Dead Soil | Book 3 | Dead World, page 15
part #3 of Dead Soil Series
“I have to hand it to you,” the one they called Sir said. His voice was encouraging, uplifting even, but his face was still contorted with disgruntled wrinkles and shadowed, tired eyes. “You just keep going. You're one tough cookie to crack, that’s for sure. But crack you will, little lady, and when you do all this pain will be over.”
Everything inside her wanted to lash out and spit in his face. She took in a ragged breath, trying to summon any energy she had left in there but she was depleted. Her shoulders sunk as she sat on her knees, her legs tingling from the lack of circulation.
Suddenly, the flick of a bow string sounded not too far off. Carolyn flinched and then heard it again. Two arrows had been released and they were followed by one piercing, high-pitched scream of agony. The tears resumed, picking up in intensity. Her face wanted to scrunch together to release the grief built up inside her fully but it was painful to move any muscles. Instead, she let them flow silently once more and stared into the face of the man who had ordered two more of her people to be murdered in cold blood. He stared back, unfazed by the hatred that exhumed from her eyes.
The screams turned to moans which turned to whimpering. She wasn’t sure if her hearing was more acute because of her awareness of what was going on around her, because of the adrenaline that coursed through her veins and kept her alive and alert, or if they were really that close to the tree line. Either way it was like the dying bunker dweller was right next to her. This lasted for an entire minute before it gave way to nothingness again, silence taking over the dark night once more.
“Ready to talk yet or do you want to listen to more of your friends die tonight?”
VIII
Inside the bunker, everyone gathered in the living room, huddled together in fear. Two of their young men had gone looking for the others who disappeared. Everyone listened as they walked down the dirt hallway and climbed up the ladder to the hatch. They held their breath as they opened the hatch to make sure there was nothing waiting to devour them on the surface. They held hands tightly as they heard the hatch close softly. One of the boy’s mothers hugged her husband, letting him wrap his big arms around her until she thought she would be crushed. She needed it. There was no denying something strange was going on up on the surface of the world, and because of it their own were no longer returning. She cried into her husband’s shoulder as she imagined the painful hours she’d have to wait, worrying about her only son as she prayed he would come back to her. He was an adult, moved out of the house when the apocalypse struck, but since then their family had been reunited and they’d been together every day since, helping each other survive. Now she felt like she was serving her son up to the dead on a platter, if that was in fact what was behind the disappearances. But what else could it be?
It wasn’t long before the sounds of someone wailing in pain up above traveled down the hatch and into the bunker. The woman grabbed on tighter to her husband and buried her face. He rested his head on top of hers and let the tears fall without a sound. He had to be strong for his wife, but he recognized the cries above; it was their son. Something had him. Something was destroying him. He pushed his wife out of the way and ran for the darkened tunnel that led above. His arms pumped as his legs moved, barely touching the dirt floor. But something grabbed him and yanked him off his path. Svend wrapped both his arms around the determined father and held him in place. He struggled against the giant Dane but it was no use.
“Let me go! That’s my son!” he yelled but Svend wouldn’t budge.
“That’s my son!” the man yelled again, though his wild frenzy was fizzling. He dropped to his knees, his head hung low. Svend let him fall, standing behind him though he knew he wasn’t going to try to move again. The man threw himself forward, covering his face with his hands as his shoulder wracked with sobs. “That’s my son!”
Svend reached down to rest a hand on the man’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. He looked up to the rest of the bunker dwellers watching with wide, round, tear-filled eyes. The man’s wife had found a friend to comfort her, an older woman who shushed her and rubbed her back without ceasing. Mac, their encouraging leader, was gone. Four of their men were gone. Olivia, Imani, Luke, Lee, Carolyn, Zack, and Christine; all were gone. Their numbers were shrinking at an alarming rate. Something had to be done.
“Something is happening,” Svend started, hoping what he had to say made sense to them since his English wasn’t the best. In his heart he knew what he wanted to say. He just hoped he had the words to say it. “Something not good. Something not normal. It is not dead doing this. It is people.”
There was a stirring as everyone whispered to each other, considering what he said. “How do you know that?” someone asked from the back of the room.
Svend shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know. I just know.” He could see the confusion on their faces and sighed. “The dead are slow. They are stupid. They cannot plan attack. You see them come. The people gone did not see anything come. The attacks were smart. Hidden. These are people, I promise you that.”
It seemed like his words had made an impact because several of the older men started to shake their heads, looking to each other to see if they were in agreement.
“They are smart. We will be more smart,” Svend declared, his hand involuntarily moving to the battle axe that hung at his side. “We will come up with better plan and no one else will die.”
The last word hit the grieving parents like a stab to the heart. They both began sobbing again as concerned friends rushed to their sides to comfort them. Svend looked around nervously, hoping this did not derail everyone from being empowered. He wanted to inspire them to fight for what they had because it was the only way they were going to keep it.
“We need lookout,” he jumped right into his plan of action. “You and you,” he said to two middle-aged men standing next to each other, arms folded over their chests stoically. “Check the outside but do not go out, yah?”
They nodded and strolled toward the entrance to the tunnel, disappearing into its darkness like vanishing ghosts in the night.
“Gather weapons. We will fight when time come.”
The theory had sunken in and everyone was onboard with what Svend was proposing. Not a single person shook their head in disagreement or refused to move. Even the father pushed himself up and brushed the dirt from his worn jeans. He wiped his face clean and sniffed back his emotions, bottling them up until this was all over and he could release them again. The older women led his wife away, their arms still cradled around her shoulder as they led her to the weaponry.
One of the men who had just gone into the tunnel came barreling back out again, his chest heaving with the effort of running when he wasn’t used to it. “There’s screaming. We heard yelling in the woods!” he declared to anyone listening. “Sounds like a woman.”
“Carolyn,” Svend said.
“It sounds bad,” the lookout informed them as a crowd formed around him. “I’d say she’s being beaten pretty good out there if I had to guess.”
“How do you know someone’s not being eaten by one of those things?” a frantic woman asked as she wrung her hands together in front of her.
“It’s not piercing like a death cry, and it’s also not ending. It’s a steady crying out.”
Svend couldn’t help picturing the small blonde taking punches from men twice her size. His breathing intensified as his large shoulders rose and fell. Burst of hot air shot forth from his nostrils as his eyes narrowed. His hands gripped his axes on either side of his waist and yanked them out of their holders.
“This end tonight.”
IX
Christine and Zack waited for Jonathan to verify their identity and let them back into the lab. She looked up at the camera, baffled that some people knew how to keep things going when her apartment had been lost to this apocalyptic world so quickly. Liam had tried so hard to give them every advantage and resource he could think of but in the end it all fell to pieces. That was just the world they lived in now.
Jonathan swung the doors open and stood behind the glass as they led the stocky horse carrying its thrashing cargo inside. Blue’s hooves clomped on the tile floor, echoing down every hallway running off the main entryway. This drew everyone in the place out of their offices and work areas, curious to see if Christine and Zack had accomplished their mission or failed miserably.
It’s like they expected you to fail, Liam’s voice breathed into her. She did her best to ignore him but found herself agreeing. They looked at her with shock and surprise, like they hadn’t expected them to find any fresh zombies let alone two. Anger rose inside her but she squelched it. She shouldn’t assume anything about these people. She didn’t even know them. All she knew was they were the ones who could save her sister and the world, and that was good enough for her. They could think whatever they wanted about her as long as Gretchen came out of it OK.
Dr. Bhatt greeted the couple with a demure grin, her hands folded in front of her. “Welcome back,” she said warmly. “I see you were successful on your trip.”
“Took a while but we got ‘em,” Zack said. His eyes shifted to his feet as he pretended to be watching where Blue placed his hooves so he didn’t get stepped on. Really it ate him up inside to not tell everyone the entire truth. Some would say he was keeping information to himself while others would see it as a flat out lie. It ate him up not knowing what these people considered it.
“Well, let’s get them to their confinement and start running tests,” she said, waving her arm toward one of the spidering hallways that led to the stairs to the basement.
There was no offer to help them carry the frenzied bodies, she simply showed them the way and let them figure it out. Christine and Zack looked at each other, both rolling their eyes. They were sore, they were tired, and the last thing they wanted to do was lug these fresh zombies around.
“For the greater good,” Zack encouraged himself and Christine as he grabbed the first one slumped over Blue’s back under the arms. He dragged it down to stand upright and Christine grabbed the once-woman’s ankles. Both grunted with the effort it took, their feet shuffling in small, quick paces. Lifting these beings was nothing like lifting a living human, who despite their best efforts still helped a little in the process by constricting and tightening muscles to not fall. This woman was dead weight. She had no concept of falling, of being hurt, as she moaned and groaned beneath the strip of tape over her mouth.
When they came back to get the other one they found Jonathan gingerly trying to pick the other woman off the small horse and stand it upright. Its body writhed like an angry snake all bound up. He lost his grip and the body came crashing to the ground, taking part in a sickening version of the worm. Christine and Zack rushed over and lifted together.
“Thanks for trying,” Christine said over her shoulder to the poor kid who stood dumbfounded where they left him. Once he’d processed what had happened, how close he’d come to one of those things for the first time in his career there, he blinked away the fear and jogged after them.
“How long until they get working on updating this vaccine? When can we test it out?” Christine asked as the intern followed close behind them.
“They’re going to start right away. It varies, but they’ve gotten pretty good at inserting new strains into the vaccine. I’d say maybe tomorrow.” He said this last part with little confidence.
“Tomorrow?!” Christine blurted out, almost dropping her end of the body.
“Christine,” Zack started to reason but stopped. He looked to her with turned down eyes that begged her to be understanding and sympathetic. She let it go for the moment.
Once they were done and the zombies were in their own glass holding pens like the one Gretchen was in, Christine walked quickly away. She didn’t stop to look at her sister, examine her dissension, talk to her as if she were still human and could understand. If anything had changed for the worse, Christine knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it, and so she ignored it. She went back up the stairs two at a time and retired to her living quarters in the employee lounge. She couldn’t hear anyone’s footsteps following behind her. A part of her was glad to have some time alone to reflect and break down in privacy if she needed to, but another part of her was mad. It was as if no one in this place cared anything for her, even Zack. She knew deep down that wasn’t true, that he was probably just giving her space. But that other part of her, the part that sounded like Liam, told her no one cared if she lived or died.
It was time to make that voice stop.
The door to the lounge quietly opened while she stripped off her hoodie and threw it onto one of the chairs. She sat down and undid the laces of her boots, not needing to look up to know Zack had finally made his way back to her.
“We need to talk,” she said with determination.
Zack lowered himself in the chair two down from her and let out a sigh of exhaustion. “Yeah,” he said, “we probably do.”
Christine searched for the words to say but where to begin? So much had happened since they set out on their mission. She was sure it had changed the way Zack would look at her forever, if he could bring himself to ever look at her again. Instead, he was starting at the ceiling, his head resting back until it lay on the back of the padded chair. He had his hands intertwined on his chest casually, his legs stretched out before him.
Should she start with the horrifying thing she tried to do to that poor woman? With the voices in her head that make her think and do things she would never have dreamed of before? The fact that she felt more alone than ever now that she’d messed everything up? That she was worried she’d ruined her relationship with the last person in the world she cared about?
She lowered her head to stare at her folded hands in her lap. Her eyes closed softly as questions raced in her mind. She took in a slow breath and let it escape from her lips in wisps before daring to speak. “I’m not good at this,” she spoke softly, cautiously, “but would you pray with me?”
Zack sat up at this and looked at her with furrowed brows. “I never took you for the religious type,” he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“I’m not,” she admitted, “but I’ve tried everything else I can to get rid of this darkness in me. I don’t know if there’s someone looking out for us. It sure doesn’t seem like there is.” She huffed a breathy laugh at this. She forced her eyes up to look into Zack’s. “But it’s the last thing I can think to do that I haven’t tried. I can’t live like this anymore.”
Zack moved over one chair to sit next to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The warmth of his body made her muscles relax into his familiarity. It felt like home.
“Lord, God, I don’t know if you’re listening to us anymore down here but we need your help. I need your help.”
Zack gave her shoulder a squeeze of support and leaned his temple against hers. “God, please help my friend here,” he took over when her voice wavered.
Christine let his words fill her mind and clear it of all the anxiety, stress, and fear that lived there. She had the eerie feeling that they weren’t alone anymore. The hairs on her neck stood on end as a chill ran up her spine. She opened her eyes and saw Liam’s form standing in the corner across from them. This wasn’t entirely strange since his passing months ago; she’d seen him, heard him, felt him almost every single day. It became a comfort to her even though she knew it wasn’t right, that he wasn’t supposed to be there, that in all reality it wasn’t even her Liam.
Liam stood with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, his leg cocked as he stood relaxed as he so often had when he was alive. His ginger hair was outgrown and shaggy as it’d been in his last days. He looked up at her through fair lashes, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a smile. She smiled back, Zack’s voice now a distant hum.
“Goodbye, Liam,” she whispered.
Zack squeezed her hand in encouragement, thinking it a part of her prayer. “Please rid her of the voices in her head and the spirits she sees. They influence her, God, to do things she wouldn’t normally do and I beg you to come and swoop down and save her…”
Christine focused on his words again, though her eyes were still trained on the Liam before her. Slowly, his face contorted with a deep-seeded rage. His jaw clenched tight, the veins in his neck bulging and pulsating, his lips trembling. She found she couldn’t look away from his eyes. They had once been a brilliant green sea she’d often gotten lost in but now they were wide and radiating a deep crimson, his brows knit tightly together above them giving him a deranged and unstable look. He removed his hands from his pockets and stood tall, his fists clenched and shaking at his side.
As Zack continued, Liam started to fade, his form disappearing before Christine’s eyes until there was nothing left to see but the wall he once stood in front of.
“Amen,” Zack concluded.
Christine agreed. “Amen.”
X
Olivia came to a skidding halt by Lee’s side. His chest rose and fell in heavy heaves as he rested against a beat-up car in the Walgreens parking lot.
“Lee!” she all but yelled as she tried to look him over. “What’s wrong? What happened? Where are you hurt?” she asked in a flurry, her hands roving his body to find the wound.
