by Fitch, E. M.
The gray skin and hanging flesh of an infected man ran towards them, sinking it's teeth into the nearest of the escaping group.
Paul's garbled shout as the infected man tore at the skin of his throat was nearly drowned out by a third explosion. It rocked the ground under her feet and left a ringing in her ears. The building behind them was collapsing and she instinctively ran forward, past the edge of the decimated building and into the wide open lawn that butted up to the higher part of the reservoir. The fence that separated the yard from the stretch of concrete damn was collapsed. The electricity gone, it had collapsed under the weight of a large horde. A continuous stream of infected poured over the chain link, stumbling over the links that lay twisted on the ground. They were staggering, but fast, limping and dragging their rotting bodies to the promise of warm flesh. The survivors ran forward, towards the stretch of dam, the only way out. Kaylee heard another yell, a women's, sharp and fresh and panic jolted through her, but Jack's grip on her arm was steel and she moved forward on wooden legs regardless. She couldn't help whoever was behind them anyway.
It wasn't until her sneakers slapped onto the flat expanse of concrete, following the rest over the dam and towards the empty lawn across it, that she heard his laugh. High pitched and shrill, more of a screech than a laugh, Marsden was perched on the roof of one of his out buildings, a demi god watching the world he had built as he systematically destroyed it. It was he who was setting off the explosions. Maybe he had it rigged long ago, waiting until he would have to use it. He was never going to lose control of his Mill, he'd rather it destroyed and everyone in it before his ceded control to another.
A horde of infected was pawing at the walls of his building. They would reach him before too long, he wasn't high enough and his building not stable enough. Marsden eyed the group crossing the dam towards safety, but instead of looking angry, he looked triumphant. He grinned down at them, a twisted, angry grin full of gloating exultation.
It was then that Kaylee knew something was seriously wrong. She looked back, towards the yard now teeming with infected and then to the group that was hurrying across the dam, she at the middle of the crossing now. There was fifty yards of smooth concrete between her and the safety of the lawn.
At the first tremble, the first rock of concrete under her feet, she had her answer.
"Jump!" she shouted, not pausing to make sure any one of them understood her. She knew they had to get off the dam, knew that going back meant death by infection and that they'd never make it to the opposite lawn on time. She dove forward, the air whizzing past her and whipping her hair back as she dove, head first, into the icy water twenty feet below. She knew Jack would follow, Emma too, her father, Andrew, Anna, Bill. She could only hope anyone else that had made it that far would follow her leap, make it into the uncertainty of the water before Marsden blew the dam to bits.
Chapter Eleven
The water parted easily and soaked through every inch of her clothing and skin. She kicked hard, stayed under the frigid reservoir until her lungs screamed for oxygen. Even through the murky veil of the water over her ears, she heard the next explosion. She had only just emerged for that first gasp of air when the dam behind her collapsed in chunks and pieces. She ducked under the water again, kicking as the huge wave of the torrent released by the dam caught her up and swept her forward, her breath exhaling in a bubbling gush. Debris, chunks of concrete and pipes flew past her, catching her in the ribs and legs. She felt the gash as a broken pipe connected with her already injured shoulder and she cried out, her voice muffled by water. The icy grip of the water fought it's way through her lips and down her throat and she kicked hard, her chest on fire despite the cold water filling it, trying to reach the surface.
She was spinning so hard in the murky water, she couldn't tell which way was up, couldn't see the sun through the rush of debris. Spots burst, white and distracting, in the corners of her darkened eyes. Her hands reached up, flailing, and caught something course and rough. She pulled and her arms felt like putty but her head broke into the air and she gasped wildly, sucking in air as she clung to the log to stay afloat. The water swirled like madness around her, she made her body as small as possible but still the debris and concrete would find her and slam into her. It didn't hurt as much as it should, she knew that, the water was cold and numbing. But it would hurt later, of that she was sure. Her arms were already aching.
She couldn't see anything but the swirling water and the ice blue sky, the sun just slanting rays of blinding white. It made the panic and fear intensify, not knowing who else had made it. She focused her eyes forward, knowing the rush of the oncoming water would slow eventually.
It didn't take as long as she had thought it would. As fast as they had all been swept away, the water settled. It flooded the banks and into the surrounding trees. She felt herself getting swept backwards again and she kicked instinctively, never wanting to go back. The current wasn't as hard to fight this time. The shore to her left was closest, so she made for it. Relief and fear spiking when she saw two figures already staggering ashore.
Quinton and Emma. Her sister was bent over, retching unto the beach. She sighed and pushed harder, needing to know who else had been lost.
"Kaylee!"
The voice was so familiar and the relief so sharp that it felt like pain lancing her chest. Jack, dragging Anna behind him, was swimming towards the shore. He stood, tripped and then straightened. His eyes were on her. She tested her foothold and found purchase, pulling herself to a stand in chest deep water and waving her reassurance over to him. Anna looked dazed, her eyes unfocussed, and a steady stream of blood mingled with water as it flowed from her hair and down the side of her face. Jack, though holding her up with one arm, looked worse. As his chest and then abdomen cleared the water, Kaylee saw it. A pole, three feet long, was sticking through his side. She saw him stagger, his shoulder twitching. Quinton rushed to help him.
Bill surfaced just beyond her, spitting water and already cutting towards the shore. Andrew was next. He emerged from the water, his hair plastered to his face, his eyes searching. They first found her, then flashed to the shore; relief broke so strongly across his features that he looked like he had reversed an aging process, losing years in seconds. He waded towards Kaylee.
Her eyes met him, sweeping his frame and finding no damage. She felt pulled, her body pinned in the water but her eyes staring past Andrew and to Jack. Then her gaze strayed, back to the water that was still sweeping coldly and quickly by them. Andrew followed her gaze as it landed on an object, a shape, too familiar to ignore.
A body, face down, unmoving. Her insides froze. Both Kaylee and Andrew waded towards it. He reached the person first and Kaylee was glad that she didn't have to be the one to flip them over and check. She could see from his eyes, from the way he shook his head and let the body continue downstream, that Danny wasn't as lucky as the rest of them.
Fear was gripping her, lacing around her throat and squeezing slowly. Her father was still missing. Kaylee's eyes swept the surface of the water. It was rushing, faster than it normally would, the surface riddled with leaves and wood, and still the occasional chunk of concrete bobbing along.
She was looking for a head, someone sputtering as they broke the surface into the air, and so she didn't see it at first, wasn't ready when Andrew clamped his hand on her arm. She followed his line of sight all too easily.
Face up, eyes open and unseeing, her father was floating towards them, a bramble of wood surrounding him. She felt her chest heave, the air being sucked past her lips all too quickly. She felt the steady, almost crushing pressure, of Andrew's hand on her cold skin. But that was all.
The rest of her felt empty, hollowed out.
The sticks that clung to Nick's lifeless body floated near enough for Andrew to reach. He pulled gently and her father drifted towards them. She looked down mechanically. His skin was already pale, his mouth slack. Something had struck him in the rush of water after
the dam broke, the damage to his head was severe, more gruesome than Kaylee could have imagined. His face was distorted with the damage, his skin shifted from the broken bones underneath.
Kaylee shut her eyes and turned into Andrew. His one free arm came around her. She stood stiff, her eyes clenched, willing the image of her father's fractured skull out of her mind.
It wasn't until she heard her sister's scream that she open her eyes again.
"No!" Emma shouted. She ran towards the water but was swept up by Quinton. She fought to get out of his hold, wrenching her arm away from him. Her screams turned to sobs, realizing, obviously, what Andrew and Kaylee were looking at. Quinton's arms came around her, squeezing her in a vice-like grip. His eyes sought Kaylee; she woodenly shook her head.
"She doesn't need to see him, not like this," Kaylee spoke, her voice a low whisper to Andrew. She felt him nod as she moved out of his grip. He reached out, fingers gentle on Nick's face as he closed his eyes.
"What should we..." he trailed off, his eyes still transfixed on her father's face. She didn't want to drag him to the shore, not like this. And how would they bury him anyway? She took the moment, that one short second in time that stretched, the echoes of Emma's sobbing and the rush of the water, even the gentle cadence of the birds cawing and the wind in the trees, and said a prayer. Her numb fingers found and traced the grooves of her mother's medal that had stuck fast in her jeans pocket as she said goodbye.
"Let him go," she said to Andrew, her voice soft. Andrew's throat muscles worked visibly as he swallowed, letting Nick's body out of his grasp. The current caught him up, carrying him gently downstream. Over the sound of the water and the wind in the trees, Kaylee could hear her sister's sobbing shift to crying.
It wasn't a burial. They couldn't give him that. But at least he had never been bitten, never been infected and forced to wander like a living corpse in the rubble of the world. Instead he had gone quickly, more quickly than perhaps he would have liked. And he left his girls, something she knew he would have hated. His funeral wouldn't be traditional, he wouldn't be lowered into the ground, no flowers tossed on a gravesite. Instead he would drift downstream, carried aloft with branches and sticks, a Viking funeral pyre, never to be lit.
Andrew and Kaylee turned together, silent, to join the rest.
The water was at her knees when Emma finally broke free from Quinton. Her sister ran forward, crushing Kaylee in an embrace. Kaylee's arm encircled her automatically.
"Was he bit?" she asked in a small voice, her words muffled against her sister's shoulder. Kaylee shook her head.
Emma nodded as she pulled back, dragging a sopping wet sleeve over her eyes. "I want to see-"
"No, Em," Kaylee interrupted, her tone gentle. "You don't."
The expression on Emma's face flickered from argument, to devastation, and finally settled on resignation. Her shoulders dropped, her features sagging with the weight of her grief. "Did he suffer?"
"No," Kaylee answered. "It was quick, I think."
"Don't know if he would have preferred that, actually. But I'm glad it happened fast."
Kaylee wasn't sure her father would have wanted a quick death either. He would have wanted time, a chance to say goodbye to his girls, say a quick prayer maybe. But he would have been lost with worry too. Worry about his daughters, about the wife he thought he was leaving behind. All that he wanted, all this time, was to protect his family, to unite them again the way they once were. If a quick death spared him the anxiety of what would happen, save him from the heart stopping worry over who would take care of his girls, maybe it was better for him to have gone like that and without a way to spend his last moments in mental agony.
Emma's eyes were tearing up, her gaze down river. Her chin shook slightly before she grit her teeth. Kaylee's eyes swept the bank. Anna sat with her head between her knees, her back rising and falling in steady even breaths. Quinton had moved back to help Bill keep Jack propped against a tree, the thin metal pole protruding from him jolted with each shifting movement. His eyes met hers and through the grimace of pain, she saw sorrow and just a tinge of pity.
"I've got her, go."
Kaylee looked up to Andrew, but he was already reaching for Emma. She fell into him easily, her eyes on the river, her small frame still shaking. He gripped her tightly and Kaylee moved past them towards Jack.
Anna shook her head, resting her forehead on her knee. She extended her hand as Kaylee drew near. Kaylee pulled her to her feet, steadying her. Her good arm shook with the effort, but it wasn't throbbing like her shoulder was. The bleeding from Anna's head had staunched some, but a trickle still cut it's way past her fringe.
"It's not too bad, I don't think," Anna said, catching Kaylee's eyes staring at her wound. "Head wounds just bleed a lot."
Anna gripped her hand, squeezing her fingers tightly. Kaylee couldn't catch her eye, didn't want to. Her father was dead. But that wasn't resonating just yet. And Emma had stopped crying so all she could really hear was the water and the wind and the birdsong. And so, her father couldn't really be dead, just resting, or not there yet, or...
But he was dead. She knew it. She just couldn't feel it yet.
Kaylee gripped her hand back, as tight as she could, and tugged, pulling Anna towards Jack. His breathing was shallow, his jaw clenched tightly in pain.
"Kay, I'm so sorry," he said through grit teeth. She shook her head, her insides hollow, the whole morning unreal. The piece of metal sticking out from him quivered with his movements, she could see the sweat that broke out on his forehead and the back of his neck, even in the cold morning air. It was the thickness of her thumb, a steel reinforcing bar that had kept the structure of the dam. It had ridges but it was straight, one end looking as though it had been snapped in half. Both ends looked rusty and dirty. It traversed his side completely and Kaylee found herself thinking that had he only been over an inch or two, it might have missed him completely. But there had been so much junk and debris rushing past them, it seemed miraculous that this was the worst...
And then she remembered. No, this wasn't the worst. The worst had happened to her father, and he was floating down the river because of it.
She swallowed hard, sucking in a deep breath and then asked Anna. "What do we do?"
Anna shook her head, grimacing. "I have to take it out, obviously. But-"
"Spill Anna, what?" Jack said through grit teeth.
"It's just... I hate this! No x-rays. No antibiotics. No pain killers. Have you had a tetanus shot recently? Who the hell knows?" she yelled, anger flashing over her features like Kaylee had never seen before. "And you know what? I'm not trained for this! I'm a damn psych nurse! I'm supposed to talk to you about how you feel. Not this shit! Not blood and constant death and pulling metal poles out of people. Not-" she broke off, her features crumpling. One hand found it's way to her head, her fingers probing lightly even as tears built in her eyes.
"We don't expect miracles from you, Anna," Quinton said, his voice gentle. Bill pulled out his knife, cutting Jack's shirt and pulling the wet material away from his wound.
"And I did have my tetanus," Jack added, his tone soft even through his grimace. "Just before the world ended."
"Well, that'll help some." A small smile cracked through Anna's features, then her face fell and she grit her teeth. "Alright boys, hold him down."
The pole slide from Jack's body with a wet slurp. A gush of blood followed, dark and oozing on his pale, olive skin. He grit his teeth, grunting in pain. Bill and Quinton kept him braced against a thin tree that jut from the rest of the woods. She stepped closer and Quinton gestured for Kaylee to take his place. She moved into Jack, snaking an arm around him to help keep him propped up. His head dropped on her good shoulder, his breath hot on her freezing skin as he drew sharp breaths. She looked down at the grass she stepped unto, water pooled by her shoe, seeping in to keep her feet soaked. It sprang from the ground below her, like she had walked from a beach unto a swamp.
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br /> The ground just past them gave way to mud, the tree line first sparse and then thickening. Trees grew in clumps with not much room in between. The ground between the trees was uneven, lumpy, and wet; old leaves and pine needles mixed in with the mud, looked churned together. The sludge was so thick it looked knee deep in places. There was no new growth, no saplings, not even ferns. It looked unnatural. Something was out of place though she couldn't say exactly what. But these woods stretched for as far as Kaylee could see.
"I need something to pack it with," Anna muttered, her head close to Jack's stomach.
"Dirt? Pine needles?" Quinton asked, already moving into the tree line.
Anna was distracted, her hands shaking as she bent and tore strips from her own shirt.
"No, cloth, the cleanest anyone-"
Quinton stepped past the tree line, his eyes back on Anna and Jack. Kaylee knew immediately that something wasn't right. It happened fast. Quinton lurched to the side, swaying as if the very ground was moving underneath him. With the squelch of displacing mud, the ground rose, knocking him off balance. He floundered for a minute before his foot found the forest floor again, but as his foot came down the ground rose up and with a shriek Kaylee saw a mud filled bloody mouth sink it's teeth into Quinton's leg.
"No!" Jack shouted. Andrew jolted forward, his gun pulled out. He shot the bloody mouth and it fell back to the ground with a wet thud. But the damage was done and Jack stood frozen, his breath coming fast as he stared at his friend.
Kaylee saw it now, saw what not one of them had noticed. The lumps and the misshapen ground, the way there was no growth between the trees. It was bodies. Hundreds of them if they spanned the miles of this swamp. Mud mixed with pine needles and leaves covered the infected in a swampy paste, but she could see them now, the elbows and ankles and hip bones that protruded from the mud. The patches of grayish skin that was only just now noticeable. They were in there, held there somehow, but put there specifically for this purpose. It was worse than the electric fence, worse than any barbed wire or barricade, it was a living shield of infected bodies, all starving and laying in wait for the next unsuspecting ankle to come near.
