They were afraid of it.
Smoke spread quickly from a lack of ventilation or circulation and Zach pulled his shirt collar up over his nose. Miranda, I hope you know to stay down. It dawned on him, too late, that they should have warned her what they planned to do.
Foster lit and launched the second lamp, landing it perfectly ahead of a divide that was forming.
An elderly female was the first to charge. Her cheek was peeled away, her left ear dangling from a flap of torn flesh.
“Take these.” Zach handed Foster his remaining two lamps, pulled his pistol, and put the woman down with a single shot to the head. The horde swarmed. Those that weren’t drawn to their voices were attracted to the gunfire.
Careful to keep away from the bathroom, Foster and Zach hurled all but one of the remaining lamps onto the pyre.
Flames licked the walls and ceilings, the lamp oil turning the infected into a gathering of wicks, melting away soft tissue and muscle until they could no longer move. Thinning the herd considerably. The smell of burning hair and incinerating flesh eclipsed the tang of the smoke. The wails and moans became louder.
Zach pushed Foster into the room with Penny and closed the door behind them. He huffed and wheezed, bending over to catch his breath when his chest was burning. Panic set in. The infected couldn’t turn the knob, but the leeching smoke would eventually kill them. He lit the last lantern for light.
“Give me that.” Zach pointed at the bed. Foster tossed the folded white blanket to Zach who was already filling the sink with cold water. “Penny, come here.”
“Hurry.” Foster coughed and choked, fighting to release the strap holding the fire extinguishers to the wall.
Zach wrapped Penny in the soaking wet blanket, covering as much of her exposed flesh as possible. “We have to go, now.” He took the extinguisher. “I’ll go first.”
“Here,” Foster said to Penny. “Hold my belt and don’t let go.”
She grabbed his belt, covering her hand with the blanket, and followed him into the fray.
Foster white knuckle gripped his pistol.
“The fire’s spreading too quickly.” Zach pulled the pin on his extinguisher, sweeping a path toward the bathroom. He squatted as low as he could and his hamstrings burned under the strain.
The infected whirled in disoriented circles, falling into piles of ashes along the hallway. Skin burnt, then muscle, until their bodies could no longer move.
“Zach, watch out!” A blazing female broke through the melee, scattering the ruins of those before her.
Zach turned, just in time, and blasted her in the face with the spray. Carbon dioxide froze her decaying flesh and her twisted, hungry expression glazed over. He drove the butt of the extinguisher into her face and it shattered.
Penny wept, bordering on hysterics.
“Get her out of here, now.” Zach breathed shallow, taking in only as much smoke as he absolutely had to while clearing a path for the others. His lungs burned and he resisted coughing even as he shouted.
Foster exterminated the straggling infected and led Penny down the dark hall to where the flames had not yet gone.
“Miranda!” Zach pounded the locked door. “Open up.” The latch released and it gave. Zach stumbled into the bathroom, which was thick with billowing smoke. Miranda hunched over and coughed, red-faced and short of breath. Scott held her down, forcing her beneath the worst of it.
Zach all but pulled her away from him. “I have her. I know where we’re headed.” He wrapped his arm around her, folding her into his chest, and checked for rogue infected.
Scott stayed nearby, too close for Zach’s taste, and readied to put down anything that approached. Zach considered how he would get Miranda alone and realized it wouldn’t happen anytime soon.
The hall broke left, the higher ceilings and open concept dissipating the smoke enough for Miranda to stop coughing. “There!” He pointed to the roll up door ahead, cracked open a foot.
Several infected followed and were gaining on them.
Scott paused, assumed a wide stance, and took them out in turn.
Kill shots, every one of them.
Miranda stopped and turned. “Scott, come on,” she said, wheezing.
“Zach, get her out of here.”
Zach pulled her along. “He’ll catch up. Come on.”
A trickle of rain cooled Zach’s burning hot hands as he helped Miranda wiggle under the door.
With Scott hanging back, this was his opportunity.
The cold pavement and gravel dug into Zach’s palms as he pushed himself through the narrow opening. He rolled onto his hip and heard a loud crunch. A jagged, plastic edge poked his thigh. No. Please no. He stood, reached into his pocket and pulled out his ruined cell. In that moment, everything slipped away—Nixon’s phone number, their communications, Allison. His legs weakened, but he didn’t fall. He couldn’t let them see him crumble for fear it would draw suspicion.
There had to be another way to get Miranda to Nixon.
The door slammed shut and Scott appeared. Miranda collapsed in his arms. “The worst is over,” he said and pressed his lips to her soaking wet hair.
Rain mixed with her tears to wash away the smudges of ash painting her cheeks. She wept so violently that she shook them both.
Shhhh. Scott sniffled and tucked her head under his chin.
The storm slowed to a cold drizzle and a sliver of moon peeked through the dark clouds in the predawn sky.
Zach lifted his head and sighed, the slowly falling droplets masking his own tears.
“Are you all right?” Penny came out from behind a large, green dumpster, the inverted lid propped against the building providing her minimal and temporary shelter. The rain melted the blood on her pants into tie-dye like rings, a badge of honor in a war she was too young to fight. She’d miscarried. Thank God. She had been the hardest for him to see on the ward. Shame descended and it was hard to look her in her dimmed blue eyes—eyes that reminded him of Allison’s. He watched Scott comforting Miranda, a new beginning forming between them.
“Where’s Foster?” Zach asked.
Penny pointed over her shoulder at the Black Grand Cherokee pulling up to them. “There was no van when we came out.”
Foster rolled down his window and adjusted his dark glasses. “Who’s ready to get out of here?”
Zach wiped his eyes, put the remains of his phone in his pocket, and climbed in the passenger’s side without saying a word. The others climbed into the back seat. Scott settled next to Miranda and placed his hand gently over hers on her belly.
Zach waited for the inevitable confrontation, a verbal thrashing because of the fire, but his paranoia was a product of guilt.
Scott reached around the seat and patted his shoulder. “We’ll get her back,” he said. “What you risked for Miranda, I’d give my life to help you.”
He didn’t know how to respond.
Foster pressed down on the accelerator and the Jeep lunged forward.
Zach kept an eye on the side view mirror, part of him fearing what might escape from the ashes. The center grew smaller, and just before it vanished, the roll-up door opened and an injured Reid crawled through it.
58.
Frank peeled off his blood-spattered flannel and tucked the gun beneath the driver’s seat. His eyes appeared empty.
“You did what you had to,” Carlene said, imagining how hard it was for him after what Scott did to Holly.
“At least it stopped the infection from spreading.”
John remained silent, his head hung low.
Frank’s lip quivered and he wiped his nose with his palm. He turned on the radio and lit a cigarette. Merle Haggard played through the crackling speakers.
Carlene coughed and rolled down her window to let out the smoke.
“So, what now?” John asked.
Frank kept both hands on the wheel and dangled the cigarette from his lip. “We go home. All of us. And I bury my daughter.”
Carlene debated telling Frank how much Holly cared about him, how she had begged Nixon to let her go, crying every night for her father until she was sedated, but it would only make burying her harder. She leaned into the door and basked in the early rays of sunlight. The radiant warmth comforted her, but it couldn’t completely shake the sadness.
Frank pulled into the driveway of the white ranch house she hadn’t seen in months. The house she’d been so proud to be able to afford on her own. She cupped her hands over her nose and mouth and cried. Tulips decorated the neatly mulched gardens and bright green grass grew where once it had been yellow and patchy. A fresh coat of paint on the porch made the house look new again.
“How…?” She was too choked up to speak.
Frank smiled and a tear dripped from his chin. “Kurt’s been working on it,” he said. “He knew you’d come home.”
Home. She couldn’t believe she had made it.
“Are you positive you don’t want us to come in with you?” John asked.
She sniffled. “I’m sure. Thank you--all of you--for everything.”
She stepped out of the van, leaving behind the weight of Holly’s death and Frank’s sadness. There were things to be thankful for. People who loved her. A father who had kept the home fires burning in her absence. The moist grass tickled her feet as she made her way up the lawn. She reached for the spare key under the mat and the infant growing inside of her kicked.
* * * * *
It’s for your own good.
Amy read the words scrawled in Billy’s sloppy handwriting on the bathroom vanity in toothpaste.
Where had he gone?
She didn’t even remember getting back to the cabin.
A sharp, needle stick pain had begun in her chest. She peeled off her soiled gown and examined the bull’s eye rash above her left breast. A tiny scab had formed over the pinhole in the center and it itched furiously.
Where had it come from?
Her stomach clenched and she flung open the toilet seat, the underside of which was blood spattered and foul. She hit her knees and vomited. The walls pulsed and closed in. The sour, yellow fluid burned her throat.
She howled in pain as the force ruptured another stitch.
What was happening?
“Billy,” she called out for help.
He had to be somewhere.
She took several slow breaths, inhaling deeply and holding her hand on her wound. Her hand contracted and her ragged nails dug into her broken-down skin. She wailed, tears springing forth from the agony.
She staggered into the living room. Her vision clouded and she knelt in front of the crucifix hanging on the wall.
“Someone, please help me,” she whispered, sensing it was already too late.
59.
Yellow ribbons circled every tree leading down the long, gravel drive to the tidy double-wide trailer. A thin man in bibbed overalls wrenched on a tractor in the yard, ignorant of the mud left by the storm. His hands and gentle, gaunt face were smeared with grease and his knees caked with dark sludge. He didn’t immediately look up, but Miranda could see the weariness about him. A preoccupation befitting someone missing a loved one. She’d fallen into that trance herself from time to time.
“Dad.” Penny nearly jumped out of the moving Jeep.
Miranda reached across Scott to grab Penny’s hand. “I told you we’d get you home.”
Foster parked and the thin man’s jaw fell open. “Beth! Beth, get out here!” He shouted.
Penny flung open the door and ambled as quickly as she could toward him, almost knocking him over with a crushing hug.
Beth, Penny’s heavy-set mother, stepped out on the porch, moving slowly at first, as though she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Penny? Oh my God, Penny.” She wobbled, leaning on a cane she hadn’t been using when Miranda saw her at Porter’s, and then moving quicker until her arms wrapped around her weeping family.
Miranda squeezed her lips tight together, tears welling up. She’d returned their child home.
Scott pulled her close and the car fell silent. Everyone watched the tearful reunion. Foster sniffled and cleaned his glasses.
Miranda drank in the sweetness, the gathering obscuring the pain she’d carried with her since losing her daughter.
“I have to say goodbye.” She opened her door and slowly approached the crying family.
“Thank you. Thank you, so much.” Beth pulled Miranda into the fold, holding her tight.
She couldn’t hold back the joyous tears.
“Are you hurt?” Penny’s father was the first to pull away, staring at the blood covering Penny’s damp pants.
“Come inside, sit down,” Beth said. “You, too.” She insisted Miranda join them.
Miranda waved the others in and followed the Hammonds inside. All but Zach complied.
An artificial Christmas tree remained in the corner of the living room, presents wrapped and waiting. Glimmering red bows caught the sunlight and the packages were dust-free.
Her mother must have cleaned them daily.
Penny’s father draped a thick quilt around her and settled in next to her on the couch.
Beth opened the warm oven and the smell of chocolate cake filled the small space. Miranda’s stomach growled in response. Beth didn’t wait for it to cool to cut it and extended the first piece to Penny.
“Here.” Penny handed the plate to Miranda, her expression hinting sadness about Miranda’s pregnancy.
As much as Miranda wanted to stay, to savor the food she craved and needed, the baby caused unsettling tension.
“You know, I think we should be going,” she said. “You have so much to catch up on.”
“Miranda, please stay. I didn’t…”
Miranda interrupted. She couldn’t talk about it. “Promise me you’ll keep in touch.” She made a writing motion with her hand and looked for a piece of paper. Beth handed her a small notepad from next to the corded kitchen phone and she nodded thanks. “Make sure you call me because I want to know all of the wonderful things you’re doing.” Penny stood up and Miranda gave her a hug. “It’s a fresh start,” she said. “Take advantage.”
Foster said goodbye next and held Penny long enough for Miranda to notice. He smiled, adjusted his glasses, and sniffled. “If you ever need anything—a bodyguard or a rescuing—you let me know.”
“I will,” she said, a red blush painting her cheeks.
“Thank you, again, for bringing her home.” Penny’s father put his grease-covered hand out and Foster shook it.
Beth hobbled to dole out another round of hugs and pulled Penny under her arm.
“Take care of yourself,” Miranda said and followed Scott outside.
Penny waved from the window more at Foster, who was easing back into the driver’s seat, than anyone.
Scott stopped midway to the Jeep and reached for Miranda’s hand. His wedding band rubbed against her finger and she turned her head to hide her blushing. Zach, red-face from crying, watched them through the windshield. Not everyone got a second chance. She took a deep breath and met Scott’s gaze, nervously letting her guard down.
“What do we do now?” Scott asked.
“The same as everyone else.” She shrugged. “We go home.”
CURE (A Strandville Zombie Novel) Page 23
