the building.
The stretch of the highway that we had been traveling was desolate. There were very few people around the area before the outbreak, and we hadn’t seen a single zombie since stopping there the day before. I felt comfortable enough going outside with just Rex and my machete for protection. I didn’t plan to go far, but I was feeling the need for a few minutes alone.
A hint of the sunrise was just starting to show over the horizon when the single gunshot suddenly rang out. Kneeling down, I wrapped my arms around the dog and held on. Patient as could be, the dog sat and let me grieve on his shoulder for a long time.
The tears had finally dried up when another shot tore through the morning air.
I jumped to my feet and whirled to face back the way I had come. I had walked farther than I’d originally intended and was surprised to find that I couldn’t see the gas station anymore. A bunch of trees was blocking my view.
There shouldn’t have been a second shot. If everything had gone to plan, the only shot needed would have been the first one.
I started running back toward my friends. Rex stayed by my side as I sprinted. Some instinct that I couldn’t explain caused me to stop just before I rounded the trees that would bring the building back into view. Warning bells screamed in my head and an uncomfortable feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Ducking behind a wide tree, I peered out at the gas station.
A black pickup was pulling into the parking lot. As I watched, a burly man climbed from the driver’s seat and walked back to open the tailgate.
The front door of the building stood open, something that no one in my group would have done. Open doors made it too easy for a zombie to get inside. The door being wide open confirmed that something had gone terribly awry while I walked alone.
Rex began to growl and I shushed him. We were still far enough away from the stranger that I doubted he could hear, but I didn’t want to take that chance.
“Stay.” I hoped the dog would listen.
Movement in the doorway proved to be another strange man. Flaming orange hair and beard concealed most of his features. What I noticed most about the man, however, was the rifle he held in front of him.
The bearded man walked to the back of the truck. He and the other stranger laughed together over something the bearded guy said, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Then my friends started to leave the building.
My hand went to my face in horror. Bill came outside first. His hands had been tied behind him, and blood flowed steadily from a wound to his shoulder. The rest filed out behind Bill, all with tied hands. Fallon was crying. Behind them, two more men walked out with their own guns trained on my friends.
The strangers herded my group to the back of the pick-up and unceremoniously into the bed. One of the men shoved Shawn down in the truck and delivered a nasty kick to his side. The men all laughed again before two of them settled into the truck bed with guns ready.
Part of me wanted to run from my hiding place and try to do something. But even in my panic, I knew that that was a terrible idea. All by myself, I stood no chance against the four men, at least three of whom were armed with guns. My group was in no shape to help me help them.
So I held my ground behind the tree and watched as the driver climbed back behind the wheel of the truck. The bearded guy walked to our van and got inside. The two vehicles turned away from the highway and drove deeper into the mountains around us.
I waited for several long minutes before cautiously coming out from behind the tree. The open ground between myself and the building felt dangerous, like someone was out there still, waiting for me to reveal myself. I rushed for the cover of the building but stopped dead just inside the door.
In all of the chaos, I had neglected to realize that Carrie’s body would still be inside. Someone had draped one of our blankets over her. Blood soaked through the material over her head. I shuddered and turned away. Carrie’s troubles were over, but the rest of my group still needed me.
Our few belongings that we had brought inside with us were scattered around the room. Someone had ransacked the bags and taken what they wanted. A small pool of blood on the floor had been smeared by booted feet. One of the shelves that had stood in the middle of the room was knocked over. There had been an obvious struggle.
When I found my backpack with the zombie-bitten strap, I picked it up and began filling it back up with anything left that might be useful. If I was going to track down my people, I was going to need supplies.
With a last look around the gas station, I went outside and hurried across the parking lot. The truck carrying my group, including Shawn, had gone right, so that was the way I was going, too.
I had seen his eyes scanning the area as the pick-up drove away, looking for any sign of me. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to get my family back.
THIRTY-NINE
DAY 21
The zombie ambled out from behind the thorn bushes and onto the dusty, dirt road. It hadn’t seen me yet, and I froze in my tracks, hoping that it would keep on going.
Luck was not on my side, as Rex let out a ferocious snarl that turned the zombie our way. It was too late to hush the dog, so I focused instead on not getting bitten.
The zombie wasn’t one of the ultra-fast ones, but my heart rate still skyrocketed at the thought of having to kill one completely on my own. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much I had come to rely on the others to always have my back.
It was another humid day, and the sun had climbed high into the sky. The smell of week-old road-kill coming off of the zombie made me want to gag as the creature bared broken teeth to hiss at me.
That hiss was apparently too much for Rex to take sitting down. Baring his own sharp teeth, the dog launched himself at the zombie. Colliding mid-leap, the zombie was knoc
ked over by the dog, who began biting viciously into the rotting flesh.
“Rex, no!”
I tried to move closer, to find room to use the machete, but Rex was on top of the zombie. Any movement I made would have been sure to hit the dog first. I yelled at him to stop again, but he kept up the furious assault like he hadn’t heard me.
The zombie’s grasping hands tugged at the dog’s sides, ripping out handfuls of fur. Releasing his hold on its neck, Rex snapped down on one arm. The crack of the bones was clear, even over the sounds of the dog and zombie snarling at each other.
Crunching down on the arm harder, Rex refused to let go of the flailing limb. When the zombie managed to sling him partially off of itself, I finally found an opportunity.
The machete sunk into the zombie’s skull much easier than a knife did.
Even after the zombie had slumped to the ground and stopped moving, Rex held onto its arm. Bending over to rest my hands on my knees, I tried to calm my racing heart.
“Rex.”
This time he listened to me. Dropping the mangled arm, he trotted to my side and grinned up at me with zombie blood splattered all over his fur and coating his teeth.
The dog was inordinately pleased with himself, but I was horrified. Could dogs contract the virus? I knew that some viruses, like rabies, crossed species all of the time. I also knew that many other illnesses did not jump from human to dog or vice versa. And I had no way of knowing which way the zombie virus would go.
“Why’d you have to do that, boy?” I patted his head, ignoring the gore.
There wasn’t anything I could do about it now, what was done was done, so I straightened up with a final pat to his head and continued trudging along the dusty road. Panting from the heat and the exertion, Rex trotted ahead a few yards, tail held high in the air.
The faint tracks that the two vehicles had left in the packed dirt were becoming harder to see. Hours had passed, and the tracks were disappearing with the breeze. I was certainly no hunter. Even more so, worried that the trail would disappear before I found where my friends had been taken, I picked up my pace.
These little back roads were like a maze as they wound their way through the trees. “Right, straight, left, left,” I chanted to myself as I took a right. If I couldn’t remember the way I came in, we could end up lost out here for days when we tried to get back to the highway.
I was studiously ignoring the thought that we may not be coming back out. If I let myself think that way, I was going to curl up alongside the road and give in to panic. I didn’t have time for panic. Whatever the reason behind the strangers’ attack and mass kidnapping of my group, it couldn’t have been good. I needed to find my friends and figure out a plan to free them as soon as possible.
The skin on my nose felt like it was burned to a crisp by the time I had my first hint that I had reached my destination. Rex’s ears perked up and he stopped in the middle of the road, listening to something ahead of us.
Darting into the trees on the side of the road, I crept forward slowly, listening for any sign of people. We hadn’t gone far when I heard something.
There were goats ahead. At least, I thought it sounded like goats. Maybe it was sheep. Either way, live livestock probably meant that people were caring for them.
A little further and I got my first glimpse of humanity. A chain link fence, at least 6 feet tall topped with barbed wire, appeared. The fence ran to the left and the right from me. Just on the other side, a dozen goats grazed on tall grass. I inched further toward the fence. The grassy field, roughly the size of a football field, led to the compound.
There really was no other way to describe it.
Several low buildings surrounded an area of dirt where the grass had all been worn away. The buildings were utilitarian, ugly grey cinder block affairs that had been built for function instead of form. A line of vehicles was parked nearby. The black pickup and our van were parked at the end of the line.
Two men had the doors to the van open and were pulling our things out and laid them around on the ground. Past the parked cars, what looked like a giant garden had two women and several young kids working at pulling weeds.
The whole picture was one of the most bizarre things I’d seen. That was saying a lot considering the fact that the dead now roamed the earth. It reminded me of that TV show I used to watch when there was nothing else on. The one where groups of people, convinced that the end of the world was near, retreated into the mountains and hoarded food and guns.
With a start, I realized that those crazy people on TV had been onto something, after all. The thought did nothing to make me feel better. If these people were like those people, then they were organized and well-armed.
No sooner did I think that when I heard male voices. Scrambling behind a tree, I held onto Rex and prayed he stayed still and silent.
What sounded like two men approached, I found them walking together along the inside of the fence, rifles propped casually over their shoulders. I hid again and listened as they got close enough for me to make out what they were saying.
“... wonder when Mack is gonna decide what to do with them.”
“I bet he keeps them locked up for at least another day. You know how he gets, he’s really mad that that one got the jump on his brother.” The second voice chuckled. “Did you get a look at Tom’s black eye?”
The voices faded as the men moved too far away for me to hear them. Stepping back out from behind the tree, I looked in the direction that they had gone. Soon the men were out of sight.
Following them seemed like a bad idea, so I began to work my way around the fence, going in the opposite direction. I still had no idea exactly what I was going to do to help my friends, but at least now I knew that they were somewhere inside that fence, and still alive.
FORTY
DAY 21
A short distance through the trees, I came across a way into the stranger’s camp. There was just one problem. The gate was closed and guarded by yet another armed man.
I stayed hidden for what felt like a really long time, waiting and watching for the guard to slip up and give me some opportunity to get inside. But that never happened.
After a while, the two guards who had walked by me before had come around again. They laughed with the guard at the gate about something that one of them must have said on an earlier pass, before doing another round.
When the guard posted at the gate looked up to talk with the other two, I got a good look at his face. One eye was swollen almost shut, a nasty looking bruise surrounding it and spreading across his cheek. Unless this group had more than one man sporting a black eye at this time, this could only be one of the men who had directly attacked my friends. The pair of guards had called him Tom. A hint of satisfaction crept through me. Whichever of my friends had managed to fight back, they had hit this guy really hard.
I crouched under some bushes and watched. By the fourth time the men walked by, a pattern had emerged. As close as I could estimate, it took roughly twenty minutes for the walking guards to complete one circuit. In all of the time I stayed there, Tom never left his post. He wasn’t exactly the most attentive to his task; none of them were, really. The walking guards seemed to be spending more time talking than looking outside the fence. And Tom was alternately digging the toe of his boot into the dirt and watching birds flit from tree to tree. But I doubted any of them would miss a strange woman and her dog if we didn’t keep ourselves carefully hidden.
Easing back deeper into the forest, I gave the gate a wide berth as I continued my circuit of the fence. After spending the past couple of hours watching the security for this place, I doubted I would get lucky enough to find a conveniently open and unguarded gate elsewhere. But I still needed to check.
There was also still the matter of my friends being inside somewhere. I hadn’t gotten any hints of exactly where they might be from the front of the compound, but I was hoping I might be able to find out something useful if I kep
t looking.
The mosquito bites that I had been picking up from the relentless little bloodsuckers ever since stepping foot into the trees were starting to itch. Scratching at a particularly nasty bump on my neck, I found the fence again and circled the perimeter slowly. I had rounded a corner, bringing me finally to the opposite side from where I first started, when I found exactly what I had been looking for.
The largest of the buildings had been blocking my view of another smaller chain link fence within the perimeter fence. This second fence was also taller than I was by far and topped with more razor wire. And inside it, everyone in my group sat huddled together.
Back here, the fence wasn’t nearly as far away from the buildings as it had been on the other side. I was close enough that I knew they would hear me if I called out to them, but I didn’t dare for fear that someone else would hear me too. Finding Shawn sitting between Maya and Devon, I was relieved when he seemed to be sitting upright and looking alertly around.
My eyes flew over the group, looking for any signs that any of them were hurt. My heart sank when I got to Bill.
He was an unhealthy shade of grey. Leaning sideways to rest up against the fence, the big man looked exhausted. The blood that had drenched the front of his shirt had dried, so at least he didn’t seem to be bleeding any longer, but the damage had already been done. I had been hoping that his injury wouldn’t be as bad as my first sight of it had seemed to indicate, but it seemed like that was not the case.
Maya sat next to her husband, leaning towards him and it looked like she was whispering something to him. Worry clouded her features. The odd way that she was holding herself baffled me for a few seconds until I figured out why. Maya’s hands were still bound behind her back.
I looked closer and saw that they all still seemed to be tied. Looking alarmingly sickly himself, Devon was leaning up against the fence with his eyes closed. Fallon had stopped crying and now she just looked mad. I could see that she was working at whatever had been used to bind their hands, twisting this way and that in what I assumed was an effort to loosen the ties, but she didn’t seem to be having much luck.
