by J. Thorn
We had about forty-five seconds before the Feeders were in range.
“Haley,” Nelson growled from the front seat. She peeked over my shoulder and I watched her eyes meet his. They were so deep with something unsaid that I felt like I was intruding in their moment.
Haley held Nelson’s gaze and then after a long release of breath she said, “I know, Nelson.”
“Good,” he replied on a sigh.
And then they were both back to the hard, angry killers we all knew and loved.
I wondered if that was like an “I love you” declaration. Haley couldn’t possibly love Nelson. We hadn’t known the Parkers long enough for there to be love developed.
But maybe? Haley seemed pretty into him- but love? I didn’t know if I was ready for her to be in love! How could she be ready?
Unfortunately I didn’t have time to ask her because Hendrix had started shooting and that meant we were engaged- with the Zombie threat, not to each other.
There were at least fifty of them, running toward us with a steady pace. Some were dragging limp feet, some seemed to have every appendage in working order, some were crawling and some were fighting through the crowd with a more intense purpose than the others.
Those with the most enthusiasm had the reddest eyes, the most blood thirsty expressions and if I had to guess, the most pungent smells.
If what Kane had told me- if Zombies really didn’t smell bad if they weren’t eating flesh and blood- then the ones that smelled the worst had to be gorging on humanity every chance they got.
I shuddered, thinking about how bad the smell was a few minutes ago.
These Feeders ate often.
That was not good news for us.
Hendrix hit one, and then another, bull’s-eye to the forehead. Harrison joined the effort, but after three shots his gun was empty. King was no better and after a few rounds his gun was empty too. Meanwhile the marathon of Feeders just kept getting closer and closer.
“Here!” I shouted and pressed my two half-loaded guns into Harrison’s hands and then grabbed Haley’s and handed them over to King. We both pulled out our knives. I unsheathed mine and held the blade carefully, but Haley just kept hers in hand while she held Page tightly against her. Page slipped her hand into my free one and we sat huddled on the floor- the three of us finding strength in each other.
Tyler and Miller slid down to the floor next to us and in the confined space of the van our legs tangled together and our bodies layered each other. It was hard to care though- almost impossible. It didn’t matter in this moment if I found Tyler obnoxious and embarrassingly unprepared for the world she lived in. It didn’t matter that I knew how to shoot a gun and had survived this far. We were all going to die. We were all going to meet the same fate, so who cared if there was a difference in our survival skills. Her cushioned life of protection before and my hard earned talent for aiming my gun would meet the same end in the same way.
This was it.
I chanced a glance over the back seat to see how we were doing. The front line of fallen Zombies were being trampled on by the majority of frenzied Feeders even while some dropped off to consume their fallen brethren.
I would never get over how disturbing it was to watch a Zombie eat another Zombie. And now on top of the pounding, heavy footsteps of the undead and their repulsive grunts and screeching, I had to listen to the tearing of flesh and the popping of bones.
A tear sneaked out the corner of my eye and rolled down my cheek. I wasn’t an overly emotional girl, but I didn’t want to have that happen to me. I didn’t want to lay face down on the gravelly pavement and feel the bite of teeth and clawing of nails into my soft, pliable skin. I didn’t want my muscle ripped from bone, or my skin peeled away from my body. I just wanted to live- I just wanted to survive.
A sob hitched in my throat and Haley grabbed my neck and forced my face to hers.
I was panicking now- I could feel the cold dread creeping over my skin like a million spiders, pulling me under, into the depths of hysteria.
“No, Reagan,” she demanded and her own tears shimmered behind her green eyes. “Don’t let them get to you. You’re stronger than this. We’re stronger than this. We’re going to make it, damn it. So stop it right now.”
Her words felt like a soothing balm on my frayed nerves and I nodded. With a strength I didn’t know I possessed I reined back my consuming terror and forced my emotions under control.
We were going to make it. We were going to make it. We were going to make it.
A Feeder broke through the mass and lunged at Hendrix, he aimed and shot immediately…. but nothing happened- just the clicking of an empty gun.
I know I gasped, but my entire body felt utterly frozen as I watched Hendrix defend himself. Without hesitation he pulled out his huge knife and dodged the waving, grabbing arms and plunged it into the Feeder’s eye. Blood spurted everywhere at the contact, but Hendrix yanked the knife from his eye socket and the heavy body fell to the ground- dead.
Hendrix stood up in the back of the van then, awkwardly as half his body was inside the car and half of it was out. The empty clicking sound could be heard in more than one places now- first Vaughan, then Nelson, then King, then Harrison. The front doors opened and then shut as Vaughan and Nelson readied themselves on the outside of the vehicle, armed with knives. Hendrix jumped down to the pavement and his younger brothers followed suit.
I pushed up to my knees, clutching my knife against my chest.
The tears fell then- I couldn’t stop them. The panic stayed at bay, but the impending loss of life gutted my soul and I couldn’t stop the despair from choking me.
The Feeders had been somewhat fended off with the constant barrage of gunfire, but not anymore. Now we were available and they weren’t going to meet much resistance.
There were maybe thirty of them left, plenty to overpower us and rip us apart.
As one unit they moved in to attack and I readied myself for their teeth.
Because we were not going to make it.
Chapter Four
There was no time for any last declarations of love or friendship. This was it.
The boys slashed across the faces of as many Feeders as they could but it would be seconds before they were overpowered.
I gave Page another hand squeeze and scrambled forward, ignoring Haley altogether. That was a face I could not look at before I threw myself at death’s feet- literally.
I crawled over the back seat and jumped through the broken window, stabbing a Feeder that was headed for King’s face directly in the nose. I shouldn’t have been strong enough to plunge it all the way through, until the tip of my knife poked out of the back of his skull, but their bones were brittle and weak from disease, their brains mushy and ready for death.
I let the momentum of the dead body carry my hand to the ground and then stomped on his mutilated face so I could pull out my weapon.
I heard the slashing of blade into flesh and then felt the warm spray of blood across my back. When I righted myself with weapon in hand I watched another Feeder crumble to the ground.
Glancing up, I mouthed “thank you” to King who had returned the favor of a saved life.
I kicked out and then stabbed, kicked out and then stabbed. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. There was a synchronization in not getting eaten, I just had to find the right rhythm. We had maybe a minute before one of us got bit- if we were lucky.
But then it happened.
The familiar sound of tires speeding over pavement.
Unable to look toward the source of the sound I kept fighting, kept struggling to survive. I had to believe there was hope in that sound. I had to hope there was salvation.
And then the most beautiful sound of my entire life echoed through the ugly morning- gunfire.
And lots of it.
It sounded like machine guns as the fast popping beat out a frantic melody of death and rescue. I continued to fight through those closest to us. My arms were weak
ening and my stomach muscles were on fire as I threw every ounce of my body into every single kill. I would keep fighting until I died. I would keep surviving until there was nothing left of me.
Murky blood clouded my vision as it continued to spray across my face. I had worked my shirt over my nose, but it kept falling down every time I managed any quick, jerky movements- which was all the time.
If killing Zombies made me a freaking Zombie I was going to be so pissed.
The machine gun rattled off behind us competing with pounding footsteps now and handguns that picked off the Feeders closest to the van.
I swung out at Feeder inches from taking a bite out of my arm, but I missed. My blade sliced across the bridge of his nose, making a deep, bloody gash, but I didn’t make it all the way to the brain so he kept coming.
I pulled my arm back to do it again when his grimy hands caught my arm in his ridiculously strong grasp. He cocked his head back on impulse and opened his mouth to reveal jagged, black teeth coated in a white, sticky film. I kicked at him with my boot but he didn’t even register the force of my foot.
I tried to cry out for Hendrix, but fear of the moment had almost rendered me speechless.
Then a heavy arm over my shoulder and the cool, black metal of a gun slid by my face only to blow a hole right through that Feeder’s open mouth.
I sagged with relief and bumped into the firm body of the man behind me.
I turned to say thank you but he was already picking off the rest of the Feeders. Boom. Boom. Boom.
With each release of the trigger I breathed a little bit easier.
I was knee deep in the bodies of the undead and covered in their filthy, diseased blood, but I was alive. And when I swung my head to the left- so was Hendrix. So was King. So was Harrison.
Finally, the last of the Feeders were taken care of and the guns stopped firing. A deafening silence fell over us and my ears rang with the force of it. Going from the scream and cry of battle to nothing was a shock to my system but a welcome one.
My breaths were ragged and dragged in and out of my chest painfully, but I turned around so I could see if everyone else made it. I ripped my shirt off, turning it inside out in the process and then wiped at my face. I had a tank top underneath, but my bare arms felt extra exposed after such a vicious attack.
I met Vaughan’s eyes when I could see again and he raised an exhausted arm that let me know he was Ok. Nelson did the same thing and I marveled at our good fortune. I honestly could not believe any of us were still alive.
Finally my gaze fell on our unexpected help. Three black Suburbans sat parked askew in the middle of the highway through the small Oklahoma town that had almost been the end of us. Two standalone machine guns were propped in the back of two of the vehicles and armed men and women stood all over.
They were all older than us- rough and world weary with hard masks of silent anger. This was a militia group. Obviously a well off one.
But they had saved our lives. And they included women as active members of society. I hoped these were good signs.
The man standing closest to me reached out a hand to Hendrix and said, “Probably a good thing we happened upon y’all.”
Hendrix broke out into a smile that looked partly deranged with his beard bloodied around his white teeth and his eyes wide and dilated from the fight. “Probably.”
“Y’all alright?” the man asked, glancing over us a bit suspiciously. He was probably their leader. He looked the oldest, but also the hardest. His graying hair was pulled back into a stringy ponytail at the nape of his neck and his salt and peppered beard hadn’t been trimmed long before he had the option of good personal hygiene. His leather jacket was soft and well-worn and the steel-toed boots he wore seemed to complete his motorcycle-man ensemble.
Except, he wasn’t part of a biker gang.
He was driving relatively new Suburbans and surrounded by people carrying a seemingly unlimited supply of weapons.
“We’re good,” Vaughan called out from the front of the van. “Nobody got bit, right?”
We responded with the negative and I sucked in another relieved breath.
“Thanks for the help,” Hendrix said sincerely.
“Not a problem,” the guy smiled and I could see three gold teeth mixed between his yellowing others. “We saw the trouble you were in. It was our pleasure. We want to take as many of those goddamn creatures out as we can.”
“We are of the same mind,” Hendrix grinned. “Where you headed?”
“Arkansas,” the man’s gaze narrowed and eyed Hendrix suspiciously. ”Y’all?”
“Not Arkansas,” Hendrix answered with a sense of humor.
This caused the other man to break out into another one of his multi-colored grins. He clasped Hendrix on the shoulder and declared, “We don’t run into to many scenarios in which anyone could have made it out of what y’all were facing. But I get this impression that if we hadn’t have showed up y’all would have been just fine.”
Hendrix was quiet for a moment and then shrugged. “Maybe.”
Not maybe. There was no maybe. We were so dead without these guys.
But I understood Hendrix’s reluctance to make it seem like we owed this guy.
The guy nodded back over his shoulder and then turned back to Hendrix, “We passed a bridge not five minutes that way. There was a nice sized creek running underneath. Why don’t y’all go get cleaned up and we’ll share a meal before we go our separate ways- Arkansas and not Arkansas.”
“We could use a creek,” Hendrix answered subtly. “And we could use a meal.”
We stood there kind of staring at each other for a few more minutes. I didn’t know if this was like a stand-off, should we trust each other thing? Or if we were making sure there were no more straggling Feeders.
I was doing both.
And probably so was everyone else.
Finally satisfied with trusting each other and not hearing another Zombie nearby, the guy with the ponytail said, “Welp, let’s roll.”
“Our van isn’t rolling anywhere,” Hendrix admitted.
“Ah, the old girl quit on you?” Ponytail asked. “I wondered why y’all showed up with a knife to a gunfight.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Hendrix agreed.
“Well, it’s just over that hill. We’ll cover you if you want to make the walk over.”
So we did. We gathered Haley, Page, Tyler and Miller from the van and grabbed our backpacks and a few of the extra bags filled with supplies we had been collecting. Page was too frightened to even stand up, so Vaughan carried her while Miller and Tyler clung to each other.
We walked past the group standing around the nice Suburbans with their guns still raised. The nice cars reminded me of the Hummer we had once upon a time and how Gary the douche bag took it away from us.
The thought made me instantly mistrust these people. Not since the Parkers had I met a decent human being. And before them it had been even longer.
It was like all of humanity was infected with the same disease- sometimes they turned into Zombies, sometimes they turned into low life scum that were only capable of dominating and hurting.
The world before the infection wasn’t even close to perfect, there was still war, still hunger, still disease. But there had also been community and generosity and a sense of banding together simply because we were human and struggling through the same rough life.
Where did that go?
How did things get so bad, so quickly?
True to his word, while we walked along the highway and over the bridge, the Suburbans followed at a crawl behind us. I felt safe with so many guns nearby and not just amateur stuff, the real deal- heavy artillery.
Still, I was uneasy just because they were people- and in this day and age people meant bad things.
Our group was perfectly silent on the way over- apparently we were all having Stranger Danger thoughts. Without waiting for them to catch up we walked down the embankment an
d started rinsing in the creek. The water was cold but refreshing.
It smelled like a river, but it was still cleaner than me.
We spread out in the shin high water so that we weren’t washing our own bodies with someone else’s disgusting run offs and got to work. And it wasn’t just those of us that had gotten bloody; we all took the opportunity to get as clean as possible with our clothes on.
Which meant no shaving…. But it had been about a week and a half anyway, the razor probably would have snapped off when I tried to run it through the jungle growing off my leg.
I rolled up my jeans and slipped my shoes and socks off. I’d already lost my shirt, so I just needed to grab my bar of soap and washcloth and set to work. When it was time for my hair I walked over to Haley and Page and we took turns working out the blood from mine.
“You were just like Mel Gibson, Reags,” Haley gushed. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Mel Gibson?” I laughed.
She laughed too, “I meant, Braveheart. You were all covered in blood and stabbing people. For real, I expect you to stand on the top of the van and yell, ‘But they will never take our freedom!’”
We laughed some more and then I asked, “Dead, Undead or filming more movies?”
This was another game we would play- whenever we remembered a movie or a famous person, we would try to decide how the infection played out in their life.
“Definitely undead, but still filming more movies,” Haley confirmed.
“Who’s Mel Gibson?” Page asked sweetly.
“Another one of those crazy men that you will never have to know about, sweets.” Haley promised.
It was amazing the difference an hour made. Just a little while ago I was positive we were all going to die, that those were my last moments on Earth. And now, we were joking around about Mel Gibson.
“Like Jazzy?” Page asked sweetly. Some color had returned to her skin after her cold bath and she looked radiant with her shining wet hair and clean face.
“Like Jazzy.”
“When y’all are done down there, we got some food up here,” the man with the ponytail shouted down at us.
