But Grace had gone down the stairs first. She had reached the door first. It was only when she turned around that she had seen Rose’s teeth sunken into Charlie’s shoulder. She had momentarily forgotten about Charlie in her attempt to check the parking lot for any zombies. Charlie’s death was all her fault. She deserved to die the same way he did. She deserved to endure the same pain. She deserved—
Bullshit.
She knew Charlie wouldn’t have wanted that. His death would have been in vain if she didn’t at least try to escape from these creatures. She had to survive. For him. Because he loved her and she loved him.
Grace now heard movement at the top of the stairs. Erratic footsteps began descending. One step, then two steps at a time. Then another set of footsteps that seemed to skip a step and fall down the stairs. She pulled the second ice axe from Charlie’s belt and held both in her left hand. She quickly grabbed the machete and shoved it in the sheath. Wiping away tears, she picked herself up off the floor.
There was a loud grunt at the bottom of the stairs. Grace looked up. The same man who only minutes ago had given them a set of car keys now stood ten feet away from her. His eyes were soulless. Blood and mucous slowly dripped from his mouth; the wound in his neck oozed pus and blood.
Not today, Grace thought to herself.
She turned and ran to the door. Manic, pounding footsteps followed quickly behind her. Those footsteps were soon joined by several others—more of the undead were coming down the stairs.
Grace burst through the door into the daylight and ran left toward the other side of the building. She looked behind her; the undead swarm poured out of the cafeteria. They chased her with rabid tenacity, but Grace was able to keep a safe distance. She would need the separation; she still had to find the car.
On the other side of the building, she found several cars parked in a small lot. She pulled the keys from her pocket and desperately began pressing the remote locking device. To her left, she saw the taillights of a Chevy Cobalt blinking.
Grace ran to the driver’s side of the car and yanked the door handle. The horde of undead bound around the corner of the building and pursued at a frantic pace. The sound of running feet, grunts, and groans announced the approach of the crowd. It was deafening. Grace tossed the axes onto the passenger side as she jumped into the driver’s seat. She jammed the key into the ignition as she slammed the door shut. The Chevy revved to life. Grace looked down at the shifter and put the car in reverse.
Hands smacked at the windows before Grace could even step on the gas. The undead had surrounded the car. They crawled onto the hood and trunk. They banged at the driver’s window using their own heads and limbs, smearing blood, hair, and pieces of skin. A man on the hood of the car pounded both his fists against the windshield. To Grace’s horror, the windshield glass began to crack.
She slammed the accelerator to the floor. The car lurched backward, knocking down several of the undead. The man, who had been pounding on the windshield, flew off the hood of the car. His head exploding into a bone-and-flesh goulash as he hit the asphalt. Grace bounced around inside the car as the wheels rolled over several bodies.
When she finally felt the wheels make contact with solid ground again, she put the car in drive. Through the spider-webbed windshield, she watched as the horde continued their frenzied pursuit. Grace pounded the accelerator again. This time, she was going forward. She could barely see the road through the sea of undead. The front end of the Chevy rammed into them, one after another. The hood wrinkled and buckled as the car repeatedly struck the oncoming zombies.
Several bodies crashed into the windshield, spreading the cracks even further across the glass. The windshield started to bow and cave in. Grace wondered how much longer it would stay in place before the glass finally shattered and the whole thing caved in on top of her.
As she plowed through what felt like a seemingly endless number of them, Grace finally saw the access road. Without taking her foot off the gas pedal, she sped around the building, toward the exit. In the rearview mirror, she saw what remained of the horde running after her. She pressed the accelerator harder. Ahead, the access road began sloping downhill; she was finally getting off the summit! It would only be about fifteen minutes before she reached the bottom.
With the crowd behind her, Grace checked inside the car for some kind of communication device. She opened the glove compartment; only papers and insurance documents fell out. She lifted the center console. There was a cell phone inside. In her excitement, she almost didn’t feel the wheels of the car slip off the edge of the road.
Grace dropped the phone. With both hands, she jerked the wheel hard to the right. Both driver’s-side wheels had hopped the road and were riding in the ditch alongside the asphalt as the car sped down the mountain. She desperately held on to the steering wheel as the narrow access road bent to the right. She willed the car to stay out of the trees as the passenger side skipped and stuttered on the road. Ahead of her, the road straightened out. She eased out of the turn and slowly straightened the wheel, steering the car back onto the road.
She reduced her speed and looked down for the cell phone; it had fallen into the cup holder in the center of the vehicle. She reached down with her right hand and flipped it open. It still held a charge. Grace hastily dialed 911 and put the phone to her ear. An operator answered.
“9-1-1, what’s your emer—”
“HELP!” Grace screamed. “I’m hiking in the mountains, by Campground Tamakwa, and I’m being chased!”
“Chased by whom, ma’am?” the operator asked.
Grace narrowly missed going off the road again as she picked up speed.
“I don’t know! They’re fucking... dead people! I don’t know what they are!”
“Okay, ma’am, I’m going to need you to slow down. Where are you?”
“You don’t understand!” Grace shouted. “They’re fucking DEAD!”
She pinned the phone to her ear using her shoulder; she gripped the wheel with both hands as the turns became tighter and sharper.
“Ma’am, who’s dead? Are you okay”
“There are a ton of them!” Grace said. “I’m on the mountain! I need help!”
As she screamed, the movement of her jaw knocked the phone loose; it fell between her seat and the center console.
“Fuck!” she cursed. She looked down and could see the phone wedged inside the gap. She reached down and inched the phone up with her fingertips, back into her hand. She pressed the phone to her ear.
“Hello!” she shouted.
***
The Chevy made impact with the boulder before Grace was able to hear a response. She had driven straight through a hairpin turn, and the car collided with the large rock without warning. The windshield shattered upon impact.
The driver’s-side airbag deployed, but it shoved Grace’s head into the roof of the car. She felt a warm sensation on her neck. She couldn’t tell if it was blood or paralysis setting in. To her left, she saw the driver’s-side door had completely ripped off the car. To her right, tree branches had entered the car through the passenger window, through the backseat, and into the trunk.
Grace sat there, motionless. Her head throbbed. She tried to lift her right arm and felt a bolt of pain shoot from her hand to her head. Stars rained down in front of her eyes. Suddenly, the steering wheel was twenty feet away. Her circle of vision narrowed. Then, a shroud of darkness lowered over her eyes as she went unconscious.
Chapter 13
Grace woke up in a large, familiar room. It was dark, but there were tall windows that allowed in the moonlight. She lay on a couch with her hands resting on her chest. She let her head roll to the side. The room was a lounge of sorts. There were a couple more sofas and some chairs. Grace seemed to recognize it but she didn’t know why.
She thought about the moonlight for a moment. She hadn’t remembered seeing the moon recently. For some reason, she remembered it being very cloudy the last time she was
awake.
Shaking off this notion, she tried to sit up. A crippling spasm smacked the front of her head, as if she’d slammed it into an invisible wall. She squeezed her eyes shut and lay back down, wincing as she pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead. She took several deep breaths and waited for the pain to subside.
When the pain finally lessened, she raised herself up again slowly and rested on her elbows. She turned her head to look out the enormous windows. She saw the moon in the sky. And, to her surprise, she saw it on the ground as well. Unable to focus, Grace closed her eyes again and massaged her eyelids. She opened them and looked again. Closed them and looked again. The moon did in fact appear to be both in the sky and on the ground.
Grace squinted at the moon on the ground. It was flickering. The moon doesn’t flicker she thought. Only stars flicker. Then she saw tiny waves passing through the moon, kind of like a reflection. The moon was reflecting off a body of water.
Grace shifted uneasily. She turned back toward the room and examined her surroundings more carefully. The tables, the sofas, the chairs—it all came back to her. Grace knew exactly where she was. She was in the common room inside the hut. The moon was reflecting off Silver Lake.
Realizing where she was, she tried to sit up straight. The pain still consumed a large part of her head, but she managed to sit upright on the couch. She tried to remember how she’d gotten there. She remembered climbing to the summit with Charlie. She remembered fighting off what felt like an endless number of the undead. She remembered escaping in a car and hitting a tree.
That was it. She vividly remembered hitting the boulder. She must have blacked out. But where was Charlie? Why would he bring us back here? She scanned the area. Perhaps he was resting in one of the rooms? He wouldn’t leave me here to sleep alone.
Finally, visions of the events on the summit came flooding in as the dam within her memory broke open. Grief and guilt filled her once again, even more now than when she was with Charlie in the summit cafeteria. The pit in her stomach, once left by hunger, now filled with nausea. Her stomach turned even more as she remembered what Charlie had asked her to do, and the terrible act she had carried out. Her heart ached so much, she wanted to rip it out of her chest and throw it on the floor, just to watch it die as she had watched Charlie die—as she was now dying inside.
She had never endured so much pain in her life. She never wanted to feel like this again. She never wanted to feel anything again. She thought of leaving, of climbing back up Arrowhead and leaping off the same cliff from which Joe had leapt to his death. She’d never feel a thing, which is precisely what she wanted—not to feel. It would be a quick death. And in the end, she’d be with Charlie again.
Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Why hadn’t she simply waited on the first floor of the cafeteria? The undead likely would have taken her then. There were plenty of ways she could have taken her life as well. Or maybe that was why she had crashed the car? No, she knew the crash had been an accident. She hadn’t intended to crash the car. Then why?
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Grace screamed as the voice startled her. She had been staring at the floor, trying to make sense of everything; she hadn’t even noticed someone had entered the room. She drew back, cowering on the corner of the sofa. The figure of a man came nearer. He stopped next to an armchair, about fifteen feet away to her right.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re okay.” He continued to approach her. “I thought I warned you and your hubby about this place?”
Grace recognized the gruff voice and the enormous beard as the man walked closer. He still wore his red flannel shirt.
“Roy?” she asked. “Roy, from the camp store?”
“The one and only,” Roy said matter-of-factly. He took a seat in a chair next to the sofa. Grace settled down onto the seat cushion, and her heart began to beat normally again.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked. Roy chuckled loudly.
“Lady, do you really ask that question of everyone who pulls you from a car wreck?”
She immediately regretted the question upon the realization that she was facing her rescuer.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Roy waved off the apology. “No worries.”
Not knowing what to say or ask, Grace remained silent. She watched Roy’s hand as he tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. She noticed as he glanced around, nervously thinking of something to say.
“So,” he said, breaking the silence. “Where’s that man of yours anyway?”
Grace hesitated before answering.
“He’s dead.”
Roy’s shoulders stooped and his voice took a somber tone. “I’m very sorry to hear that, truly I am.”
Grace nodded.
“Did they kill him?” Roy asked, likely referring to the undead. Grace nodded again. Roy ran his hand through his hair and let out a long exhale. He looked off to his right before asking his next question, not wanting to make eye contact with Grace.
“And is he now,” he paused, “one of them?”
Grace shook her head.
“So his head was, uh—”
“Yes, his head is fucking destroyed.” She was already tired of Roy’s passive attempt at finding out about Charlie. “I know because I killed him.”
Grace stared at him, unblinking, after she said this, and waited for a response. There was none. Roy only stared back in awe.
“You’ve got some scars, don’t you,” Roy said.
Grace lifted her hands, stared at her palms. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”
“I’m not just talking about the physical kind,” Roy said. “Although, those are there too.”
Grace dropped her hands. She nodded weakly.
“When I found you in the car, I couldn’t help but notice the axes in the front seat.”
Grace again remembered when she’d last used one of them.
“It’s okay, you know. You were just doing what you had to do.”
Grace’s eyes welled up.
“These people,” Roy began, “I mean… these things—they’re not like us, you know. Not anymore.”
Grace’s eyes went to the floor. She was not ready to have this conversation. Luckily, Roy seemed to notice and he quickly changed the subject.
“You must be starving,” Roy said.
Grace nodded. Roy stood up.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s food in the kitchen.”
The word “kitchen” set off a silent alarm in Grace’s head. Cheryl was still in the kitchen. In fact, both George and Cheryl were still in the kitchen. Grace tensed and shook her head. Roy saw that the terror in her face had returned.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Grace gestured toward the kitchen. “There are people in there,” she said, her voice very low.
Roy lowered his head. “What do you mean?” he asked. “There’s nobody in there.”
Grace slowly rose from the sofa. She started to approach Roy but walked past him. She looked down the hallway, toward the room in which she and Charlie had spent the previous night. The bodies that had once lain on the floor in the hallway were gone.
“I moved them,” Roy said, as if reading her mind.
She continued walking toward the kitchen. Roy watched her curiously, tried to guess what she was up to. She placed her palms against the steel double doors, but the memory of the incident from that morning prevented her from entering. She turned around.
“What about the people in the freezer?” she asked.
Roy shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t been in the freezer,” he said.
Grace pointed toward the kitchen doors. “There was a man and a woman this morning,” she said. “She turned into one of those things. The man tried to trick us into helping her, so we locked them both inside.”
Roy now stepped closer to Grace.
“Lady, I haven’t been in the freezer. I brought you back here, moved those bod
ies out, and washed up. Nearly got myself killed in the process.”
Grace’s pulse quickened. She wanted to be anywhere else at that moment.
“What do you mean, ‘nearly got yourself killed?’”
Roy hesitated. He’d said too much. But it was too late. It was time to talk. “One of those things saw me when I carried the little girl outside.”
Grace remembered Caitlin, the image of the bullet hole in her head still fresh in her mind.
“Did it attack you?” she asked.
“It tried to,” he said. “I had already lain out Terry and one other. Then I dragged out the little one.” He stared off as he recalled the terrifying ordeal. “I’m not as quick as I once was,” he said, tapping his hand on his leg. “Bastard nearly caught me as I was closing the door.”
Grace could see he was shaken up. She was surprised. She didn’t figure Roy to be the kind of man who was easily rattled. Then again, not many people could say they’d been face-to-face with the living dead. She put a hand on Roy’s shoulder and met his eyes. She suddenly became filled with compassion. “But it didn’t, and that’s the important thing.”
Roy took several deep breaths, nodded his head. Grace rubbed his arm and looked around.
“We have to leave,” she said.
“Wait, wait. What?” he asked.
Grace’s adrenaline was pumping again. Her head was a bit clearer than when she’d gotten up. “We have to get out of here. We have to get off this mountain.”
She started to walk away, but Roy grabbed the sleeve of her shirt.
“Didn’t you hear a word I said?” he asked.
“Yeah, every word.”
“There’s nobody here,” he said. “We’re safe here.”
“We are not safe,” Grace said, struggling out of his grip. “This place is a fucking tomb. I’m leaving, and if you’re not coming with me, then that’s fine.”
Dead Summit (Book 1): Dead Summit Page 15
