The rest of the pack strikes, fifty strong. Hands batter the fence and the noises grow in volume. The wood groans, but the posts hold. A shit smell wafts up along with the scents of rotting flesh and fresh blood. Some bodies wear cleanish clothing, but the majority is torn, stained with brown, and clotted with chunks of dried viscera. Whoever they were is erased by grayed, sunken skin and ratty hair. One looks up with silvery vacant eyes, sees me, and lets out an unearthly moan.
I step out of sight into the truck bed. “Can they get through the fence?” Mitch asks over the din.
“If they can’t, they’ll keep pounding and draw enough who will,” Sam says. “We’ve got to get them from this side.” He points up the hill. “Girls, get my truck.”
Clara and Holly take off without a word, racing up the grass and around the house.
“Bullets will make it worse,” I say. “We need something long.”
A spike of some kind, or a long-handled blade. I’m sure I could make something, but there’s no time to shit around with that. Rose lifts a hand in a hold on gesture, takes Mitch’s arm, and leads her toward the house. Dirty, decaying hands yank the pickets, and one begins to pull away from the top rail. Just a centimeter, but one centimeter will beget another, until a picket is missing. With one gone and more surface for hands to grab, the next will be easier to remove. Once a few pickets are gone, there’ll be space enough to squeeze through.
I draw my knife from its sheath and grasp the arm of the man on the loose picket. I haul him up a few inches, bury the knife in his eye, and then drop him to the ground. A woman hisses, her blond hair hopelessly tangled and left eye hanging by a bundle of veins and nerves. I lift her by the hair, put my blade in the remaining eye, and release her onto the first.
A couple of hundred feet down, at least twenty more zombies stroll the road on their way to join these. Over a dozen come from the other direction. They’re reaching us faster than I anticipated, which means there are more around now. More in the woods. More ways to die.
Another picket board squeaks, pulls out an inch. I start that way, but Jesse beats me to it, lifting a man by his shirt and delivering a jab with his bone-handled knife. Thumps rise down the line when the next packs arrive, and the fence shudders on its posts.
Rose and Mitch return with full arms and dump their loads in the back of the truck. A fireplace poker, a few three-foot round metal spikes, two broomsticks, a hammer with a nasty looking blade opposite the head, an axe, two pieces of rebar, and assorted garden tools. Under it all is a digging bar, likely from when Rose and Ethan built the original fence. Made for breaking up hard soil, it’s five feet of forged steel, with a blunt pointed end opposite a wider chiseled end.
Sam’s truck rolls down the slope, Holly behind the wheel and Clara in the passenger’s seat. The truck pulls beside the fence, moving forward and back until it’s close, then the girls run for us.
“This is all we could find,” Rose says. She takes a spike and hops into the truck with me.
I lift the digging bar. It weighs close to twenty pounds, and it feels solid. Deadly. I turn to where Rose stands tiptoe on the raised edge of the truck’s bed, hanging over the pickets with the spike in a fist. She raises her arm and slams it down, presumably into a zombie, then yells, “It works!”
I join her. The digging bar needs almost no force, as gravity supplies enough weight to slam into eyes and mouths and even a nose. Rose grunts beside me, her spike gouging one eye and then another. A plus—maybe the only plus—is that the creatures are dumb. They wait below, mouths ajar and eyes staring, while they beat on the wood. They don’t dodge or feint or understand they’re meeting their end.
More zombies arrive. Clara, Holly, and Jesse take the other truck with Sam, while Mitch joins Rose and me. She holds the fireplace poker, and she’s no joke. Her arm slams down, an eye caves in, and the zombie drops. Between the three of us, we have a dozen finished off in less than two minutes.
After another five minutes, bodies cover the ground. The zombies still on their feet trip and stumble over the fallen, making it difficult to get a weapon close. “I’ll move the truck down,” I say. “Just enough to give us room.”
Rose and Mitch step into the bed while I climb across the cab into the driver’s seat. I pull up as far as I can with the end of the truck still blocking the gate. By the time I reach the bed, Mitch and Rose are at it again, though Rose lifts her spike and hesitates, hand in the air.
Kara stands below. In comparison to the others, she almost looks human. Barely grayed, fresh red blood. But her panic and distress have been replaced by hunger. Her once terrified eyes are blank. Rose drives the spike into one, and Kara falls onto her side in the grass. I spot her son behind her, half-hidden between two zombies whose waists he barely reaches.
The boy trips over his mother’s body and pulls himself to his feet, only to be knocked down by a larger zombie who staggers to the fence. I drop the digging bar into its open mouth. The kid disappears, lost underfoot in the next dozen zombies. Mateo. His name was Mateo. Kara told us that much.
One by one, the zombies fall until there are three left. Two down the way, and Mateo. He struggles out from under the bodies, hissing like a feral kitten. His pudgy hands hit the fence. I swallow my reluctance and lean as far over as I can, aiming for the center of his face, then bring the chiseled end down with every bit of force I can muster. The first time has to work; I don’t have it in me to do it twice. Mateo crumples to the ground. Clara brings the spiked end of that hammer into a face with impressive force and then whips it out again, while Jesse fells the final one with his knife.
Silence fills the air. You don’t realize how much those hoarse hisses and groans wear on you, fill your head with noise. Silence is fucking golden, as far as I’m concerned. Silence is safety. I set down the digging bar, flex my hand, and release my breath.
Rose sits on the edge of the truck bed, massaging her biceps with opposite hands. Her hair has lost the ponytail and curls around her face. The kids and Sam make their way to the tailgate, and Sam lays a hand on her shoulder, face lined with sorrow.
“She was so close,” Rose says quietly.
“I’m sorry, Rosie.”
She nods and says to the kids, “Nice work, guys.”
“Those spikes were perfect,” Holly says with no excitement in her tone. Her face is pale and spattered with gore, her eyes almost haunted.
“They’re from when we poured the patio.” Rose dredges up a smile and brushes Holly’s sleeve. “You did good, sweets. I know it wasn’t easy.”
Holly blinks a few times. I search Clara for a sign of the same disquiet, but her expression is composed, if tired. A few strands of human hair hang from a clump of scalp on the end of her hammer, and she wipes it off on the rag I hand her. It’s odd to be proud of your kid for murdering zombies, but I am. She has the right combination of grace and power. Added to her stubbornness, it’ll help keep her alive.
“Goddamn those things,” Mitch says, and drops beside Rose. “Fuck them. This shit has to end soon, or…” She stares at the fence and doesn’t finish.
I didn’t make it. I didn’t save them. All I did was acquire a new image, a terrible one, of a desperate mother entreating me to rescue her son. That Mateo resembled Jeremy—that I’ve killed him not once, but twice—makes it worse. I’m not sure what happens after we die, but I hope that Jeremy knows how much I love him. How sorry I am that I wasted time trying to change him instead of enjoying him as he was. How sorry I am that I didn’t save him, either.
I shake my head in a bid to clear my thoughts, then take in our group. We seven killed over a hundred zombies. Even through the dullness of defeat, I have the encouraging thought that every one of us is a complement. Somewhere along the way, we’ve formed a unit.
My gaze returns to Rose. Whether or not she’s the glue that holds us together, she’s certainly a big part of it. I continue watching, concerned by the way her eyes have reddened, how she holds her lips ti
ght. “Everyone go and clean up,” she says. “I need to sit for a minute.”
“Mom?” Holly’s brow wrinkles the same way Rose’s does. Apart from their difference in size, I imagine seeing Holly is akin to seeing Rose twenty years ago.
“I’m fine,” Rose says. “I’ll shower in the RV last. Go wash off the germs. You don’t want me feeling your foreheads for fever all night, do you?”
The kids smile wanly and start up the hill. I step to the grass with Mitch and Sam. “You sure, Ro?” Mitch asks.
Rose nods, keeping her eyes on the fence. “I’ll be up soon.”
Sam and Mitch get moving, and I follow only because they seem to think it okay. Midway up the incline, I look back. Rose’s head has dropped to her arms. Her shoulders shake. Without a word to the others, I make my way to the pickup and climb into the bed, where I loosely set an arm around her curved back.
Rose is a peculiar combination of empathetic and guarded. She’ll storm your castle walls to give you a hug, while her drawbridge remains locked up tight. I’m prepared to leave if requested, but she leans into me, and I tighten my arm a little. “I knew she should’ve come with us,” she whispers. “We should’ve made her.”
In hindsight, I wish I’d thrown Kara and Mateo over my shoulder and forced them into the truck. “We couldn’t. We tried. She would’ve come had she known.”
“I keep trying, and I keep failing. First Julian and Elliot, and now—” Rose motions at the fence. “Maybe it’s hopeless.”
I’ve thought the same many times, but to hear Rose say it is far more demoralizing. She’s the one who does dumb things like insist on leading zombies away from a house, jump a fence to save kids, and stop to help a stranger, all because she believes it the right thing—the good thing—to do. Honestly, those things aren’t dumb; they’re kind and softhearted and human. As far as I can tell, this fucked-up world has devastated humanity, and I can’t stand for it to take that away, too.
“It’s not hopeless,” I say. “We’ll keep trying.” My words are meant to cheer her, but they come out easily, like I believe them myself. Either I’ve lost my mind or Rose is rubbing off on me. Possibly both.
Rose nods. When she fishes out her boob tissue, I can’t help an amused grunt. She laughs brokenly. “Just be glad I’m not wiping my nose on you.”
“True.”
After a minute, she straightens and swipes her fingers beneath eyes turned bright turquoise from tears. They search my face. “You did your best to save them. More than any of us did. Please don’t beat yourself up.”
Somehow, Rose knows, and I smile in thanks. She takes a deep breath and shakes out her arms. “And please don’t ask me to lift anything for the next week.”
“You’re the one who wanted exercise.”
“I take it back.”
“Nuh-uh,” I say. “No backsies.”
She pushes me, and though the sound she makes isn’t anything close to her usual laugh, it pleases me all the same.
37
Clara
All roads into town are blocked by bodies, but the woods behind us aren’t, and we’re heading through them to a house on the road opposite. The owners had NRA bumper stickers and five dogs, which makes it the perfect place to look for weapons and dog food.
I brought the war hammer. Because I’m not an idiot, I also have a knife and a sharpened screwdriver, but I’m going to figure out this hammer if it kills me—and it might. The trick, which I learned during the fence incident, is to get the spike into a softer area. If that fails, bash them with the hammer end and then drive the spike through skull in that spot. Between the first pack at the fence and then the stragglers over the next day, I got pretty good at flipping it around quickly to do just that, but I need more practice. And while I don’t want to run into a zombie today, I also kind of do want to run into a zombie.
Holly walks beside me in the forest behind the house. Mitch, Sam, and Rose are ahead, Dad and Jesse behind. When the virus hit, the woods were scraggly. Since then, they’ve filled out with leaves. Light rain hits the new greenery and wind rustles the trees above, which makes it a perfect day for covering up noises, though I could do without the damp chill. You get used to rain when you grow up in Oregon, but you don’t necessarily like it any better.
Mainly, we’re looking for guns. Dad and Sam want guns. I guess I do, too, not that I know what to do with them. But the past two nights we’ve heard gunshots in the distance, and it freaked me out. It could be someone shooting at zombies, not humans, but there’s no way to know that for sure. Dad showed me how to hold and fire his pistol, though I only got in two shots down the road from the house. The noise and our lack of bullets made more than that unwise.
Rose stops at a nearby sound, hand in the air, then motions for us to move on a few moments later. Holly steps over a log and plants her boot directly on a stick. It splits with a crack, and she stills with her hand lifted to her mouth. Everyone freezes with her, then relaxes when nothing comes.
“Sorry,” Holly whispers. Her cheeks burn even after everyone murmurs that it isn’t a big deal.
“It’s fine,” I whisper to Holly as we continue on. “You’ll just have to live with the fact that you’re the reason for our deaths.”
Holly tries to smile, but her shoulders are tight and her eyes roam the woods. She was already quieter than usual, but she’s been practically silent since Kara and Mateo. In the house, behind the fence, we can pretend the world outside isn’t so bad, but when the world is trying to break through your one defense, there’s no room for make-believe.
Ahead of us, Rose walks with her knees bent and feet hitting the ground slowly but silently. Mitch watches her for a few seconds, shrugs, and attempts to copy whatever Rose is doing.
“When did Mom become a ninja?” Jesse whispers from behind.
“You must have inherited it from her,” I throw over my shoulder. Jesse chuffs, to which Dad clears his throat. He’s right—we need to shut up. I turn my head to the side and salute him. A second later, he tugs my ponytail.
I still can’t get over Dad not being an asshole. Maybe he can’t get over me not being one, either. And though a month ago it seemed impossible that I could feel content, I like the way the seven of us fit together. There was talk of a schedule, but so far we don’t need one. Someone draws the water without complaint, someone mows the grass, someone cooks, another person washes dishes or does laundry or straightens up. It’s boring but peaceful, aside from the fact that living dead people roam the land. It’s exactly what I need, what Dad needs: some normalcy, a family, and, at the same time, something different enough from our old life that we don’t spend every minute of the day missing what we’ve lost.
In the old world, I would’ve gone back to school, achingly aware of my mother’s and brother’s absence. Dad would’ve gone back to the office, lived alone in an empty house, and withdrawn more than usual. If we’d retreated in that way, I’m not sure we would’ve found each other again. He certainly wouldn’t have been yanking my ponytail and laughing when I made fun of him.
That first night, I had the thought that the peace between us couldn’t last, but now I see how it could. I feel it between us again, as if I’ve been transported back in time to when he was Daddy, I was Clare-Bear, and the love between us was simple.
There’s a crunch to our left. Seconds later, a man stumbles from behind a tree and trips toward Rose, Sam, and Mitch. Mitch swings her axe in a wide arc that ends with a fast jab into the side of his head. He falls while she retains her grip on the axe, then raises it in triumph.
Short-lived triumph. The woods crash to our right, and then nine more come lurching through the trees. I’ve killed them over the fence, on a porch, but these are right here, on the same level. My mouth dries up. My hammer weighs a million pounds. I know they don’t move fast, but my mind insists they’re running at me, that I’m about to die.
Holly whimpers. Dad brushes my shoulder as he passes, his knife in his glove
d hand, and stops where Rose, Sam, and Mitch stand on last year’s leaves with their weapons raised. Jesse is right behind him. The first zombies arrive, hissing and limping, with the others close behind. Rose moves left, and a man follows. She slams her knife under his chin and releases her hold on his shoulder when he falls. She spins toward Jesse, then watches him take a body down before she steps into the trees for another.
Mitch’s axe slams into a teenage girl’s head. Dad fells two in quick succession. Sam pins one against a tree trunk and jams his blade into its eye. I need to move past this fear, but I’m frozen, Holly by my side, until I hear a groan from behind.
“Shit,” I whisper.
I pivot in what feels like slow motion. The woman was in her thirties, and she’s still pretty, even with half her chin eaten away and her forehead clotted with blood. Her curly hair is matted and full of twigs. Her lips curl as she advances.
It’s now or never. Flight or fight.
I draw in a breath and run at her, raising my hammer two-handed, and bring the spike end directly into her face. She flies back and drops to the leaves, revealing two more behind her. The first is a man with no shirt, chest hair plastered to his gray skin by rain. I slam the hammer end into his forehead, my arms jolting at impact, then flip the hammer and bring the spike down into the same spot. It penetrates the shattered bone with a sick crunch, and he falls.
The next man is huge, and I remember what Dad taught me when it comes to humans: Get them down when you can, especially if they’re bigger. Go for the weak spots. Keep it simple. Fight dirty. When your life is on the line, use whatever means necessary to stay alive.
It should work for zombies, too. I kick his leg right at the kneecap, and he topples to the ground. Two steps later, I’m bringing my spike into his face. It sinks so deep it sticks. I leverage my boot on his chest to pull it out, panting with the effort, and turn around.
The woods are quiet—the birds stop their calling and the smaller critters go silent when zombies are nearby—and Holly watches me with round eyes. Her scratch awl is in her hand, unused. Dad stands two feet away with his knife at the ready, waiting to jump in if needed. Behind him, Rose winks, then puts her arm around Holly’s shoulders and begins walking toward our destination. The others follow.
The Cascadia Series (Book 1): World Departed Page 34
