“Understand me,” I growled at her. “Do not hurt her or shoot her or do anything to her. Just hold her. And if she tries to bite you… give her back to me. But she is my responsibility and I will deal with her! Do you understand?” I was shrieking at her by the end of it. But she finally seemed to catch the gravity of this situation.
“I get it, Honey. It’s all right,” she promised in a placating tone.
But I knew… I freaking knew that nothing was all right anymore.
I pushed Page into Linley’s arms and took the guns she offered me. And then I turned around to help Kane.
Game on, Zombies.
I needed vengeance or I would suffocate to death in this very moment. I needed retribution for the horrendously unreal event that had just changed my life eternally or I was going to lose my mind.
But then again, maybe I already had.
Because as I opened up fire on the flood of Feeders pouring through that open window, it felt very much like I had officially snapped.
Chapter Three
The Feeders kept coming through the window as if our gun spray meant nothing. They stopped for no fallen comrade or out of fear of our precisely aimed bullets. I felt Linley at my back and this gave me some peace. Page’s hysterical cries had the opposite effect.
I shot with a frantic rage that I had never felt before. My body was strung tight with a feral anxiety that bit at my bones and twisted my muscles. My stomach churned violently but the mission in front of me demanded that I hold it together for a little while longer.
The rooms behind us rattled excruciatingly loud as the Feeders tried to break in through the other points of entry. The door cracked and split with every bang that assaulted it from the other side.
And still they were endless in this window.
“Backup!” Kane shouted over the gunfire. Screaming came from every species present; the Zombies with their unnatural screeching, Linley with each pop of a bullet, Page as she got sucked further and further into the madness and me from the violent inferno of fury inside of me. Kane continued his instructions. “We can close this door and lock it if we can get out!”
Linley immediately started backing up, apparently thinking that was an awesome idea. I couldn’t really argue with it. Locking this exit did sound great. Except I knew it wouldn’t last. Those metal shades were much more impenetrable than a wooden door, and they’d still gotten through. But it might buy us some time to get a plan of attack together.
Or for Page and I to officially switch teams.
Page was taking an unnaturally long time to change. I had seen humans with my own eyes transition from clear-minded homo sapiens into bloodthirsty Zombies in a matter of seconds after being bitten.
I wondered if Page was holding it together better because she was a Parker and born with an indomitable spirit or if maybe her age had something to do with it? I didn’t know. But I didn’t question it either.
Some sick, last-chance-of-compassion part of me wanted to get Kane and his mother into as much safety as I could gather. I should have wanted them to die.
I should have wanted them to face the Feeder horde that was here because of them.
I should have wanted them to get what was coming to them.
But I couldn’t make myself wish this end for any person.
Even Linley Allen.
Not at the mouths of Feeders. Not when my own mortality was in such volatile imbalance and I’d been forced to witness Page’s last few moments alive.
I didn’t even bother including Kane in that. I wouldn’t let him die this way.
At Hendrix’s hands, definitely. But Hendrix deserved the retribution.
These Feeders did not.
Just as I stepped into the doorframe, the front door exploded open. Splinters of wood shot across the room and ricocheted off every surface. I felt the sharp wood dig into my clothes all over and out of the corner of my eye I saw Linley cover Page with her body.
Okay, I hated her just a teensy bit less for that.
I swiveled around and opened fire on the incoming wave. Kane had generously outfitted me with a fully clipped Glock and a semi-automatic rifle that I’d swung around my back until I needed it.
I opened fire and shouted at the masses of hungry Zombies trying to get to their midnight snack. They were an especially nasty bunch, all decaying skin and dripping mucous and coagulated pus everywhere. White bone jutted out from joints or broken skin, large chunks of muscle flashed in a dark crimson red and their inhuman speed carried them directly to me.
I did not miss.
How could I?
If anyone got to bite me tonight, it was going to be Page. They would not take that from us.
Bam. In the forehead. Bam. Bam. In the eye socket. Bam. Bam. Bam. Mouth. Nose. Temple.
Kane’s back was against mine as tight as anything could press into me. He kept pushing me into the living room, while he trained his gun on the window. He was irritating.
“What are you doing?” I screamed at him while Linley cowered with Page behind the two of us.
“Get into the living room so we can at least lock these ones out! I’m not trying to push you into them; I just want to shut down one avenue!”
Okay, well that made a lot of sense.
This time when Kane pushed against me, I let him have his way. I continued to shoot at the door as an endless amount of Feeders rushed the door. The rattling on these windows had stopped for the time being, what with the open hole leading right into a four-course meal.
In reality, there wasn’t really an endless amount. It just felt like it. This was an entire horde and I had already put seven of them down. More sprinted through the door, stepping over their dead friends and the mess of debris now littering the living room. My bullets bounced around the room with deafening purpose. Kane’s rang out behind me as he attempted to keep that channel of Feeders locked in this room.
Finally we made progress and Kane left the support of my back to close the door behind him. He had to stop shooting in order to lock it properly and I experienced a new level of tension as I heard him fighting to get it shut while Zombie arms and legs clawed and kicked to get through.
I heard Kane cursing and grunting to get the door shut all the way, but there were too many in the way. I saw movement in my peripheral but my attention was wholly focused on everything in front of me.
The whack-whack sound that resounded behind me had me turning a curious glance over my shoulder though.
I couldn’t help myself.
And there she was… Page. She’d been kidnapped, attacked by a Feeder, bitten and still she jumped out of Linley’s hands, grabbed the closest thing- which was a lamp minus the shade- and was brave enough to hit at the decomposing appendages sticking through the door and preventing Kane from closing it all the way.
This girl.
No, I could not think about that now.
I could not.
I had to get us out of this mess first and then I would figure out what we were going to do about her… injury.
From now on, I would call it an injury.
Not a bite.
Not a freaking bite.
Page, in all her eight-year-old glory, managed to do some serious damage and eventually Kane squeezed the door shut all the way. Although it wasn’t exactly a clean close… The disgusting crunch and squish of flesh and bone made my spine tingle but then there was the click of the lock and Kane was back at my side again.
I imagined a pile of rotten fingers and hands at Kane’s feet as he snapped them off in his attempt to secure the door.
We took out the living room together. The house shook under the force of other, unseen Zombies still attacking from the outside. The door that had just been shut vibrated beneath a barrage of fists and aggression. I jumped with each pound and rattle.
This was bad.
“I blame you for this!” I shouted at Kane. “You should know that I blame you for all of this!”
I did
n’t look at his face, or touch his body, or even hear the sound in his chest, but still I knew that he was laughing at me.
Bastard.
“I told you I had a plan if we were attacked!” He hollered back at me. “That wasn’t a lie! I do have a plan!”
“I hope this isn’t part of it!”
“Just a small part,” he leaned in so I could hear him properly.
“And Page? Do you have a goddamn plan for that?”
“Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“God, you’re an asshole!”
He didn’t respond and it was probably better that way. He had already nudged my anger and wrath up exponentially. My heart was a jackhammer in my chest, my blood a rushing volcano of activity.
A particularly large Feeder broke through the door and came right at me. I fired shot after shot at him, but he was freaking fast and always managed to take the hit anywhere but his head.
I started to panic when he jumped over the couch. His second foot caught on the back and he tripped forward. In typical Feeder fashion, he didn’t even try to recover. He dove at my legs, his mouth chomping and drooling with disgustingly smelly slime.
I kept shooting at him but I never managed to hit his head. His momentum carried him quickly forward, and my bullets stupidly lodged into his back, ass and calves.
Just as he slid to my feet, I gave up the idea of getting bitten by Page and resigned myself to letting it happen by this undead troll. I let my eyes flutter close and I tipped my head back.
This was it.
This was my last moment as me.
In a second I was going to be turned into a delicious snack, or I would have a sudden and irrevocable craving for brains.
The quick pop of bullets pulled me out of my Zen moment and I jumped unexpectedly. I felt Kane’s arm sweep back up and reopen fire on the doorway.
I looked down at the monstrous man and found him dead at my feet. Kane had gotten three shots into his bulbous head.
The fight to survive lit inside of me again and I raised my weapon.
A terrible crash sounded from the kitchen and Linley and Page’s screams were brought back to life. I spun around just in time to catch a once upon a time middle-aged woman in the last stages of Zombieism. She appeared in the opening to this room and grinned frighteningly at us.
I began firing immediately.
She didn’t get far before my bullets found purchase in her forehead. She fell back against another wave of Feeders.
They were coming in through the kitchen window now, but it didn’t look like they could do it quickly. The kitchen window was elevated further off the ground than the bedroom window and it was narrow. They must really be fighting to get in there.
I took careful aim and shielded Page and Linley between Kane and me. I was able to hold this new barrage off until I needed to reload. I swung the rifle around as quickly as I could but my fingers were slow with finding the unfamiliar safety and locking it into place against my shoulder. They were closer than I wanted them when I finally opened fire again.
Then I felt the swipe of sharp nails on my shoulder blade before Kane put that Feeder out of his misery. I glanced over at him but his attention was back at the crowded doorway.
I had no doubt that the only thing saving us right now was the greedy, hungry addiction that kept the Feeders from working together. They had to fight each other to get to us and this worked in our favor… slowed them down.
Plus, it was distracting for them.
Often times they would stop to nibble on one of their own.
It was so completely horrifying to watch, but I couldn’t say I was surprised by their behavior.
Kane nudged me again with his shoulder. We were back to back again but not making much progress in the way of moving.
“We need to get across the room!”
I glanced the way he suggested and felt like laughing. Upturned furniture and fifteen feet stood between us and the destination he had in mind.
Impossible.
At least right then.
“No way!”
“Reagan, if we don’t get over there we’re going to die!”
I hated it when he made sense. “Fine!”
We started inching along, keeping our gunfire continuous. Linley tucked Page against Kane and me and we shielded the two of them as best as we could.
Feeders were everywhere though, so it wasn’t exactly an easy task. And Page and Linley were frustratingly unarmed.
I might not have trusted Linley with a weapon of any kind. But I sure as hell trusted Page. I knew she could handle a weapon. At the very least she could get a shot off if anything got too close for comfort.
But then again… she’d already had that happen tonight.
Her injury was as fresh as anything.
If she got another… injury… What was the point? Did it even matter?”
I shook my head and forced my mind away from those dark thoughts. She still hadn’t tried to bite anybody yet. I didn’t know what that meant and I was too afraid and too wrapped up at this moment to analyze it further.
We had to step over furniture that had turned into dangerous debris and broken pieces of every single thing in the house. A pair of antlers had fallen in the way from the wall and I took care not to accidentally step on one of those.
I was willing to sacrifice myself for Page tonight but there was no way in hell I was going to let myself die of something stupid… like infection or blood loss by fallen antlers. I would not get stabbed in the leg and have a funky wound that slowly drained the life out of me.
My choice of poison for the afterlife was the Zombie cocktail. And Page could have all the honors.
The door Kane had just closed cracked in half, right down the center. Feeder hands appeared immediately in the thin space as they worked with insatiable determination to rip it apart. Linley let out another painful scream of terror and this time I joined in.
They were everywhere!
I know, I know… when weren’t they everywhere???
But seriously, this life or death stuff was just the absolute worst.
And also, how hard was it to cross one freaking room? This was taking forever!
A very skinny Feeder near the kitchen leapt from the pack at me. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen once upon a time. He was stick thin and his head was ridiculously small, like disproportionate to his already petite-sized body. If I had taken the time to give him a back-story, he would have been a computer-geek kind of kid that hated gym class and had years yet before he bloomed.
This kind of kid would have one day ruled the world via the next wave of iPads and some insane algorithm that could hack the Pentagon in less than thirty seconds. But instead, his small muscles had failed him in his fight to survive against the army of undead and now he had it out for my slightly above average, ACT-score-of-twenty-four brains.
Just as I took aim at his face, another girl broke through the horde. Great his band geek girlfriend was jealous. Guys, slow down, I’m taken.
Hey, I used to be a cheerleader. I was allowed to stereotype and assert my popularity wherever and whenever I saw fit.
Okay, just kidding. I had never been that kind of cheerleader.
Unless you counted shooting these two in the forehead as bullying, because then fine, I was officially guilty.
He ducked at the last minute and dove for my ankles. In some miraculous act of God, I still managed to get a round off and hit the girl right in her open mouth. Blood and bone splattered everywhere and I swear I got hit on the cheek with a blackened tooth.
No time to think about that now. My back hit the corner of an end table and I slid awkwardly to the ground. I pulled my leg out of World of Warcraft’s firm hold and shoved my foot in his face. He snapped and chomped at me like a rabid dog. Drool and mucous flowed from his yellow and black mouth and the stench of his decay was enough to make me gag. I pushed him back but his razor-sharp nails clawed at my jean-clad legs
with a desperate hunger. His fiery red eyes seemed to weep over his face, dripping tears of blood and staining my jeans and the floor beneath us.
My foot slipped off the point of his face but I brought it back quickly and jammed it in his nose again. Soft bone crunched beneath the ball of my foot bursting forth more gelatinous blood. Linley picked up a glass bowl that sat on a buffet along the wall and threw it on his back. She had shoved Page behind her and did her best to help me but the attacking Feeder wasn’t even fazed.
If that wasn’t enough, I had to keep my attention on the rest of the incoming Zombies that weren’t slowed down even though I clearly had my hands full at the moment.
Come on, where was the common courtesy?
I kept my foot shoved into the Feeder’s face and took them out from my flat-on-my-back position. This was not ideal. I wasted way too many bullets trying to get them in their heads when my placement made it much easier to hit the rest of their bodies, not slowing them down at all.
“Move your foot on three, Reagan!” Kane shouted over his shoulder.
“No way!” I yelled back. That sounded risky.
Way too f-ing risky.
If it had been Hendrix calling the order, I would have obeyed without a second thought. But this was not Hendrix. This was Kane. And as soon as I moved my foot, the Feeder was going to fly at me. Hendrix would have no problem taking the shot.
But, let me just say this one more time, this wasn’t Hendrix!
“One…” Kane counted while still picking Feeders off on his end. His shots were so close together that I could barely hear his voice.
I hoped he could hear mine. “No!”
“Two…”
I renewed my efforts to push the Feeder off me which was basically a science to keep my foot balanced right in the center of his face while he gnawed at the rubber of my shoe and shot at the still-incoming horde.
“Reagan, I’m going to shoot you in the foot if you don’t move it!” Kane warned.
Shit. This was really happening.
“Three!”
I dropped my foot wide and to the side and the Feeder went right for my crotch. Holy crap! The first boy that was brave enough to enter that new, uncharted world and it was a Zombie! My sexual self-esteem was going to be forever ruined after today.