She looked over at Anna, who had resumed watching from her spot at the window, and thought about how lucky she was that Michelle and then Anna had taken her in. From her brief time with them, the two women seemed as much like sisters as they did best friends. They were so much alike in personality. Physically, Michelle was a petite little thing with long black hair and gorgeous eyes that were nearly black. She was strong, stubborn, no-nonsense, had a fearless attitude, and was a fierce protector of her family. Anna was taller with long dark hair and piercing green eyes. Like Michelle, she was strong and stubborn but also impatient, slow to trust, and just about the scariest woman Emily had ever met when it came to her children.
“Emily, I think we’re in the clear,” Anna said suddenly. “The last few zombies just left my line of sight.”
“Are there any in the street at all? Any shamblers?” Emily asked.
“Nope. I don’t see anything,” Anna said with a grin. Her natural impatience, coupled with her worry for her daughter, made all of the time waiting for the zombies to pass by nearly unbearable. Seeing that their wait was finally over, she couldn’t help but smile.
“Let’s go out the front door then. Stay low, dash behind cars and stay out of sight until we get to that red SUV,” Emily said. “Please let the house be empty and the keys easy to find,” she muttered.
Anna opened the door, and they quietly walked down the front steps. She looked around and didn’t see any zombies. They carefully walked along the front of the house, paused at the corner to make sure no surprises lay in wait between houses, and then continued past the next. They walked until they were across the street from the home with the red SUV in the driveway. With their path clear, they crossed the street then crouched down next to the SUV.
“The front door is closed,” Anna said quietly as she studied the front of the house. “Hopefully, it’s unlocked.” They crept up to the door while keeping an eye out for zombies but didn’t see any. Anna tried the doorknob and found that it was locked. Looking up and down the street, they hadn’t seen any other vehicles worth trying for, so she decided to check for a hidden key for the door. Both women checked the planters and rocks but found nothing.
“Let’s try the back door,” Emily suggested. “We could still get lucky.”
Anna nodded in agreement. They walked past the front of the house around the corner of the garage and found the way clear. Within seconds they were at the back door, and this time the knob turned freely in Anna’s hand. Knives at the ready, she slowly opened the door and stepped inside with Emily right behind her. They stood still for a moment to listen for the telltale sounds that zombies were in the house. Hearing nothing, they fully entered the kitchen and started looking for a key rack or a key ring on one of the counters but found nothing
“Of course, it couldn’t be that easy,” Anna sighed. They moved further into the house and entered a large dining room. There was some mail and clutter strewn about on the table but no keys. Off to one side sat a family room with a sectional couch and a big-screen TV. On the other side, a hallway ran off the dining room, presumably leading to the bedrooms and bathroom, which seemed the most unlikely of places to find keys. Straight ahead of them was the living room at the front of the house.
“What do you think? Living room?” Emily asked. “There could be key hooks or a little table by the door.”
“Probably, I’m not sure where else to look,” Anna answered as she headed for the living room. The room was neat, with nothing out of place and no sign of keys anywhere. She double-checked the area by the front door but found nothing. Annoyed, she turned back to Emily, “Where the hell else should we look?”
“You check the family room, and I’ll check the master bedroom. If we don’t find them there, they’re probably not here,” Emily was irritated too.
Both women went through and checked the rest of the house. Having wasted a good twenty minutes searching for keys that didn’t seem to exist, they returned to the kitchen feeling frustrated. They were going to have to find another vehicle at a different house.
“Well, I guess we head down toward the other end of the street. There’s bound to be something there,” Anna said. “Let’s go out quietly and make sure it’s still clear out there.”
They went out the back door and silently walked around the side of the house to the front as they checked the area for zombies. There was one stray zombie in the middle of the street, unfocused and standing still. They decided to slowly move past the houses one by one until they found another with a suitable vehicle in its driveway. Three houses down, they stumbled across a lone zombie standing near some bushes. It was a young brunette woman in shorts and a tank top. Several large rings of bites lined one arm, and a small chunk of flesh was missing from her neck. She turned toward Anna with outstretched arms, but Anna was easily able to thrust her knife through its ear before the zombie could grab hold of her. They continued further down the street until they saw a black SUV in one of the driveways.
“Let’s try this again,” Anna said as she walked toward the small front porch and up the five stairs to the door. The screen door had tinted storm windows in it and opened outward. Looking through the darkly tinted glass, she couldn’t tell if the main door was open or not. The screen door was unlocked and opened freely when Anna pulled the handle. The main door behind it was wide open, and before either woman knew what was happening, zombies poured out the door and onto the porch. Anna jumped back from the reaching arms and stumbled backward down the steps landing on her tailbone on the walkway. Wincing, she struggled to get back to her feet before the zombies fell on top of her. Emily had darted to the side as the dead came out and was immediately caught in the grasp of what had been a middle-aged woman in jogging clothes. The woman had a bandage on her hand but otherwise appeared whole and had a very strong grip. Emily fought to free herself, but it was futile. The zombie’s strength was greater than that of her own. Unable to find an angle to use her knife while the zombie grasped both of her arms, Emily twisted around and attempted to knock the woman down the stairs. The woman fell, but she took Emily with her. Anna had just gotten back to her feet and plunged her knife into the zombie’s ear before its teeth could reach Emily’s arm. The zombie’s grip didn’t loosen with its second death, and Emily was unable to pull herself free or get to her feet. Terrified, she kicked the dead body and pulled as hard as she could, but the dead hands remained locked around her arms, holding her in place. At least six more zombies had come out through the door and all of them stumbled down the steps toward Anna and Emily. As Emily struggled to break free, she twisted, turned, and kicked the approaching zombies. She was completely vulnerable and nearly helpless down on the ground.
A large man wearing the bloody remnants of a shirt and tie came lumbering toward them next. He had several bites of flesh torn from his arm and one of his hands. Just behind him was a teenaged boy in shorts and a t-shirt. His mouth was covered with dried blood, his shirt was stained crimson, and he had a dirty bandage wrapped around his arm. Anna shoved the man, hoping to knock him down. He was so tall that she couldn’t reach anywhere near his head. He stumbled backward but didn’t fall. He regained his footing and reached for her, his hand grazing her shoulder. Anna thrust her knife upward under his chin but only succeeded in causing brackish blood to drip onto her hand and arm. She tried to push him away, but his sheer size prevented her from moving him even an inch. Starting to feel desperate, she tried to kick him as hard as she could in the knee but hit his shin instead. He leaned down to grasp her arm and pulled it toward his mouth. His fingers wrapped around her arm with unbelievable strength and brought a crushing pain that she felt down to the bone. In his eagerness to try to make a meal of her, he leaned forward just enough for Anna to thrust her knife at his head. She stabbed him in the nose and cheek before finally plunging her knife through his eye. He fell to the ground hard.
Emily was trying to take down the teenaged boy as he sought her out. Unable to move freely, she l
aid on her back on the ground with the dead woman next to her, still holding her arms. The boy leaned down toward Emily’s face, so she used every ounce of strength she had left to kick him in the knee to try to knock him back. Instead of falling backward, he fell on top of Emily. With his gnashing teeth just inches from her throat, she tried to force her knife upward and sliced his ear off. Undeterred, the boy leaned closer to take a bite when Emily managed to thrust her knife through his eye. The fetid milky fluid dripped onto her face, and his full body weight dropped on top of her. Thoroughly trapped, there was nothing else Emily could do but hope that Anna was able to kill the rest. The other zombies were nearly on top of them. Anna saw that Emily was trapped and knew that she was on her own. A blonde woman in jean shorts and a tank top displayed sickening bite wounds with most of her face cleanly ripped away to reveal her bare teeth, which formed a snarl as she reached for the women. Anna was able to grab her by her long hair and thrust her knife through the woman’s ear, then immediately lunged for the next zombie. With the woman out of the way she was faced with two more teenaged zombies and an elderly man, all reaching for her at once. She shoved the old man and tried to kick one of the teens out of the way as she focused on the closest teenager. As she plunged her knife through his eye, she felt hands becoming entangled in her hair from behind, pulling her backward. She felt clumps of hair being pulled from her head as the old man tried to pull her closer while she pulled away. With no time to spare, she pulled her gun and shot the teenager point-blank in the face. She couldn’t see the old man behind her but fought against his grip on her hair. She had no idea if his teeth were about to sink into her or not, so she forcibly turned her head sideways, painfully losing more of her hair in the process, and tried to shoot him in the head. Her first shot went wild, but with him partially within her field of vision, she nearly emptied her gun until a bullet finally found its way into his head. When his body dropped, she fell with him as her hair was still wrapped around his hands.
Her long dark hair fell a few inches shy of her waist, so she was able to twist her body just enough to start cutting her hair off with her knife. The knife was so sharp that it sliced her hair off quickly. With blood running down her neck and back and bloody patches around the back of her scalp burning intensely, she stood back up to look around and make sure that no more zombies were coming. None came from the house, but in either direction down the street, small groups of the dead were slowly shuffling in their direction, no doubt having been drawn by the gunfire.
“Emily, are you okay? Were you bitten?” Anna asked frantically as she struggled to pull the dead teenaged boy’s body off of her.
“I’m okay. He didn’t bite me, but I can’t get these damn hands off of me,” Emily said as tears filled her eyes. Anna had seen how Emily had become trapped and started sawing the dead fingers off of Emily’s arms. Dark purple hand-shaped bruises circled both of her arms. “It’s just my arms. I couldn’t get free. Anna, you’re bleeding pretty badly. He must have pulled out chunks of your scalp.”
“I can’t worry about that right now,” Anna replied. “More zombies are coming this way; we’ve got to get moving.” She said as she helped Emily up.
“Holy shit,” Emily said as she stood up. “We’ve got maybe a minute. I’m going to check inside the front door for keys. There might be a table or key rack right there.”
Anna nodded and kept watch as Emily briefly went inside. The first groups of zombies were closing in and were less than a minute away. Emily came back out the door with keys in her hand, and they ran for the SUV. Emily jumped into the driver’s seat as Anna rushed around to the passenger side. The vehicle started and displayed a nearly full gas tank. Emily immediately backed down the driveway and turned into the street, dodging zombies as she went. She made it to the end and turned left to take them further north and further away from the two areas they had been forced to fire a gun, knowing that more zombies would have been drawn to the sound.
Anna pulled open her backpack and reached for one of the bottles of peroxide she had grabbed from the gas station back when Emily had some of her hair ripped out. She pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror. Zombie blood had splattered on her face mixing with some of her blood from her bleeding scalp. Her hair was cut jaggedly and fell just past her shoulders. She could feel the heaviness of the blood on the back of her neck and running down her back. She grabbed a bottle of water and washed her hands with it. She wiped away as much of the zombie blood from her hands and her face as she could. Turning her face upward, she poured the entire bottle of peroxide over her hair and down the back of her head. It stung like pure alcohol. She let it do its job and settled back into her seat as Emily drove. She knew she might need a few stitches, but there was nothing she could do about that right now. She’d keep the wounds as clean as possible and get them bandaged up later.
“Anna, I think we should make a quick stop at your house. We need to treat your head, so you don’t get an infection. I know you’re the nurse, but it looks pretty bad,” Emily said. Her injuries hurt, but they were just bruises, so there was nothing she could do about them.
Anna didn’t want to waste any more time and wanted to resume their search for Camille, but the nurse in her knew that she needed to treat her head. Even if stitches were unnecessary, her scalp needed a much more thorough cleaning. Who knew what kind of germs had gotten into the wounds and what kind of infection they could bring on.
“I hate this. I hate stopping even for a little while,” Anna started. “But you’re right. That old man did some damage, and I have what I need to treat it back at the house. Besides, we haven’t checked in since we left yesterday. Camille or Max and Jesse may have made it home.”
With that, Emily adjusted her course and headed for Anna’s house.
Chapter 14
Day 4
As the garage door opened, Camille saw that there were a few more zombies than she had anticipated. Having never driven before, she depressed the gas pedal too hard, and the SUV shot out of the garage, plowing through half a dozen of the dead before her foot found the brake. Luckily for her learning curve, the zombies had all fallen to the side without causing any damage to the vehicle. The driveway consisted of a large circular loop that was wide enough for at least two cars all the way around and had two openings leading to the street. After hitting the brakes hard enough to come to an abrupt jerking stop, she hurriedly steered toward her right to follow the loop out onto Lake Road. She turned right to head in the general direction of her home. She was surprised to see so many wrecked and abandoned cars along what was once a busy two-lane road. When she’d been running for her life the day before, she had been too preoccupied with avoiding zombies to notice all of the vehicles.
She eased up on the gas pedal to drive at a snail’s pace because she was afraid of hitting one of the many cars. There weren’t many zombies on the road in front of her, but without fail, every one of them turned in her direction. Even at her slow pace, the zombies were still too slow to catch up to her. She didn’t dare exceed five to ten miles an hour, at least not until she found a more open stretch of road. She was so nervous behind the wheel that she found herself shaking. Thinking of her family and the possibility of seeing them soon helped to calm her nerves. She focused on the road in front of her as she carefully weaved around cars and stray zombies. A small opening up ahead was void of cars but held half a dozen of the dead. She slowed for a moment, then saw more of the dead entering the road from a mansion on the right and decided to try to drive right through them before the rest could walk into her path. As she sped up, she veered to her left and managed to hit only two zombies on the edge of the headlight, both of which were knocked to the side.
She was coming up on the first main street when she saw a multi-car pileup at the intersection. She brought the SUV to an abrupt stop as she considered her options. An experienced driver would have been able to go around the wreckage without much difficulty, but Camille was afraid she would hi
t one of the cars. She didn’t want to turn left yet if she didn’t have to because it would force her to go through what would have been a busier area. Lake Road was busy enough, and she had hoped to go further west before turning into the suburbs. She very carefully veered around the accident using the shoulder to avoid hitting any of the cars, and her confidence went up a notch.
She had another half mile to go before making her first planned turn. Zombies seemed to come from everywhere at the sight of the SUV, but they were slow as hell. As long as she drove faster than they walked, she thought she would be okay. There were so many cars on the road ahead that she slowed to a near crawl as she made her way past them. With her inexperience behind the wheel, she had trouble judging distances between her vehicle and the others. She gasped when she loudly scraped the side of a vehicle on her right but forced herself to keep going as she tried to veer slightly left, only to scrape yet another car on her left. The road ahead was nearly gridlocked, but she kept going forward, ignoring the scrapes and noises as she grazed other cars. She knew all of the noise was drawing more zombies toward her, but there was nothing she could do about it.
SUBURBAN JUNGLE: A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Survival Thriller (Chronicles of the Undead: Book 2) Page 11
