Zombie Island

by Samantha Hoffman

  Tobe has been tossed aside like trash. Frank and the other Warriors mostly ignore her, and she spends most of her time whimpering in the corner of the tent. She’s completely unresponsive, and nothing I can say gets to her. She just wraps her arms around herself like she’s trying to hold herself together, and I wish I could reach over and comfort her, but I can’t.

  My arms are still tied behind my back. One of the Warriors unties me daily to kick me around in an attempt to break me, but I’m always tied right back up. I’ve tried to keep my spirit up, but it’s starting to break. I know it, and so does Frank. I’m not sure if I can stand one more beating or hour without water.

  My mouth is bone dry, I have a constant headache, and my heart is racing. My breathing is fast and labored, and Frank told me a few hours ago that I’m developing a fever. I haven’t passed any urine in a while, and that’s not a good sign. My body needs water, and it’s not getting it. If this continues, I’ll be dead in a short while, probably a few more hours.

  A quick look at Naomi tells me she isn’t going to last much longer. She’s become as unresponsive as Tobe, but for different reasons. When she does speak she’s delirious and her speech is slurred. If she doesn’t get water soon, I’m afraid she’ll die before she can be broken.

  Frank won’t let that happen. He wants her too badly to just let her die of thirst.

  Frank snaps his fingers to get my attention, and I lift heavy eyes up to meet his. I’ve been so tired these last few hours, and I know that can be another sign of dehydration. Frank peers down at me and smiles. “You’re wasting away. It’s amazing how long the human body can go without food. Up to three weeks. The amount of time a body can go without water is much, much shorter.”

  “If you don’t give me water, I’m going to die,” I rasp. “Naomi too.”

  “One woman once went thirteen days without water, though the average is about three. You’re tough. I think you can handle another day or two before it gets really serious.”

  I don’t answer him. Conserving my energy is more important right now than making conversation with a monster like Frank. He’s just playing games anyways. If he allowed it, he could have three or more Warriors just come in here, hold me down, and let them do whatever they wanted with me. But he won’t do that. He’s purposely waiting for me to give up, because he gets some sick pleasure from this.

  “Hmm,” he says, lifting my chin. “I think you’re finally ready. Let’s test that, shall we?”

  He takes a knife from his pocket and cuts the rope that binds my hands to the pole. I slump forward, too tired to even move, though I desperately want to. I want to kick and scream and punch him, but I just don’t have the energy to move, and he knows that.

  He chuckles, and lifts me to my feet. Then he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder. Panic starts to set in and I finally realize what he’s doing. He’s taking me to one of the other tents, and I won’t be the same when I come back. I know that, because I’m too exhausted and weak to fight off any attack.

  Frank carries me into a nearby tent that has only a large air mattress and a pile of blankets. The second I see that mattress, my mind kicks into escape mode, and I start to kick and thrash as hard as I possibly can. But my movements feel jerky, weak, and slow, and Frank can easily fight me off. When he reaches the mattress he pauses, and throws me down onto it.

  I try to scramble off the mattress, but Frank steps on one of my thighs, holding me in place. He drops down to the mattress and straddles my legs, and pins my arms above my head. His hands are large enough to hold both of my wrists above me, leaving one hand free to undo my jeans.

  I thrash and kick and scream, but nobody comes to rescue me. Frank just smiles, and slides my jeans down around my ankles, before setting his knees on the insides of my thighs. He forces them apart, and I try to fight him, but it’s no use. He’s much larger than me, much stronger than me, and he knows what he wants.

  I can’t believe this is happening!

  Frank leans over and whispers, “I’m gonna enjoy this.”

  When he pulls away, I do the only thing I can think. I slam my head forward, colliding with his forehead. Pain radiates down my eyes and nose, and my vision goes hazy for a second, but Frank’s grip loosens just enough. I slip my hands free and hit Frank as hard as I can, which isn’t very hard. His nose starts to bleed and he sits back, giving me just enough room to free my leg.

  I bring my foot up and kick him in the face, breaking his nose. Blood spurts everywhere, dripping down the front of his shirt until it’s soaked, and I roll off the air mattress. I hit the ground hard, trapping my arm at an unnatural angle, and I whimper in pain.

  Frank recovers just as I get to my feet, and he lunges for me. His hands close around my ankles, and he drags me to the ground again. His hands creep up my legs, and the nails dig into the flesh of my thighs, leaving bloody marks behind. He crawls up to my neck, “You’re not getting away that easy, bitch.”

  He grabs a fistful of my hair and drags me to my knees. I try to pull away, but his hold on me is so tight I can’t break it without ripping out half of my hair. Instead of trying to force his hands to let go, I punch for the only thing I can reach: his groin.

  He grunts in pain, and his hand lets go of my hair. I crawl away on my hands and knees, unable to find the strength to stand. Just as I reach the closed tent flaps, the gunfire starts. My first thought is that someone is executing Tobe or Melissa because they stopped fighting, but then I hear return gunfire, and screams of pain. Male screams of pain.

  Zombies…

  Frank pauses when the gunfire starts, and he looks uncertain. He’s not sure whether he wants to stay and finish with me, or go see what’s going on. If this decision is hard for him, he’s even crazier than I thought if he’s willing to risk the lives of most of his men just to teach me a lesson.

  He snarls, and grabs me by the ankles before hauling me back towards the mattress. I kick and scream, trying to free myself, but it’s no use. Frank’s mind is made up; this is what he’s going to do, even if it kills us both. He throws me back down to the mattress and unbuttons his pants.

  The gunfire gets louder and closer, and I know that whatever’s out there right now is heading this way. If it’s zombies, I’ll be eaten alive in the next few minutes, hopefully before Frank can finish whatever he plans to do to me. If it’s raiders of some kind, I’ll probably end up in a similar predicament later, just with more sane people.

  Frank drops down to the mattress and pins my arms to my sides.

  I whimper, “Please, don’t do this,” I beg.

  He smiles. “Begging won’t save you now.”

  “No, but I will,” Ryder says, stepping into the tent.

  Ryder leans against a tent pole for support, and in his left hand is his rifle. He looks terrible; his body is covered in sweat, and his entire body is trembling. He’s wearing a wife-beater, and I can see a large bandage over his right shoulder, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good, because it’s bright red and soaked in blood. Some of it is seeping around the edges of the bandage.

  “Ryder!”

  He tries to smile, but grimaces in pain when his left arm moves. He draws in a ragged breath and raises the rifle until it points directly at Frank’s chest. “Let her go.”

  Frank is armed only with a knife, and it’s no match against Ryder’s rifle, and he knows it. Hands up, he slowly gets off the mattress, letting me grab my jeans and hastily pull them on. “Ryder, what’s happening out there?”

  “Reese and I got the drop of your Warriors. They were busy with one of your girls,” he sneers. “You pigs deserve what you’re about to get,” he says, looking at me. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

  I keep one eye on Frank, and edge away toward Ryder. When I’m out of Frank’s reach, I turn and bolt toward Ryder, and throw my arms around his waist. He wraps his bad arm around me, even though it has to kill him to do it, and I bury my face in his chest. “I thought you were d
ead.”

  Standing this close to him, Ryder looks ever worse than I first thought. “I probably should be. It didn’t hit the bone and just tore through muscle. Reese patched me up, but he thinks my right arm might not ever work right again.”

  “What?”

  “It’ll probably cause me pain for the rest of my life. It might have been avoided had Reese been a surgeon with a sterile operating room, but he did the best he could with antiseptic, pressure, and some clean bandages. I hope it holds.” Ryder looks at Frank, who’s still keeping his arms up, and sneers. “I should kill you right now.”

  “No, don’t! You’re better than that.”

  “I know,” he says, looking down at me. “Come on, let’s go.”

  He removes his arm from around me, and I see him wince in pain again. I can’t imagine how badly his shoulder must hurt right now, and I juts want to reach over and comfort him, but that’ll have to wait until we’re safely away from this place.

  The second Ryder’s backs is turned, Frank draws his knife and rushes at us. Ryder must have expected it though, and quickly turns and fires off two shots. Both hit Frank dead in the chest, and he drops to the mattress and lays there, unmoving.

  I stare at Frank’s body, and have the strangest urge to go over and hit him over and over again. Ryder nudges me, “Come on, let’s go. Reese can’t hold them off forever.”

  “We have to free the other girls here.”

  “Reese is on it. He found the tent with Tobe and the others, and they’re waiting for us at the boat.”

  “The boat?”

  “We’re going back to the island from here, and we’re going to gather up what’s left of our supplies. Then we’re leaving this place behind for good.”

  I follow Ryder through the tents, trying to ignore the bodies on the ground. They’re all wearing army fatigues similar to Frank’s, and even though I know that they were terrible people, and they probably deserved what they got, I can’t help but feel slightly sick at the sight of them.

  These men were people. Sons, brothers, maybe even husbands or fathers. Was it Frank that turned them into monsters, or were they already secretly inhuman, and Frank just gave them the opportunity to be who they really were?

  Ryder grabs my hand and drags me along when I start to slow down. “Come on, we have to go.”

  “I can’t help it. I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in almost three whole days. And I’m so tired, Ryder,” I say, stopping to catch my breath. “I feel like I’m dying.”

  “Listen Sam, you have to keep going, because I don’t have the strength to carry you right now. We’re almost there, just keep moving.” He forces me to keep moving, even though all I want to do right now is drop to the ground and get some rest.

  Escaping with Ryder gives me my first chance to actually look around this campsite. It’s small, with only about two dozen makeshift tents, and a stockpile of guns and ammo in the center. We’re only about a hundred yards from the dock, where Reese is waiting with our boat.

  Tobe, Naomi, and Melissa are sitting in the back, but only Naomi looks coherent. She’s chugging from a bottle of water, and she actually gives me a smile when she sees the two of us. When Ryder helps me into the boat, she hands me a bottle of water and looks Ryder up and down. “Oh, is this the man you cried for at night?”

  I’d reach over and elbow her if she weren’t’ so far away. So I settle instead for glaring at her over the bottle. She shakes her head and tears into a can on soup, eating it cold and fast, almost as if she’s never seen food before. She probably hasn’t, at least not for a while.

  The food seems to snap Tobe and Melissa out of it just enough to get some food and fluids into them. My own stomach screams at me when I catch the scent of vegetable beef soup, but I don’t worry about food right now. I’m more concerned about my lack of water, and stick with my bottle as Reese pulls away from the dock.

  Ryder sets his rifle down and scoots closer to me, wrapping his good arm around my shoulder. He’s not normally good at showing emotions other than anger, and I know he probably wants to be anywhere other than here right now, but I lean my head against his chest and cry.

  Reese gives us worried glances, and he looks at Naomi, who is the most stable girl in the boat. “What happened?”

  She looks at me. “I’m not sure. Frank took her to one of the tents a few minutes before you got there. He had time to do some horrible things to her. Did he hurt you?”

  I shake my head, and curl up tighter against Ryder’s side. He doesn’t push me away, even though I’m crying into his shirt. He sighs, and looks down at me. “Sam, I’m sorry we couldn’t get there sooner. I was so out of it for the last couple of days.”

  “He shouldn’t be up now,” Reese says from the front of the boat. “He’s putting too much stress on his fresh wound, and he’s losing a lot of blood. When we get back to what’s left of the house, he’ll probably crash for days.”

  “Are you really hurt that badly?” I ask worriedly.

  He shrugs, and winces. “Ah, don’t worry about me too much. I’ll be fine.”

  He doesn’t look fine. His face is so pale it’s nearly gray, and his arm is still shaking. I can tell he’s in pain whenever he moves, and he’s breathing like an eighty year old smoker without his oxygen tank. Not to mention that his shirt is plastered to his chest with both blood and sweat. Put all that together, and he is definitely not fine.

  “Hang on,” I tell him. “We’re gonna get you back to the house and you can take all the rest you need. Just hold on until then.”

  He smiles. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I look over my shoulder at Reese. “Can’t you go any faster?”

  The boat speeds up, and the island quickly approaches. When we reach the end of our dock, the first thing I notice is that half of the house is gone. It started to rain as we were being abducted, and that kept the fire from spreading, but it didn’t save most of the roof, the bedrooms, or the dining room.

  All that’s left is part of the kitchen and the living room. Reese pulled a large, blue, plastic tarp over a corner of the living room to keep the rain away, and it left part of the room dry. When we get out of the boat, he helps me half carry and half drag Ryder under the tarp, and he arranges some pillows around him to keep him comfortable.

  Melissa and Tobe stand off to the side and just watch with wide eyes and fearful expressions. Reese drags over a bag of medical supplies, and tosses me a roll of clean, white bandages. He then peels off the old bandage which is almost completely soaked through, and discards it over his shoulder.

  He takes a wad of paper towels and applies as much pressure to Ryder’s shoulder as he can. The second he touches his brother, Ryder gasps in pain, his eyes roll back in his head, and his entire body goes slack. “Did he just pass out?”

  Reese nods, and takes the bandages from me. “I’m gonna need your help with this. Are you ok to assist me?”

  “I’ll have to be,” I say. “What do you need me to do?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  We spend the next four days preparing supplies for when Ryder hopefully gets better. It rains almost nonstop after we fix Ryder’s bandages, and Naomi and I fill two five gallon buckets of water, strain them, and boil the water. Then we take a funnel from what’s left of the kitchen, and fill almost fifteen bottles with fresh, hopefully clean water.

  There isn’t much else to do, except sit around and think about my nightmares. I’ve been having them since Ryder and Reese rescued us from Frank and his Warriors. Each time it’s the same dream: a feeling of helplessness, pain, and confusion. Then Frank’s face, cruel laughter, and the feeling of being thrown down onto a mattress. Thankfully I always wake up after that.

  Ryder hasn’t moved much in the last four days, and he’s going to be in no shape to leave the island for a while, so Naomi and I take the time to get to know each other better. She’s sixteen years old, and was a star on her high school’s cross country team. She was a stra
ight A student, with two younger brothers. One died in the initial wave, and the other died years ago in a car accident.

  Naomi and I carry the cases of water back up to the house, and Tobe looks up. She’s eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and she gives me a small smile. She’s starting to recover from our abduction. I’m just thankful that nothing happened to her like it did last time, or we probably would have lost Tobe forever.

  “Have you checked on Ryder yet?”

  I shake my head. “I was gonna do that now,” I say, setting down the case of water. Tobe grabs one and takes a sip. “It doesn’t taste very good, but I guess it’ll have to do.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and, even though she flinches, she doesn’t pull away. I take that as a good sign. “I know, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

  She nods, and I head out into the living room, where Ryder is still lying under the tarp. He’s covered by a large, thick blanket, and his face is still pale and covered in sweat, but he seems to be recovering to the point where I don’t have to worry about him dying in the middle of the night.

  When I sit down beside him, I grab a wet washcloth and gently dab his forehead, cleaning dirt and sweat away. His eyes flutter open, and when he sees me sitting beside him, he sighs. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

  “Yes, I do. Ryder, you saved my life earlier.”

  He frowns, and tries to sit up. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get there sooner.”

  I put my hand on his chest to keep him lying still. “Ryder, you almost killed yourself saving me. You shouldn’t have been up at all, and instead of resting, you mounted a successful rescue attempt, helped Reese take out several armed Warriors, and saved me from being raped by Frank Schultz. What were you thinking when you got in that boat with Reese? You could have died.”

  Ryder wraps his good arm around my waist and pulls me close, burying his face in my shoulder. I can feel his entire body trembling and, when he pulls away, I notice what look like tears in his eyes. “I thought for sure I wouldn’t get there in time. The whole time I kept thinking, ‘What if I don’t ever see her again?’ Or, ‘What if the last thing I really said to her was that she was just some girl?’”