Run_Book 3_Long Road Home

by Rich Restucci

  Rick looked down at his chest. “Oh. Oh shit.”

  She had to concur. “Yeah, oh shit is right.”

  He had four separate lacerations, two across his left pectoral muscle that went under his nipple and two on his stomach that stretched from his left side, across his navel to his right hip. The two on his upper torso were slices and bled freely, whereas the two on his lower abdomen were where the chain link barbs had torn him open. The bottom two were vicious wounds and the purple of muscle could be seen under the lowest tear in the skin. Several other holes oozed blood where they dotted his chest and abdomen as well, but they didn’t look as serious.

  “We need to disinfect that right now.”

  “Shouldn’t you look at Seyfert—?”

  “Right now!” she reiterated. “The likelihood that either of those two numbskulls get an infection from galvanized chain-link is low. You, on the other hand…”

  They moved back downstairs, Anna putting her sidearm on a small table and grabbing her medical kit. She glanced at Dallas, who was making faces at his ankle and Seyfert, who was still taking the labored breaths of someone with a rib injury.

  “I know you’re hurt, but we should probably think about getting upstairs and figuring out a way to prevent them from getting up there when they get in.”

  The SEAL took another torturous deep breath and stood. He nodded and moved to help Dallas.

  “Don’t be a dumbass!” Anna hissed and helped the SEAL to the stairs. She opened her bag and rooted around until she found a brown bottle of something and some gauze.

  “What’s that?” Rick asked nervously.

  “Relax, it isn’t the stingy stuff and it certainly isn’t Kwik Clot.” She glanced at him. “Pussy,” she added. She dabbed a bit of the stuff on the gauze and motioned for Rick to lift his arm a bit.

  Rick took an involuntary hiss of breath. “Jesus! You said it wasn’t stingy!”

  They both spun their heads toward the heavy sliding door as the farmer’s porch on the building creaked loudly. The first sounds of the dead reached them as well and everyone went still and silent. Shadows moved across the outside of the shades in one of the rooms, some of which unceremoniously thudded into the exterior shingles. They weren’t banging to get in, just smacking into the walls.

  Seyfert snapped his fingers quietly and the group moved toward the steps. Dallas made to put his foot on the first step and Rick grabbed him, shaking his finger. They quietly climbed the stairs while the dead searched for them.

  A scream from close by chilled Anna’s blood. Two answering cries from further away increased her terror as she helped Seyfert over the last stair.

  Her voice was the slightest whisper when she told Rick, “I need to finish cleaning you up.” He nodded and she worked on him for a few minutes with the gauze and disinfectant.

  He didn’t like it. She winced when he winced and she put adhesive bandages over the smaller wounds. She used medical glue to seal the dual wounds on his chest and the top abdomen gash. In the waning light, she dug through her bag again, coming out with a suture kit.

  Rick shook his head, No!

  “Sorry, but the glue won’t do it for that.” She pointed at his stomach and a window broke downstairs. All four of the survivors stared at the open area between the floors. Nothing seemed to be trying to get in. The broken window was probably just from an accidental impact. Anna had a moment of panic where she frantically patted herself down then closed her eyes.

  “I left my gun downstairs.”

  Before anyone could object, she moved silently down the old staircase. The three men watched through the hexagonal opening as Anna moved to retrieve her weapon. She had no sooner picked it up when a Runner’s scream rent the air. The breaking of glass that followed sent tendrils of terror down her spine and through her stomach. She dropped down behind a display case with a large ship model in it. She scooched her back against the mahogany, momentarily closing her eyes and voicing a silent prayer. She held the weapon with two hands, knowing her suppressor was burnt out. Anna looked up at the rest of her friends. All three of them had their weapons trained on the doors near her, panning them around, looking for hostiles. Seyfert first put his hand on Dallas’ shotgun then shook a silent No to Rick, who also lowered his weapon.

  The SEAL pulled his combat knife and pointed at Anna. She understood and drew her own knife. Seyfert drew his finger across his throat and she swallowed hard, understanding what he meant.

  Ragged breathing behind her made her almost soil herself. The thing was inside with her, not five feet away. She looked back up, noticing that only Seyfert remained visible. Barely. He was on one knee, his rifle aimed at the creature through the banister of the hexagonal railing. If he fired, she would be saved, but only briefly as the remainder of the things in the fairgrounds would storm their little haven and tear the survivors to pieces.

  The creature began to make odd noises, like a cross between a cough and a bark, Uh! Uh! Uh! and she could feel it jerking and twitching on the floorboards. Then she heard something that terrified her more than anything else had since the onset of the plague. In a horrible, wet hack, the thing uttered, “Wheeeeere?”

  A footstep sounded on her right and she directed her gaze that way. A shuddering shadow on the picture-framed wall told her the thing had stopped. Slow, deliberate scratching, fingernails on glass, commenced on the dusty case of the model ship above her. She considered that the thing might know she was in here someplace. Could it smell her? She looked up at Seyfert and he pushed his palm at her, indicating she should wait and not do anything.

  Tap-tap. The creature rapped its knuckles on the glass. It gave a low growl and made another guttural noise. “Booah. Uh! Uh! Booah…”

  Anna had never been so terrified. She glanced up at Seyfert again and he nodded his head almost imperceptibly. She felt the floorboards shift and whipped her head around to the right again. Seeing nothing, she dared a look to the left and saw the back-right leg of the thing. It was barefoot, wearing a pair of dirty blue jeans and a red T-shirt. It came fully into view and Anna almost shit herself. From the back, it looked like it had been a young man, but she knew that nothing about it, other than its shape, was even remotely human. The fingers on both hands constantly flexed into claws and the head jerked to the right while the body twitched all over. Its knees were in constant motion although the thing’s feet were planted solidly.

  This thing would eviscerate her and play hopscotch in her entrails and it was four feet away. Its head stopped twitching for a moment and it pushed its face forward, peering into one of the downstairs rooms. Anna put her left hand, which was still holding her sidearm, on the floor and pushed herself up silently. Even as quiet as she had been, the creature heard her and went into a half crouch. It jerked its head to the side looking for her, but didn’t know she was behind it and looked the wrong way. She took one purposeful stride so that she was right behind it, reached her knife-wielding fist around to the front of it, and drew her blade across its throat as hard as she could.

  Infected blood spurted the length of the room in front of the Runner and Anna in a great gout. The thing brought both hands to its throat, aware something had happened, but not sure what. It started to turn on Anna and she grabbed it by the hair and began repeatedly stabbing it in the back. As soon as she touched it, the creature went ape-shit and spun to face her, slashing with its fingernails. She had a handful of the thing’s hair, but it was taller than her so when it turned she was jerked to the side. Anna fell and the infected dropped onto her, swiping at her midsection. She batted its attempts away, slapping and pushing at it. Dark fluids rained down on her chest from the throat wound and blood bubbled from its nose and spilled through its growling teeth over its lower lip.

  Seyfert tightened his finger on the trigger of his weapon, but relaxed it a bit when he saw the creature losing strength. Anna could see it blinking rapidly and a large blood bubble formed on the wound she had created. She pushed it to the side
and crab-crawled away from it, breathing hard. It looked up at her with sadness, not hate, on its face and it collapsed. A few more breaths and it was spent.

  Rick was suddenly standing next to her and she began to cry. He reached down to help her up but she shrank away from him. “Don’t touch me!”

  Rick reeled back, horrified.

  “No! No, no, no! I didn’t mean it like that!” she said. “I’m covered in this shit and you have cuts. You stay away!”

  She got up of her own volition and after Rick drove his blade into the newly dead thing’s temple, they moved back upstairs together. She grabbed her bag and immediately began to cut her shirt off, right down the middle. She turned from the men and threw her shirt to the ground, slicing through her bra with the scissors. She used gauze to wipe herself off, discarding the infected medical supplies on the floor.

  She was inspecting the front of herself for scratches when Dallas said, “Here,” and passed her his button-down shirt.

  “Do I have any scratches or cuts on my back?” Dallas and Rick both examined her, Dallas lifting her hair to check the back of her neck. She was breathing fast.

  “Yer clean, kid,” the Texan told her. “Also, remind me never to piss you off.”

  “What?” she asked, buttoning up the shirt, which was many sizes too large for her.

  “Ya done kicked that thing’s ass!”

  She turned and saw Rick nodding. “You really did.”

  “I had to,” she said and burst into tears. Dallas embraced her in a tender bear hug. She sobbed for only a moment. “I was so scared…”

  Dallas let her go. “We all were.” He made a face and she pushed gently away.

  She furrowed her brow. “How’s your ankle?”

  “It’s fine. Check…” They all looked at Seyfert. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wooden railing. The SEAL was breathing raggedly and each breath brought him pain.

  “I think… I might need…a corpsman.”

  “Oh shit!” Anna moved quickly from Dallas and got on her knees by Seyfert. She unbuckled his tactical webbing, moved his weapon, and checked under his shirt.

  He coughed, sending spasms of agony through him. “Tough…to breath.”

  “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Anna, looking at the huge purple bruise with yellow edges on Seyfert’s side. It extended from just under his armpit to just above his waist.

  “Rick! My bag!” She felt gently where she thought the damage was and the SEAL hissed in pain. After the hiss, it was clear he could no longer breathe. He started to make odd sounds and Anna began to dig in her bag. “Where is it!” she demanded and upended the entire medical pouch onto the floor.

  It was obvious that Seyfert was in a great deal of pain and nervousness showed on his face. Anna found a small blue pack with a zipper in the myriad of medical supplies now on the floor. She quickly unzipped it and removed a cylindrical, individually wrapped package. Tearing it open, she revealed it to be a large syringe, which she pulled the plunger out of and discarded. The needle had a twist handle as its cap. The medic tore open an alcohol swab, felt the SEAL’s ribs again, and without ceremony, pushed the needle between two of them and twisted the handle.

  The PSSSSssssssssssss of escaping air came from the needle and Seyfert could immediately breathe again. The look of pain he had was replaced with relief.

  He nodded. “Better.”

  Anna also released a big breath. “Tension pneumothorax. That deer kicked your ass, Mr. SEAL.”

  Dallas also looked concerned. “Attention what-now?”

  “One of his broken ribs must have nicked a lung. Air was escaping from the lung into the chest cavity, which then crushed and collapsed his lung.”

  “Is that bad?” drawled the Texan in a whisper.

  “It would have killed him, eventually.” She closed the twist-cap but left the needle in him. Seyfert made to pull it out, but she grabbed his hand, giving him a stern look. “Don’t touch that.” Using most of her medical tape, Anna secured the needle to his side with large loops that circled his chest. She wrapped his ribs with a compression bandage, careful to loop the brown dressing around the affixed syringe. “Anytime you feel pressure on your chest, or if it’s hard to breathe, open the syringe and it will release the air. This won’t fix your broken ribs though. They’re going to hurt.”

  Seyfert nodded. “How long do I have to have this thing sticking in me?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll take it out tomorrow and see if you’re okay.” She sat down next to him. “It spoke.”

  All three of them looked at her, but it was Rick who asked the question, “What?”

  “That thing,” she pointed at the body of the Runner, pathetically splayed out next to the ship model, a puddle of plague-infected blood surrounding it, “it talked. It asked where. It knew I was in here and it asked itself where I was.”

  “You’re misremembering,” Seyfert alleged, “it happens in situa—”

  “No, I’m not. I heard it and I remember it clear as day. It spoke. That’s why I was so scared. Well, that and I thought it was going to tear me to pieces.”

  “Well, ain’t that a peach,” grumbled the big Texan under his breath. “Maybe we can just ask them not to kill us now?”

  Scott Street, San Francisco

  Through the waning light, three people lying on their bellies looked down on an overgrown and trash-strewn Alta Plaza Park from behind a huge apartment window. The gorgeous flat had been unlocked and untouched and Billy had thought they were extremely lucky to find such a swanky place. The home took up both the second and third floors of the building and was extremely spacious, with an open floor plan and a giant fireplace below. A wide, winding, enclosed stairway led to four bedrooms and a bathroom in the loft above. Billy hated the black and white rug which sat under an ostentatious and no doubt extremely expensive coffee table. Other than that, the place was perfect. Especially the ratcheting metal front door complete with three deadbolts and a security bar which protruded down into a steel plate in the floor. All the windows were too high for infected to reach. If they drew the curtains and stayed upstairs, they might be able to ride out what the three survivors were staring at.

  The boy still wasn’t sure about Billy and he was constantly testing the waters. “We can make it.”

  “No, we can’t. Look there,” Billy pointed, “and there.” Dozens of undead were milling about the street in front of them, but there were at least two Runners and they were game changers.

  “Sorry, Kyle, but we’ll have to stay here until it gets dark before we make a move. The fast ones will catch us, and those ones do want to eat me.”

  “I used to play there,” said Vanessa as she stared longingly at the multi-colored, metal jungle gym. “We would stay here for hours, with Stephanie, my babysitter. I used to hate it when people would call her a babysitter. It made me feel like a baby.” She absently put her hand in Billy’s and he gave her a reassuring squeeze.

  A dead man kept tripping over a curved, low stone wall built for use as a bench. The thing would trip over it, get up, take a few steps, and trip over it again going in the other direction. Another dead thing stood next to a blue and yellow teeter-totter with its hand resting on the metal. Two more were caught inside a blue and red geo-dome with yellow netting. The dome was too short to accommodate adult heights. Billy smiled at the thought of the two dead grownups bent over inside the child’s plaything for eternity. His smile evaporated when he saw a child stumble across the concrete and repeatedly bump into a three-foot metal fence encircling the play area. The kid would forever be denied entry into the park and that made Billy sad.

  Then he remembered that this thing was not a child anymore, but something wicked that had both murdered the boy then stolen his body. Billy didn’t often get angry, but he felt his ire rising and had to will it back down. He looked at Vanessa and Kyle, two living kids that the dead one would gladly tear into and devour.

  Billy sighed. “We wait until dark
and then, if the street is more clear than that, we’ll make a break for it.” As if to accentuate his point, one of the sprinters took off at a lightning pace, tackled a dead woman, and began to punch and claw at it. The other Runner noticed and sprinted at the two infected who were battling. Well, thought Billy, one is battling, the other is just minding her undead business.

  The second Runner, a male in tattered sweatpants, stopped short of the fight and screamed at the combatants. The first one, a female with extremely long dark hair, shot up and raked its nails across the male’s cheek. Both screamed at each other then the man bolted forward, smashing itself into the female. They both went down screaming and slashing.

  “Ohh!” Billy exclaimed. “I wish we had popcorn.”

  The two kids stared at him, aghast.

  “What?” he asked when he figured out they were both looking at him. “Oh come on, I was kidding! Geez, so serious. Ten bucks on the dude, he’s way bigger.”

  Kyle glanced at Billy before returning his gaze to the infected bout below on the street. “I don’t have any money.”

  Billy reached down and grabbed his pack. He fished around in it for a moment before coming out with three neat stacks of cash. “Here’s ten grand for each of you. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  The kids looked at each other and then at him. They both broke into ear-to-ear grins.

  “I’ve… I’ve never seen so much money before!” Vanessa squealed.

  Kyle sighed, hefting the banded bills. “I wish I could have had this when the video game store was still open. $100 on the woman. Guy might be bigger, but she is just nuts, look at her.”

  Billy gave him a sideways, knowing glance. “Done.”

  They never got to see a winner because something stole the attention of the infected in the area. The Runners both got up and ran off down the side of the park, screaming. They vaulted the small fence, sprinted across the park, and were lost to the invading evening shadows. Their dead cousins followed at a death-impeded pace.