Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (22 page)

Enveloped in a brown cloud of dust and with the raucous
sound of a mini avalanche nipping at her heels, Glenda reached the bottom of
the decline without twisting an ankle or even a scratch for that matter.

She hobbled the last twenty feet across uneven ground strewn
about with rocks and tree limbs, fell to her hands and knees and plunged her
face in the water and drank greedily.

When she’d had her fill, she rolled over onto her back and
sat up and scrunched around until the water was running by in front of her left
to right. She washed her face and neck vigorously, using sand to abrade away
the stubborn dried bits of internals still clinging to her skin. She did the
same to her hands and wrists and watched the oil-slickened water carry away the
scraps of decayed skin and flesh.

She unlaced her hikers, wrenched them off, and tossed them
to the side. Didn’t bother removing the blood-soaked socks with any kind of
restraint. Just peeled them away, sloughed off skin and all, and
unceremoniously tossed them atop one another in the sand.

Perspiring profusely, she decided the soiled sweatpants had
to go. Careful not to disturb the taped-on magazines, she pulled the
long-sleeved shirt over her head. As she placed it on the ground near her
socks, she couldn’t help noticing the horizontal black streaks on both arms and
the sooty palm prints incurred when the throng of zombies at the foot of
Violet’s drive had nearly knocked her from the bike.

She threw a hard shiver as it hit her full on how close she
had been to death. Not once, but three times in one day. Four, if she counted
Louie. But that was in proximity only. She had been in no jeopardy in the
presence of her bound undead husband.

Counting her lucky stars, and wondering how much longer
they’d be aligned in her favor, she eyed the crystalline water that had been so
close, yet so far, and subliminally calling her name for miles. Little more
than a creek at this location, the burbling water and smooth stones were just
what she had envisioned. She let out a little yelp and cast a nervous glance
uphill when her bare feet finally hit the ice cold water. Thrust her toes into
the sand and rubbed her heels and arches gently back and forth on the pea-sized
pebbles. Twice, over the creek’s gentle murmur, she thought she heard the rasps
of the dead coming from the State Route above. And both times she held her
breath unnecessarily, looked up expecting to see flesh eaters, but, thankfully,
only saw the red bike leaning against the guardrail precisely where she’d left
it.

She read page 1 through 164 in her blue book and by the time
she closed the dog-eared and highlighter-marked tome she figured she’d been
soaking her feet for close to an hour. She stuffed the book between her jeans
and the small of her back and the sound of her grumbling stomach convinced her
it was time to tie on the crimson-splashed Hi-Tecs and tackle the shale incline
rising steeply behind her.

Sliding down the hill had been fun—sort of. Equal parts
gravity and bravado combined with the near orgasm-inducing sight of the running
water made tackling the dangerous decline seem like nothing to Glenda.

Climbing out, however, was a monumentally harder task than
the former cross-country runner could have fathomed. Halfway to the road she
stopped, feet planted and hands splayed out in the sharp stones, and spewed
every ounce of water she’d consumed—and then some.

One step forward and three steps back was how the latter
half of what had become Glenda’s own personal Everest played out.

She scaled the last ten feet commando-crawling on her
stomach until the squared-off wood post and attached guardrail was within arm’s
reach.

Then she rested her eyes.

Raven won the second race by a nose, her front tire crossing
the poorly marked finish line just ahead of Sasha’s.

Chest heaving, Raven jammed to a stop and between ragged
gulps of air said, “Best of three?”

“Let’s rest for a few minutes.”

Let’s not
, thought Raven. Then she heard Sasha’s
whiny voice in her head:
Bragging rights are at stake.
“
Now
,”
called Raven over her shoulder.

“After a water break?”

Shaking her head side-to-side, Raven said forcefully, “
Now
.”

“Let’s up the ante,” said Sasha. “How about the loser cleans
the winner’s gun next time.”

Still shaking her head, Raven answered, “Dad would be pissed
if I didn’t clean mine myself.”

Screwing her face up, Sasha thought hard for a few seconds.
She said, “Loser makes the other person’s bed for a week.”

“Deal.” Mimicking something she’d seen the fifth grade boys
do, Raven spit on her palm and offered Sasha her hand.

“Uggghhh. I’ll trust you on this one.”

Face a mask of concentration, Raven stood hard on the
upright pedal and counted down from
three
.

At
one
they were off and pedaling hard.

By lap two Raven had pulled away but multicolored tracers
were flashing in front of her eyes.

By lap three she was still in the lead but breathing was
becoming difficult.

Lap four was when Sasha made her move, passing Raven on the
far corner near the parked vehicles.

Casting her gaze over her shoulder and following the redhead
left to right as she passed by was distraction enough to cause Raven to miss
the turn. She swiveled her head forward and registered the tree trunks rushing
at her and, without thinking about the lesser of two evils, jinked the bike
right, putting it on a collision course with several hundred pounds of
gore-encrusted steel bumper.

She remembered the blue Ford oval rushing at her face. Then
the coiled cable wound vertically on the winch drum flashed by in her side
vision as the bike slid from under her and the whirr of the tall grass whipped
against her back side. Lastly, she let out a yelp and the angular bumper
disappeared under her upthrust arms and met her ribs with breath-stealing
force.

The air blasted from her lungs wasn’t replaced. Instead she
tasted copper as a fine sheen of blood rimed her lips. And as she struggled to
inhale, her forehead met the bumper. In the next beat her body rolled over the
bike and a burst of white hot pain flooded her brain, causing it to turn off
and sending her mercifully into darkness’s warm embrace.

Feeling like he was being watched was an understatement. The
forest seemingly had eyes, and lying there naked on the soft bed of needles
under the low branches of a Douglas fir, Wilson could feel his skin begin to
crawl.

Taryn ran her hand through Wilson’s hair and then moved to
his cheek, and with the pad of her index finger traced over the scar where
Cade’s bullet had grazed him three weeks ago. It had healed to a colorless line
of corded tissue four inches in length and stood out in stark contrast on his
perpetually sunburned face. She continued the journey down and dragged a
fingernail over the uneven line demarking her man’s reddened forearm from the
rest of his alabaster torso. Sensing him tensing up, she asked, “What’s wrong,
Mister Farmer Tan?”

“I thought I heard something out of place.”

“From where?”

“Back towards the camp.”

“What did it sound like?”

“I don’t know,” Wilson said, the inquisition obviously
getting to him. “Something like a hammer banging metal, I guess.”

“Well we all know the rotters aren’t using tools,” she said,
propping herself up on one elbow.

“Yet,” countered Wilson as he cast an anxious glance towards
the nearby inner fence. “I saw that thing get over the top yesterday. That was
no accident. I have a theory.”

“And?” said Taryn. She shrugged on her bra. Made a mental
note to keep her eye out for a couple of new pairs, sports bras preferably,
next time she left the perimeter. She grabbed her shirt and, seeing Wilson
averting his eyes—a gentlemanly trait she had come to admire—pulled it over her
head and then gave him a quick peck on the scar on his cheek.

Wilson waited for Taryn to finish dressing then said, “I
think some of these things ... at least the ones that turned early on … are
getting smarter.”

“It’d look awfully strange if someone stumbled upon us and
only you were naked,” said Taryn. “Get dressed while you elaborate.”

He laid flat, arched his back, and pulled his fatigue pants
on. Covered his supernova bright upper body with a neon green short-sleeved
shirt emblazoned with a giant Mountain Dew logo. Then, thinking about how best
to articulate his hypothesis to Taryn, took his time lacing his boots.

Tired of waiting for the slow poke, Taryn helped him out on
both accounts. While tying his left boot, she said, “
I
think the rotters
are acting
mostly
on instinct and their desire to feed. However ...” She
paused and watched Wilson tie a double knot on the other boot. Saw the corded
muscles under his shirt rippling on his sides. He looked up and she continued,
“... if they see something they’ve done a ton of times it’s like Deja vu or
something. A certain sight or familiar location dislodges a little bit of
something from their memory and they just act on it.”

“So they’re
not
learning?”

“I don’t think so,” Taryn said. “Remember Captain Kirk at
the four-wheel-drive shop? That wrench was in his hand because he was just
going through the motions ... like muscle memory. We ever go back there again
I’d be willing to bet you a month’s worth of laundry duty he’s still got that
same tool in his hand and all of those bolts holding the shelving together down
there will not have been touched.”

Wilson smiled. He arched a brow and said, “Throw in two
shifts of body disposal duty ... digging and burying
both
, and you’re
on.”

Taryn rose and shouldered her carbine. She reached out her
hand to shake on the bet just as a shrill scream rang out.

Looking in the direction of the sound, Wilson sprang from
the ground with his fatigue top in hand, grabbed his carbine and sprinted that
way, bellowing, “Sasha,” at the top of his voice.

Beginning to end, Glenda’s climb from the creek bed back to
the road burned thirty minutes of daylight. Ninety minutes total squandered
since she’d left the old Schwinn on the road.

She wasted another five catching her breath. Then listened
hard for almost as long. But between the white noise of the distant creek and
the steady breeze jostling the pines and firs rising up on the far side of the
road there was no telling whether she was alone or not. So she commando-crawled
forward a few more inches and peered through the opening between the
frost-heaved roadbed and the underside of the guardrail. What she saw twenty
feet away, and stretching at least a hundred feet in the direction from which
she’d come, stole her breath away. Between the bicycle’s warped spokes,
distorted by the heatwaves rising off the blacktop, she saw an army of dead
shuffling left to right—towards Woodruff. Close to a hundred souls were
following hot on the heels of the monsters she’d recently given the slip.
Cursing under her breath, she put her cheek to the warm ground, did her best to
appear twice dead, and watched them pass.

It was a mixed lot, that much was clear. The zombies in the
lead, for the most part, appeared to be from Huntsville. However, as badly
burnt as they were, trying to tell one apart from another would be an exercise
in futility. More than twenty, dispersed throughout the undead parade, were
newer specimens, all showing no more than two or three weeks’ worth of rot. And
looking like wet linen, the alabaster skin clinging to their bloated bodies
contrasted sharply with their brethren’s crunchy, coal black dermis.

Moving with purpose, the stealthy procession passed mere
feet from Glenda’s prostrate form. She gave them a five-minute lead and, having
learned from past experience, made certain there were no stragglers around to
give her away before peeling herself off the hillside and surmounting the
guardrail.

Being careful to keep the chain from rattling—which up to
now had proven nearly impossible—Glenda wheeled the bike off the gravel
shoulder and onto the blacktop. She hopped aboard but refrained from sitting on
the seat lest the springs give her away. Slowly she pushed off and stood on
both pedals. Let the momentum carry her a short while until she hit the
left-hand sweeper and the tail end of the Woodruff death march.

Then, drawing on all of her reserves, she began pedaling
like her life depended on it—which it most definitely did. Picking her route in
advance, she steered left and right, zippering with ease through the first
twenty or so cadavers. However, the rasps and moans began the moment she
entered their midst, and in seconds, like a train lurching to a slow-speed
halt, the front two-thirds of the herd began stopping. The monsters turned
their heads to see what the ruckus was about, and when they fixed their milky
eyes on the meat on the bike the clumsy chain reaction only got worse.

Going wide right and risking being shoved over the guardrail
and ending up back down the ravine with broken bones or paralysis, Glenda
repeated her earlier move, tucked her elbows and knees in tight and became one
with the bike.

The move only further confused the zombies on her immediate
left, but the throng’s lead element—not so much.

With only thirty feet and about as many flesh eaters between
her and the open road, she raised her paper-wrapped left arm, ready to fend off
the closest of her attackers.

Twenty feet to go. She leaned left, hoping her weight and
momentum would be sufficient to parry the first creature’s lunge. The female,
judging by two sagging breasts that looked like a first timer’s failed attempt
at roasting marshmallows, missed grabbing her head by a few inches, but still
received a forearm shiver and an up close look at the July copy of National
Enquirer.

Ten feet to go and a trio of carbon copies of Kingsford were
near enough to make a grab. With one eye on the ever deepening ravine, Glenda
braced for contact. A tick later, left arm up in a defensive posture, she saw
the tips of their burnt fingers—perhaps the same ones that had soiled her shirt
earlier—make contact with her forearm, bend back and snap off, one at a time,
hollow little pops that left all three creatures with far fewer digits on each
hand than they brought to the fight.

Desperate times call for drastic measures
, thought
Glenda. With only ten feet to go and freedom looking her in the face, she took
her left foot off the pedal, straightened her leg, and stared the last cadaver
in the eyes. Saw a spark of knowing there. Not cunning, but just a feeling that
the thing knew what was in store for it. And it wasn’t pretty. Newton’s Law was
in effect. The action part came into play as her hiker hit a glancing blow on
the naked zombie’s package. She felt a great deal of give, like the bloated
thing there was a rotten melon. Instantly, started by the impact and furthered
by the zombie’s reaction to it, the pasty abomination brought its arms up and
began spinning away slowly to her left. The opposite reaction piece of Sir
Isaac’s law played out when a torrent of brackish fluid squirted onto the
blacktop and the two pus-engorged testes, now freed but still attached by the
testicular artery and smaller veins, dropped and swung around like mini
wrecking balls. As Glenda wheeled past, inexplicably, caught in her side
vision, she witnessed the zombie make a slow motion play at protecting its
ruined family jewels.

Some things never change
.
And some things you just
can’t unsee
, thought Glenda, as she pumped her legs and pulled away. Once
she’d put a little distance between her and the persistent parade of death, and
the bike was coasting smoothly on the blacktop, she looked down at the paper
armor, saw a number of teeth embedded there, and realized how close she’d come
to becoming one of them.