The woods ahead were covered in the leaves of dead deciduous trees, faded to dull oranges and browns. The gray sky peeked through the bare branches shooting out every which way above, and the wind gently came down and licked at her. The ground in front of her turned into a short hill, with the top of it extending out into a little rock cliff that stood about six feet over the ground below where the hill sloped down and wrapped around it.
Sarah gingerly moved to the edge of the cliff and stopped, scanning her surroundings.
For a while, there was nothing. But then something rustled to her right. She looked down below and saw a flash in the corner of her eye, tucked well behind some trees in the distance. She focused on it and a moment later it scurried again, coming out from the trees.
A fat squirrel poked its head up from under the orange-brown leaves and looked around like the periscope of a submarine emerging from water. It hopped forward, stopped and looked, hopped, stopped and looked, then it scurried off deeper into the woods.
Sarah waited on the cliff to see if anything else would appear, but after a couple minutes, nothing did and she followed the hill down and stalked the squirrel.
The leaves crunched under her feet and she winced with every step. She hadn't found the squirrel again yet, but she was sure that it would pop up again soon. She was aware of the hatchet's weight in her hand, the sound of her footsteps, each movement of her body. She was patient, but she was ready.
There was a sound to her left and her head snapped over to it. The squirrel ran across the ground, swimming through the leaves with the speed of an Olympian, and bounded over a large root sticking out of the ground. It paused at the base of a tree then started to climb it.
Sarah stopped at a tree next to her and leaned against it, wrapping her body around to get a look at the furry creature.
It sat on the trunk, staring blankly above and waiting, almost like it knew it was being watched. It deliberated for a long time, then it finally scrambled back onto the ground and sniffed the cold winter air. Slowly at first, it lumbered right in front of Sarah, cutting from left to right, only about ten feet away.
She stayed perfectly still and didn't let a single breath into her lungs. Her hand was gripped tightly around the handle of the hatchet and she could almost feel it aching to be thrown.
The fat squirrel stopped at the base of another tree twelve feet away and buried its little head down under the leaves, rummaging around. Its bushy tail stuck straight up into the air and its back curled up, bundling itself halfway into a ball.
Sarah's view was clear and the squirrel had gotten much closer than she thought it would. She twisted her body and put her back to the side of the tree, stepping a leg forward and planting it on the ground in a long stance to be able to throw the hatchet properly.
When her foot softly pressed down on the leaves, the squirrel's head shot up and darted around in both directions. Its back was to her, but it still looked in her direction with its beady little black eyes while keeping its body completely still.
Sarah waited for it to put its head back down, and after a long moment where she thought it was going to bolt, it finally lowered it. She drew in a deep breath and held it in her lungs, feeling the cold air swirl inside her. She lifted the hatchet above her head, keeping her feet still, and she shifted her weight onto her back leg.
A soft swirl of wind seductively wrapped its way through the trees and brushed across her skin. The squirrel's head stayed buried.
Sarah lined up her shot carefully and ran through every step of the technique through her head. If she killed it now, she would probably have time to gather some wood and start a small fire to cook it before it would start to get dark and she would have to move on for the suburbs.
When that special moment came that all athletes felt where everything was right, she shifted her weight forward and swung her arm.
"SARAH," a rough voice said. It was soft like a whisper, but it was spoken in a loud and harsh tone, and there was a distinct smokiness to it.
She released the hatchet as her whole body jumped from the surprise, and her arm gave a twitch and sent it off-course. It bounced off the ground next to the squirrel, rebounding against the tree and spinning to the side. The squirrel shot off like a bolt of lightning and was out of sight before she could even comprehend what happened.
Sarah spun around, searching for the source of the voice. The sky was a murky gray, but it was light enough out to see the entirety of the woods around her.
But there wasn't a soul in sight.
"Who's there?" she asked, fear creeping into her.
The wind picked up and she heard the gentleness of it brushing against the trees answer her call. But no voices.
She wanted to tell herself that she imagined it, but she was positive she heard it. It wasn't just a trick of the wind; she could hear the distinct timbre to it, the way it came off the tongue in a rough and oscillating tone.
Sarah ran to the hatchet and picked it up, brandishing it in front of her. "Who's there?" she called again. "Answer me!" Her voice was shaky and her adrenaline made her hyper-aware. It was as if she could see every tree in the woods, hear every sway of a branch.
But still there was nothing.
The fear did awful things to her. Suddenly she didn't know where to run. She couldn't tell where the voice came from and every direction was now a trap, a murderous psychopath waiting for her. The trees seemed to expand, creating miles of distance to get out of the woods when it had only been a matter of yards before. Her stomach clenched and she shivered. Her coat no longer seemed to do anything against the cold, and she wanted to be anywhere but here.
She didn't think of the details; she didn't think that it was still miles until she reached any kind of shelter; she didn't think that it might get dark before she got there; she didn't even think about how her stalker knew her name. She just started running.
Her arms pumped through the air and the hatchet became an extension of her hand. She was ready to lash out at anyone or anything in her path. She stared straight ahead in the direction that she had come... at least, the direction she thought she had come. Her tunnel vision carried her and her lungs felt like canisters of pressurized gas.
The wind swelled and gusted around her as she flew across the leaf-strewn ground. Where it was gentle before, now it howled and shrieked, sharply slicing itself against the tree trunks and splitting into a thousand directions of furious sound.
That rough voice chanted her name over and over again, being carried on the waves of the wind and being shrouded in it. But she knew that wasn't right; the voice had only spoken once and now she was hearing it behind everything.
The edge of the woods came into view and the final trees dotting along her exit were individually registered in her mind like objects on an obstacle course. Their trunks seemed larger than she remembered, and her brain pondered that every one of them could easily hide an entire person behind it.
Her heart pounded and she held the hatchet up in front of her, starting to wave it around in anticipation of the killer jumping out from behind a tree. The sounds of leaves being kicked up into the air were loud in her ears, and she couldn't tell if they were all caused by her footsteps or not.
She weaved through the trees as her heart clutched at each one, and then she heard the killer behind her, approaching like a cheetah, unmistakable.
Sarah didn't dare look back. She ran for her life, but she knew she wouldn't make it far.
The last nest of trees sat in front of her like prison bars and she nearly leaped out of them. She came out onto the grass next to the road, and in one swift movement, she spun around and swung the hatchet horizontally to slice her stalker in the face.
Her arm swung and caught nothing but air, because there was no one there. Her brain started to click in to the reality of the situation and she looked around, trying to find where he went before finally realizing that he wasn't chasing her at all.
Had she actually hea
rd someone speak her name in the woods? At the time, she was sure that someone had, but now she wasn't. Given time to let the frightening thoughts bounce around and fight with each other in her head, she wasn't sure of any of it.
The first signs of darkness touched the sky and she didn't want to linger anymore. She was hungry and she could use a drink of water before she departed, but she would just grab her bag and go—sort out the rest when she got somewhere safe.
Sarah went back into the woods a few paces to retrieve her bag, holding the hatchet at the ready the entire time. She walked around the tree where she had dropped it and reached down.
It wasn't there.
She stood upright and paused, not understanding what she was seeing. She glanced back at the highway and stepped out toward it again, studying her surroundings and confirming that it was indeed the same place where she had entered the woods earlier.
Sarah returned to the woods and traced her steps in her head very carefully, once again coming to the tree that she was positive had her bag hidden behind it, and once again finding that it was gone.
Coldness crawled through her body, and this time it had nothing to do with the temperature outside.
She backed onto the road, staring in horror at the woods. The dryness in her throat nudged her, letting her know it was there and that she had nothing but the clothes on her back and the hatchet in her hand. The confusion and fear grew until she could hardly breathe.
The clouds slowly rolled across the sky, choking out the sunlight and letting the first pocket of darkness loom, as Sarah fled down the road.
5
Sojourn
Darkness fell sooner than expected, blacker than usual. The night was here, the temperature dropped significantly, and Sarah was still on the road. She staggered along, somewhere between a jog and a shuffle. Her heart was about to explode and the insides of her lungs felt like they were coated with sand. The woods stood on either side of her, tall and looming. The trees stared down with maniacal faces, gleeful at her imminent demise.
Sarah couldn't run anymore, having traveled down the road for almost two hours, and she moved off to the grass and collapsed to the ground. Her entire body screamed at her and she rolled onto her back, letting the air painfully fill her lungs again.
She felt like she pushed herself beyond her breaking point, but she never wanted to stop. As she had traveled along the highway, she continually looked over her shoulder. As it got dark, every tree and every shadow it cast on the road made her second-guess. The shadows constantly moved and she became paranoid, doing double takes the entire way, only to find that it was nothing.
As she lay on the grass now, she lifted her head and peered behind her along the road, still seeing nothing following her, though it was becoming increasingly difficult to see anything in the dark.
When she started to calm down and it didn't feel like all of her organs would pop, she forced herself up. She trotted along very slowly, already becoming tired again.
The road followed a gentle bend through the trees ahead, but just before it disappeared out of view behind the line of trees on the right, Sarah saw another road branching off from it to the left.
Her heart hammered again, but this time it was more from excitement than exhaustion. She remembered the map showing that the first road to intersect with the highway led to a neighborhood. She picked up speed, ignoring the pain in her body, and forced herself to run for the final stretch. She knew that she had lost the killer, and if she could find a house to hide in for the night, she would be safe. If he had followed her at all, he wouldn't have come this far.
Sarah ran along the gentle bend of the highway until the adjoined road widened in her view and the trees on the left started to pull away, revealing what was behind them.
Just like the map had shown, the side street split up and led to rows of houses. They were all big two-story houses spaced widely apart with plenty of property to themselves, all sitting atop a sprawling hill of overgrown grass and weeds, and all of the streets crawling with zombies.
Sarah stopped in her tracks and pressed herself against the nearest tree, peeking around it.
The dead shambled in the moonlight, and they seemed to cover the whole neighborhood. If she wanted to get to one of the houses, she would have to go through them. They couldn't see well in the darkness, but neither could she.
Her eyes ran along from house to house along the first street. There were four properties, and there were small clusters of the undead in front of the first house, and a larger congregation near the far end, but the two houses in the middle were light in zombies. Still, if she just ran for a house, she would attract all of them; she needed to be careful.
There was a black sedan parked at the side of the road in the middle of the street and it didn't look like there were any undead near it. Sarah took a moment to steel her nerves, then she crouched low and scurried over to it. She hid behind the car and scoped out her path to the second house in the row.
There were a couple zombies wandering around on the grass near the house, and she waited for them to look away. When they did, she bolted out from behind the sedan.
As she skirted around the hood, a zombie that had been obscured from view on the other side of the car stood in front of her. Her shoes scraped along the road as she screeched to a stop. The zombie turned around and spotted her just before she dove back behind the car. It stood there dumbfounded at first. Its jaw started to shift around as it took a step forward, certain it saw something.
Sarah's heart pounded as she sat with her back pressed against the car on the other side. Uneven footsteps scraped across the pavement and she scampered around to the trunk as she heard them round the hood.
The zombie picked up speed, hearing the sounds of her moving, but it was confused about why there wasn't anything there. It broke into a slow jog and circled around the sedan, seeing around each corner just a little too late to spot her. It made its way around two laps of the car before stopping behind it where Sarah first hid.
She was crouched on the other side, completely exposed to any zombie near the houses that happened to look. One of the corpses blocked her path to the front door of the house and it stared right at it, refusing to look away. She heard the zombie behind the car stir again and she knew she had to move.
Sarah quietly crouch-walked away from the sedan and onto the weedy grass. The few undead nearby hadn't spotted her, and the one ahead was still facing the house. There was a large shrub on the right side of the front garden and she ran for it.
The zombie finally turned toward her just as she dove for the shrub. She hit the dirt and wiggled her body behind it, curling herself up and hoping it hadn't seen her.
The corpse stopped dead, staring at the bush. The moonlight bounced off its pale eyes—the only highlight in its black silhouette. Its fingers curled and stretched and cold saliva dribbled from its mouth. It walked for the shrub, its eyes lighting up.
Sarah waited on the other side and listened as its soft footsteps plodded along the grass. She didn't know where to go, and if she made a run for the door and it was locked, she might've had half the neighborhood after her.
It reached for the bush and slid its bony hand into it, grabbing a handful of it and pulling it around, trying to see what was hiding inside.
Sarah tensed and pulled out her hatchet.
A gust of wind picked up and swept across the front of the houses. A wind chime hanging outside the front door clanged and the bush rustled and swayed.
The zombie paused and stared at the bush, then looked up at the wind chime. It withdrew its hand from the shrub and stumbled away from it, realizing there hadn't been any food there after all.
Sarah watched it go back to the front of the house, but this time it turned its back to it. She waited, but it didn't move and she could hear moans behind her not too far away. She peeked around and decided it was now or never. She stood up and gently brushed the dirt off her front as she crept for the do
or. The wind was still blowing gently and the wind chime continued its high and airy melody. She kept her eyes on the zombie, ready to strike at it if it turned around. But it was motionless.
Sarah reached the porch and pressed her thumb to the lever on the handle.
It was locked.
She slowly shoved at the door while she pressed down to make sure, but it wouldn't budge.
The zombie became restless and shifted around.
Sarah darted off along the house and disappeared around the side, feeling her heart thumping. She made her way around the fence enclosing the backyard and found an open gate. The coast was clear and she slipped inside.
There was a swimming pool in the ground that was only a quarter-filled with water. Sarah peeked down into it and saw a zombie floating facedown in it that had apparently drowned.
She walked past a tool shed and a broken set of patio furniture. There was a sliding patio door leading into the house and she yanked on it to find that it was locked too, as was a window next to it where she decided to try her luck next. She glanced at the tool shed again, wondering if she should cut her losses and try to spend the night hidden inside, but she knew it was neither warm nor safe.
Carefully making her way out of the backyard, she slipped through the watchful guard of the prowling dead and checked the next house. But both the front door, as well as the gate to the backyard, were locked.
Her body was ready to shut down and she knew she needed to find a place immediately. Crouched against the end of the back fence, she looked out at the next row of houses across the street and saw that the undead presence there was sparser. As she moved across the street, her vision started to blur and she suddenly felt very weak. She didn't even notice the zombie that spotted her as she went to the front door of the nearest house.
She shoved her weight against the door, but it didn't open. Frustrated, she banged her head against it, and she was afraid that her heart was about to stop. But her hearing hadn't faltered, and she heard the footsteps and groans closing in.
Zombie Apocalypse Series Books 1-3 (Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set) Page 50
