“What do you know?” The mom in me surfaces, my voice taking on a no-nonsense, answer-me-now tone.
“Just—just snatches.” He fingers the black radio on his belt. “I had to turn it off so it wouldn’t attract them. But Eureka, Arcata . . . it’s bad.”
“Bad?” Tension shoots up my spine. “What do you mean by bad?”
Frederico squeezes my arm. “Keep your voice down.”
I force a lower whisper. “What do you mean by bad?”
The soldier licks his lips. “Both towns are overrun by them. Military survivors have been told to retreat to the south and reinforce the Ukiah blockade.”
Carter. I thump back against the nearest tree, feeling bleak.
“You’re too late,” Frederico says to the soldier. “We saw zombies in Healdsburg this morning. There’s no place safe.”
The soldier’s lips part. No words come out. Our harsh breathing fills the silence. In the distance, the country music blares through the trees.
Then I hear other sounds: a moan and a snarl, both of them much closer than I’d like. I peek around the copse of trees.
Despite our attempts to be quiet, we’ve managed to draw the attention of two military zombies. They’re moving through the forest in our direction.
“John and Zach,” the soldier says, voice leaden as he stares at the approaching zombies.
“We have to move.” I hesitate, then say to the soldier, “Come with us.”
I don’t relish the idea of bringing him with us, but I’m afraid if he leaves us he’ll do something stupid and get himself eaten, or worse.
“I have to go to Ukiah.” His black eyes fix on the approaching zombies.
“You need to keep yourself alive.” Frederico clasps his shoulder, giving him a gentle shove in a northward direction. “Kate’s right. You should come with us.”
He breaks into a lope. I fall into step beside him. I don’t like the idea of thrashing through the trees, but the zombies are between us and the road. What choice do we have?
The soldier follows us. His eyes are wide and wild, but he manages to put one foot in front of the other. I wish he’d put the gun away, but now isn’t the time to argue about it.
We stumble across what looks like a deer path. I jump onto it, figuring it to be better for speed and silence.
I’m right. The noise of our passage nearly disappears with the firm path beneath our feet. The zombies slow in their pursuit, turning their heads as they attempt to track us.
We run another fifty yards. I put a hand on Frederico’s arm and signal him to stop. The car music continues to blare in the distance.
Thirty seconds tick by. Sixty.
The soldier zombies turn, attention tracking back toward the road and the car. I exhale with relief as they lumber away.
“The deer path goes north,” Frederico says. “Let’s follow it as far as we can toward the bar.”
I nod, then glance at the soldier. His breathing is ragged. He clutches the gun to his chest like it’s a lifeline. Thank god the safety is on.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Alvarez.”
I figure this must be his last name, but it’ll work for now. “Nice to meet you. I’m Kate. This is Frederico.”
“We’re two crazy fucks who want to find our kids,” Frederico says. “Don’t get in our way and you can stay with us.”
His curtness tells me just how on edge he is. He breaks into a lope, leading us onward. The deer path zigzags through the woods, meandering in a northward direction. Twenty minutes later, the trees begin to thin.
“Do you see that?” I ask. “Is that a building up ahead?”
“Yeah.” His jaw tightens. “That’s Rod’s Roadhouse. Where Aleisha works. I recognize it from Google Earth.”
“You don’t want to go there,” Alvarez says. “They’re all dead. I was—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Each word falls from Frederico like a stone. The ferocious gleam in his eyes makes Alvarez clutch his gun a bit more tightly.
I squeeze the young man’s shoulder and give him what I hope is a reassuring smile. His upper lip is beaded with sweat, and he won’t meet my eye. Bringing him along may have been a mistake, but what choice did we have? He’s just a scared kid.
We slow to a walk. Details of Rob’s Roadhouse materialize as we draw near.
There are bodies in the gravel parking lot. Some in biker leathers, some in regular clothes, and a few in military fatigues. I see two military jeeps, at least a dozen motorcycles, and a few cars. Alvarez licks his lips, eyes glued to the scene.
The wood siding of the bar has faded over the years to a washed out brown. Patches of graffiti have been painted over with different colored paint, making the outside look like a schizophrenic patchwork. Rod’s Roadhouse, once a big white sign with red lettering, is now faded and pitted with holes and cracks. The “d” is missing completely, making it look like Ro’s Roadhouse. There are no windows, just double wooden doors that look like they were hijacked from a bad seventies movie.
I count seven bodies. All of them looked to have been shot in the head or bludgeoned with a heavy object. Blood is everywhere.
Dread fills me. God, why couldn’t Aleisha have moved to some other little town in the middle of nowhere?
We creep toward the edge of the gravel parking lot, none of us saying a word. We crouch behind a copse of trees, watching. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs.
“That—that’s Aleisha’s car.” There’s a hitch in Frederico’s voice. He raises a hand and points to a silver Mustang convertible that looks like it got in a fight with a semi and lost. The faded bumper sticker reads I sell pot to your honor student.
I don’t respond. I don’t know what to say. If this was the outside of Carter’s dorm room, I’d be out of my mind. Frederico is pale, his hands clenching and unclenching on the straps of his hydration pack.
“What happened here?” he asks Alvarez.
“We—” He stops, swallowing. “My platoon ran into trouble. Those guys . . .” He gestures to the downed soldiers. “My friends.” His mouth works, as if he has more to say, but no words come out. A glazed look fills his eyes. I get the feeling he’s reliving whatever horror unfolded here.
“Hey.” I squeeze his shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Alvarez blinks, coming back to the present.
“I have to find her.” Frederico stands up, eyes fixed on the heavy wooden double doors. “I have to go in.”
I rise with him. The last thing I want to do is go into this shithole of a bar that probably has zombies inside, but I don’t have a choice. If Frederico wants to go in, I have to go with him. I know without a doubt he’d do it for me. Hell, our roles might be reversed in another twenty-four hours when we get to Arcata.
My hand itches for the phone I no longer have. I want to text Carter and tell him what’s going on. Part of me knows I might not make it out of Rod’s Roadhouse. If I’m going to bite the big one, I want Carter to know about it.
“You can’t go in,” Alvarez croaks. “The things—they’re inside—they’re—”
Frederico’s face darkens. I hold up a hand to silence Alvarez before he can further agitate my friend. It’s clear we should move on, but Frederico won’t go anywhere until he lays eyes on his daughter.
“Let’s be smart about this,” I say after a moment. “Let’s see what we can find in the way of weapons on the bodies, then figure out a way to get inside without getting ourselves eaten.”
I give Alvarez a look, a silent warning not to try and talk us out of this. He shrinks in on himself, eyes locked on his dead friends.
Frederico approaches the first of the bodies. Using the dirt-encrusted sole of his running shoe, he flips it over.
Alvarez stays crouched on the edge of the woods. I make my way to one of the dead bikers. It’s a heavyset woman in chaps and a leather jacket with six-inch fringe. She’s covered with bite marks. Several of her fingers have been chewed off.
There’s a bullet hole through the center of her forehead.
Swallowing against the nausea in my gut, I force myself to go through her pockets. I don’t find any weapons, but I do find the next best thing: a cell phone.
I yank it up, swiping the screen. A text to Carter is already half-drafted in my head.
A prompt for a passcode comes up.
Shit. God dammit. I hurl the phone to the ground with a surge of frustration. Alvarez startles, fumbling his gun but managing not to drop it.
“What’s wrong?” Frederico, poised over another body, looks up at me. There’s a haunted look to his eyes that does not bode well.
I shake my head. “Nothing.” What’s a locked cell phone compared to what he’s going through?
After a thorough search of the bodies, we have two handguns and six knives between us. I hesitate when Frederico holds one of the guns out to me. I’ve never handled a gun before, let alone aimed and fired one. What if I shoot myself in the foot, or something equally stupid?
“You can have them,” I say. “I’ll stick with the knives.” They’re scary looking things, the smallest of them at least six inches long.
“You should take one.” He presses the cold metal into my hands. “Just in case.”
I open my mouth to argue. Frederico gives me a look so fierce that all protest dies on my tongue. I silently take the gun. Not knowing what else to do with it, I slip it into the waistband of my compression pants.
“There’s a bathroom window in the back,” Alvarez says, taking a few tentative steps into the parking lot. “You can get in that way. The back door—it’s, ah, barricaded.”
We don’t ask for details. My gut tells me we really, really do not want to go inside this place. I look at Frederico. In his face I see my own anxiety for Carter reflected back at me. If this were where Carter worked, nothing would stop me from going inside.
There’s got to be a way to get in without attracting attention. I scan the parking lot, searching for inspiration. My eyes land on one of the military jeeps.
“Kate, you don’t have to come with me.” Frederico levels a grim expression at me. “I know I’m walking into a shit storm. But I have to know if she’s in there. I—”
I cut him off. “We’re in this together. We came to find our kids. Besides.” I glance at the jeep. What worked once can work twice, right? “I have an idea.”
“You two are crazy,” Alvarez whispers.
I give him a faint grin. “You have no idea.”
43
Aleisha
I LAY OUT MY HASTILY assembled plan to Frederico and Alvarez. The men nod as I explain, even though Alvarez looks like he wants to vomit.
“Just wait here,” I tell him when I finish. “We’ll come back for you afterwards.”
“No.” He shakes his head resolutely, sliding his gun back into its holster. “I want to help.”
“How many zombies are inside there?” I ask.
He hesitates. “Four. Maybe five? I’m not really sure. My unit . . . We got out of there just as everyone started to go nuts. I couldn’t really count, you know?”
I nod sympathetically, gathering an idea of what happened before Alvarez found us in the woods.
Frederic’s eyes are dangerously flat as we advance on the military jeep. The windows are rolled down and the keys are still in the ignition. We throw the car into neutral and roll it against the double front doors of Rod’s Roadhouse.
Frederico then sets the parking brake and fires up the engine. It hums to life.
We stand there, listening. After a moment, we hear a soft bump against the doors of the bar, followed by a few muffled moans.
Frederico nods grimly. “Nice and distracted,” he says softly, running one hand along the side of the jeep. Without another word, he marches off toward the back of the building. Alvarez and I hurry after him.
The bathroom window is a good seven feet up, just to the left of a dumpster. Frederico locates a fist-sized rock and wraps his shirt around it. He then clambers onto the dumpster and breaks the window with the shirt-wrapped rock. He takes care to clear away the bits of glass stuck in the sill.
Between the distraction we created at the front of the bar and the dampening of the window break, we’re hoping to get inside without attracting attention.
Alvarez paces back and forth, the gun still out. He scans the landscape around us, that slight tremor still in his hands. God, I hope he doesn’t shoot off his own foot. Or worse, shoot me or Frederico.
It takes a few awkward moments for Frederico to get his legs hooked into the window. Twice he almost topples backward but at last manages to disappear inside. He’s silent during the ordeal, not even swearing.
His quiet tightens my chest with worry. I scramble onto the dumpster after him, looking inside the window. I see his curly gray hair over the bathroom stall. He’s cracked open the bathroom door and is peering out into the bar.
“You coming?” I call back to Alvarez, who’s still pacing.
He pauses to look up at me. His eyes have regained some clarity. There’s reluctance in his expression.
“On second thought, why don’t you keep watch out here,” I say, trying to give him an easy out. In all honesty, I’d rather his shaky trigger hand be a safe distance away. “We’ll be back.”
An inarticulate cry cuts me off, followed by a gunshot. I turn back to the tiny bathroom window just in time to see Frederico charge through the door. Another gunshot goes off.
“Motherfuckers!” he bellows. “You cocksucking motherfuckers!”
“Fuck!” I dive head first through the window, grappling with the wall of the stall as I haul myself in. Frederico! I scream silently, not daring to shriek out loud.
Two more gunshots sound, followed by a loud racket, like someone knocking over furniture.
“Goddammit!” I hiss. My shin drags painfully against the windowsill as I pull myself the rest of the way inside. I break my fall by hanging onto the stall. My legs dangle for a second before I drop to the floor.
“Kate? Kate!”
I hear Alvarez’s frantic voice, but I can’t spare the time—or the noise—to answer him. I draw one of the obscene knives scavenged from the parking lot and burst out of the bathroom.
It’s like walking onto the set of a Jason Stathom movie—one where he single-handedly takes on fifteen bad guys, kills them all, and leaves behind a room covered in blood and bodies. That’s what the inside of Rod’s Roadhouse looks like.
The slaughter is contained in a dark-paneled bar room. Faded Grateful Dead posters in fake gold frames fill every inch of wall space, many of them splattered with blood.
I’m just in time to see Frederico take aim at a zombie in a too-tight tank top and jean skirt. He fires the gun. Instead of hitting her in the forehead, he grazes her clavicle.
Fuck it all, my friend is a terrible shot. And now the zombie is pissed. She leans back into a crouch, snarling as she prepares to spring forward.
I sprint past Frederico, lunging at the she-zombie. My aim is true—the knife slides right into the zombie’s ear.
Just as the sharp metal pierces the soft flesh of the brain, the gun goes off again. A searing pain rips through my shoulder. I scream, reeling. Blood oozes from the zombie woman’s ear as she sways, then drops.
I drop beside her, clutching at my shoulder as hot blood drenches my arm. I’m too dazed from the pain to do anything more than stare stupidly at the wound.
“Kate!” Frederico turns horrified eyes on me. “Kate, I—”
He breaks off and aims the gun over my head. It doesn’t take a genius to know he’s spotted another zombie. I wince as he pulls the trigger, but the chamber clicks empty.
“Fuck!” He hurls the useless gun over my head.
I turn in time to see it hit a bearded zombie in the face. Frederico races past me, brandishing one of his own wicked military-issue knives. Instead of stabbing the zombie through an eye, he delivers a vicious kick to the creature’s gut.<
br />
It stumbles several steps back from the force of the kick. His lips peel back in a feral snarl, revealing blood and bits of skin stuck between his teeth.
Frederico lashes out a second time, planting one dirty running shoe in the zombie’s sternum and shoving with all his might. This time the monster trips on a chair and goes down.
“Motherfucker.” Frederico pounces, driving the knife downward. He doesn’t stab the zombie in the eye or head, but rather in the chest. “Fucking motherfucker!” The knife falls in rapid succession into the zombie’s sternum.
“Stop it!” I scream. “Stop fucking around—”
A moan brings my head whipping about. A female zombie fights her way free of several barstools, which have been thrown on top of her. She’s about five-foot-eight with brown hair that’s been bleached five too many times. She’s dressed in a slinky black dress that shows off generous cleavage and a trim waist. She’s not unattractive, though hard living has stripped away the beauty of her youth.
I’ve only met her a handful of times over the years that I’ve been friends with Frederico, but I recognize Aleisha immediately.
Vicious bite marks cover both her arms and the shin of her bare right leg. Both shoes are gone. Blood is smeared on her mouth and neck.
As she stumbles free of the barstools, I register two other zombies. Both have been shot through the head and lay on the dark, worn wooden floor in growing pools of viscous blood.
Aleisha growls, a low sound that rumbles out from deep in her throat. She takes a step in my direction.
Shit. My shoulder is on fire, not to mention saturated with blood. I am in no shape to grapple with a zombie.
She takes another step toward me, reaching out with both hands. Her lifeless white eyes roll in their sockets.
I fumble the dreaded gun out of my waistband. The feel of it in my hand turns my stomach to lead. Licking my lips, I thumb back the safety.
“Don’t shoot her!” Frederico screams. “Don’t you dare fucking shoot her!” He barrels past me, face and clothes spattered with gore.
Grabbing another barstool, he drives it into Aleisha’s chest. She snarls, slashing at him with her nails. Frederico bears her to the ground, pinning her beneath the stool. He breathes raggedly as he struggles to hold her down.
Undead Ultra Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 25
