Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution (50 page)

Hope was quickly dashed when Neil realized
it was a zeke and it was still fresh enough to be moving with a
horrifying pace. Jerry hated it when they could still run. It was
bad enough that they were indefatigable, vicious monsters bent on
killing and eating everyone but to have them running at the pace of
a charging grizzly was enough to take one’s breath away.

Jerry took a moment to process what he
thought he was seeing. The wretch was running parallel to Danny and
Jerry. It didn’t seem to know that they were even there. Jerry
watched it sprint deeper into the forest as if it was...chasing
someone.

Jerry uttered, “Oh shit,” and peered through
his scope. He didn’t have a clear shot but tried nonetheless. The
bullet zipped and cracked out amongst the trees but did little
else.

“Why didn’t you just let it chase after...
oh.”

“Yeah. We better hurry but keep an eye out.
If there’s one, there’s probably more. That gun ready to fire?”

Danny lifted his rifle and showed it to
Jerry to assure the man he was ready to do his part. They started
to run after the zeke but were unable to keep pace with it. In
running, they almost tripped over another of the creatures pulling
itself along a footpath cut through the forest. Its left leg was a
seeping stump of violated flesh with a partially gnawed femur bone
protruding from it. Despite its obvious handicap, the fiend moved
along the path at a respectable pace.

Both young men retreated a few steps and
discharged the rifles in their hands. One of the bullets struck the
creature in its shoulder, shattering the clavicle and pitching it
forward. The other bullet pierced the top of its skull and drove
itself through its head and out the soft stretch of skin between
its chin and neck.

Still standing in a firing stance, both men
spotted another one coming at them along the same trail. Danny
fired first, his bullet sailing harmlessly high.

Jerry said, “Settle yourself. Don’t let your
fear....” Jerry pulled his trigger, “...cause you to waste ammo or
time.” He looked down at Danny and smiled.

Danny smiled back. “I coulda’ hit him but I
didn’t want to show you up… especially in front of Danielle.”

Smiling even more, Jerry demanded, “What do
you mean by that?”

“Shouldn’t we—”

“Yeah. But don’t think we’re done with this
conversation,” Jerry playfully warned, trying to calm both of them
with some levity.

The two of them tried to follow the original
ghoul they had spotted but it had run well out of sight. Neither of
them had any skills or experience tracking. There were sounds and
movement in the trees all around them, and they stopped to
listen.

It was by sheer luck that Jerry and Danny
found the road leading to the lodge’s driveway. Breaking into a
jog, they hurried back to the fortress-like lodge at the end of the
paved, but now snow covered drive.

Jules was sitting in the perch above the
front door and saw them before either of them could see her. She
waved excitedly until both Jerry and Danny waved back to her. Mia
opened the door to let them in and immediately confirmed what Jerry
had feared: Danielle and Betsy had not yet returned.

Jerry ordered Danny to keep watch at the
lodge and join Abdul on the veranda overhead. Abdul started to come
down the stairs but Jerry waved his hand. “I can’t leave them here
alone. I need you to be here with them. I won’t be long.” Jerry
slammed the door behind him and made his way back out into the
forest in search of the three ladies.

It was starting to snow again, coming down
in lazy flakes, which rested uncomfortably on the cold ground
waiting for the next breath of wind to once again set them to
flight. Jerry’s footsteps were enough to give them life for a few
seconds, each footfall producing a snowstorm raging below his
knees.

If there had been tracks to follow, those
were now being covered with the fresh falling snow. With hope as
his compass, Jerry trekked into the woods in search of a little
girl and two women.

Running into the forest without any true
direction, Jerry was as likely to get lost himself as he was to
find the missing ladies. He may very well have wandered off into
oblivion if not for the timely pop of a gunshot not too far from
his location.

He charged off toward the sound of the
discharged firearm, his heart racing. With the trees streaking by
in a blur, Jerry very nearly missed Danielle and Betsy lying below
one of the larger trees in the area. The two women were curled up
with one another and sobbing. It was the noise they made that
alerted Jerry to their presence. He almost passed them without
noticing them.

He stopped awkwardly in his tracks, his
momentum still threatening to carry him forward. He caught
Danielle’s eyes and immediately saw that they were filled with
sadness. Kneeling closer to them, he asked, “Nikki?”

Danielle shook her head sadly. “We found
her. Back that way a bit. One of those things... It was... it
had...” She struggled for words and finally managed, “Betsy tried
to pull it off of her but the thing attacked her. There was so much
blood and it just wouldn’t stop. It kept biting her and biting her
and...” Danielle’s words trailed off as her sorrow truly grabbed
hold of her.

Lying against Danielle’s chest in a fetal
position, Betsy was shivering. Danielle had wrapped a scarf around
Betsy’s mangled arm, trying to cover the horrific bite wounds and
stop the bleeding at the same time. Both efforts were futile.
Beneath Betsy’s eyes, dark crescents had begun to form but the rest
of her color in her face had faded drastically. Her already pale
cheeks were quickly becoming opaque. It was obvious that her shock
was contributing to her rapid decline.

Jerry saw all the signs and knew that there
could be only one conclusion. He pulled off his ever-present
University of Alaska Anchorage Seawolves cap, which had once been
Claire’s, and ran his fingers through his thickening hair
thoughtfully. They were wasting time that they didn’t have.

“Danielle, we really should be...” Jerry
couldn’t finish his statement or his thought. He knew that they
needed to be on their way but he couldn’t bring himself to say so.
He touched Betsy’s shoulder gently and looked down at her. The
older woman’s eyes fluttered and then stopped with the lids
partially cracked, revealing her cloudy corneas.

In a whisper, Danielle admitted with a hint
of shame in her voice, “I don’t really know her. After William
brought me back here, Gordon had been over to the lodge a couple of
times to borrow this or return that. He used to talk about his wife
but she never really left the house. He sure loved her though. He
never said a single negative word about her. He’d go on and on
about her artwork...fused glass I think.” Danielle’s eyes glazed a
bit as her thoughts wandered away from the forest.

He hated to do it, but Jerry was forced to
interrupt her and bring her back to their present situation. He
helped her up to first her knees and then her feet. Betsy’s
breathing was dangerously shallow, starving her blood and brain of
oxygen which enabled vital functions to be performed. She was
slipping away rapidly.

“We really should be moving on,” he said
gently. “Those things are everywhere in the woods all of a sudden.
They must have sensed that we were over on this side of the
Cove.”

“What about her? What do we do with Betsy?
Carry her?” Danielle asked the questions but she could tell by
Jerry’s posture his intent. She shook her head and moved herself to
shield the older woman from Jerry. “We can’t.... what do you plan
to do?”

“Danielle, she’s...once you’ve been
bitten... I mean, there’s nothing that can be done. She probably
won’t ever regain consciousness.”

Looking a little annoyed, Danielle added,
“And she would just slow us down. Dead weight, right?”

Jerry looked hurt, but he didn’t deny
Danielle’s line of thinking. He grabbed Danielle’s arm and tried to
lift her back to her feet, but she refused to move, pulling her arm
away defiantly.

The crackle pop of approaching footsteps
atop the decaying ground foliage and fallen tree branches and
leaves quickly shifted Jerry’s entire demeanor. His rifle was back
in his hands and at the ready. He leaned back on his heels to
better allow him to see his surroundings.

Jerry could see at least two more zekes, one
much closer than the other but both closer than he would have
liked. Danielle watched Jerry and tensed up herself. Betsy was
still struggling to maintain her tenuous hold on life, but Danielle
was too distracted to pay her more attention than a blind and
absent-minded stroking of the older woman’s beautiful long gray
hair.

Poor Betsy, quiet and unassuming and having
lived a life in a shadow of her own making, was silently slipping
away from both the shadow and her life. Her heart still pumped
weakening jets of blood from the multiple bite wounds up and down
her wiry arm. Both her lap and Danielle’s were soaking up the
majority of the thick red fluid.

Jerry looked down and spotted the growing
red stain on the two women when from out of the trees, another
woman burst into the clearing. Running as fast as she was, the
woman tripped and slid headfirst from one side of the area to the
other, coming to rest against a narrow tree.

The thing was quickly onto its hands and
knees, but Jerry leapt forward and pounded the butt of his rifle
into the creature’s skull several times until it slumped forward
motionless. When he had stopped, the back of the beast’s head was a
soft, gooey morass of blood and bits of bone.

Jerry turned about slowly, his face and
jacket spattered with blood, and beseeched Danielle with his eyes.
He needed her to understand that they had to leave at once and that
the fate awaiting Betsy was no different than that of the woman he
had just dispatched. He looked down at the awful, lifeless being
and then cast his eyes onto Betsy to emphasize his point.

Danielle relaxed her shoulders a bit and
softened the contours of her face. She knew what had to be done and
did so without another word from Jerry.

Gingerly, she eased Betsy’s head from her
lap and onto the ground. Betsy scarcely registered the change in
position. Danielle stood, looking down at the beautiful older woman
and couldn’t see any of that former beauty. The woman’s face looked
faded and drawn, as if the years to come had been leached from her
over the last few minutes. Her eyes fluttered, but it was certainly
not returning consciousness or lucidity. Danielle could see death’s
encroachment upon the woman.

Without a word, she stepped away from Betsy
and looked to Jerry for direction. She was acting against every
empathetic impulse in her being by leaving suffering Betsy to face
her doom alone and doing so was not something she would be able to
accomplish on her own. Jerry pointed back in the direction from
which he had come and Danielle trotted off in that direction.

Luckily for both of them, they weren’t that
far from a main trail, which led directly back to the lodge. The
movement in the trees was growing all around them, the trees
themselves seemingly starting to rally against the two of them.

They could see the lodge after a few tense
moments of running along the worn path. Seeing it helped to restore
Danielle’s flagging energy and resolve. The two ran hard, as hard
as their feet would carry them.

Running, gasping for breath, fighting to
control the scream that was threatening to escape from her lips,
Danielle suddenly felt like they were not alone. She felt like an
animal being tracked by another; she felt like prey, exposed and
vulnerable.

Looking back over her shoulder, her worst
fears were realized. They were being pursued by a creature whose
frenetic head tics and flailing arms made it appear much larger and
faster than it actually was. It felt like she was watching it on a
video played in fast forward and it made her stomach turn. Even on
the run as she was, Danielle could taste the bitter acid rise to
the back of her throat. Through her mind replayed the violent
attack on Betsy she had witnessed. It had played out in the blink
of an eye and was threatening to happen again.

Finding some untapped reserves, Danielle
picked up her pace and was relieved when Jerry did the same. She
wasn’t going to be eaten, but she didn’t want to feel guilty about
leaving someone behind to suffer the same end, especially Jerry,
who had come out to find and save her. It dawned on her at that
moment that he could well have left her behind but had opted to
stay with her, to protect her. He could have abandoned her from the
time they both had started to run, but there he was running right
alongside her.

Danielle could tell that he knew they were
being followed as well by his body language and facial expression.
He obviously didn’t want to turn and fight for some reason so
Danielle pushed herself to run harder and faster.

Seconds later, they were running on frosty,
snow covered pavement. The lodge was looming directly ahead and
beckoning to them. The air in their lungs was beginning to feel
thin and too cold to breathe. Danielle was quickly nearing her
limit but she continued to push herself. Her eyes were glossy and
her mouth opened and closed again and again like a fish searching
for water.

Her pace was slowing no matter how hard she
tried to keep her legs going or how much she wanted to stay alive.
Her hands were shaking and her eyes were beginning to cloud.

They were at the driveway and she could hear
the extra set of frantic footsteps, which were getting terribly
close. She couldn’t help the tears any more than she could help the
fright that was building exponentially in her chest and belly.