Dead River, page 20
When their eyes met, her cheeks blushed and a tear dripped off her chin; her eyes glinted. They didn’t want to talk about it because it would do no good. It is what it is.
“Do you?”
He said confusedly. “Do I what?”
“Do you still love me like—”
Before she could finish, he leaped out of his chair. He didn’t care about what she’d said in the car on the way home from the doctor’s office or that she wasn’t hungry when they were passing their favorite Chinese restaurant (God knows he could use some Kung Pao Chicken right about now) on the way home or even that she’d said she’d felt so dirty that she needed to take a shower.
All he wanted to do was hold her and never let her go no matter how hard she tried to push him away. This wasn’t something they could forget about like a broken heirloom or a marital spat; it had come out of nowhere, unseen by either one of them until it was too late.
“I love you, baby.”
She buried her face in his left shoulder, her skin cool to the touch, as he whispered those words in her ear. She wriggled to free herself from his grasp only for them to perform a compressed half-dance, her strangled cries exploding inside the screened-in porch like water bursting from a ruptured dam. He told her it wasn’t her fault, that it just hadn’t worked out the way they thought it would and that they could never—
A voice snapped him back to reality.
“Fuck this, B-Head!” The wigger said. “They won’t get too far on foot. Let’s circle around and try to cut them off.”
Footsteps shuffled across the overpass as they leaped into the Jeep. They sped off, their tires screeching at the bleak landscape; the engine roared overhead before receding in the distance.
Dominic let out a long-deflated sigh and fell back onto the grass, his chest rising and falling. Teresa stood up to meet Colin’s gaze, confusion creasing her brows.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?” He said coyly.
“We called your name like ten times.” Pixie said.
“We can take a break if you want.”
“I’m good.” He said. “The quicker we get there, the quicker we get out of here.”
“Are you sure?” Teresa said.
Colin nodded and then tiptoed back down the hill. He didn’t know if they believed him or not but he could feel the heat of their suspicious glances bearing down on him. When he cleared the railing, the others followed.
“Where do we go from here?”
“We can’t go that way,” She said. “Because the bridge going into town was blown up in a tanker truck accident.”
“I saw that on the news.” Dominic said. “We have to keep heading east and then follow that road into the back of town.”
It was her turn to nod.
“It’s not the easiest way but it’s the only way.”
Colin nodded.
They jogged down the road, noticing more vehicles along the way. Teresa led the pack again for about half of a click and then hung back to join Colin at the rear of the line.
They passed a wide stretch of green-yellow grass backed by a wall of naked oaks and shaggy-headed pines. Dominic gave a protesting groan as the mingled stench of pine sap and skunk urine wafted across his face. They exited the thinly-shaded road and found themselves at the mouth of another T-shaped intersection.
On the left, the road meandered through wide stretches of faded green farmland; a bright red barn loomed in the distance as if it’d been freshly painted. The road on the right ran along an old wooden fence and disappeared into a heavily shaded area. Tall jagged mountains crowned by a high wall of trees jutted toward the sky, resembling the back drop of a movie.
Teresa snapped her fingers and stopped everyone in their tracks. She pressed her left hand against Colin’s chest and raised her right hand at shoulder level, fingers spaced apart.
“Go down to the end of the road and we’ll meet up with you in a bit.” She said, waving the others away.
Colin narrowed his gaze at her as the others did what she asked. She braced her hands on her hips, pursed her lips together in a mask of anger and scanned him up and down. A thin net of wrinkles etched themselves across the corners of his eyes and mouth, making her look much older than she was.
“Is something bothering you?”
“You know why I’ve stopped you.” Colin said. “Did you forget what those assholes said before they drove off?”
She peered quizzically at him, then placed her hands on her hips.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know which one of you it is but one of you is a goddamn spy and I want to know now right now.”
Dominic, Pixie and the kids cast mystified glances at them. They stared quizzically at him, taken off guard by his accusation.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind, haven’t you?” She said.
“No, I haven’t.” He said. “I know what I saw and–”
She scanned him from head to toe.
“I’ve seen this before, Colin. This isn’t a good time for everyone and it’s an even worse time for you to pull this shit.”
“I’m fine.” He said, clasping his hands together in a mock prayer. “I need to know who I can trust and who I can’t.”
“I’ve known these people for a long time. If we wanted to betray you, we would’ve done it by now.”
“I wouldn’t be saying this if it was a possibility.” He said. “I’m not trying to cause a rift between anyone but we all heard it.”
He knew the more that he talked about it the less she was going to believe him.
“All I heard was something about a gee-pee-ess tracker.” She said. “If we keep going, we don’t have to worry about–”
“Look out!” Dominic said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
COLIN and Teresa spun around and gazed in the direction they’d came from. Pixie let off a strangled cry and stepped back, clutching Jason’s left sleeve. Dominic flinched as if he were thinking about running then thought better of it.
Another horde of zombies stumbled out from both sides of the road, crushing fallen twigs under their footsteps as skeletal gray branches clung to them and left tiny, jagged cuts across their exposed skin. A pair of tall brawny male zombies wearing red shirts under blue-jean coveralls and a pair of skinny male zombies in Amish clothes appeared from the right. A trio of squat old female zombies with bedhead gray hair wearing blood-soaked muumuus and baggy brown stockings.
Teresa swung the Glock back around and hit the two farmers in each of their right eyes. Chunks of brain matter and red pulp sprayed out the back of their skulls and plopped onto the hot black tarmac. When an old woman reached out for his left shoulder, Colin slipped the hammer out of his pocket and rapped it hard against the crown of her skull; a river of blood oozed across his wrist, sliding down her face and chin. She shot the tallest of the two Amish teens, hitting him in the right side of the neck, spraying a stream of arterial blood.
Gripping the Glock in her right hand, she said, “Run.”
The others hurried out ahead of her, crunching powdery-white gravel under their feet. Colin reared his arm back to take another swing, changed his mind and ran after them. He caught up with them after half a mile and grimaced at the pinpricks of pain jabbing at his midsection.
When he felt a fetid breath on the nape of his neck, Colin winced and ran after them. Pinpricks of pain flaring across his midsection, he caught up with them after almost two miles. In the distance, a rusted metal windmill loomed over a flaking-red barn and spun lazily in the breeze.
At the end of the road, they skidded to a stop, gazed across the quiet country side and let off a mixed chorus of breathy moans and sharp-edged curse words. Dominic wrapped his left across Pixie’s chest, hissed a string of curse words under his breath as the color bled from his face, his eyes wide with shock.
The first horde shambled across a rolling carpet of sunbaked grass spread out along the right shoulder of the road. Women, men and children wore torn bloody clothes that exposed chunks of missing flesh; their sunken gray skin reeked like roadkill, their eyes had a milky blue tint as saliva glinted off the edges of their rotting black teeth. A chorus of moans echoed toward them from the right as a second horde came toward them, their arms slumped against their sides; their heavy lidded milky blue eyes bearing down on them.
Colin nodded to Teresa, stretched his left arm across Pixie, Dominic and the kids’ chests and shoulders. He slipped the baton she’d given him out of his left rear pocket and tightened his right hand around the handle until it hurt. She thumbed back the hammer of her Glock, slammed her right hand against her thigh and heard the sound of metal clanging inside of her ears as the .22 slid into her palm.
The first horde was still a good—and comfortable—distance away but the second was now their central concern. A current of electricity tingled along the back of their necks, prickling their skin with fear and a deep cold paralysis settled into their bones.
It was do-or-die. At least they would’ve went down fighting.
Colin slid the night stick from her waistband and gripped it in his left hand. A long gravel road stretched across faded yellow farmlands backed by tall grassy hills looming in the distance.
They didn’t say a word as the first three zombies began to shrink the gap and close in on them. Instead, they held their breath and savored the gusts of cool crisp air caressing their skin.
A tall dark-haired man wearing a black tee-shirt and gore-stained blue jeans dragged his half-eaten leg behind him, leaving a snail trail of blood in his wake. A heavyset woman with a pumpkin colored bob wore a loose-fitting nightgown splattered in blood and a large hole in the middle of her stomach. Two ferret-faced men in oil-stained street clothes sported two bloody-red stumps where their left and right hands used to be.
Colin hissed from behind tightly-clenched teeth, swung the claw hammer in an arc across the man’s head and sent him to the pavement in a drunken ballet dance, spraying a mist of blood and shattered teeth. Teresa swung her pistol over to her right, squeezed the trigger twice and sent the woman flying backward amongst a spray of blood. He then spun the nightstick in his right fist and swung it in a whistling arc across the first young man’s face and flung him into the crowd.
She raised both guns and fired, hitting the other farm boy in the face. He stepped up, swinging the hammer and the nightstick in one fluid motion one after the other, flinging his arms across his chest striking one after the other as he inhaled with each swing and exhaled when he struck home, his weapons pounding into their flesh like soft mud squishing beneath heavy boots.
Gunfire roared across the quiet countryside, filling the air with the acrid smell of gunpowder and blood. Teresa stayed behind with the others, her fingers working the triggers with liquid-like reflexes as each bullet mowed down the left side of the horde, spraying mists of dingy-black blood as recoil pounded against her shoulders like sledgehammers.
She had to concentrate on creating a pocket of distance between them and those ugly fiends. She quickly slipped the .22 inside the crevice between her knees, popped the empty out of the Glock and jacked in a new one.
She tried to retrieve her pistol when it slid out of her grasp. Something clenched the back of her ball cap and, arching her spine, jerked her head back. She tightened her hand around the grip of her Glock and reared her arm back ready to strike when she caught movement from the corner of her left eye.
“I’ll take that.” A familiar voice said.
In all her angry, pink pixie-haired demeanor, Pixie snatched the. 22 out of Teresa’s hand and thumbed back the hammer. Teresa glanced over and saw the same look on Pixie’s face she’d seen on Dominic back at the overpass. Her mouth was set in a hard line to match the tight shrunken lips and the dark narrow slant in her eyes.
Pixie was tired of running, tired of living in fear and being chased around like some little field mouse. She knew that if she didn’t act now, if she didn’t muster up even a shred of courage, they would not only devour her flesh but both her soul and her pride. The last thing she wanted was to end up like one of them.
A faceless blonde girl in a white floral print dress covered in sporadic bibs of blood clutched the back of Colin’s right shoulder. Her fingers pressed into the crown of his shoulder, sending snakes of sharp hot pain wriggling down his back, coiling around his spine. His legs trembled and his knees weakened under the heavy pressure of her bloated gray fingers.
Colin shook it off, brushed her hand away and drove his left elbow hard into the bridge of her nose. Her head snapped back as a mist of blood and broken teeth spewed from her twisted gray mouth. He peered out of the corner of his left eye and glanced over his shoulder.
A tall bald man in denim coveralls over a red tee-shirt came staggering toward him. His gray withered skin along his lower left jawline had been peeled back, exposing a road map of nibbled flesh streaked with veins of bone. Colin spun around, swung the nightstick in a whistling arc across his chest and struck him hard across the right temple.
As the jawless man flailed back, a thick gray finger grazed across the back of Colin’s left ear. His skin bristling with fear, panic submerged him like waves of ice water.
Lucid snakes of heat wriggled off the pavement like ghosts grasping for purchase. Beads of sweat lent a bright sheen across his clean-shaven head, slid down his temples and trickled down his sides.
They nearly got the drop on him for a second but he shrugged them off. He began to part the crowd once again, hammer then baton and then back again, repeating each motion as if he were a street-cred artiste with a spray can, blood and limbs flying in a spasmodic dance.
A rotten putrid breath caressed the back of his neck. The horde began to close in around him, their bloated gray fingers caressing his face and clothes. Snakes of cold fear wriggled down his back, coiled around his spine and spread a carpet of gooseflesh down his entire body.
He thought for a split second that it was over. He thought they would leave him behind just as he’d instructed and find their way to Abilene on their own whether by boat or by foot.
A second barrage of gunfire burst across the road, each shot sending these ugly fiends to their deaths one at a time. Large drops of soot-black blood dripped onto his arms, soaked the back of his head and splattered onto the back of his tee-shirt as their shadows were flung backward; when he could feel the sun burning the back of his neck his stomach fluttered with relief.
The air stirred against the back of his tee-shirt.
“Stand up, dipshit.” A familiar voice said.
Colin stood and saw the mad angry look on Pixie’s face. She gripped the .22 in her small pale fist as wisps of white smoke spewed out from the barrel and dissipated in thin air. He drew a large cloud of sour country air deep into his lungs and sighed.
Jason hugged his little sister, pressing her face against the front of his tee-shirt. The mingled look of fear and shock etched tiny lines along the corners of his eyes and lips. A lone tear sliding down his face, bowed his head to plant a small kiss on the crown of Rosie’s forehead, brushed the back of his hand across his left cheek and wiped it away.
“Thanks.”
Pixie dropped her arm in a half-swinging motion as if to toss him the gun when a loud scream exploded across the dry-yellow expanse. She froze in mid-swing and spun around on panicked heels, her sneakers making soft whispers along the bubbly-black tarmac. Colin followed her gaze and watched in horror as the first horde began to close the gap between them, his heart thudded.
The voice was childish and panic-stricken. Their skin bristling with fear, they gazed down the harsh-yellow meadow with narrow black eyes. Beads of cold sweat slid down their faces and gathered in great pools under their arms.
A decaying two-story Victorian house stood on the crown of a tall grassy incline, its steeply-pitched roof looking dark and ominous in the clear blue sky. The meadow rose from the back of the house in a bright-yellow slant and flattened out against the base of the tree line. A black-iron wind vane in the shape of a spiky-haired rooster spun in the cool summer breeze and gave a loud piercing whine.
Colin saluted the sun and squinted at the house.
“Get in here, quick.” The voice urged.
Dominic clamped his hand across his chin. “Thank God! Let’s go.”
Teresa reached out for his left shoulder and missed. His labored breathing mingled with the sound of the contents rustling inside of his bookbag and brushed it away.
Instead, she popped a few more shots into the horde and sent them tumbling across the meadow. She didn’t bother with accuracy because she was just looking to take them down and get back to Dominic. If she tried hard enough, she might even reason with him.
“Stop, Dominic.”
“That little girl needs us.” He said.
“We don’t even know who’s in there.”
Colin stood between them and the house, twisted his hip to the right and popped two shots into the head of a third bald heavyset farmer with a hole in his throat. He didn’t bother to check the clip so he swung the gun to the left and struck two more zombies and sent them rolling across the meadow; their legs came out from underneath them and struck the others shambling from behind them. He waved the others ahead of him and looked down at his hands before he realized he’d left the batons back with the second horde; they winked in the sun like the edges of a chrome bumper.
He had Teresa’s gun now and that was better. This way, he couldn’t be surrounded.
Three more shambled down the hill on the far left. He raised the .22 and cut them down at the knees, spraying a stream of blood across the meadow. When he hit the trigger again, the gun clicked empty.
“Do you have any clips for this, fucking thing?”
“Slow the fuck down.” Teresa said.
