by Red Lagoe
"The tracks. We shouldn't walk straight through town."
"There's one!" Kayla released Marcus's hand and shuffled herself on the sides of her feet over to a dead body. The half-naked dead man in grey briefs and white crew socks had no shoes to offer.
"Dang."
Marcus helped her peel the socks from his body—at least it was something.
As they were kneeling over the body, a scrawny brown boxer dog trotted in their direction,
"Let's go," Marcus said with the damp socks in his hands, eyeing the dog.
The floppy-eared dog with short, muddied fur approached them. Kayla stood behind Marcus as the dog lowered his head and growled. Marcus took a step forward.
"Do they get infected too?" Kayla whispered.
"Don't know," he said, even though Melody had warned him about animals potentially contracting the disease.
Melody's coworker had called to tell her that a cat had been brought into her clinic with neurologic symptoms. Melody was frantic with him that day, saying the disease could be in Fair Haven, but Marcus figured she was overreacting. Her stint as a homeless orphan had made her paranoid and untrusting, even after all these years.
Marcus picked up a piece of brick and the dog growled again before he hurled it toward the dog. After dodging the attack, he scrambled away into the fog.
"That one seems fine," Marcus said with a smug grin. "He's not falling over or attacking."
The tracks were not the most circuitous route to the high school, but it was likely less littered with the infected due to the high fences. Marcus used to take long boring walks with Melody along those tracks. She would show him all the places that were safe to sleep if one were to find herself homeless. But the long boring walks were necessary foreplay, if he wanted to see any action at Make-Out Hill.
Marcus and Kayla made it to the chain link fence along the tracks and squeezed through the gate with ease. The tracks were overgrown with weeds and nestled up against the sparse woods on the outside of town.
Beyond those woods laid the highway which, according to the last news reports, was littered with abandoned cars and chaotic with the infected. A short fence ran along the highway and kept most of the infected on the other side of it, so Marcus assumed their passage along the tracks was likely to be clear.
Marcus and Kayla stared down the abandoned tracks at the long, gray road ahead.
"Sit down," he told her.
He took Kayla's feet in his hands and meticulously plucked any remaining glass, then slid the corpse's baggy crew socks onto her feet.
"It's about four miles to the school this way. The tracks go around the perimeter of Fair Haven. There are parts where it runs close to town, and other parts where it runs through mostly woods or shrubbery and stuff. I'm sure we'll find some shoes on the way, but for now these should do. I'd give you mine, but they're a bit excessive for your tiny feet."
Kayla's eyes were tired and frightened as she stared down the tracks. She put her hands on her hips and looked down to her sock feet in the tall weeds. The crew socks were pulled up high around her calves.
"I can do this," she said.
Marcus watched her from behind as she moved away from him, beginning her trek. Kayla's tight skirt shifted up as she high-stepped through the weeds with those ridiculous socks on.
He wondered if Melody was still alive and if she would be at the quarantine camp when they arrived. If so, he couldn't show up with this redhead on his arm.
His thoughts wandered to the possibility that Melody may not have even survived the outbreak. Life would be easier to deal with if that were the case. He became sickened with guilt over that thought, and shook the terrible idea out of his head.
Kayla flinched and jumped at every sound they heard. She was adorable and sexy, and made him feel like a real man, unlike Melody, who was always questioning his reasoning.
Whether his wife was at the quarantine camp or not, didn't matter. Kayla would slow him down either way. She would need constant supervision and protection, and that could get him killed. He would have to find a way to ditch this girl.
20
The Storm
The sleeping infected woman on Melody's porch—the one John had spotted earlier from his house—had thrashed herself awake. The man in the necktie, who had been thumping against the side of the house over and over again, broke from his trance and approached her to investigate.
Melody looked out her front window to see the man in the necktie lunge, and the two infected began to fight on her porch. Melody backed away as they hurtled toward her and crashed through the dining room window, sending glass shattering to the floor.
As a large woman's torso hung inside the house, reaching for them, John and Melody darted out the back of the house and climbed the fence into the next yard.
A light drizzle fell from the sky, and the top of Melody's house began to disappear from her view as she moved from yard to yard. As they climbed the fences between the yards, Melody caught sight of the roaming infected in the street. The pavement around the pile of dead bodies in the center of the cul-de-sac was blackened with blood.
Burnt bones laid scattered across the Nickerson's tall grass and the sight was like an anchor—stopping Melody's forward motion. The blackened skeletons each laid in a pile of thick wet ash. Her heart ached and her stomach twisted. After what happened with Candace, she already wanted to collapse into a ball and give up, but she could not. She pushed forward, trying not to look at the bodies, and trying like hell to stay focused on surviving. There was no time for emotion now. She just had to concentrate on getting to Marcus.
The drizzling rain began to dampen their clothes early in their trip while they crossed the elementary school property. Paul, the construction guy, who fell from the school roof the night before, pulled his body through the tall grass, allowing his legs to drag behind him.
The field by the school was littered with the infected—at least forty of them—and they began to follow John and Melody, but they made it to the fence line before the infected were able to close in. Melody threw her baseball bat over and began scaling the eight foot tall chain link fence. She looked down to John to be sure he could make the climb with his prosthetic leg, but he wasn't slowed by it. They climbed over, and then rushed into the woods beyond the tree line on the opposite side of the tracks, out of sight, while the infected lost interest and wandered off.
"That was easy enough," John said.
Melody was riddled with fear. "Yeah. Easy."
Melody was a brisk runner, and John kept up right behind her, with his prosthesis whispering on each step. The material rubbed against his skin, irritating the tissue, but he didn't ask her to slow down. He knew how important it was to her that she get to her husband as quickly as possible. He wondered if Marcus was even alive.
He remembered meeting his new neighbor months ago when they had first moved in. Marcus had a way about him that made John distrust him. The guy had looked at John like he was an enemy.
John wondered what kind of husband he was to Melody. It was pretty dumb of this Marcus guy to keep her from getting a dog over something as lame as allergies.
Lucky son of a bitch. Melody's wad of messy hair bounced back and forth in a ponytail as she ran. Hell—maybe John was the enemy type now, considering his thoughts about this guy's wife. This Marcus guy should have fought his way back to Melody by now, so he was either dead or he took off without her.
They kept a steady pace for well over a mile without incident before John spoke up from behind her.
"So you run a lot?"
She slowed down and let him approach her from the side.
"I'm sorry," she said, as if John couldn't keep up.
Melody slowed to a stop beside him as he shook out his good leg and bent over to adjust his prosthesis.
"Are you OK?"
"I'm good," he shrugged, unwilling to tell her his leg bothered him already.
"I ran cross-country track in high school.
" She put her hands on her hips and continued walking. "But I don't run as much lately."
"Don't run much anymore. Don't look at the stars as much," John said. "What do you have time for?"
"Work," Melody answered. "Have to work to pay the bills. Work to survive. It always comes down to simply surviving, doesn't it?"
A rumble of thunder in the distance sent a shiver of warning through John.
"It's more than just survival," he said.
John tugged her sleeve and picked up the pace to a steady jog again. The sprinkles of rain became heavier, soaking their clothes as they went.
They made it another mile before Melody's pace began to slow and she became out of breath. She paused with her hands on her hips, trying to muster the endurance to keep going.
"I shouldn't be tired yet," she said.
"Well, we haven't eaten much today, and we've already expended too much energy this morning."
John offered some beef jerky, and they fueled up before returning to their pace.
They were fortunate to have traveled those two miles without encountering many of the infected, but on the final mile to the lab, they spotted three sauntering silhouettes on the tracks.
John knelt down to take aim with his rifle, but feared he would attract more infected. By then, they were in a steady downpour and lightning lit up the clouds above. Melody ducked and flinched, and then looked to the sky. John could tell that she needed a break, but she'd never admit that.
"Let's go around," John said.
Through the dense woods they could see tiny splotches of colors that were abandoned vehicles on the highway over a hundred yards away. The distant bodies were making sluggish movements around the cars.
They were careful to stay tucked deep enough in the woods to go unseen by the infected on the highway and by the few infected on the tracks. The pines created a canopy overhead, protecting them from the heavy rainfall while the sound of the downpour concealed the sounds of their footfall.
The thunder and lightning persisted. John's prosthetic leg rubbed against the skin on his knee, and the flesh quickly became raw from irritation, but he worked through the pain and moved forward. Each step sent the prosthetic blade sinking into the muddy ground, but he was determined to keep up with Melody.
A shrieking crack of thunder split open the sky overhead and careened the path of the infected from the tracks into the woods. Three bodies stumbled between the trees and spotted Melody.
"No," she whispered. She was exhausted. A physical exhaustion that must have been brought on by stress—it was all that made sense to her. She was stronger than this.
She and John ran through the woods while the infected pursued them. A tall thin man with curly hair, a stout apple-shaped woman, and a man in ceil blue scrubs hurried their pace behind John and Melody.
She wanted to rest for a while.
Melody knew it was coming up. Her hiding place. The place she could go and forget about how hard life was. She recalled the broken down shell of a Cadillac that laid in the woods beyond the gigantic fallen tree.
As she and John climbed over the massive fallen pine that sank into the earth, she peered through the woods ahead trying to find the car.
She saw it—like a lifeline for Melody, calling for her to come to it and hide again. It was being absorbed by the surrounding earth, with ivy wrapping it within its embrace.
Melody sprinted toward it.
"Here!" She ducked around the shrubbery by the vehicle and dove into the musty chassis and waited for John. The floor of the car had been eaten by the earth, and Melody sat on the ground with a dome of jagged rusty metal over her head to protect her.
"What are you doing?" he asked from outside the car, hiding behind the vines and shrub-growth.
Melody closed her eyes, panting, more terrified than she had ever been for her life. She hoped the danger would pass over her like the storm did over ten years ago.
John took Melody's hand, and her eyes popped open to reality.
"We can't hide here. They're coming."
Melody didn't care if they were coming...at least she tried to convince herself of that. She didn't want to fight, or run, or hide, and for a moment wasn't sure if she wanted to keep living—but that was her dad talking. The coward gave up when life got too hard and then expected her to not grow up just like him.
It felt like her only purpose for existence at that point was to save Marcus, and if she was brutally honest with herself, she didn't know if he was worth it.
John's voice lowered and he put his torso in the chassis with her.
"We're faster than them, but we have to go..." He looked back toward the incoming infected that were closing in twenty feet away. "Now."
Melody—with the whining defeat of a toddler—smacked her hand to the ground and began to climb out of the car.
The tall man with curly hair and the apple-shaped woman were fighting one another at the front of the car, but the man in scrubs was out of sight.
As Melody poked her head out of the vehicle, ready to make her escape with John, her feet were grabbed.
The man in scrubs hung his body inside the opposite side of the chassis, with a grip on Melody's ankles. Melody tried to pull herself free.
She unsheathed her knife and twisted her body enough so she could swing at the man's face, but her slashes to his skin did not deter him.
John grabbed her arm with one hand and reached for his pistol with the other, as the man in scrubs climbed up her legs.
Her backpack snagged on the sharp edges of the car, and he bit into the lower end of the back pack while John gave Melody a swift jolt toward himself. The metal ripped open her pack along the outside pocket, and the pale orchid-colored envelope dropped into the mud.
"Cover your ears," John shouted with his pistol beside her head.
The man chewed on Melody's pack, and she did as instructed. John fired his 9mm and stopped the infected with a bullet to his forehead.
The other two infected stopped fighting with each other and looked toward them.
Despite Melody's attempt to protect her ears, the bang of the pistol rang in her ear.
John fumbled the straps of Melody's pack down her arms and helped her shimmy out. No time to free the pack from the man’s clutches, because the apple-shaped woman and the curly-haired man were coming toward them.
"Leave the pack. Let's go!" John's muffled voice urged her, through the high pitched hum in her ear.
Melody snagged her dad's envelope from the ground and ran alongside him, shaking her head in an attempt to free her ear from the ringing.
They sprinted through the woods and back out to the tracks. Melody's body surged with adrenaline and she powered forward, faster than she knew she could run. She left her pack behind. Her food, her antibiotics, the medical supplies, her underwear...everything.
John was right beside her. She looked back frequently, to be sure they were nowhere in sight, but the infected were not able to run as fast without falling over.
She slowed down and looked to the sky as the rain continued to pummel her head.
"I would've been fine," she said, but she knew otherwise.
Her own voice sounded strange, muffled like she had been in the front row at a rock concert. She didn't know what to think of her idiotic attempt to hide.
He looked at her with an odd concern—the way Marcus's parents looked at her on that first night she stayed at his house—like she was a helpless girl without a clue.
"I freaked," she said. "It won't happen again."
John sighed. "It's OK. We're OK." John apparently had no snide remark for her this time.
21
Waiting Out the Storm
Marcus had to stop often because of the injuries to Kayla's feet, so progress was slow. In addition to the wounds from the glass, the clumsy girl tripped over a rusty railroad tie and stubbed her big toe. Concealed within the pebbles and weeds was more broken glass and sharp rocks that cut into the bottom of her
socked feet.
The pain from the wounds slowed their pace, and with every passing minute, Marcus continued to scheme for a way to arrive at the quarantine camp without her. He could lag behind, then sneak into the woods and leave her, but he was certain that she would see him running off. He passed by an opening in the fence between two brick buildings where he could slip through, but when it came right down to each opportunity to flee, he couldn't bring himself to leave her out there alone.
After about a mile of travel, a rumble of thunder rolled across the dark clouds, and small drops of rain began to fall from the sky. Kayla looked above as the clouds swept over her, and she nearly cried, so Marcus tried to encourage her to keep pushing forward.
The rain turned to a steady downpour as they crossed over a steel rail bridge. Lightning lit up the sky, coupled with an ear-piercing crack which caused Kayla to screech and duck, scurrying off the other end of the bridge to find cover.
She sought out a dry patch of gravel beneath the bridge where Marcus and she could wait out the storm.
The torrential rain plummeted to the earth for over an hour while they sat beside each other. The creek water rushed past them faster and faster.
Several infected could be seen over the bank on the other side of the fence, but they were not aware of Marcus and Kayla sitting beneath the bridge. Marcus leaned back and allowed Kayla to rest her head against his chest. Her soaking wet hair fell across his shirt, and he caressed her head with a gentle hand. Kayla nuzzled in closer.
"That's a cop, isn't it?" Kayla said, looking toward two of the infected beyond the bank.
"I think so," Marcus said, trying to focus his sight through the rain. The man in the dark uniform bumped into the railing of a loading dock over and over again.
"Why is the cop infected? Don't they carry guns? You'd think he would have protected himself," she said.
"Maybe he hesitated. You hesitate, you die." He paused for a while, wondering if he should say anything else, but the girl seemed so open to listening. "My grandfather was a cop. He used to have me up to the lake for shooting practice, but he stopped when I was about 12, after he saw me holding his nine mil, unsupervised. I was just looking at it. I was going through their stuff, and I opened the metal ammunitions box that he kept in his bedroom because it looked cool. The gun was right there on top of all his retired cop stuff. But he didn't trust me not to play with it. Sad, when you can't trust your own family..."
