by R. J. Spears
“The undead?”
He erased and wrote one word. “Yes.”
There was more. I knew it, and I also knew he was holding back because what he had to say was about Naveen. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
“But I’m okay, aren’t I?” Naveen asked.
He erased his board and wrote again. “Sure. You run fast and get away.”
“I am a fast runner,” she said. “Aren’t I, Joel?”
“You sure are, but Jason’s looking tired,” I said. “Maybe we should let him rest?”
“But we were just getting to know each other,” Naveen protested.
“Naveen, he’s still nowhere near 100 percent. He needs his rest. Plus, he’s not going anywhere, so you can see him tomorrow.”
A small battle went on behind her eyes, but she conceded. “Okay. As long as I can see you tomorrow.” She leaned over Jason and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and I saw some of his color return. “I’m ready to go.”
“Okay,” I said, “let’s get you upstairs and into bed.”
I patted Jason’s hand and tried on as warm a smile as I could muster. “See you tomorrow, big guy.”
Although it taxed him, Jason waved at the two of us as we went toward the hallway. I held Naveen’s hand as we left. We were barely out the door when Kara turned the corner down the hallway and saw us.
I stopped and said, “Naveen, can you run upstairs with Kara? I left something inside.”
“You’re not coming up?” she asked.
Kara had made it to us by then. “What’s up?”
“We were just visiting Jason,” Naveen said.
“How do you know Jason?” Kara asked Naveen.
“Well, I’ve seen him,” but she stopped when I gave her hand a quick squeeze. She gave me a puzzled look and then got it. “Joel told me about him. He sounded like he could use a friend.”
“Well, that’s very nice of you,” Kara said.
“Do you mind taking her upstairs?” I asked.
Kara looked a little reluctant but then said, “Sure. It’s late and I was just wandering with no real purpose.”
“You have a good night, girls,” I said.
Before Naveen broke away, she turned and threw herself into me. Her hug was fierce, expressing both adoration and need. “You’re going to help Jason get well, and you’re going to take care of him, right?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
She broke the hug and went directly to Kara and took her hand.
“See you later,” Kara said.
“I’ll be up in a jiffy,” I said and felt like a total dork for using the word, ‘jiffy.” Next thing you’d hear me say was boffo.
When they were around the corner and I did an about-face and went back into the infirmary. Jason looked as if he were expecting for me. He wrote on his board as I walked back to his bedside. Just as I got there, he turned the board around. It read, “I couldn’t say more with her here.”
Now, I was reluctant to ask any more questions, but I knew from past experience that the answers were out there whether you liked them or not.
“Is it something bad?” I asked, feeling an ache in my chest.
He nodded.
“Do they get her?”
He nodded again, but it looked as if it killed him to do it.
“Do you think everything we see in our visions always comes true?”
He wrote again. When he finished, he showed me his board. It read, “Not always. I saw you in the field, but I never saw your friend there.”
“So, there’s always a chance that what you saw won’t happen?”
This time his board said, “Maybe.”
We both knew we were reaching for straws.
“I’m not one of them. I’m from the church,” the young woman said through choking gasps, her hands raised in surrender. Her clothes were black from soot, and her hair was matted against her head with sweat and dirt. Despite how bad she looked, he could tell she was an attractive girl. While not classically beautiful, she was handsome, with high cheekbones and strong features, but not in a masculine way.
Russell held his aim on her for another few seconds, too stunned to move. It was only when he saw another shadowy figure shambling along in the smoke cloud that he broke from his frozen state.
“I’m not with the attackers,” he said, hoping to allay her fears. “Get up,” he said, putting his pistol away and extending a hand for the woman. “There are zombies all around the area. We’ve got to get moving.”
She reached up and took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet. Once she was up and ready to move, he put a finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet. He crouched down for a moment and felt for his rifle. It took a few seconds, but his fingers felt the wooden stock and he retrieved it. He stood and motioned for her to follow him. He brought his rifle back up to the ready position, and they were on the move.
He went for the last opening in the smoke cloud he had seen. It only took a few seconds to break from the cloud, and they were standing south of what left of the church as it burned out of control. When she saw it, the girl nearly swooned, but Russell moved next to her and braced her with his body.
“Oh, my God,” she said, “oh, my God.” She brought both of her trembling hands to her mouth, and tears began to stream down her cheeks, coursing through black soot.
“We’ve got to be quiet,” Russell said in a half-whisper.
“But my dad and mom are in there,” she said, “plus all the other people.”
“Maybe they got out like you did.”
“I don’t think so,” she said as her eyes scanned frantically for any movement around the church. “I barely made it out of the window in the back.”
“You don’t know,” Russell said, “did you have a meeting spot set if anything like this happened?”
“Not that I know of....” but she stopped, her eyes locked on something in the distance.
Russell followed her gaze and saw a large half-charred zombie heading their way. A blackened yellow collar dangled around its neck.
“That’s one of his,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
The zombie’s progress was slow as one of its legs still smoldered from being badly burned. White bone lay exposed at a burned spot on its thigh.
Russell weighed the chance of making it around the zombie and the risk of the sound of shooting it could bring more down on them. The problem was that it blocked their best escape route. It was through the zombie or back into the cloud, and he had had enough of the smoke. He whipped the rifle up, aimed, and blew the thing’s brains out the back of its head. It collapsed in a heap in the street.
He looked and saw more figures shambling around in the edges of the smoke cloud. None of them looked friendly.
“Come on; we’ve got to move,” he said and started moving southward away from the church and smoke. It took the woman a few seconds to tear her eyes away from the burning building, but she finally did and started following Russell toward a grouping of houses just south of the church.
Just as they got out of the thickest smoke, Russell saw three zombies coming after them from the east. These look like fresh zombies and not ones that had been on the scene. He knew that even more would be coming down on them soon. Their window of escape was narrowing with every second.
He figured that they would have to head west and circle around the back of the church and then through the houses along Roosevelt Street. Maybe we could lose their zombie pursuers there, he thought.
The woman kept looking back at the church imploringly, as if the fire raging inside would magically burn itself out, but it didn’t. Russell had to stop at one point and physically tug her along as she cried quietly, the tears cutting though the dark soot on her cheeks.
They started between two houses when two zombies filled the gap and bore down on Russell and the woman. One was a woman in a soiled dress with half
her face missing. The other was a lanky man, wearing a jacket and a tie but nothing from the waist down. His knees looked like someone had worked them over with a sandblaster, the white of bone flashing against the dark gray skin. This zombie’s gate was irregular, halting and faltering but making ultimate forward progress towards them.
Russell looked back over his shoulder and considered going back rather than shooting his way through these two undead bastards. He decided to save the ammo for his rifle and pulled out his pistol and aimed for the female zombie because she was making better progress.
His first shot plugged the one in the chest, which spun her on her axis, but she righted herself and kept coming. His second shot went wide, and his third shot glanced off her shoulder.
Before he knew it, the girl he had rescued stepped up beside him and said, “Give me that,” as she reached for the pistol. Russell initially balked but saw the two zombies quickly closing the gap so he handed it over.
Despite her grief and shock, she grabbed the pistol, took the perfect shooter’s stance, and fired two shots. Both headshots. The zombies went down and didn’t move again.
Without a word, she extended her arm, offering the pistol back to Russell. Something had shifted in the young woman as she stuffed down the grief and sorrow. She was no longer the victim. She may have lost everyone and everything that she had ever loved in the past few hours, but she was going to be a survivor. She owed that much to the people she had lost.
“I’m right handed,” he said apologetically. “But I hurt my shoulder and can’t really shoot that well anymore.”
“Then maybe I should keep it.”
“Sounds like a good idea.”
A rattling metal sound came from behind them, and when they looked back, they saw five zombies smashing through a set of trash cans, battling to get to the pole position in the chase for these last two tasty humans.
“By the way, what’s your name?” he asked.
“Paige,” she said, looking back at the trailing zombies, “we had better get moving.”
“My name is Russell and I agree. We need to get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 28
Escape
The distant pop of gunshots got my immediate attention. It was only two shots. I couldn’t tell if it came from inside or not. Neither was good.
Jason touched my arm to get my attention and held up his board. It read, “What?”
“Gunshots, I think,” I said and listened intently for a few seconds. I had come down to visit Jason just ten minutes earlier. We had talked, with me doing all the talking and him doing all the writing. It had been two days since the revelation from Naveen, and he was getting stronger with each passing day, but he still wasn’t in good enough shape to do a lot. Doc Wilson said he’d have Jason up and moving by the next day to help build his strength.
A third shot sounded, and I knew it was inside as it echoed down the hallway.
“Doc, can you stay with Jason?” I asked. “I need to go see what’s going on.”
“Sure,” Doc Wilson said and went to Jason’s bedside as I made my way to the door. As soon as I hit the hallway, I heard shouts echo off the hard concrete walls. It was coming from the direction of the room where we were keeping Billings. Something told me this couldn’t be good, and my feet were in motion. As I ran, I pulled out my pistol and took off the safety.
The shouts that were indistinct at first because of the echo off the walls became clearer the deeper I ran into the basement. As I got closer, I could tell it was Aaron’s voice.
“Help!” he shouted, “I need help!”
I turned the corner and saw Aaron standing in the doorway of the holding room for Nate Billings. Lying on the ground half out into the hallway, was Brandon. Even at twenty feet away, I could see blood pooling around his head. The smell of cordite filled the air in an ugly way.
“He’s getting away,” Aaron shouted, his face contorted with anger and concern as he bounced around on one crutch. The other one lay inside the room and looked beat up.
“What happened?” I asked as I got to him.
“Brandon and I came down to talk to Billings. You know, to get information from him,” he said. “Things got out of hand.”
I said, “We have to help Brandon.” Brandon’s forehead was covered with blood, as were his eyes and most of his nose.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Brandon said, his voice shaky.
“You’re a bloody mess,” I said but stopped. Footsteps sounded down the hallway opposite from the direction I had come. I pulled my gun up and aimed at the corner. Four seconds later, Greg appeared around the corner, gun in hand. He put on the brakes when he saw me, but sped towards us when I dropped my aim.
“Head wounds bleed a lot,” Brandon said.
“What happened?” Greg asked but stopped to look into the room. “Where’s Billings?”
“I’m really sorry. We thought we’d turn up the pressure on him and…” Aaron started to say, but Brandon cut him off.
“You need to get him before he gets too far,” he said. “I shot him, but I don’t know how bad.”
“We need to take care of you,” I said.
“No!” Brandon said. “I’m fine. You need to get to Billings.”
“Is he armed?” Greg asked.
“No. He bashed my head into the door frame, but I wouldn’t give up my gun. He tried to get it from me, and that’s how it went off,” Brandon said. “I think I got him in the stomach or the side. When he tried one last time to get my gun, Aaron fended him off with his crutches. I figure he knew with the shots and the shouting, he didn’t have much time, so he just ran.”
“I saw a blood trail down the hallway as I came this way,” Greg said.
“Stop dicking around with me, and follow it,” Brandon said.
Greg and I exchanged glances, and he said, “Okay, have it your way. Let’s go, Joel.”
Following the blood trail wasn’t too hard. In places, there were drops, but in others, there were larger globs. It wasn’t pretty, but it made it easy to follow him.
“How much of a head start do you figure he has?” Greg asked.
“Less than three minutes,” I said.
With Greg in the lead, we went up the basement stairs and onto the first floor faster than you could say Zombie Robinson. When we burst through a set of double doors in the first floor hallway, we heard shouting coming from the end of the hallway. We were in a wing of The Manor that had no full-time inhabitants, so the noise had to be coming closer to the front of the building where most of our people congregated.
Greg said nothing as we slowed to a jog as we approached the intersection of the next corridor. Greg held up a hand for me to hold back, and then he poked his head around the corner. He quickly waved me on, and we both sped around the corner, but I nearly rammed into him from behind when he stopped suddenly.
“What is it?” I asked as we went down to one knee.
He brushed a finger across the carpet, drew it up, and inspected it. “Fresh blood. He came this way.”
As he stood, two silhouetted figures entered the hallway at the other end. Both brandished rifles.
“What’s going on,” a female voice shouted in our direction. I could tell immediately that it was Kara. The other person was Jo.
“Billings has gotten loose,” I shouted. “Brandon’s hurt downstairs.”
“Kara, can you go down and help Doc with Brandon?” Greg asked. “Jo, come with us.
“Okay,” Kara said and broke from Jo and headed for the closest stairwell to the basement while Jo jogged to us.
“Where is he?” She asked when she got to us.
“I don’t know for sure.” Greg said. “He’s been this way. Let’s spread out and check for more blood. Once we find it, we need to follow where it leads.”
We split up in the wide hallway, and all looked to the carpet. It was dark, and there was only a little bit of light streaming from each end of the corridor. I fi
nally got smart and pulled out a small pocket flashlight, clicked it on, and started scanning the carpet.
“Good idea,” Greg said and retrieved a flashlight of his own, clicked it on, and started searching.
Jo moved up beside me and pointed to a spot on the carpet a few feet in front of me. “What’s that?”
I aimed my flashlight in that direction and caught a reflection of something wet on the floor. It was more blood. I moved up and inspected it and saw a trail of small splotches of blood, which led along the floor to a closed door. When I moved the flashlight up the door, I saw a bloody handprint on the door.
Greg moved quietly up beside me and put a finger to his lips, telling us to be quiet. He stepped up to the door but turned back to us. He brought up his hand with three fingers extended, then turned back to the door, and gripped the doorknob. He held his gun at the ready as all three of us silently counted to three.
On three, he jerked the door open and took a shooter’s stance in the doorway. A bracing wind rushed over us from an open window on the other side of the room, telling us that Billings had gone out the window. A gust of wind pushed the curtain covering the window slowly back and forth.
Greg snatched up his walkie-talkie and keyed the talk button and said, “Guard stations, report in. Anyone see any one leave the building in the last three minutes?”
A man’s voice came across the walkie-talkie about five seconds later, “This is Steve Hampton from observation south. I saw someone walk away from the building a minute or two ago.”
“Why didn’t you report anything?” Greg asked.
“It could have been anyone,” Steve said. “I figured someone wanted to take a leak in the woods.”
I walked over to the window and pulled the curtain aside to look out. There was flat, clear ground for about fifty feet then some trees that got thicker the deeper as a person went into them. A thaw over the past two days had melted away much of the snow. A pale blue moonlight gave the ground a ghostly glow. I couldn’t see anyone moving at all.
Greg sighed deeply and then said, “Did you see which way he went?”
“Yeah. He headed off into the woods just southwest of the front of us.”
