Dwindle

  Chapter Eighteen: And Then There Were Two

  I turned about to see the object of his concern but was surprised and horrified at what I saw. Right where the light of the oil lamp faded into darkness, there was a breathing being, several in fact. They breathed faster than normal, a quickness I knew, hunched and huddled in a group, and they seemed to watch us. They saw me look about, but I forced myself not to meet eyes with them. It was the only way to stay alive. I turned back to Ollie as if I had not seen them. I clenched my teeth.

  “What is –?”

  “Shut up,” I whispered to him.

  He had not an idea of the imminent death he seemed to be facing. I calculated our success rate if we bolted to the door, and our chances, though daring, were not high at all. If he was bitten or cut or coughed on or spat on or bled on, he would soon be a dead Outlander. I felt panic descend. His life was my responsibility now. So many had died because of my failure to adhere to this responsibility, and I felt the familiar despair threaten to descend as it had in previous months.

  Regardless of the fact that he could very well protect himself, he could not protect himself from an Undead simply because he was not immune. So few of us were. And even then, given the two deaths before this event, being called immune was not the same thing as actually being that way.

  “What is it?” Ollie asked me apprehensively.

  “Behind me…” I whispered, barely moving my lips, “are Undead…”

  His eyes seemed to widen and he made to look, but I grabbed his wrist with my other hand and squeezed harder than anything. I put a hand to his face to keep him from trying again. I leaned close.

  “Meet your eyes with theirs, and it may be the last thing you yet do.”

  He was captivated by something in that hand and nodded to do as I ordered because I was the owner of that hand. My breath came in rasps, harder than it had in a while. I knew Ollie was a probable casualty. I did not will it to happen while I could think of something. But I could not think of something. It made me nervous. I was angry with him, but I didn’t want him to die. Nobody was that heartless.

  “Be still…make your way slowly to the stairs. But not too slow. They’ll know you see them.”

  He breathed heavily and chills rose and fell about his body. I slowly let go of his wrists and I nodded him to do it. He hesitated.

  “You’re going to have to trust me, Ollie,” I swallowed hard, “or you’re going to die.”

  “What about you?” he asked fearfully.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said to him, offering my bravest half-smile. “I can’t die, remember?”

  For the first time, this seemed to brace him. Then, he stepped backwards.

  Too slowly. I heard them shift to run at us from behind. They knew he knew. They were hunting us, and I knew this by their weight, if not their noise. We couldn’t wait.

  “RUN!” I shouted.

  I flipped about. I fired my gun at one jumping at me. It fell in a pool of red blood but came up again quickly, undeterred by the pain from the bullets or the imminence of its death. I ran behind Ollie, who wasn’t moving nearly fast enough.

  “MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!”

  I shot again behind me, receiving several more bite and scratch wounds. One vaulted on top of me and wrapped its mouth about my neck. I pointed my gun to it, in painful desperation, and shot it in the head. Blood spattered my face as I shoved it off to the side, scrambling back to my feet.

  We reached the stairs. He was almost up, but I saw something.

  “Ollie, look out!”

  I tripped him as a new Undead flew where Ollie’s head once was. It landed onto my face, knocking me over slightly, but I caught the railing. It broke, but I steadied myself, if barely. I ran up. There were more sprinting at us from across the street. Their silence and speed was chilling.

  “They set us up,” I whispered to myself.

  I glanced in the two directions from which they now ambushed. None came behind, as they were all killed, but the amount of them coming from all sides was more than I’d ever seen.

  “They set us up!” I said louder.

  “Come on!” Ollie called.

  He was already moving to higher ground. He climbed up the shell of the long dead buildings like I’d taught him, to flee upwards when worst came to worst. But he moved too slowly. I followed him quickly and passed him faster. The Undead were literally at his ankles when I pulled him up. I saw dogs running at us from a board running across to another framework. I looked around for a second. There was frenzy all about us. It was as if they knew it confused me.

  “Climb up!” I yelled.

  He did so as I did, faster than he had originally. I had jumped when a dog reached my ankle. I looked down at it and with great alarm as I realized it too was Undead.

  I released one hand, shot at it, and vaulted higher. Ollie was on the framework, but I could see that the Undead were still advancing. If they ran about, the Undead could make it up. And suddenly, as sudden as night and day, I knew they would be able to figure that out.

  I shot the dogs out, but more flocked to the scent of fresh, poisoned blood. I heard them snarl desperately as they ascended the boards on the other side of the building, and I knew we could not corner ourselves too high. Instead, I climbed back down and ran across the board to the next building, kicking it out from beneath me. It landed on the rubble below us with a wisp of dust.

  “STAY CLOSE TO ME!” I shrieked over the now deafening wails of their collective lust for blood.

  But the Undead were there too, guessing where I had planned as if they could have guessed themselves. They thought of it even before I had. They knew my own thoughts because they had seen me fight them enough times. They had seen me win too many times. They were thinking. They were planning. They were learning.

  They lunged at me with all fours, intending to rip with their teeth and claws, but I shot them with a small noise. I flipped around as I heard a thump, and I realized they were jumping from the building from which we’d come. There were seven there, to my glance, and I knew I could not shoot them well enough. Bullets, as they always did in these situations, became the lifeblood of existence, sacred and necessary, and they were the only thing worth preserving.

  Finally, a large one, a man, attacked at Ollie, vaulting towards him with an unearthly wail. I thrust my foot into the thing’s jaw, dislocating it instantly, and fired at its head, removing it completely from its torso in a bloody mass.

  From the other way, four more had begun to ascend, twisted, mutated claws scratching the shoddy framework on which we stood. It surely wouldn’t support all of the wait, and I found my neck swiveling constantly to try to think of something, anything, to do.

  Right, there were Undead. Left, undead. Forward, a hole under which I heard dogs snarling and drooling. There was only back.

  I turned around, feeling breathless. It was high, very high, and the debris had been cleared in front of it so that the fall would be nearly the length of four or five of me. It was hidden in a cove of high mountains of debris. It had been the reason I chose this place for my Gallery.

  The choice seemed naïve now.

  I ran with him to the edge, tugging at him, before shoving him wordlessly off the side. He didn’t expect this and yelled out at first, but I caught his hand, flipping myself around to grab onto the edge myself. This would leave him suspended, and they would not be able to catch him then.

  As he swung to his lowest, I felt a crack inside of me and screamed out in pain as I hadn’t needed to in a long, long time. My life became a swirling vortex of agony, all physical, that raked at my willpower to hold on.

  Every muscle in my body became a support vessel to the strength in my fingers, and I ached for them to hold on, even as pain shot from there angrily. They were attacking my fingers.

  Above, below, and within the walls we hung from, the Undead wailed in fury. We were utterly surrounded. Something had to be done.

 
“SHOOT THEM!” I screamed to Ollie. “SHOOT THEM NOW!”

  Sound faded then in favor of the sounds of my blood pumping, pain, and breathing. Breathing became harder and harder. I felt as though a huge ball was growing in my chest. My arm was useless, or reaching the point of uselessness, so I began to cry. Ollie was going to die. He would fall and they would overwhelm him.

  The shots that I heard were loud, too loud, but also seemed to be coming across a great distance. And there were so few. It took no time at all.

  “Hey!” he yelled up to me.

  I could not focus on him or on anything as my grip began to give way. Ollie grabbed onto a window underneath just as I did so, and the sudden release in pressure hurt me more than the initial popping had. My hands slid from the roof tops, completely useless, and I experienced a moment of pure ecstasy. Falling. This was falling. I was floating without pain or worry, besides the vision of my nearly skinless knuckles.

  I hit the ground with more pain than ever and felt another pinch deep inside of me. I writhed and pushed my back off the ground, trying to breathe, failing to do so. I looked down.

  Something large had splintered in my side, and I shrieked in pain, trying to reel it in, incapable of doing so. Blood. A lot of my blood. The wooden shard stuck out of me wrongly, and the blood that seeped out was the only means my body had of telling it to get out.

  My life suddenly became a series of blinks. First blink. I turned my head to see the things running at me. The fog, which had emerged from nowhere, was menacing. Second blink. Dimmer. They were shot by some force above me. Third blink. Fog. I heard silence. Fourth and last blink: I turned my head to the rubble and to smell the ground. It smelled like blood. My blood. I lifted my shoulders from the ground and tried hard to make the pain of the pressure from the ground to go away. It wouldn’t. I screamed louder as arms were pressed beneath my shoulders. Someone was lifting me.

  “Oh no…” was all I heard. He shook me a little, fading. “NO…No…no…”

  ***