Chapter Eight
Tobe screams and Ryder brings his rifle up. He pulls the trigger, and a zombie drops, but another quickly takes his place. There are dozens of them, and the four of us are no match, especially since I barely know how to shoot, and Tobe still doesn’t have a weapon.
She bends down and grabs a rusted piece of metal to defend herself with, and moves closer to Ryder. I bring my gun up and aim directly for the head of the nearest zombie. I pull the trigger, and the shot goes wide, lodging in the shoulder of the zombie next to him. “Shit!”
I aim again and squeeze the trigger. This time the bullet lodges in the zombie’s throat, but he doesn’t stop coming. The third shot buries itself in the zombie’s eye socket, and he crumples to the ground, tripping up two of the monsters behind him. I turn, looking for my next target.
A woman comes at me, drooling thick, yellowish slime down her front, and I shoot. My heart is beating wildly, my hands are sweating, and they’re shaking in fear. My shaking hands causes the gun to tremble and my next shot misses. Luckily, it hits a different zombie in the head, and that one drops. Reese moves closer to me and takes out three zombies with three shots.
He and Ryder are amazing with their weapons, and I have a strange moment of jealousy. If I was that good, we wouldn’t be in such a tight spot right now. We wouldn’t be stuck in a fight at a gas station, with a zombie horde separating Reese and I from Ryder and Tobe.
Reese fires again. “We’re gonna make our way back into the store, and we’re gonna find a window to shoot from.”
I start to back away from the jeep and the crowd of zombies, firing shots along the way. Reese shouts my name, and tosses me something from his pocket. It’s long and black, and I recognize it instantly. It’s another magazine for the gun; I’m running low on ammunition.
I raise the gun and fire two more shots. The third time I pull the trigger, nothing happens. It just clicks, and the zombie in front of me keeps charging. I don’t have time to do anything with the extra ammo before the zombie is within arms length. I give up trying to reload the gun and just tighten my hold on the grip and swing it as hard as I can when the zombie steps closer.
The impact knocks the zombie to the ground, and I bring the heel of my boot down on its head as hard as I can. Two more stomps and the head splits open, coating my black boots in thick, red blood. I step away, panting, and shift my grip on the gun.
The ammo is lying on the ground near the zombie with the caved in skull, and I don’t think I can get to it without being bitten. Looking around real quick, I notice that Ryder and Tobe are both splattered with blood, but holding their own at the jeep. Reese is nowhere to be seen, so I can’t tell if he’s alive or not.
For a second, even though I’m surrounded by zombies and gunfire, my heart clenches painfully at the thought of Reese lying dead or dying somewhere nearby. That one second of hesitation is enough to cost me, and a zombie comes up behind me, wrapping its arms around my neck.
Instinctively, I run backwards, slamming my back and the zombie hanging there against the gas station wall. I reach back with my foot, hook it behind the zombie’s leg, and yank. It rips away from my neck, taking a chunk of hair with it, and I cry out in pain.
Spinning away from the collapsed zombie, I slam my boot into its face, breaking the nose and driving bone fragments straight into the brain. It collapses and doesn’t move again. I take a quick second to catch my breath, and rub my head where the hair was yanked out.
Someone curses, and I see Reese fending off four zombies with a long hunting knife. He’s breathing harshly and his shirt is plastered to his chest with sweat. He looks like he’s running out of steam, and is going to collapse at any moment.
Thankfully the stream of zombies is lessening. There are only about a dozen or so left, and they’re all surrounding Ryder and Tobe by the jeep and Reese by the door to the gas station. They’re both in trouble, and I’m not sure who needs help more.
Reese swears again and that makes up my mind. Before I can help him, a group of zombies come out of seemingly nowhere. There are three of them, and I can’t take them all on at the same time without ammo. All I can do is run and hopefully find a way to fight them one at a time.
I turn, and take off across the parking lot. Two of the three zombies are freshly turned, and don’t have any problem keeping up with me. Thankfully the third one falls behind, and I have one less enemy to take on. Unfortunately, the two that remain are going to be hard to kill.
There’s a metal rail at the end of the parking lot, which is probably in place to keep cars from sliding into the deep ditch on the other side. I was planning on jumping the railing to slow them down and then keep running, but with the ditch there that plan goes out the window.
I run along the metal rail, searching for anything I can use to kill these zombies aside from my unloaded gun. I don’t have any other weapons except for the knife on my belt, but I don’t want to have to get that close to a zombie so I can use it. The lower the risk of infection the better.
There’s a painful stitch in my side, and I try to even out my breathing and calm my racing heart. I won’t be able to fight if I can’t even breathe right. I’m not going to die today just because I have the athleticism of a lazy fat kid.
I see a long, pointy stick, and I swoop down to pick it up. I quickly pivot, and ram the sharp end right through the eye of one of the zombies that was just inches from grabbing me. He twitches a few times, and then drops to the ground when I let go of the stick.
That wasn’t so hard. Only one more to go.
It charges at me, and I have nothing but a foot long stick and the knife. I unsheathe my knife and brace myself. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do to this zombie, but I do know that I’m not going down without one hell of a fight.
The zombie runs straight at me and I stab for the side of its head. The knife slashes along his forehead, and thick blood begins to leak from the cut. It doesn’t slow him down though, and he tackles me like a football player, knocking me backward and over the metal railing.
I tumble down the ditch with the zombie, trying to avoid being bitten or falling and impaling myself on my own knife. Halfway down the ditch, a white-hot pain flares up my left thigh and, when I reach the bottom, the knife flies from my hand and away from my grasp.
I’m trying to keep the zombie at arm’s length, and it lunges in for my throat, stopped only by my hands. The knife is well beyond my reach, and I don’t have any other weapons that I can use. All I can do is try to keep his hands and mouth away from my face and arms.
The zombie is no stronger than a normal man, but I’m half his size and in bad shape. The one thing I do have that he doesn’t is boots.
I bring my feet up under his stomach, and shove with all my strength. The zombie flies over my head, crashing into a tree behind us. Jumping to my feet, I grab a nearby rock as the zombie is standing, turn, and swing. It connects solidly with his head, sending him to the ground.
I drop down beside him and slam the rock into his head eleven more times. By the end, blood and brain matter are splattering everywhere, but I can’t bring myself to stop. Even though the zombie is dead and unmoving, I see it still coming for me, and keep swinging away with the rock.
Finally, I have to stop or risk having my arms fall off. When I drop the rock beside me, my arms are dead and feel like they have lead weights in them. My heart is still racing, and my breathing is fast and shallow. Right now, I feel ready to pass out and never wake up. Or even cry.
And that’s what I do. I take one quick look at the zombie nearby, and burst into tears. I’m alone at the bottom of a ditch with a dead zombie and blood spattered clothes, and my leg is burning from some injury I don’t have the guts to look at just yet. For all I know, I could look down and see the bone sticking out of my leg, but I ignore it; I just can’t handle anything else right now.
“Sam?”
I look around. “Ryder?”
Ryder’
s face appears over the metal guard rail. He easily vaults over the railing and slides down the ditch, landing on his feet near me. He takes one look at the dead zombie near me, and my red eyes and running nose, and his jaw tightens. “Have you been infected?”
I rub my face. “What? No. I think I cut myself on my knife on the way down,” I say, ashamed at how weak and exhausted my voice sounds. “Are Reese and Tobe alright?”
He nods, and takes a seat next to me. His hand hovers around the red-stained area on my jeans, and his eyes lift to mine and soften, asking for permission before he touches me. I don’t flinch away, and he pulls apart the shredded fabric, revealing a deep scratch that’s bleeding sluggishly.
Ryder pulls away and starts digging around in his pack. “Take your pants off.” At first I think he’s joking, but when he looks up and sees that I haven’t moved, he frowns. “What are you doing? Take your pants off.”
“I am not taking my pants off for you! Are you freaking crazy?”
He glares at me. “You need to clean the wound and bandage it, or risk infection. Zombies aren’t the only things that can infect you. Bacteria from dirty places does that just fine.”
I want to argue with him, but I can’t, because he’s telling me the truth. I don’t want to survive a horde of zombies just to die of a bacterial infection that could have been prevented with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a clean bandage. So I shimmy out of my jeans, careful to avoid tugging at the cut. When they’re off, I sit back down on the grass, and Ryder examines the wound.
I try not to feel incredibly uncomfortable with having Ryder’s face this close to my body. It’s been about six months since the infection first appeared, and it’s been about six months since trivial little things like shaving stopped being important. Having a handsome redneck taking care of me would be a lot more romantic without six months worth of leg hair built up.
He doesn’t seem to mind though. He takes a cotton swab from his kit and dabs on some hydrogen peroxide. It bubbles up the second it touches the blood, and he wipes it away. Then he takes a thick bandage and spreads it across my thigh.
His hands are callused, but surprisingly gentle. “You can’t put your bloody jeans back on; they’ve got zombie blood on them.”
“What am I supposed to wear? I can’t walk around the city half naked. That leaves me really exposed to infection, not to mention the cold or the rain.”
“Just stay as close to me as possible until we get back to the SUV. I’ll make sure you don’t get hurt. Then you can change into the extra pair of clothes you packed.”
I nod. “Alright.”
Ryder helps me to my feet, and I stagger and fall into him. He catches and steadies me. “Are you ok?”
“I stepped on my ankle the wrong way. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before,” I say, looking at the zombie again.
“Adrenaline. Now that it’s wearing off, you’re feeling the exhaustion and pain from your fight. Can you stand, or do you need help?”
I don’t want to admit to him that I need help, but I won’t make it three steps up that ditch by myself. He listens to my silence, and wraps his arm around my back. When he swings me up and into his arms, I squeal in surprise. He chuckles, and I resist the urge to smack him for laughing at me. The only reason I don’t is because this is the first time Ryder’s laughed at me that hasn’t been in a mocking kind of way.
Ryder carries me up the ditch, and I think to myself. Maybe Ryder’s starting to like me a little. Or at least tolerate me more.