Scavengers

by Nate Southard

  “I don’t know,” Morris said. “I didn’t get a good look at how many he had chasing him. You?”

  “At least a couple dozen. Looked like half the pack peeled off to go after him.”

  “Then I still don’t know. Eric made it back here okay, but he knew where he was going. Blake, not so much. If one or two of them had been on him, sure. Couple dozen, though? I don’t like his chances.”

  “Yeah, that’s about what I figured. So what do we do?”

  “The smart thing-”

  “I know what the smart thing is, sure. We just pack up and go, don’t take any extra risks. Can you really do that, though? We’re already packing up Eric and the Motts kid to take back with us, and they’re dead. Are we supposed to go back, shrug, and tell everybody we don’t have a fucking clue where Ellis might be?”

  Morris shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s screwed up, yeah. You think Blake would wait for either of us?”

  “Yeah. It’s the guy’s style.”

  “I guess it is.”

  “Right. Look, I know I’m an asshole. I just don’t want to be that big an asshole.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “So what are we saying, big guy? We want to hang out here until sunset on the off chance he shows up? Do we want to go looking for him? We’re fucking surrounded by killbillies. Really, what the hell do we want to do here?”

  “I don’t know. Right now, let’s just see what else we can find to put in the truck.”

  “Sure.”

  “When we’re done here, we’ll figure out a next move.”

  “Got it.” He stepped away from the truck, rolling his shoulders. Every muscle and joint ached. He knew it wasn’t only from heavy lifting. A lot of it came from the world class beating Morris had given him. Still more was the result of running for his life half the goddamn day. A hot bath or soft bed would let him die happy. He’d settle for a ten-minute nap, but that probably wasn’t in the cards. Even if Ellis took two months and six days to show his ass, Morris wouldn’t let either of them relax. Prick.

  Clicking on his flashlight again, he took another look at the shelves. He knew he’d left some canned goods in this direction, and he found them on at eye level: five cans of peas loose on the shelf. Were they really down to loose cans? If that was the case, they had to be close to finished.

  He reached out and began scooping up cans and placing them in the crook of his arm. His joints screamed, but he kept working. It kept Morris off his back, gave him time to decide if he’d really had more than he could stand.

  He turned toward the truck, but he cast a look toward the hallway at the stockroom’s rear wall. He could just barely make out the scratching on the double doors.

  “We’ll see,” he whispered. “Guess we’ll just wait and see.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Blake spun to meet his attacker an instant before the dead girl slammed into him like an angry dog. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen when she died, and she was about as big as a starving topless dancer, but her fury and hunger gave her an advantage. He fought to resist her, but the splint on his leg robbed him of any leverage.

  She slammed him against the doorframe, sending an eruption of pain through his back. His air burst from his lungs, and a wave of weakness crashed over him. He slumped toward the linoleum, but the wooden brace on his leg refused to let him fall.

  He had a good six inches on the zombie, and the height difference saved him. She tried to bite a chunk out of his arm instead of going for his throat, and the terrible feeling of her teeth trying to gnaw through his jacket brought him back to reality. He curled his left hand into a fist and punched her in the temple. It didn’t budge her, didn’t even appear to get her attention.

  He felt the heat from the burning living room. It pulsed against his cheek, baking him. He had to get rid of the rotting bitch before the flames reached him.

  Grabbing the fat end of the bat with his left hand, he whipped the entire club upward in a single, violent motion. It popped the girl’s teeth from his biceps and sent her staggering backward a few inches. She darted forward again, but he was ready. He caught her in the mouth with the weapon, shoving the aluminum forward with both hands. He heard the crumbling sound of her teeth breaking off at the gum line. She kept coming, snarling around the metal club in her mouth. Spittle and black bile flew, and he ducked, turning his head. The last thing he wanted was that horrible stuff on his face.

  He’d turned to face the living room. The heat was punishing, and he opened his eyes to see how the fire had grown. Flames had turned the living room into a landscape of orange and yellow and black. The fire spread across the carpet, attacked the musty drapes. It peeled back wallpaper like dying skin. Its hungry roar provided a terrible harmony to the dead girl’s starving cries.

  Smoke the color of tar lunged through the air like a monster. It escaped through the doorway and found its way into his lungs. He hacked out a round of coughs that threatened to sap the strength from his arms.

  The dead girl’s hands scrabbled at his chest, exploring, trying to find their way to something soft and fleshy. Blake shoved again, but the zombie held on, refusing to let go. She screeched her hunger and rage past her shattered teeth, and he knew she wouldn’t quit until one of them was finished.

  Options raced through his brain, and he selected one out of desperation, unaware if it was genius or idiotic. She lunged for him again, and he let her get closer than she’d managed before. He pulled his left hand fast to his side, shoving outward with his right and pivoting his hips at the same time. His stationary leg robbed him of some valuable momentum, but death had made the girl clumsy enough so it didn’t matter. It all came together in a miracle of torque, speed, and blind luck as the dead teenager careened past him into the inferno that had swallowed the living room.

  The dead girl’s cry of sudden confusion sliced through his eardrums. Blake staggered back from the doorway, coughing and trying to draw clean air into his lungs. A terrible smell reached him, one that reminded him of a time as a boy when his father had attempted to grill steaks that had passed beyond the point of being edible. The scent was so close to being appetizing it became that much more terrible and wrong. It doubled him over, and his coughs became a series of choking gags.

  The zombie cried out through it all. It almost sounded as though she could feel pain. Maybe she did feel the torture of her flesh burning from her bones.

  Blake limped through the kitchen and into the dining room. His lungs burned with each step, and he decided he’d made a big fucking mistake by setting the fire while he remained in the house. The three wooden shafts taped to his leg kept him from ducking beneath the thickening smoke. Now he was upright in the middle of a growing fog of black smoke, trying to see through it to find the back door.

  He turned right and charged forward as quickly as his hobbled form would allow. Moving with the smoke, he could only hope it would head for open air. He collided with a wooden chair and nearly toppled to the ground, somehow managed to stay upright and moving. Sweat mixed with the smoke in his eyes and struck him blind. Panic blossomed in his mind and heart and sent him racing forward without care or thought. He became a choking mass of desperate limbs. He couldn’t die in this house. Wouldn’t. He refused.

  He raised the bat and stumbled forward. Some terrified part of his brain prayed the aluminum would not collide with a wall, that he was still moving toward the exit. Behind him, the confused cries of the dead girl arced upward, reaching a new level of punishment. He pressed his free hand to one ear and buried the other ear against his shoulder.

  Cool air touched his cheek. He felt concrete beneath his feet and knew he’d reached the back patio. He ran a few steps and then lurched forward, collapsing to the grass. It tickled his cheek, and he thought he’d never in his life felt something so wonderful. He fought the urge to just lie there, to relax and feel the grass brush at his face. Even if the fire didn’t touch him, it would probably draw more zombies, attr
acting them like moths to a porch light.

  Still coughing, clean air just beginning to reach his needy lungs, he struggled back to his feet. He stumbled farther away from the house. The air grew cooler around him, sweeter. He breathed deep and felt some of his strength return.

  Blake fought to hear past the crackling of the fire. The angry, hungry sounds of dead men bounded over the fence in front of him and to the right. Running left would take him farther away from Tandy’s, but it was his only avenue of possible escape. He limped in that direction, wondering how he’d get over the fence with one leg in a splint and a damn baseball bat strapped to his good hand.

  The agonized shriek behind him ripped the question from his mind. He whirled to face the house a split second before the dead girl burst onto the patio as a being of moving fire. Black smoke billowed off of her, carrying a smell like burning garbage.

  Blake watched the dead girl flail across the patio. He didn’t think she was trying to extinguish herself. Instead, she was just moving with the pain that had to be terrible and the confusion that must be absolute.

  He believed it until the moment she turned to face him.

  He stared, unable to move or even comprehend what was happening. Could she see him? Smell him? She was on fire! How could she even tell he was in the same area?

  She charged, and the questions shattered like porcelain. He broke from his trance and decided he didn’t have time to escape. A burning dead woman was charging him with her hands outstretched, ready to eat him or wrap him in her charring embrace. An eight-foot privacy fence stood at his back. Retreat didn’t exist. It wasn’t even a rumor.

  Blake stepped forward with his left leg, grabbed the bat with both hands and cocked it over his shoulder. Pain and hatred blended in the burning girl’s cry. The rumble of fire created a bass line. She closed to within six feet.

  He swung the bat with every ounce of strength he could muster. The metal sliced through the air and collided with the dead girl’s cranium. The crunch of her skull vibrated up his arms, and the girl’s immolated form crumpled on the spot, burning in the grass at his feet. He backed away from the blazing husk, trying to tell his legs it was time to run.

  The sounds of hunger grew louder on the opposite side of the fence, and his legs finally decided that was their cue to haul ass. He bolted for the yard’s silent edge and tried jumping with his good leg, wound up woefully short. He grabbed the top of the fence in a desperate, angry grip and began to haul himself upward, swinging his right arm over and hooking his armpit against the boards. Pushing with his left, he tried to rise high enough to clear the fence. His arms and ribcage screamed at the effort. He attempted to dig in with his left leg for further help, but his shoe refused to do anything but slip off the smooth boards.

  “Dammit!”

  Inch by clumsy, painful inch, he climbed the fence. He heard something fall to the ground on the opposite end of the yard, and the shriek of rage and hunger that followed told him everything he needed to know. Now kicking with both legs, he struggled like hell to boost himself over the boards. He didn’t care what might wait on the opposite side. All he needed was to get out of the yard. The pain in his chest and back and shoulders tore screams from him, but still he lifted and pulled and pushed with every ounce of strength that remained in him.

  He managed to peer over the top of the boards. The yard next door was dark, empty but for a dead dog that had been stripped of nearly every available scrap of flesh.

  Shoving with both arms, he gripped the top of the fence as best he could, and his gut rested against the wooden ridge. He reached farther down the fence and grabbed a two-by-four. With his next breath he pulled as hard as he could, and his body seesawed over the fence and dropped to the ground as a snarling corpse slammed into the boards like a charging bull. The wooden fence rattled up and down its length, but it held back the monster.

  He landed in the wet grass like a dropped laundry sack. A rock pushed up into his kidney and drew a fresh scream out of his chest. He rolled onto his side and felt the kidney begin to throb like a light in the darkness, oscillating on and off with the thrum in his right leg. Struggling to his feet, he lurched toward the back of the yard. These folks only had waist-high chain link to keep the neighbors out, and he thought he’d never seen something so beautiful.

  He limped toward the fence, keeping his eyes peeled. No dead approached. The fire must have caught their attention. Maybe the scent of charred flesh had stirred their bellies. Whatever. Nothing mattered but making it to Tandy’s.

  Please, God, he thought. Please, let the others still be there.

  He sat on top of the fence, feeling the metal bite into his ass, and swung his good leg over to the opposite side. His broken wheel followed it. The act was clumsy and slow, but it was his only option. At least he’d probably find a gate in the side yard. He didn’t think climbing was something he could do again.

  He ground his teeth together as he moved across the wet lawn. His leg and kidney taunted him with alternating cycles of agony. They sent signals to his brain that turned into blinding flashes of pure torture. He hoped like hell he could find something to dull his pain once he reached Tandy’s. He hoped like hell he’d make it that far.

  Sure enough, he found a gate in the side yard. He swung the hooked latch upwards and opened the entire assembly. Hinges squealed as metal scraped over metal. The sound stabbed at his ears and made him check the surrounding area again.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he muttered as he loped through the gateway. The street sat thirty yards in front of him, a pair of limp bodies scattered across the hardtop. He moved toward it, his fingers tightening around the bat.

  He peered across the street. A patch of forest stretched out before him. He’d seen a few of the zombies enter the forest before, but the trees might give him an advantage. With any luck, he could dodge, maybe hide. He imagined the hell of trying to take his makeshift splint through the woods, but his other option involved getting dragged down like rabbit by a pack of dogs. Whether he was ready or not, he was taking a wilderness adventure.

  He almost laughed again. Part of his brain wondered if a broken leg could drive a man insane. Another part asked if anybody could hope to retain their sanity in this situation.

  “Hell with it.” He breathed the words, smart enough to keep his voice all but silent. Then he broke for the street.

  This yard had wound up soggy, as well, and it robbed him of any semblance of speed. He slogged his way across the grass, the ground sucking at his shoes. How bad was the forest going to be? Would he even reach the pavement before something came chasing after him?

  The answer came five feet from the blacktop, when he caught a flurry of movement to his left and turned to find a woman charging him. She wore nothing but a pair of soiled panties. She’d maybe been in her fifties before she died, and now her skin sagged like a withered sack. Her right breast had been chewed away entirely. So had her nose. Some other time or place, he might had thought she was a leper.

  Blake kept moving, fighting for every inch, determined to reach the pavement before the dead woman grabbed hold of him. He cocked back his right arm and kept moving. His left foot popped free of the mud as his right sank into it. He leaned forward, trying to wrestle the limb free, and his foot tore loose from his shoe. Baring his teeth, he kept going. No other choice existed.

  The dead woman tried to scream at him, but instead air only whistled through a crusted ruin of her throat. She swiped at him, and he ducked, shoving at her with his free hand. She hurtled past, and he sensed her whirling to face him.

  He swung the bat. It glanced off the woman’s cranium, knocking her head to one side but failing to drop her. She darted in at him, jaw opening to reveal black teeth. He stepped forward to meet her and jerked to one side, swiping his elbow across her mouth. The blow connected like a swinging hammer, and the zombie fell away.

  Blake swung again, giving it all the weight and speed he could muster. The aluminum club
dented in the woman’s horrible face, and she fell. Cold and nearly-congealed fluids splashed him, and he slammed his eyes shut and wiped his face with a sleeve.

  He opened his eyes again and looked down the street. His stomach rolled with fear as he realized he’d been spotted. At least ten of the rotting things had turned to face him, and several of them had already broken into runs.

  Blake spared a single glance at his lost shoe and then took off in something like a sprint. His body jounced up and down as his splinted leg moved back and forth beneath him. Terror flooded his senses, blocking out pain and fatigue.

  A dozen steps took him across the road and into the ditch on the opposite side. The wet ground pulled at him, every last inch of Rundberg out to get him. He fought back, lurching and tumbling forward, a shambling mockery of running. He heard a chorus of cries from the roadway, all of them hungry, and then he plunged into the woods.

  Stumbling over roots and broken branches, he slipped through last autumn’s leaves. He fought the urge to scream, to let panic and rage drive him into madness. All that mattered was escape. He cut to the right, determined to reach the grocery store, and grabbed hold of trees as he passed, pulling himself forward and then pushing off, fighting for every foot of ground and every ounce of speed. If he was going to die, he’d make it out of the woods first.

  I’m not giving up, Holly. Not by a long shot.

  Bodies crashed into the forest behind him. Angry feet kicked up leaves and snapped twigs. The dry sounds mixed with animal snarls and harsh breathing that was only instinct. It created a wave of promised pain and death that chased him like a swarm of locusts right out of the Bible.

  Blake felt no urge to stand and do battle. He locked his eyes on the brick structure he caught flashes of through the trees, determined to reach it at all costs. Low-hanging branches tore at his face like claws as he crashed through the trees. The ground was not so hungry here, and he was thankful for the small mercy.