Maybe he’d ask before killing them.
The men were in the middle of the yard, just past the fire. Diagonally to Keller’s right was the shed; fifteen feet to the left of it was the oak tree. The infected woman strained against her bindings, shrieking at the gruesome scene. Keller snuck through the grass, keeping an eye on the men, gaining confidence as he crawled. Even if the men saw him, he’d take care of them. He didn’t even need Dan’s gun. The man had offered it, but Keller had insisted he keep it to protect his family.
Keller planned on taking it later, anyway.
He reached the edge of the grass. He was ten feet from the shed. Keller glanced at the men, confirming they were distracted, and then sprinted to the small building. When he reached it, he pressed his back against the wall and waited. The fire crackled; the men laughed.
The infected woman moaned.
No one heard him. He peered around the side of the shed, confirming he was safe, and then worked his way around the shed. When he’d reached the far side, he peered around at the oak tree.
The sun had slid from view, tinting the yard orange. Jed stoked the fire with an infected limb, then returned to his perch next to Marvin.
Keller sprinted for the oak tree, his heart battering against his ribcage. As he made his way across the lawn, his body felt like it was on automatic, his brain running a program. It was the feeling he always felt before he killed, the feeling of maximizing his potential. The feeling of being alive. He stole a glance down the driveway and past the pickup, thinking he might see his companions crouched in the grass across the street, but they were too far away. When he reached the oak tree, he clung to the back of it. The infected woman hissed from the other side.
Using his knife, Keller cut her loose.
He peered around the trunk, watching her stagger across the lawn. He smiled as she found her targets. The sadistic celebration of the brothers was cut short, replaced by their surprised, terrified screams.
“Holy shit! Mom?!”
“How did she—?”
Keller ducked out of sight, letting chaos ensue. When he peered back around the tree, he saw the woman shoving fistfuls of Jed into her mouth. Marvin had been wounded. He stumbled toward her, his arm bleeding, and gored her in the back.
Keller broke from the tree, covering the gap between him and Marvin, clutching his knife. In seconds he’d pulled Marvin away from his mother, and he thrust the knife into the man’s side. Keller felt the wet spurt of blood on his hand, but he continued stabbing, listening to Marvin gasp for breath. The knife felt like a third hand as he weaved it in and out of the man’s side and stomach. When Marvin finally stopped struggling, Keller threw him to the ground.
The infected woman continued to feast on Jed, oblivious to the knife protruding from her back where Marvin had stabbed her. Keller bent down and wiped his hands on the grass. His pulse was pounding, but he felt good—better than he had in quite some time. He rode the waves of adrenaline and bliss, listening to the slap of the old woman’s gums as she finished eating her son. When she’d completed her meal, she turned to look at him, her black eyes reflecting the glow of the firelight.
Keller stared at the infected woman for a moment, trying to read her expression. Her mouth hung open, dripping gore. Perhaps she was grateful for the moment of freedom.
Without another thought, Keller advanced and plunged the blade into her forehead, then removed it, watching her topple face-first into the mess she’d made.
21
After parting ways with Tim, the others trekked across the street, Ernie in tow. They dipped into the field at the other side of the road and stole toward the house. The thought of Tim out there alone, armed with only a knife, made Dan nervous. He envisioned the heads of the infected that Marvin and Jed had hung on the clothesline, then imagined them driving pitchforks into the wounded creatures they’d captured. If the brothers caught sight of Tim, he was certain Tim would face a similar fate.
He’d warned Tim not to take any chances. He’d even argued with the man about going, but Tim had insisted on executing the plan. Over the course of a day, the man had proven himself a trustworthy ally, and Dan was grateful he’d accompanied them. He just hoped Tim would be quiet and careful.
The building loomed closer. The house was no more attractive from the front than the rear; the windows were cracked, the paint was peeling, the porch bannisters were broken.
When they reached the property line, Dan, Quinn, John, and Meredith peered across the street and down the driveway. The pickup was unguarded. By the sounds of it, the brothers were still engaged in their gory business. However, both the men and the fire were out of view. Meredith crouched next to Dan, watching. Behind them, John and Quinn perused the fields, ensuring no creatures approached their location.
“Do you see Tim?” Meredith whispered.
Dan shook his head. “No.”
“I hope he’s okay.”
“Me too. He promised he’d get out of there at the first sign of trouble.”
They kept their eyes glued to the pickup, waiting for a sign from their companion. An occasional burst of laughter pierced the air. Dan clutched his pistol with both hands. He heard Meredith sucking in one nervous breath after another. Moments later, a shadow darted out from behind the shed. Tim, Dan thought. Tim raced across the yard and out of sight. Dan waited for a reaction from the men, some sign that Tim had completed his mission, but there was nothing.
Then screams erupted. Dan heard the infected woman groan, the unmistakable sounds of men in pain.
He scrambled to his feet, scanning the driveway. Had he missed Tim’s signal? As soon as Dan saw the man, he was to run to the truck and check for keys.
“Stay down!” he hissed to his companions.
Dan started across the street, heart stammering. He stared at the slice of backyard that was visible from the road, but saw only the outline of the shed and the flicker of the distant, dwindling fire. He was halfway across the street when a figure raced toward him. It was Tim. Tim was out of breath, carrying two rifles.
“Tim!” he hissed. “You all right?”
“I’m fine!”
“What happened?”
“They’re dead. Their mother took care of them. But I got the keys. They’re in my pocket. We should hurry; I heard more activity behind the shed. There are more infected coming.”
Dan turned and called for his companions. “Come on!”
Meredith, John, Quinn, and Ernie burst from the field, headed for the driveway. Tim opened the pickup and handed Dan the keys. Tim’s hands were covered in blood.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dan asked, his breath heaving.
“I’m fine,” Tim said. “I had to dig for the keys. Marvin had them in his pocket. It wasn’t pretty.”
Dan surveyed the interior of the truck. The vehicle was a two-seater, with little room behind the seats. The vehicle was filled with bottles and trash. He ushered Meredith and Quinn and Ernie inside and gave Meredith the keys. Then he closed the door. He motioned for Tim and John to jump in the truck bed, then did so himself.
Meredith fired the engine.
The pickup growled in protest, as if it hadn’t been started in days, and a puff of exhaust billowed out the back. Dan rapped on the window.
“All set!” he yelled. “Get out of here, Meredith!”
22
Dan watched the sun start to set from the bed of the pickup. The breeze was cool against his skin. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the cab window, remembering what he’d seen Jed and Marvin do. The image of the brothers slicing the infected was imprinted in his brain like a nightmare he kept reliving. The fact that Tim reported them dead gave him no satisfaction. They were just two more dead faces in the graveyard of his mind.
It felt like days since Dan
had slept, though it’d only been hours. His hair was matted with sweat; his clothes were filthy from a day’s worth of travel. He’d give anything for an uninterrupted night’s sleep, though he doubted that would happen soon.
The nap he’d taken earlier did little to sate his need for rest.
Tim and John were on either side of him, holding the rifles Tim had secured. Every so often, Dan attempted conversation, but for the most part, his words were lost to the wind.
Fields whipped past them, the scenery both beautiful and foreboding. Several times, Dan witnessed the infected stalking through the grass or hovering by the roadside. The creatures barely responded to the pickup. It was as if they’d already decided the truck wasn’t worth the effort, or that they couldn’t reach it.
Dan was glad to be in a vehicle rather than on foot.
A sign for Abbotsville flitted past. Ten miles. As exhausted as Dan was, he was glad to be making progress. His eyes drifted to the sky, as if to conjure the chopper the others had seen, but the horizon remained dim and cloudless, devoid of life. The sun slipped farther into the east.
Dan tried to repress his biggest fear—that they’d find no help in Abbotsville, and that darkness would descend before they found shelter. The thought of being outside and alone with the creatures was a frightening one. As if to reinforce his fears, Meredith turned the headlights on.
The pickup hit a bump in the road, and Dan jolted in the pickup bed. He turned around. The road curved. Several houses appeared at the road’s edge, dim and lifeless. When he looked back his companions, he noticed Tim’s face had darkened.
“What is it, Tim?” he asked.
“I thought I saw something up ahead.”
“What was it? People? A car?”
“I’m not sure. It was past those houses. Around the curve.”
Dan stared between the two front seats, his eyes playing over the road. He raised his hand to rap the glass, ready to alert Meredith. He kept his eyes glued to the road. No sooner had the curve straightened than he saw a large mass of bodies walking away from them, about a hundred feet away. Even in the sun’s dying glare, Dan could tell they were infected. The horde swaggered as it moved, limbs and heads cocked at odd angles. A few creatures crawled on hands and knees, as if they were soldiers in a trench, hell-bent on escaping a warzone.
“Meredith!” Dan shouted, banging the glass.
She careened to a halt. A few dozen bodies turned in their direction. More creatures spilled from the tall grass at the roadside, as if they’d been hiding in the cover of the landscape, waiting for someone to happen by. The infected had already swarmed the vehicle.
“Turn around, Meredith!” Dan yelled.
Meredith reversed, but the creatures had already flanked the vehicle on both sides. Quinn screamed, the sound of her voice muffled by the closed windows.
John and Tim stood in the truck bed, knocking back the creeping hands that were already trying to get up and over. Dan kicked at several as they threw their elbows over the truck bed. The pickup’s tires whirred, stuck on a mountain of bodies—both standing and fallen.
“We’re stuck!” Meredith yelled from the cab, revving the accelerator.
The infected raked the sides of the vehicle, glaring at the passengers with black eyes and open mouths. Ernie’s barks were like gun bursts.
“Try driving forward!” Dan cried. His words were lost in the moans of the infected.
Meredith made an effort, but the street was dense with the things. Dan kicked at an infected dangling over the side of the truck bed. It pressed its hands to the floor as if it were an insect adhering to a flytrap. He gave it another swift boot, sending it tumbling backward. Beside him, Tim and John fought similar battles.
In his peripheral vision, Dan saw Tim raise his rifle and fire. The gun blast screamed in Dan’s eardrums. Fists pounded on the side of the vehicle like beats in a tribal song. Across from Dan, one of the creatures had gotten over the passenger side, and it shrieked and got to its feet. Dan lifted his gun, but before he could squeeze off a shot, the thing barreled into him, pitching him to the side of the truck bed. Dan wobbled, the hiss of the creatures behind him overshadowing the ringing in his ears. He caught his balance just in time to avoid falling. The creature mushed against him, its teeth inches away. Dan pushed it off him, pressed the pistol into its chest, and fired, giving him enough leeway to pitch it over the side.
It fell into a shrieking mound of others.
Meredith continued to change gears, alternating between drive and reverse. One of the headlights burst, pitching the road into semi-darkness. Quinn screamed louder.
The vehicle began to roll.
Dan felt a wave of relief. He continued to fight back the swarm, countering the groping hands around him. But they were clearing the mob.
“Keep going, Meredith!” he shouted.
He glanced quickly at the cab, verifying Meredith and Quinn were still out of danger. They were. When he turned back, he saw something that made his heart somersault.
John had pitched over the edge of the truck bed. The man screamed in anguish as he fell.
“John!”
A wave of cold terror washed over Dan. He lunged for the man, but he wasn’t in time to reach him. Tim was yelling, but Dan could hardly hear the words.
“I couldn’t hold onto him!” Tim shouted. “He fell!”
“Meredith! Stop!” Dan banged on the glass, as if the urgency of his request might save his friend. But he knew it was too late.
Meredith screeched to a halt.
Dan knocked back the bodies, scanning the place where John had fallen, but discerned little more than a mountain of outstretched limbs. He finally spotted his companion at the bottom of the horde, simultaneously being trampled and eaten. John had stopped screaming, his final moments drowned out by the roar of the infected.
“No!” Dan screamed.
He raised his pistol and fired. The bullets hit several of the infected, sending a few of the creatures reeling. But more took their place, tearing at John. The man’s body was lifeless, still. The infected shrieked louder, as if the taste of blood had deepened their resolve to get to the others.
The window opened, and Meredith’s voice rang out from the cab.
“Where is he?” she yelled frantically.
“He’s gone!” Dan booted another infected off the side. “We have to leave!”
Tim fired next to him. Another infected fell backward.
“I’m not leaving without him!” Meredith shrieked.
She pounded the steering wheel, shouting uselessly for John. The mob thickened. If they didn’t leave, they’d share his fate.
“Meredith! Drive now, before it’s too late!”
She didn’t answer.
“Now!” Dan barked again, with as much force as he could muster.
Suddenly the vehicle was careening backward, crunching bodies and limbs under its tires. Meredith reversed fifty feet and turned the wheel. Then she drove forward, heading in the opposite direction. Dan crouched down, clutching at the floor to keep his balance. His eyes met Tim’s. The man looked like he was in shock. They’d successfully gotten away from the mob, but not in time to save their friend.
The vehicle sped off into the night with one less passenger.
23
How could this have happened? Meredith was still in shock.
She uttered the words over and over in her head. In the rearview mirror, she watched the bodies of the infected sway in the taillights’ glow, like dancers in the street. The remaining headlight of the truck barely lit up the road in front of her. It felt like she was living in a nightmare.
Her brain was functioning several steps behind reality.
John can’t be dead. He can’t be.
She’d s
een him just a few minutes ago, swinging his rifle, fighting the infected with as much vigor as the others. For all she knew, he was still back there, waiting for them at the side of the road. Dan must be mistaken.
Meredith swerved to the side of the road and parked. Quinn sobbed quietly next to her.
Meredith opened the cab window, unbuckled her seatbelt, and stuck her head out. “We need to go back! John’s still alive,” she screamed at Dan, as much to convince herself as to convince him. “He’s there, he’s waiting…”
“He isn’t, Meredith,” Dan said.
“I saw him, Meredith. He didn’t make it. They got him.” Tim crept across the truck bed. “It was my fault. One of them grabbed hold of his rifle, and he tried to hold onto it, but they pulled him over. I couldn’t catch him in time…”
“Are you sure he’s gone…?” she whispered.
Meredith stared from Dan to Tim. Both men nodded. She clenched her eyes shut, tears streaming down her face. Then she closed the window and buckled her seatbelt. Quinn leaned against her. The little girl cried silently.
Meredith dried her face with her shirt and shifted into drive.
The pickup rattled and groaned beneath her. She could still hear the distant moans of the infected, and she pictured them feasting on John. Feasting on the man she loved. Stop it, Meredith. If she envisioned the scene any longer, she’d lose it completely. She focused on driving, immersing her body in the task, trying to figure out the next turn.
Memories of John came rushing back.
They’d had a tumultuous year together, but over the past few days, they’d grown closer than they’d ever been. She recalled rescuing him from the furniture store, tending his wounds at the movie theater. The battle they’d had at her farm. They’d survived all of it together.
Contamination Box Set [Books 0-7] Page 84
