by Raymond Lee
“Come out, you bitch!”
Every infected head swiveled in the direction of Cruz’s voice and they moved in his direction, speeding up as she heard him crashing through the woods.
Using the zombies shuffling gaits to cover her own movement, Raven scrambled to a stand and fled through the trees, pushing past the stiffness in her limbs and pain in her thighs as they burned from the exercise. Her feet stung as she ran over rocks, sticks, and tree roots in her sock-clad feet and so did the most intimate part of her as air reached the tears Cruz had inflicted with his teeth, but she forced herself to keep moving forward knowing pure evil was on her trail. With no idea where she was at or where she’d find help she looked up at the moon and chased after it, knowing it had to eventually lead her somewhere.
Hal jerked awake, the haunting howl still echoing around his skull. He swung out of the lower bunk and climbed up to shake Damian awake.
“Is it morning already?” Damian asked, his eyes narrow slits as he struggled to raise his head from the pillow.
“It’s morning enough. I had a dream. Raven’s in trouble.”
Damian popped up onto his elbows, fully awake. “What kind of trouble?”
“I saw her running from a big fire monster kind of trouble.” Hal grabbed clothes from the dresser, tossing jeans and a flannel shirt over to Damian as the man dropped down to the floor next to him.
“A fire monster?”
“I told you I have dreams that tell me things. I get messages. They’re not always literal or even sensical but they always mean something.” He quickly shed his pajamas and pulled on the jeans, Damian doing the same albeit slower. “I saw her running through the dark with this big fire creature after her. I’m pretty sure it was Cruz, or his demon to be exact.”
“I thought he had enough medicine to keep from going all snap, crackle, and fucked in the head.”
“Language,” Hal admonished the younger man as he noticed other men in nearby bunks stirring. “We don’t need any issues before we leave out of here. Raven needs us as soon as possible.”
“What are you two doing?" Simon sat up and reached over to the dresser for his glasses. He rubbed his eyes before putting them on and looking at his watch. “We’ve still got time to sleep. You’re getting up too early.”
“We have something we have to do,” Hal said, sitting on his bunk to pull on his work boots. “Go back to sleep.”
“You’re leaving now?” Elijah rolled over and looked down at them.
“Yeah,” Hal answered, tying his laces.
“Everybody go back to sleep,” Damian said to the men turning in their bunks, sitting up to see what was going on. He tied his shoes and straightened up. “Nothing’s happening.”
“You can’t get up this early,” Simon told them. “It’s not allowed.”
“Son, I’m not asking permission,” Hal told him as he stood from the bunk. “Elijah, keep an eye on the twins. Remember everything I told you.”
The teen’s skin paled a bit but he nodded his head. “Yes, sir.”
Hal reached up and squeezed his shoulder. “I wouldn’t put you in charge if I didn’t believe in you. You got this.”
“How much of a shitstorm do you think we’re about to kick up?” Damian asked as they exited Block D and headed straight for the front gates.
“I don’t know,” Hal answered, looking up at the dark sky. “Technically it is morning and it’s not like they ever actually told us we were confined to our quarters until a specific time of day.”
“I hope they don’t toss our asses in isolation.” Damian shoved his hands inside his coat pockets, wishing he had his rock hammer or at least his gun. “Maybe we should get our knives?”
“No, I told you we’re leaving those here for the people we’re leaving behind.”
Damian regretted that decision as they approached the front gate and were spotted by security. Three men raised guns on them, including Trey, and four ran over to search them.
“What are you two doing out at this hour?” a muscular Hispanic man asked, keeping his gun trained on them.
“We were told we were allowed to leave,” Hal answered. “We already spoke with David. He was fine with us leaving this morning.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s what he said,” Damian answered, the man’s tone irritating him. “We’re honest people. We have no reason to lie.” He looked at Trey, caught the irritation in the man’s eyes as he caught on to the dig and fought the urge to grin. Maybe he was petty, but he was an honest petty.
The Hispanic man narrowed his eyes on them, watched as they were patted down by his coworkers, and raised a walkie talkie to his mouth after the men finished and indicated they were clean. “Yeah, we got two men out of bed early,” he said into the radio. “They say David gave them permission to leave.”
“Hold them,” a voice said from the radio.
“Roger that.” The man clipped the walkie talkie to his belt and lowered his gun. “We’re just gonna wait here and see about this, make sure nobody got their wires crossed.”
“Are the guns necessary?” Damian asked, noting the other guards hadn’t put down their weapons.
“We have a procedure we follow,” the man said. “We almost never have to shoot people because they’re hardly ever dumb enough to make us have to.”
“Almost never?”
“Almost.” The man smiled, clearly enjoying the thought of shooting someone.
“And we were told the guns were for security from the monsters outside the gates,” Damian whispered to Hal. Hal shook his head in response, cautioning him to keep his mouth shut, which was hard to do considering being held at gunpoint generally pissed Damian off, but he managed to bite his tongue until a disheveled David arrived on foot, his son with him.
“Gentlemen,” David greeted them, the sleep still in his voice. “It’s awfully early.”
“We told you we were leaving in the morning,” Hal advised him. “It’s morning.”
“It’s early morning,” David corrected him, “also known as the middle of the night. I thought we’d agreed you would be leaving with a member of the security staff along for protection. You don’t even have a vehicle. What are you planning to do, walk out of here?”
“If we have to,” Hal answered, voice neutral. “We are appreciative of the generosity you’ve shown us, David, but our friends are in trouble and we need to get to them. We need to leave right now and if we need to do that on foot and without any additional help we understand. We won’t hold it against you. We just need to go.”
David angled his head to the side as he ran a hand through his hair and seemed to study them. “Why so early? Someone would think you were trying to escape a prison or something.”
“Do you believe the Lord sends messages?” Hal asked.
Damian raised his eyebrows, wondering where Hal was going and how much he would tell the head nut in charge of the looney compound.
“I do,” David said, standing straighter, his eyes more in focus. He crossed his arms over his chest. “The Lord has been known to send messages to the most devout. I’ve heard Him myself.”
Yeah, right, Damian thought. The nut probably thought he heard God while playing a Beatles record backwards.
“I get messages,” Hal said. “I have dreams that tell me of things. I had a dream about my friends. Our friend was not bitten,” he lied, “but she is in danger. She’s a good woman and our other friend is a good man. They could create a beautiful family together someday if given the chance, if they had a place like this, but we have to get to them now and bring them here.”
“The Lord sent you a message in a dream?”
“Yes.”
“He sent you a message that you have to leave right now to save these people?”
“Yes.” Hal straightened his shoulders and looked David square in the eye. “Think of how important these people must be for me to get a message like that, what a travesty it would be to lose som
eone like that.”
David looked between them, contemplating. “All right,” he said with a nod. “Tony, get them a truck. The one they came in isn’t fixed yet and might not make it there and back. Give them weapons in case they run into trouble, and …” He looked around. “Trey, you go with them in case they need an extra hand.”
The acid in Damian’s stomach curdled and judging by the expression on Trey’s face, he wasn’t happy with the arrangement either. On the bright side, they were getting out from under David’s prying eyes and getting their weapons back. Damian vowed to never relinquish his rock hammer again.
“Here,” a guard said, stepping out of the small station near the fence, guns and knives in hand.
“I had a rock hammer,” Damian told him.
“These knives will work just as well,” the man told him, handing two weapons over to Hal and holding out the remaining handgun and blade for Damian.
“I had a rock hammer,” he repeated, looking at the folding knife with contempt as he took the gun, checked the safety, and shoved it into a coat pocket. “I need my rock hammer.”
“I don’t know where that is,” the man said. “The knife does the job.”
“I want my rock hammer.”
“Damian.” Hal shook his head. “The knife will work just fine. Take it.”
He started to argue but Hal narrowed his eyes and mouthed, “Take it.” Damian took the knife and slid it in his other pocket, cursing silently as he vowed to come back and tear the entire compound apart until he found Dwayne “The Rock” Hammer.
A black Chevy Colorado pulled up and a man jumped down from the cab. “Full tank of gas and drives fine,” he said, nodding toward them as he took over Trey’s post at the fence.
“I’ll drive,” Trey said as he approached them.
“It’s better that I do,” Hal said, cutting past him to climb into the truck. “I’m being guided by intuition.”
“Make sure they make it back safe,” David told Trey as he turned toward him for confirmation. “Good luck, friends.”
Damian nodded his head, cut Trey a withering glance and walked to the passenger side of the truck. Hal looked over at him and motioned with his head for him to sit in the back. Damian nodded and got in the back, leaving the passenger seat available for Trey.
“You even think about putting your gun on me,” Trey said as he climbed in and closed the door, “and I’ll shoot your friend and send us all crashing into a fucking tree. Don’t think I’m that stupid.”
Hal and Damian shared a look, silently agreeing Trey was going to be trouble, and headed out the gate as it was opened for them.
“You lied about God sending you messages,” Damian told Hal as they left the compound. “You could go to hell for that.”
“I didn’t lie. I said I’m sent messages in my dreams. I don’t always know who sends them but it could be God.”
“Uh huh. What about that Raven and Cruz could be a family stuff? Where’d that come from?”
“Cruz is in love with her. Maybe once we clear him of his demon and things settle down he and Raven could have a life together.”
“Raven’s not thinking of Cruz like that,” Damian told him. “Raven’s got a brain and she knows the zombie apocalypse isn’t the time to be hooking up with anyone, not even a movie star.”
“Cruz isn’t just a movie star and this virus might be wiped out and the world can go back to being civilized. Raven herself might be the key to that. I’d like to think that someday she can settle down and have a nice life with a family of her own. She already lost her little sister. She shouldn’t lose out on ever having a family again.”
“Hold up, hold up, hold up.” Trey looked at both of them. “Messages from God? Demons? What are you two talking about? You sound crazier than David when he gets on one of his reclaiming the Christian world spiels.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hal told him, never taking his eye off the road as they headed toward the interstate, retracing the route David had used to bring them to the compound in reverse. “It doesn’t concern you.”
“Really? I’m here with you. Whatever you do I’m doing it with you so if there’s some crazy shit going on I need that information.”
“Yeah, about that…” Without taking his eyes off the road, Hal shot his arm out like a snake, grabbed the back of Trey’s neck and rammed his head into the dashboard.
“Shit, Hal!” Damian leaned forward to check out the damage as Trey fell back against his seat, unconscious, a gash in the center of his forehead dripping blood between his eyes.
“Please relieve our friend of his weapons before he comes back around. Tie his wrists together if possible.”
“Damn, Hal, you sound like you done this shit before.” He leaned over the seat and searched Trey, finding a gun, bullets, and two knives. Noticing Hal hadn’t responded, he looked at him. “You done this shit before? Man, there’s a lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?”
“Son,” he said, applying more pressure on the gas pedal, “You have no idea.”
Raven trudged forward, limping as pain shot up her legs with each step she took. The cold night air bit at her skin, tempting her to curl up in a ball and let hypothermia claim her, but she knew she couldn’t stop. Whenever she slowed down she could still hear him behind her, tracking her. Sometimes he called out her name, unconcerned with the fact that he announced his presence to any zombies or wildlife in the area when he did. Apparently he was a good fighter, even while out of his mind.
“Maybe it’s all just a dream,” she said to herself for the hundredth time. “Maybe if I lay down and sleep it’ll end and I’ll wake up in the cabin with Cruz bringing me soup.” She started sobbing, wishing that would happen, wishing anything would happen to erase the horror of what he’d done to her, what he still wanted to do to her. She looked at the katana and thought about sinking the blade into her stomach, thought about it every time she thought about how she’d been violated at the cabin, wondering if it was the only way to make the nightmare quit replaying in her mind. But then she thought about Sky, wondered where she was right at that moment, who was she with, and what had she been through, and she knew she couldn’t give up. No matter what, she had to keep going.
She’d stumbled along a path and started walking it, hoping it would lead her to some sort of civilization. She knew residential areas meant more zombies but they didn’t seem to find her very appealing. If anything, they would help keep Cruz away from her. He couldn’t attack her if he was busy fighting his way through them so as far as zombies were concerned, the more the merrier. “Bring ‘em on,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from sucking in cold air.
She rounded a bend and stopped, the path blocked by a large white wolf. She shook her head to clear it and looked again. It wasn’t a wolf. It was a white German shepherd, similar to one she’d had years ago.
“Spirit?”
The dog barked at her and turned, pausing to look back at her. It barked again and started walking. Shaking her head, thinking maybe it was all just a crazy dream, Raven followed the dog. Its coat was white as snow in the moonlight, unmatted and glossy. It had no collar but appeared friendly and didn’t seem to have missed any meals. It did not look like a wild dog living off of whatever it could find. It didn’t look like it belonged in the woods, or in reality. “If this was a dream, surely I would have woken up by now,” Raven said to herself, teeth chattering. “Maybe it’s a hallucination.”
Hallucination or not, she followed the dog, and when the path gave her the option of going forward or making a turn, she turned left after the dog. Her instinct would have been to stay straight and hope to run into something so she hoped the dog knew something she didn’t. “Hell, it could be leading me to a pack of feral dogs so they can eat me.”
The dog looked back at her and shook its head as if it knew what she was thinking and she was shocked by how familiar its eyes were to her. It looked so much like her own beloved dog fresh tears rolled do
wn her cheeks. “I’m going to dehydrate from all this crying,” she muttered to herself. “If I don’t freeze to death first. I suppose either of those two deaths beats whatever Cruz has planned for me. She thought back to his previous threat of peeling her like an onion and forced herself to move faster despite the increase in pain that came with the increase in speed.
She followed the dog, regularly checking behind her to see if Cruz had taken the same turn as them. She couldn’t hear him anymore, but she didn’t think that meant she was safe. She could barely hear her own footsteps since the trail grew less rocky. They continued on and the longer she followed the dog the more she noticed how luminous its color was and how achingly familiar it felt to her. Just as she was starting to believe she might be following an actual ghost, a cabin appeared. The dog ran up to the porch, pushed the door open with its nose and turned around, waiting for her.
Raven crept forward carefully, knowing better than to rush into a strange place blind. Anyone or anything could be waiting in that cabin for her. She gripped the katana as tightly as she could in her shaking hands and surveyed the area. The cabin was by itself with no other structures in the viewable distance except for a clothesline and a small shed. There was a fenced pen to the side that probably contained animals prior to the outbreak but they had since ran off or been released. Or maybe no one had lived there at the time of the outbreak. The cabin certainly didn’t seem like the type of place someone would choose to stay while on vacation, and if it had been an actual home she didn’t think whoever owned it would have been infected. They were all by themselves in the woods with no nearby neighbors. Then again, she had run into quite a few zombies that night.
The dog wagged her tail excitedly as Raven reached the small porch and climbed the steps. She paused at the door, listening for signs of something moving inside. She heard nothing except the dog’s toenails on the wood as it pattered past her, turned in a circle in the center of the room and sat, its tongue hanging out as it panted. Bathed in a beam of moonlight shining down from the skylight above it, Raven was able to make out a dark spot on the dog’s tongue and gasped. Her white shepherd had the same mark on its tongue.
