If all she had to do was make love to Veronica she would've been just fine—the woman was pretty, sweet, and had a kind heart. The problem was that the colonel would join them at some point and both women knew that he would be aiming most of his affections Sarah's way. And that was something she dreaded. He was a horrible man. He stole from the weak, he bartered the lives of innocents for personal gain, he abused women to a hellish degree, and perhaps worst of all he did these things wearing a false mantle of honor.
He had turned honest, decent American soldiers into mercenaries, thieves, and assassins. Evil should be seen as such, but instead he had women begging for the chance to prostitute themselves, and thanking him when he consented to it.
How could she allow that sort of man to touch her she didn't know. It would be a trial for her.
Thankfully the evening started well enough. A heavy rain came and he was late. Veronica passed the time giving Sarah a neck rub. It wasn't sexual, instead Sarah felt very much like a boxer before a fight and this was mainly due to the fact that Veronica kept up a stream of talk about how pretty she was and how the colonel would likely cream himself the second that they started kissing.
This got them laughing, so it was easier to smile when he came in mid-way through. “What's so funny?” he asked, taking off his hat and heading for the already set table. Veronica actually told him the truth and he laughed as well. “Maybe. I hope it's that good.”
“Oh it will be,” Veronica assured him. “We've been practicing.”
“Veronica!” Sarah cried, embarrassed and feeling flush. The colonel had them sit on either side of him and now it took a purposeful will to keep her smile pinned in place. Eating helped. The colonel had a private cook who had served up steak, which was a huge surprise.
“Oh, yes, quite a prize,” Williams said around a mouthful. “One of our scrounge crews found thirteen head of cattle, untouched by the stiffs. Man, this rain is coming down hard.” It beat upon the roof of the tent and they had to practically shout to be heard over it.
Sarah ate greedily, and when she was almost done she said, “You know what this needs? Some red wine. Tell me you have some?” As the dinner had progressed she had stiffened up more and more and she worried that she would be dry as a desert when the time came.
“I don't,” the colonel answered. “Alcohol and soldiers are a deadly combination, though I suppose that I will have to lighten up on that rule eventually, but…first…is that thunder?”
Even as he asked there came another heavy crunching noise that shook the air. “Crap! What are the tanks firing at?”
He left in a hurry and the two women sat there growing nervous as gunfire could be heard all along the upriver edge of the island. And then it began to slip down the banks of the island on both sides. A few minutes later a soldier burst into the tent.
“Where's the colonel?”
“Why what's going on?” Sarah pleaded. She had a terrific fright going and felt useless and unprotected in her summer dress and high-heels.
“The second island is being overrun, now where's the damned colonel?”
Veronica said something, but Sarah didn't hear, she was busy running. Out into the night and the rain she ran, but did not get far before her heels sunk three inches deep into the new mud. She left her shoes where they were and ran to the south end of the island where the firing was picking up.
The scene around her was nearly beyond her ability to comprehend. The river on both sides was clogged with zombies. Thousands had entered up stream and now they were being swept along and at the sight of so many humans they were doing an odd swim; they basically clawed at the water. It was ineffective except that there was just so many of them that the ones in the rear pushed the others forward.
Many hundreds were hung up in the concertina wire, while others were climbing slowly up the pontoon bridge that connected the two islands. Guns were firing at a rapid rate, shredding the creatures but more came on and on.
And then the colonel came up in a humvee. He took one look at the situation and ordered, “Cut the bridge! Let it go! Don't waste any more ammo unless they actually come onto this island.”
A second later he was shocked as Sarah grabbed him and screamed over the gunfire and the rain, “No! My parents are over there.”
He shoved her roughly away and she went down in the mud. “My orders stand. In every war there is collateral damage. It's for the greater good.”
The colonel was lucky she wasn't armed; she would've killed him on the spot. The idea of being armed made her realize that her parents were defenseless—not a single one of the misfits were allowed a gun.
A soldier in front of the bridge put down his M16 and began working on one of the pins that held the pontoons in place. In a flash Sarah ran forward, picked up the gun and then sped out onto the heaving bridge. A grey hand reached out from the water and tripped her and then the bridge swung crazily as the first of the chains let go.
Someone yelled over the din, “There's a civilian on the bridge! Don't cut the chain.”
“No!” yelled the colonel, staring right into Sarah's eyes. “Cut it.” The chain let go and Sarah, who had just regained her feet, fell into the water where thousands of zombies waited.
Chapter 24
Sarah
The Island
That afternoon, as Sarah and Veronica had talked nervously about how they were going to fake orgasms—not too loudly Veronica advised, the colonel would see right through it, if they sounded like a low budget porno—the river that parted around the Island was slate grey in color and was home only to a few catfish and a million minnows. That night it was a different story.
It was a literal river of zombies.
Thousands of them were swept along, fighting the current to get at the Island in their greed to devour human flesh. While just above them, on the now loose pontoon bridge, cold rain lashed at Sarah as she raced along the wood sections. Without support these heaved up and down as the zombies struggled to get at her, and with the slick wood and the yawing, bucking pontoons it was an inevitability that Sarah would go into the water. Mid-way across, the pontoon began to tip on its side. Her feet slid to the edge and she knew that her options had all disappeared and so, with her heart in her throat, she was forced to dive in over the arms of the nearest zombies.
Earlier, when the sun had been out and the day had been agreeable in its fall warmth, the water had felt like ice, now, however she didn't even notice it. Her panic was too great to feel warmth or chill, or the inch-long splinters in her feet, or even the weight of the M16 in her hand. All she knew was a wild mindless terror to get out of that river before the zombies could tear her apart.
When she came for air she saw that the bridge had been taken by the current and had swung down the river at a gaining speed and as it did it pulled the creatures along, creating a V shaped lane where the water was clear of the beasts. Immediately she swung the M16 across her shoulder and began to swim.
Her stroke was dreadfully inefficient and ugly. She had been taught to swim in the proper fashion: face down, body aligned to cut the water, toes pointed, arms spinning like twin water wheels. In that river form went out the window. Out of fear, she swam with her head held high out of the water and to keep the rifle in place she felt the need to swing her arms wide. All of this only had the zombies focusing on her and they came at her in a rush, clawing the water, raking it back to get at her.
They had her thirty feet from shore. Every zombie within sight ringed her and churned the river white in their mindless desire. Sarah screamed and tried to fight the gun from her shoulder, but it wouldn't come and the waste of effort only had her sinking lower in the water as the monsters came just within reach, and then a wave swept over her, and her panic became hysteria.
But it was only for a second.
Above the water the air was filled with soul tearing screams, and machine gun fire and the hateful hungry moans of the zombies, but below the water there was utter cal
m.
Sarah took a big breath and ducked beneath the water, this time on purpose. She went deep, before angling to the second island where her parents were all but defenseless. In the dark she swam blind, kicking like a frog until her hand hit slime...and then a submerged log...and then sand. And then her head came up out of the water, and her panic returned. The great majority of the zombies were behind her searching the water for her, but there were still many more clawing their way through the coiled razor sharp concertina wire.
Three were just in front, but their focus was ahead and so she slunk back down in the river and kicked off the bottom, moving to her left where the bridge had at one time been connected. The current had pushed her away from it, however now, as she yanked the M16 from her back she slogged along keeping as low as she could, trying not to draw attention to herself.
It was easy to do. The second island was utter chaos. Not even a tiny fraction of the zombies from the river had made it through the wire, still the people were practically defenseless. What few soldiers had been assigned to guard the perimeter were burning through their ammo and there'd be no more coming. Where there weren’t any soldiers, the zombies came on unchecked and the non-essentials fought back with anything at hand: axes, shovels, even rakes.
It was clear to Sarah that the island would be overwhelmed in a matter of minutes, if not sooner. As well she knew that for her to keep going was tantamount to suicide, but after failing to do anything about rescuing her daughter she couldn’t just leave her parents to die this way. With a glance down at the gun in her hand to check that the safe had been switched to fire she slipped out of the water and ran up onto the island.
Her parents had been staying in a little green tent just off the far end of the island and she went that way, ducking from fleeing workers and hiding from zombies. Once she almost shot a human. It was man so covered in blood that she was sure it was one of the living corpses and her gun came up to his face before he screamed at her in what sounded like a foreign language. He tried to grab the gun, but fortunately his hand was slick and red, so that with a mighty tug she remained in control of it. The gun was her only chance.
She ran, bent over and low until she came to where the tents were; thankfully her parents weren't there. The people hiding in the tents were fools, trusting to a shell of thin nylon to save them. They were “safe” at the moment, however in a short time they would become easy meals.
A shout that sounded more like an order than a panicked scream brought her head around and there, sixty feet away, were a gathering of the nonessentials trying to form a perimeter of picnic benches. Her father was with the group, straining to keep one of the benches on its side as zombies tried to pull it down. Sarah charged the beasts from behind and at point blank range fired into the back of their heads sending brain and gore sheeting across the tabletop.
“Sarah!” Gary Rivers cried at seeing her. “Get in here.”
She ducked around the bench and breathed a sigh of relief at seeing her mom a few feet away in the middle of the perilously upended tables. The relief could not last; Sarah had seen their danger from the outside and it was far worse than they knew. “We can't stay here,” she yelled over the din, before rushing to grab her mother's arm. “Come on, this whole island is about to be overrun.”
Denise pulled back against her daughter. Her face was white and the skin of it so drawn in fear that she hardly looked like herself. “There's nowhere to go! They've cut the bridge and the river is full of zombies.”
This was true, and yet when Sarah looked around and saw the undead trampling over their brothers struggling in the wire, using them to bridge the emplacements she knew that the little perimeter wouldn't hold for more than a few minutes. She wasn't the only who saw all of this. Already the people closest to the river were beginning to run and this began a general stampede of the non-essentials.
The picnic benches were allowed to fall one after another and the people took off north. When her parents saw this they gave up on the perimeter they were just fighting for and wanted to run along with everyone else.
Sarah pulled them back. Having just come from the north side of the island she knew that it was going to be even worse than where they were, and yet the zombies were coming so thick that they couldn't stay. With a quick idea coming to her, she yanked her parents around and pulled them to where the tents sat. There had been only a few zombies sniffing around minutes before and she hoped that would still be the case.
Even before she got there she saw it wasn't. The easy meals were screaming as they were eaten alive and this only drew more of the monsters on. “Sarah! Behind your mother,” her father yelled. A stiff had come up out of nowhere to grab Denise and Sarah shot it from inches away.
“To the river,” Sarah said. “It's our only chance.” Hoping they would follow she ran to the river, shot more of the undead and then stopped just as the land sloped down to the wire and the river beyond. There was no going that way—it had become a wall of zombies. There was no going in any direction. People screamed and ran about mindlessly going from one danger to the next.
“The trees!” Gary cried. “Help me get your mother up.”
It was a slim hope. Most of the trees on the little slab of an island were thin pines and those that could bear some weight weren't easy to climb as their branches started so high up. One that could be used by her mother was close to a steep edge of the island—they pushed her up into the tree and she scrambled as best she could.
“You next, Sarah,” her father ordered.
“Don't wait for me,” she said slinging the rifle. “Get in that tree over there.” He went to climb it and she leapt for the lowest branch of the pine. It bent under her grip and she clung to the trunk with her bare thighs, feeling the bark burn. Had she been in another time or place she would've dropped with a scream but the zombies had caught sight of the little group off on their own and were rushing at them.
“Hurry!” Denise screamed. “They're right behind you.”
Sarah reached for another branch and pulled and shimmied her way higher, while her mother went on screaming in horror—it was a moment before Sarah realized the screams weren't for her. Her father was only seven or eight feet off the ground, just within reach of the tallest of the zombies. One of them had a hold of his ankle and would not let go, while Gary's grip grew weaker with every passing second.
Now her mother was grabbing Sarah by the shirt and yanking and screaming for her to help her father, however stuck in a tree like that it took too long to get the rifle off her back, and in a position to shoot. By the time she did, Gary had been pulled down. He fought with a rage and a strength he hadn't known in years. He'd been carrying a hoe, which he had laid aside to climb the tree, but now as he dropped he grabbed it up and swung it all around with great vigor.
Yet it was not a sword and he was not a knight in armor. It struck dead the beast in front and a second, but it was a clumsy weapon and fouled momentarily in the next zombie and before Sarah could untangle her weapon and find a way to hold on to her precarious perch and shoot at the same time, a horrid creature with most of its face missing launched itself upon her father. In a second Gary was dog piled.
“Shoot...Shoot!” Denise screamed, pointing at the mesh of bodies.
Sarah sighted at the best target she had, the side of her father's head. Shooting the monsters would be a waste of ammo. Dozens were converging on the helpless man and the fact that he was already bit, meant his time was up—the fever would destroy him even if she managed to shoot every single zombie on the island. She aimed and fired, and true to the teaching of the man she shot, she didn't blink or pull away. She didn't yank on the trigger or try to breathe through the shot.
She caressed the trigger and sent a bullet smashing through his head and then nearly dropped the gun as her hands went numb.
“You missed,” Denise said in a little voice. “Oh, God! Don't look.” She turned away, while Sarah never had any intention of looking. No
r would she look at any part of the island. Instead she stared at the hateful sky, letting the rain beat into her face, letting is wash away the tears and what was left of her soul and after a long time, many, many hours, she thought she was done with the pain.
Chapter 25
Ram
Western Desert
“Don't shoot,” Ram pleaded. Julia had the gun twisting into her hair, digging it in, and her breathing was picking up. Sure signs that she was seconds from pulling the trigger.
“You can have the house, Ram. And all the food and the trucks, just bury me. I don't want to be eaten.”
He threw down the shovel and said, “I won't do it. I won't bury you. And…and it's a sin to kill yourself.”
Julia laughed and then cried. “Is that all you have? That it's a sin? Do you think I care about hell anymore? I'm in hell already! That grave there,” she said pointing to the one on the left. “That's my husband, Jack. And the next one is Taylor, my little brother. And that's Papa, and that last one you know was Mama. That's all the love I have. Have you ever experienced that? All the love you have is buried in front of you. My love is just sitting under the dirt, rotting.”
“No it's not all your love,” Ram said. “There's more love out there for you. You just have to live, and you just have to find it.”
She shook her head and the gun dropped to her side. “Who am I going to love? You? Or maybe some other stranger who doesn't know the first thing about me?”
“No. That's…that's not what I meant, I…” he flailed for words and she gave him cheerless smile.
“See? There isn't any real reason to live. We just keep eating and breathing but there isn't any reason to it. We only go through the motions waiting until it's our turn to die.”
The Undead World (Book 1): The Apocalypse Page 16
