by A. Rosaria
Ralph pushed the zombie‘s head back and its teeth away before they ripped his flesh apart. The others were closing in fast, way too fast. He had to move quickly or they would be upon him before he could escape. His backpack was still near the pile of boxes with his shotgun, and his way to get them was blocked by a score of zombies. There was no way he could get back there. He still held the flashlight. A long, sturdy, six D-cell maglite. He smashed the zombie‘s left eye in. It kept coming at him, teeth closing in. He smashed again. They were almost upon him. He swung once more with all his strength. The zombie‘s grip on him loosened. He pushed the zombie off and kicked it away, rolled on his belly and crawled. About to stand up and run, one grabbed his shirt. Ralph swung the maglite, hitting the large half-faced zombie in the chest. He hit it again, breaking its teeth and the maglite. The light went out, covering him in darkness. The zombies, tens of them, if not more, disappeared from sight. Only their incessant shuffling and moans were a testament of them being there, and the smell, the rank, putrid smell. He pushed the large zombie and yanked his clothes free from its grip. Ralph staggered a few feet back. Turning around for the exited, he cried out. He had turned to total darkness where he had expected to find the light coming from an open door.
The door must have fallen shut. The moans got closer. He backed away, not knowing where they were. They could smell him, and he them, though they didn‘t need to see him as much as he needed to see them. He tripped over a chair. The noise didn‘t help. He grabbed onto a table, got back up, and tumbled over it. He held a hand behind and pushed over each chair or table he touched. Not long after, he heard bodies falling, tripping over the mess he had made. He hoped this slowed them down enough for him to find a way out.
He touched the wall. He had two choices, right or left. With a fifty-fifty chance, he chose correctly. Time was running out, and the chairs and tables would hold them back only so long. If he remembered, the boxes were a little to the left from the door. He believed he went in a straight line back, so he needed to go right to get to the door. The moans closed in. Something nagged at him. His calculations felt wrong. Going with his gut feeling, he went to his left. The shambling zombies got nearer with every step sideways he took. Time went by, and yet, no door. It started sinking in that he might have gotten it wrong. Frantically, he slapped the wall. His heart leapt with excitement as he finally touched metal. Grabbing for the door‘s handle, he pushed it open with his back, stumbling out. The little bit of light from upstairs reaching down fell on the half-faced zombie standing less than a foot from him. It grabbed Ralph by the shoulders, pulling him back in.
Ralph punched the zombie, breaking its remaining teeth. It didn‘t let go of him and pulled him closer. It put its teeth on Ralph‘s shoulder; luckily the broken teeth did not get through his jacket. Ralph punched the zombie‘s ribs in a futile attempt to get away. The dead didn‘t feel pain, and one or more cracked ribs didn‘t make any difference. Another moan reached him, followed by many more growls. Whatever head start he had was gone. The zombie holding him might be harmlessly trying to give him a hickey on his shoulder, but it would be different when its comrades joined the festivities. He pushed an arm between him and the zombie, dislodging the grip it had on him. He shoved it off and kicked it in the groin. The double back he expected didn‘t happen; what did was the zombie tried to latch back onto him. Ralph backed out of the room and kicked the zombie in the belly, sending it tumbling back and knocking down the others behind it. He backed away, cursing himself for still being stuck fighting like he would against a living being.
The zombies, hungry to get his blood and meat, were tripping over each other to get at him, spilling onto each other as they tried, forming a rotten meat blockade at the door. Not waiting for them to get free, he ran through the corridor and back to the flight of stairs. It was a good thing zombies didn‘t do well on stairs; it would take them a long time to navigate up and continue the chase. By then, he hoped to be long gone. He reached the ground floor and made his way to the exit, happy he managed to survive, but mad that he didn‘t get what he needed. Sarah‘s chances of survival narrowed.
There had to be somewhere else to find what he needed. Ralph sighed. He was back to where he started, nowhere. He could hit himself for being so stupid; he had almost gotten himself killed. There was little else left to do than to go on. Someone depended on him and he would not fail her, not this time. He would find a way. He would find a way to save her, to get her safe. Without her, he would be alone in this cursed world. He had met two other survivors, but without Sarah, his life as it used to be would be permanently gone, not a sliver of connection with the past would be left. With Sarah, he shared something special, something he shared with no one else alive. He shared with her his life before it became a mess.
Ralph gritted his teeth and went outside.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Who is Billy?”
Sarah stirred as the man spoke, the words an echo in her waking ears. Must be part of a dream, a delirious dream. She tried to open her eyes, but the sunlight coming in from the RV‘s window hurt her eyes. She squinted, but the glare prevented her from seeing anything. She heard someone chuckle and ask again who Billy was. Dream, delirium, or real, she couldn‘t place it. The sound was still garbled to her.
“Ralph?”
“No not Ralph, honey. Whoever this Ralph is, he is long gone.”
Alarmed, she sat up, or tried to. Her muscles hurt like hell, but she managed this time to pull up a little. Wildly, she looked around, which increased the pounding behind her eyes. To her right, sitting at her feet, sat a silhouette of a man, a tall man. The bright sunlight prevented her seeing more.
The voice was that of a young man. “Who are you?”
The chuckle again. It had a bemused intonation to it, though she didn‘t feel amused at all. No, it was apprehension she felt. Her hands felt at her sides for anything she could grab and use. Her eyes widened when it dawned on her that she was naked under the bed sheets.
“Hey, hey, calm down, honey. I don‘t mean you harm, not yet anyway. You stay cool and I will do the same. Are you going to tell me who Billy is? You kept repeating his name, on and on, and something about dropping him.”
She held her lips tight together, doing her best not to show any emotion, and failing.
The man pointed at her arm. “From the uneven marks, I guess this Billy was a little kid who bit you and you dropped him. Momma not teach you not to ever carry dead things? It must be why you were dying of an infection. It was the only bite mark I found on you, and I looked good, not one inch of your body that I didn‘t examine.”
Her eyes twitched. How dare he touch her, ask about him, and make fun of her. Humiliating her, undressing her, who knows what he did to her while she was out.
“Go to hell!”
Who did he think he was talking to her like this, like this was nothing, like this was some matter-of-fact conversation about the weather? Who was he but an intruder with who-knows-what for intentions? She felt like she had regained some of the strength she had lost since she fell ill, though not enough to hurt him like she wanted to.
“My, my, momma didn‘t teach you to be polite either. Feisty little thing you are.”
The man leaned forward. “I guess Billy must be someone close to you. You look too young to be his momma, but it could be possible. However, you don‘t look the part. He‘s a brother then. My, my, my, your mother must have decided to have another baby later on. She probably was not satisfied with you and thought she‘d try again. Maybe baby Billy biting you wasn‘t the only reason you dropped him. Maybe there was a little bit of jealousy mixed in. Surely, after that, you must have brained your mom. No wonder this Ralph boy left you to die. Bite wound and all, strange he didn‘t put one between your eyes to put you out of your misery. He must really hate you.”
Filthy lies, assuming such nonsense about her, her baby brother, her mother, and Ralph. Ralph would not leave her like this or leave her to die.
He must have gone out to scavenge or something else must have happened, something like this guy here.
“Or maybe I‘m wrong. After all I‘m just assuming. Tends to happen when people don‘t answer simple questions. Just one simple question. Who is Billy? But you couldn‘t answer me, so you left me no choice. I had to fill in the blanks myself, and you are looking murderously at me for doing so. Well it‘s your own damn fault for not answering me, honey!”
Before he had attempted to put some affection in calling her honey; now he bit it out.
“One last time! Who the fuck is Billy?”
“My baby brother, and I didn‘t do it because I was jealous, you jerk. I had no choice.”
What had happened that day flashed before her eyes. She remembered the hope she had felt when she thought he was okay, but that was dashed the moment after when his tiny teeth broke her skin. Startled, she dropped him. She still could hear that sickening cracking of bone when his tiny head hit the floor.
“Do you see now how easy it would have been if you had answered my question the first time? You do see now, do you? Honey?”
The affection was back in his voice, though she didn‘t believe there was any truth to it. There was a threat in the way he weighed every word he said, how he said it, when he said it, working on her emotions at every lash of his tongue.
“Feeling better?”
She looked at him quizzically. He pointed at her bite mark.
“The infection, are you better now?”
She nodded. She felt much better. Her head was clear and the pain had ebbed, though she still wasn‘t feeling well, but he didn‘t need to know that.
“Good, of course we knew there would be those who wouldn‘t get the plague, but that there would be ones that might battle the infection, even if they got it directly from a zombie, well that surprised us. To see it firsthand makes it that more real. You, honey, are a wonder. Survived the plague, survived a bite wound. Something we surely must investigate further. Heck might even make the cure last longer.”
What was he going on about? Who were they? What was he planning to do with her? Wasn‘t it common knowledge that there were those who were immune? That not everyone got infected? That the bite didn‘t necessarily kill? Or was there more to it? Ralph seemed certain about that a small percentage of people would be immune and many more resistant. He told her he heard a doctor say that on a radio show. Ralph wasn‘t wrong about the immunity and resistance part, but maybe the numbers were smaller than he thought. What if there were fewer who were really immune? What if most survivors were just waiting to bite the bullet, leaving too few for humanity to survive? Looking at the man hidden by the sun rays, she thought that it wouldn‘t be bad if humanity ceased to exist if people like him were meant to survive and rule. He claimed to have a cure. She had never heard of one being given to those who were ill.
“Why so angry all the time? If looks could kill, I would have been done in many times by now. I guess that is the gratitude I get for saving your life.”
She looked up, surprised.
“Yeah, that‘s right. Unlike your friend who ran off and left you to die, I helped you. I gave you medicine to combat that nasty infection you got from your little brother.”
He stood up and walked to the front of the RV, out of sight. Sarah tried to get up. Halfway, she was briskly pushed back onto the mattress by another man, a shorter one who stunk of garlic.
“Stay down, bitch,” he said in a raspy voice and yelled to the front. “Hurry up with the IV. We need to get back to the base before sundown.”
“Always so impatient and demanding,” the younger man said, returning with a pole with an IV bag hanging from it. He placed it next to Sarah.
“Hold her down.”
The older man pressed down on her, hurting her. She gritted her teeth against crying out. She looked wildly from the one to the other and the needle in the young man‘s hands. A needle connected to a tube leading to the bag and whatever was inside.
“Don‘t worry,” the young man said. “It‘s an antibiotics mix. It will get rid of the last traces of the infection you had, and make sure you feel better. He grabbed her arm with more strength than she expected from his slender build, stopping her from struggling. He found a vain and slid the needle in with a practiced touch. She felt a sharp pain that subdued immediately as the liquid from the bag caroused through the tube inside her. Slowly, she started to feel light in her head. Her vision blurred and everything around her faded from existence.
“You‘ll sleep for now, we‘ll be back by the time you wake up.”
“Told you we should‘ve taken the van,” the older man said, “though you insisted on taking that ridiculous three wheeler. What the guys took on the flatbed is enough. We can easily throw the cargo we have with us out and transport her instead.”
“Nah, can‘t throw away my samples.”
As the men left the RV, the sound of their footsteps muddled away, and she could barely hear them talking. However, before she fell into a deep slumber, she heard the older man say, “What samples? You mean body parts!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Ralph heard shots fired. He dropped for cover near the exit. Three consecutive small arms fire, followed by two loud shots from a high-caliber rifle, then it went silent. It sounded like the rifle Frank had pointed at him. They must have run into trouble, the living kind of trouble. He crept to a burned out car parked halfway up the curb and peeked over the hood. It was clear, deserted like it was before he entered the hospital. He wondered what had happened and if he should go and investigate. It wasn‘t his problem really, and they had held him captive, so he really shouldn‘t go looking for trouble at their behest. However, they let him go and Skip seemed like a nice guy.
Ralph left his cover and ran, hunched over, to the other side of the road. He felt vulnerable in the open and without his shotgun. How stupid could he be, having lost it in that zombie-infested bomb shelter? Without a weapon he had little help to offer; maybe he should just leave.
Another rifle shot from up ahead. Frank was still firing. Without giving it a second thought, he ran toward the shooting, hugging close to the soot-covered walls from the burned out houses, trying to keep himself under cover. Machine gun fire rattled in response to the rifle. Ralph threw himself down on the pavement, covering his head. He raised his head back up when the shooting stopped, and crawled up when he saw no one was near. Frank‘s rifle boomed once, twice, three times. The machine-gun rattled again. He heard a scream and someone else howling triumphantly. He was close now. In a crouch, he ran to hide behind a station wagon with a missing roof.
Ralph could see Skip dragging a motionless Frank behind a car. He was crying, bawling it out, seemingly not caring if he was heard and that his attackers could see his distress. Ralph wanted to call out, make him stop, but if he did, he would draw unwanted attention to himself. He ducked away, pressing his back against the car, his eyes moving from side to side for anything he could use. Rocks, bottles, tin cans, nothing really effective against a machine gun. Still, anything was better than nothing. He grabbed a brick large enough to fit into his hand. If he could hit someone with it, it would do some serious damage, and at least it would distract whoever it was thrown at long enough to give him the advantage of surprise.
He dared a look. Skip was cradling Frank‘s limp body. To Ralph, it was obvious that Frank was dead, bleeding from many holes in his chest. No one could survive that. This was bad; this was really bad. Farther down the road, two men were lying in a pool of blood. A naked middle-aged woman was sitting near their bodies, staring ahead in shock. A man in slacks, bare-chested, rounded the corner, brandishing a small machine gun. From far away, it looked like one of those the SWAT teams used, a Heckler & Koch MP5, a nasty thing up close.
The man stood next to the woman and pulled a pistol out from his waistband and blew the brains out of his mates lying dead on the ground. He pressed the gun against the back of the woman‘s head.
&nb
sp; “You hear me, fat man. Come out or I blow her head off. I know you two are acquainted. I saw you folks together, so no games. Come out with you hands in the air.”
Skip started bawling louder. The man grew agitated. “Come out now, you son of a bitch.”
“Mah mama is no bitch,” Skip cried.
Ralph could not stand still and watch this; he had to do something to save them. With no clear idea of what to do, he chose to charge the man. As he left his cover, the man holding the gun cursed, his eyes tightened together, and he pulled the trigger. The bullet went into the back of the woman‘s head and came out the front, taking her face with it. The woman was still sitting, a gaping hole where her face used to be, brain dropping out and blood spurting everywhere. The man dropped the gun, grabbed his SMG, and trailed it up toward Ralph. It was now or never. While running, Ralph threw the brick at the man. He missed and hit the woman instead, lodging the brick in the hole in her face. Startled, the machine gunner jumped back, giving Ralph the chance to slide in next to Skip, just before a rain of bullets hit the car and went flying over.
“Skip, where‘s your gun?”
Skip kept bawling like Ralph wasn‘t even there. It took Ralph shaking him to get some response, a sad look, but there was no stopping the grown man from crying like a child. It was all on Ralph now. He cursed himself for getting himself into this mess. It wasn‘t even his problem to solve. He just barged in and brought it onto himself. He looked at the middle-aged man of about forty, who still was a kid, eyes red, tears steaming down his cheeks, his body trembling with every snort and wail of sorrow. He sort of owed his life to this man-child, for if not for Skip, Frank would certainly have put one between his eyes.
