Something falls to the ground behind me and I spin around, bringing my gun up. A pair of bleeding hands slap the gun out of my grip and it goes flying across the floor, skidding to a stop somewhere under the bed. The zombie is on me before I can even scream.
Her arms wrap around my throat and she pins me against the wall, aiming to sink her teeth into my throat. My hands press against her chest as I try to keep her away from me. Her skin is soft and spongy, and my fingernails tear through it like it’s tissue paper. Her thick blood drips down my wrist and falls to the floor, staining the once white carpet.
She lunges at my throat and I shove her away from me as hard as I can. She spins away and hits a trunk at the foot of the bed, falling to her back. While she struggles to get to her feet, I dive to the floor and search under the bed for my gun. My fingertips just brush the metal of the gun when I see the zombie get to her feet. I flip around onto my back and kick her in the knee as hard as I can. There’s a loud crack and her left leg crumples beneath her. My second kick smashes her nose, snapping her head back. More thick, slightly congealed blood flows from her wounds, and she shrieks at me with her ruined vocal cords, sending shivers down my spine.
There’s a lamp on the bedside table near me, and I reach up and grip it in my hands. As the zombie rights herself, I swing my arm as hard as I can. The lamp collides with the side of her head with a sickening crack, and she falls face first to the floor. Before she can get back up again, I step on her back and swing my hand up above my head before bringing it down on her skull a second, third, and forth time. Finally, she stops moving.
I drop the lamp and it hits the ground with a soft thud. For a minute, I just stare at the unmoving zombie on the floor. Whoever she is, she’s been infected for some time—her skin is soft and looks like it’s beginning to melt, and the only hair left is a few stringy strands of blond hair that have been stained red by the blood leaking from her broken skull. Her bones all press against her paper-white skin, giving her the look of a long dead corpse.
When my heart stops racing and I start to relax, I reach under the bed and retrieve my gun. Then I head into the bathroom and tear down the shower curtain. It has bright purple flowers printed over it, and I fold it up as best as I can and tuck it under my arm. I head back downstairs and out the front door.
Todd is standing behind Felicia, leaning on his shovel for support. His arms probably feel spongy and weak, just like mine. Even though he has to be exhausted and scared after everything that has happened today, he looks up as I close the front door behind me, and he gives me a small smile.
“I didn’t find a sheet, but I did grab the shower curtain. That should work.”
He nods and takes the folded up curtain from me. “How are we gonna get Felicia to let go of him?”
“Give me a second to talk to her,” I say, looking over at her. Her eyes are red-rimmed and dead. She still hasn’t let go of Levi’s hand, and I’m not sure if she even knows where she is right now or even what kind of danger she might be in. We’re out here in the open—exposed and helpless—and we still need to get back to the rest of our group. We have limited ammunition and no supplies, which makes us easy targets.
Todd nods. “Make it fast. Aaron and the others won’t wait forever.”
As I get closer, I can hear Felicia’s quiet sobs, and I can see the tears still falling down her cheeks. She doesn’t look up at me as I crouch down beside her, and for a minute, the two of us just stare at Levi’s lifeless body. When I can take the silence no more, I nudge her gently with my elbow. “Felicia? Honey, we have to get out of here. This area isn’t safe.”
“I don’t want to leave him,” she says softly.
“Felicia, you’re the one who said he deserved a proper burial, remember? We can’t give him that unless you let go of him.”
She exhales loudly, and I get the feeling that she’s trying hard not to cry anymore. “You were right, Madison.”
“About what?”
“What you said to me about not taking forever to decide…you were right. I did lose Levi, and I do have regrets about what could have been. I should have just told him how I felt, and now I’ll never get the chance to do it. And the worst thing is that he died trying to save me. It’s my fault.”
“Oh, Felicia. I’m sure he understood. He knew how you felt, because he felt the same way. You were there for him in his final moments, and I’m sure he knew how you felt. But now, you have to take care of yourself, because he isn’t here to do it anymore.”
She sniffs and wipes at her face. “What happens now?”
“We bury Levi, and then we get back to the others.”
She nods. “Alright.” Slowly, as if she’s unsure whether or not she can do it, she lets go of Levi’s hand. It falls to the ground, and Felicia slowly gets to her feet. She dusts off her knees and takes a deep breath. “Let’s do this and get out of here.”
Todd walks over to my side and spreads the purple-flowered shower curtain out across the ground. He nods to me, and I grab Levi’s ankles while Todd gets his shoulders. After counting to three, we lift Levi’s body and move it to the side before gently setting him on the shower curtain. Todd wraps the shower curtain around him, and we both grab an outside edge and drag him toward the grave.
Felicia flinches when Levi’s body hits the bottom of the grave, but she bites her lip and she doesn’t cry anymore. She stands there at the edge of the grave and watches as Todd and I fill the grave in with dirt one shovelful at a time. When Levi’s body is completely buried in dirt and she can no longer see his face, she heaves a giant sigh of relief, and her body visibly relaxes.
Todd and I fill in the rest of the hole, trying to smooth it out as much as we can. We don’t have any grave marker or even a piece of wood to indicate where Levi is buried, but the chances are none of us will ever be able to come back to this place, so having a marker doesn’t really help us.
When the grave is covered, Todd walks over to my side and puts his arm around my shoulders, surprising me by his willingness to get within touching distance. “Does anybody wanna say something?”
My gaze flicks over to where Felicia is standing at the foot of the grave. Her arms are clasped around her chest like she’s trying to hold herself together, and my heart squeezes painfully at the sight of her. She sniffs once more, and she nods her head. “I’ll say something. If you guys don’t mind.”
“Go ahead,” Todd says quietly. His eyes dart around the street, and I’m not sure if he’s looking for zombies, or if he’s just trying to avoid looking at Levi’s fresh grave. “Just make it fast. We’ve lingered here too long.”
Felicia steps closer to the edge of the grave and when she speaks, her voice wavers a bit. “Levi was so brave. He was willing to do anything to save the people he cared about, whether it was his cousin Lucy or a girl he barely knew. And I think that’s what makes this so sad. Levi didn’t know me like he wanted to, and now he’ll never get the chance. I wish I had given him that chance…” Felicia’s voice breaks and she starts to cry again.
Todd and I just stand there and stare at her, unsure of what to do. There’s nothing I can do that I haven’t already done for her since the shootout ended. I’ve talked to her and I’ve listened to her, and now it’s up to Felicia to pull herself together.
She wipes at her eyes furiously, as if she’s angry at herself for being sad. “I’m sorry, Madison.”
“It’s alright, Felicia,” I say, walking over to her. She throws herself at me, wrapping her thin, bony arms around my waist and burying her face in my shoulder. Her entire body heaves with each sob, and I can do nothing except hold her while she cries herself out once more.
Todd stands back a ways, watching us with a careful expression on his face. “Madison, we have to go,” he says gently. “We have to get back to Aaron before it turns dark, or the three of us will need graves of our own.”
I pull away from Felicia and look down into her dirty, tear-streaked face. “Todd is ri
ght, Honey. We have to go.”
She sighs heavily. “I know.” She looks at Levi’s grave one last time before nodding her head. “Let’s get out of here.”
*****
It takes us way longer to find Aaron and the others than it did to find Levi. Felicia wanders behind us at an ungodly slow pace, and Todd and I have to keep stopping to let her catch up to us. We can’t get too far ahead of her or we risk not being able to spot any danger she might be in, so Todd and I are forced to walk at a snail’s pace as well.
It’s almost dark when we find our way back to the car dealership. As we make our way between a pair of SUV’s, Aaron is the first one to spot us. He jumps to his feet with a look of pure disbelief on his face. “You actually found her,” he says breathlessly as we walk by. “I can’t believe it.”
“Yeah, we found her,” I say quietly. “But we lost Levi in the process. When we found him, he’d already shot one of the bandits and he was pinned down by the other three. They were in the middle of a gunfight. During the fight, Todd killed two of them, but the third one got away. Felicia was mostly unharmed, but Levi was shot in the stomach. We…”
“Put him out of his misery?” Aaron guesses. When I nod my head, he wraps his arms around me, pulling me in for a strong hug. “I’m sorry you had to do that, Maddy. I should have been there with you.”
“I didn’t have to do it,” I mumble into his chest. “Todd did it when I couldn’t, and now he’s…handling it as best as he can. But Felicia is just devastated. I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to move on from this.”
Aaron sighs. “Great. Now we have two possibly suicidal teen girls to look after,” he says bitterly. Before I can object to his harsh words, he puts a hand up to calm me. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Both of them have been through traumatic events—traumatic even by the apocalypse’s standards! I understand they’re in a fragile place right now, but I have to worry about their lives and the lives of everyone else in this group. And Daisy and Felicia are going to be a hindrance to us now, Maddy.”
“I know,” I say softly, hoping nobody overhears us. When I look at what’s left of our group, a shiver runs down my spine. We’ve already lost three members of our group. First Rose, then Rachel, and now Levi…how long until we’re all gone? We can’t keep this up. “I’ll keep an eye on Felicia and Daisy. You just worry about getting us to Colorado.”
“About that,” Aaron says. “I’ve got an idea of how we might be able to speed things up a bit. Well, Michael has an idea.”
“What kind of idea does Michael have?”
“It’s a bit of a long shot…” Aaron warns me before he starts.
“More of a long shot than driving to Colorado?” I ask with my eyebrows raised.
“You know how Michael is air force? According to him, before our country belonged to the undead, the government made one final stand at a base in Dayton, Ohio. They actually managed to fortify it by erecting a wall around the base that was manned by soldiers. Even though the base eventually fell, he says they should still have a handful of helicopters ready for use, since everyone was dead before they could clear out the supplies. Michael says if they’re still there, he can fly one.”
“Flying to Colorado would be much easier than driving. Would we all fit in a helicopter?”
“We’ll squeeze in and sit on laps if we have to. The only problem is getting to this walled off base in one piece. Michael says that when the place got overrun, the rest of the area did as well. The place will be swarming with zombies and I don’t know if we’ll be able to make it through.”
“So what you’re saying is we either take our chances on the road to Colorado, or we take our chances on the road to this helicopter?”
“What do you think?” he asks.
“Out there on the open road, there are so many things that could go wrong. We could break down with nowhere to defend ourselves. We could run into trouble. We could run out of supplies. I don’t know, Aaron. I think this helicopter might be our best bet. If Michael thinks this is an option, I think we should listen to him.”
Aaron nods. “Alright. Let me talk to the rest of the group. Then we’ll find a place to camp out for the night, and in the morning we’ll get some fresh supplies. Why don’t you grab some dinner while I talk to the others?”
While Aaron outlines our new plan, I sift through our remaining supplies. We don’t have much left since the others ate while we were gone, but I manage to scrounge up one of the two cans of chicken chunks. Todd and Felicia join me as I pop the first chunk into my mouth, savoring the juicy, cold flavor of the canned chicken. I offer the can to Felicia, and she picks one of the smaller chunks out.
“You need to eat,” I remind her.
“I know, but I’m not really that hungry.”
Todd grabs a handful of chicken and shoves it all into his mouth, chewing slowly to savor the taste. I eat a few more chunks, and offer the last couple to Felicia. She shakes her head, so I split the rest of them with Todd. With the chicken gone, the three of us take turns sipping from one of our water bottles while Aaron finishes explaining our plan to the others.
“Aren’t you curious to hear this?” I ask Todd.
He shakes his head. “I already caught part of it when Aaron told you. You guys weren’t as private as you thought. I saw your hug and I heard most of the plan. I have to say, it sounds better than driving all the way to Colorado.”
“You’re okay with walking through zombie infested streets to get there? We’ve already lost three members of our group so far. What if we lose the rest of our group on the way there? It would all be for nothing.”
“Everything comes with risks these days. But we have to think about which choice has the least amount of risk involved. Like you said, there are a lot of things that can go wrong out on the road. Our best chance is this helicopter, so I say we go for it and hope for the best.”
“That’s what we’re gonna do,” Aaron says, taking a place behind me. “After talking to everyone, I’m convinced this is the best thing for us. But right now, it’s starting to get dark, and we need to find some place safe to hole up until morning. Let’s find an abandoned home that we can fortify for one night.”
Our group packs up the remainder of our supplies, and we make sure to walk together as one pack. Todd and I take up positions at the back while Aaron and Michael lead the way out of the business section of town.
Chapter Thirteen
The two story house looks like a dump from the street outside. The light blue paint is chipped and faded in places, and dirt smears the sides. The front steps are broken and the roof of the porch sags in the middle, and we all have to step around some low hanging pieces of wood just to get at the front door.
Aaron and I are the first two inside the house, and we split up to check every nook and cranny for any signs that someone or something is still living here. Aaron takes the upstairs floor while I search the living room, the dining room, the first-floor bathroom, and the kitchen. When I find nothing during my search, I start to look through the cupboards and the drawers in the kitchen, hoping to find some kind of food.
In one of the kitchen drawers, I find a large flashlight and a fresh pair of batteries. In one of the upper cupboards, I find three small cans of tuna, a can of pear chunks, and a jar of chunky applesauce. Everything else looks like it’s been cleaned out, but this meager bit of food makes me unbelievably happy, and I swipe them for later.
Aaron comes back down as I’m packing away the food I just found. “Did you find anything?”
“A bit of food and a flashlight. Everything else has been cleared out. You?”
He shakes his head wearily. “Not much. There are three bedrooms upstairs that are empty, but I did find a box of bandaging and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in the bathroom medicine cabinet. That should help in case one of us gets hurt. Let’s get the others and bring them inside so we can set up a temporary camp upstairs.”
I head upstairs while Aaro
n gets the others. Right off the landing is a small bedroom with two twin-sized beds with pink flowered comforters. Colorful paintings of sea creatures cover one of the white walls, and a broken toy chest sits abandoned in the nearby corner. A handful of dolls hang out over the side, and I look away from them, hoping that whatever little girls lived in this room didn’t suffer in some horrible way.
“Try not to think about it,” Todd says quietly in my ear. “It only makes it worse.”
“I won’t be able to sleep in this room.”
“I don’t blame you. I don’t think I could sleep in here either. It’s too…depressing.”
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure every place is like this now. There won’t be any place that is untouched. This is our future, Todd. The rest of our lives will be like this—one devastated place after another.”
He bumps my shoulder with his. “Come on. Aaron is passing out food to everyone, and he wants whatever it is you found in the kitchen added to the pile.”
Todd and I head back out into the hallway, where Aaron has everyone grouped in a circle. Someone—probably either Michael or Aaron—has already pushed an old dresser in front of the stairs. Felicia has her back to the dresser so she can lean back, and she scoots over to make room for me and Todd. Everyone stares at me hungrily as I unzip my red backpack and start to pull out the food.
Once all of our food is piled in the center of our little circle, Aaron starts to divide everything up. “We don’t have a lot of water left, so we’ll have to go easy on that, but we can drink the pear juice and the tuna juice.”
“Aaron, how much of this are you planning on letting us eat tonight?” I ask, surprised by what his hands are doing.
“We’ve skimped on the food for too long. We can’t keep going with so little food in our stomachs—eventually it will cost us. So tonight we’re going to eat a real meal, and we’ll find more food in the morning. Let’s dig in.”
Zombie Country (Zombie Apocalypse #2) Page 16
