I narrow my eyes at Todd. “You know, I like you a lot better when you’re not talking.”
“You know, I hear that a lot, actually. I’m used to it,” he says, giving me a snide smile. “And now that I know it annoys you, you can expect me to talk even more. I’ll be a non-stop chatterbox, a Talkative Tyler, a—”
“Will you shut up?” I ask, fighting the urge to cover my ears like a child. “Dammit, you are annoying!”
“Knock it off!” Aaron snaps. He doesn’t turn away from the front window where he’s keeping watch, but his voice carries to everyone in the room. “We need to start being more civil to one another. In the next few days, we’re going to be very dependant upon one another, and I need to be able to trust anyone in this group to look out for me, just like you all need to be able to trust each other. Now stop bickering.”
Todd and I shift guiltily, and I look over at him. “Sorry.”
“I’ll try not to be so annoying in the future.” He says it with a grin that promises me he’ll continue annoying me later, when we’re not about to be in so much danger.
Strangely, I’m kind of looking forward to it. Bickering with someone seems like such a small thing, but it’s normal. In life, you argue with people you don’t necessarily like, and if Todd and I can find a quiet minute to argue with one another, it can make our lives seem so much less dangerous and hopeless. Todd catches my eye and winks, before crossing his arms over his chest and reengaging in conversation with Janelle.
Daisy comes down the stairs with a fresh pair of clothes folded up in her hands, and she hands them over to me. I shove them into the bag with both me and Felicia’s new clothes, and they rest over the canned goods with just enough space left for the zipper to close. The red backpack given to me by Allen is now bulging at the seams, but it seems sturdy enough to hold all of our supplies and clothes.
“You guys remembered the can opener, right?” I ask.
Michael nods but doesn’t look away from one of the front windows. “Yeah. It’s in Aaron’s bag.”
We only have to wait for another couple of minutes until Levi and Rachel come down. Levi looks much better than he did last night, and his eyes no longer have a glassy appearance to them. His eyes are ringed with dark circles though, and I figure he probably didn’t get much sleep last night. He’s chewing on a graham cracker though, which is a good thing, since he hasn’t eaten since breakfast before the school burned down.
He immediately leaves Rachel’s side and stands next to Felicia. She leans in close, whispering something in his ear, and he nods his head. I’m curious what she said to him, because he straightens up a bit and nods to Aaron. “I’m ready to go.”
Aaron looks around at all of us, but his gaze lingers longest on Felicia, Daisy, Levi, and Rachel—the only unarmed people in our group. “Once we get out there, try to stay close together. Michael, Maddy, Todd, Janelle, and I all have weapons, so if anything happens, pull in closer to one of us. We’ll protect you as best as we can. Don’t get separated from the group, or you might get lost. Understand?”
Everyone nods.
Aaron opens the front door, and I tighten my grip on my handgun as we walk single file out into the street. The sun is already high in the sky, and there are no rain clouds in sight. The only thing worse than walking through zombie infested areas is walking through zombie infested areas in the rain.
Aaron takes the lead, followed by me and Janelle. Todd and Michael take their places in the back, between those in our group without a weapon. When I glance back over my shoulder, I’m surprised to see Levi and Felicia holding hands and walking side by side. Rachel walks behind them with a hint of a smile on her beautiful face, almost like just seeing two children happy makes her happy, too.
We walk for the better part of an hour with no trouble, but when we reach the end of a street and turn a corner, we walk straight into a small horde of zombies. There are at least ten of them feasting on the remains of what looks like a dog, and they’re fighting amongst themselves for a scrap of decaying flesh. Aaron motions for us to slowly back up before they notice, and we all start to move.
Aaron looks over his shoulder and swears. When I look back, I see eight more zombies coming down the street after us. We’re caught between two groups of flesh-eating monsters, with nowhere to go. We all huddle together in a circle, with our unarmed friends in the center. “Aaron, what do we do?” I ask as the group of ten leaves the dog’s carcass to shuffle slowly in our direction.
“Stay together,” he says as the groups surround us on the street. “See the house on the next street over? The one with the deck? We’re gonna try fighting our way over there, and then we’ll climb the deck and make our next plan. Alright?”
Eighteen zombies against five guns. Aaron’s plan seems simple enough, but fairly impossible. The first zombie steps within range, and Todd blows part of its head off. Janelle takes the next shot, and a zombie temporarily drops with its shoulder dislocated. More shots pop off, and I set my sights on the nearest zombie, aiming for its head. I pull the trigger and the zombie drops. They just keep coming though, and soon they’ve broken our group apart and split us up.
Another lunges at me, forces me to jump back. Todd shoulders me behind him and pulls the trigger. A shotgun blast to face at such short range is devastating, and the zombie drops, missing most of its head. “Be more careful!” he snaps, returning to Janelle’s side.
Felicia screams, and I whirl, spotting trouble immediately. Two zombies have her and Levi cornered. As I run across the street, Levi pulls Felicia behind him, and uses the move I taught him in our only self-defense class together. He hooks his leg around a zombie’s calf and yanks, sending the zombie to its knees. He plunges a steak knife into its head, and the monster goes still and drops to the ground.
The other zombie lunges at Felicia, and I slam into its side, knocking it away from her. The zombie falls to the ground with me on top of it, and it reaches for my face with cracked, yellowed nails. I put the gun in its mouth and pull the trigger, exploding the back of its skull. It goes limp beneath me, and I roll to the side, getting to my feet in a second. Felicia is still screaming, but Levi pulls her protectively behind his back, ready to face down anything that comes near her.
His newfound devotion to Felicia is surprising. I wonder how well they got to know each other before the school was overrun.
Somewhere behind me, Rachel shrieks. A zombie has its arms around her throat and she’s trying in vain to fight it off with a steak knife taken from the house we slept in. Before I can run to her side, an older zombie lumbers toward me. She’s been a zombie for a while, judging by her lumpy skin, sunken eyes, and her jerky movements. Her skin has begun to melt from the inside out, and her facial features have begun to blur together, making it impossible to tell her gender if not for her open shirt, revealing a large hole between her breasts—another zombie went straight for her heart and found it.
The zombie reaches out for me and I slap her hand away, knocking her off balance. She falls to her knees, and I slam the grip of my gun down on her head as hard as I can. There’s a crunch as her soft skull cracks, and I hit her two more times before she falls to the ground. For good measure, I stomp down on her head as hard as I can, and her brains split open and ooze through the cracks in her skull. She doesn’t move again.
Somewhere behind me, Rachel shrieks—a bloodcurdling sound of pain—and I whip around. Blood wells up from her left arm, where a zombie is gnawing its way down to the bone. She yanks her arm away, ripping a strip of skin from her arm in the process. She stumbles back a few steps before falling to her butt. She stares at the gaping hole in her arm and she begins to scream. Michael runs up behind her and shoots the zombie in the head, before kneeling to the ground beside Rachel. He tears a piece of his shirt and sets to work bandaging
“This way!” Aaron shouts.
He’s on the opposite side of the street with Todd and Janelle, and they’ve created a very small opening for u
s to dash through. I shove Levi and Felicia to get them moving, and they take off in a sprint, forcing me to run to keep up with them. All I can hear over the sound of my pounding heart is Michael’s boots pounding on the ground as he runs to keep up with us, and above that, I hear Rachel’s sobs and short, raspy breaths.
We hit the sidewalk and don’t stop. Aaron leads us between two white houses with the remaining zombies hot on our heels. Aaron and Todd reach the deck first, and they hoist Janelle up with their weapons. Janelle pulls up Felicia while Aaron throws a whimpering Daisy up there. Todd grabs me around the waist and lifts me up with surprising ease until I can grip the wooden deck in my hands and haul myself up the rest of the way. He hands me Levi, and I pull the struggling boy up beside me. He crawls over to where Felicia is crying softly to herself, and he whispers something in her ear that stops her trembling.
Todd drags himself up beside me, huffing and out of breath as he makes sure his feet aren’t hanging over the edge. He flops back onto the wooden deck and takes deep, even breaths, and I wonder if his heart is racing like mine. Aaron pulls himself up and turns around, grabbing Rachel’s hands. Together, he and Michael manage to get the wounded woman onto the deck. As Aaron hauls Michael up, Rachel collapses next to me. My eyes lock onto the bleeding bite wound on her forearm. She can’t stay with us. She’ll turn and then she’ll be a danger to the group.
The zombies reach the edge of the deck just as Michael’s feet disappear from the edge. There are seven zombies standing beneath the edge of the deck, reaching up for us with their hands. The deck is on a slight incline so we’ll be safe for a while, at least long enough to catch our breath and come up with a better plan.
“Well, what do we do now?” Todd asks, still lying flat on his back. “Do we go around to the front of the house and hope more of them aren’t out there waiting for us?”
“I’ll check to make sure the coast is clear,” Michael says, getting to his feet with a groan. “If the street out front is empty, that’ll be our best bet.” Michael reloads his gun and limps over to the sliding glass door that leads into the hopefully abandoned house. He disappears, making sure to leave the sliding glass door open behind him in case he has to bolt back out.
“What’ll we do if the street out front isn’t clear?” I ask. When Aaron doesn’t answer me, I look over at him. He’s lying on his side watching the zombies below us. We’re out of reach for the moment, but we still have plenty of problems to deal with right now, and Aaron has to worry about them more than the rest of us. “Aaron? Do we have a backup plan?”
He rolls over and looks at me. “No, Maddy. We don’t,” he says softly. “If the street out front isn’t clear, I guess we’ll just have to make a run for it.” He looks down over the edge of the deck and shudders. “There’s no way all of us will make it.”
I inch closer to him and lower my voice. “Not all of us are going to make it anyways. Rachel’s been bitten. What do we do about her? We can’t just leave her behind, but we can’t just pretend she isn’t dangerous…”
Aaron grimaces. “I’ve lost so many people in the last forty-eight hours you’d think I’d be getting used to it.”
“Aaron, the soldiers on the supply run weren’t your fault, and neither were the survivors. Bad things happen, and all we can do is brace ourselves for the worst, and then keep going. Please stop blaming yourself.”
He sighs. “You’ve never been the leader before, have you? If you had, you’d know that a good leader always blames themselves, even for things they know can’t be helped.” He looks up at me again. “To be honest, part of me doesn’t want to know what we have to do about Rachel.”
“But a bigger part of you already knows what has to be done…” I say gently.
He nods. “Yeah, I do. She can’t come with us. She might turn and kill someone. But I can’t just leave her here, stranded and alone, with no previsions or weapons. She wouldn’t last five minutes. And I could never…” He trails off, but his face turns a little pale, and I have no problems figuring out what the rest of his sentence might have been.
“You guys are talking about me,” Rachel says, crawling over to us. “I can tell. Both of you look guilty.”
“Rachel—”
“Madison, I know I’m a threat to everyone in this group. I understand what this bite mark means,” she says, holding up her forearm for us to see. “I saw my children suffer from fever and blisters and cramps…I know what’s in store for me. And I know I can’t come with you guys.” She sounds scared but sure of what she’s saying.
“Aaron!” Michael runs back through the open door and skids to a halt in front of us. Aaron is on his feet in an instant. “The street out front is even worse than back here. There’s gotta be at least fifteen of them out there. We’ll never make it through.”
“So jumping back down into a pit of zombies is our best bet?” Todd asks with a sneer on his face. “Awesome. We’re trapped between two groups of zombies with nowhere to go. We’re screwed.”
“Don’t be so negative,” Janelle says, frowning. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”
Todd snorts. “Oh really? You think Aaron can come up with a plan that actually works? Seems to me like anything that comes out of his mind is doomed to fail.”
“Hey!” I shout, startling him. “You think you can do better than Aaron? I’m sure he’d love to let you try. Go on, Todd. Come up with a plan that involves doing something other than bitching.”
Rachel joins us. “You guys—”
Todd narrows his eyes at me, ignoring Rachel. “Alright. You want a plan? Give me a minute to think about it. Honestly, I can’t come up with something worse than he did!” he snaps, jerking his thumb at Aaron. “It was his bright idea to try walking to Colorado!”
“He didn’t say anything about walking to Colorado you ass! We’re walking out of the city because there are too many of us to fit into a car. And you know what? At least Aaron is trying to keep us all alive. He’s trying, Todd, and that’s more than I can say for you. What have you done in the past two days other than complain and eat up our resources? You didn’t do your chores like you were supposed to, so I had to step in and do it. And look what happened to me!”
Aaron steps between the two of us before Todd and I can start a shoving match. “Knock it off, both of you. This isn’t helping our situation any.”
“I’ll do it,” Rachel says quietly.
“How are you gonna make me, Aaron?” Todd asks angrily. “Are you gonna whip me if I misbehave?”
Aaron pales and shifts his feet nervously. “I didn’t enjoy doing that. I did what needed to be done.”
“Whipping a man in front of everyone until he passed out needed to be done? No, Aaron. That didn’t need to be done. But you did it anyway. And you know what? I think there’s a part of you that kind of enjoyed it…”
Aaron narrows his eyes at Todd and takes a quick step in his direction, causing Todd to immediately step back. Even though Todd may be an inch or so taller, Aaron is maybe thirty pounds heavier, and every single pound of it is muscle that comes from years of intense training. Aaron is a mountain of muscle and discipline, while Todd is more of a scrawny child in comparison.
“What did you just say to me?” Aaron asks in a deep voice full of anger and authority.
“Y-you heard me,” Todd stutters. “I think you like being in charge, and I think you like punishing people that don’t obey you.”
“Aaron is just doing what has to be done!” I shout, jabbing my finger into Todd’s chest. “He knows that someone has to make the tough calls, and that someone isn’t you. You’d crack from the pressure in a week tops. Aaron managed that school for months, making sure everyone was as safe and comfortable as possible. How dare you—”
“Hey!” Rachel shouts, startling everyone into silence. “I have a plan. I’ll jump down and draw them away long enough for you all to escape.”
“Rachel—”
“It’s not like I’l
l survive long either way,” she points out. “At least this way, you can all get away and keep fighting.”
“We can’t just let you sacrifice yourself like that,” I say.
She looks over at me with tears in her eyes. “This world is so dark and cruel. It took my husband and my children from me long before their time. Madison, I know what I’m doing. I’m going to be with my family again. Please don’t take away this chance to make my death mean something.”
There’s nothing I can say to that, and it looks like nobody else plans on speaking out against her wishes. Instead, Aaron puts his hand on her shoulder. “Thank you for doing this, Rachel. You’re saving our lives, and we won’t forget that.”
Felicia runs over and throws her arms around Rachel’s waist, burying her face in the older woman’s shoulder. “You can’t go!” Rachel pats Felicia on the head and leans down to whispers something in her ear. Felicia shakes her head, refusing to let go of Rachel. “It won’t be the same!”
Rachel forces Felicia to look her in the eyes. “I know you’re scared, but you have to be strong for me and for yourself. These people will protect you and keep you safe, but you have to promise me that you won’t ever give up. Promise me.”
Felicia sniffs and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I promise,” she says in a shaky voice. “I promise I won’t give up.”
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Felicia has grown so close with Rachel. Felicia lost her mother and Rachel lost her children. They were both lonely people that were bound to gravitate toward each other…
“Madison,” Rachel says, stopping in front of me. “You take care of that girl,” she tells me quietly. “You and Levi are the only people she has left to trust, and I’m trusting you to be there for her.”
“Of course.”
Without another word to any of us, Rachel squares her shoulders, and she takes a running jump. She lands in the grass at the edge of the deck, and she curses in pain as her ankle twists beneath her. She grits her teeth against the pain and begins to run back between the two white houses, and my last glimpse of her is as she rounds the corner, disappearing down the street with more than half a dozen zombies following along behind her.
Zombie Country (Zombie Apocalypse #2) Page 12
