by TW Brown
Our only real option was to run out onto Johnson Creek Boulevard, turn right, and continue up the long and gradual hill that led into a residential area. I felt that Chewie I would be able to make it just fine if we ran hard. I was less confident that Betty or Selina would fare as well.
9
…and into the fire.
I spun to see a zombie with an unyielding grip on the broom that Selina was supposed to use to try and shove the undead back while we made our escape. That, however, was not what was making her scream. Another of the zombies had moved in beside her and had a handful of her hair in one fist as it did its best to jerk her towards it.
It was sooner than I’d hoped, but there was no way around it now. I stuffed the axe in the loop at my belt as I drew my .357 and stepped to the zombie that was just about to try and bite into the top of Selina’s head.
Jamming the barrel up against the temple, I fired. There was very little muffling of the sound. My arm snapped up with the recoil but I was able to recover fast and move to the one holding the heavy end of the broom. This time I put a shot into the forehead.
I grabbed Selina and pushed her towards the street. “Right…go right and just run!”
“But—” she started to protest. I shoved her in the direction she needed to be going.
“GO!”
Turning, I saw Betty heave one zombie away with her free hand and then jab at another as she backed towards me. I rushed to her side and kicked the zombie moving in from her right. She acknowledged me with a grunt as she brought the paddle up and then thrust out with a firm two-handed grip on the shaft. The end of it smashed into the open mouth of a zombie, shattering teeth and rocking it back and away.
With a small clearing created, she was able to disengage and turned to follow me. I ushered her past, intent on bringing up the rear. Chewie had bounded after Selina and was currently crouched and growling at a pair of zombies approaching from down the road. That was not so much the problem as the fact that this pair were only the very leading edge of a mob that had been wandering around on the overpass just down the slope from us.
I almost tripped stepping down from the curb and onto the road, but it was Betty who was suddenly at my side and grabbing my arm. She helped keep me on my feet, and together, we started after Selina.
“Chewie,” I called. Obediently, the dog broke of her confrontation and bounded after us.
An open grassy area was across from us on our left and another big series of buildings was on our right. There was also a road leading between the café complex and what the lettering on a rounded brick wall identified as the Mt. Scott Professional Center. As we passed those buildings, the words “MEDICAL CENTER” on the side caught my attention. I made a note of this place as I felt it might be beneficial to perhaps try and come back here for supplies if we ever get a vehicle again.
The four-way intersection gave us a moment on flat ground to gather ourselves as Betty and I caught up with Selina who was now crying so hard that I had no idea how she was able to see through all the tears. My eyes instantly scanned her for any signs that she might be bitten or scratched, but she seemed fine.
“It’s okay,” I said in as soothing a tone as I could manage while I sucked in gulps of air.
“M-m-my hair,” the girl whined.
I looked closer and saw that a large chunk of her hair had indeed been ripped away and she was left with a jagged bald patch towards the back. That was also when I noticed a bit of blood running down the back of her neck. I felt my own blood run cold. Was it possible that she was infected now?
Doing my best to remain calm, I gripped her shoulders and turned her towards me. I looked into her eyes, but all I saw as the shimmer from her tears.
“I know it hurts, but we have to get moving,” I said, still not confident that she had not become infected.
Could I kill this child if she turned? I thought as I nudged her onwards and we resumed our uphill trek.
There were zombies on the road ahead, but not in the numbers or concentration that existed behind us. The two lanes on either side were separated by a raised divider with plenty of small shrubs that would trip up anything attempting to cross. I just wished that maybe there had been some sort of actual barrier dividing the lanes. The one good thing was that there was a steep, grassy hill on our left once we cleared the pine trees that lined the sides of the road. We had perfect vision of anything that might come from that way. The left side was even better. Again, there was a grassy slope, but the bottom of the hill that bordered the road had a three-foot-high rock wall. Any zombie coming down from that side would likely fall rather unceremoniously to the sidewalk and be easy to outdistance.
On both sides, at the tops of those slopes, I could see some very expensive looking houses. They were not necessarily good choices since they looked to have an extremely large number of windows, many going from the ground up to the second or perhaps third floor.
I don’t know how many times over the years that I have driven along this same road. I never once thought about how steep it was if you are on foot. In a car, I could just cruise along with no worries. If I was already starting to feel a burning in my lungs as well as my quads, I had no doubt that Betty was in pain. Yet, she was keeping her pace constant and steady.
As we reached a long, arcing bend in the road, we also reached the end of the bushes serving as the divider between the two lanes on each side. Now there was just a raised concrete sidewalk of sorts. Also, on our side, the grassy slope was replaced by a tiered rock formation that reminded me of the side of a pyramid. On our left, the slope was still all grass, but there was not a single zombie stumbling down it. We were actually reaching a spot where there were only a few of them ahead, and those few were spread out enough that we would probably be able to get by them without too much effort.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the mob from the overpass was still in pursuit. There would be absolutely no way we could backtrack if something came up in front of us. I had to hope that a bit of luck would fall in our laps.
Jogging ahead, despite the fact that my jog was almost slower than our fast walk, I approached a pair of the walking dead that we would most likely not be able to avoid. I tucked the pistol away and pulled out my trusty hand axe.
The first one almost made me laugh. He had easily been over three hundred pounds in life. His walk was much more of a drag-step waddle and I could imagine him scooting around in those little electric carts. His face was a hideous mess as dried blood had caked and crusted over in his unruly bird’s nest of a beard. He would be the easiest to evade as I took down his companion. Still, judging by his beard, he’d managed to get his teeth into at least one victim. His only visible injury was a large black smudge on his right forearm that looked more like a bruise than a bite.
His companion was his polar opposite. She looked like perhaps she’d been out for a jog when she’d been attacked. Most of her right arm was shredded and destroyed from the elbow to the wrist. You could actually see both bones of the forearm quite clearly. Her mouth was still clean, which meant that she’d yet to feed; although, there were at least a dozen bullet holes in her upper body.
I took her down first, sweeping her long, slender legs out from under her in one movement, my hands checking her at the shoulders to send her onto her back. Placing my foot on her chest, I whispered an apology and then split her face almost in two.
Not taking even a moment to really allow myself to see what I’d done, I focused my attention on Big Boy. He was wearing coveralls and a red tee-shirt with the logo of some sports team on it, but so much blood had run down his chin and beard that the lettering was obscured by a huge blackish stain. I decided to use his size against him and made a feint to his left. As soon as he started that way, I juked to his right and brought my axe up.
He was like a cruise ship in that he was not designed for hairpin turns or sudden stops. Still, he made his best effort. That caused him to lose his balance and he tumbled.
When his feet got tangled, it actually sent him falling sideways…in my direction.
Now it was my turn to try and dance around. Unfortunately, my swing was already committed and I was moving into him as he fell into me. His side hit me hard and his enormous hand managed to be dangling in the perfect spot as his knuckles acted almost like the head of a whip and struck me squarely between the legs.
I barely managed a yelp of agony. Perhaps I should at least be thankful for that as I would not be drawing still more attention our direction. Sadly, the pain proved to be too much for me and I found myself on the verge of blacking out. When his massive frame landed on me, I was certain that my end was here. The wind was literally crushed out of me in one massive exhale as the weight of his body forced all the oxygen from my lungs in one huge whoosh.
Then the world went dark. I wasn’t unconscious because I could hear Chewie barking furiously which pretty much negated my having not screamed when I took that nut-shot from Big Boy. For some reason, I couldn’t see anything, plus, now that I had the wind basically knocked from me in addition to the pain radiating in huge waves from my groin region, I began to panic. Worse still, I could not do anything about it. I was basically immobile.
Finally, I registered the fact that I was lying pinned beneath the massive figure of Big Boy. I got flashes of daylight as it moved and squirmed on top of me, obviously seeking to get its head around so that it could gobble me up. I just knew the bite was coming and my journey was about to come to a gruesome end. There was a loud pop that sounded like a gun, but I could not be sure.
I would have gotten sick if I had anything left in my stomach, but since it was empty, all I could do was gag. That only made things worse as I wondered which I would die from first: lack of oxygen or being eaten? The body shifted, and suddenly I could see. I was staring straight up at a partly cloudy sky. Betty’s face came into view and she reached out a hand.
“Get up, Evan. We need to move, that huge group of zombies is coming around the bend.”
I looked up and could make out Betty’s round face looking down at me. There was a dark splatter across her shirt, but it was the pistol in her hand that really drew my eyes.
“It fell out of your pants or whatever,” Betty answered my unasked question. She looked back the way we’d come from again and then back to me. “Now you have to get up.”
I tried to move but my legs would not budge. I had to struggle to muster the strength to look down. Having the wind knocked from me was not going to just clear up. The problem with that was not just in the feeling that I might never be able to draw a full breath again, but in the fact that it almost paralyzed a person.
Moving my legs with the wind knocked from me would be a struggle, but with that huge corpse sprawled across them, I wasn’t going anywhere. Betty’s gaze followed mine and she tucked my pistol in her waistband and then bent to try and move the offensive carcass. She grunted with the effort, but not much changed.
Fear was not doing my ability to recover any favors. I could now hear the moans increase in volume. The chorus was punctuated with plenty of the baby cries to add to the creepiness of the hellish choir.
I was a goner. There was just no way that I would free myself and make it to my feet in time. Betty could hardly haul herself up this slope. It was not reasonable to believe for a moment that she would be able to drag my sorry ass or even help me limp along.
“Get moving, Betty,” a voice growled. “I got Pretty Boy here. Watch your step, but these rocks ain’t that hard to climb. You too, little missy.”
I turned my head and spotted Carl as he came sliding down the pyramid-esque rocks on his rear end. That was enough to make my heart just about burst, but the small shadow I saw at the top of those rocks was all it took to etch a smile into my face despite my grimace of pain and discomfort.
“Remind me to never hire you to babysit if I have kids, friend,” Carl grunted as he pulled me from under the massive coverall-clad body that was almost my doom.
I managed a pitiful squeak as he hauled me to my feet. He looked around and then scowled. We started up the road. I saw the rock formation slide by, but he continued to force me to limp up the gradual slope. Every so often, he would pause and look over his shoulder, curse under his breath, and then force me to continue on.
Very slowly, I began to regain the ability to draw in the most miniscule amounts of oxygen. A little further, and I could almost suck in a breath.
“The moment you think you can run, you just say so,” Carl panted as we continued our hike up this steep section of road.
It took more effort than I expected, but I finally chanced a look behind us and was amazed to discover that the undead were apparently moving faster than we’d been going. That gave my recovery a boost and I nodded, picking up my tempo to a fast walk.
I finally felt like I could manage a word or two. “Why don’t we head up the hill?”
“Because those bastards are too close and will follow. They may stumble and fall, but I found out the hard way that they just don’t stop. Eventually, they will make the summit, and with a herd that size, we are fucked seven ways to Sunday, friend.”
That made sense. Of course that was the only thing that did at the moment. I had no idea where he’d actually come from. And I was willing to bet that small shadow I’d seen was our Michael. Had he found the boy like he did us, or vice-versa? Did it matter?
I decided that it did.
“The boy.” It was a statement and I felt confident that Carl understood.
“Damn fool was out wandering the street. I kept hearing this voice, and so I came out from where I was hunkered down. It was pretty dark, but the moon was bright enough that I made out this little figure running around in the damn road.” Carl paused and actually chuckled. “He was telling the zombies that they needed to run and hide or they were gonna be murdered. The thing is, he was apparently smart enough to know that they couldn’t touch him because he ducked and dodged out of their attempts every time.”
I didn’t know what to say. In a way, it all made perfect sense. At least it did when I confined my thoughts solely to Michael.
“I thought you left us for dead weight,” I finally said.
It wasn’t that I was ungrateful for being saved. And it wasn’t that I wanted to pick a fight with him, but Carl had bailed on us. Why had he come out and obviously saved the boy, and then me?
“I got to thinking while I sat all by myself and listened to the moans of the undead. Like we said, this situation will define who we really are. There won’t be any pretenses because there really aren’t any consequences or accountability when it comes to our actions. Oh sure, we can screw up and end up zombie chow, but all the rules of the world we knew just a short time ago are gone…history.” He paused and I thought that was his entire answer. “I decided that I’m not that guy. I’m not the uncaring asshole I believed myself to be. My conscience was eating me alive the whole time…at least once I’d found someplace to hunker down.”
By now, we had rounded a sweeping bend in the road and, after taking a look over his shoulder to confirm that we were out of the zombies’ line-of-sight, he started us up the slope. The footing was a bit treacherous, and more than once I ended up on my knees. By the time we made it to the top, I glanced back to see the zombies rounding the corner. It didn’t appear to me that we’d been spotted.
“They just go along until something else distracts them,” Carl whispered. “Sorta like a girl in a jewelry store…fixated on that one thing until another shiny object is dangled in front of her.”
Okay, I thought, Carl is a bit of a dick, but at least he had enough of a conscience to go down after little Michael and then basically save our butts.
We made our way to an enormous house. It looked like it cost well over a million dollars. The cars parked in the big, turnaround driveway looked like they cost more than I would make in a lifetime.
“Down at the end of the driveway is a gate. It was open when I got
here, so I pulled it shut, but the damn electric lock won’t engage, so I had to use some wire to keep it closed. I doubt it would hold up to any serious pulling or tugging,” Carl explained. “When I got inside, there was one of them things locked in a bathroom. Easy enough to put down, but that was it.”
We reached the stairs that led up to the main doors and I was amazed that any single person or family could afford something like this. I felt a little guilty when I took a bit of happiness in the fact that these people had bailed on a location that was actually not a bad candidate for holing up and waiting things out.
It was set back from the street by a long entry drive. It had a gate and five-foot-high wall encircling a good-sized yard. Sure, the lock wasn’t engaged at the moment, but I bet we could find something better than a bit of wire to keep it secure. Sitting on a hill and being three stories high, we would have an excellent vantage to see the surrounding area.
Then I walked inside.
It was like something out of an episode of MTV Cribs. In the entry was a massive fountain and there were stairs that wrapped around this huge circular foyer along the walls. Straight ahead was an arched opening that revealed a living room that was probably the size of my house. The far wall was floor to ceiling windows that looked out onto Johnson Creek Boulevard. I could see just bits and slivers of the actual road from this far back. It was disconcerting to see that many of the walking dead plodding past from such a relatively close distance.
There were also exits on either side and three doors spaced evenly around this entry hall. A stack of suitcases and a safe on wheels were on one side of the fountain which still had water gurgling from the tipped pitcher the fat little cupid was holding. It was obvious that the suitcases had been rifled through.
“It seems the former occupants left in a hurry,” Carl said, noticing as my gaze lingered on all the open luggage with clothes strewn about. It was easy to envision Carl just tossing all the expensive looking blouses, slacks, dress shirts, and ties over his shoulder as he went through everything.
