by Dan Decker
“Yeah, Vince,” Sharon said, “why are you holding it back? I don’t like the way you’re treating me.”
It was a calculated gamble on her part. She was betting I would not bring up how she had hidden in a tent while the others had turned into zombies.
After a glance at Mike, I decided that outing her was not my best strategy as Mike might have done the exact same thing. He had likely hidden until he had thought it was safe.
“Considering how quick people have fallen, I think it wise everybody knows the call signs. Don’t you agree, Sharon?”
She was surprised at how I had turned it around. She did not miss a beat and sagely nodded her head.
“Vince is right, of course. Everybody needs to know how to make contact with the outside world. Hopefully we all make it to the extraction point without any problems, but there are half a dozen zombies and we cannot take the chance.”
I unslung my bag and pulled out the radio. When Sharon held out her hand, I turned it on but did not hand it over.
“What channel?”
Sharon told me the number and I tuned it before giving it to her, watching to make sure she did not change the dial.
“We do this together,” I said.
Sharon looked at me while biting a lip. “Okay, but Mike carries the radio after this.”
I hesitated but saw that as a preferable alternative to us wasting time to fight over it. I did not know Mike well as he had usually chosen to stay back in camp with Jill, but he was not a bad fellow. He did not appear to like Sharon any more than me. Having him carry the radio seemed reasonable. It was far more important we got out then Sharon and I continue our battle over who was in charge.
“Agreed.”
It took several minutes, but Sharon finally got her contact on the radio. She spun a story about a find of the century and how we needed to get it back to civilization as quick as possible. She also explained that only three would be coming on this flight and the others would be picked up later.
I was surprised at the deception, but figured she was concerned the pilot might not come if he felt like there was danger.
It was not how I would have handled the situation, but there would be time to set the record straight later.
Once we were safe.
After the conversation with the pilot, Sharon handed the radio to Mike who slipped it into his bag while muttering something under his breath that sounded a lot like, “I’m surrounded by crazy people as well as monsters.”
I could not argue because there was truth to his words. I was not in my most sane frame of mind and doubted I would be until after we escaped the jungle.
Sharon was bonkers.
Power trips do that to people.
“The flare?” I stared at Sharon.
She hesitated but only for a moment before pulling it out from a cargo pocket on her pant leg. Without a word she pointed it up and pulled the trigger.
I looked at my wrist and started my stopwatch to make sure we waited the entire thirty minutes.
Mike shook his head as he slung his pack over his shoulder. Something jumped out of the undergrowth and pulled him back in the blink of an eye.
42
I brought my machete up as I backed away, staring at the place where Mike had just disappeared. Strangely, instead of going for the cooler she had placed on the ground, Sharon reached for her pack. After a glance at me from the corner of her eye, she picked up the cooler as well. I was too frazzled by Mike’s disappearance to think much of it.
While I had not gotten a good look, I was certain what had taken Mike.
It was a lizard that was even larger than the one I had run into at the spaceship. This one had been at least six feet tall, double the size of the last one.
Are these things growing exponentially?
Pulling out the hammer with my other hand, I took a deep breath and moved toward the brush.
Sharon grabbed my arm. “What are you doing?” Her voice was a low hiss that was so quiet I barely heard it.
I shook off her hand without answering as I approached the place were Mike had disappeared. Preferring to have the machete at the ready, I used my hammer to part the leaves and pushed into the undergrowth.
A shuffling from behind told me that Sharon had followed. Apparently, she did not like to be alone unless she had a tent where she could cower.
I avoided making a snide remark as I got to the other side and looked for Mike. I had expected to find him with his entrails torn onto the ground, but he was not there. I dashed forward through more undergrowth, hoping to take the creature unaware.
Sharon grabbed at me again and we nearly toppled over. Freeing myself from her grip, I turned and pushed her away with my hammer.
“We don’t need him or the radio,” she said.
I looked at Sharon with cold eyes. “Mike might still be alive. I made the mistake of assuming he was dead once. I will not do it again.”
I went around the next tree and found Mike with his throat torn out and his abdominal cavity slashed open.
The lizard appeared to be gone, but I made a careful patrol of the surrounding area just to make sure. Each step seemed to take forever, the slightest sound threatening to give me a heart attack.
I was only halfway through when I heard a cracking behind me and turned to see Sharon standing over Mike’s body. She was reaching for his pack.
“Stop.” I brandished the machete and held the hammer like I was going to throw it. “I will take control of the radio.” I gave her a cold smile. “Curious that is the first thing you thought of, particularly since you just got done saying we no longer need it.”
Sharon’s hands stopped above Mike’s bag, she looked at me as if weighing whether I would make good on my threat. Eventually she must have decided she did not want to risk it because she backed away.
“Further,” I said. “Go back further.”
She shook her head. “No. We must stick together. You misread my intentions. I would not leave you.”
I snorted, not even pretending that I believed her.
“You said we don’t need him. Those words are still ringing in my ears. Maybe you should not claim to care about me right after trying to abandon Mike.”
There was a line of tracks that led away from him in the moist ground that I had not noticed before. As near as I could tell the creature was gone. I kept careful watch for it from my peripheral vision so I did not take my eyes off Sharon as I procured the radio and slipped it back into my own bag.
She watched me with cold eyes.
“There is safety in numbers,” I said not wanting to sound like I was desperate to keep her around, but also knowing that as long as she was with me, my odds of surviving were that much greater, if only because she presented another option when the creature returned.
“Indeed, there is.”
I did not like how she looked at me.
“How about you go first?” I suggested.
43
I studied Mike as Sharon left, wondering if he would start to move if we gave him long enough. Would it take three days or would he be moving in a couple of minutes? The unanswered question about why Sandy had taken so long bothered me. I hated the discrepancy and could not get past it.
I did not believe for one second that Sandy had changed into a monster and laid low in her tent for three days before attacking. I was certain that when we left that morning, she had not been a zombie but by the time we returned to camp she was killing people.
There must be a difference between a lizard bite and a zombie bite. Or maybe it’s in the blood. Mike is covered in zombie blood.
This was why I edged away from Mike without turning my back on him until I was a sufficient distance away.
It was a good thing I had, because a moment later I heard a groan from behind that sent chills down my spine. Sharon and I exchanged a look before looking back at Mike who was just starting to move.
Cursing, Sharon and I took off at a run, a
ll thoughts of waiting for other survivors driven from our minds.
When we arrived at the trail, we ran as fast as we could toward the extraction point.
We went for a good three miles before we stopped to take a breath. We had not seen Mike since we had left him on the ground in a pool of his blood, but there were so many monsters about that I kept turning at the slightest sound. When birds chittered in the tree above me, I was up on my feet with both my weapons in hand before I realized what I had done. They sounded like the lizard I had killed a few days ago.
I had been afraid it was calling capybara minions.
On another occasion Sharon would have chittered with laughter, but she reacted in a similar way, hopping to her feet and pulling out a knife.
It was not an average pocket knife. It was longer than seven inches and looked mean.
I eyed her weapon and motioned again for her to take the lead. She gave me a grim smile as she did just that. I shook my head as I followed.
She had pulled that deadly knife out of nowhere. I would not have been put off by a little pocketknife, but that blade meant business. I had not seen it before; despite the fact I had been with her nearly every day for the better part of two months. It seemed like she had taken care to keep others from knowing about it.
What else did she have that I was not aware of?
I had been hesitant to put her at my back before, but it was not going to happen now. I would risk being attacked by a monster before she took up the rear.
The next mile and a half passed without us saying anything. At one point during the break I pulled out my phone and recorded a video in a low voice, so that if something happened there was at least a chance of my final words getting back to my parents, I even left a will of sorts, telling my younger brother Sam that he could have all my electronics.
Sharon had stepped off the trail to go to the bathroom and after I relieved myself, I made the recording while I waited for her. I expected her to not come back, but a few minutes later, just as I was thinking of going on without her, she did.
It is better to know where she is.
She looked surprised I was still there but neither of us said a word as she took the lead without my prompting. She had not seemed bothered that I had insisted she walk before me and I could not help but feel like she somehow thought like she had the situation under control. That was something that had been consistent in my experience with her.
Once I get out of this jungle, I don’t ever want to see her again.
It was difficult to describe what it was that caught my attention, but there was a glimmer of movement to the side that made me hiss almost inaudibly to Sharon.
She stopped as I brought up my weapons, both of which I had in hand. At first, they had given me comfort, but I felt that no longer after seeing the largest lizard. It had been a false sense of protection, because out here, even if I had been armed with a gun, the lizards had the advantage.
“What is it?”
I shook my head and focused on where I had seen the movement. Sharon followed my gaze and was about to go on when I reached out and touched her with the head of my hammer. The move surprised her and she jumped, but when she saw that I was not about to attack, she focused again on where I was looking. Just as I was about to think we were safe I saw what I was looking for.
An eye.
It blinked.
It was the lizard that had killed Mike, waiting to ambush us. It was ten feet back from the trail and twenty feet ahead of where we stood, but considering how fast it moved, I knew we could die within a matter of seconds.
“I see it,” Sharon said so softly I could have dismissed her words as the breeze that ruffled the back of my neck.
It was not the breeze that made me feel cold.
The creature looked at us, seeming to sense something was wrong. It disappeared like it just melted into the undergrowth.
I strained my eyes to pinpoint where it was going and what it was doing, but there was nothing. It moved in a way I could never hope to. Ten seconds passed and then twenty, soon a full minute had elapsed and I wondered why it had not yet attacked.
Was it alone?
I had only ever seen these lizards by themselves, but it was not a stretch to imagine they might hunt in packs.
Where had these come from? How had they not been found before now? Why had every single lizard been a different size?
Perhaps they have been discovered, only nobody lived to tell the tale.
It was difficult to believe these had been here all along, without anybody bringing them to light. We were missing something, but I did not have a clue what it could be.
“I think we should move,” Sharon said.
I nodded, if the creature wanted to get us it would. There was a reason it had not attacked, but I could not fathom what that was. Perhaps it liked to take people by surprise. Whatever it was, we were just as much at risk standing as we were moving.
I looked at my watch, we still had an hour before the helicopter was due to arrive and a mile or so to go. It would not have normally been a problem.
When Sharon started moving, I followed, staring intently into the jungle as we did. Wherever this creature was, it was too close.
Ten minutes later we stopped and I drunk my last water. Sharon had a full bottle but I did not think of asking for a sip and she did not offer me one.
I would not have taken one even if she had.
When we started again, I heard a crack to the side, but there was nothing. Sharon increased her speed, jogging fast enough that I could not help but wonder if she was trying to outrun me. I kept up, using the machete to chop branches out of my way instead of trying to duck under. The first time I did, Sharon jumped and looked back, but after that she did not falter.
We ran like that for a quarter mile, maybe less.
Sharon lurched to a stop.
As I came up behind her I was focused more on our surroundings and not on what was in front. It was not until Sharon nudged me that I looked ahead and saw that zombies blocked our path.
44
“How did they get ahead of us?” I asked, staring at the zombies that looked like they had been ordered to line up. I noticed with chagrin that Bill was among them. Apparently, I had not done as good of a job tying him down as I had thought.
The only one missing was Mike, but I had a feeling he would be coming from behind. Eric was there too.
That leaves Carmen, Frank, Harold, and Jim, wish I knew if Eric was a zombie before Sandy went on her rampage.
“Looks like they went straight through the jungle while we went around the long way.” Sharon spoke as if to herself, but I nodded, amazed that the apparently mindless zombies had not only been able to form a group, but had also managed to head us off.
It reminded me of how those capybaras had obeyed the lizard’s orders.
Several of the zombies looked our way, one took a step as if to come our direction, but stopped as if something held it back.
I looked around. “I don’t like this. This is bad, on a lot of different levels.”
Sharon nodded while continuing to study the zombies, before she turned. “You should have told me what you knew before all this happened.”
“If you would have—”
Sharon cut me off. “No, Vince. It is you that condemned our team to death. If you had shared what you learned—what you had seen—I could have foreseen what came.”
“Really? You have made every single decision based on what is best for you, not the team.” My voice was starting to rise as I spoke and I could not keep my anger from coming out. “While I was fighting monsters hoping to find the radio, you cowered in your tent.”
“You knew Sandy was turning into a zombie and said nothing.”
“I knew nothing of the sort.”
“You hid the spaceship.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the zombies had still not moved, drawing my attention.
“We don’t need to d
o their job for them.” I looked at Sharon. “I might have made a mistake, but I didn’t know what I was dealing with. You’re a coward and you’re going to have to live with that for the rest of your life.”
Sharon shifted and I thought she was gonna pull out her knife. She folded her hands in front of her instead, it appeared I had misread her intentions.
Is this about the eggs?
Destroying those eggs was the best decision I had made. If it meant Sharon and I did not escape from this infernal jungle, so be it. I realized what was happening at the exact same moment I heard movement from all around.
We were surrounded by lizards before we could react.
45
The lizard I had previously encountered at the spaceship was the smallest of the three. It stood to the side, chittering as it looked at me with curious eyes. Of the remaining two, one had a red stripe running down its green back. It stood in front, looking at us in turn.
“Why haven’t they attacked?” Sharon asked in a quiet murmur.
I shook my head, startled not only by their sudden appearance but also by the fact we were still alive. The lizard to my right continued to make noise, as did the one to the left of Sharon. It was as if they were trying to convince the one in the middle to take a course of action.
That one remained silent.
I would have pegged him at almost six feet tall and the second largest at five. There were no obvious characteristics to identify the one in front as male but I thought of it as such and decided the other two looked female.
“What have you gotten me into, Vince?”
I did not respond.
Sharon was just as much to blame.
We should not have wasted time throwing accusations. If I would have turned my attention to the strange behavior of the zombies, I might have figured out what was happening sooner, perhaps we could have had time to at least climb a tree.
I looked at the claws of the lizards and figured that they could climb, so perhaps that might not have been the right idea. We could have done anything; instead, we had been caught unaware because we were fighting.
