Crusade (Eden Book 2)

by Tony Monchinski

  It was at that moment something in the back of her head clicked and she stopped where she was. The sun was down behind the trees but there was still a great deal of light in the sky. Off in the distance there was the buzz of cicadas.

  She looked around in all directions and didn’t see anything amiss. The cars and trucks stretched on as they had. To her left, beyond wherever Maurice was, the shoulder of the road angled up through waist high grass and ended at the tree line.

  She got down on one knee then lay flat and looked under the car to her right then the van to her left. She didn’t know what she expected to see but seeing nothing did not assure her.

  Eva got up and climbed on top of the hood of a car then the vehicle’s roof. She looked back and saw Sonya, Lauren and the kids and she signaled to them to stop. Lauren said something to Sonya that Eva could not hear but their small group halted where they were near the bus Eva had passed a few minutes ago.

  Maurice saw her signal to the other women and he stopped too.

  Eva squinted in the growing dusk and looked around and saw nothing, but, no, that wasn’t quite right, there was something up ahead three or four cars. She watched it but couldn’t figure out what it was. A growing sense of unease welled up inside her. She turned back to her sister and Lauren, signaling to them to stay where they were. She carefully stepped down from the roof of the car onto its hood, and from the hood to the trunk then roof, then to the hood of the next one, and so on until she had crossed three cars this way. Now she stood on the roof of a Volkswagen Rabbit looking down on a mess.

  A man was lying there on the road between the car on which Eva stood and the next. His face was ravaged, a mask of red and raw muscle and sinew laid-bare. From his neck up the only identifiable parts were a tongue and an eyeball. The man’s nose, ears, lips, the entirety of the skin on his face, most of his scalp, was all gone. There was some hair plastered to the back of his head and the road.

  A few things hit Eva at once. The blood was fresh. This was a recent kill. He wore a blood-stained t-shirt that said I am the Man from Nantucket. She knew this man. He was from the convoy.

  And those weren’t gnats, they were flies. There were hundreds of them, many buzzing around the man, but too many to be drawn by the corpse alone. Eva knew where there were flies there were—

  “Uggghhh!” the man uttered a gargled cry. She jumped back and lost her footing, slipping on the hood of the Rabbit, her ass slamming into the windshield, her body rolling off the car. She hit the road with one hand out to break her fall then quickly scrambled up. As she did so she heard a gunshot from somewhere behind followed by “Ska ta!” and more gunfire. She knew the Greek and Zach were in trouble.

  “Eva!” Sonya screamed but she couldn’t see her sister. She backed away from the space where the mess lay and wondered if the man in the t-shirt was still alive, or was coming back from the dead, when Maurice yelled out “Fuck!” She looked up. There were dozens of bookers sprinting down from out of the tree line towards him and the cars. He turned and ran, disappearing from her view.

  “Raaaaaaah!”

  The growl turned her around. A zombie, one of the smart ones, squatted on the roof of a car, looking down at her. As Eva watched, the thing cracked its mouth open and a gob of bloody spittle descended from its maw to the road surface in an unbroken line as it tensed to pounce.

  She hit it with a slug-load from the shotgun mounted under her carbine. It wasn’t a head shot but the blast lifted the creature off the car roof and deposited it somewhere on the other side of the vehicle. She didn’t stick around for it to come back. High-tailing it between the cars, trucks and motorcycles back towards her sister and the others, she screamed: “Get in the bus! Get in the bus!” She was aware of movement from many sides now, more things like the brain she had just blasted moving amongst the vehicles, coming for her, shrieking and hopping on and over cars.

  Two vehicles over a zombie popped up from between a couple of cars like a jack-in-the-box and howled at her.

  As she ran she pumped the shotgun, chambering a double-ought shell. There was gunfire from amidst the cars now and the Greek was still cursing. Eva looked up. The bookers were all gone from the hillside, which meant they were amongst the cars on the highway. Sure enough she caught a glimpse of a head and shoulders blur past between a couple of cars.

  Eva reached the bus at the same time the Greek did.

  Lauren stood in the doorway of the school bus, the MP-40 submachine gun in her hands. Eva could see Sonya and the kids inside the bus.

  “Where’s Zach?” Lauren yelled at the Greek, who motioned futilely with one hand and yelled back something none of them understood.

  “Get in the bus! Get in the bus!”

  Eva brought the stock of the M4 to her shoulder and sighted around the front of the bus, firing. A windshield spider-webbed. The zombie rushing past it did not flinch. The creature disappeared from view. The Greek fired behind her. She turned and there were a quartet of bookers loping towards them from around the side of the van pushed up against the bus.

  “In the bus!” Eva fired the shotgun and the buckshot spread, knocking two of the four zombies down momentarily. The third and fourth tore past the other two, mouths wide open—

  The Greek fired his Remington, pumped and fired, dropping both.

  Eva was the last one in the bus. The Greek worked the lever, slamming the door shut. Immediately there was a zombie outside the door, looking in, slapping at the glass , jerking its head around to catch sight of each of them.

  “Esai vromikos poustis!” The Greek extended his12-gauge towards the door but he didn’t fire, and the door held.

  The sound of thumps on steel came, and Eva looked out the window to see the front of the bus surrounded by zombies, at least a dozen of them.

  “Shit.”

  “Eva? Are you okay? Where are my babies?”

  “We’re here Mommy.” Little Nicole hugged her.

  “Where’s your brother? Where’s Nelson?”

  “He’s right here Mommy. He’s okay.”

  The baby cried at the top of its lungs.

  “Eva,” Lauren said. “Where’s Maurice?”

  “I don’t know. What happened to Zach?”

  “Ask the Greek.” Lauren shook her head. “I don’t understand a word he’s saying.”

  The Greek was babbling on heatedly, pointing through the window back up towards the tree line.

  “Oh shit,” little Nelson said and while his mother scolded him—“Nelson what have I told you about your language?”—in a harried tone, Eva and Lauren looked where the Greek pointed. There were dozens of zombies shambling down the hill towards the vehicles on the highway, towards the commotion about the bus.

  “Shit,” Eva said. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “I want my mommy!” Buckwheat cried.

  The Greek was cursing at the zombies outside the school bus, pointing at each one of them and yelling, his face all red.

  “In two minutes we’re going to have hundreds of them swarming us,” Eva said. “You’ve got to listen to me.”

  “What? What are we going to do?” Sonya asked.

  “There’s an emergency exit at the rear of this bus,” Eva said, making it up as she went along, which was their only chance. “There’s also one in the ceiling. I’m going to climb out onto the roof and draw their attention. Most of them are gathered around the front of the bus. When I start shooting you guys get the hell off the bus, get out the back and head that way—” She pointed where she meant, realized Sonya couldn’t see where she directed, so she caught Lauren’s eye. “Get off the road. Get the hell out of here!”

  “What about you?” Sonya demanded.

  “Don’t worry about me!”

  “I’m your sister! Of course I worry about you!”

  “Sonya, you’ve got to get the kids out of here! Now! Greek! Greek, look at me!”

  He stopped cursing at the zombies massing outside to look at Eva. He had spittle flecked
in the corners of his mouth.

  “Give me a hand up!” She stepped onto a bench seat and fiddled around with the emergency exit hatch mounted in the roof. She figured it out and disengaged it. The hatch slide back and open.

  “Lauren! Sonya! You have to all stick together—do you hear me? It’s getting dark outside! Get off the road and don’t stop. I’ll catch up! Greek, give me a boost!”

  He didn’t understand a word she said but apparently understood fully what she wanted. Eva stepped into his clasped hands and he boosted her up and through the roof.

  “Rifle,” she called down and he passed it up to her, wishing her luck, “Kali-tixi, na exeis.”

  She stood on the roof of the school bus and looked at what was unfolding below. There were fifty or sixty zombies gathered around the front of the bus and scads more stumbling towards it through the parked cars on the highway. The sky was purpling and soon it would be impossible to see. She hoped the night would help her sister and the others steal away unnoticed.

  “Hey! Dead fucks!”

  She fired the M4, the 5.56mm round punching through the chest of a zombie in a suit jacket. The creature staggered back two steps and looked up at her. The undead around it looked at it curiously. When the second shot from the assault rifle cracked, removing the top of the chest-shot zombie’s skull, they again looked up to the roof of the bus at Eva with anticipation in their eyes.

  “Yeah! You dead fucks!”

  She started screaming at them and firing down into them. The zombies pawed the air for her, hissed and cried out in frustration and hunger and dropped, head shot.

  The bolt of the M4 clicked open on an empty chamber. Eva dumped the magazine and slid a fresh one home.

  “Eat my pussy limp-dick!” She fired the shotgun mounted under the barrel, racked the bolt, fired, spraying the massing zombies below with buckshot and slug loads. When the shotgun was out she chambered a fresh five-round magazine and started back into them with the M4.

  On her third magazine for the assault rifle, she paused briefly to look over her shoulder. She could just make out someone—the Greek and one of the children—crouched over, disappearing in the shadows amidst the cars. Hundreds of zombies were streaming towards her position but she breathed a sigh of relief. Sonya and the kids might just get away.

  “Eva!”

  She looked up.

  “Mo!”

  Maurice had climbed atop the cab of a standard 8x4 dump truck several vehicles away. At the sound of his voice many of the zombies looked up and cawed at him. The ones gathered directly around the front of the school bus looked from Eva to Maurice, confused, unsure who to go for.

  “Get the fuck out of here!”

  “Maurice, you crazy—”

  “Go on! Tell Lauren—”

  “Fuck you!” She fired down into the mass of zombies, scoring a headshot, aiming at another, “And you!”

  A second assault rifle entered the fray, as Maurice fired his Mini-14 down on the zombies gathering around him and over their heads at the exposed zombies near the bus. As Eva swapped out another magazine she watched several of the creatures grouped beneath her turn and head towards the dump truck.

  She stepped back and squatted down, out of sight of the zombies below.

  “Eva!” Maurice stopped firing long enough to reload and call out to her. “Wait a minute then get the hell out of here! Take care of your sister! Tell Lauren—tell Lauren I love her!”

  She didn’t say anything. She would not risk Maurice’s sacrifice. There were hundreds of zombies coming down off the hill, through the cars, and as he resumed firing they congregated around the truck on which he stood.

  She waited and reloaded the M4 and the M-26. When she peered off the side of the bus and didn’t see any zombies below she rolled off onto the roof of the van flush against it and from there dropped to the highway.

  Maurice fired behind her, out of sight. She knew there were hundreds, maybe thousands of zombies back there, only several yards away from her at most, so she kept low and ran as best she could in the general direction she thought Lauren would have led Sonya and the children.

  Eva reached the shoulder and the tree-line on the opposite side of the road without incident. She didn’t look back as she plunged into the woods, breathing heavily, listening as best she could. Maurice continued to fire and as she moved through the woods his gunshots diminished.

  After fifteen minutes of wending her way through the trees and dark she started to wonder what she would do if she had lost them out here in the night. Then from somewhere up ahead she heard the cry of a baby and she sped ahead.

  “It’s me,” she called, risking the noise less someone accidentally fire on her. “It’s Eva!”

  “PoPo, piga na se skotoso,” the Greek said, lowering his Remington. “Nomiza pos esouna zobi!”

  “Eva!” Sonya clutched her sister with her free arm, the other holding Victor. Her kids grasped Eva’s legs.

  Nelson cried: “Aunt Eva! Aunt Eva!”

  “Lauren.” She caught the other woman’s eye. Lauren’s eyes were puffy like she had been crying. Eva noticed someone was missing. “Where’s Stymie? Where’s that kid?”

  “I don’t know.” Lauren looked down. “We—I lost him, somewhere on the highway. I told him to stick close…”

  “We have to move,” Eva said. “There are thousands of those things back there.”

  “How did you get away?” Sonya asked.

  “Come on, I’ll explain on the walk.”

  “The kid,” Lauren implored.

  “He’s gone, Lore. Deal with it, okay?”

  They moved through the dark for an hour or so until they could go no farther. It was a moonless night and the gloom was impenetrable. Eva had a flashlight and did her best to light their way but soon it was evident they would have to stop. She called a halt and said they’d spend the night here, beneath the trees. The children lay down around Sonya, exhausted, little Victor at the breast, and were soon asleep.

  Eva leaned against a tree, the barrels of her assault rifle pointed towards the pine needles littering the ground, and she listened to the night.

  Lauren lay there thinking about Stymie or Buckwheat or whatever his name was. How had he become separated from them? Where had he gone? Was he still alive out there? Alone, with all those zombies? The little boy… The thought made her want to vomit.

  The Greek was snoring and she couldn’t sleep. She stood up and walked over to him, prodded him awake with her foot.

  “Ti? Ti? Ti egine?”

  “Greek, you’re snoring.” He pulled his Kangol up off his eyes and looked at her without understanding. She mimicked the sound of snoring and pointed to Sonya and her kids huddled nearby. “You’re gonna wake the kids.”

  “Den mou pirazi katholou.” He waved his hand, yawned, rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Lauren didn’t lay back down. She walked over to where Eva stood in the dark.

  “You should get some sleep,” she told Eva. “I’m tweaked. I can’t sleep now.”

  “I can’t either. But you should try.”

  Lauren yawned and stretched.

  “Listen, Lore, you did good back there.”

  “You’re welcome. I can’t get that kid out of my mind.”

  “Did you tell him to stick with you the entire time?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Then he should have listened.”

  “You can be a real harsh bitch, you know that?”

  “I need you to understand something. All that matters to me in this, the only thing that matters, is my sister and her kids. Not you, not me, not that snoring-assed Greek over there. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to hear some fucked-up shit? When we were in the RV, when we were getting ready to leave it, remember when the door opened and I fired at the zombie there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That wasn’t a zombie, Lore. That was Mason.”

  “Oh s
hit, Eva…”