I let out a scream, the sound a mix of frustration, anger, and fear. I twisted again, those same emotions powering my tiring limbs. This time, the snap was loud and final. The zombie’s hands fell to the floor.
There was a wet, sucking pop as my thumbs came free of his eye sockets. He rolled sideways and landed on the wooden floor with a solid thunk.
I felt a momentary surge of elation, and then the shadow stifled it. I’d grown careless, and it had almost gotten me killed. Worse, I’d missed a perfect opportunity to feed the shadow.
My heart rate had spiked during the fight, but now it was slowing. The departing adrenaline left me feeling disappointed, empty. My encounter with Ling and his merry little band had worn me down. The shadow might have needed to work on the zombie, but so had I.
With the hat gone, I could see the zombie’s face. He was young, late teens at most. I gave the body a frustrated kick and leaned back against the armchair. Part of the vine was lying nearby. I snorted in disgust. How could I have believed it would be strong enough for my needs?
I wiped my bloodied hands on the cowboy’s jeans and got unsteadily to my feet. Looking around the cabin, I cursed myself. The zombies were dangerous, unpredictable. I couldn’t forget that. I needed a controlled environment to work in, and I’d been stupid to try anything away from the cave. I didn’t even have my tool kit. The thought reminded me I didn’t have my knife. Eventually, I found it buried beneath the remains of the armchair that had collapsed.
Still berating myself, I picked my way past the zombie and out of the cabin. The sky had darkened noticeably, the impending storm conspiring to shroud the forest in shadows. More reason to regret my decision to work on the zombie.
I counted to four and tried to let go of my frustration. It wasn’t getting me anywhere, but I couldn’t shake it. I’ve never been one to compartmentalize my feelings. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what the shadow is—some remnant of a childhood trauma that my conscious mind has locked away, deep in my psyche. Or was it simply a part of me that had existed since birth? An unusual part of me, yes, but as natural as the shape of my face or the color of my eyes? It’s the age-old question: nature or nurture?
I gave up on the psychoanalysis and considered my next move. The encroaching darkness made the cabin more appealing, but if the rain held off, I’d still have time to find somewhere better. The cabin had been inhabited by someone once, which meant there must be a way to get to it, a track or a road.
There was an open space in front of the building that looked as though it might once have been used for parking. I scuffed my feet across the grass and uncovered a patch of gravel.
I circled the cabin again, but instead of looking at the building, I surveyed the forest. For the most part, nature had the cabin hemmed in, but in one place—the direction the zombie had come from, in fact—the undergrowth was thinner.
I pushed my way past the edge of the clearing. Thick brambles covered with grasping thorns blocked my path. The going was slow for the first few feet, even with the path left by the zombie to help me. But then I broke through the brambles onto a more open trail. It cut through the forest from north to south and was just slightly wider than a decent-size SUV. Although the grass growing on the trail was high, there were no other obstacles. Within a few feet, I was walking on hard-packed earth.
The shock of my fight with the zombie faded as I walked down the trail, but the feeling that I’d missed an opportunity hung around me, clinging to my mind like a cobweb and leaving me disgruntled. I peered into the forest, trying to see through the rapidly deepening gloom. I told myself I was just being cautious, but I knew that wasn’t it. If I saw a zombie, the shadow would come roaring back.
When I saw the strip of gray through the trees ahead, a wave of relief hit me. I still wasn’t safe, I didn’t have shelter, but I wasn’t wandering aimlessly through the forest. Roads had road signs, and road signs would help me find my way back to the cave.
The gray strip was a highway, two lanes in each direction. It was well maintained, although the fall winds had scattered debris from the forest across the blacktop. I headed right, for the sole reason that the road sloped gently downward in that direction. The ache in my muscles was growing steadily, and I needed to conserve my energy.
About half an hour down the road, I reached an intersection. As I’d hoped, there were road signs. There was also shelter. A small building, not much more than a hut, sat at the edge of a tiny parking lot. The blue sign and empty pamphlet outside marked it as an information center of some kind—something to direct visitors to the local tourist traps.
Drawing my knife, I walked quietly up to the long window at the front of the building. The panes of glass were cracked and covered in grime, making it hard to see inside. I tapped gently on the window with the heel of the knife. Nothing moved inside.
The front door was open slightly. The frame was damaged where someone had taken a crowbar to it. I pushed the door open with the tip of my boot and then took a step back, ready for something to come charging out of the building at me. When it didn’t, I went inside.
The kiosk was mostly open space. A couple of wire racks holding dozens of brightly colored leaflets stood in the middle of the room, between the doorway and a counter. A glass cabinet in one corner held a display of skulls of indigenous animals and some rocks. There was no sign of the dead. The air was stale and smelled of old wood, not decaying corpses.
I stood just inside the room, listening. The building was quiet, but there were two doors behind the information counter. After a couple of minutes, I heard a noise coming from a door marked Staff Only. I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like the soft shuffle of feet across a wooden floor. I strained my ears, listening for the familiar moans or the rasping of fingers trying to claw through the door to get to me.
I’d resolved to investigate when I heard an engine and the crunch of tires on gravel. I stepped back, away from the window. Doors clunked, and voices drifted to me from somewhere outside. Their words were too indistinct for me to hear properly, but it sounded like there were at least two people.
I was still considering what to do when a voice called to me. “Come out, slowly!”
There was a dull thud from somewhere at the back of the center. I definitely wasn’t alone, but I still couldn’t tell exactly where the sound was coming from. One of the doors might lead out the back, but I had no idea which one. Even if I did, there could well be someone waiting for me at the rear of the building.
A fist hammered on the door, making me jump.
“We know that you are in there,” said a man’s voice. He sounded young, and there was an Eastern European tinge to his accent.
A shadow moved across the gap at the bottom of the door. I considered trying to hide the knife down the back of my jeans, then decided against it and slipped it behind some leaflets in the rack nearest to the door.
“Okay!” I called. “I’m coming out! I-I’m not armed!” I tried to put some fear into my voice, but it came out sounding false.
I waited for a reply. When none came, I slowly opened the door a couple of inches.
“Take your time,” said the young man. I still couldn’t see him, but he was close.
“I don’t have a weapon.”
“Good, then I will not have to shoot you.”
I counted to four then swung the door open wide enough for me to walk out.
There was a Jeep on the opposite side of the road, pulled diagonally across the junction. Two people in camouflage gear stood on either side of the vehicle, a man and a woman. Both of them were carrying automatic rifles.
The woman was pointing hers at me. She looked more like a model than a soldier, all high cheekbones and flawless bronze skin. But she held her rifle with the easy confidence of someone who was used to being around weapons. There were two knives clipped to her belt.
The man leaned casually against the Jeep. He was white, middle-aged, and from this distance, wholly ordinary looking,
but confidence practically oozed off him.
Movement to my right caught my eye, and I almost ducked back inside. The young man who’d called me out stood a couple of feet away, another automatic rifle aimed at me. He was wearing dark jeans and a camouflage jacket and had the barest dusting of stubble across his chin. He was trying his best to look threatening, but it didn’t quite fit his skinny frame. Still, he was the one with the assault rifle. I slowly raised my hands.
The young man twitched his gun, directing me out from the building. “That way.”
I nodded slightly and walked toward the Jeep. He followed just behind, keeping a respectful distance despite being armed.
Once I was within a few feet of the vehicle, the middle-aged man raised a hand to stop me. He flicked his head toward the young man and said, “Novak.”
Without hesitating, the young man started patting me down, looking for weapons and bites. He went over me inch by inch, checking under my clothes, squeezing my arms and legs as though I were fruit in a supermarket.
Finally, he stepped away. “He’s clear, Captain.”
The captain nodded, and Novak stepped back from me. I could almost feel his relief.
“What’s your name?” said the captain.
“Marcus Black.”
“Pleased to meet you, Black. I’m Captain Harwood, this is Novak and Santos. You on your own?”
“Yes.”
“No one inside?”
Part of me, the part most closely aligned with the shadow, wanted to hide the zombie’s existence. Just to see what happened. “I only just got here. I was looking for food inside, but I think there’s a zombie.”
As soon as I mentioned the zombie, the tension in the air rose a couple of notches. Santos tightened her grip on her rifle, and Novak’s eyes flicked toward the door.
“Santos, check it out,” Harwood said.
The woman moved immediately, raising her rifle to her shoulder and stalking quickly across the road to the cabin. She stopped by the door to switch on a flashlight mounted beneath the barrel of her rifle then disappeared inside the kiosk.
As we waited, I noticed Novak had turned slightly to make sure his rifle was trained on me. Less than a minute later, there were two hollow pops from inside the information center. Shortly after that, Santos reappeared.
She jogged casually back over to us. “It’s clear. One ex-zee. No sign of anyone else.”
“Anything worth salvaging?”
“I found this.” Santos held up my knife. Her eyes flicked to me. “It was hidden in a leaflet rack.”
I tensed at the sight of the weapon.
Harwood turned his attention back to me. “That yours?”
I nodded. “I have it to defend myself against the… zees.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“A couple of months.”
Harwood’s eyebrows raised, and he gave me an appraising look. “On your own?”
I let my discomfort at being interrogated show. “There were others.”
I was hoping my obvious distress would dissuade Harwood from asking more questions, but his face kept the same cold expression. “But not anymore?”
“No.”
“So, you’ve just been wandering around the forest for months?”
“We were living in a building, a gas station.” I swallowed. “But the zombies came…” I looked away and let my voice trail off.
I had been with a group of people, and we had been cornered at a gas station, although we’d been living in a lodge, not the gas station itself. I replayed our escape and tried to let the memories show in my expression.
When I finally looked back at Harwood, his skepticism was written across his face. Santos and Novak had moved without me noticing. They were standing a few feet away, forming a triangle with Harwood and surrounding me in the process. The tension in the air rose again. The shadow urged me to strike quickly, to get the first attack in.
Harwood held my gaze for a moment then nodded. The atmosphere seemed to lighten, the tension suddenly dissipating. Novak lowered his rifle. I got the impression I’d passed some kind of test. I let my hands drop.
“Okay,” Harwood said, “get in the Jeep, and we’ll take you back to the camp.”
The three of them started moving back to the vehicle, but I stayed where I was. “Oh no, it’s fine, I—”
“No debates. Get in the Jeep.”
Santos and Novak stopped again, their grip on the rifles noticeably tighter. Apparently, the offer was nonnegotiable. I resigned myself to going to the camp, wherever it was, and climbed on board.
Novak jumped into the driver’s seat. He looked barely old enough to have a license, but I figured that sort of thing becomes kind of irrelevant when the dead start walking around trying to eat people.
Santos sat down beside me. She weighed my knife in her hand, and her bottom lip stuck out as though she were assessing its quality. She nodded appreciatively then gave it to me without saying anything.
Novak gunned the engine and spun the Jeep around. I grabbed hold of the vehicle’s roll cage as it accelerated away from the information center.
Anxiety welled up inside me. I’m not good with people; I never have been. Since the outbreak, I’d spent most of my time alone and come to loathe company. My encounters with other human beings had been universally negative.
As we barreled along the road, I considered throwing myself out of the Jeep and running off into the forest. I didn’t. Nor did I take my knife and try to kill everyone around me. Instead, I clung to the metal roll cage and watched the landscape rush past, the tightness in my stomach growing stronger as the miles rolled on.
Chapter 12
Hope
The Jeep swung off the main road and onto a rutted dirt track. It bounced and rocked, and I found myself clinging to the roll cage so tightly my knuckles turned white. We passed a couple of zombies hunched over the carcass of a deer. They looked up as we roared past but didn’t bother chasing us.
A couple of miles from the road, the track began to climb, winding up through the trees. Novak barely slowed down. The wheels slid ominously across the loose earth several times, and I thought we were going to end up in the ditch at the side of the road.
Clouds were rolling in over the treetops. We’d had a hot, dry summer, but now winter was approaching, and it was rare for a day to pass without at least some rain.
Fall is my favorite time of year, and until the aircraft’s arrival, I’d been enjoying my solitary life. I didn’t need anyone else to survive. In my pre-apocalypse life, I’d worked out of necessity, not because of any desire for company. While my coworkers went out for drinks or to movies, I stayed home and read. Or worked with the shadow.
Now I was being pulled into other people’s lives against my will. Maybe I’d grown too comfortable with my new way of life, and some trickster god had brought the aircraft, the Jeep, and me together to disrupt things. If that was the case, it had succeeded.
I puzzled over how this new group might be. They seemed more organized, almost military but not quite. I doubted they were part of a gang like Ling and his crew, but I couldn’t be sure.
The Jeep slid around another corner, and I saw that we’d reached the camp. A makeshift barrier built from metal oil drums and wooden planks blocked the entrance. Two men armed with pistols stood behind the gate. As soon as they saw us, they raised it.
A chain-link fence stood on either side of the road to make a perimeter of sorts, but as we passed through the checkpoint, I could see it was incomplete. There wasn’t enough fence to surround the camp completely, and there were gaps where the trees were at their most dense. Presumably, the inhabitants were hoping the zombies didn’t have the persistence to push through to get at them.
The Jeep rolled slowly through the camp. It was smaller than I’d expected—just four small wooden buildings and half a dozen tents of varying sizes and styles. There weren’t many people either. I saw maybe ten or twelve tired-
looking men and women. Most of them were busy at something, carrying wood or buckets. A couple looked up at me as we drove past, but most just carried on with what they were doing.
A couple of cars were parked outside a large brown tent. The hood of one of them was raised, and there was someone working on the engine.
The Jeep came to a halt outside the largest of the permanent buildings—a ranger station. Santos immediately jumped off the Jeep and disappeared into the camp, leaving me, Novak, and the captain.
A middle-aged black woman came out of the ranger station. I avoided her gaze. Instead, I looked around the camp. I was trying to see if there was anyone there I knew.
There were two people out in the forest somewhere that had seen the real me. The last time I’d seen Alex and Lucy, they’d been in a military helicopter on its way to a ranger station. What if they’d been brought here? If they had and they saw me, they’d tell Harwood I was a liar, a dangerous sociopath. I had no idea how he’d react to that.
“Any luck, Captain Harwood?”
The captain shook his head. “We got there too late. No one survived.”
Sadness swept over the woman’s face. She bowed her head slightly and crossed herself. When she looked up again, she caught my gaze and raised her eyebrows.
“This is Marcus Black. We picked him up at the information center.”
The woman held out her hand. “Mr. Black. My name is Allison Parker.”
We shook. Her grip was firm, the skin of her hands rough. I’d pegged her as African when I saw her, but her accent was solidly American.
“Welcome to Hope,” she said.
I stifled a laugh. “Thank you. You’re the senior officer here?”
There was a little snort from behind me. Evidently, Novak found that idea amusing.
Parker smiled. Her teeth had the yellow tinge of a committed smoker. “Not exactly.” Her eyes flicked past me to the captain. “I’m in charge here, but I don’t have a military background. In fact, I’m a schoolteacher. At least I was until things went to hell.”
Serial Killer Z: Sanctuary Page 6
