by Russ Watts
Disgusted, Jonas turned away, and looked around the group. He saw broken people, disillusioned, bereft of hope, and with barely enough energy to stay awake. Could they do this? Could he do this? Dakota never lost her faith, yet, his wavered from minute to minute. He had to find strength somewhere, and if it couldn’t be from God, he would have to find it within himself. Before all this started, before the dead walked, it was his love for his wife that drove him on to work harder, to provide for her, to make their lives as content as possible, and to make a safe home. Dakota was his everything, and he drew upon his deep love and admiration for the woman who stood beside him now. Even now, when they were lost, she still stood by him, and never lost her faith. He would do it for her. When he was at a low all he had to do was look into her eyes, and it was like looking into another world. Nothing else mattered when he was looking at Dakota.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything. I just did what I had to do. You know I’ll never leave you, Dakota. It’ll take more than a zombie to keep me apart from you.”
Jonas heard a rustling sound coming from somewhere within the treeline. He heard branches breaking, and leaves being crushed underfoot. There was a faint moaning sound, and he knew they were still coming. Maybe they had found a way over the fence, or maybe there were stragglers in the park. Either way, they couldn’t stay any longer.
“Time to go,” Jonas said lifting Dakota to her feet. He pulled up Terry, and then approached Erik who was examining his Glock.
“I’m almost out. We need to find somewhere safe to go, and fast.” Erik looked at his wife, and then to Peter who was strapping on the backpack as he helped Freya to her feet. They looked shattered.
Jonas nodded in agreement. “How are they holding up?” he asked quietly.
Erik shrugged. “Peter’s got more strength than most people I know. He’s still a kid, but anything I ask of him he does without question. He looks after Freya like she’s part of him. I just wish this was over.”
They began walking through the park, deeper into the trees. On the far side lay the Interstate, and from there they hoped to find a vehicle, or somewhere to at least stay a while and rest up. No one was thinking long-term at this point. When they had set off in the morning, they had assumed they were moving to the garage. It was a well-stocked secure place that Cliff had supposedly checked out beforehand. Instead, they were running from place to place without any sense of direction, or any plans beyond the next five minutes. Jonas asked Quinn to take the lead, as she knew the area well. He needed to talk to Erik.
“She said anything to you?” Jonas looked at Freya. The girl was like a ghost, her skin pale and her movements slow. When she walked, it was as if she floated just above the ground instead of trod on it. She was clinging to her brother’s side, and Jonas could see what Erik meant. Peter let his sister hold his hand, and from the whiteness of her knuckles, she was gripping his hand tightly.
“She hasn’t said a word,” said Erik. “It’s been months now. She used to be such a happy girl. Always laughing and playing. She didn’t have a care in the world, then this. It’s like she’s shut down. Pippa tried talking to her last night. We thought if she realised it was going to be her last night in her own bed that she might open up, but all she did was run for Peter. I’m glad she feels like she can trust him, but it makes me feel so useless. All I want to do is look after my family. You can understand that can’t you? I see how you and Dakota are, how close you are. I miss that closeness that I used to have with my daughter. I thought we had a special bond, but now...well it’s gone, and I’m not sure it’ll ever be back. She doesn’t speak at all, and she constantly looks scared. Hell, she is scared. What can I do? I’ve talked to her, Pippa and Peter too, we all have, but at the end of the day, she’s just a kid. This is too much for her.”
Jonas felt in his pocket for his keys. He’d kept his car keys on him, a relic of the past, of a life now gone that would never return, and he couldn’t explain why. They were never going to be useful again. He decided to give something to Freya, and slipped a keychain off. He let Peter and Freya catch up, and bent down to her.
“Hi, Freya. How are you? Look, I was just talking to your Daddy, and I wanted to let you know that we’re all here for you. I want you to have something. Here.” Jonas held out the keychain to her. It was a metallic square, with a picture of a hand-drawn building in green, set inside a golden yellow circle. There was an inscription on it that read Fort William Historical Park. He could see Freya sizing it up, but she refused to take it.
“The thing is, Freya, this is really important to me, and while I’m fighting off the bad men, I don’t want to lose it. Fort Williams is in Canada, and it’s close to where my sister lives. She has three young boys, and they sent this to me after they visited. Can you please help me, and look after it? I promise you can give it back to me when we’re safe, away from the monsters and mad men. Okay? What do you say? Can you help me with this?”
Freya looked up at Peter who returned her gaze with an approving nod. She reached out and plucked the keychain from Jonas’s hand. She looked at it, before stuffing it into a pocket. Saying nothing, Peter just smiled at Jonas, and they trudged on in silence. Erik silently acknowledged Jonas’s gift, and then headed off to walk with Pippa.
The trees were thick, but there was a dirt trail leading them through the copse toward the edge of the park, and then the road. Jonas began to believe that maybe they could find a car. Maybe they could actually find a way out of Jeffersontown, somewhere far away from this hellhole. The moaning sounds had receded, and the zombies that had been following them seemed to have disappeared. The axe in Jonas’s hand was heavy, and slick with blood. He longed for the day he could put it down, and never have to pick it up again. His thoughts were shattered quickly, and he realised that day was a long way off, when from up ahead he heard Dakota scream.
“Peter, keep Freya back. Stay here.” Jonas brandished the axe in both hands as he ran. He ran toward her, towards sounds of gunfire, splintering wood, and shouting that filled his ears.
“Please, God, not Dakota. Not Dakota.”
CHAPTER SIX
Abramson Memorial Park was fenced off from the highway by a thick concrete wall, designed to hide the usually busy road from the quiet park. A ring of black oaks surrounded the brick wall, and low to the ground were a variety of thick bushes and common flowers. There was an exit leading to a public footpath outside the park in two corners. These exits were now as useful as a blindfold in a fist-fight.
When the zombies first appeared, they sprang up all over the city, and inevitably, some of them strayed onto the Interstate. With the authorities and the public caught unaware, there was a multitude of crashes throughout the whole country, and many cities were reduced to gridlock. Louisville’s trunk roads quickly snarled up, and outside the park, a large trailer jack-knifed. The resulting pile-up involved twelve cars, a postal delivery van, and a police car. The fatalities were high, made even worse as one truck involved was on its way to deliver high octane gas. The resulting explosion left a blackened sump in the middle of the road, and blasted a huge hole in the wall surrounding the park, scattering bricks like leaves. It was this hole that Jonas could see through the thinning trees, and zombies had found their way through it with ease. The gunfire he heard stopped, replaced by shouting, and the guttural cries and grunts associated with hand to hand combat.
Quinn was hacking away steadily with her knife, assisted by Terry who was fighting them off with a thick branch. Pippa had taken refuge behind a pile of bricks, whilst Erik used his bat to fend off their attackers. Sickening thuds repeatedly sounded as he caved in heads, sending the zombies hurtling back. If they came again, he simply stood his ground, defending his wife, and struck at them until their heads were nothing but mush, their bodies falling to the ground at his feet. Jonas saw Mrs Danick and Tyler pistol whipping more, and then he finally found Dakota. She was literally punching a zombie, kicking wildly at it, pushing it, shoving it
back with all her might to keep it at bay. The gun he had given her lay at her feet, empty.
Jonas charged and raised the axe above his head. With a scream he swung at the zombie attacking Dakota, and the axe whistled through the air. The blade landed in the zombie’s neck and near took off its head completely. The dead man’s head flopped to one side, and his neck was ravaged, dead tissue and blood splashing over the axe. It was enough to make the zombie stagger backward, but not stop it entirely, and as Dakota fell to the ground she crawled away. Jonas retrieved his axe, and swung again, aiming at the gaping wound on his attacker, this time succeeding in severing the man’s head altogether. The zombie’s head rolled away coming to a stop by a tree stump, and the decapitated body staggered forward before slumping at the base of a gnarled witch-hazel bush. Dakota screamed again as another zombie appeared beside Jonas.
Swinging his axe around, Jonas smashed the axe-head into the torso of a huge zombie. The man looked like he had been burnt alive. The skin was blackened, and the body completely hairless. Its clothes had been fried too, and stuck to the dead man’s thick body. As the axe ripped into the man’s chest, flayed pieces of crispy, black skin came free and fluttered to the ground. Jonas jerked the axe out, pulling a couple of ribs free with it. The man was huge, at least a foot taller than him, and the arms were reaching out for him. Crisps fingers, like burnt sausages, reached for him, delicately brushing against Jonas’s face as he recoiled.
“No fucking way am I dying today,” said Jonas as he swung the axe again, plunging it deep into the dead man’s head. The axe split the man’s skull neatly in half, and shattered the zombie’s jaw. With the zombie scalped, its eyes and brain gone, and only its broken teeth exposed, it tottered on its feet unsteadily. As if unsure what was happening, the zombie stayed there, reaching for Jonas, but making no movement or sounds. Like a headless chicken, its body seemingly refused to accept it was dead, and the body kept twitching. Jonas heaved the axe one final time bringing it down in a neat vertical line, aiming a direct strike onto the man’s bloody lower jaw. This time the sheer weight of the axe made it sink straight through the jaw, into the neck, and it only came to a stop when it hit a bone. Jonas was weak, unable to hold onto his weapon as the zombie fell, and the lumbering giant took the axe down to the ground. The axe was firmly lodged into the man’s shoulder, nestled between a shoulder blade and collar-bone.
Looking around, Jonas saw the fight was over. What had taken mere minutes had felt like hours. The zombies were dead. It had been a relatively small group, thankfully free of runners, and they were spread out thinly. Peter and Freya had joined their parents, who were all hugging beneath the frame of an old oak tree, and Jonas was pleased that Erik’s family was safe. Quinn and Terry were sitting by the feet of a dead zombie, their red faces evidence of their exertions. Mrs Danick stood at the park walls, looking out at the road, and Tyler was approaching Jonas, his face sweaty, his palms bloody.
“Dakota. You okay?” asked Jonas as he turned to his wife. He got down on the dry ground beside her, reaching out to her, offering his hand. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her expression one of shock and fear.
As he drew Dakota to him, he could feel her shaking uncontrollably. He stroked her hair, matted with dirt and tangled with leaves, and she clung to him as if he were a lifeboat on a stormy ocean. Dakota buried her face in Jonas’s neck, and he knew that she was in shock. He had never seen her strike anyone, and being reduced to batting away a zombie with her bare hands must have been terrifying. He was the only solid thing around her, an island surrounded by death and doom. Her warm breath caressed his neck as she drew air in and out quickly, and he waited for her to calm down. He whispered reassurances to her, telling her he loved her, and that she was okay now. He gradually became aware the others were talking amongst themselves, sizing up the situation, and wondering what to do next, but his priority was Dakota. He looked her up and down as best he could, noticing the skin on her bruised hands, and her grazed knuckles.
Then he looked closer.
There were scratches on her forearms, and a deep welt on her left wrist. Something sharp had gouged out her skin, leaving a fresh trail of blood. The wound was healing, the blood clotting, but it left him feeling cold. Cuts and scrapes had become commonplace, yet, this was different. If she had been bitten by one of them, or even just scratched, then she couldn’t be patched up with a Band-Aid. Jonas studied her face, looking for something that told him she was okay, would be okay.
She had to be.
“Hey, Jonas,” said Tyler, “you all right, man?”
Jonas ignored him. “Dakota, honey, look at me.” He slowly brought her face up to his, ignoring the numbness in his right hand that had been wielding the heavy axe. Her eyes told him everything he wanted to know. Before she looked away, in that split-second that their eyes locked, he thought that the gates to Hell had been opened, and all the vicious, nasty monsters that lurked beneath the souls of Men had surfaced. His heart was pounding so hard he thought that it might burst.
“It was just the bush,” Dakota said as she pressed on the cut. “I cut myself on the witch-hazel when I fell. I’m fine. I’m going to be fine, honey. Are you okay?”
As the horrible thoughts and nightmares swam from his mind, he realised he had been about to go into full panic mode. His heart continued to throb, pounding like a sledgehammer into hard concrete. Storm clouds swept over the flat, grassy plains of peace, and darkness approached. Tornados of doubt guzzled every rational thought in his mind, sweeping up logic, and spitting out dire warnings of doom, disaster, and death. Jonas blinked, banishing the storm. Dakota was his guide through all of this, his light, and while she was here there was no reason to succumb to the power of those dark thoughts. He smiled at her as he brushed the dirt from her cheeks.
“I’m fine.”
“You should get Pippa to look at that,” said Tyler noticing the cut on Dakota’s arm. “Don’t want to get infected.”
Dakota nodded. “Not now though. Later. I’m not staying here a second longer than we have to.”
Jonas watched as she gently squeezed her fingers together, ensuring she still had full use of her hand. There was no serious damage, and the cut had missed her tendons. He wasn’t sure he still believed in God, but he said a silent prayer anyway.
“Hey, Jonas, you okay, man? Is everyone all right?” asked Erik.
They gathered by the hole in the park wall, and everyone confirmed that they were okay. Nobody had been bitten. They all had a few cuts and bruises, but no major damage had been done, and Dakota had come off the worse. Peter got out some bandages from the rucksack he’d been carrying, and wrapped them around Dakota’s arm to stem the bleeding. As they all discussed their situation, they soon realised that things were progressively getting worse than they thought though.
“So, you too? Damn it.” Jonas saw Tyler put the gun back in his pocket, but it was useless. He was out of ammo, as was Erik, Dakota, and Mrs Danick. Their entire arsenal had been depleted, and all they had between them now was an axe, a baseball bat, and a couple of knives. If they faced another attack by a large number of the dead, it was going to be difficult to repel them.
“We need more guns,” said Quinn, “and quick.”
“You think?” Terry paced back and forth. “We’re screwed. We are so fucking screwed.”
“Hey, Terry, calm down for a second, we just need to think this through,” said Jonas. The embers of the afternoon sun cast an orange glow over everything, and Quinn was right about needing guns, and needing to do it quickly. Jonas estimated they had a couple of hours of sunlight left, no more than that. If they hadn’t found somewhere safe by then, they were in big trouble. The night was worse than the day, and no sane person ventured out after sundown.
“Look at us,” said Terry, “we have nothing. The only thing separating them from us, are our morals. Now we have to kill, to butcher our way through these poor people, just so we can live another day, and for what? To
scavenge like rats for food? To die one by one? Like Anna? Like Randall? We have nothing.”
“We have resilience,” said Jonas firmly. “We don’t kill, we fight. We don’t murder people, we defend ourselves. I’m proud of every single one of you. We have a lot more than so many other people, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that slip away from us.”
Terry was usually the calm one, but this latest attack seemed to have unnerved him. Jonas could tell he was scared, they all were, but panicking now was not going to help them one bit.
“Terry, just cool it, okay? We’ll figure it out. These things aren’t people anymore, and killing them is nothing like killing a real person. Come on, we’re all on the same side here.” Jonas held out his hand and Terry looked at it before shaking it.
“Sorry, I just…” Terry turned away and leant against a tree. His eyes glazed over, and the last time Jonas had seen a man look like that was at his mother’s funeral. His father wore that same expression on his face when they had lowered her coffin into the ground. It was a face full of grief, devoid of hope, and yet an awakening of sorts: a knowledge that death was not just inevitable, but horrible and cruel and dirty, and it was coming for them.
“Um, Jonas?” Mrs Danick had so far remained silent. She had been watching the sun slowly set, turning the road into a corridor of shadows. “We may have to do a lot more fighting before the day is over, and I’m beat. We also have to go, like now. There are more coming. I can see them.”
They all peered at the road, looking west along the highway in the direction of Louisville, and saw movement in the distance. Between the jammed cars was a sea of heads, bobbing up and down, but definitely moving their way.
“The gunfire would’ve drawn them at least.” Erik picked up a brick from the smashed park’s walls, and gave another to Peter. “Better than nothing, right?”
“Everyone happy to head east?” asked Jonas. Without waiting for an answer, he jumped over the wall into the road. The median was just as clogged as the main highway with destroyed vehicles. He wasn’t happy about having to navigate a way through the littered cars, knowing they could contain hidden dangers, but they had little choice. They couldn’t head back into the park the way they had come, and if they went west, they would only be marching straight into the army of zombies coming out of the city.
