Once again, Vanessa and James stayed behind. Not because they were woman and child, but because it was their turn to guard the camp. Plus, they acted as a standby reserve should things go south, and they need a cavalry charge.
They had not moved far through the trees before they spotted the area of their perimeter defenses where the zed had pushed through the razor wire. The recent rainfall had softened the ground and its persistence had seen it work the foundations of the makeshift fence free from the mud.
They heard the steady, and now all-too-familiar slurping growls that told them a group of post-humans was ahead of them, feeding on a fresh kill.
The trees were dense in that part of the forest but not so much that you could not make a path through. The cool autumn saw the trees drop their leaves unseasonably early, and while the weather had stabilized since, the nudity of the forest increased their visibility considerably.
The forest floor sloped upward, forming as a gentle hill that gave way to a long, shallow incline into a small basin below. The higher ground served to their aid, as it hid them from the zeds’ baseline view.
Once the feeding started, there was little that could distract them, other than the scent of another meal.
“I count four,” Henry whispered, looking through the scope of his rifle.
“I only see one victim. You suppose the other got away?” Taron asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Henry replied.
“You fools are out of your mind. We don’t know these people from Adam,” Hector protested but to no avail.
Taron raised his crossbow and took aim. The red sight setting on the back of the nearest zed’s head. “This should get their attention,” he said, moments before firing.
The arrow shot forward with a quiet whoosh, covering the ground between them in mere seconds, embedding itself in the skull of its target. The post-human died without making a sound, collapsing on top of the meal, much to the perceived annoyance of its hungry brothers.
Henry and Hector advanced down the hill, with Taron keeping back to cover them from a distance.
The three remaining posties turned at the first sound of their approach. Their pale skin, painted with the deep red of fresh blood, made them look more like a troupe of murderous clowns than the living dead.
Snarling and gargling, they announced their attack. Henry met his first one with a heavy swiping blow. Less skilled with a melee weapon than Hector, he relied on his strength and the simplicity of their opponents. His blade sliced open the zed’s distended belly, expelling a belched rush of gaseous rot. The blast rushed over Henry’s face and made him gag.
He reacted to the dead man’s fetid release by burying the knife hilt-deep in the side of the post-human’s head. It dropped to its knees, landing in the pile of cold, black offal that had spilled from its gaping belly.
Hector made short work of his post-human. The kid could not have been very far into his teens, certainly not old enough to drink in its previous life. Not that age was a factor anymore. Once they woke up, all posties had a strength that bordered on superhuman.
Still, the kid's skinny build and baggy pants, which Henry assumed were dropped close to its knees before it died, made its movements clumsy and predictable. Armed with a knife in each hand, Hector jabbed the creature once on each side, kidney shots, and that pushed it to its knees where it continued to snap and snarl like a crack whore desperate to suck a cock and earn her next rock.
Hector put the post-human kid out of its misery by slamming a blade through the top of its head. The creature fell away, and Hector immediately turned to advance on the third.
The woman, oversized in the gut and even more so in the bust, was a messy sight indeed. The right-hand side of her face was missing, stripped down to the bone. They could even see gouges in them, from where her whatever claimed her life had clearly gotten over-zealous with their bites. She also had deep wounds in her sides and across her chest.
Henry paused for a moment as he wondered about her final moments. It was clear she did not die peacefully; she knew exactly what was happening to her. He gave a sigh and drove his blade through her face and out the back of her head.
“She was mine,” Hector said, sounding disappointed.
“We’re not keeping score,” Henry said, shocked.
“We’ve got to do something to pass the time,” Hector said, smiling. It was a strange expression and reminded Henry that there was something not quite right with that man.
In all of their days prepping and preparing, the simulations they would run, and the supply checks they ran through, none of their scenarios involved the rising of the dead. Well, apart from one of their very first meetings. But that had been for shits and giggles. Yet, in all of them, Hector was the first to raise the issue of combat and taking lives. He hid it behind his role as weapons officer for their shelter, and always had an answer thought out and ready to use. A lawyer through and through.
“Guys, look,” Taron said as he moved his way down the slope to meet the others.
He pointed to the side where a clear trail of blood could be seen leading up and over the other side of the depression.
“Let’s take a look,” Henry said before Hector had a chance to complain.
They heard Hector grumble, but he followed along with them.
The three men crested the rise and did not need to look hard to see the injured person. He was on his back, reverse crawling through the woods. His leg was broken, a fact made clear by the way the foot was twisted over ninety degrees to the position of the other leg. The long shard of bone poking through the man’s mid-thigh merely served to accentuate the injury.
“Help me,” the man screamed.
“Quiet, you fool,” Hector snarled, scanning the trees. “He’s going to be like a fucking flare for those things.”
“He’s scared and hurt. What do you expect?” Taron asked, moving off toward the man.
“I expect you to have some common fucking sense,” Hector replied, once again following the two men, in spite of his protestations.
“Guys, watch for any zeds. I need to take a look at this. We can’t move him without a stretcher or some kind of splint,” Taron said, dropping to his knees.
“We can’t help him, period,” Hector growled, but took his blades and turned to watch the trees.
“Ignore him, he’s a lawyer. They’re all assholes,” Taron said, eliciting a strained smile from the injured man. “Bite down on this. I need to clean your leg, and well, I won’t lie to you, it’s going to hurt.”
Taron grabbed a leather strap out of his pack, folded it double and placed it in the man’s mouth before he had a chance to say anything else.
Taron grabbed his water bottle and washed the bleeding limb. The man cried into the belt, his face turning a deep shade of red. Sweat poured from his face.
“Easy, easy,” Taron whispered, as he poured more and more water onto the wound.
The man offered no response, but his face paled visibly, and his eyes rolled back into his head momentarily.
“Hurry up, I think we’ve got company coming,” Henry said, switching from his knives to his rifle.
“I’m going as fast as I can. This is nasty,” Taron said, understating the task he knew faced them. “Even if I clean this up, we need to make a splint and get him back to the shelter. I have more supplies out there.” Taron swapped his water bottle for a pack of bandages.
“We’ve got company,” Henry called, taking two quick shots to put down the first two zeds that emerged through the trees.
“Oh crap,” Taron said.
“Let us worry about them, you just work on him,” Henry said.
“No, I mean oh crap, look at this,” Taron said, looking up at the others, and then beyond them at the approaching group of zeds.
Taron pulled up the man’s shirt and showed them the bite mark on his side. The wound was not deep but did not change the fact that the man was going to die, or that Hector was righ
t. They needed to leave him behind.
“Shit, we wasted time on a dead man,” Hector snapped. “I told you.”
“Hey, we tried. We did the right thing. We have bigger problems now,” Henry said, pointing at the encroaching zeds. They easily numbered into the double digits, and moved like a flood, fleeing, rather than hunting. Their growls hung in the air like the rumble of a propeller aircraft flying low overhead.
“What are we going to do with him?” Taron asked, looking at the man who was staring at him with wide-eyed horror.
“This,” Hector said, stabbing the man through the temple without as much as a pause for final words.
“Jesus Christ,” Taron cried out in surprise.
He shot to his feet, realizing his mistake immediately when the post-human flood turned and headed their way.
“Shit, we need to get back to the shelter,” Henry said, turning to retreat.
While they had been busy tending to the wounded man, the zed flood had surrounded them; closing like a spreading fire, they inadvertently encircled their newly discovered prey.
There was no room for them to head back the way they came. Instead, they needed to move through the forest and the open areas that lay beyond. The other option being to engage the group, which none of the trio felt any inclination to do. Being vastly outnumbered by a horde of the undead did not promote an optimistic feeling of survival.
Taron set off toward the closing gap, knowing that not only did they need to make it through, but do so without drawing any more unwanted attention to themselves. Henry followed, with Hector bringing up the rear, dragging the dead body with him.
“What are you doing?” Henry asked, watching as Taron increased the distance between them.
“Saving our asses,” Hector said, his accent coming through stronger when he was stressed.
He dropped the body and pulled out his knife. With a quick, sure motion, he slit open the man's belly, spreading the incision until everything that belonged on the inside leaked through to the outside. The rush of warm blood and innards tainted the air with a heavy, coppery aroma.
“We need to talk about this later on,” Henry said, worried by the ease with which Hector did what he did.
“Sure thing, but don’t tell me it didn’t work. Look,” he answered, pointing to the zombie group that was closing in on them, the tantalizing aroma of fresh meat drawing them in.
“Just run,” Henry said, unwilling to admit that Hector was right.
They hurried off in the direction Taron had moved. He was no longer in their direct line of sight.
They broke away from the main group of the undead and soon found themselves following a hiking trail. The forest was filled with them, each one conveniently marked with colored placards.
They caught up with Taron, who, having noticed their lack of presence, turned and set up a watch, taking out three post-humans that had been stumbling away from the rest of the group.
“What happened? We had a clear run!” Taron asked when the pair finally appeared from one of the trails.
“We baited them,” Hector said. “Let’s get back to the shelter.”
“We can’t go back that way. There are too many of them,” Taron said. “I’ve never seen a group this size before. It’s like a goddamned herd.”
They pushed on, following one of the trails, away from the group. Even with the main body behind them, the number of strays they came across was more than they had seen in the previous weeks combined. More than they had seen since leaving the city.
“Do you guys smell that?” Taron asked as he pulled an arrow out of the head of a heavy built zed. He had carried on walking a few paces even after the arrow had penetrated its skull.
“Fire,” Hector and Henry answered in un-choreographed unison.
They broke into a run, sprinting past the lone posties, the fear of an inferno overriding the danger of a few lone zeds.
“Honey, get inside, lock the place down and whatever you do, don’t go outside,” Henry spoke into the walkie-talkie as they stopped to rest just on the edge of the trees.
“They are already in the camp,” Vanessa answered, her voice hushed. “Everything is secure, but you can’t come back, not yet, there are too many of them.”
“I know, we skirted around them. We’re on the edge of the woods. There is a fire or something driving them this way. Just stay put, and stay safe,” Henry answered, replacing the walkie-talkie as they moved off once more.
The smell of the fire grew stronger, carried on the light wind that picked up as the day drew on. Yet the complete absence of smoke or ash told them the fire was some distance away, for now, at least.
They emerged from the forest and into the sprawling farmland that dominated the landscape between the big cities and the mountains that lay behind them. In the distance, a billowing cloud of black smoke obscured the city skyline. It plumed into the air, its mass so great and heavy the orange flames at its base seemed almost inconsequential.
“That must be what is driving them away,” Henry said as he stood staring at the blaze.
“Just imagine how many there could be if that blaze reaches the city limits,” Taron said. “It would drive millions of them out, scattering them into the wind.”
“That’s why we left. The city is a dangerous place. Letting it burn would be for the best if you think about it. They are mindless and slow. The fire would get a good bunch of ‘em,” Hector answered, watching through a pair of binoculars he pulled from his pack.
“Not enough of them,” Taron answered, his words cold.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Hector said, turning to face the doctor.
“It looks like it’s the power station,” Henry said, peering through Hector’s binoculars.
“I wonder what sent it up?” Taron asked, squinting, his eyes as keen as his skills with a knife.
“Probably just a surge. There’s nobody left to man them places. They’ll start to pop like corn in a pan before long,” Hector said, turning just as a zed stumbled through the trees. He sliced its face clean off with a single blow, stomping on the brain that fell from the open-faced cranium, grinding the jellied mass into the ground like a cigarette butt.
“Dude,” Taron said, watching as Hector scraped his shoe clean on a downed branch nearby.
“Come on, we need to circle back and try to make it back to the camp,” Henry said, holding his rifle before him. “Let’s keep clear of the trees and head up the old Blackthorn trail. It’ll take a few hours, but that will bring us to the side of camp, and behind this flowing herd.”
“Lord willing,” Taron added, casting a quick glance up to the heavens.
Hector gave an impatient tisk but said nothing. As far as he was concerned his faith died with the rest of the world.
The walk back to the camp took them along the edge of the forest until they reached the river. The tide was strong, and it didn’t take long before the first zed appeared, bobbing in the water like a tin can. It snapped and snarled, only staying afloat because of the gasses building up in its gut.
The men crossed the river, using the covered footbridge, and moved into the woods on the far side. The trees consumed them once again, and with the sun setting, a sense of urgency settled in. Not quite fear; that would be reserved for full darkness.
“Keep quiet, and keep your eyes open,” Taron said. “We don’t want them to come crashing down on us.”
The sound of the rushing river had a soothing effect, but also served as a distraction, the rush of its tide masking the growls of the undead, potentially until it was too late.
One bunch passed close by but showed no inclination to attack. They stumbled along in the direction they happened to be facing. The herd appeared to have broken up, which resulted in numerous splinter factions forming. The post-humans showed no visible signs of bonding or being linked, yet there could be no denying their communal spirit.
Hector raised his machete and moved to strike at a stumbling zed. Its
body was bent at an unnatural angle, the spine broken. From what they could see in the dim light, it was missing an arm.
Taron reached out and put a hand on Hector’s shoulder. He squeezed hard and shook his head. Hector resisted, but as the zed shuffled away, Hector relented and turned back to them. “He was an easy kill,” Hector whispered.
“Maybe, but what about them?” Taron said, pointing ahead of them where a group of half a dozen snarling, leather-clad, heavily bearded post-humans clumsily ambled their way. Both their numbers and their bulk promised to provide an interesting engagement. The blood caked into their beards proof that the group were more than capable of winning a skirmish.
“Get down,” Henry said as the zeds’ directionless stumbles brought them too close for comfort.
The group scrambled behind some trees, and for the first time, each of them was completely alone. While they knew the others were close by, the realization that they were not physically there, was a sobering one.
Henry pressed his back against the tree, holding his hunting knife, a simple Cold Steel Leatherneck six-inch blade. His hand was pressed against his chest, ready for a quick strike if needed. He felt exposed and alone. Even though his friends were only a tree trunk away, he could have been the last man on Earth in that moment and not felt any lonelier.
Henry’s heart hammered in his chest as he heard them shuffling closer and closer, their growls a continual static-like noise that would surely drive anybody mad should they be caught among it long enough.
He heard a twig snap as the shuffling reached the trees. He held his breath, resisting the nearly overwhelming urge to close his eyes. He had to move. Once they reached the other side of his tree, one look back, for whatever reason, and they would see him.
Henry looked up. The sky grew darker and darker. Before long, they would be traveling blind. He swallowed that portion of his fear away. One problem at a time.
Moving slowly, he circled around the trunk of his tree, taking small steps, careful not to lift his foot too far off the floor for fear of snapping a twig or creating some other sound that would alert them to his presence.
Plague War (Book 3): Retaliation Page 32
