The low pitched roar below is beginning to grow. It sounds like a strong wind whipping through the trees. Or a snowplow battling a blizzard. Wait, is that water? Uh oh, that’s what Maxwell meant by the dam broke. The infects must be clogging the turbines or something, I don’t know how it works but I’m sure a bunch of human bodies jamming up the equipment isn’t exactly helping things run smoothly.
We need to get across that gorge before it’s flooded.
“Noah, we need to swing to the side,” Felecia calls up to me.
“I know, but I can’t see. It’s in my eyes.”
“On three, swing to your right, I think my feet can touch.”
“I’ll hold you as soon as you’re close enough,” Sami screams, standing dangerously close to the edge. Through my blurred vision, it looks like she’s levitating.
The combined force of our feet propelling us along the side of the dam must work because we’ve stopped moving. I can’t open my eyes long enough to tell but it feels like Felecia touched down and is holding the bottom of the lab coat rope for me to climb down the remaining few feet.
“You’re almost there, come on,” Sami urges from below. “We’ve got the rope, just keep sliding. Only a few more feet.”
Someone’s hand touches my ankle, I’m close. It’s gotta be Felecia, Sami’s not tall enough to reach me. Her touch instantly puts me at ease, she won’t let me fall.
I can feel movement on the line of clothing above me before Felecia’s guided my feet onto the rocky surface, someone else must be coming down.
My eyes burn and tear up as I rub them feverously the second I’m on solid ground. Kind of glad I can’t see right now because I’m pretty sure this cement shelf isn’t much more than a foot and a half wide and there’s still over a hundred feet to the bottom.
“Noah, there’s a puddle over here.” I can’t see her but I can hear Sami’s voice.
“Come on, I got you,” Felecia says, leading me off the retaining wall and along the ledge. “Baby steps, just like on top of the dam. The others aren’t coming, are they?”
“It felt like someone else was on the rope above me. I told them they were, I’m just not sure my stern dad voice is really believable.”
“No, they have to,” Sami whines, bewilderment in her voice. The hopeful just don’t understand the hopeless. “Look! Maxwell’s climbing down. See, they’re coming.”
“Your dad voice might be more effective than you thought.” Felecia leads me from the smooth surface of the retaining wall onto the rugged ledges, holding me close to her. “Okay, squat down. You must have blocked it from getting in my eyes, I knew you’d be good for something eventually. Sami, how’s the river looking?”
“I can’t see the tree stump anymore. Guys, look, there’s a sign. It says flood zone. Does that mean…”
Felecia lets out a bull-like grunt, her foot bopping nervously as she looks back and forth between the gorge and the dam. “We need to be over there, on that side, now. I don’t know how much longer the dam’s gonna hold. If we stay here, we’re getting washed away. Noah, your eyes, can you see?”
“The water’s helping.” They still sting but I open them anyway, just in time to see a shadowy figure fly by us.
Oh shit, Maxwell! No, no, no. The rope must have broken.
“Guys, duck, incoming!”
What? That couldn’t have been Maxwell because that was just her shouting down to us.
Felecia hunkers down beside me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. We both flinch as something splats beside us with a sickening crunch. What the hell’s going on?
My blurry eyes open enough to see a body tumble over the retaining wall. The infects, they’re throwing themselves off the dam. They must be jumping from the platform directly above us.
I look up in time to see three more go airborne. I can’t tell if they’re intentionally tossing themselves over the guardrail like missiles or if it’s getting so crowded up there that they’re inadvertently knocking each other off the edge. Not important. I’m not sure which is worse.
The second and third divebombing zompires hit hard, bouncing off the open ledges on both sides of us. Blood squirts into the air, raining down as their mangled bodies careen over the edge.
“Go, go, we’ve got an opening!” Maxwell shouts, touching down on the narrow shelf of cement blocks, she must have been closer than I thought. I hadn’t noticed it until now, but, she’s got the duffel bag again. Does this mean… Is Norwood not coming? “Move, hurry! We gotta get off these ledges!”
“They’re not coming?” I ask.
“I left mid-argument. We can’t wait around for them to decide. The equipment in there is blowing left and right.”
“How are we supposed to get across?” Sami asks, leading the way down the ledges, deeper into the ravine we desperately need to be climbing out of.
“You can’t be serious, how are there no trees across the gorge?” Max grumbles, scanning the riverbed.
Yes, I’ve started thinking of her as Max now. In this new world, where every day feels like a week, my little brother’s no longer Max to me, she is. She’s my family now.
I can’t help but flinch as two more bodies splatter off the rocks somewhere behind us, followed by a third and fourth. Do the ones this late in the pack even know what they’re chasing or are they just joining in, assuming there must be a good reason for a mob this size?
Two of them tumble over the side, disappearing in the whitecaps of the raging river growing more violent by the second. They get sucked under, dragged down by the current, never to be seen again. Well that settles that, we will not be swimming across.
I can make out one of the guys climbing down the dam. Neil? It looks like Neil. I was under the impression that if anyone was giving up, it was him. Does this mean Marty and Norwood are… staying behind? It can’t. Not after everything, to go out like this. To choose to quit. I can’t accept that.
The new batch of flying dam jumpers are getting to their feet, one of them is already crawling after us, his sweatpants covered legs crushed beyond recognition as he drags them behind him. The other is draped over the retaining wall, teetering on the edge, trying to hold herself up, tooth torn dress fluttering in the breeze.
More of them fill the air, the first raindrops in a downpour. They start sporadic but pick up steam quickly and before you know it, the sky will be full of them.
Their bodies splatter against the ledges, cracking and splitting, sending torrents of blood spraying from open wounds and severed limbs, painting the cliffside red.
Half of them continue tumbling right over the edge, skidding down the open slabs of rugged stone like a giant staircase. But the rest of them spring to their feet, broken and discombobulated, extremities dangling loosely with bones protruding from their mangled bodies. At the rate they’re going, our safe ledge will be overrun within a matter of minutes.
“God dammit,” Maxwell groans skyward, letting out her frustration with a roar that could scare lions into their dens. “No logs to cross, anywhere. After this little patch of woods, it looks like we enter the Grand Canyon of northern Cali. Sheer cliffs. It’s the end of the line if we don’t find a way across.”
“I don’t suppose you have any rope,” Felecia says, nodding at the overstuffed duffel draped over her shoulder.
“Fifty feet, but we’d need at least a hun–”
She’s cut off by another blast from the dam. Water explodes from the holes at its base, sending bits of cement and metal piping bursting into the air. The pressure’s getting to be too much. Whatever’s going on inside, it’s letting all the water through.
A tidal wave of bodies and machinery crashes through the walls of the ravine, flooding the narrow gorge. With the water level rising like it is, it won’t be long until we’re swallowed by the tsunami.
There’s no going back.
Norwood and Marty are both clinging to the makeshift rope, barely moving, trying to withstand the barrage of bodies pou
ring out of the window. The conference room we escaped from is being overrun, they must have broken through the barricaded door.
“Maxwell, do you have explosives in the bag?”
“You know it. What stupid thing do you want me to do with them?”
“Blow up that little forest,” I yell over the deafening sound of the rising river.
“Try to make our own bridge across? Kid, I think you might be onto something. I don’t know if the trees are tall enough to span the gorge but I’m not seeing any other way out of this. Everyone stay behind me.”
“We gotta find a way to help them down,” I say, turning to Felecia, racking my brain for a solution that doesn’t exist, watching our friends scale the massive structure. “They can barely climb, they’re just trying not to get knocked off by the falling bodies.”
“Okay, okay,” Felecia groans, running her fingers through her hair. “Okay, um, what if we shoot a missile into the room?”
“I’m worried it’ll break the pipe they’re tied to.”
“What if we could get it to explode in the back, away from the window? Max, how accurate is your aim with that giant dildo looking thing?”
“I could get you off from half a click away,” she says, turning around to face the dam, dropping to one knee with the miniature cannon resting on her shoulder. “Say no more. I got this. Guys, hold on tight! Incoming!”
She lets off a rocket, sending it straight through the window, turning before it’s even made contact, arrogance oozing from her pores. The blast rocks the back of the conference room, sending a fireball erupting from the window. Okay she wasn’t exaggerating, she’s good.
It’s working, it’s got them stunned enough to give Marty and Norwood a chance to climb down.
“Told you,” Maxwell says through a cocky grin I can’t see but know is there.
She steadies the weapon on her shoulder and fires again, aiming for the cluster of tenacious pine trees clinging to the cliff. Clumps of dirt and moss covered rocks shoot into the air as the trees begin to waiver. They’re going down. It worked. They’re falling. It actually worked!
The small cluster of trees comes crashing down, the impact reverberating through the ledges. It’s something you feel in your heart, this loud thumping like it was you who fell and not a nearby tree. I don’t know if it always feels like this or if it’s because our feet are planted on the same bedrock as its root system, but it hurts my soul.
God dammit, the big one didn’t go down. Hemlock, fir maybe, I don’t know, I’m not a tree guy, they all look like pine trees to me. No, wait, it’s a cedar, that is definitely a cedar, they’re my mom’s favorite. We had three of them in the yard, she wouldn’t let Dad cut them down. Come on Mom, help me out here, please.
The two smaller trees are crashing over the edge of their precarious perch, swallowed by the rising river, sucked away like it’s nothing. I can’t even see the, um, the leafy tree, the one that doesn’t have pine needles. It’s just gone, completely submerged by the raging white water.
It’s the other big pine I’m worried about. The one that slammed into the rock cliff instead of the gorge. A gang of free-climbing zombies are hopping the guardrail and racing towards the giant tree before it’s even settled.
“Fuck me,” Maxwell growls, dropping her head in shame.
“I can get you off from half a click away,” Felecia mimics in her best Maxwell impersonation.
“I hit the target,” she shouts back. “I fucking hit it! I can’t choose which way the tree falls. We’ve got grenades, anyone a baseball player?”
“Noah,” Sami says, her hopeful eyes locked on me. “You, right? The way you threw those pots at the girl on the powerlines, back on the island. I saw you, you can throw.”
I look down at my wrist, willing it to find the strength to do this. I don’t know what that steroid shot did but it sure as hell made a world of difference. I just hope I can reach. This has to be almost a hundred feet, can you even throw grenades that far? How long until they detonate?
“Just pretend you’re skipping rocks,” Felecia says softly, stroking my bicep with her soft fingers.
I follow her eyes up the cliff, where a pack of undead daredevils are making their way into the branches. This is nothing like skipping rocks, but I can’t be the one to drain that hope from their eyes. They’re all looking at me, waiting for me to do anything other than let them down.
I reach out and take the grenade Maxwell’s holding out to me. “Sorry kid, my horseshoes ended up on the jungle gym. I know your hand’s messed up. Just do your best. Pull the pin, it’s tougher than you think, four seconds.”
I can’t let them down. Not after all this. After everything I’ve put them through. Nothing goes the way we expect it to. But that’s why we’re still here, we’ve learned to adapt when everything goes wrong. I love and respect these people too much to fail, not just the amazing women standing beside me, but Neil fighting his way down the ledges, Norwood and Marty, who look like they’re almost off the rope. Maybe dead would have been better from the start, but we’re not dead, we’re here, and they’re counting on me.
I pull the pin and toss the grenade like it’s a flat stone, begging to be skimmed off the crystal blue stillness of the water. No raging river, no zompires, no dam currently crumbling to bits. I can feel the breeze off the lake, drying the beads of sweat drizzling down my face like I forgot my towel. This is a rock I picked up off the beach, toes in the sand, not a grenade that has our future riding on its trajectory.
It disappears into the cluster of upturned roots. A collective gasp from all of us is almost enough to suck the tree towards us like we’re a Mega-vacuum-Zord. Is anyone counting? I forgot to count. How long does it take for a rock to hit the water? I’ve never timed it before. Should I have held it longer?
The explosion shakes the wall of the ravine, sending a brown cloud of dirt and wood bursting from the base of the giant cedar. Did anyone else just hear that? Am I crazy, or, did the sound of the roots tearing from the ground sound like laughter? Not just any laugh, Mom’s.
It’s coming down. The tree’s falling. I did it. It creaks and groans, picking up momentum. Slow motion turns into fast forward as it tips over the water-filled gorge.
It reached! It reached the other side! We’ve got our bridge. She’s here.
And so are they. A handful of undead Mowglis are crawling down. They’re emerging from the pine needles and scurrying down the tree trunk on all fours like they were monkeys in a past life. Three, five, no, eight. They just keep coming.
Nothing ever works out the way we plan, does it?
CHAPTER 12
“Thanks Mom,” I whisper, loud enough for her to hear me, wherever she is.
Felecia whips her head around, tears misting in her crystal eyes. She feels it as deeply as I do, whatever it is.
“Hell of an arm you got there son!” Marty shouts, pumping his fist as he and Norwood clamber down the cliffside, avoiding broken bodied infects trying to crawl after them. “A throw like that woulda made my pops proud, and that prick hated everything we did.”
“Bro, there was no way that thing was gonna make it across,” Norwood says, kicking a couple cliffhangers over the edge. “I don’t know how you did that but you must have an angel on your side. Think you can convince her to hit those tree huggers with some lightning?”
Crap, I forgot about them.
“We gotta hurry, the water’s still rising,” Maxwell shoots over her shoulder, zipping up the duffel bag.
She’s right, the raging torrent is brushing the branches on Mom’s cedar. The river was a foot or two lower not even fifteen seconds ago.
“Max, pass me a grenade,” I say, holding out my hand before she’s done zipping up. “We can’t let them cross with us. The second we’ve all made it to the other side…”
“I can do it with the bazooka, don’t worry, you don’t need–”
“No. I think this is something I need to do.” To say good
bye to my mom. I don’t say it because I know how crazy it sounds. No one else needs to understand it, but I need to be the one to blow up this tree and send it crashing into the flooded streambed.
“Here. I don’t want you anywhere near that ledge when this goes off. Son of a bitch, the ones coming down the tree, they’re here.”
“Go,” Norwood shouts, hopping down the ledges like a mountain goat. “I’ll hold them off, you guys get across. Max, go, I’m right behind you.”
Sami’s already climbing onto the fallen cedar, shifting beneath her weight as it settles. Neil follows her up, no more than a few steps behind. It’s not as big as I’d like, considering we have to walk across it, but at least their feet fit. The cedars in the yard had rigid bark, I’m hoping that’ll give us some sort of traction.
Marty hops up, stretching his injured shoulder, barely able to lift it over his head. First the rafters, then the climb down the dam, I can see him wince in pain with every movement. He’s putting on a brave face but there’s only so much his aging body can take.
He grabs the duffel bag from Maxwell, who’s trying to cover the pain she’s in. Was that only yesterday that she was having bits of glass plucked out of the entire left side of her body?
“Help! Noah, I’m down! Felecia! Help! Shit, help me.”
Felecia spins so fast her ponytail whips me in the face before I’ve even got both hands on the mangled root system of our non-OSHA approved bridge. She heard it too. I’m not crazy, that was Norwood. But where is he? I don’t see him. That’s his machete laying on the ledges a good thirty feet away. Why isn’t he with his sword?
“Norwood, where are you?” The deafening river is so loud I can barely hear my own voice. I think Felecia’s calling out for him, literally right beside me, but I can’t be sure.
I see headless bodies. Norwood was here. He had to be. Where the hell did he go?
“Noah! Down here!”
It takes every bit of restraint not to race down to where he’s clinging to a crack in the cliff. If I do, I’m going right over with him.
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 7
