The tip of my blade knocks the severed forearm over the edge before piercing his other hand. It draws a steady stream of blood as I dig through his flesh, twisting and turning it, trying to knock him off. If he were a human, he’d have had to let go by now, but it’s not enough to faze him.
And this bitch is stomping down on my blade like she’s killing a spider.
Felecia’s legs tighten around me as she prepares to swing. I don’t know if I should hold onto her leg or the dam itself. To be honest, my butt cheeks are clenched so tight they could probably hold me up here through a hurricane, not to mention my leg muscles squeezing so hard it’s probably going to leave bruises come morning. If morning ever comes, because I’m not so sure I see a way out for us this time.
I wiggle the blade beneath Cowgirl’s foot, it’s not much, just enough to throw her off balance. Her displaced hips can’t move fast enough to correct her, she can’t bring her other foot down, it’s stuck halfway in flamingo stance.
Felecia takes her opening and swings the katana without a moment of hesitation. Her blade hits the mark, digging into Menopausal Cowgirl’s neck, but it’s not sharp enough to slice through. We’ve been using these all day now without sharpening them, there hasn’t been time. It’s just go, go, go, dodge death, go some more.
The strike to the side of her neck, paired with my sword shaking beneath her foot, there’s nothing she can do but fall. Nothing to hold onto. Nowhere else to go. She plunges towards the water, spinning through the air, reaching for something, anything. Until the second she hits, splattering off the still surface with a sickening crunch. From this height, she may as well be jumping off a skyscraper and hitting the street below.
The darkening water swallows her body in a ring of ripples, sucking her under, refusing to release its grip. Either her bones are too broken to move, or she’s getting whirlpooled into one of the shafts and spit out the other side.
With her gone, I wrap my free hand around Felecia’s thigh and reach as far as I possibly can, ramming the end of my blade into ringleader’s pimple popping palm, skewering it, scraping against bone. I’m not sure if my hand’s shaking involuntarily or if I’m telling it to do that, hoping the vibrations will be enough to send him sailing over the edge.
It’s working, his fingers are twitching. I must be severing nerves or something, I’m not sure how it works, but he’s spasming. It looks like there’s a thousand bugs crawling under his skin. He’s letting go, whether he wants to or not.
His hand can’t hold on any longer. His fingers go limp. The only thing holding him up is my blade poking through his palm, slipping around in the soft flesh. There’s too much weight, I can feel it tearing, ripping apart as he tries to hold on with his other hand, still not understanding the fact that it’s no longer attached.
With one last slurp, my sword breaks free, sending him and his piggybacking friend spiraling towards the gorg–
Shit! G.I. Ballerina launches himself off the falling zombie’s back just in the nick of time, springing straight towards us, hands outstretched, mouth open, hunger in his eyes. And he’s coming right for us.
CHAPTER 3
Before I have a chance to react, Felecia thrusts her sword forward, tightening her thighs around my shoulder.
The tip of her blade makes contact, entering the striking zompire’s mouth. Blood gurgles, gushing everywhere as her sword pierces the back of his throat and exits his skull in a midair collision.
His body slips off the steel in a river of blood. He doesn’t even have a chance to hold on, his arms just flail for a second before it’s too late. Leaving a stream of blood falling behind him, he takes the plunge.
It’s disturbing to watch. They don’t scream like you’d expect a human to do. Because they’re not human, not anymore.
Felecia’s vise grip loosens. We can breathe again. The others aren’t climbing onto the dam, they’re trying, but it looks like one of them got tangled in the rungs and caused a jam up, they’re just crashing into him and tumbling over the edge.
Hands clutching my shoulders in the world’s most awkward massage stance, she unwraps her leg and slides down my back until she’s once again straddling the dam. I can tell she’s trying to talk but she’s trembling too much, which is fine by me because even if she was talking, I wouldn’t be able to hear her over the drum solo my heart’s performing right now.
We let our wheezes and desperate gasps do the talking for us, just like the day this all started, when I pulled her up through the window in the science lab. How was that not even a week ago? Wait, was it? No, that had to be a couple months ago. Has it been a year already? Because it feels like it’s been a year. What day is it?
“They’re gone,” she finally whimpers. “They left us. What do we do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”
“Noah, we made it. We fucking made it,” she cries, trying to catch her breath between unsuccessful inhales. “How can they rip that away from us? Why was Buckley there? Please tell me this isn’t happening.”
“That’s who was in the truck with Paul,” I manage to squeak over the pulsating lump in my throat, making it hard to swallow or even breathe. “That’s why he wanted to be alone. I thought it was Darius. I didn’t even question it, I knew it was him, but it wasn’t. It was Shane, and Buckley. They’ve been planning this. They must have been the ones who set him free.”
“Blake. Blake was in on it, that’s why they were going with us last night,” she half growls, half cries. “That’s why they wanted to stay with the chopper. They thought Neil would side with them, with his dad. How did we not see this coming? God, Noah, they have Caylee up there. What are they gonna do to her? And Tyrone? Kristen. Shit, Kristen, she’s up there with Shane. We know what he’s capable of. We should have killed every last one of those assholes.”
“I know,” I whisper, looking over my shoulder at her, wishing with all my might that I could go back and do what I knew needed to be done, but my humanity wouldn’t let me. What good does humanity do us here?
She sighs heavily, blowing a small cluster of hairs that’s escaped her ponytail. Her eyes close as she looks skyward, like she’s asking the heavens for an answer.
“Island?” she says in my ear after a long moment watching zombies fall from the ladder. “It’s over, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s over. Let’s go to the ocean.”
“Well, there is no way in hell I’m turning around so we’re just gonna have to scooch our way along backwards,” she says, her Disney Princess eyes focusing on me, flashing me the smallest of smiles. Would you laugh at me if I said it warms my soul?
If it’s me and her on an island for the rest of our lives, I think I’m okay with that. The feel of her body pressed against mine, even if it is in a death defying back hug, it gives me the strength to face forward, just knowing she’s there, and push myself along the concrete behemoth.
I have to say, straddling the dam and sliding along it like dogs running their butts across the carpet is a hell of a lot less stressful than tight roping. We should have been doing this from the start.
Have you ever been promised something, only to have that promise fall through? The feeling of betrayal that dominates the void hope once filled overwhelms you. It doesn’t matter what the promise was, how grand or trivial, its failure to come to fruition is debilitating. It can break your heart, crush your soul and leave your spirit empty.
When it happens again and again and again, sadness turns to anger. Anger consumes us, turning into vengeance. We become driven by that need for retribution. We will do whatever it takes, cross any boundary, ignore any moral, as long as it means getting what we feel is owed to us.
I’m trying to come to peace with this, but I can’t. All I can picture are my hands around Buckley’s throat while Felecia does unimaginable things to Shane, things that force me to look away. The image playing in my mind is so vivid, I have to glance over my shoulder just to make sure it’s not re
ally happening.
“What? What is it?” Felecia asks, skeptically, looking behind me to make sure the dangling zombie hasn’t been dislodged, opening the floodgates. “Why are you looking at me like that? If me straddling this thing is bringing back images of Sex Island, don’t even think about it, it is not happening. Not up here. I don’t even think it could, every hole is clenched so tight there’s no way it’d work.”
“This is probably the first time I haven’t pictured it since it happened, so thanks for restoring the mental image, way to help me focus.”
“Any time,” she purrs. “I’d flash you a little boob but this chainmail’s kind of a snug fit and it’d take me a while to lift it over them and, ya know, fluff up the girls after being smooshed.”
“I don’t know, could be worth the hassle,” I say with a shrug. “I mean, if it helps, I can do the fluffing.”
“Generous offer, I’ll certainly take it into consideration. So if it’s not me looking like a sexy medieval, military, cowgirl, which by the way I am totally making a fashion trend on the small island nation of Nolecia, then why are you looking at me all weird like that?”
“Because of this,” I say proudly, watching her bump into the ladder on the far side of the dam, the side I don’t think either one of us believed we’d reach. But, the hope that was once found at the top of the iron rungs is long gone now.
She glances over her shoulder and looks up at the metal bars sticking out of the concrete wall, a grin on her face she’s trying to hide. “We’re finding a way out of this. There’s an island out there calling our names. I am living a life with you. If it’s the last thing I do, I will be Felecia Britton, you can even ask my diary, it says so.”
“Felecia Britton keeps a diary?”
“Shut up.” Her smile grows even wider when she realizes what I just called her, until she can’t stop a girlish giggle from escaping. And she wants us all to believe she’s a stone cold bitch? She shakes her head to try and will it away but it doesn’t work. “You tell anyone about my ‘feelings journal’ and I will kill you, just so we’re clear.”
I nod and cross my heart with a smile. She doesn’t need to say it for me to know, she started writing in her ‘feelings journal’ as a little girl, after losing her dad. Probably something a therapist had her do to cope with the loss.
She’s not the girl we all thought she was. I don’t think any of us are who we thought we were. They were all misconceptions we ourselves believed were true. It’s situations like these where our true colors shine. This is who we really are.
She silently mouths ‘love you’ while reaching over her head and grabbing the metal rungs protruding from the wall.
I am in awe of everything this girl does.
I follow her every graceful step up the ladder. Somehow, I get the impression my steps aren’t quite as elegant, they’re a little more deliberate and heavy, like I need a diaper change. But, in my defense, there’s a strong possibility I might. We are really high right now and there’s no safety cage behind us. I like the ladders with those little enclosures a lot more. I’ve never climbed one but I’d imagine they offer at least a tiny bit of comfort.
“Felecia, Noah, you’re alive!”
CHAPTER 4
Norwood? That was definitely Norwood’s voice. What the hell is he doing here? Why is he not on the helicopter?
“Oh thank god,” he screeches from his kneeling position beside a pile of decapitated corpses. “We thought we lost you in the dam. They left man, they fucking left us here!”
Norwood lets out an agitated roar, kicking a decapitated head like it’s a soccer ball. It sails over the viewing platform, or whatever it is we’re standing on, narrowly missing what looks like a camera on a pole.
He kicks another head in the other direction, a tail of brain matter secreting from the severed neck as it disappears over the railing. “What the hell happened? Me and Marty went in after you, next thing you know, we hear the chopper taking off.”
“Joseph Buckley,” I growl, knees still too wobbly to stand. I’ll just stay here on all fours for a while, until the tremors die down.
“Oh you’ve gotta be butt fucking me! How?”
“He must have been in the fuel truck,” I yell from my crawling position, staring down at the concrete as I try to compose myself. “That’s gotta be who we saw in there, it wasn’t Darius, it was Shane and Buckley.”
“Hold on!” He stomps a disembodied head until the heel of his boot caves it in with a crunch that will forever change the way I hear a can of soda opening. “Shane?”
“Paul must have found him by the lake, when we were getting Neil and Scott off the island. Maybe Buckley followed us there, I don’t know.”
“It was Blake.”
Neil? Why the hell am I hearing Neil’s annoying whine in my ear? Oh this is just lovely, I’ve heard it so many times that now it’s stuck in my head like a car alarm when it finally stops squealing.
“Last night, in the car, I saw his phone light up.” Nope, that really is Neil, laying on his back, knees up like he’s about to show us how many sit-ups he can do. What is he still doing here? “It was my dad’s number. They had this planned. It was a god damn setup.”
“And you’re telling us this now?” Felecia screams, pacing in circles, clawing at her ponytail.
“I thought I could handle it. I didn’t want anyone to freak out and decide this wasn’t a good idea because they thought my dick of a dad would screw it up.”
“Well guess what happened,” Felecia hisses through gritted teeth. “Your dick of a dad screwed it up. And he just left with our fucking helicopter!”
I look up in time to see Marty slump down in defeat, resting against the enormous back tire of the Stryker. Marty didn’t make it on the chopper either? And he’s not alone. Sami. The little girl is beside him. They’ve both got weapons in their hands, they must have been fighting off the infects, keeping them from swarming the chopper. Buckley left us all behind. His own son included.
“He came from that way,” Marty grumbles, pointing towards the mountains. “He wasn’t in the truck. That chainmail vest he stole from Caylee, I could see it glistening through the trees, in the viewfinder. Kept trying to figure out what it was. It was him, I know it. Son of a fucking whore! He came over the god damn mountain range. They must have told him where we were going, he snuck in over the ridge and waited for us.”
“At this point, it doesn’t even matter.” Felecia shakes her head, pulling me to my feet. “They’re gone, and we’re not. Can anyone drive this thing? Because we gotta get the fuck outta here before that mob reaches us and all hell breaks loose.”
“Kinda,” Norwood says, raising his hand timidly. “I drove it back at the base a couple times. It wasn’t pretty though. Marty?”
“Man, I mean, I’ll try anything once. Word of advice, never say that to your brother in law who you suspect is a closeted homosexual, he might take you up on it and it might make you feel extremely awkward. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the best blowjob I’ve ever had though, and I will stand by that to my grave. Which might be just around the corner.” He cranes his neck, closer to the road than the rest of us. “Shit, we can’t drive through that. Fuck me, guys, I think this might be it.”
Sami jogs over to the edge of the parking lot or whatever this is we’re standing on. “Guys, there’s gotta be a thousand dead people coming up the hill. We’ll never make it.”
Norwood lets out a sigh that could knock over ten of them if they were close enough. “We had it. We were right fucking there! After all that, this is it?”
“Can’t we run into the woods?” Sami asks, spinning around like she’s chasing an invisible tail, looking for some way out. “Like that man you’re talking about? If he made it over the mountains, so can we, right?”
“Not with that many of them on our as–butts,” Neil says, shaking his head in Sami’s direction, too spent to even sit up. “The terrain will slow us down, but not them. The
re’s no way through the dam?”
“The catwalk over the generators is gone. It fell while we were on it.” I point back and forth between me and Felecia before looking to Norwood and Marty. “You guys came in after us? I really wish you hadn’t, but thank you. Was the power room still swarming with them?”
“Grizzly bear and all.” Marty chuckles nervously, shaking his head. “As if these undead douche weasels ain’t enough, you guys go and find yourselves a damn zombie bear. How the hell’d you make it outta the bridge collapse? We were just looking for your bodies, so we could try to put you out of your misery if you’d turned.”
“Rafters,” Felecia says, pointing up. “We swung across them like monkey bars. That’s it, guys, let’s just do it again. Climb across the ceiling and back through the tunnel. We’ll have to fight them off on the other side but at least we have a chance.”
“A chance at what? Maybe…” Neil starts before stopping himself, dragging his hands across his face, still staring skyward. “Maybe it’s time we stop running. How much more of this can we do? I know no one wants to say it, but, aren’t we just delaying the inevitable here?”
“You mean, just… give up?” Sami shakes her head, shifting her gaze from one defeated face to another. “No, no, we can’t. We made it this far. There has to be something else we can do.”
Marty nods at the ground, rubbing his mustache intently. “Kid, I know you’re new to this and all, but, I think we’ve done everything we could.”
“This was ridiculous to begin with.” Neil finally makes it to a semi-sitting position, propped up on his elbows. “Noah I’ll give it to you, you got us here. You and Felecia both, you two were right all along. But there’s nothing left to do. That was our flight outta here, and my dad just stole it from us. We’re not making it to New York, or England, or that aircraft base down in the desert. We gotta come to terms with this, guys, it’s not happening.”
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 2
