Mad World (Book 2): Sanctuary

by Provost, Samaire

  “Well, yes, I think so,” she said. “Isn’t this Promenade Red River?”

  “No. It’s Cartier,” I said, looking into her face. “Promenade is two and a half kilometers north of here. You’d better call them back.” I turned my attention back to the flipped car.

  Five of the people were trying to turn it back over. They were making a loud commotion and were on either side of it, rocking it back and forth. I heard a scream come from inside.

  “I think you’d better stop,” Jacob said. “There are injured people inside there.”

  The people stopped and Jacob said under his breath, “idiots.”

  I smiled.

  Suddenly, I heard the sound I hated most in the world.

  “GRRRRRRRR…………..”

  “GRRRRROARRRRRRR…..”

  “….MRRRRRRBBBLLLMMRRRRR”

  “Oh God!” someone yelled.

  “AIIEEE!!!!!!” someone else screamed.

  They were everywhere. Zombies. They’d been using the marsh as their home, we found out later. The marsh went on for dozens of miles. We’d find out later it was home to hundreds if not thousands of the things.

  Right now there were maybe 25 of them, creeping up on us. They’d probably been attracted by all the sound. They were on all sides of us. I don’t know if this was by coincidence or by design, but they circled us and were closing in.

  It was chaos.

  I saw the woman who was calling the fire department back, to tell them our correct location. She was on hold when she was jumped by a zombie and went down. The fire department never did find us, not until it was far too late.

  Zombies jumped at us everywhere. We had stupidly (stupid, Alyssa, just utterly stupid!) left our guns in the SUV and we were naked without them.

  Screams came from all around us as the zombies attacked and tore open any living human they could get their hands on.

  I saw two of them crawl into the overturned car. The occupants let out multiple blood-curdling screams as the zombies feasted uninterrupted.

  Luke jumped right into the fray. The zombies were ignoring him, as usual, and he was nearly as strong as they were. Add to that strength his training – and the element of surprise – and he was a force to be reckoned with. He tried to put himself between me and the zombies, but it was hard even for him to stand his ground as he tried to take on more than one of the creatures. Try as he might, he couldn’t protect all of us from all of them.

  One zombie jumped at Jacob, and he kicked it away. He’d been studying Jiu-Jitsu and Kickboxing with me, and we took turns kicking and flipping zombies away from us.

  The trouble was, I thought later, that zombies that are kicked or flipped fall down and then get right back up again. We were smarter. More focused. But they were a lot stronger and a heck of a lot more resilient. After a while we were getting tired, and they just kept coming.

  The civilians were going down fast. DeAndre grabbed a zombie from the back as it attacked one of the women in the crowd. Risa, fearless as ever, kicked several away, but again, they just kept coming back.

  “We’re going to have to leave them,” yelled DeAndre. “We have to make a run for it. There’s no other way.”

  Jacob grimly fought back against two more zombies, but he nodded at D.

  Caitlyn was the farthest from the road. She was trying to fight off four zombies … and she was losing.

  Jacob struggled to get to her. He flipped one zombie and then kicked two more away.

  DeAndre was trying to get to Caitlyn as well.

  All of us were fighting at least two zombies each, but I saw Caitlyn’s predicament and, pushing back the zombie closest to me, I ran to help her.

  That was my undoing.

  Turning my back on the second zombie, I began to run. The ground was muddy and sloshy, and I stumbled a bit, and then regained my footing. That was all it took for the second zombie to leap and land on my back.

  I crashed to the ground.

  Dammit, Alyssa, that was sloppy… I thought.

  And then I felt it.

  The zombie clamped its jaws down on my right upper arm, right up by the shoulder, and bit down.

  “AIIEEEAARRRRRRR!!!!!!” I screamed in rage at the damned thing.

  It bit down harder, and I felt the bone crack.

  For some reason the audacity of this crummy zombie to dare attack and bite me was enraging me, and that’s what probably saved me from further injury.

  I felt the adrenaline surge in me, and I gathered myself and flipped over. The thing was still clamped down on my arm, like a pit bull. I grabbed its head with my free hand and tried to pry it off. It was slick and slippery and gooey, like zombies always are, and my hand just slid over its nose and eyes. Trying to grab its hair was futile, it was too short. I reached again and hooked my fingers in its eye sockets.

  “AHA!” I think I actually said that out loud. My adrenaline was flowing so much I didn’t feel any pain, only rage and annoyance, and now triumph as my fingers found purchase, and I dug them in deeper.

  We were in a battle. The thing was clamping its teeth down harder, but now I started to pull. I put all my strength in pulling with those three fingers hooked in the zombie’s eye sockets. The thing was so slippery! Ugh. I pulled harder, putting my muscle into it.

  Wiggling my hips, I tried to get on top of the thing, but I could only manage to get sideways, as the thing ground its rotten teeth in my arm.

  Finally, I felt something give. It was not what I first thought would give when I started pulling. It was not its mouth that came off from my arm. It was the top of its head coming partly off.

  Apparently part of its skull had been knocked in by some kind stranger at one point in its miserable zombie life, and when I really put my back into pulling from its eye sockets, the rest of its rotted skull cracked and the top of its head pulled away.

  Unbelievably, it was still biting me.

  “You creep, get off of me!” I yelled, tossing the piece of skull away. I reached back with my hand again and put it into its head and grabbed a handful of black, rotted zombie brains.

  Oh, gross, I thought, borrowing Risa’s favorite phrase.

  I withdrew my hand and flung the stuff far from me, and reached in again.

  Believe it or not, it took four scoops to make the thing go still.

  “Ugh,” I said, getting up on my knees, and looking around. The zombie’s teeth were still on my arm, and it took a bit of pulling to get loose. I was still running on pure adrenaline, and I felt no pain at all.

  Looking down at my arm, I saw the bloody mess it was. Without thinking, I splashed water on it, and rubbed the gore off. I looked at it again. I totally didn’t hurt, so I shrugged and got up.

  I saw that Jacob, DeAndre, Risa, Luke and Jonathan were fighting the zombies off Caitlyn. She was nowhere to be seen, so I ran over to them.

  “Oh, Caitlyn,” I said, running up to see her in the mud at their feet. Blood soaked her neck and chest. “Oh, God no. No.”

  The others were fighting zombies with their bare hands, and I was afraid one more of them would get bitten. Looking down at Caitlyn, I grabbed her hand and called out to the nearest of my friends.

  “Risa, help me!”

  Risa turned and saw I was trying to drag Caitlyn away from the zombies and back to the street. She grabbed Caitlyn’s other hand, and together we began pulling our downed friend to safety. We got within fifteen feet of the road, and I saw we were going to make it, so I called the others.

  “Guys! GUYS!” They turned. “COME ON, MAKE A RUN FOR IT!” I called.

  Risa and I had Caitlyn almost to the pavement. The last part was steeply uphill. We were pulling and having a hard time when DeAndre ran up and just grabbed his woman, put her in a fireman’s carry and sprinted up the short embankment. The rest of our group ran up, and I looked back at the chaos then.

  The zombies had overtaken every one of those civilians. I looked up the road to the north. No fire truck was in sight
. They were probably at Promenade Red River, I thought. Looking back to the zombies, I saw half of them were loping after us.

  “Come on!” I said, running to the SUV and around to the driver’s side and getting in. I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life.

  I slammed the door and looked back into the vehicle. All of us were in, including DeAndre and Caitlyn, so I gunned the SUV back onto the highway and drove down a mile before making a U-turn and speeding back north. We had to get back home. Caitlyn. Oh, God, Caitlyn.

  DeAndre was moaning in the back. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him cradling Caitlyn in his arm, tears streaming down his face. “Nooooo…” he moaned.

  I have never driven faster than I did that morning with my sweet Caitlyn in the back. I didn’t know if she was just unconscious or worse. She made no sound whatsoever.

  I cursed the long drive, I was going almost twice the speed limit but it still took more than half an hour to get home. Finally, I made it back to our compound on Wellington Crescent. The gate couldn’t open fast enough, and I think I scraped the side of the SUV driving in, I was so impatient to get Caitlyn help. Jacob had called ahead, and they were waiting for us.

  I parked, and they had our sweet Caitlyn lifted gently out and placed on a gurney in no time. We’d had our own little medical clinic set up in the big house for years, and it had been well used. Injured operatives were nursed back to health all the time; we found it invaluable to have such a facility at home. We could trust that it was secure; we’d found out in the past that hospitals mostly weren’t.

  They brought her into the medical unit and the doctor there began examining her. She was utterly covered in mud and blood. The M.D. took some vitals. We were all gathered around the table, silent. He paused and, using his stethoscope, pulled down her shirt and listened closely to her heart.

  After a minute, his movements slowed. He reached for the sheet covering her legs and pulled it up over her head.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “Oh!!!!!!!!” Moaned DeAndre, and collapsed, crying, onto the floor.

  “Oh God, NO!!!” Risa yelled.

  “No!!!!!” sobbed Luke.

  Jonathan began sobbing loudly.

  Tears ran silently down Jacob’s face.

  And I collapsed.

  The pain in my arm finally registered in my brain. I think my whole body had been holding its breath, waiting to see what happened to Caitlyn. I’d been hoping and praying that she was just unconscious. There’d been a lot of blood, but not nearly as much as when someone bled out from a ripped throat, so I’d been hoping. And my body had just been on hold.

  But the pain finally hit me.

  I grabbed my arm, gave out a long moan, and slid to the ground in a gentle faint.

  The last thing I heard was Luke: “MOM!!!”

  ___

  I came to in my own bedroom. I was all cleaned up, and someone had washed my hair and put me in clean clothes.

  Am I in heaven? I thought, bewildered and disoriented.

  I looked around. Sunshine was flooding through the big window at the foot of the bed. Luke and Jacob were in the loveseat nearby, both fast asleep. The doctor was rising from where he’d been sitting and as he came up to the bed he took my wrist in his hand.

  “Well, hello there, Sunshine,” he said softly as he took my pulse. He began a cursory examination.

  At the sound of his voice, Jake and Luke woke up and came to the bed.

  “Babe,” said Jacob, kissing my forehead.

  “Mom,” Luke said, holding my hand. When Jake rose up after kissing me, Luke bent and gave me an in-bed hug, a long one.

  “Mmmm, that’s nice, “I said dreamily, smiling.

  Suddenly, I remember Caitlyn and tears sprung to my eyes.

  “Caitlyn…” I said weakly.

  Jacob and Luke closed their eyes for a moment.

  “She’s…” I said.

  “Gone, Alyssa,” Jake said. “I’m sorry.” He moaned softly in sadness.

  “How are you feeling, Mom?” Luke asked.

  The doctor had finished checking me over. He lifted his eyes to Jacob’s and nodded, then left the room.

  My eyes followed him. “Guess I’m okay, huh?” I said. I looked at my arm; it was wrapped in a neat, white bandage.

  “Alyssa,” Jacob said.

  Luke sobbed and put his head on my other arm, holding my hand still.

  “It’s okay, Sweetheart,” I said.

  “Alyssa…” Jacob said.

  I smoothed Luke’s hair, distracted by his crying.

  “Alyssa.” Jake said again.

  I turned my head to look at him. His eyes were filled with unshed tears.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Alyssa,” he swallowed, then bent to kiss me. “Alyssa, babe. You’re infected.”

  Acknowledgement

  A huge thank you to Steve Provost for his editing expertise

  ABOUT THE AUTHOER

  Samaire Provost lives in California with her husband and son.

  Her love of paranormal stories, odd plots, and unique tales as well as the works of Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, Madeleine L'Engle and Stephen King has deeply influenced her writing.