Sarah's base immediately dropped into a low stance as the scratcher charged at her. She stayed calm and watched carefully for her opening. When it reached her, flailing its arms out, she stepped to the side and thrust the knife at its head. The front end of the blade hit its collarbone and bounced off as the scratcher sailed past, stumbling before grinding to a halt. Sarah took the opportunity to close the gap and she stabbed it repeatedly in its back and neck before it twisted around to her. The corpse threw itself at her and she braced her foot against its stomach, letting herself fall to the ground and using its momentum to throw it over top of her. It did a somersault in the air and landed on its back, convulsing in its usual way. Sarah spun onto her front and threw herself on top of it, mounting the zombie and using her knees to pin its arms to the ground. Its head snapped around from side to side, trying to get a big bite out of the soft flesh of her legs, but it couldn't reach them. Its whole body flopped like a fish, but Sarah rode the wave and aimed carefully before sinking the knife into its forehead. The whole body gave out a quick wave of twitches and shakes, and then it was still.
When she got up and dusted herself off, Trevor approached her. "My, my, you scrap with the best of them."
"What you see is a product of necessity," Sarah told him. "Pride never got me here. I may not be the cleanest, but I'm effective, and I'd like to see you do better."
"Sounds like a good challenge." He looked around. There wasn't much in the area other than a couple of old stores and fast food joints, and the streets appeared to be empty except for one section. "Over there," he said.
He pointed out another scratcher far off in the distance loitering around a lumber store.
He handed her the gun. "I've got this one."
They made their way closer to the store before hiding behind a black SUV sitting in the corner of the parking lot. Sarah wished him good luck, but he paid no attention to her; his gaze was keenly focused on the task ahead of him. He rested his hand on the hilt of the knife sitting in the sheath wrapped around his waist, and when he judged that the conditions were ideal to his approach, he left the safety of the SUV and stalked his target.
Sarah poked her head up from the hood of the SUV and watched in amazement as she saw a dazzling display of stealth and grace. The scratcher patrolled in a similarly random pattern like all the rest. Yet Trevor stayed behind it at all times, moving much quicker than Sarah had, but yet still so silently as if he wasn't there at all. Like a ballet dancer, he moved from one abandoned car to another, taking pause behind a light post before moving on. There was even a moment when the scratcher turned in his direction, but he quickly and gracefully slid behind cover, not making a peep. As soon as he got within that same stone's throw that Sarah had gotten with her quarry, Trevor made a swift beeline for it, removing the knife from his waist and almost running in a soft hop. The scratcher didn't turn around at all before Trevor drove the knife up from under its jaw and into its brain. And just as quickly as he had inserted it, he pulled it out and left the scratcher to crumple to the ground in midstride.
He casually sauntered back to Sarah, flinging the wet blood off his knife. "Always determine the characteristics of your prey before approaching," he said. "These ones make a lot more noise than most animals; chattering teeth, grunts and groans. That allows you to move quicker and sacrifice absolute silence for speed. Cover is also your friend. Stay close to it, because you'll never know when you need it. And those zombies can smell you if you get too close, so you want to pay attention to wind direction and make the final approach quick."
"I must say, I'm mighty impressed," Sarah said.
"All it takes is practice, Sarah. You're a good fighter and a born survivor. I just wanted to make sure you have all the tools in your toolbox before we tackle our final objectives."
"So are we done here?" she asked. "My feet are starting to kill me on this pavement."
"Almost," Trevor said. "There's just one more thing."
"What?"
He looked around. "I think there's a gas station near here."
They made their way down the road, passing a bakery and a strip mall before coming to a gas station on the far corner of an intersection.
Trevor stopped in front of the wide concrete base of the vertical signs advertising the stores in the strip mall. Sarah shored up to it next to him and they peered at the gas station across the way. Two more scratchers prowled the area near the gas station, one of them on the edge of the intersection and the other one skulking around the pumps. "That'll do nicely."
"What will do nicely?"
"That convenience store in the gas station. I need you to retrieve an item from there."
"Okay. Like what?"
Trevor's eyes squinted against the morning sun. "There should be a cracker box in there somewhere on one of the shelves. White and blue box. I need you to get it for me."
"What's in it?"
"That's not your concern," he said. "This will be your final test for the day. Show me what I taught you."
Sarah rolled her eyes then studied the scratchers wandering around. She watched their movements for a minute, waiting for an opportune time to go. Her eyes scanned around the area, looking for all points of cover and she planned her strategy of how she would get from behind this concrete block to the store and back without being seen. She looked at Trevor. "Can I at least take the gun this time?"
"You can take the gun. But don't use it. In fact, don't touch the zombies at all. Just get in and out."
"Fine," she said. She tarried a moment longer, then she took off. She swept across the intersection when the first scratcher turned its back to her and stumbled up one of the connecting roads. She kept the other one by the pumps in her vision as she took cover behind a wildly overgrown set of bushes marking the edge of the gas station's property. There were four sets of gas pumps, each wide enough to hide the width of a person. She waited until the zombie had disappeared behind the third pump, then she ran to the first one closest to her, pausing behind it. She peeked out from the side and pulled her head back when she saw the zombie turn for her. But she stayed calm knowing that she wasn't seen and that the scratcher would move on. When it did, heading for the side of the building, and when she saw the other scratcher continuing down the road in the distance, she made her attempt for the door. Sarah used all the techniques Trevor taught her, including the peculiar way she watched him move when he dispatched the previous undead lurker. The techniques didn't fail her, and just as the zombie reached the side of the building with its back turned, she slipped the door open and went inside.
The interior of the gas station was extremely musty, like someone had spilled a few gallons of chemicals and didn't clean it up. But it seemed as dusty and untouched as any other store, and it appeared that she was alone. Sarah began rooting through the aisles, scanning each shelf for this cracker box that Trevor wanted for some reason. What item was hidden in it or who left it here, she could only guess. But when she decided to try the snack aisle with all the other chips and cracker boxes, one solitary white and blue box sat tucked away on a shelf, an old Premium box.
She leaned forward and pulled it out. With the package in hand, she moved back to the door and peered outside the glass to see if the coast was clear.
Just then, the scratcher that had wandered to the side of the building came back, stepping right in front of her. It slipped past her view without noticing her and Sarah pressed her face to the glass, watching it saunter over to the other side of the building. When it reached the edge, it simply stopped and twitched on the spot, facing away from her. It didn't move from its position, but Sarah took a deep breath, knowing that it didn't need to.
She gently pushed the door open and softly closed it after slipping through the gap. She felt the wind blow westward from her position toward the zombie, so she wasted no time in quietly making her way back to the pumps ahead of her. And just as she slipped behind the cover of the nearest one, the scratcher turned around in a daze,
staring at the front of the store where she had passed through, alerted to something, but not knowing what. And as it was distracted, Sarah made her way back across the intersection to where Trevor waited with a proud smile on his face.
"There, no problem," she said. She handed the cracker box to him and he thanked her, gleefully opening it up. "So what is this for?"
His face turned to her in disbelief. "Breakfast," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He pulled out a sealed stack of crackers and opened the end of it, prying one of the thin snacks away from the rest with his thumb and forefinger. He brought it up to his mouth and chomped on the corner, then his face contorted into something like displeasure.
"A little stale," he said.
5
A Ghost from the Past
They went their separate ways, done for the day, with Trevor pleased with her performance. He reminded her once again that she had nothing to prove to him, but he just wanted to make sure that she was prepared for what was ahead. She asked when they were going on the hunt for the first item needed to complete the Eden Project, and he told her they would set off early the very next day. Sarah also felt the need to ask him about the new kind of zombie she'd seen before they parted. His face was blank as she described their strange new intelligence to him and the encounters she'd had. When she finished speaking, he simply replied that he had no knowledge or experience with what she was talking about. His answer was a little coy, and she couldn't tell if he was being sincere or not, but she let it drop.
When Sarah returned to Wayne, things were pretty quiet. Having been only a week since she launched her daring infiltration into Glass's base to rescue Wayne, the events were still fresh in both of their minds. Sarah had initially thought that Wayne would go through some growing pains in the first few days, but that it would get better. But instead, he seemed to get a little worse with each passing day, a little more bitter and isolated. And even with Wayne's stubborn insistence that he do everything for himself, she started to feel more and more that he would end up being a burden to her; neither one of them could have predicted the shocking turns in their life and the horrific injuries they would sustain in this fight, but Sarah began to see his stubbornness as a weight holding her down, a child that she would always have to return to who couldn't take care of himself. It weighed heavily on her mind, but the project that Ron and his team of scientists were working on gave her hope. She just hoped the final solution would come quickly.
Sarah walked into the living room of the cabin and searched around for Wayne. She spotted him through the window sitting on the back deck on a flimsy old plastic chair. Despite his need for independence, Wayne was often needy when she was around, even if it would only come in the form of conversation. And the nice thing about his unfortunate new injury was that he wouldn't always know when she was around; Wayne hadn't heard her come through the door into the cabin, and even though she would normally be in his line of sight through the window, she took the opportunity to plop down on the brown suede couch and relax without him bothering her.
After they had escaped from the base and Ron tracked her to their cabin in the woods, he injected her with something to scramble the signal her cells emitted, blocking the very technology he used to find her so that Glass couldn't do the same. He also advised her to find another place to live just in case, and so she did. The next day, she transported Wayne to a different cabin in the Eagle Rock area, then she ditched the big rig she'd stolen just in case.
She rested her head for twenty minutes on the couch, feeling all the muscles in her body sink into the fabric, then she got up and tidied up around the place. She glanced over at Wayne periodically through the window, and he just sat there doing nothing. She shuddered at the thought of not being able to see; missing an arm was bad enough, making formerly simple tasks into Herculean feats, but the thought of losing her vision completely crippled her. There was no way she would be able to fight or do anything. As frustrating as Wayne had been in the past week, she had to admit that deep down she had a big soft spot for him. She didn't quite know what the feeling was, but it was there. There was always a twinge of sadness along with it, but as she stared at him and saw the still-attractive and chiseled features of his face with the rough, graying stubble on his chin, she felt her heart give a little jump. But she buried those kinds of feelings in her for a long time, and now she pushed it out of her mind once more. She cleared her throat and went back to cleaning.
When darkness fell she went on a jaunt back to the gas station. It was exceptionally warm and she threw on a halter top, letting the breeze crawl up from underneath and the sides to cool her sweaty skin. The night was very peaceful and the sky was clear. She stared up at the stars and tried to tell one constellation from another, not knowing anything about them. She wanted to get some more food for her and Wayne, and she had noticed a few canned goods in the gas station's convenience store when she was there with Trevor that she hadn't thought to take with her at the time. She just brought the Sig Sauer with her, not expecting much trouble; she knew the route, and with the darkness, she knew she would be able to slip there and back without any problem.
But she kept her eyes open, scanning behind every hill and tree to spot any more zombies watching her.
She ran over the techniques that Trevor had taught her in her head and occasionally she would look down at her feet, taking a moment or two to go through the sensations again. She remembered how he had performed that impressive display, slipping from one piece of cover to another, and she envied that skill.
And now that the idea was in her head, she departed from the edge of the road, slipping into the woods and practicing it, going from tree to tree as she made her way forward. She didn't go too far into the woods because she didn't want to get lost, and there was nothing that she was actually trying to hide from, but she understood how useful this skill was and how much practice Trevor must have had to use it so deftly.
Her movement was already far swifter and more silent than it had been in the past, even with her shoes on. She still didn't know where they were going to get the MRI camera the next day, but she suddenly felt at ease knowing she wouldn't have to brawl her way through whatever situation they found themselves in. It was a pleasant feeling.
Sarah came out of the woods onto the familiar road that she and Trevor had reached in the morning, and she retraced their steps all the way to the round concrete base of the signs for the strip mall. But by this time she had let her guard down a little and hadn't been paying too much attention to what was around her, deep in thought about this Eden Project as Ron called it, and what it would mean for the future of humanity. So when she spotted an army truck sitting at the side of the road in front of the gas station, she paused for a moment, startled, remarking in her head how she didn't remember seeing it that morning, before continuing on. And when the soldier appeared suddenly on the other side of the truck just as she started to pass it and ran right into her, she didn't have time to do anything but fall down to the ground in surprise.
The man reeled back from her and stared at her with wide eyes. He was one of Jack Glass's men, no doubt about that; he had the same armor and weaponry that she had seen on all the other troops. But he didn't shoot her. In fact, he didn't even try to attack her at all. His helmet was off and his M16 hung against his chest, unused. His eyes darted from Sarah to the area around him. He looked like he had been in a hurry to go somewhere or do something when they bumped into each other, and now that the shock of running into her had started to wear off, he ignored Sarah entirely and continued running across the road.
"Let's get out of here, guys!" he shouted, heading for an auto parts store across the street whose windows had been smashed in.
A moment later, seven more men came out of the store, all in the same armor with their helmets off, and they looked just as frantic as the first man. Sarah pushed herself up to her feet and then crouched low, pulling out the pistol on her hip and aiming it a
t the men as she looked around for cover.
But none of the soldiers seem to care about her. A few of them glanced at her, some of them startled when they saw her pointing a gun at them, but even that didn't seem to slow them down or worry them more than what they already had on their minds.
"I don't have a good feeling about this!" the first man yelled nervously. "I think he's here. I think he's fuckin' here!"
Discord went through the small crowd and they all looked at each other and argued, moving around from one place to another like a school of fish with elastic bands attached to each of them; one man would go one way and tried to pull the crowd with him, but then another would go the other way, arguing for them to go somewhere else to flee whatever it was they were hiding from.
Sarah moved toward the gas station, electing to hide behind one of the pumps and watch the confusion unfold in the street. She just wanted to get the food she was after and leave, but she wanted to find out what they were so afraid of. The men kept frantically looking around like something was after them, and if there really was something that could instill sheer terror in eight armored and well-armed men, she wanted to know what it was for her own sake.
"That's it, we're dead!" one of them said. "Glass found us. Shit man, we're all fucking dead!"
"Pull your ass together!" another one barked. "We're not shit yet! We just need to get in the truck and get out of here!"
"No!" another one shouted. "We ain't gonna make it two miles without fixing the injector, and you know it."
Sarah looked over at the army truck. They must have had a malfunction in the engine and needed to repair it, but why were they talking as if Glass was after them? Weren't they Glass's men?
"The boss did this!" one of them said, backing up from the group and holding his hands to the sides of his head. The look of terror was stronger on his face than anyone else's, and he looked near ready to evacuate himself in the bottom half of his armor. "He knew! He knew right from the damn start! I told you guys we shouldn't have cut and run! Now he's gonna hunt us down and kill us one by one!"
The Eden Project (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 6) Page 5
