That was when she turned to see a dozen more zombies in the distance heading their way from down the path.
Nick, having had to have seen the look on her face, yanked her leg, telling her to go prone. “There’s more of them, isn’t there?” he asked as he checked the gun. “Seven rounds left,” he mentioned absently. “Did they see you?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered. How are they…?”
“It’s the sounds, Gaia. They are drawn to the sounds,” Nick said, nodding his affirmation. “Adam’s theory was right on the mark! Son of a bitch. The gunshots ringing out in the open spaces are drawing them in. I fired the rifle in the parking lot and it echoed throughout that open area, right? And now this. It’s gotta be true.”
Indeed, Gaia felt stupid in that moment at not having understood that after all the clues. It was not only the smells of flesh that attracted or stimulated them, but it was sound, too. Though she had a hard time wrapping her head around those facts as the creatures were essentially lifeless.
“How can something with no lungs or senses smell or hear?” Nick shrugged, speaking aloud what she was just thinking. “If we can’t use guns, what the hell are we supposed to do?!” Gaia whispered incredulously.
“We’ll have to just figure that one out,” Nick explained, peeking above the lengthy blades of grass which hid them, to see that the zombies had scattered in different directions. “And soon.”
“We gotta get out of here!” Gaia whispered anxiously. She could once again feel her heart pounding in her chest under the anxiety.
“We will.” Nick craned his head around and removed something from his jacket. Gaia recognized a pair of binoculars that he now held over his eyes as he peered around. Then he nodded his head toward one of the outer fencings.
Gaia stared off into the distance but saw nothing that stood out as the answer to their prayers. Nick handed her the binoculars and pointed to the far end of the enclosure, where the edge of the thickets stood a border of the zoo. Leaning against the fencing, she noted a handful of tools, including a shovel, a pitchfork and a rather large pick.
“Shawn and the rest of the grounds crew were fixing a section of fencing over there,” Nick mentioned with a grin. His smile quickly began to fade as he got to his knees and noted one of the undead wandering in their direction. As soon as Nick locked eyes with the abomination, it began to race toward them at incredible speeds, Gaia noted, thinking the things being propelled by none other than the devil himself.
They both stood and ran as fast as they could, and she was actually pulling Nick along as she held his hand. Gaia could run for miles without so much as breathing hard, recalling several marathons she had run in the not so distant past, combined with being, as Adam often said, a ‘health nut’. As Adam came into her thoughts, she pumped her legs even harder, feeling the anchor of Nick’s weight, but continuing along faster and faster. She was also thankful that her gap between her obsessive exercise routines, and her current bout of laziness, was not separated by any more time than it already was.
The pair reached the tools and Nick, stumbling the last few paces, sprawled out on the ground behind her and slid head first into the fencing, his hat flying off in the process. She stood frozen with doubt for a brief instant, staring at the archaic tools and knowing that things were about to get much more gruesome. That trepidation had her doubting that she could do what needed to be done and she glanced over the tools laid out before her, she almost couldn’t bear it.
Almost.
Gaia, suddenly remembering that her actions were now spurred on by the needs of both Adam and Nick, and instilled with the accompanying courage that recollection provided, grasped a rounded point digging shovel tightly in both hands and swung it at the approaching zombie. The strength provided by her purpose combined with the speed at which the zombie was recklessly running toward its prey resulted in a devastating eruption of gore that sprayed backward, covering the grassy canopy with a myriad of colored gore and blood. The nearby goats and birds continued to run away from the carnage, back into a corner some fifty paces away.
Gaia shuddered at the impact and resulting scene, barely holding back her own vomit. Instead, she choked down the bile, extended a hand and helped Nick to his feet. He quickly grasped a pitchfork, tested its weight and nodded to Gaia.
“Thanks, I owe you one,” he said, jabbing at the empty air and testing his weapon. “This’ll work nicely.”
“I don’t think you owe me anything, Nick. Now, let’s get to that damned veterinary lab.”
Gaia knew that the facility of which she spoke was attached to the main house, in which no one really lived any longer, but which Kristen had tended to and cleaned on a bi-weekly basis by another crew. Even Nick chose not to live here for one reason or another, though he had never divulged that reason to anyone. Gaia only knew that he lived off the grounds, somewhere nearby.
The house and accompanying veterinary hospital were in a huge space in the attached building and the food supplies were mostly kept in a storage shed with three massive freezers to store food. There was a backup generator in the basement beneath the veterinary lab, too, with enough fuel to last a month or two in case of emergencies, she recalled.
As they approached the backside of the washrooms, Gaia was able to make around the corner to peek at the house in the distance.
The entire front side of the house was swarming with the undead versions of what might be considered an entire class of children.
There were at least two dozen of them. Her heart sank at the sight.
“What now?!”
“We need to gather them up and trap them…kill them all somehow in one fell swoop.”
“I’m all for it, Nick. Just how are we going to do that, though?”
“Gimme a minute. I’m thinking.” With that request spoken, Nick once more removed the binoculars and scanned the area for several minutes. After a few more moments of silence, Gaia heard something approaching and readied her shovel again.
From around the corner, preceded by its shadow, was another zombie. It was in in the zookeeper’s uniform like the one she wore, but its body was in the shadows cast by the restroom on the grassy ground. Emerging from the gloom of those shadows was the distorted face of Aubrey.
But it wasn’t Aubrey…not exactly. Instead, it was a caricature of what she had once been. Her formerly brown eyes were in a haze, sort of pale, wide and full of malevolence. She was no longer the woman Gaia had known and cared for, but she was now something less than human—a wretched automaton, driven only by the insatiable desire to feast on flesh. This point was never more evident to Gaia than in this very moment.
It raced toward Gaia and Nick, though he had not seen her yet, his focus still on the landscape and happenings in the distance. Gaia braced the shovel against her side meaning for the thing that was once Aubrey to run into it directly.
And she did just that. Only she did not stop against the steel tip of the shovel. Instead, she proceeded past the tip as it penetrated her rotting flesh that felt strangely unnatural to Gaia. The momentum of the undead body propelled it forward as the tip of the digging tool came out the back and the undead-Aubrey continued along its path, as the shaft of the shovel guided it along toward its destination.
Gaia was completely dazed by the turn of events that she was under a spell of both astonishment and horror that held her unmoving—so much so that she did not react as Aubrey’s undead fingers grasped her arms. Nor did she notice the business end of Nick’s pitchfork as it penetrated the creature’s skull, stopping the zombie in its tracks.
Nick shook Gaia just then and she came to, recognizing Nick suddenly for who he was.
“Gaia! Snap out of it!” Nick said, as she finally recognized that he was shaking her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, slumping against the side of the restroom’s outer wall and avoiding eye contact with the dead zombie as Nick retracted his pitchfork from the creature’s skull and retrieved his binocula
rs from where they lay on the grass beside Gaia.
“Hey,” Nick said, kneeling beside her. “I know it’s not easy. She was my friend, too. But she isn’t anymore. She died yesterday. You know that.” Nick grasped her chin and forced her eyes to stare back at his. “You with me?”
“I know!” Gaia yelped and she pulled free of his grasp, irritated at the truth of his words. She stared at the corpse of her one time friend and colleague, not understanding the point of this whole thing called life.
Is this a test of some kind? She wondered, sliding back up along the wall and steeling her resolve, remembering that Adam needed her to be brave above all else.
“So, what’s the plan? You think of anything that can help?”
“I do see something,” Nick said, handing Gaia the binoculars and pointing toward the barn in the distance that is situated next to the house. “And I have an idea. Not sure you’ll like it though.”
“What am I looking at?” Gaia asked. “You mean the gas cans? You want to set the barn on fire?”
“Yep, the barn. If we can get a gas can or two, we pour it all over the inside there, draw ‘em in and torch ‘em. Probably kill most of ‘em.”
Gaia looked all around the building and thought for a moment. It seemed like it could work. There was nothing close to the building that would catch fire, and there was certainly a second level up there where they could climb up and escape out the window.”
“So, draw them in, climb to the hayloft and escape through the window?”
“Well, that‘ll work, yeah,” Nick said. “Not sure what other live bait we can gather other than us, so we’ll have to do it. Just need to sneak inside there. That’s the hard part.”
“Well, we can certainly draw the whole lot of ‘em inside, sure. Might be a good idea if we set up the trap with a little preparation.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I mean, if we are going to draw them inside, maybe we can lean a ladder up against the side of the barn to climb down.”
“That sounds like a great idea and I know for a fact that there’s one on the side of the house there,” Nick said, pointing to the house that was a distance away from the barn.
Gaia laughed aloud as she maneuvered the binoculars across the sea of undead flesh gathered in front of the house.
“Is there something amusing about us risking our lives that I’m missing,” Nick asked sarcastically as Gaia lowered the binoculars and handed them back to him.
“Not at all. But, some of the zombies are missing hands and fingers and one’s missing its entire arm,” Gaia explained with another laugh. She stared at Nick until she believed he finally understood.
“The cats,” he said.
“What else? Or Oscar and Grace. Some of them have been spending a bit too much time trying to get into the cat pens,” she continued, feeling that there was some sort of justice in that. “So, question is: how do we get over there without attracting all those dead things?”
***
Nick quickly summed up his idea to Gaia, explaining that they needed to circle all the way around to the outside borders of the zoo, through some of the pens of the big cats. He went on to say that gatherings of zombies were outside those enclosures and how it would be safer for them to go through the animal pens than have to deal with the mobs of zombies gathered outside. He believed that the tigers and lions would let them be—more so than the zombies would. Nick was well versed in the ways of the big cat. Gaia knew little of his past, but she did know that. To Gaia, that opinion made sense, but still scared the living shit out of her. Having to come face to face with the big cats without anything between them was a frightening prospect.
She followed Nick as he made his way on a wide circuit around the outside section of the zoo toward the cat pens. He had his keys on him and held them in his right hand while the pitchfork was gripped firmly in his left. Gaia saw the first of the enclosures, found on the opposite side of the zoo as where her primates were kept, and calmed herself, knowing the animals could sense fear.
They would have to climb through the tiger pen and then the lion pen to emerge safely at the rear side of the barn, which Nick explained, he could not see, but had hoped it was void of the living dead.
“We won’t know until we get there,” he said, making Gaia feel even more trepidatious about the whole plan.
“Explain to me again why we can’t go through the house and into the hospital that way?” Gaia asked, looking for a reason not to do this.
“Because the entire facility is surrounded by the living dead, and we never go anywhere without exploring it first,” Nick explained as he slowly crept toward the locked gate at the side of the tiger pen. “You follow? We never go somewhere that we haven’t explored. It’s a sure fire way to get yourself killed. That house could be crawling with the undead, and if we get chased somewhere, we could be running into a death trap. Comprende?”
“Yeah, sure,” Gaia said, understanding the logic behind that line of reasoning. She had seen her share of horror movies and enough of the dumb things they did to argue with Nick.
“The Amur’s are magnificent animals,” he remarked dreamily as he crept closer and fitted the key in the lock. “Did you know that each tiger’s stripes are as unique as a snowflake?” Nick whispered excitedly to her, as if he had not a care in the world.
Gaia held his stare for a minute and then widened her eyes as if to prod him along, which he did, unlocking the gate and waving her closer. She watched uncomfortably as the zombies standing at the front of the pen began to make sudden movements as well as jerk their heads about, seeming agitated. The tigers, possibly sensing that too, began to pad about their enclosure. One of the tigers strode right over to Nick’s position and growled lowly.
“Hold on there, Toby,” Nick whispered, standing tall. “You know me, boy.”
“What is he doing?” Gaia asked, remaining still and trying not to panic.
“Maybe he got a taste for flesh,” Nick suggested, not completely confident of his answer. “Just guessin’.” He gestured to the remains of what was most likely a zombie that had somehow gotten into the cage. At least, Nick hoped it was a zombie.
Gaia then heard the shuffling of something to her right and noted a zombie, which could not have been more than a teenager until recently, racing toward them, its wild eyes wide with malice.
“We don’t have a choice now,” Nick said, shoving open the enclosure and stepping inside. Toby made no move toward him, and Gaia reluctantly followed him inside. But before Nick could secure the gate, the zombie slammed headlong into it, forcing it open slightly and knocking Nick down in the process.
“Fuck they’re strong!” Nick yelped from his backside.
Gaia cocked the shovel, ready to swing it at the zombie that had made its way inside, but before she could, a mix of orange, white and brown flew past her. She gazed to her right to witness the tiger, his half-ton plus of muscle and grace, leaning over the zombie. The tiger named Toby clamped down on the zombie’s neck holding it in place with its massive weight and then tore out a huge chunk of its neck. Its second bite latched onto the zombie’s shoulder and Toby dragged its still moving body to the back of the enclosure and into the shadows. Snarls and the sound of bones snapping ensued.
She could see the zombie’s legs for a brief instant behind a cropping of bushes, as it spasmed and twitched violently under the tiger’s assault until finally it stopped altogether.
Gaia snapped her attention back to Nick, hearing the steel on steel as the gate closed. Several other zombies now threatened to tear them limb from limb, held fast by the gate’s steel bars. Nick worked the key, locking the gate again from the inside.
“Do they sense that the zombies are a threat?” Gaia asked, truly not understanding how or even if the tigers recognized the zombie as such.
“I honestly don’t know. Their behavior is…different.”
“So they differentiated between us and the zombies?!”
&n
bsp; “I have no idea why they just did that,” Nick admitted, adjusting the rifle again on his shoulder and staring at the gate on the opposite side. “All I know is that we need to get moving if we wanna torch these fuckers.”
“Sounds good to me, Gaia said, adjusting her grip on the shaft of the shovel, holding it firmly in two hands. She followed Nick to the opposite gate, walking briskly and matching his pace. The other zombies gathered outside the pen hadn’t seemed to notice them yet. They made it quickly to the gate, unlocked it, and made it outside.
The next destination was the lion pen. Once they were through it, they should make it to the backside of the barn without incident.
Nick hunted through the key ring and found the proper key, set in in the lock, and then turned it. Gaia watched as the lions in the distance were gathered near the front of the enclosure, swiping and biting at zombie hands that dared breach the safety of the bars. It looked so ludicrous to Gaia—so surrealistic, as if she were dreaming the whole thing.
She took in the sight of four zombies reaching inside the pen, trying to get at the lions, and watched the big cats swatting at and biting the zombie flesh. There were several females and a male there at the front of the enclosure. Nick stopped and stared at the exchange, looking from Gaia back to the fight again.
“What’s up?” Gaia asked. “And can you answer it when we get out of here?”
“Sure,” Nick said, shaking his head dismissively, as if he had just remembered what they were doing. The pair ran to the gate on the opposite side and they were both relieved to witness nothing but green pastures at the backside of the barn. But then Nick stopped suddenly, holding Gaia back with an outstretched arm, stopping her in her tracks.
Another male lion, its glorious mane surrounding its majestic face, had suddenly begun to pursue them.
“Move, but go slow,” Nick advised, doing exactly as he said, the lion stopping its pursuit altogether. Gaia mimicked his actions and followed him to the gate. Suddenly the lion padded over to them and sniffed the air, making a growling noise.
Cage The Dead Page 5
