Then the path angled yet further south until it hit a road, going west again. I switched onto that, wincing at the still hot pavement singeing the raw soles of my feet, but it made for easier going. I ran faster for a while before I had to slow down, my breath turning from pants to wheezes. The water bottles seemed to weigh a ton, and more than once I debated letting the fastest zombie catch up so I could smash its head in and be done with it. But I wasn’t sure whether I still had the strength to manage that and have enough left to continue running, so I kept on going. It was still more endless dragging yards further down the road that I realized that the distance between me and my pursuers remained roughly the same. Actually, they seemed to fall back whenever I slowed down somewhat, as if running hard gave them more of an incentive to give chase. With no other option than to keep going, I started varying my speed to verify my guess. About an hour in I even chanced stopping for a moment so I could wrench a bottle open and drink some, but that brought the entire horde coming after me with a vengeance—so no more stopping.
This was shaping up to become one hell of an endless day.
I kept on running, and when that got too much, I walked, until the approaching zombies forced me into a lumbering run again. Temperatures dipped as the sun disappeared behind the horizon in what I really fucking hoped wasn’t the last sunset I would ever see. Been there, done that, and found it highly overrated. I no longer worried about freezing during the night as being in constant motion would easily take care of that. My feet ached but the acute pain from earlier in the day had long since started to dull. My muscles ached, but with no chance of respite I forced myself to ignore that. The hard sprinting out of that town had cost me a lot, but with the speed I was going now I felt like I could keep this up for a while. Eventually the first bottle was empty, making going somewhat easier now that my burden dwindled to one, leaving me with one arm free at all times. My head hurt and I felt slightly dizzy from what I guessed was a good sunstroke that I’d given myself, but I didn’t really worry about that. Should I really drop down with exhaustion, the zombies would take care of me within minutes. So either I made it, or not. There was a strange kind of comfort with life narrowing down to such a simplistic duality. I didn’t have enough energy left to worry, so no more playing guessing games about why the zombies had congregated in that town that couldn’t have had more than a double digit population to start with.
It was just me, my bottle, the road, and the zombies.
Night fell, turning everything into deep shades of grays and blues. The road remained warm underneath my feet, what had bothered me all day turning into a slight comfort now. A town came up ahead and I wondered if I should have gone around, but I felt too exhausted to try so I just kept on going. In passing I heard some banging coming from a house or two, but otherwise it was completely deserted. My undead train of followers was still after me, although I wasn’t sure if one or two didn’t drop away between the buildings, deciding to go for easier pickings.
It turned darker still until only the stars lit up the sky, no moon out tonight. The road was easy enough to follow, so that’s what I did, the constant low shuffling and growling behind me keeping me just alert enough not to trip over my own feet. The contents of the bottle dwindled, until I dropped the empty plastic husk where I walked. A little later my body proved that it was still working somewhat, if inefficiently, as my bladder demanded to be emptied. Taking care of that between hops and haphazardly paced brief stops wasn’t exactly a clean solution, but I was beyond caring. Anything that didn’t make the zombies come after me full speed was a good solution, so that’s what I did.
More farms and abandoned cars I passed. Once I tried wrenching open a car door to maybe snag something from the inside but it had rusted shut, barely splayed open enough that I could get one hand into the gap. The resulting noise drew agitated howls from the zombies, so I gave up on that endeavor. Maybe once the sun came up I could try again. Or better yet, try to lose them in a town, playing hide and seek in abandoned houses. I wasn’t sure if I still cared what happened to me. It was getting so damn hard to think. All I could do was move on. So that’s what I did.
Suddenly, there was a dark shape looming before me, somewhat solid, on four legs. It let out a huffing, grunting kind of sound that made me skip over to the other side of the road immediately as I stopped. Was that a fucking bear? Were there even bears in… Nebraska, I thought I’d read on the license plates of too many cars to ignore.
I wasn’t even frightened as I stared it down, more like dazed and confused. It didn’t rear up on its legs or give one of those growly shouts, but I wasn’t sure if bears even did that outside of dramatic scenes in bad movies. It looked menacing enough, although it was smaller than I’d thought bears got, but then that was probably just the grizzly bears up in Alaska. Or not. Mauled by a bear was a quick way to die. I could think of worse. Hell, just this morning I’d escaped much, much worse. And ending up as meal to a living thing was a lot better than becoming zombie chow.
The lead zombie gave a triumphant scream less than ten yards behind me, sure that now it had caught me. The bear sniffed the air before it turned away from me, and with one hard leap went after the zombie, close enough that I could have brushed along its flank had I extended my arm. I didn’t. I didn’t even turn around to watch what was going on—the sounds made that more than apparent. I just started running again, down the road, too perplexed to fully appreciate what had just happened.
A fucking bear. Now this I had to tell someone. Burns would die from envy.
Just another incentive to survive.
I had no way of knowing whether the bear survived or not, but my following of the undead kind dwindled down to three individuals. As the sky started to lighten behind me, just a little to my left, I dared stop for a few moments to take care of business again. My skin was covered in sweat but chilled if not outright cold. Walking was a feat, and I knew that if I sat down now I wouldn’t be able to get up again. So I didn’t, yet I felt like every single motion was quickly draining what was left of my reserves. But there was no town to go look for something to loot, and the few abandoned cars had been picked clean. The moment the sun came up and chased away the cold of night, my skin started to burn, my lips so cracked that I tasted blood when I licked over them. I knew that I wouldn’t survive another day and night of this. Either something happened in the next few hours, or I was dead.
I was just thinking that when I topped another rise, and paradise opened up before me.
Well, maybe not paradise exactly, but the endlessly stretching palisade around the settlement that lay in the plain ahead came very close to it. It was such a fantastic view that I halted and simply stared, unsure what exactly I was seeing.
And yet, something made my skin crawl, to the point that when I glanced down I saw goose bumps all over my grimy arm.
I listened around me, but except for the low, chuffing sounds that the last remaining zombies made I didn’t hear anything.
No, that wasn’t true. There was something. A sound so low my ears couldn’t quite pick it up, but I felt it, like vibrations low in my bones. It made me want to turn around, to avoid it. It set my teeth on edge.
What the fuck?
I must have stood there for a good five minutes, trying to force my sluggish mind to come up with a plan of action. The zombies should have caught up to me by then, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw that they had congregated in a huddle a good hundred feet back down the road, swaying to and fro, bumping into each other but not moving forward—just like they’d done in that room.
Strange.
Only that the moment I took a step forward—away from them—they surged into action again, fresh and energetic as if they hadn’t spent the entire night on their feet.
And, just like that, all the good I’d made in distance was melting like ice thrown into an open fire.
I was running before my mind could give the order, my body flinging itself into one last
mad dash—down toward the palisade. I hadn’t seen a gate so I took the way of least resistance—down the hill on the road, and where it swerved to the side I plunged into the high grass, aiming straight for the high, wooden barrier. Sunlight crested the hill, streaming into the plain like fire but for once not killing my vision as it was coming from right behind me. Not that it mattered—all I could focus on was the palisade, and the distance to it that kept getting shorter and shorter.
And the people up there on the palisade, three guards that I could make out, stopping now that they caught something moving out there in the grass.
With the burst of adrenaline that had rocked my body into action a few moments ago clarity came. I had to come up with a story for why I was out here. Was the patch on my neck still there? Would they believe me if I claimed to be a trader? But if the palisade was any indication, they were with the people who’d much rather shoot me than listen to me explain what a scavenger was doing out there, without gear, without weapons. But would they believe me if they saw me sprint full-out, going about the speed a professional athlete could maintain over short distances?
Just as I thought that, my foot caught in a hole or something and I went down, the air leaving my torso in one painful rush as I hit the ground. I was scrambling up and started forward again before I could draw breath, but that certainly helped make me look a little less like I knew what I was doing. The zombies had almost caught up to me, screaming with their bloodlust, and a few haphazard steps later I finally drew breath again, waving like a madwoman as I tried to make my parched throat work again.
“Help! You have to help me!” I croaked. It came out barely intelligible, but it must have been audible enough in the clean morning air as two of the guards scrambled into action, disappearing behind the palisade. Only a hundred feet separated me from them now, which was close enough that the remaining guard could have easily shot at the zombies—but also me, so it was for the best that he didn’t.
Just as I started to feel dejection well up inside of me, sure they’d watch me getting torn to shreds, a rope ladder was thrown over the palisade, reaching almost down to the ground on my side. Mobilizing the last bit of my strength, I vaulted toward it, throwing all caution overboard where looking frail and incapable was concerned. People could move fucking cars if they were on an adrenaline high—they could very well jump, too.
My fingers closed around the last and second-to-last rungs of the ladder before my momentum sent my entire body smashing into the wooden beams, hard enough to make me bite my tongue and almost let go. But I held on for dear life and pulled my legs up just as the ladder gave a jerk upward as they started to reel me in, the zombies screaming below me. One of them tried to jump up, its claws raking over my shin, but then it fell away to remain at the bottom of the palisade, howling uselessly.
“Hold on!” came a shout from above. “We got you!”
It was almost more than I could manage. My grip was so frail that I would have dropped right down to the ground once they had hauled me up to the top of the palisade if the remaining guard hadn’t grabbed me at the shoulders and pulled me across. I fell onto the wooden walkway like a sack of potatoes, ending up on my back, staring straight into the sky. My breath came in wheezing pants barely deep enough to pull any oxygen into my lungs, making me see spots. No, those were faces, of the three men who had rescued me.
Or had they?
A wave of paranoia rose in me, fright gripping me so hard that my entire body started to shake. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t even stretch out my legs, let alone raise my arms to protect myself. If they decided to kill me, or rape me, or do God knows what to me, there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
All I could do was hope.
I realized that the weird sound in my ears was them talking to me, or trying to. One of them was sane enough to hand me a bottle of water, and when it just dropped uselessly from my fingers he called something out to someone below before he hunkered down and held my head up while he put the unscrewed bottle to my lips. The water hurt where it sloshed into my parched mouth, but I swallowed greedily. He only let me have a few sips, which was likely a good thing but felt more like torture to me. The other one tried talking to me again, and finally the words got through.
“Can you tell me your name, Miss?” he was repeating, over and over again.
My name. It didn’t take a genius to know that I couldn’t very well give that, with a bounty on my head and all that shit. That and the fact that I was sure that Taggard—if he had survived—was monitoring communications. But coming up with something while my mind was turning to mush wasn’t exactly easy.
“Anna,” I finally managed to croak, coughing. “Anna… Hawthorne.” Hawthorne? Where had that come from? “Water, please?”
I got a few more sips while the other guy continued his questioning. “What were you doing out there? How did you even get here?”
I had to hand it to him, he didn’t give me a clue about anything, nothing to build on. Bastard. My silence seemed to go on for too long because he got tired of it, telling the guy with the water bottle to turn me over. I tried to put up some resistance but flopped onto my side, my limbs useless. I knew they were checking my neck.
“Single mark,” the third guy contributed, making me let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding.
“What did you expect?” Water Bottle Guy said as he helped me onto my back once more. Some chuckles were traded that I ignored; I could very well live with a bruised ego.
“Traders,” I managed to offer after another few sips. “My husband and I. We’re traders.” They seemed to wait for more so I continued to mumble the next best thing that came to my mind. “Were with some others. Got attacked. My husband told me to run. So I ran.”
They traded glances before the one who kept asking questions continued.
“When did that happen? And were you bitten or scratched?” He paused, giving me a quizzical look. “We can’t keep you here if you’re sick.”
I almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of the question, but then remembered that yes, I should have been worried about that, too, under different circumstances. I shook my head. “No. And a few days? Five? Yeah, five days. I think. I hid for a while. But had to leave. No food. No water…”
That got me a few more sips while they considered my words. Not that out of the question that a mere trader wouldn’t quite know how to get to food. And, if I was honest, I had had a hard enough time keeping myself fed as it was.
“Can you call Dispatch?” I asked, trying to sound whiney, and not having to pretend much. Shit, but I felt awful. “If my husband is still… if he survived, that’s where they will know. And they can send someone to pick me up. Don’t… don’t want to be a burden.”
More trading of glances that set my teeth on edge. “Don’t you worry about that, Miss,” Water Guy assured me, but I didn’t quite buy it. “You can stay with us until you feel better.” Why, oh why didn’t I believe him? Not the part about staying. I just didn’t buy the part about being welcome—or feeling like I was.
Voices got loud somewhere below us and I sagged back onto the walkway, exhaling slowly. I got some more water but the other two men got up and shouted something to those that must have come to the foot of the palisade to investigate. I could still hear the zombies grunting outside but they sounded much quieter already, now that their quarry was out of sight. The third man disappeared completely but I felt vibrations underneath me that made me guess that he was running down some ladder or similar contraption. A few moments later, several lighter voices answered his grumbled explanation, and steps came back up. From the edge of my vision I saw two women approach—or someone wearing long, flowing skirts. The skirts were pretty much all I actually saw. A warm, gentle hand dropped down on my forehead, making my eyes flicker open again. When had I closed them? The face above me looked older, fine lines and gray wisps of hair coming loose from a tight bun making me guess that she must have been t
wice my age. The other woman remained behind her, out of my direct sight, while the first briefly checked me over, stopping at my feet. I could take a guess at why she pulled air in through her teeth in a slight gasp. Over a year out there with lots of walking and running and seldom being without my boots had left quite the fair share of calluses on my feet but none of that had prepared them for the abuse I’d put them through.
Still better than what would have happened to me if I hadn’t done it.
I stopped trying to be helpful and just stared up into the brightening sky, my puffy eyes already starting to water again. They felt like someone had sanded them down.
Another woman’s face appeared above me, and that’s when I knew I’d started hallucinating. That lush blonde hair. Warm, brown eyes, so ready to sparkle with joy but now clouded with worry. Those lips, the upper one slightly plumper than the lower. Lips that had smiled at me a thousand times. That I’d kissed a thousand times.
Only that the details were wrong. There shouldn’t have been the hint of a scar on her chin. Her cheeks were still full, no signs of starvation, but the lines of her cheekbones and jaw were more defined, hard where softness had been before. But most of all that carefree look was gone from her eyes, leaving worry and tension there that shouldn’t have been in a vision that my mind conjured up in the last moments before it went out forever.
Resurgence: Green Fields book 5 Page 32
