I ate slowly, too, buying myself some time, although I didn’t know what for exactly.
When Ling finally put aside his empty pouch, he cracked his knuckles. “Okay, obviously the Cessna was a bust.” He looked pointedly at me as though that was my fault, which in a way I suppose it was. Lawson glared at me. Clearly, he agreed with Ling.
“We’ve still got enough food for now,” continued Ling, “but we need to find somewhere to wait out the winter.”
Green shifted position and looked as though he was about to speak, but Ling didn’t let him. “And don’t bring up heading to the city again. Marcus has the right idea staying out here. It’s too dangerous to go back.”
“I know, I know you’re right,” said Green. The look on his face made it obvious he thought otherwise.
Ling pursed his lips and looked as though he might rebuke the man. Instead, he said, “We need to go back to the building site, take another look.”
Green shifted uncomfortably and glanced at Bailey. “There’s a lot of zees there.”
“Maybe, maybe they’ve moved on. Either way, there’ll be supplies there, things we can use. Could even be a place to hole up.”
Green looked doubtful.
“This isn’t a democracy,” Ling said. His voice was normal, friendly almost, but his eyes were cold. Green nodded reluctantly.
Lawson flicked his head at me. “We really gonna add another mouth to feed?”
Ling raised his eyebrows. “That’s up to Marcus. What do you think? You going to join us?”
“How could I refuse after you’ve been so welcoming?”
A pensive look came over Ling’s face. “I’m glad to hear that, but Lawson here raises a good point. You will be an additional drain on our already limited resources.”
I considered suggesting Ling let me go again but thought better of it.
“You certainly look like you’ve got the life experience to be a valuable member of the group,” continued Ling. “But we need to be sure you’re going to be able to contribute.”
“Oh? How can I reassure you?”
“Any ideas, Lawson?”
He replied without a moment’s hesitation. “The nest.”
Ling smiled. I was beginning to hate that smile and the way his nose moved all the time. “That’s an excellent idea.”
“The nest?” I said.
“It’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure you’ve dealt with worse. You must have, to have survived this long.”
Lawson had a smug look on his face, the sort of look the shadow and I would enjoy slicing off.
“Finish your food,” Ling said. “You’ll need your energy.”
Chapter 6
Nesting Instincts
“Say hello to the nest,” Lawson said.
I peered over the edge of a roughly circular opening in the ground. The cave beneath was shrouded in darkness, but I could see shapes moving in the shadows. Human shapes.
Green was carrying a rope, and he tied it around a scrubby tree thirty feet away from the hole’s edge. He pulled on it, and the tree creaked ominously. Apparently satisfied it was secure, he dropped the other end of the rope into the cave. A low-pitched moan rose up out of the ground like a swarm of angry bees.
The cave was on the top of a long incline that had been ravaged by fire at some point in the recent past. Ling stood looking out over the blackened remains of the trees that dotted the slope. The weather had broken, and a few patches of blue peered through the ragged clouds.
Ling sniffed and turned back to me. He nodded to Lawson.
“Follow me,” Lawson said.
He walked off down the slope. I looked at Ling, but he simply raised his eyebrows. I hurried to catch up with Lawson.
He led me down the slope to a steep drop with a series of wooden steps cut into it. A yellow warning sign exhorted visitors to take care while descending the steps. Lawson sent me down first.
Near the base of the steps, there was a small opening in the hill—the beginning of a cave system, one of the dozens that dotted the landscape in this part of the world. Flattened grass, dark stains on the ground, and a discarded shoe lay around the entrance.
Lawson put his rifle on the ground, making a point of keeping it just too far away for me to get. Then he swung the pack he was carrying from his shoulder and rooted around inside before pulling out a torch that looked like it belonged in the Dark Ages.
It was made from a branch a couple of feet long. Strips of cloth were wrapped tightly around the end, and I could smell gasoline and oil. He handed me the torch then lit it using a match from a box he had in his pocket. Oil-black smoke rose up from the bundle of cloth, but it burned brightly enough.
Lawson pointed toward the opening. “It’s a straight run from here through the cave. Make it to the rope, and we’ll pull you up.”
I thought of the zombies’ moans drifting up from the opening. “Do I get a weapon?”
He retrieved a knife from his pack. I held out my hand, but instead of giving it to me he lobbed it close to the cave entrance. He slung the pack over his shoulder and picked up his rifle.
“Oh, and if you try to come back out, I’ll shoot you.”
There was a touch of hope in his voice.
He flicked his head toward the cave, and a moment later I heard a low moan.
“You’d better get moving,” he said. “While you can still get to the knife.”
A ragged zombie shuffled slowly from the cave. Whatever clothes might have covered her body when she was alive were long gone. Her bones were clearly visible, her desiccated skin drawn so tight over them it gave her a skeletal appearance.
Lawson backed away, raising his rifle toward both me and the zombie as he did. The knife was embedded point down in the soft earth a few feet away from the zombie, directly in her path.
Zombies didn’t use weapons. I’d seen policemen with pistols in shoulder holsters, and workmen with knives and screwdrivers fastened to their belts, and none of them had made any attempt to use them to take down their prey. They didn’t need to. Given enough zombies, everyone falls. The bullets run out, or the knife gets caught in a skull. I was playing with fire every time I wandered out into the forest to collect a new subject. One day, I wasn’t going to make it back. Assuming I survived Ling’s little game.
I ran for the knife.
The hilt stood temptingly upright, and I grabbed it without stopping. Then my feet slipped on a patch of loose earth. I hit the ground awkwardly and dropped the torch. The knife almost sliced through my leg, triggering visions of me bleeding out from a self-inflicted injury while the zombie and Lawson rolled around on the floor, laughing. As though to emphasize the point, I heard Lawson chuckle.
I got my feet beneath me then pushed myself upright. The zombie veered toward me, one bony arm raised out in front of her. The other, barely more than a dried twig, hung loosely by her side. I slashed with the knife, caught the back of her hand, and knocked it away. It was enough to deflect her attack and put her off balance.
I ran at her and drove the knife into her chest. The force of the blow drove her back. The knife snagged on something as I pulled it free. There was a dull crack. I kicked at the zombie’s leg and caught her just above the knee. Dry bone snapped. She fell, and the knife came free.
The zombie struggled to get back to her feet, but when she put her weight on her one good arm, I stamped on it. Her forearm splintered, and she let out a high-pitched shriek. There was no blood. Her brittle bones just broke apart like chalk. She fell forward onto her face. I crouched and calmly drove the knife into the back of her skull.
There was a sharp pop, and the ground a couple of feet to my right exploded. A deep-throated moan drifted out from the cave.
Lawson had his rifle wedged into his shoulder. “Go on.”
When I didn’t move immediately, he rattled the rifle.
“Okay, okay.”
I grabbed the torch from where it had fallen. The flames had gone out. I held
it out toward Lawson.
“Sorry,” he said, “out of matches.”
I almost threw the torch at him, or away at least, but thought better of it. The more weapons I had, the better. Silently vowing to kill Lawson at the first opportunity, I crept into the cave.
Chapter 7
Go into the Light
What little light the outside world provided was quickly swallowed up. It had been a long time since I’d urged my mother to leave a night-light on to chase away the monsters in the darkness, and I’d grown used to the pitch-black forest at night, but still, some primal instinct remained. My heart rate ratcheted up, and I felt a surge of adrenaline.
Once I was away from the entrance and out of sight of Lawson, I paused to let my eyes adjust to the gloom. The cave entrance was narrow, but it quickly opened up into a tunnel at least thirty feet wide. As my eyes compensated for the lack of light, shapes appeared—patches that were slightly paler than the space around them. Most of them three or four feet high—boulders I’d need to find my way around.
Ahead, farther away than I’d have liked, I could make out a circle of light. Presumably, that was the way out. I couldn’t see any movement there, although I could see a vertical shadow that was probably the rope. Maybe the zombies had moved off, deeper into the cave system. Maybe, but I doubted it. I might not be able to see them, but I could smell them. The air was heavy with the moldering scent of death and decay. The smell was all too familiar, but it had a stale, musty edge.
I hefted the torch. It would make a solid club, not heavy enough to smash skulls but enough to defend myself. Zombies notwithstanding, the run to the light would take me maybe sixty seconds. That was assuming I didn’t trip and fall in the darkness. Or run into one of the boulders. Or plunge into some unseen crevice. Throw the zombies into the mix, and a headlong charge toward the light seemed likely to send me toward another, very different type of light. Slow and steady was a much better option.
Once my eyes had adjusted as well as they were ever going to, I counted to four then moved slowly along the tunnel. The ground beneath my feet was uneven and covered with fragments of rock. I forced myself to take baby steps and stopped after every eighth step to listen and assess my surroundings.
The darkness closed in around me, stifling my senses. I lost track of the passing of time. When I reached the first boulder, I had no idea how long I’d been in the tunnel—it could have been two minutes. It could have been twenty.
The boulder was big, taking up almost half of the left-hand side of the tunnel. I reached out with the hand holding the torch and touched the rock. The surface was dry and dusty. Hesitantly, I crept around it.
Something scraped across rock. It was just a soft shuffle, barely audible even in the all-encompassing silence. The darkness suddenly pressed in on me as those childhood fears returned. My throat constricted. For someone so well acquainted with philosophical darkness, I was suddenly very uncomfortable with the physical kind.
And then I saw the zombie. All it took was a slight shift in what my eyes had taken to be a shadow. The movement unlocked something inside me, and I could see the indistinct shape of a figure standing near the wall on the right, just past the next boulder. I couldn’t make out any features, but they were a foot or so taller than me. I pressed my back against the boulder while I decided what to do.
My shadowed self, my natural instincts, urged me to take the zombie down before he noticed me. The knife in my hand called to me as though it were thirsting for blood. But the more rational part of my psyche knew that a kill now, even a quick one, would generate noise. The tunnel was silent. Even my shallow breathing seemed too loud. A struggle with a living corpse would bring every zombie in the place down on me.
A trickle of sweat ran slowly down my back.
The figure moved again, but it was a random adjusting of position, not a prelude to an attack. I had no reason to believe zombies had better vision than their living counterparts. Their decaying bodies might even have poorer eyesight, weaker hearing. I could have the edge over them. I felt the sudden urge to try out the theory by raising my arm and waving to the zombie.
I shifted my weight to my right foot then took a single step with my left. I watched the figure for any kind of sign that he’d seen me.
The zombie didn’t move.
I lifted my right foot and took another step.
I waited.
The zombie didn’t move.
The wall on my left was clear of obstacles for as far as I could see, which wasn’t far. The zombie was close to the right-hand wall, which meant there was enough space for me to get past. In theory.
I counted to four, took a slow, deep breath, and gradually worked my way past the boulder to the wall. Once I was there, I waited. When I was sure the zombie still hadn’t seen me, I continued moving along the wall.
Step by delicate step, I made my way through the tunnel. For the most part, I kept my eyes locked on the zombie’s shadowy outline. I hardly dared blink. His shape began to warp and shift. Patterns formed. Imagined faces. Some I half recognized, coworkers maybe, or people I’d met since leaving the city. Others were just nameless, rotting visages.
The smell of decay thickened as I got closer to the zombie. A fly bounced against my face, and I had to fight not to slap it away. I drew opposite the zombie. He moaned. The sound was so low it was barely audible. Fear tightened my grip on the torch.
I paused, watching the zombie’s barely visible form for any sign that he was about to attack. I’d already decided that if he did, I’d just make a break for the rope and hope I got there. I was still afraid of running into more zombies, but the idea of falling prey to a cave full of the ravenous dead appealed more than going back the way I’d come and giving Lawson the satisfaction of shooting me.
After what felt like an age, the zombie still hadn’t moved. I resumed my slow but steady progress through the cave.
Even when I was past the zombie, I kept watching for any sign that he’d heard me. My attention was so focused on him, I stopped checking the path ahead until my hand brushed against an outcrop. The torch scraped across rock. I flinched at the sound and froze.
I was six or seven feet past the zombie. He was barely visible in the darkness, and my vision swam as I tried to focus on him. I squeezed my eyes shut for a few seconds to clear them. When I opened them again, the zombie was still there, still not moving.
I felt around the outcrop, careful not to hit it with the torch again. It wasn’t big, just a couple of feet deep. I moved around it, convinced bony fingers were about to clamp down on my shoulder.
There was another shadow ahead, a human-shaped patch of darkness in the middle of the tunnel. Shapes swam across my vision, the effort of staring into the almost pitch blackness wreaking havoc with my eyesight.
The pale glow of my destination still seemed a long way away. If anything, it seemed farther than it had been. I wasn’t close enough to run for it yet. I counted to four and began to move again.
The shadow ahead coalesced into a zombie as I got closer. He was smaller than me, and his clothes were ragged patches of varying depths of gray, but that was all I could make out. He stood right in the middle of the tunnel, which seemed to have grown narrower as I’d progressed along it. I’d have to pass within seven or eight feet of him to get by. I kept moving.
Even if I hadn’t been able to see the zombie, I’d have smelled him. A musty tang, laced with blood and the stench of curdled milk, hung like a wall in the air a couple of feet away from him. My throat clenched as I hit it, and I had to fight down the urge to cough.
The zombie moved. It was subtle, just a slight turn of his head toward me, but it was there. I lifted the knife away from my body and pointed it at the zombie. He moved again. This time, he turned completely in my direction. His feet shuffled across the rock. He groaned.
Again, I had to resist the urge to attack. I was sure I could kill this one zombie, even in the darkness, but who knew how many others I�
�d bring down on top of me in the process?
The zombie let out another moan, softer this time. I waited for a slow count of sixteen before I took another step. The ground was noticeably rougher in this part of the tunnel. I had to raise my feet more and be more careful as I put them down. Each time I did so, I was convinced debris would crunch beneath my feet or I’d stumble on a loose chunk of rock, but I didn’t. Slowly, carefully, I moved past the zombie.
I didn’t look behind me this time. If the zombie came after me, I’d hear him. Instead, I focused on the path ahead. I fell into a steady rhythm. Step by step, I made my way through the darkness. There were more boulders, more outcrops in the wall, but if there were other zombies, I passed them without noticing.
Slowly but surely, the light that marked my route to safety grew clearer. And with it came the sound of the zombies. They’d calmed down since being disturbed by the rope, but every now and again, one would utter a low-pitched moan or shuffle their feet. It was impossible to tell how many there were. I silently berated myself for not thinking to count them when I was up top—although four would be more than enough to stop me from reaching the rope.
The air inside the tunnel had grown dense and cloying. That combined with my attempt to keep my breaths shallow and quiet was starting to make me dizzy. A wave of light-headedness rolled over me. My foot caught a chunk of rock, and it skipped noisily across the ground. The sound echoed through the tunnel. A low-pitched groan answered back from in front of me, frighteningly close.
I tensed and raised my knife. Shuffling footsteps drifted through the darkness. I couldn’t see the zombie, but maybe if I was lucky, he’d walk straight into the knife. I held my breath as I stood there, peering into the black, waiting for decaying fingers to wrap around my throat.
Serial Killer Z: Volume One Page 30
