Paul got up, head dizzy from the quick movement in the thin mountain air. He paced in front of the fireplace, looking for a sign of Sophia on the floor and wondering why he should believe this guy. Because Wendy did? He stopped marching and planted his hands on his hips. “Bullshit.”
Brian traded a solemn look with Wendy and slowly dug into his back pocket like he was afraid to make any sudden movements around Paul because he might shoot him dead if he did. “My clearance is in here.”
Paul swapped glances with Wendy before taking the wallet, assessing she’d already seen what was folded within. The leather was soft against his skin and probably an anniversary gift from Dot in the not-too-distant past. The cards inside were even more imposing, and not just the platinum ones either. Everything related to the CDC – three cards in all – had a magnetic stripe on the back and Brian’s picture on the front. They looked legit and there was no way anyone could’ve forged them after the outbreak, not with this world’s limited resources. Regardless, Paul tossed the wallet back and played along. “So how did this happen? Who’s responsible for this…blight that killed everyone I know and love?”
Brian slipped the wallet in his back pocket like he might need it later on at the grocery store or gas station. “Like I said, we didn’t have a lot of time to figure that out but I can tell you that the one hundred and seventy-five million vaccines I mentioned, are produced by private manufactures. Now, these vaccines are never in the same place at the same time, which means this had to be done by someone with an international reach because this was no coincidence.”
Paul shrugged, searching to fill in the blanks. “So who would have that kind of power?”
Brian shrugged right back. “You tell me. Isis? Taliban? North Korea? Maybe a network of activists like Anonymous – but instead of cyberattacks, they attacked our health security. The only thing I know for sure is that this was an inside job. People infiltrated manufacturing plants across the globe through lawful employment and means. A lot of people.”
“Like who? Scientists and security guards?”
“That, or delivery drivers, janitors, health inspectors. The number of people with even minimal access to plant floors is alarmingly high.”
“So what can we do to stop it?”
“The virus?” Brian looked at him like Sophia had just done and it grated on his nerves. “In a sense, we have to set a brush fire.”
“Brush fire?” Wendy gasped, nervously noting the heavy woodwork running throughout the home.
“Down on the flatlands, burning pastures is how ranchers rid their fields of unwanted brush, weeds, ticks, and parasites.” He tipped his head down. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
Paul pulled up his jeans and studied Brian for any tics of his own. The kind that would tell him if this guy was full of shit or not. Not that it seemed to matter. Brian was right about one thing: it was definitely too late to stop it. “What about a cure?”
Blowing out a long breath, he ran a palm back and forth across his thigh. “For who? Us or them?”
“Both.”
“It’s too late for them. Their bodies have suffered severe internal damage.” His gaze slipped out and over the second floor balcony, getting lost in the darkness swallowing the mountainside. “I’m afraid nothing can ever bring them back.”
“No, but we can help ease their pain.”
Wendy’s eyes jerked to Paul and narrowed. “What do you mean?”
Paul ignored her and continued on. “So what are you suggesting? We burn the whole town down?”
“Yes, but not with fire.” He smiled thinly. “With ammunition.”
“Oh great idea, Brian.” Grinning, he threw his hands out. “Shit! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“We start with one town at a time and go from there, kill the corpses and save the people.” Brian winked at Wendy. “It’s the only way to be sure.”
Crossing the room to the large windows overlooking the front yard, Paul rested his hands on his hips and stared into the night. “We’ll need to get to the Suburban for the food and ammo before we can do anything.”
“And we will in the morning,” Brian replied, coming over and slapping a hand on his shoulder. He smiled warmly at Paul’s reflection in the glass. “First, let’s get a good night’s sleep. You look like you could use one.”
Paul watched him slip into the kitchen, Sophia’s words coming back to him on the smell of burnt wood. If he wasn’t hallucinating, they may have a bit more of an edge than they thought. A hand slipped through his arm and he turned to find Wendy tucking up next to him, her body warm against his.
She searched his face, bloodshot gaze caressing his eyes. “What did you mean when you said, we can help ease their pain?”
He stared down at her, remembering that first night they met inside a frigid strip club, a purple butterfly peeking from her back while she huddled with Dan for warmth. So much had happened in such a short span of time it felt like he’d known her for years. For decades. Wendy had stood by his side through thick and thin and he’d known her longer than anyone on the entire planet. Anyone left alive. This was his circle of friends now and it didn’t seem real. Didn’t seem right. A trade had been made on his behalf and he was powerless to stop it, so maybe it was time to relax into the pull and build upon his strengths…instead of continually tripping over his faults.
“Paul.”
Prying her from his arm, he backed away. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
That first day at the Gulf of Mexico came back to him in her eyes. They thought they had made it back then. Made it to safety. Just the two of them. Now he knew there was no making it. They would never make it. They could only make it better than the day before and if that’s all they had then so-fucking-be-it. “Why do you think that out of all the people out there, we survived?”
Her steady gaze held onto his and when she spoke her voice was low and unwavering. “Fate.”
His mouth opened as he silently cursed fate for taking his wife from him. For taking everything. “We should get some sleep,” he said, turning for the hallway leading to three of the house’s five bedrooms.
She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him against her, staring up into his eyes. “Did you see her again?” She swallowed hard. “Sophia?”
Just the mention of her name quickened his breath and broke his heart. The room spun around him. The flickering flames painted the walls with things that weren’t there. Despite Sophia’s growing decay, he couldn’t wait to see her again. Couldn’t wait to feel her scaly skin against his. Taking a calming breath, he looked Wendy in the eye and reminded himself to breathe. “Yes.”
Chapter Thirteen
DAY TWENTY-EIGHT
The morning sun was bright against the melting snow, and descending the driveway was much easier than going up it. Paul looked from Curtis, Stephanie and Billy flanking his left to Wendy, Calvin, and Brian standing to his right. Together, they formed a wall of resistance no corpse wanted to cross. Nonetheless, Paul could feel them out there.
Watching.
Itching.
Drooling.
“It’s like they know we have ammunition again,” Brian whispered, throwing his pinched gaze around the quiet trees encroaching upon both sides of the driveway. “When we ran out, they somehow knew it and tried getting inside the house.”
“How’s that even possible?” Billy asked, clutching an M4 and searching the trees. “How the hell could they know something like that?”
Brian grunted. “Probably because we stopped shooting at them.”
“Well, they know different now.” Curtis spit onto the sun-splashed asphalt. “Come on out, ladies! Breakfast is served!”
“Curtis,” Paul hissed, setting his jaw.
He shrugged. “I thought they already knew we were here.”
“They do, but you just scared the crap out of us.” Stephanie sighed, forcing her muscles to relax.
Calvin adjusted t
he M4 hanging from his neck. “Probably not the best idea to be scaring people who’re holding fully automatic weapons, Curtis.”
“That’s his thing, man,” Billy told him.
“It’s not my thing.”
“Yes, it is,” Stephanie murmured, moving with the group’s slow and steady advancement.
“Boo!” Curtis grabbed Calvin’s arm, causing him to errantly fire a short burst into the treetops.
“Goddamnit, Curtis,” he growled. “Don’t be doing that shit, man. I could’ve shot your sister.”
“Hey, you shoot my big sister and I’m going to start getting pissed.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet,” Stephanie replied, rolling her eyes.
Paul turned and looked behind him, heart jumping. The look on Wendy’s face curdled his blood and the fact that she’d stopped walking without warning sent a nest of restless nerves slithering down his spine. “Stop,” he said to the others. Wendy stared past him like he wasn’t there. Like he didn’t exist, pink gun hanging limply in her hand. “What is it?” he whispered, throat tightening with his grip on the M4.
Jaw slowly lowering, she pointed past him.
Turning, he followed her index finger to a thick skeletal tree on the right side of the driveway just before the asphalt disappeared around a pine-tree laden bend to the left. His heartrate jumped, sending a burst of vertigo rushing through him. Cora’s bloody robe flapped in the breeze, her face gaunt and blank. Paul’s heart cracked down the middle. His watery eyes followed her crooked finger across the driveway to where Brock stood with a toothpick wiggling in the corner of his shit-eating grin.
The cowboy pulled his bloodstained boxers up and pointed a meaty finger at the sky. “Look up, boss.”
Adrenaline dumped into Paul’s already racing bloodstream, accelerating his breath and leaving him lightheaded. Slowly looking up, terror widened his eyes when he saw all of the dead people in the trees. They were everywhere and he barely had time to wonder how they managed to climb so high when something hit the ground behind him and Wendy screamed. Gunfire shredded the quiet mountainside and before he could draw a bead on a target, corpses began raining down from the branches like dead autumn leaves. Something hit his left shoulder, driving him to the ground and jerking the M4 from his grasp. A dead sheriff’s deputy sneered and hobbled closer, his uniform pants torn off at the knees. Paul grabbed the M4 but it twisted in the neck strap. His peripheral vision was a downpour of corpses falling to the ground like toxic rain. The deputy reached for him with both hands, cheekbone poking through his face and hunger haunting his eyes. Scooting backwards on his butt, Paul pulled the PX4 Storm from its leg holster and shot him in the face before pushing to his Adidas. He swung the gun from body to body, not sure who was dead and who was alive. Gun blasts rang in his ears. The smell of decay filled the air. Paul took aim at a young man hopping a piggyback ride from Wendy as she spun in circles and fired into the air. Unable to line up a clear shot, he put a slug through a woman sneaking up on Stephanie from behind. Turning back to Wendy, he saw Curtis grab the thing from her back and yank it to the ground. Paul shot the man once in the head and took Wendy’s arm, steadying her on her feet. “Are you okay?”
Pulling a hand from the back of her neck, she stared hard at her open palm. The fact that it was free of blood did little to deter the shock welling in her eyes. “I think so,” she panted, looking up to meet her reflection in his sunglasses. “Look out!”
Paul dropped to one knee and Wendy sent a two-round burst over his head, ripping open the two things about to tear into him from behind. One after the next, they dispatched the dead while wasting as little ammo as possible. The last of the stiffs fell from the trees and, even with a fight still on their hands, Paul had time to notice how well his crew worked together as a team. Like fingers of the same hand. Even Brian picked up the slack in all the right places, as if they’d done this a thousand times before. When it got quiet again, the place was a bloody mess that smelled like pennies and death. Ragged bodies littered the hillside and driveway, and stepping over and around them was no easy task.
The woman who played possum yesterday skittered through Paul’s mind. He kept his weapon pointed at the head of every crumpled corpse he passed, holding his breath and gritting his teeth. It was hard to believe they were once human. He could almost see them laughing in the sun. Spending Christmas at mom and dad’s. Snatching his ankle and biting into his calf. Clearing the images with a quick shake of the head, he pressed on. This was almost worse than seeing them fall from the trees. Almost. Everything was too quiet, too still. Even the breeze held its breath. His pulse echoed in his head, growing louder with each body he put behind him. Stepping over a fat man missing his Adam’s apple, Paul stared into the man’s gaping eyes, wondering if he was here to help him or kill him. With the dead these days, Paul was never sure.
“I can’t believe that! Those bees were actually hiding in the trees,” Calvin said, sweating in the cold and searching the treetops. “We’re totally fucked, man. Totally fucked.”
“No we’re not,” Paul replied, searching the treetops with an intensity that contradicted every word he said.
Billy vehemently shook his head, white knuckling the M4. “I didn’t sign up for this shit, man!”
“How long can we keep this up?”
Paul turned to Calvin and tried to control the panic in his voice. Calvin hadn’t been outside the base since day two and this had to be intimidating as all hell for him. “As long as it takes.”
“That’s right,” Curtis whispered, jerking his M4 around. “And quit calling them bees. We call them stragglers around here.”
“You gotta admit bees is kind of cooler,” Billy replied. “Ya know, like zom-bees.”
“I get it already and it’s still stupid.”
“Who were those people back there?”
Paul turned to Brian but didn’t follow his jerk of the chin to where Cora and Brock were no longer standing. He knew who he was referring to and giving an answer at this point in time wasn’t high on his list of priorities. Right now they needed the food and ammo in the Suburban. That’s it. “Friends.”
Brian’s face soured. “Friends?” He took a hand from the bolt-action rifle to wipe sweat from his brow, searching Wendy’s face for an explanation he would never understand. “But they were…dead,” he said in a trembling voice. “Like the others.”
“No,” she breathed, pink gun clutched in both hands. “They’re nothing like the others.”
Coming around the pine-tree laden bend in the driveway, Paul shot a hand out, stopping the entire unit on a dime. The sun was warm on their faces, lighting up the ghostly plumes rushing from their lips. They stared down the rest of the driveway, eyebrows bending in the golden light. There had to be at least twenty-five stragglers standing between them and the Suburban and this wasn’t looking good. Paul could feel more of them hiding in the trees around them and didn’t need a decomposing ghost to tell him the dead people guarding the truck weren’t here to stop them from getting to the food and ammo. No, they were here to sacrifice themselves. To waste the group’s ammunition so the other things hiding in the woods could get their fill.
“Jesus,” Calvin whispered, pushing his glasses up the greasy bridge of his nose. “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“They’re bait,” Paul replied, swinging the end of his weapon to the trees.
Wendy and Stephanie picked up on what he was saying and turned their guns to the sides as well, readying themselves for the ambush they knew was coming. The foul horde watched them through vacant eyes from the bottom of the drive, curling their hands into mangled fists, itching to move. But something was holding them back. They wanted to attack. To feed. Paul could see it in their eyes and hear it in their grunts but something was stopping them from fulfilling their animalistic impulses. Something he couldn’t see.
Intellect?
Orders?
Rules?
Whatever it was it scared the
living shit out of him because, one way or another, this meant there was something still rattling around in their little brains. Something still firing synapses that triggered a choreographed reaction that could spell the end for mankind.
“So what now?” Billy whispered.
Examining the corpses standing next to the vehicle, Paul’s heart banged in his chest. “They want us to waste our ammo on them and accidentally shoot the truck in the process so the ones hiding in the woods can make easy work of us.”
Billy and Curtis jerked their guns around the trees, muscles tensing in their necks.
“Damn,” Curtis groaned. “Won’t be long before these things start outsmarting Billy.”
“Look who’s talking, Slingblade.”
“Oh, I’m looking, Scott Peterson.”
“That’s enough,” Paul hissed, adjusting the neck strap and trying to think.
“So what do we do?” Wendy’s chest rose and fell beneath her blue jacket, a loose stand of bangs hanging in her face.
“We need that food and ammo, so we go closer.”
A white plume shot from Billy’s nose. “Okay, that’s pretty much the exact opposite of what I was thinking.”
“If we don’t get the food we’ll starve to death.” Stephanie shifted her combat boots on the driveway, examining the dead with gravity pulling on her pretty face. “We have no choice.”
Billy turned to her. “Steph, there’s way too many of them.”
“We can take em,” Curtis replied. “And don’t call her Steph.”
Lines carved through Billy’s forehead. “What about the ones hiding in the trees?”
“We get the truck and run them over with it if we have to,” Paul answered, pausing to meet their eyes. “So whatever you do, don’t shoot the truck.”
“Oh, that’s perfect.” Calvin flipped his bangs out of his eyes with a quick head jerk. “And how’re we supposed to do that? They’re standing right next to it.”
Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive Page 11
