Very slowly Sarah eased her hunting knife from its sheath.
The Beretta was still in its holster, and if she had any chance of getting out of there—not just out of the elevator, but out of the building—it would have to stay in the holster. The third floor was probably packed with zombies by now and a gunshot would have them running to the shaft. She’d be buried in an avalanche of undead.
It had to be the knife and it had to be quick, only where was she to strike! Anything less than a single accurate, piercing blow to the thing’s temple or eye would doom Sarah. It would find her and she didn’t like her chances of a brawl in the dark with a baby strapped to her back.
It was this that had her hesitating, even after the zombie found her. A hand brushed against her shoulder. It left for a brief moment and then came back, this time with too much curiosity.
Sarah could not wait any longer. She struck downward in a diagonal and the knife bit into something. There was blood on her hand, while in the dark the zombie moaned louder than she had ever heard one moan before, yet it did not die.
Again the diseased hands reached for her. They clawed at her coat and she took a step away, sweeping the walls with the back of her arm, trying to get her bearings. Just in front of her there was a thrumming from the cable as the zombie struck it. For instant she had an idea of where the beast was, but then she stepped on one of the backpacks she had tossed down. It was filled with cans that went squirrely beneath her weight and before she knew it, her ankle buckled.
She wasn’t hurt, however she was down on one knee with a zombie almost directly on top of her. Its arms were out and searching, and worse, Eve had reached her breaking point.
“Eh-eh, eh-eh,” she cried.
The zombie glanced down and Sarah saw it!
Tripping on the backpack couldn’t have been more fortuitous. From her vantage she could see the zombie’s outline against the grey gloom washing down from above.
She could see its hands begin to reach and its mouth open. Acting on instinct she slapped the wall to her left. In an instant the thing turned to the sound and Sarah struck for a second time. Now that she had a fixed target she punched the knife blade to the hilt through the thin bone of its temple. It died instantly, slumping gently to the roof of the elevator with the help of Sarah, who guided it down.
Now was not the time to give away her position.
Standing she pulled her baby around so that she once again properly positioned. “You did great, sweetie.”
She soothed Eve until the sound of her sucking on her pacifier came up from up beneath the blanket. Only then did Sarah stoop and remove the knife from the zombie’s head; as disgusting as it was, there was still a chance she would need it. Next she found the two packs and set them aside; then she ran her hands back and forth on what was the roof of the elevator, searching for the latch to the trap door.
After a brief panic she felt under the still warm body of the zombie and discovered it. In a minute she went from the pitch black of the shaft, to a level of dark beyond even that. Yet she didn’t need light to escape. By feel she found the elevator doors and sunk the bloody knife in its seam. With a light grunt she heaved back, stuck her foot in the crack, sheathed her knife, and then put her entire weight into getting the doors open wider.
They elicited only a single creaky, metallic shriek; just enough to alert the zombies milling about on the floors above and the few still left on the stairs. They all turned to gaze in her direction, as she sped toward the lobby, but were slower to react than normal. Perhaps they failed to recognize her humanity in the dark, what with the heavy packs slung on her back and the baby hitched in front. Not daring to make eye contact, Sarah walked brusquely past the stairs, looking more like a loaded down Christmas shopper than a woman fearing for her life.
She barely got past the lower steps before the zombies came alive with louder, excited moans—she'd been spotted! The ones on the stairs, in their haste to feed, came tumbling down and it was Sarah’s great wish that they would all break their necks. She didn’t stay to discover if this was the result.
Out into the chill night she hurried once again. Dotted here and there along the streets like ill-plotted shrubbery were stragglers, zombies that didn’t seem capable of making up their minds which way to go. She avoided these by heading into the maze of neighborhood side streets, where she found herself safe, but lost after only about twenty minutes.
“Am I really lost?” she whispered to her baby, jiggling up and down in the way that comforted Eve. The unfamiliar street signs implied that she was indeed, however the fact that she had no idea where she was going or how to get there, suggested otherwise. Being lost hinted strongly that one either had a destination in mind or some reason to journey. In this case she had neither.
“At a minimum I should know what direction I’m going,” she said, looking about. The stars could have told her, only they were hidden by clouds that were clearly in league with the fates trying their best to kill her. This thought she ignored. “Maybe I could orient on…”
She jumped at a very human sound: a slamming car door. Just like that, this simple thump brought out an intense desire for her to run down the street screaming: Don’t leave me!
Sarah bit back the urge to cry out, but nothing was going to stop her feet. They took off under her and she was borne along with the great fear that she’d be too late and she’d be left behind again. A minute later, while crossing a wide boulevard she was amazed to discover she knew exactly where she was: the CDC.
Somehow she had managed to come in a big circle. There was the seven-story main lab and the front gates, and right across from it, settled on the median in the middle of the boulevard was a gold Ford F-250. She knew that truck. As well she knew the big lady crouched down inside it.
“Shondra,” Sarah said in a barely audible tone as she drew close. Shondra lifted her head just a hair above the level of the door frame; when she saw Sarah her eyes went comically big.
“Sarah! Get in. There are zombies in the CDC. Did you know that?”
The blonde climbed in and as she did she cast a look back. “Yeah, I know and I think some of them saw me.”
Ever so slowly, Shondra rose up again to peer over the door frame. “They did! Get down!”
“Get going,” Sarah shot back. “Don’t just sit there, drive!”
Shondra shook her head. “I can’t. I got high-centered trying to turn around. We’re stuck.”
“Then we got to get out of here. We gotta leave the truck,” Sarah said, poking her face up to see their situation. It wasn’t good. The CDC was emptying of the dead and all around the streets were clogged. “Do you have a gun?”
Sarah had her Beretta drawn and held it up. Shondra nodded quickly, her jowls shaking. She took a .38 Police Special from the console and checked the load.
“That’s all you got?” Sarah asked in disbelief. A lousy six-shooter wasn’t going to cut it.
“I have a shotgun in the back.” She jerked her thumb to the bed of the truck. It wasn’t going to do them any good back there.
“Try the truck again!” Sarah cried. Shondra did her best, but the wheels only spun in the air doing nothing but attracting more zombies. While she was at it, Sarah put Eve on the floor at her feet and did her best to cover her up.
“We’re going to have to shoot our way out,” she told Shondra, who immediately began shaking her head. “Yes. We’ll make a gap and try to make it to the…” She had been about to say the lab, but the germs came to mind. “…to the storage facilities on the east side.”
“I can’t run that far!” Shondra said. She opened her mouth but just then a grey fist struck the window. More would follow until the windows were destroyed and then they’d be dragged out. This knowledge had Shondra changing her mind. “Ok...ok, let’s do it.”
“Please, Lord be with us,” Sarah said, thumbing off her safety. She grabbed the handle, kicked open the door and fired off two rounds in quick succession droppin
g a pair of zombies. At close range she was as deadly as anyone. Five more shots sent the brains of five more zombies ripping into the night yet still the beasts closed in.
“Shondra! Help me,” she screamed. The woman hadn’t budged from the driver’s seat. Under Sarah’s withering look, she timidly began to roll down her window. Sarah couldn’t spare more than a second watching; she had to concentrate on the zombies right at her door. With her fear mounting, she counted the spent bullets.
“Eleven, twelve, thirteen...” At fifteen she reached out and slammed the door closed before going through the automatic motions in reloading. Both Ram and Neil had forced her to practice over and over. She could reload blindfolded. Shondra couldn’t. Her hands were shaking so badly that she dropped more shells than she managed to put into her pistol.
“You ready to make a dash for it?” Sarah asked.
Shondra shook her head. “It’s not going to work. Listen to Eve! She is crying too hard.” It was true. With all the shooting, the baby was bawling with the full power of her lungs.
“Then, I’ll go alone,” Sarah said, blinking to clear the sudden blurring of her eyes. “You stay down and keep her quiet until I draw them off.” Shondra didn’t argue other than to shake her head in a very weak display of denial.
The zombies were pounding the doors now with dreadful power. It wouldn’t be long. Sarah grabbed the door handle, but just then the bigger woman pointed.
“Look!”
A sharp light cut the night. It swept them and then came the roar of an engine. In a second a motorcycle, not more than a dirt bike, was in the street thirty feet away, spinning in short arced circles. Immediately the zombies advanced on it, but the man on the bike only spun sharper.
In the dark, his features were loose and hard to define, but Sarah was almost sure she knew the man. “Ram?” she yelled from her cracked window.
“Get down! Get down!” he raged. It was Ram. He was there, unarmed save for a golf club and his motorcycle. When the zombies were within reach, he gunned it forward but only for a few seconds, and then when they closed a second time he spurted on again.
Sarah didn’t see after that. She bent to her daughter in the foot well and was soothing her as best as she could when suddenly her door was flung open. She grabbed the gun that she had set aside, but was too slow. A little girl with flyaway brown hair stood there. She too had reached for the gun, but only to keep from being shot. Their hands overlapped on the hot barrel.
“We have to go,” Jillybean said.
“Who are…” Sarah began, but Shondra interrupted.
“We can’t leave the truck. We’ll die out there.”
At this the little girl turned sharply and stared into the night, her little muscles bunched, ready to send her flying. After a moment she relaxed. “No, they’re all after Mister Ram. It’ll be fine.”
Just then Ram came flying back on the motorcycle and was surprised to find them all still there. “What’s wrong?”
“The truck is high-centered,” Shondra said. “We can’t leave it. We’ll die out there.”
Ram spun once looking at the truck, before glancing to the hordes that he had led away. They were heading back and weren’t being slow about it. “Can you fix this?” Ram asked the little girl.
She had stepped away from the truck and now was looking at it with her lips tight together; under her arm she carried a stuffed animal. She nodded. “I think so, but we’ll need some time.”
“I’ll give it to you,” Ram declared and then spun about again. He headed right for the mob of undead, turning at the last moment to lead them away.
“Have you tried putting it in four-wheel drive?” Jillybean asked. “That’s when all the wheels go at once. You see with your truck, it’s only the back wheels what are up off the ground.”
Shondra looked at her dashboard, searching. “I don’t think it has four-wheel drive,” she said at last.
Jillybean made a face of disappointment and then unexpectedly said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a stupid truck. We still have to get it off of there.”
The two adults glanced at each other, before Sarah asked, “How old are you?”
“Six and three-quarters,” Jillybean answered by rote. Her mind was clearly somewhere else. She squatted down and looked at the truck’s undercarriage, she then climbed up the back to peer into the bed. “We need some help back here," the girl said. "Whichever one of you is stronger.”
Sarah was the younger by twenty years. She hopped out of the truck and hurried into the bed where Jillybean stood pointing at the spare tire. “Can you pick that up?”
“I…probably,” Sarah said. The tire was much heavier than it looked, and it looked very heavy. First they cleared a path through the chaos in the back of the truck then the two heaved it to a standing position and rolled it off.
“I need you to put this extra tire under one of the tires that’s off the ground,” Jillybean instructed. Sarah saw what was needed and together they shoved the spare onto the median beneath the jacked up tire, but unfortunately they were inches too short. “The two tires have to be able to touch!” the little girl said emphatically. She was clearly getting nervous at how long the operation was taking. “We need some boards or wood or anything flat.”
There was nothing in the bed that would serve. In vain, they pushed aside the heavy fuel cans and the water jugs and the boxes of canned goods that had been haphazardly thrown in the back. Their surroundings weren’t any help either.
“What about a shovel?” Jillybean asked suddenly. “Ipes says we can build a quick mound of dirt that could do the trick.”
“Ipes?” Sarah asked.
At that moment, Shondra gasped and pointed behind them. Mistaking this for a good thing, Sarah turned, excited, hoping that Ram had returned, instead she was confronted with more zombies heading their way.
“What do we do?” Shondra asked.
It was clear what they had to do. Sarah ran for her gun, pausing only to kiss Eve. When she got back to the end of the truck the little girl was acting strange.
“Come on, Ipes! Tell me what to do,” she demanded. “I told you we don’t have anything that’ll go under there. What? The gas? It’s too big. Oh, I get it…excuse me. Ipes has an idea. If we can’t raise the mound we can lower the truck.”
“You’re going to let the air out of the tires?” Sarah asked. “Will that even work?”
“No,” Jillybean said matter-of-factly. “That’ll make it worse by increasing the angle. What we need is everything in the back piled as far to the rear as possible. If we’re lucky then the truck will tip rearward the few inches we need.”
The two women immediately started to climb into the truck forcing Jillybean to remind them of the zombies. Shondra hopped down. The zombies were straggling up and her .38 was good for this sort of work. She began killing them one at a time, while Sarah heaved the gas and the water to the back.
Jillybean watched for a minute, but then she said in a monotone, “Ipes says to put down the tailgate. I think it’s that thing.” She pointed vaguely at the back of the truck. She then walked away and came back toting Eve in her arms. “Whose baby is this? She was crying.”
Sarah almost choked to see this strange girl holding her baby without permission. Eve always seemed like such a tiny thing, but in the little girl’s arms she looked to be the size of a sack of potatoes and the girl was holding her like one.
“Oh hey, Honey, don’t,” Sarah said. “You can’t just pick up someone’s baby. She was fine.”
“She was crying,” Jillybean explained. “I forgot to mention, you need to put that stuff on the tailgate.” She went to point, but almost dropped the baby. “Oh, sorry. I’m pretty good with babies, normally, you can trust me.”
“It’s not you,” Sarah lied, hopping down and taking back Eve. “She’s just safer in the truck. What if a zombie comes up? You see?”
“I have magic marbles,” Jillybean said.
It took a mom
ent for the words to sink in, though understanding failed to. Sarah asked, “Magic what? Marbles? Babies can’t have marbles. They’ll choke on them.”
Jillybean sighed. “You don’t get it. The marbles are used against the monsters. You see? Not babies. And especially not this baby. She is supposed to be my little sister.”
Sister! Who was this kid? None of what the girl was saying made any sense and it caused Sarah to stand there speechless. Eventually, Jillybean sighed again and pointed at the truck. “It’s ready. Ipes says to floor it, which means go fast. I’ll hold the baby if you want.”
“That's ok, but, thank you,” Sarah said and put the baby back on the floor, making sure to bundle her tight. She then started the truck and easily drove it off the median. In minutes the back of the truck was righted and a shaking Shondra was in the passenger seat, while a quiet Jillybean sat in the back.
“Are you worried about Ram?” Sarah asked the little girl. “You shouldn’t be. He’s an extremely capable person, he can take care of himself.”
“He can’t, not really,” Jillybean replied. “He's like everyone else. He can’t take care of himself.”
Figuring it was best not to get into an argument with her, Sarah only smiled briefly before turning back to the road. They found Ram minutes later. Amazingly he was leading a black Range Rover that she recognized immediately—it was Mark’s SUV!
With a feeling of wild joy, Sarah was out of the truck in a flash and running to see her husband and Sadie…only Sadie wasn’t there, and Neil looked like he was about to throw up.
In less than a minute, he explained how Sadie had been kidnapped by a, as he put it, “crazy-assed cult” and was being held against her will. “They’ll trade for her though,” Neil said as a way of re-assuring Sarah. She had been feeling lighter and lighter in the head with every word her husband uttered.
The Undead World (Book 2): The Apocalypse Survivors Page 26
