The anxiety and panic began to well up inside him. By the sound of the roar, he figured the undead were within a hundred yards. Bjorn grabbed Jen by the hand and slapped Nick and Chris on the shoulder as he veered off, further to the northeast, hoping to delay the inevitable. The four ran on, this time sprinting as fast as they could for as long as they could. After another five minutes of full-out flight across the frozen lake, the roaring had stopped, or at least if it continued, they were unable to hear them over the blood pumping through their ears. Another sound came to Jen as they pushed on. She screamed, immediately recognizing the sound from her flight across I-86 on foot after Will had been injured. It was the sound of feet slapping on the ground coming from close behind them. A steady slew of curses ran through Bjorn’s head at that as he slowed and turned.
He wheeled, swinging his M4 to shoulder level and waited. The clouds had cleared for the moment and the weak light cast by the stars and the sliver of a moon was enough for him to see when the undead were within fifty feet. He aimed carefully and fired a shot at the first undead that came tearing into sight, hitting it in the head. Its body crumpled to the ice and a few, of the many that followed, fell, tumbling to the ice after tripping over the corpse. Bjorn flipped the toggle to three-round burst and started firing into the thickening horde of dead.
His ability to aim the bursts with precision bursts came much slower than he liked. He fought to control his labored breathing to steady the weapon, and he was forced to close his eyes as he pressed the trigger in order to keep the muzzle flash from blinding him. Nick and Jen were next to him, firing round after round of their rifles into the undead that closed the gap rapidly. The sheer quantity of the fast things was enough to cause their bladders to empty; none even had the chance to make an attempt at modesty in the sight of such horrible odds.
“Run, Jen, run!” Bjorn screamed at the three as he slapped a fresh clip into the gun.
The undead were only twenty feet from them. The ice was slick with the blood and fluids of the other dead. The spectacle of the raging dead slipping, sliding, and falling over one another as they approached helped the shooters’ odds, giving them a chance to keep them from closing the final gap. Jen and the teens peeled off, running away and Bjorn’s next few rounds took the legs out from a handful that broke off in pursuit of her. He had given up on kill shots at this point, not that his marksmanship was up to the task at most times, in favor of easier hits to the torso. The body shots, more often than not, unbalanced the undead, tumbling them to the ice where they flailed about to try and continue pursuit. Nick and Christine had been working their rifles to finish those off before they could stand, in most cases.
Bjorn wheeled back to his left taking out two other undead that had made it to within a few feet of him. Then he too was up and running. He channeled his inner high-school track star and put one foot in front of the other, all while his sphincter clenched in abject terror. Looking up, he could see the flash of muzzles aimed back towards him and hoped that Jen and the teenager’s aim was true as the sound of bare feet and sneakers slapping the ice behind him sounded terribly close.
Before he could make out their shapes in the gloom, he was past them, running off into the night. He briefly entertained the idea of continuing to run and leaving them behind, before dismissing it. A hundred feet beyond the trio, he spun about, slipping and falling on the ice as his crampon failed to get a bite into the wet ice. He smashed his chin on the surface, opening a vicious cut that immediately poured blood down the front of his coat when he stood. He cursed bitterly at his fortune and got up to one knee and assumed a shooter’s pose. His feet were in agony at this point; the week or so of icebound travel had taken its toll. He had stopped removing his socks and boots as getting them back over his blackened toes was too painful to endure. He winced at the pain the position caused in his feet as he waited for the image of Jen, Chris, and Nick to appear and sharpen out of the gloom.
His eyes still showed the burned image of the muzzle flash and he tried to blink it away as he waited. And then there was screaming…Nick, he was sure of it.
“Nick!” he heard Chris screaming in anguish a moment later.
“Chris, No!” Jen barked a moment after that.
Bjorn winced as Nick’s screams echoed hollowly across the ice for what seemed like an eternity before they were blessedly silenced. The silence that followed was eternal, broken by the sounds of heavy, metallic footfalls as Jen finally came into sight, dragging Chris by her hair. Chris had no gun and she sobbed silently in great heaving breaths. As they pulled even with him, the undead were still out of sight. Bjorn guessed that most were jockeying position, trying to get a bite of Nick. He also knew that there were too many, that they would come after shortly.
“Keep going, Jen,” he yelled. “If she won’t run or keep up, leave her.”
Bjorn couldn’t hear her response as the undead swarmed forwards into sight and he opened fire on full automatic. The undead danced and fell as bullets tore into their midst. Others slipped and fell on the ice slick with gore. The constant falls on the slick surface gave him enough time to slam a fresh clip home and allow him to resume firing.
The dead kept coming out of the darkness, slipping on ice and blood and tripping over the others, but they were relentless. As the next clip emptied into the frenzied attackers, for a fleeting moment, Bjorn thought he saw something through the mob; he thought he saw the clear night sky, where previously he had only seen the forms of the pursuing dead. The click of his empty weapon spurred him to run again. One of the things hit him from the side as he spun, driving him down to the ice. The undead was off-balance and slid clear of him after knocking him down, giving Bjorn enough time to regain his feet and run on, drawing his pistol as he did. The blood poured freely from his chin. It seemed an eternity before he saw the flash of Jen’s muzzle lighting a path ahead of him.
“Stop, Bjorn!” she screamed at his approach “She isn’t helping and I can’t hold them off alone.”
Bjorn dropped to his ass on the slick ice, sliding in as if he was stealing second base, uncontested. He came to a stop to the left of Jen, spinning with his pistol raised.
“Go ahead, Jen,” he said to her through gritted teeth. “You don’t need to stay.”
Jen neither responded, nor moved to run. Her answer lay in her pulling the trigger again and again as the first of the dead came into range. Bjorn’s earlier suspicion was confirmed. After the first volley, only a half-dozen of the things remained charging at them. Growling and scrabbling movement in the darkness beyond them indicated more of the things, most likely those incapacitated by non-fatal shots. He heard the click of Jen’s empty rifle next to him, followed by her fumbling, with hands numbed by the frigid temperature, to reload individual rounds into the weapon. Bjorn took aim with the 9mm he held. He squeezed off a shot followed by a second then a third, each one sending an undead down to the ice. He lined up his next shot as the undead were only twenty feet from the three of them. Bjorn squeezed the trigger and the dreaded click of an empty weapon echoed in his ears.
Time crept into slow motion at the same moment as he stared in disbelief and betrayal at his empty gun. Bjorn snapped back into the moment and brought the gun back, reared to strike the first dead as it barreled into his chest. His arm was too slow and the thing hit him with the force of a linebacker, driving him down to the ice and sliding them back a number of feet. The wind was blasted from him on impact with the ice, and as he hooked his thumb under its chin to wrestle its head away from him, a second undead landed on top of him. The force of the second blow bounced the back of his head off of the ice. He could feel the hands and teeth ripping into the heavy down Marmot coat he wore, and through his dazed vision, he could see the puff of feathers flying upward into the starlit black sky.
Bjorn surrendered in that moment, giving into the oblivion that death offered. A peace came over him as the undead shredded their way through his clothes.
*
&n
bsp; Tar awoke early the following morning to someone hammering loudly on his front door. Blearily, he opened his eyes, wincing at the pain the light caused him.
“Linda, if that’s you, you’re gonna wish it wasn’t,” he grumbled as he swung his legs off the couch, tipping the nearly empty bottle of whiskey over, then onto the floor, as he did.
He sat there for a minute with his head in his hands, pressing on his eyeballs to try and relieve the throbbing behind them. He was parched, his tongue felt fat and dry in his mouth, and he had the remains of the bottle of whiskey soaking through his dungarees. The knocking continued incessantly.
“Alright, alright!” he barked loudly, silencing the knocks.
His hands scrabbled around the area until he found his gun under the couch. He could only assume that he had kicked it under there at some point the night before. After standing up slowly, bracing his hand on the arm of the couch, in case he needed to sit back down, he moved slowly to the vestibule. When he got there, he could immediately see that it was not Linda. The distinctive shape of a man wearing a western hat was silhouetted against the curtain hanging over the window. Tar threw the latch and swung the door open, raising the pistol as it swung inwards, revealing Sheriff Daltry, standing on his doorstep.
“Tar,” Daltry nodded, touching the brim of his hat.
“Sheriff,” Tar replied, lowering the gun and nodding towards him.
“You need a shower, man,” the sheriff barked, wrinkling his nose.
“That why you came by and woke me up?” Tar cast back with a glare. “You got out of your comfy hospital bed to focus your extensive knowledge of law enforcement on crimes of personal hygiene?”
Daltry laughed at the jest with genuine humor.
“Actually, Tar, I came over this fine winter morning in the capacity of fireman.” Daltry eyed Tar for a moment, making sure he had him on the hook before continuing. “I did so in order to put out all the fires I hear you’ve started around here.”
“Very fucking funny, Sheriff,” Tar said, yawning loudly.
“Seriously though, get your shit together. We are going over to talk to Tyler and his crew as soon as you wash up. Jesus, man, did you drink the whole distillery?”
“Fuck you, Sheriff,” Tar said, turning to start slowly up the stairs to the bathroom.
Tar felt like a new man a half-hour later. He came down the stairs in fresh clothes for the first time in days after his first shower in even longer. Moreso, his new lease on the day was due to a handful of ancient aspirin he found in the medicine cabinet. They stuck to the inside of his mouth and tasted wretched, but apparently they had some life left in them.
Thank you, Sheriff, he thought earnestly to himself, as he came downstairs and could hear his coffee pot brewing. Two quick cups of coffee and three cigarettes later, the duo walked out of Tar’s house into the gently falling snow. The winds had died off overnight, leaving only a steady flurry drifting to the snow covered earth. Tar was beginning to feel completely human again with a belly full of warm coffee, as they climbed into the police issue Ford Explorer. Daltry steered the cruiser out to the northwest, towards Triple D Ranch, the home of Tyler Peterson.
*
Bjorn felt instantly relieved as soon as he gave in, accepting death. At last, there would be an end to the grief over his wife and son, an end to the excruciating pain the bitter cold had put him through over the last week. An end to the worry…about Sophie. His thoughts drifted across the years to a vacation he had taken his family on, before Liam was born. The tender memory of Sophie as a toddler, excitedly running towards the Ferris wheel, her first one. The raw emotions of love swept through him at the recollection of being atop it with her and her fearfully clutching to his arm. His reassuring hand around her. The loving look on Lilly’s adoring face as she smiled up at them. Sophie! his mind screamed at him.
His eyes snapped open and his will to survive kicked in fully. He lashed out at the undead raging atop him. One of them was pinning his right arm underneath its weight as it viciously tore at his coat, and the other was straddling his left leg. He felt a cold, dead hand creep up under his coat, worming its way under his clothing and gripping painfully onto the warm flesh of his stomach. Wicked nails tore at his flesh as his rage built. Finally, screaming in rage, he was able to rip his arm out from under the undead that pinned him. He rammed his hand into its armpit and pushed with all his might. The dead thing toppled over, half on his right leg while colliding into the other undead. He hauled his right leg out from under its weight and planted his foot on its chest. The force of his kick thrust it a few feet across the ice, away from him.
“Chris, help!” he heard Jen scream off to his side, her voice filled with panic. “No! Don’t you fucking run from me!”
Bjorn could hear Jen struggling with the third undead, just a few feet to the right of him, but he couldn’t spare a moment to look in her direction, nevermind help her. The undead he booted away righted itself and dove back atop him as he wriggled his fingers through the other thing’s hair. He brought his knee up to keep the diving undead at bay and pulled mightily back on the other thing’s hair, tearing it away from his abdomen.
The undead stood up from his extended leg and moved to dive back in at his midsection. Bjorn unleashed a series of vicious kicks, raining them down heavily into the thing’s snapping mouth as it leaned in. Each kick he unleashed on the undead face slid it back across the ice a few inches. He continued struggling to keep the other undead away from his stomach, his left hand tangled in its greasy, gore-streaked hair. As he started to turn the tide against the two, he reached with his free arm and hooked a hold around the ankle of the one that Jen was struggling with. He pulled with all his strength, hoping that Jen could use the opening to free herself.
Suddenly, the tension pulling at his left hand was gone and a searing jolt of agony tore through his stomach. He looked confusedly at the hand, still holding the hair of the undead. A moment’s examination showed him that he was clutching its detached scalp that had tore free of its head. The pain of teeth sinking through the soft flesh of his stomach into the muscle underneath overwhelmed him. Hot blood poured and pooled across his cooling skin. The strength in his legs faltered as he struggled to cope with the pain in his torso.
Fresh teeth ripped through his pants and into his inner thigh as the other undead moved clear of his defensive leg, sliding down and into his groin. A third set of teeth tore into his right hand. The undead he had tugged away from Jen turned around and sunk its teeth into the prone victim. Bjorn’s heart broke in that moment; he knew he was going to die here. He was going to be devoured by the undead and he would never see his daughter again. He knew that even though he had saved her, he failed her.
Rather than resigning himself to his death, his anger about it sent a new fire surging through him. He sat up, ripping his hand out of the undead mouth and losing a chink of skin in the process. He grabbed the face of the one ripping its way through his stomach and tore it free, smashing its head heavily into the ice. He smashed it again and again, eventually ruining the skull and dashing its brains on the black surface. Renewed pain shot through him as the one that had been gnawing on his hand threw itself into him, its teeth fresh purchase where his neck met his shoulder. He lashed out with his right foot, kicking the one struggling to get a bite of flesh through the many layers of clothing on his thigh. The force of the kick painfully tore its mouth free and sent it sliding clear of him. He struggled to stand, finally shoving the third one from his shoulder.
A shot rang out from his right, sending the one he’d just kicked clear of his thigh spinning on the ice as its brains poured from the wound.
“Bjorn!” Jen screamed in surprise and fear as she took his condition in.
He felt a wave of blood pouring down his stomach, soaking through his pants and reaching his groin in a matter of seconds. Another gout of blood poured down his leg, filtering through his sock and pooling in his boot. A third channel of blood traced it
s way down his chest, meeting with his stomach wound, and still his chin poured blood from his fall. Bjorn shoved the final undead weakly away from him and Jen fired at close range, dispatching it.
He flopped heavily to the surface of the ice as the blood began to pool around him. He was cold and the feel of the warm blood cascading from his wounds was pleasant. He could vaguely feel Jen tearing at his clothing and checking his wounds, but the sensation seemed so far away, almost as if he were watching it happen through binoculars. A heavy slap brought him back into his pain-wracked body, he was aware that she was yelling and everything quickly came back into focus.
“– I said don’t you fucking leave me here alone, Bjorn! I need you!”
She was stuffing scraps of torn clothing into his wounds in an attempt to stop the flow of his life blood. Chris had run off into the black night out of fear, leaving the two of them alone on the open ice. Bjorn knew the woman’s efforts were hopeless. Even if she could perform a miracle and stop the bleeding, he was infected. He was angry that he was dying, but even that anger seemed of little consequence. He became aware of a new noise coming from in front of him and lifted his head to see it. Hundreds of slow dead were slipping and stumbling across the black ice, slick with the gore and ichor.
“Fuck,” he managed to weakly mumble, knowing that his pain was not over yet.
Jen let out a scream, but Bjorn heard his daughter screaming instead and dragged himself to the ammo can. He ripped it open and started loading his clip.
“Help me, sweetie,” he urged.
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 32
