Zombie Rules (Book 3): ZFINITY

by David Achord

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I think they went to the school and then were coming home when they were ambushed. I was in the barn at the homestead when I heard the gunshots. At first, I thought they were under zombie attack. When I walked out of the barn, Konya was standing in the doorway of the house. He got shot by somebody and fell back inside.”

  “So, what happened then?”

  “I ran back into the barn and hid. I was unarmed and didn’t know what else to do,” she said, somewhat defensively.

  “Okay, I understand. What happened then?”

  Kelly slowly, painfully, told me the rest of the story. I could see the agony in her face. I believe Marc and Ward would have called it survivor’s guilt.

  “Are you sure everyone is dead?” I asked. Kelly shook her head.

  “That’s what Terry told me before he died. The only ones I know of for sure, are Terry and Konya.” She wiped some fresh tears before continuing.

  “Once I got the truck and escaped, I kind of drove around aimlessly. In spite of Terry’s warning, I went to the school. They seemed genuinely shocked, but their attitude was like, better us than them.” She shook her head. “Not a single one of them said, hey Kelly, you’ve been through a lot, why don’t you stay with us.” I nodded in bitter understanding.

  “So, I went looking for Bo and Penny, but they’ve bugged out and nobody knows where they are. Then I went across the street to Chet’s old friends. Johnny actually laughed when I told him about what had happened.” She was lost in thought a moment before continuing. “You guys went out of your way to help all of them, and it didn’t seem to make a difference.”

  “Yeah,” I replied, “some people are like that. I can’t explain it.”

  She looked at me a long moment. “What happened to you?”

  I told her the story, starting with Felix and his pals betraying me and ending with my escape. I didn’t bother going on about the last week of trying to get home. It could wait until another time.

  “So, what the heck are you doing up here in Joelton?”

  “It was Terry’s idea. He told me to get the truck and get the hell out of there. He said I shouldn’t trust anyone at the school and he suggested I make my way to Fort Campbell. I didn’t take his advice at first, but after striking out everywhere else…”

  I nodded in partial understanding. “I’m not sure it was a good idea, but I’m certainly glad you came this way.” I glanced over at her while I drove. “When you ran them off the road, was it a bad wreck?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know. I saw them run into the ditch, it didn’t look too bad, but I didn’t exactly stick around to check on them, you know?”

  That meant they probably were not killed or injured. No matter, I was going to deal with them one way or another. I saw her looking at the leg injury and could see fresh blood seeping around the tear in her pants leg.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “It’s bleeding again and it hurts like hell. Maybe you could take a look at it?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, let’s find a place to hide first.”

  “What are we going to do, Zach?”

  I grunted. “After we get you fixed up, we’re going home. We have unfinished business there.”

  Chapter 57 – Infection

  “You have an infection,” I said. We ultimately decided to stop in a parking garage located near the intersection of White Bridge Road and Harding. It provided cover and was not far from home. After parking, I got Kelly on the bed in the sleeper compartment. She didn’t look very well when we first met, and within the last hour, her condition had gotten worse. I had helped her pull her jeans off and carefully removed the dirty rag she had wrapped around her leg. The gash was on the outer side of her thigh, about four inches long, swollen, and oozing out pus. I leaned forward and smelled it. Not good.

  “How bad is it?” she asked nervously.

  “It could be worse, could be better.”

  “Can you stitch it up?” she asked. I shook my head.

  “I could have on the day it happened, but not now. We’re going to have to do something a little different.” She started to ask me to explain, but I held up a hand.

  “I’ll explain later. Let me think a minute.” I was so tired my brain was not firing on all cylinders. I had to think things through slowly, not like I normally did.

  We hadn’t cleared this area and so I had no idea if there were any humans or zombies lurking around. It was a chance I was going to have to take. The one thing I was sure of was a creek nearby, a pharmacy, and plenty of garbage dumpsters.

  “Okay, I’m going to leave you here for a little while and try to find some things we need. Do you need to go to the restroom or anything?” I asked. Kelly shook her head.

  “Are you going to be gone long?”

  “I don’t think so, maybe an hour.” I handed her the fob for the truck locks.

  “I want you to stay back here in the sleeper and be as quiet as a church mouse. I’m going to lock the truck behind me. When I come back, I’m going to knock and then say the password. It’ll be Nashville, and if you’re in danger give the duress password of Tennessee, okay? Oh, and say it loud enough where I can hear it, but don’t shout at the top of your lungs, unless your life is in immediate danger.” She nodded in understanding. I tried to give a reassuring smile, but couldn’t do it. Instead, I nodded curtly.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said and exited the truck before she had a chance to ask me any additional annoying questions.

  I was now armed with the M4, but I only had eight rounds left. I grabbed one of the jerry cans, looked around for any threats, and then sprinted across the street to a strip mall on the other side of White Bridge Road. At the opposite end was one of those super-duper grocery stores with all of your shopping needs, including a pharmacy.

  Just as I suspected, the store was infested, not with rats, but with cats. There must have been twenty or thirty of them. It still smelled awful though, maybe even worse than rat odor, if that was possible. I struggled to hold down the beef jerky I had eaten about ten minutes ago and ventured in.

  I was not worried about the cats attacking and killing me, but if I got a bad scratch it could easily become infected. I’d have to tread lightly. Thankfully, they scattered when they saw me, probably believing I was a zombie in search of a cat snack.

  It pained me to do it, but I used the truck driver’s well used bandana to cover my face. I’d rinsed it out a few times, but it was still in rough shape. As quietly as I could, I made my way back to the pharmacy. The place was a wreck. Stuff was strewn everywhere and the shelves were bare. I looked around in disgust and started to give up when I happened to spot one of those bags with the prescription and instructions stapled to the outside. It was lying in the middle of a bunch of debris and cat turds. Picking it up, I looked at the prescription - Ampicillin.

  “Bingo,” I said aloud before catching myself. I pocketed the bag and made my way back out of the store.

  Taking several breaths of fresh air, I headed around to the back of the shopping center where there was a creek. The water really smelled bad, almost like raw sewage. Even though we had a couple of those stick water filters back in the truck, I was reluctant to chance it, especially when I saw a dead deer lying on the creek bank. On a hunch, I walked closer and inspected it. It was covered in maggots.

  “Well, at least now I don’t have to go crawling around in a nasty dumpster,” I said, only in a whisper this time. Using the bag that the pill bottle was in, I scraped several maggots into it and folded it closed.

  “Zach, please don’t do that,” Kelly pleaded, but I was not in the mood to coddle her.

  “Listen to me for a minute,” I snapped. “Do you want to lose your leg?” Kelly looked at me apprehensively. “Well, if gangrene sets in, I’ll either have to cut your leg off of just let you die.” I knew I was being harsh but my disposition was frazzled. I was trying, without success, not to stress out o
ver the fate of my family. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself.

  “Maybe I’ve not explained it properly,” I said. “The maggots will eat away only the dead stuff. They don’t like living flesh. They’ll help the wound heal.”

  “But we have the antibiotics,” she implored. I muttered an expletive under my breath.

  “It won’t be enough. You have to trust me on this.” What I didn’t say was I had no idea if the combination of the maggots and the expired Ampicillin were going to do the trick. I didn’t see any red squiggly lines around her wound more than a quarter of an inch long, but for all I knew, it was already too late.

  I looked at her expectantly. After a moment, she reluctantly nodded her head and moved her hands away from her thigh. I opened the bag, dumped all of the maggots in her wound before she could complain, and used one of Fred’s clean tee shirts to wrap it.

  “Okay, it won’t hurt, but I imagine it’ll be a little irritating. Don’t scratch it. Let those little fellows do their job, okay?” Kelly nodded her head again. I looked her leg over again, wasn’t satisfied, found another tee shirt in the drawer and wrapped it around her leg as well. She looked ashen and feverish. I didn’t say it out loud, but I was worried for her. I encouraged her to drink and fed her some pills.

  “Alright, get under the blanket and try to get some sleep.” She did so without protest and then looked at me.

  “Zach, will you lie here with me?”

  I shook my head. “I want to keep watch for a little while and make sure we’re safe. You never know if someone is hiding out there and they’ve seen us. Besides, I haven’t had a bath in several days.”

  “Neither have I, but you look exhausted,” she said. “You need to sleep.” In fact, I was terribly exhausted. I ached from head to toe, especially the spot on my leg from the recent surgery, but I was too stressed out even to think about sleep.

  “I’ll be alright. Maybe I’ll lie down once it gets dark. You get some sleep though. I need you to break that fever.” She nodded in acquiescence.

  I moved back into the front of the cab and sat in the driver’s seat. I really wanted to drive straight home, but I knew I couldn’t. As exhausted as I was, I was fearful I’d drive us straight into a trap. I checked myself in the vanity mirror mounted on the back of the visor. I looked awful. My gaunt face was dirty, chapped, sunburned, had multiple bug bites, and I don’t think I’d even bothered combing my hair for the past few days. I’d lost a lot of weight, at least twenty pounds, and in summation, I looked like shit warmed over.

  I looked back in the sleeper. Kelly was already out. I readjusted the blanket on her before resuming my seat and watched the streets. The only signs of life were the cats wandering around. Not even a single zombie. Eventually, it got too dark to see. Somewhere in there, I drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 58 – Exodus

  There were thousands of them. For some reason, I was standing on top of a stool in the middle of the street, looking them over. They had me surrounded, their empty black eyes staring at me in deadly silence. I started shooting, over and over, but there were too many of them. None of them moved, they simply stood there staring at me until a bullet to the head knocked them over. One of them finally walked up to me. I shot her right between the eyes. She didn’t fall over dead like she should have. Instead, her mouth began to move.

  “Zach,” it said. I frowned in confusion. The thing was a woman at one time, very badly decomposed with black pus gushing out of the fresh wound in the forehead.

  “Zach,” it said again, only this time the voice sounded familiar. The decomposed face then started to change before my very eyes. I stood there transfixed as the face began to take shape.

  “Zach,” she whispered. It was Julie. I inhaled sharply and jerked awake.

  “Zach!” The voice was a frantic whisper. As I became more alert, I looked around, expecting to see Julie, smiling because she had awakened before me. Instead, it was Kelly, and her face was very close to mine. So close, I instinctively pushed her away.

  “What is it?” I mumbled irritably. She quickly held her finger up to my lips and then pointed out of the passenger side window. I rubbed the sand out of my eyes and tried to focus. At first, I did not see it. I kept looking around the parking garage, overlooking the view out of the open section. Kelly pointed again. Then I saw it. There were zombies, lots of them, walking along the railroad tracks that ran behind the garage.

  “I stepped outside to pee,” Kelly whispered, “and I spotted them. They didn’t see me though, I was real quiet.”

  I shrugged off the grogginess, pushed aside the dream and focused on the zombies. They were trudging along, almost like they had a specific destination in mind. I had no watch, but it looked like it was sometime around noon.

  “How long have they been walking by?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I first spotted them about an hour ago,” Kelly replied. “You were exhausted and I knew you needed your sleep, but after an hour went by with no end in sight, I thought I’d better go ahead and wake you.”

  I nodded in understanding, glad she let me get an extra hour of sleep, I certainly needed it. I didn’t have my watch anymore, which irritated me. Straining to look out of the entrance to the garage, it was difficult to see where the sun was in the sky. I glanced at Kelly.

  “Got any guess what time it is?” I asked. She reached back, retrieved her jeans and pulled a Timex wristwatch out of her pocket.

  “A little after noon,” she responded. I focused again on the zombies. There was an endless line of them.

  “Where are they going?” she asked. I shook my head.

  “It may be wishful thinking, but it looks like they’re in the middle of a mass exodus from Nashville, at least I hope so,” I said. “Maybe there’s nothing for them to eat around here anymore.”

  “That’s good, right?” she asked. I nodded.

  “It’s good for Nashville, if in fact they’re leaving, but very bad for every town on down the line.” I thought a second. “If they stay on those railroad tracks, they’ll eventually end up in Memphis.”

  “Why are they following the railroad tracks?” she pressed. I refrained from giving a smart assed answer. I was still tired and had not eaten very much in the past couple of days.

  “The correct answer would be rule number nine; they’re following the path of least resistance,” I said. Or, were they? Maybe they actually had a plan of some sort. Maybe they were simply walking down the tracks until they got to an intersection before diverting to another location. I guess the rules really don’t apply anymore. We sat quietly and watched the seemingly endless line of them walking, walking to who knew where.

  “There’re so many,” Kelly whispered. “It’s like we’re in a world of Zfinity.” I looked at her oddly.

  “What?”

  She looked at me and absently rubbed her wound. “Zfinity, no matter how many we kill, we’ll never be rid of them.”

  I thought about that and eventually nodded my head. “You’re probably right,” I replied and looked her over. She was still wearing a shirt, but had not put her pants back on. I had to admit to myself, her legs were nice and toned. She still had a tan, leftover from the summer when the girls liked to bask in the sun, but she’d gone several days without shaving. I put my palm against her forehead.

  “You seem to have broken your fever,” I said. She nodded.

  “I woke up about sunrise. I’m feeling a lot better, except for those damn maggots, they’re itching like crazy.”

  “Let’s have a look at it,” I whispered and untied the two tee shirts that were wrapped around her wound.

  “Is it bad?” she asked with a slight quiver in her voice.

  “You’re going to have a pretty good scar, but I’d say the maggots have done a nice job of cleaning things up,” I replied and looked around.

  “There used to be a first aid kit in here. We’ll look for it in a minute. In the meantime, I’ll get these little critters
off you.”

  “Oh, thank God,” she whispered in relief. “I’m going to have a phobia about maggots for the rest of my life.”

  After picking the maggots out and securing them in the prescription bag, I found the first aid kit exactly where I had first stored it, cleaned up her wound, and wrapped it with fresh gauze. The kit had a thermometer as well, which I had forgotten about. I pulled it out and stuck it in her mouth.

  “Ninety-nine degrees, that’s good. You’re not out of the woods yet, but I think you’re going to be alright. You’ll need to keep a fresh dressing on and I want you to follow the dosage on the bottle of Ampicillin, okay?”

  “Thank you, Zach,” she said gratefully. I shrugged.

  “We’ve got to take care of each other,” I replied. “If you’re right about everyone being dead, we only have each other now.” My statement elicited an involuntary whimper from her, causing her to reach over and hug me tightly.

  “Are we going home now?” she asked. Her voice was muffled because it was buried against the nape of my neck. My body odor did not seem to bother her.

  “Yeah, eventually, but we have to be careful we don’t drive into a trap, and if we start the truck now, it’ll alert the zombies.”

  Kelly pulled her head away. “We can out run them,” she replied.

  “Yeah, but I don’t want them diverted. They’ll follow us down Woodmont until we’re out of sight and then simply keep walking. It’ll bring them closer to home. Let them keep going wherever the hell they’re going.”

  “Oh. So, how long are we going to sit here?”

  “I have no idea,” I replied. “I would think there is an end to the line somewhere and the number of them will gradually dissipate.”

  It did. Dissipate, that is, but only after we sat there for four long hours, watching them trudge past. The both of us dozed off and on. At one point, Kelly and I were whispering to each other while I occasionally glanced at the horde. Kelly was saying something about eating when I grabbed her hand.