I could make promises to Vaughan for the hypothetical scenario in which he didn’t exist anymore. But I wouldn’t even be able to have that conversation with Hendrix. I couldn’t think those thoughts or imagine a life in which he wasn’t my cornerstone, wasn’t my solid ground that kept me from getting washed away in confusion and despair.
“You guys alright?” he asked in a growly voice when he was close enough that we could hear him.
“We’re good,” Vaughan told him.
Hendrix looked back and forth between us. “It looked like you were having a moment.”
“We were,” I smiled at him.
“Anything I should know about?”
I stepped forward and slinked my arms around his waist. His body was tightly packed muscle that stretched in long lines over his tall frame. When I closed my eyes I could see him at the edge of a swimming pool, shirtless as beads of water traced over the dips and ridges of his lithe torso. His swimmer’s body was buzzing with intense focus and drive- the same devotion he now gave to me. His arms stretched over his head, his knees bent and then the gun would go off. His coiled body would leap forward and dive seamlessly into crystal clear water. His powerful, deadly arms would push stroke after stroke as he cut through the cool water. He would turn his body into a machine, into a weapon to win gold medals and trophies. He would be single-minded and utterly intent on his prize. If I closed my eyes and imagined Hendrix before Zombies took over the world and he was given the responsibility of making his family survive, I would see a fierce competitor that refused to lose. I would see the man I now loved as the person he used to be- a little more relaxed, a lot younger but no less ambitious or enigmatic.
“Only that your girlfriend is an excellent kisser,” Vaughan quipped.
“He’s lying,” I denied. “He was the real talent. I felt a little slobbery that round.”
“You guys think you’re really funny, don’t you?” Hendrix did not sound amused.
Another joke sat restlessly on the tip of my tongue when leaves rustling on the other side of the wall drew our attention. Our heads perked up and all conversation dropped immediately.
Vaughan made a lowering motion with his hand that wasn’t holding a firearm and crept silently toward the door in the wall. Hendrix and I followed stealthily behind.
I held my breath while Vaughan unlocked the back door with one of the two keys. Gage was the only other owner. They both kept the keys on a chain around their necks.
Vaughan turned the handle and pulled the door back so that we could peer into the dark forest beyond the compound. I had been outside for a while now so my eyes were mostly adjusted to the lack of light, but it took several moments of staring into the thick trees beyond us to make out a figure lumbering through the heavy brush.
Feeder.
Definitely.
His walk was uneven and his shoulders slumped tellingly. When I stopped to listen I could hear his muffled grunting/groaning noises. While the three of us poked our head out, he stopped for a moment and lifted his head toward the sky as if he could smell us.
He turned his head to the right and then to the left. I held my breath and let my pointer finger slide up and down the smooth trigger of my Glock 9-mm. The cool, black metal felt reassuring in the palm of my hand, the textured grip rested against my hand just right.
But he didn’t turn around. He moved away from us, shuffling his decaying body over the leaf covered forest floor and dragging something long and heavy along his side. The three of us shared a look and as if we also shared one brain, moved to the unprotected other side of the wall.
“We should follow him,” Vaughan decided. Hendrix and I nodded and waited for Vaughan to relock the door.
We moved as craftily through the forest as we could, but fallen leaves crunched beneath our feet and small branches snapped when we were helpless to avoid them. But each of our footsteps was carefully placed and slow.
The Feeder didn’t seem to be in a hurry, so we followed behind at a careful pace. I took my gun off him for a moment to scratch at my healing shoulder wound. The scabbed ladder-wound wasn’t exactly dripping fresh blood, but there should be enough of a fleshy aroma to grab this guy’s attention.
“We should shoot him,” I whispered to Vaughan as the Feeder leisurely strolled ahead of us, groaning quietly and tripping over a small tree that had fallen over and rose to shin-level.
“We will,” Vaughan whispered back. “I want to see where he’s going and why he’s not trying to eat us. If there are more of them, we need to take them all out. He’s too close to the compound for me to feel good about him wandering around our backyard. He might lead us to a horde. We need to make sure there are not more of them that could find the compound.”
“Maybe he’s a loner. Maybe none of the other Feeders wants to be friends with him. Maybe he lost his nose,” Hendrix suggested sarcastically. “Maybe he can’t smell.”
Neither Vaughan nor I answered those speculations. I didn’t think this Feeder had lost his nose, but I wondered if it would have mattered if he had. Instinct told me that Feeders would be able to hunt us down whether they kept their five senses or lost them all. They were made predators with no room for forgiveness or behavioral justification. What was happening in front of us didn’t make sense.
And so I continued to follow as quietly as I could.
The Feeder headed off in the direction of the bowl; whatever he was pulling through the woods with him thumped and bumped as he went. Staying away from the highways and sticking close to the tangled trees, he picked his way through the dense forest with bumbling stiffness.
We followed him for thirty minutes before he even made an effort to turn his head toward us. I hadn’t necessarily become complacent, but I had lost some of my initial enthusiasm over the kill.
In my overly active brain during this quiet and relatively tranquil hunt, I imagined him without a nose like Hendrix suggested, or as a man afflicted by some weird sensory-deprivation disease before he was turned. I also imagined him as an evolved Feeder that didn’t want to hurt humans anymore- although I was fully aware that this was pure, deluded, wishful thinking on my part. Lastly, I imagined him a very busy Zombie with more important things to do than fight three heavily armed veteran killers.
Not in one of my Feeder-fueled fantasies did I run through the possibility of what could really happen. That this could be a trap. That this creature that normally stuck to packs of its own kind, could possibly be leading us into a setup.
Why would I?
Even while I had seen with my own eyes how the Feeders were growing more aware, more intuitive and intelligent, still my brain refused to believe that these beasts could ever have the ability to communicate with each other or plan an attack.
It was really stupid of me.
I had seen it happen more than once.
But I was lulled into believing this enigma we were following was somehow harmless.
It wasn’t until we rounded a corner after the lone Feeder that we realized he wasn’t exactly alone. And while he had been walking alone, it didn’t mean that he intended to stay that way.
We had to be close to the bowl- the same place Hendrix fell off the roof of our van and he and I had to fight our way to Gage’s compound. That instance had also been a booby trap.
And now we walked into another.
Vaughan had been right. This was definitely a horde. And they were way too close to home.
But he was out of his mind if he thought the three of us could take this many!
There were at least twenty of them. The moonlight hit their pallid edges and flashed white against their exposed bone. They crouched on the ground with their gnarled hands pressed into the packed earth beneath them. Or they stood, hunched over and standing on decomposing limbs. They were a horrifying clump of undead animals.
Their red eyes glowed in the darkness and their teeth chomped and snapped together. Their putrid, rotting scent, that had so far been masked by
the wind blowing in the opposite direction of our approach and the heady fragrance of crushed leaves and autumn air, wafted toward us and with it chills of fear that pebbled all over my skin.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Vaughan started backing away from them as if they hadn’t seen us yet or turned their hungry eyes on us, their next meal. “Do you think if we play undead, they might not notice us?” he whispered.
I almost laughed at the absurdity of his statement. Almost.
“Shoot or run?” I demanded.
“Shoot then run,” Vaughan and Hendrix ordered at the same time.
A Feeder stepped forward. A woman, with wild red hair that had tangled into impossible knots where it hadn’t fallen out. Her teeth seemed dangerously long when she opened her mouth. They dripped with puss and slime that slid down her torn-apart chin. One of her hands swiped out at us like a cat toying with her dinner. I could see her yellowed, jagged nails even from here. Her wrists and forearms showed teeth marks from where she’d gnawed on her own flesh. Her clothes were sodden with mud and filth and ripped open exposing breasts and a sternum that was nothing but bloodied, gaping holes of exposed muscle and fat. One of her rib bones stuck out her side, obviously broken a while ago and never healed.
She was terrifying, but her appearance was only a preview of the fear she could send racing through my body. She stared us down while we prepared to turn and run for our lives. I was somehow caught in her hungry gaze as if she’d hypnotized me with those crimson eyes. She opened her mouth and a screeching moan scraped out of her in ragged breaths and jumbled sounds. The other Feeders looked back to her and, as if following instructions, flashed their predatory gazes back to us. In one synchronized movement they all took a step forward.
We had half a second to process that the woman had given them orders to attack.
Chapter Two
“Run!” Hendrix shouted.
Feminism aside, that was an easy command to obey.
Forget accuracy, we popped off a few shots and took off running through the forest. We were headed back toward the compound, but I knew we couldn’t continue in this direction. We were the watch and unless someone happened to notice we were missing, and assumed, which was an impossible speculation, that we would need reinforcements when we came back, there would be no one to cover us. We would lead twenty hungry, intelligent, apparently speaking Zombies back to our home and probably die trying to unlock the gate.
My mind played through this predicament over and over again. That Feeder spoke. She communicated with those other Feeders. Maybe it wasn’t a language that we understood or would ever understand… but she verbalized her thoughts to the other Zombies and they knew what she wanted.
I couldn’t even begin to comprehend that.
Holy shit. In two years, Zombies had either evolved or de-evolved, depending on how you looked at it, beyond grunting and moaning animals blinded by their addiction to flesh into intelligent creatures fueled by their addiction to flesh.
The consequences this had on our war with the undead were… staggering.
And not in a good way.
I pushed my way through the thick forest, hating how familiar this was becoming. Even in the dark night, I managed to stay upright and fast enough to keep up with Hendrix and Vaughan. The cool air burned as I sucked it in and pushed it out of my lungs. My arms pumped at my sides, my feet pounded the crunching leaves.
And all the while the Feeders pursued hot at our backs.
They were smart, obviously. But not as smart as us. And their rotting, stiff joints and bones gave us an advantage in the closed-in space of the forest. They could be inhumanly fast on flat ground, but their super-speed was seriously limited with so many obstacles for them to trip over.
So we had a lead, but barely.
“We can’t take them straight to the compound!” I huffed with wheezing words.
They boys remained silent for a long time but after a while Vaughan veered to the left, away from the storage facility.
This put Hendrix just an inch behind me. I felt safer with his protection covering my back and that feeling was only reinforced when the bang of a loud gunshot burst a few inches from the back of my head. I screamed with the explosion that sounded like dynamite in my ear from how close to my head Hendrix had taken the shot. I couldn’t hear anything for several seconds while my ears struggled to clear, but I had to assume Hendrix had saved my life again, and that whatever had been about to attack had taken a journey into the afterlife.
Vaughan’s head turned toward me and his mouth started moving, but I couldn’t make out anything he was saying. I watched Hendrix respond, but still the sound of their words couldn’t compete with the ringing in my ears.
I shook my head, stumbled a little and prayed the ringing would dissipate. Vaughan kept pointing at a thick crop of trees in front of us. The lowest branches were above my head so I could easily run under them, but Vaughan kept pointing at them and jabbing his finger up.
“What?” I tried to ask. My voice finally competed with the high-pitched ringing and so I tried again. “What?”
“Stop shouting!” Vaughan shouted back at me.
And I could hear again. Whew.
“What did you say?” I demanded.
“We’re going to jump into those trees, then turn around and take out the whole line. We should have an advantage, but we’re going to have to be fast and accurate,” he explained through panting breaths.
“You up for this, Reagan?” Hendrix asked in a gruff voice.
“Sure,” I wheezed. “How hard can it be to climb a tree?” I cut a look to Hendrix, hoping to get a smile out of him, but he did not look impressed.
“Tuck your weapon away,” he demanded. “You’ll need both hands.”
I took his advice and clicked on the safety before shoving the Glock into the back of my pants. We had to race through a clearing in order to get to the trees Vaughan had pointed out, and I knew the Feeders directly behind us would make up some of their lost time through this section.
Vaughan lengthened out his stride and took the lead with Hendrix directly behind him. They left me way in their dust as they sprinted forward and took a flying leap at the tree. On opposite sides of the substantial trunk they grabbed hold of the lowest hanging branches and planted their feet on the trunk. They scrambled up into the cover of the full body of the tree fully synchronized.
If I hadn’t been so freaking irritated that they left me back here to die a horrible, gruesome death while they were safe and sound in a tree, I would have made a flattering comment about how they both belonged in a Bruce Lee movie.
Instead, I decided I was going to let myself get caught, get infected and spend the rest of my life haunting them.
Those selfish bastards-
Oh, never mind.
Hendrix dropped down to crouch on the low branch and held out his arms to me. Vaughan took up his post on the other side of the trunk and aimed his weapon at the line of undead predators behind me.
I staggered out my steps as if I were taking off for the high jump and thrust my hands upwards. Hendrix caught me at my forearms and I jumped up so that the bottoms of my feet planted on the trunk of the tree.
Hendrix’s grip slipped for a moment, but it was long enough that his hands slid from mid-arm to my wrists. I let out a startled scream, but he caught me just in time. My back bounced with the momentum and I felt the swipe of razor-sharp nails cut through the material of my hoodie. The Glock in the back of my pants slipped from its holding place and clattered to the ground beneath me. Hendrix tightened his grip and started to pull, I ran my legs up the tree trunk in an effort to keep up with him and keep my legs from dropping down into Feeder territory where they could easily become a snack.
Vaughan’s gun started banging out shots while Hendrix helped get me into the right position in the tree branches. Bullets exploding and hitting flesh mingled with the high-pitched keening of the Zombies. Fear and panic blurred with adr
enaline and my heart hammered painfully in my chest.
“Get up another branch!” Hendrix shouted at me. “Do you have another gun?”
“Yes!” I shouted back over the gunfire and screaming.
It wasn’t my preferred weapon, but it would do. My favorite handgun was lying underfoot of a snarling Feeder, getting stomped to pieces. It was a fantastic firearm and Gage always seemed to have plenty of ammo for it.
I couldn’t think about that now. I would have to kill the damn thing and retrieve my fave gun.
I pulled myself up to the next branch and carefully stood. Nerves and adrenaline made my hands shake and my movements forced. I wedged my foot into a split in the branch to steady myself and I joined the rest of the gunfire. Hendrix and Vaughan had already started on the horde below us and I quickly mixed my bullets into the fray.
There were twenty of them at least. And while we’d faced this number plenty of times, they seemed to be impossibly more than us.
It was hard to see through the leaves and other branches and keep my aim perfect; but because I didn’t have a choice about it, I adjusted to my surroundings and turned up my murder-o-meter. It was kill or be killed and now that I was a legal guardian to the most beautiful family left on Earth, I wasn’t about to let the Feeders get the best of me.
I had official responsibilities.
Starting with blowing the heads off my third of this horde.
They came at us so fast. I could hardly keep up. Basically, we shot straight down because they bombarded the tree all at once. They scrambled over each other to get to us. They clawed at the bark until their fingers dripped with their sticky blood. The rancid stench of their peeling flesh engulfed the small area and the soundtrack to our night was accented with the continual popping of bullets.