Blood Type Infected (Book 4): Betrayal of Hope

by Marchon, Matthew

  Felecia doesn’t allow it. She slashes Mermaid Zombie’s leg off at the knee like her sword is an axe, sending our tagalong back into the infested waters from whence she came.

  “Ooopsie.”

  “What ooopsie?” I ask, not sure I want to know the answer.

  “I kinda made a hole in the boat. It’s not near the water though, we should be okay. I think. We’re almost there anyway.”

  “We’d get there quicker if a certain someone didn’t have to do all the legwork.”

  “Excuse me mister? I just saved us from Undead Ariel.”

  “Sort of,” I tease. “You didn’t even kill her, you just turned her into an amputee.”

  “Good enough. I’d like to see her swim with one leg. She’ll be thrown off kilt, spinning in– uh oh.” Without so much as an explanation, Felecia hops back into her seat and starts pedaling.

  “Uh oh? Why uh oh?”

  “Turns out my one leg theory might have been flawed. This does not mean you were right so don’t let it go to your head. It just means you weren’t wrong.”

  “She’s not swimming in circles, is she?”

  “She is not.”

  Our mangled canopy lets out a sickly groan as it completes its gradual journey into the lake. It’s only slowing us down now that it’s dragging along the water. It might as well be a parachute strapped to our ass. I think I’ll be writing a strongly worded letter to the company, I am less than satisfied with the quality of their product.

  Our roof shouldn’t be splashing this much. Or groaning. Why is our canopy slurping? A quick peek over my shoulder confirms it, yep, she’s back. And she looks pissed. Of course they always look pissed, but not all of them spew water from their cheek like it’s a fountain. Maybe she just wants her leg back. If we pluck it off the broken rod and toss it into the lake, is there any chance she’s going to leave us and go retrieve it?

  Felecia flashes me a guilty glance. “So, don’t mean to alarm you but there’s a small possibility Mikayla Phelps might be back. Any chance you can keep pedaling while I handle this?”

  “Only if you chop off the right body part this time.”

  “Her head was underwater. I couldn’t reach. Wait, I think she’s stuck. She is. She’s tangled in the canopy. We’re almost there, we can make it ashore.”

  But ashore doesn’t look much better. The welcoming committee is anxiously awaiting our arrival. We’ve been spotted.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Dumb move,” I mutter as the shoreline soldiers grow tired of waiting and start splashing their way towards us. “Should have just left the Buckley boys on the damn island.”

  “I swear to god those two idiots better be alive. Let’s pedal that way, closer to where we came ashore last night. Maybe we can lose some of them in the water.”

  Our hands land on the lever at the same time, and in spite of everything, somehow there is still electricity every time we touch. It feels like that day in gym all over again. It’s comforting in a weird way, like we were meant for this. I’m not sure I believe in fate and destiny and all that nonsense, because clearly none of this should have been in anyone’s future, but it feels right.

  The water didn’t slow them down, they just changed course and now we have a school of zombies tailing us. I swear I’m pedaling as hard as I can but we’re barely moving. Is water getting inside? The hole Felecia made with her sword shouldn’t be making this much of a difference. Wait, are we going backwards?

  Oh you have got to be kidding me! They’ve grabbed ahold of the desecrated frame. They’re pulling us back. They’re pulling us right towards them. No matter how hard we kick our legs, there’s too many of them, we can’t win.

  With a subtle nod, we both bail over the edge. The water’s shallow enough for my feet to touch, hovering around my chest. Not nearly as cold as the ocean but cold enough to convince my Britton baton to tuck himself back into turtle mode.

  Okay, I’m adjusting, I could swim in this, as long as there’s no girls around. Except Kristen, she doesn’t count. She’s always been one of the guys, a feminist to the fullest, oddly enough, but for some reason I never looked at her in that way. You always call bullshit when someone says a girl is like their sister, but she really was. Okay, step sister because I definitely noticed when her chest no longer looked like ours. It was a little weird when her and Shane started dating because it was like watching your siblings kiss, to me at least, I’m sure not to them, but they’ve been a couple for so long now it’d be weird if they weren’t.

  They aren’t, are they? I swear, it feels like life stopped the morning this all started. It feels like it’s still today. Except when I say today, I mean that morning, before Nurse Dickens threw herself against our homeroom door. Time’s stood still since then. It’s still Tuesday. I think the only thing keeping us going, is the idea that when our plane touches down in London, Tuesday continues, and the five days in between were just a bad dream.

  Tonight, I’m taking Caylee on our first date. Jenny’s gonna break the news to Paul, and in turn, break his heart. Kristen and Shane will go on pretending everything is fine. Neil will be celebrating his victory on the track, haunted by the fact that my absence is the only reason he won. Doug and Darius will be celebrating with Tyrone after he breaks his long jump record, but they’ll understand why I had to bail on them. Felecia will be driving her sister to some catalogue photoshoot, wishing she could be at the new dinosaur exhibit at the Ellington. When we wake up in another country, it’s not going to be after a weeklong nightmare that most of us didn’t survive, it’ll be Tuesday.

  I swing my sword for Tuesday’s sake, beheading an incoming victim of this reality we’ve chosen not to accept. His body continues reaching for me under the surface before his claw-like grip goes limp. His head bobs beside us, eventually disappearing into the depths. He won’t see Wednesday.

  “Noah, the one I just took out, bullet holes in his face. At least three. We gotta be careful, there might be more of those guys from last night.”

  “They couldn’t have gone far, not in the state Neil was in. They’ve gotta be in one of those houses there.”

  We hit the shore running. It’s eerie to be back here, with everything that happened last night. One of these trees is the one Doug died against. This is where the boy bit Felecia’s arm. We should have died here, all of us. This was the end. I knew it the second his teeth latched on. I can’t explain anything that’s happened since.

  This is the same path I followed last night, Felecia in my arms. I didn’t even realize it was a path at the time, it was too dark to see anything. This must be their trail to the shore, to the bench we didn’t see yesterday. It feels like a dream, I was in such a haze, knowing I’d lost her. Knowing we’d lost. We finally lost the war we’d fought so valiantly in.

  There’s the house. The miracle house that brought Felecia back to me. The steep backyard where we fought them off with one sword. I don’t know if it feels like it was twelve hours ago or twelve years ago. Is it possible to be both at once?

  The chills that creep up my spine seem out of place in this blistering heat. It’s the little things like our phones telling us today’s weather that you take for granted. When we snuck out of the hospital in the earliest of morning’s hours, we didn’t know today would be ninety something degrees, I’m guessing, I don’t have a phone to tell me how hot it actually is.

  “I think I found them,” Felecia says, pointing towards the house with the epic patio. Is that a TV in the stone wall behind the grill?

  A few stragglers are lingering outside, throwing themselves against the doors and windows in a desperate attempt to break through. But what really gives away their location is the woman with a string of intestines dangling from her open abdomen, swinging on the powerlines like they’re monkey bars, inching her way closer. How the hell did she even get up there? Assuming she came from the pole beside the driveway, she’s three quarters of the way across.

  Bang!

  A
shotgun blast rocks her body, sending the strand of intestines spilling out of her stomach even more. But she doesn’t go down. How is it that some of these things trip over their own feet and some of them Ninja Warrior themselves across the powerlines?

  That’s gotta be Scott shooting from the third story window, I’m assuming an attic. We were two houses away. We were so close. Please let them be alright.

  “Scott! Scott is that you?”

  A young girl pops her head out of the window, shotgun in hand. Definitely not Scott. I should check again, it’s a young girl, could be Neil. Okay that was mean, that was totally old Noah, the version that hated Neil. What can I say, it’s become a habit. I can’t just magically quit insulting him overnight. But now I’m gonna feel really bad if he didn’t make it.

  “Shoot her arm off,” Felecia shouts up to Neil. Dammit, I said I was gonna stop. “Aim for her arm, hurry!”

  The young girl, who can’t be much older than ten, nods vigorously before disappearing from view. Another gunshot echoes throughout the island and off the water. But nothing happens.

  She missed. I say that like it’s surprising but how can you expect a kid who’s probably never held a gun in her life to hit a three inch moving target from fifteen feet away? Even with all my years of practice aiming at tree trunks to miss animals and I probably couldn’t hit this woman’s arm.

  “Noah, there’s two coming up the hill and another coming from the house. I’ll get them. Can you throw something to hit her? We can’t let her reach that window. Please tell me you used to be a pitcher in little league.”

  “No, but I’m a master at skipping rocks.”

  Felecia takes off down the hill, leaving me to find something, anything to throw at Ninja Warrior before she makes it into the house. It’s not often you find survivors, and when you do, there’s this urgency to protect them. She’s just a kid.

  The potted plants. I race over to the patio, flinching at the sound of another shotgun blast tearing through the atmosphere. She did it! She hit Ninja Warrior’s wrist. Forearm? It doesn’t matter, she blew her arm in half.

  The woman’s hand is still clinging to the powerlines, completely disconnected from her body. She’s dangling there, swinging her stump of a maimed arm around, confused as to why she can no longer grip the cable.

  Oh you can’t be serious. Ninja Warrior swings her body and lets go, propelling herself forward. She catches the powerline with one hand and continues swinging. Who the fuck does that? She’s climbing the monkey bars with one hand!

  I throw a ceramic pot of herbs at her with what I’m assuming is the speed of a major league pitch. Alright, maybe not quite that fast but it’s gotta be close. It’s definitely faster than a pitch in tee-ball, you know, because in tee-ball it’s sitting on the stand, not moving. Shut up, it was funny.

  What my throw lacks in speed, it makes up for in accuracy, smacking her in the side of the head. The pot explodes, fine, it breaks in half but the dirt bursts into the air like fireworks on impact. How disappointing are brown fireworks? It just sounds like explosive diarrhea.

  My basil blow to the face has no effect on her. She launches herself into the air again, grabbing onto the powerline on her way down. The sudden jolt sends her intestines unraveling out of her see-through stomach even more. At the rate she’s going, she’ll be at the window in another two or three swings, and I don’t think my garden grenades are going to be enough to stop her.

  The little girl shoots again, at close range, blowing a hole through Ninja Warrior’s chest. The blow jerks her body but isn’t enough to take her–

  Holy shit! She explodes in a sea of sparks, her body bursting into flames as electricity courses through her. I didn’t even realize we were dealing with a livewire. I assumed there was no power, how the hell did she get up there? What just happened? How did she make it so far without getting electrocuted? Is she half bird?

  It was her intestines. Her small intestine touched the ground and acted as a conductor. It got closer with every hit her body took. I bet Paul could tell me how long they are but she’s gotta be fifteen feet in the air.

  Her body shoots off the powerlines and lands in a flaming pile by the driveway. Smoke and flames rise from her convulsing body as she slowly makes her way back to her feet. The burning corpse stumbles its way towards me, volts of electricity still surging through her melting body.

  All the commotion has drawn the attention of the persistent bastards banging on the door. They’re almost as bad as bible thumpers passing out their little propaganda pamphlets, but slightly less annoying.

  “Noah!” Why does Felecia sound like a boy? “Holy shit, you’re alive! Neil! Neil, it’s Noah and Felecia.” Scott, that’s Scott Buckley, they’re alive. “Guys, go to the side door, I’ll be right there.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “That’s one elaborate story,” Neil chuckles, looking at us through his squinched eye, the one that isn’t swollen shut. “All you had to say was you felt guilty for leaving me and changed your minds. Hell, I woulda left me too. Thanks for coming back,” he says, slapping my hand in appreciation. It’s called giving dap, Tyrone taught me that, but white people call it a high five. Either way, I know he means it from the bottom of his heart.

  “Saltwater though?” Scott asks, still shaking his head in confusion. “I mean, what the hell? I don’t even get it. You’re really sure?”

  Felecia moves aside Caylee’s bandana and lifts the edge of her bandage to reveal the bite. “Pretty sure. So what’s their story?” she asks, just out of earshot of the girl from the window and who I’m assuming are her mother and older brother, throwing all their earthly possessions into backpacks.

  “That’s Ellen,” Scott whispers, and I can’t help but wonder why we’re whispering. Do we not realize they’re in the same room and the boy is staring directly at us? “Sami’s her daughter, the one who was shooting. And that’s her son, Anthony.”

  “Okay,” I whisper back, I guess I’ll play along. “Why is Anthony staring at me like he wants to lick my toes?”

  “I think he’s special,” Scott says skeptically. “He doesn’t talk. But he likes putting stuff in the toaster. I don’t know much else, we’ve just been trying to stay alive all night. The zombies didn’t start to clear until a little while ago, gunshots on the other side of the island, I think it drew their attention. The three of them were hiding in the attic.”

  “What are we gonna do?” Felecia groans, running her fingers through her hair. “We can’t take them with us. We can’t all fit on that chopper as it is.”

  “They saved us.” Neil’s voice is raspier than I remember, I’m not sure if it’s from the beating he took or from a night of fighting for his life without us there to back him up. “We’re not leaving them. We gotta make room.”

  “It’s a freakin’ helicopter,” Felecia hisses. “What are we gonna do, have them cling to the propellers? If there’s too much weight on it, we’re not flying anywhere.”

  “You do realize I can hear you.” The mother zips up her pack, throwing it over her shoulder and leading the kids towards us. “Please, I’m begging you, as a mother, please, just take them. I can’t put them through another second of this. Together, they’re only the weight of one adult. They don’t deserve to suffer like this.”

  “Mommy, no, you have to come too.”

  “Sami, sweetie…” She kneels down and places both hands on her daughter’s shoulders, “I have to find your sister. Erica needs my help. And once I find her, we’ll head east. We’ll meet you in London, I promise. You have to be strong right now, and look after your brother. Just like Erica needs me, Anthony needs you.”

  “We want to stay with you. Mom, please, I can help you find her. We don’t wanna leave you.”

  “Your other daughter, is she on the island?” I ask, having trouble with the idea of splitting up a family. What am I doing? We don’t have time for this. But, how many families are left in this world? How can I tear apart the last one
in existence?

  “Sami, how about you take your brother upstairs and make sure you didn’t forget anything. We won’t be able to come back here.” She sends them along before collapsing onto the arm of the couch. “This is my in-laws’ camp. We uh, we came here thinking it’d be safe, hide out until things died down and help arrived. Richard didn’t make it. We had to stop and refuel along the way and…” Her silence says what her words don’t need to. “When we got here, these men, these horrible men, they’d already claimed the island as theirs.”

  “Kenny?” Felecia asks, hesitantly.

  “Wait, you know him?”

  “We had a small encounter with him and another guy last night. Didn’t exactly get the best vibes. They won’t be bothering you again.”

  “There’s two others. There were six but two of them didn’t make it when the island got overrun. They have my oldest daughter. She’s your age.”

  “When you say they have her…” I ask, not sure I want to know the answer.

  “They make all of us, everyone on the island, give them something, in return for protection and a place to live. This is all my fault. I didn’t know what to do. I hid Sami in the attic but they saw Erica with me, there was nothing I could do to protect her. Anthony’s needed so much of my attention, she already feels like I don’t love her as much. I can’t leave her here with those monsters. The things they’re doing to her. She’s only seventeen. Seventeen for god’s sake. I have to find her.”

  “Is she still here, on the island?” I ask again, even though I shouldn’t. But how can I leave an innocent girl in the hands of men like that? We knew last night, in our brief encounter, that something was horrifically wrong here. We were right.

  “No. They were doing what they do with young girls, yesterday, they do it after supper, before bed. That’s when the island got attacked. It was intentional, I know it was. Someone lured them here. We were safe before that, they didn’t cross the pond. All of a sudden, we’re being swarmed. I ran after them but they left on their boat with Erica and another girl who lives across the street. The two you encountered last night, they had a girl with them as well, Tiffany. She was fourteen,” she says in disgust. “That’s why I hid Sami in the attic. They would have taken her too.”