by Chris Lowry
I grabbed Tyler’s rifle before he took off after Bem and held it. He glanced at me, then reached into the waist of his pants and pulled out a pistol before he followed her.
One by one they crawled away as I watched the boardwalk above and the men out by the dune.
The light grew brighter. Still no sun, but it was moments away, and when it was up, the cloudless sky would shine a spotlight where we were and where we went.
Byron and the Boy stopped five houses away, far enough and dim enough I couldn’t make out their features, just the shape of them as they turned and waited.
Their turn to watch over me.
My body screamed as I began crawling. Wet clothes covered in sand, aching muscles stiff and swollen. No telling what kind of bacteria from the pool in the scrapes and wounds.
I moved fast, as fast as I could toward them.
Byron lifted his rifle and sighted over me, and I froze, but the Boy waved me forward.
I glanced back just to be sure.
There was no one there, no one watching, but the hunters had turned and they were making their way back to the mansion.
The light was bright enough they would see our passage in the sand.
I popped up to hands and knees and crawled faster.
Brian picked a good exit point between two houses. The yellow grass didn’t show prints, but I could see the churned sand that marked our way like a beacon.
I stopped at the Boy and Byron.
“Do you know where the boat is?”
“I do,” the Boy stammered before Byron could say anything.
“Get them there,” I told Byron and pushed him toward Brian and the rest of them.
“Make a mess,” I said to the Boy and pointed further up the dune.
He turned and began crawling, swirling sand in his passage, churning up more track for the hunters to trace. I followed in his wake, adding my own trail to his.
Six houses further, I grabbed his ankle and didn’t mention the yelp he let escape from his lips.
He turned inland and scrambled on the shell pathway until we were hidden from the beach by trees and homes. Then we stood.
“Take us to the river,” I said. “Eyes up.”
I wasn’t sure if there were more hunters on this side, or searching for us.
But we needed to be careful.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We made the boat without encountering any hunters. Tyler, Bem and Brian stood on the shore, waiting.
It was a thirty two foot party barge on triple pontoons, and I was glad to see Brian had outfitted everyone with an oar.
We were going to run silent across the water.
No one said a word as the Boy traded his gun for a paddle and sat near his sister at the front of the pontoon.
Brian directed me to the seat behind the wheel, spun it around to face the stern.
“Keep watch,” he said.
He shoved us off from the pier, and let the slow current catch us. We didn’t so much as paddle as meander. He let the river do the work, pulling us downstream toward the North causeway and the mouth of the river where it met the ocean.
He sat on the back of the boat and used a paddle as a rudder.
I’d have to ask him where he learned the skill, and it was a skill. He steered into the current and zig zagged across the river.
I wanted to watch, maybe to pick something up, but I kept my eyes trained on the bank we left behind.
“Now,” Brian called as we reached the halfway mark and the others began paddling.
At first, their rhythm was off, but after a few strokes they settled into a steady pull together.
I had guessed twenty minutes to cross the river the night before. I was off by five. We made it in fifteen.
Brian steered us toward a common dock at a park, less than ten minutes from where we parked the bus.
A ping bounced off the roof of the pontoon and I saw the flash of sunlight on a lens on the other side of the river.
Figures gestured and pointed back where we were, two hundred yards or so away.
One of them aimed a rifle at us and fired again.
We couldn’t hear the echo of the gunshot. It was caught by the wind and carried away from us, too far to travel across the water.
But the bullet clanked into the console next to me.
I lifted the rifle and aimed back. Aimed high for wind, to the right for the drop and shot.
It slammed into the guy next to the shooter and pitched him sideways into the water.
I was aiming for the shooter.
We bounced off the wood dock and Brian leaped up. He wrapped a thin rope around a post and started shoving people up and over.
We were too exposed out on the water, the dock open to the sky, and the far side of the river.
But there was a building, an event center fifty yards further away.
He directed them toward it, and they ran hunched over, toward the shelter of the structure.
I stood on the stern of the rocking ship and shot back but I didn’t hit anyone else.
Blame the waves, the light bouncing off the water, or maybe my fear of someone hitting one of us.
But I kept their aim off. They were just as scared of getting shot.
Brian rolled onto the dock.
“Go! Go!” he shouted and I popped up and pounded after him.
Once we put the building between us and the shooters, I took a breath.
“Anyone hit?” I asked.
“You are,” said the Boy.
I looked down. There was a hole in my shirt, hole in my stomach.
“Shit,” I said.
“They’re coming,” Byron called out as he peered around the wall of the building. “They’ve got a boat too.”
Anna lifted my shirt and tried to examine the wound.
“We’ve got to move,” I said.
Or think I did. It may have come out a little warbled. Garbled.
“We’ve got to move,” Brian shoved Raymer and Peg toward the bus.
Tyler grabbed me by one arm, the Boy the other and helped me stumble toward after the group as we ran.
Anna ripped my shirt as we pounded along. I had it easy. The two boys were almost carrying me.
She tied a strip of cloth around my midsection, cinched it tight.
“Ow,” I groaned.
“Oh that you feel,” she snapped.
The bus hove into view. Still there. Untouched. Waiting.
Peg opened the doors and cranked the engine. Everyone dashed on board in a mad scramble of limbs and grunts.
Or maybe that was me as Tyler and Brian grabbed my arms and helped me in. The Boy lifted my feet.
They laid me down in the back as the rumble of the engine grew louder and Peg did her best imitation of me in a yellow convertible as she burned rubber to get us going.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I expected chaos. I got Anna and Bem.
They kneeled on either side of me, working in tandem.
“Through and through,” Anna said as she tilted me to one side and removed the shirt tied around me.
“We have to stop the bleeding,” Bem said.
“It may have nicked something,” said Anna. “This is going to hurt.”
She warned me.
Then she stuck her finger inside of me. It was just the pinky, just the tip to feel around and I didn’t scream.
I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth and when I opened them again, they were done.
Who said there’s no dignity in passing out from pain. It let me skip some of the hard stuff.
That’s not to say it didn’t hurt.
It did. A lot.
The slick mess on the floor, wadded up sheets stained crimson and black, and the tight dressing wrapped around my middle let me know they had done some work.
“Look at me,” Anna said, eyes locked on mine. “You’re going to get an infection. We need to find medicine. Alcohol.”
“Whatever was in the pool was on your skin,” Be
m said. “It’s in you now.”
I nodded. I got it. As soon as I moved my head, I got it even more. Fever. Aches.
“How long was I out?”
“Twenty minutes,” Brian peeked over the seat to the section we had cleared for sleeping in the back. “Your son knew the way so he’s directing Peg.”
I tried to sit up, fought a wave of nausea and black cloud in my vision.
“That’s a fast infection,” I said.
“It may be more,” Anna sniffed. “We don’t know what was in the water. Or on the bullet.”
I nodded. Or tried to.
“We’ll find what we need,” I said. “A bottle of whiskey will work wonders.”
“I like an old fashioned,” Brian said.
I reached out for Anna’s hand with one of mine. Reached for Bem with the other.
They were nice enough to ignore my grimace.
“You’ve pulled me through worse,” I told Anna.
She shook her head.
“Not like this.”
“It’s just a flesh wound,” I glanced at Brian.
He snorted.
“You’re scaring us,” he said in a soft voice. “You don’t have to take all the chances.”
I wanted to tell him it wasn’t my idea to get shot. That some idiot with a rifle got lucky.
But I kept quiet.
And hoped my luck hadn’t run out. I needed it to hold til we reached Oviedo. Til we found Bis.
Then we could hole up someplace off the grid and I’d heal. With or without whiskey.
“Water,” I said. “I need water.”
Bem passed me a bottle and I sipped the sulfur tang of Florida’s aquifer, tried not to gag.
“We’re going to be fine,” I told them as I leaned back in the blanket.
My tired body was ready for a rest. I just needed to hold out for forty minutes. An hour tops.
Then we’d find her.
“Rest,” Anna tucked a blanket in around me.
A nap until we got there. That sounded good.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We didn't know it was over until it was. Bullets ripped through the side of the bus, shattering windows that fell in razor sharp bits of shrapnel. People screamed and ducked, fell to the floor, bits and bloody sprays arced across the seats.
Peg slumped out of the driver's seat, one hand gripped on the wheel. It yanked the bus sideways, carried it off the road. The long roaming home of ours for the past few weeks bounced off the asphalt, across slick grass and tilted.
The speed of the bus, the angle of the berm, all worked together and sent it tilting up on two wheels. A crazy stunt if it were a movie, but full of screaming men, women and children it was a rolling nightmare.
Gravity grabbed the roof and completed the tilt, slammed the side of the vehicle into the sandy brown dirt. It slid into a palm tree that crumpled a dent in the roof.
We were bounced around. Off the floor, into the side of the bus that was now the floor. Bodies jammed against cracked and blasted windows.
Screams of fear replaced with wails of terror, and pain and grief. Bullets still pinged off the undercarriage of the bus, but we were safer now, the thick iron acting as a shield.
It bought us time. Moments only, maybe. But time.
I stood up and grabbed the side of a seat above my head for balance. The world was still spinning, salty sticky blood leaking from a cut in my hair, another over that eye. My side burning like a hot poker shoved through it.
My hip hurt where I landed. Stiff, swollen.
"Rifle!" It came out as a croak.
Besides, no one was listening to me.
Weak light leaked through the shattered front windshield, a spiderweb of reflections on the wall of the bus. Now the floor.
Brian crawled, dragging an ankle as he skittered toward Peg. She lay at an awkward angle on the door, blood on her head, her arms, her face.
I took a step forward. My boot hit the rifle I wanted and I bent over to pick it up.
And woke up with a new scuff mark on my face. Barrel under my fingers. I gripped it and scooted to my back.
People still cried, wails and snuffles, so I must have only dropped for a second, maybe two.
Long enough for shadows to appear at the back door. Hands working the exterior handle.
I watched the emergency bar on the inside slip up in a half circle, a crack of light lining the upper edge of the door as the shadows stepped back to let it fall open.
Then the grip was in my hand, the stock against my shoulder as I sat up, let the tunnel vision narrow my field of focus to just the heads that appeared in the light.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Three dropped as they tried to peek in, the rest of the shadows fell back.
A hand grabbed me by the collar and yanked me behind a seat as they fired back. Bullets bit into the metal, sliced into the seats, puffed out bits of stuffing, but the layers kept most of us safe.
For a moment.
Byron grabbed Tyler and the Boy. Kicked out the shattered windshield and they began shooting before they rolled out.
I saw them split. Two toward the front of the bus. The Boy used the hood to climb to the side that was our roof. He pounded down it.
I could hear them shooting, firing. The chatter of their rifles as they concentrated fire on a position slightly behind us.
Their movement drew the hunters.
I shoved up, lurched to the open emergency door and leaned out. Took my time. Aimed. Fired.
Rat. A. Tat. Tat.
The gunfire stopped. Smoke drifted across the ambush sight. Dead bodies littered the asphalt above where we crashed.
The Boy dropped off the roof. Tyler and Byron limped around the front of the bus. Tyler cradled his left arm, blood cascading down the thin fabric of his shirt.
Hurt. But alive.
I didn't know if I could say that about the rest of us.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“We were lucky,” Brian cursed under his breath.
Damn lucky. I agreed with him. Our wounded were lined up in the shade of palm trees on the side of the road, resting on blankets. Bound. Bloodied. Battered.
But alive.
Even Peg, who was hurt the worst besides me. A slug sliced into the meat of her shoulder, bounced off the bone in the socket and took a nip from her neck as it kept going.
A nicked artery sounded bad, and she was white from blood loss. But alive.
All of us.
I fought back a wave of vertigo, let the world spin for a moment, and then it passed.
“You need to sit,” said Anna through swollen lips.
She had landed on her face in the tumble, smacked it against the metal edge of a seat.
Blood clotted in her hair, dried in sprinkles down her shirt.
I could see shadow figures lumber from the woods further back. Our Z friends coming to visit. Coming to check on us to see if we needed help.
Like good neighbors.
“See who can move,” I said.
“No one,” Brian snapped.
I watched him. Just watched him. He earned the right to snap because he was my best friend after the Z apocalypse. He had saved me. I had saved him.
I was ahead, but who kept count.
“Sorry,” he said and trudged to check on our wounded.
I rummaged through the wreckage where Tyler, the Boy and Byron stacked what we could salvage, and pulled a pike free.
A pike was Brian’s invention. Technically, it belonged to the middle ages, a throwback to a sharp bladed spear medieval foot soldiers used to jab, poke and stab their enemies in battle.
Brian just modified it for a new dark ages.
We took long metal fence poles, wrapped the handle in duct tape to make a better grip. Then jammed a machete blade into the far end, wrapped it in wire and tape to make sure it wouldn’t come loose in a fight.
