I fire once, twice.

  “Two. One.”

  Zee falls to his knees. Blood gushes uncontrollably from the side of his neck, and yet his hands still reach out for me, clutching at the air. As he leans forward, the side of his skull falls away and he collapses in a heap. One of my shots has clipped his head, shattering his skull. He slumps to the concrete and his brains slide out onto the grass.

  Jane screams for help. She’s being overrun.

  I turn and fire across the road at the zombies closing in on her, but I’m such a lousy shot. I don’t know what I hit, only that I didn’t hit Zee in the head.

  “I’m out,” I say to no one other than myself. There’s one more zombie climbing the hill toward me, but Jane is facing roughly a dozen of the rabid creatures.

  David joins her.

  Unlike us girls, who steady our aim by leaning against car doors or over car roofs as we fire, David marches forward as he shoots. He strides down the hill, reducing the distance as he culls the herd. I’m not sure how many shots he fires, but he empties one clip, reloads in an instant, and then empties another. Shots resound in rapid succession and zombies fall behind the parked cars until David is the only one standing.

  Knowing his clips hold eighteen or nineteen rounds each, I figure he killed one zombie for every three or four shots, but the speed with which he felled them was impressive. And I’m reminded of his point about doing whatever it takes to survive the next thirty seconds. Here am I, trying to conserve ammo, when I should be blasting Zee to hell. What good’s spare ammo if you get bitten?

  It takes me around twenty seconds to reload. I fumble with the box of shells in my pocket, but Zee is too close. I’ve hesitated. It’s too late.

  I slip my gun into the holster in the small of my back and grab my baseball bat, bracing myself as the last zombie staggers toward me. To my surprise, the side of his head explodes. I turn and look. David has his arm outstretched, holding his Glock perfectly steady. I could hug him.

  There are more zombies clambering up the hill, but they’re stragglers and most of them are badly injured, having been clipped by the truck or the cars. The horde is effectively gone.

  We’ve won.

  Steve rolls up in a black Cadillac. He jumps out and is about to let the Caddy loose when David says, “Hang on, we’re going to need that.”

  David pauses for a second. He’s making life and death decisions for us, but I trust him. “Time to consolidate ammo and water. Dump everything else.”

  He tips his backpack to one side and the contents sprawl out over the concrete path. Jane slings a canteen over her shoulder and stuffs her pockets with ammo clips. I jog over, pushing the ejector on my pistol and letting the empty shells fall to the concrete before reloading my gun.

  “What are you thinking?” Steve asks David. He leaves the car parked in the middle of the road and grabs a box of shells from his pack.

  I consolidate my water and top up Steve’s canteen as David continues.

  “I’m thinking we’ve got ten minutes. Twenty minutes max before this place is crawling with zombies again. That gunfire is going to bring them in from miles around.”

  “So what do we do?” Jane asks. “Time to bug out?”

  I say, “I count seventeen zombies staggering up the hill toward us and another three coming in from the rear.”

  David says, “I think we go on. We can slip past them. We’ll leave our packs here as bait. The smell will draw them in. We use the car to creep past without leaving a scent trail.”

  David is astonishingly calm under pressure.

  “Smart,” says Jane.

  Steve and David climb into the front seats of the Cadillac while Jane and I get in the back. We both have water canteens slung over our shoulders, resting on our hips.

  “Get down,” David says.

  Steve’s driving, if driving is the right word. I can hear him frantically pumping the dead foot brake with his boots as we roll down the hill, trying to build up pressure in the brake lines and slow our speed. He’s also working the hand brake and I’m hoping this plan is going to work. If our brakes fail we’re in serious trouble.

  David has his seat back reclined so he can lie below the window. Jane and I huddle half in the foot well, half on the rear seats. Steve has slipped as low as he can while still watching where we are going.

  “I’m not liking these brakes,” David says as our speed increases.

  “There are other ways of stopping,” Steve says, and I feel the car lurch to one side and clip several zombies. Blood splatters across the windshield. The car rides up over the crumpled bodies. As there’s no engine noise, I can hear bones breaking beneath the weight of the vehicle.

  The slope levels out and Steve brings us to a halt in the middle of the intersection on top of a pile of dead and dying zombies.

  Outside, Zee wanders around in a daze.

  “Not good,” David says.

  Peering over the door, I can see hundreds, perhaps thousands of zombies stretching along the broad avenue into the distance. We thought we’d killed most of them, but we barely made a dent in their numbers. For now, they’re ignoring us.

  A herd of zombies mills around by the mall, but they look confused, unsure what has happened or what their response should be, which is quite surreal. Steve assesses the situation.

  “We’re not going to stand a chance in that animal hospital. There are too many of them. They’ll trap us in seconds.”

  “So what do we do?” I ask.

  “Jane and I will run a diversion. We’ll head down the road making as much goddamn noise as we can to buy you some time in the hospital. You get in and you get out in five minutes, is that understood?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Regardless of whether you find those worm tablets or not, you get in and you get out. You don’t go to ground. You don’t linger. You stay on the move. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you bug out. Follow the waypoints home, and we live to fight another day. Understood?”

  “Yes,” Steve replies.

  “OK. Go!”

  We climb out of the Cadillac, leaving the doors open. The zombies ignore us. They looked dazed, almost bewildered, as though the carnage around us has deeply affected them. Broken bodies and crushed skulls litter the ground. Blood runs in the gutter like rainwater after a storm.

  The lone zombie standing on the grass lets out a wail and Zee turns in unison. A chill runs through my body as hundreds of heads turn and stare at us. I’m starting to think my crazy concept of Zee, treating all zombies as one, isn’t too far from the truth.

  None of them move. They just stand there, staring us down, watching, waiting for our next step. Of everything I’ve seen in the zombie apocalypse, this is the most terrifying. Hundreds of zombies standing perfectly still for miles, all looking at us. There’s no noise, just the wind swirling through the air.

  We step cautiously away from the Cadillac. I step forward slowly, feeling my way with my boots, pushing between the bloody pile of broken arms and smashed legs, searching for concrete to stand on.

  Zee watches.

  Dark eyes take in our every step with the intensity of a tiger stalking its prey.

  “Ready?” David asks from the far side of the Caddie.

  “No,” Steve replies, and I know what he means. I don’t think any of us are ready for what we know is about to happen. At this point, our lives are measured in seconds, in little more than the beat of my racing heart.

  “Go!” David yells, screaming at the top of his lungs.

  David and Jane run away from the Caddie.

  Jane stumbles on the rubble, but she stays on her feet. David picks up a brick and hurls it at a store window. A pane of glass shatters, crashing to the ground like thunder.

  Zombies scream with excitement.

  Jane has her tire iron. She runs along next to a chain-link fence, running the tire iron against the metal and causing an almighty racket.

  Zombies swarm out of the mall, running after them. They’re fast, faster than anything I’ve seen before. They leap over cars, slide across hoods, and sprint with their arms pumping like Olympic athletes. Zee moves with the grace of a cheetah descending on a weary antelope.

  Steve and I run for the doors of the animal hospital as David fires rapidly at the runners, emptying his magazine into the herd. There are too many of them.

  I want to shout at David and Jane, to plead for them to come back because they’re running into a trap, but Steve pulls me on toward the animal hospital.

  Over my shoulder, I catch a glimpse of David and Jane turning up a side street. Barely a second later, the horde swarms into the street behind them.

  “In and out,” Steve says, as though I need a reminder.

  Steve must have seen David and Jane, but he hasn’t said anything. He must know they don’t stand a chance. He’s focused, keeping me on task. There will be time to mourn later.

  “This had better work,” I say, and for the first time I doubt my father.

  Steve opens the door to the hospital and everything changes. Our plans are ruined by one unforeseen circumstance: darkness.

  Chapter 10: Zee

  The door swings shut behind us. There’s barely any light in the reception area. The blinds have been drawn and what little light there is slips in through the cracks, tormenting us with nothing but a vague outline of the room.

  There’s a waist-high reception desk at the far end of the room, partially obscuring a darkened doorway. A row of chairs lines one wall. The floor is sticky under our boots. A soft squelch marks each step.

  “Shit!”

  I’m pretty sure Steve and I both spoke at the same time.

  A zombie growls in the shadows.

  I’ve got my gun out, pointing in the direction of the sound, but a shot fired in here is a really bad idea. Whatever zombies are in the building will come flying through that darkened doorway at us and we don’t stand a chance of making a single head shot, let alone dozens. I can barely see my gun outstretched in front of me and have no idea what I’m aiming at. My hand shakes.

  “Five minutes, Haze,” Steve whispers. “If we’re going to do this, we have to move.”

  I’m about to ask, are you crazy? But this is my crazy, stupid idea. Every instinct I have says to back quietly out the door and run like hell, but he’s right. We’ve come all this way. If my father is correct, the answers we need are in this building.

  I put my gun away. As much as I want to cling to it for security, it’s useless in the dark. I switch the baseball bat to my right hand and raise trusty old Nathan up over my shoulder, ready to bash anything that comes flying at me.

  My foot catches on something lying on the floor and I stumble. I don’t want to know what it is. I’m just glad it doesn’t move. I’m overwhelmed by a sudden fear of another bony hand grabbing at my ankle. I can almost feel those dead fingers clinging to my leg again. Carefully, cautiously, I step over whatever is lying there.

  Steve creeps forward, his footsteps betrayed by the sticky floor. Steve is left-handed. He’s a southpaw. I should have noticed before now, but up until this moment it hasn’t held any significance. Now, though, being left-handed means we can push our shoulders against each other as we creep through the room, ready to strike at the shadows. We’re the mirror image of each other, covering different sides of the room.

  Zee snarls.

  “In the doorway,” Steve whispers.

  I can’t see anything. My mind plays tricks on me, and I’m sure someone is creeping up behind us. I want to turn and look behind me, but I keep my eyes forward, desperately trying to make out any movement in the grainy darkness.

  A dark arm reaches across the counter as Zee climbs up onto the reception desk. I feel the muscles in Steve’s back and shoulder flex as he swings, and that’s my cue. I swing on instinct, putting everything I can into my strike. I can’t see anything other than the black outline of the door and dark fingers on the counter. I’m trusting Steve. Both our bats collide with something. Steve strikes slightly higher. I think I hit a jaw, as I see the black outline of a head skew to one side as Steve’s steel pipe glances up off a crushed skull.

  Blood splatters across the countertop.

  Zee falls, slumping from the counter onto the floor. I can’t help but think that it was too easy. Normally, we have to beat these monsters to death.

  I reach for the blinds, opening them and allowing daylight to flood the room.

  The body lying in front of us is emaciated, looking more like a starving child than a zombie. The skin is yellow, stretched tight over a bony frame.

  I’m shocked to see four or five other zombies huddled in the corner. They mumble with the influx of light, but they’re staring at each other. They look confused. It seems they don’t notice us or don’t recognize us as food. I’m not sure how long that will last and don’t want to wait to find out. Like the zombie that attacked us, they’re little more than skin and bones. Their muscles have atrophied, wasting away.

  Several zombie corpses lie scattered on the ground, only they’re not injured in any visible way. They’ve collapsed and died where they’ve fallen.

  Steve takes my hand and pulls me on. Neither of us take our eyes off the zombies stirring in the corner. It’s as though they’re drowsy, like they’re waking from slumber.

  We creep around the desk, stepping over untouched corpses, hoping they’re not alive. One of them stirs. A hand reaches for my leg. I bat it away softly, more pushing than hitting it, and the hand collapses, exhausted.

  Steve leads me through the darkened doorway and down a narrow corridor. There are offices on either side, and it’s then I realize the hopelessness of our situation. I barely have any idea what I’m looking for. I’m hoping to find something that can be identified as an anti-parasitic tablet, but in the darkness I’d never know where they were kept. There was a collapsed stand in the lobby. Leaflets and packages lay strewn on the floor. We could have walked right past several packets of worming tablets and not even known it.

  The corridor ends, opening out into a large room. It’s pitch black in here and my heart is pounding in my chest. I’m expecting to be attacked at any second. The thought of being eaten alive in the darkness, unable to defend or even see my attacker terrifies me. A thin crack around the far door provides the only light.

  I bump into a steel cage, knocking it from a bench onto the ground. The cage crashes to the floor and zombies stir in the dark. I can hear them bumping into things, moaning softly, snarling as we walk past.

  “Shhh,” Steve whispers, and I want to scream at him to hurry up. I know I’m supposed to be quiet. I don’t need him to tell me that. I’m not trying to make noise. I can’t see anything. I’m shaking with fear.

  Steve leads me on further into the darkness.

  I let go of his hand. I have to. It’s impossible to trust solely in him, knowing he can’t see anything either. I need some other point of reference. Touch is the only sense I have, that and the soft sound of our boots on the linoleum. I’m reminded of David’s warning: we rely on sight; they rely on scent. There’s a deep growl from somewhere behind me. They know we’re here. We’ve got to get out of here. I push on Steve’s back, but he won’t go any faster.

  “I think this is some kind of holding room,” Steve whispers.

  “Just move,” I reply, and I realize he’s as afraid as I am. He’s trying to move as fast as he can, but he too desperately wants to avoid stumbling into Zee in the darkness. There could be a zombie just inches away from me and I wouldn’t know it until he bit.

  The stench is overwhelming. I’m on the verge of throwing up.

  I run my fingers along the bars of a series of floor-to-ceiling cages, giving myself a sense of direction.

  Steve stops.

  I sense rather than see him come to a halt in the darkness. Light bleeds into the room from around the door frame.

  Steve opens the door and sunlight streams in, blinding me for a moment. I turn and there are dozens of zombies in the cages lining the walls. Someone trapped them in here. They’re all dead, but not from gunshot wounds. Most of them are little more than skeletons, having rotted away.

  Feet pound on the floor behind us. Someone’s running after us, racing out of the darkness.

  We hurry through the door. A pale zombie emerges from the shadows with its arms outstretched, only he looks like a drowning man reaching for a rope. Steve slams the steel fire door behind us, sealing Zee in the darkness.

  Zee pounds feebly on the metal door, almost begging to be let out.

  We’re in a warehouse at the back of the hospital. Sunlight comes in through the high windows. Large rolling doors open out onto an industrial loading dock that must have served several other business in the adjacent buildings.

  A zombie walks past as casually as a worker might when heading out for a break. With pale skin and sickly green hair, he could be a punk rocker punching a time clock in a factory before heading out to play in a band on the weekend. If only that were the case. Either Zee doesn’t see us, or he doesn’t realize we haven’t turned.

  As he walks away, I can see he’s lost his right arm just below the elbow. It’s a common injury, suggesting he was protecting his face and neck when he was attacked as a human. His loss is a stark reminder that these monsters were all once like us. That’s the madness of the apocalypse—the innocent become murderers. I can only hope I won’t end up like him.

  “Jackpot,” Steve says, pointing at the aisles full of dusty boxes. The animal hospital was well stocked before the outbreak and hasn’t been looted. I guess pet shampoo and cat collars weren’t high priority items in the early days.

  A shadow passes over the window above us. The warehouse is recessed into the side of the hill we just came down. Although we’re twenty feet below the windows, the angle of the hill means Zee is almost level with the windows outside. There’s an office at the rear of the warehouse, forming a mezzanine level.

  “They’re looking for us.”

  “We’re out of time, Haze,” Steve says. “One quick sweep of the floor and we’re out of here.”

 

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