We head over to the hydro plant as soon as the day breaks: no point putting off the inevitable. We promised we’d help; I only hope that we can. As we get closer to the plant, I see the group of undead looking even larger than it did yesterday.
We slide down a small embankment
at the back of the hydro plant, the noise from the waterfall louder now. We land one by one in a muddy stream at the bottom with a splash. Mud coats my boots and legs and I grimace. Overnight it rained a little, turning the ice into sludge. I should be grateful that it didn’t snow anymore, but these days I tend to disregard being grateful for anything, since you never know what strings come attached to it.
“How is it even possible that you have electricity?” I ask as I climb up the other side of the embankment.
I look up to see Dean shrug and roll his eyes dismissively. “Again, that’s the hydro power. The river still runs, and I guess it’s keeping everything going. I mean, it’s not very efficient—there’s nothing to spare, everything is going on the defenses—but we don’t use electricity in town, since we didn’t want to disrupt anything else after the accident. I mean, whatever caused all this to happen,” he gestures to the herd of deaders around the plant, “it was a miracle, and I don’t want to mess with it any more than I have and have it turn off or whatever. Plus, we’ve managed pretty well without electricity so far, and we don’t want to attract any attention to ourselves.” He shares a look with Anne. “We’ve both seen those types of movies where people are their own worst enemy. We decided it was best to be on our own until everyone came back.”
Again with
the ‘everyone coming back’ crap.
I roll my eyes.
As we get close to the main fence of the plan
t, a loud humming can be heard—oh, and a chorus of deader moans, of course. Can’t forget that sweet sound.
“It
’s there.” Dean points up ahead. “You guys sure you’re up to this?”
“No,
” I say wholeheartedly. And I mean it, too, especially after seeing the amount of them. There’s definitely a couple hundred more.
Mikey scratches his beard
, frowning again. It’s becoming an all too familiar look on him. “I’m not happy about this.” He looks around at the surrounding fields, stray deaders making their shambly way over to the exact point that we need to get to.
“Look, Lovers
’ Lookout is just over that hill, the truck’s over there. It will be easy—we’ve done something similar before.” He looks around and I don’t miss the anxiety that crosses his face. “Of course there weren’t nearly as many of the sick then.” He shrugs. “I only need them distracted long enough to get this fence secured.”
I take a deep breath. “Let
’s just get this over and done with. Anne, Em, you’re both with me then. You know the plan.” I start to walk away but Mikey catches my elbow and turns me back around. He reaches down for my chin, tugging my face up to his as he kisses me.
“Be careful.” His brown eyes bore into mine like something you
see in a movie—intense, full of emotion. I’d swoon if I was the type to.
“Always am.” I smirk as I deftly kiss him back and then start walking to the truck.
“I’m serious, don’t go doing anything stupid,” he shouts after me.
There are
several trucks scattered around, but the two we’re using are Land Rovers or something similar. I only recognize the shape of the truck as something my own father used to drive when I was younger. He was so proud of that vehicle, always going on about it being a real man’s truck.
I
smile fondly at the memory and climb into the closest one. Anne climbs in the back and Emily gets in the passenger’s seat next to me. The deaders have spotted us and are growling their disgusting asses off, as if afraid that we might be getting away.
Not likely
—
we’re bringing lunch to you.
I start the truck with the key Dean
gave me, glad that he had the sense to keep turning some of the vehicles over so the engines didn’t all go flat. I have to give the boy some credit; he has some very clever ideas, even if some others are ridiculously stupid.
I swing the truck around, getting a feel for it before stopping and deciding to put on my se
atbelt. I tell the girls to do the same—last thing I need is one of us falling out, and this ground is not the easiest to maneuver, I realize.
“Keep
your arms inside, guns raised—you know the drill, Em.”
We
’re the bait, intending to lure the deaders away from the area and up to Lovers’ Lookout—a.k.a. kids’ make-out corner—and then the best part of all: Dean has thoughtfully left a snowplow up there that he’s used once or twice to, well, plow the dead over the side, apparently. That part I actually can’t wait for.
I pull around the back of the herd and beep my horn several times to get their attention. Slowly they begin to turn, scrambling ove
r one another to get to us. The more unfortunate ones fall right away, the stronger of the dead trampling them into the sodden earth, but mostly they all press forward, intent on reaching us in whatever capacity they can.
When I think enough of them are following, I start to drive away, keeping enough distance between us to keep
them following. The men become smaller and smaller as we get further away, and I can’t help it, my heart starts pounding heavily in my chest. The truck starts the gentle incline, struggling ever so slightly as we reach the top. The deaders use each other as leverage to make it up the slippery hillside. At the top is a small parking lot, and after that is a beautiful view of the rocky, snow-covered landscape. I can’t help but gasp at the magnificence of it, and it seems unfair to ruin it by plowing the dead over the sheer side, but those are the facts.
I pull the truck over to one
side of the industrial orange snowplow, feeling it somewhat ironic that with all the snow around, we’ll be plowing zombies and not snow. Anne climbs into my seat of the truck as I climb out and hurriedly into the plow. I pull the second set of keys from my pocket and start it up. It’s noisier than I expected, and as the deaders come up over the hill and the girls take off, my noisy engine attracts the deaders to me.
I fumble with the controls momentarily, nearly losing my cool as I struggle to s
teer the damn thing. Eventually I’m heading straight for them, grimacing at the sound of the first bodies to hit the metal scoop on the front. They growl and continue reaching for me even as their legs are torn from their rotten bodies. I press down harder on the accelerator, driving as close to the edge as I feel comfortable with and feeling slightly satisfied when the first group goes tumbling over the edge.
It doesn
’t last long, as hands begin to hit the back and side of my truck, causing it to rock. I shift it into reverse, imagining the sound of their bones crunching as I roll backwards over any that were stupid enough to get behind me. More come up over the hill as I swing back around, and I continue to shovel them toward the edge and over into the abyss.
The sun is shining down
, causing the surrounding snow to twinkle like diamonds, and it would be an almost beautiful sight as the area is more or less cleared of the first group of dead. Unfortunately, the ground is smeared with rotten corpses, blood, entrails, and sludge, and the image is far less wondrous as the sound of the second horde of undead follow behind Anne and Em’s truck as they come up and over the hillside.
Em
’s hand flies to her face, and even from where I sit I can see her pale significantly. Anne’s face seems nonchalant about it all, and that’s what catches me by surprise. Em doesn’t have the strongest stomach, but Anne seemed like such a little mouse—yet here she is acting all tough-girl without a care in the world.
Their truck pulls up beside mine and she rolls down the window.
“They’re on their way,” Anne says with determination.
“So I hear.” I shrug. “Any problems?”
“No, everything is going okay. Mikey and Alek are taking out any that get too close to Dean, and the rest seem to be following us. This next group seems bigger than the last. Want us to hang around and help?” Anne asks, not a hint of humor in her voice.
“
Uh, no, I should be good.” I frown. If I had a beard I’d scratch it in puzzlement at this girl’s new hardcore attitude toward what’s going on; she’s like a different person from the one we met yesterday.
The first of the dead begin to come
up over the hillside. “Better go,” I say and let out the breath I had been holding without realizing it.
I rev the engine to get their attention
, and once I have it I ease forward, waiting until enough of them are up close before I accelerate and push them toward the edge. A couple grasp onto the steel of the scoop, but as I reverse they lose their grip and fall, or smear against the concrete ground of the parking lot, leaving trails of rotten limbs behind them.
I swing back around and repeat the action, driving away from the initial herd and then spinning full circle to be able to scoop as many as possible in one
shot. I’ve long ago gotten over the sound of their bodies being crushed, but the smell they excrete when they are broken open is worse than I expected.
It
’s on my third scoop of deader that I panic as a large deader manages to climb the side of the truck. He seems as surprised as me, but not as surprised as the deader that he stood on to get up so high in the first place, when it falls to its knees and goes under the wheel of the plow. The other deader bangs against my window angrily, fingernails snapping as it claws at the glass.
“Don
’t panic, don’t panic,” I mutter, speeding up and slamming my brakes on to shake the deader off. He grips onto the side mirror, doggedly determined not to be thrown loose.
I look up and see more deaders spilling over the top of the hillside, but no Emily and Anne preceding them.
“Okay, panicking a little bit now.” The deader bangs angrily on my window again, and I can’t stop myself from banging back. “Fuck off!”
I decide to dump
this next load of deaders over Lovers’ Lookout and ignore Angry Pants at my window for now. I can’t get him off willingly, and more and more are coming to join the party with every second. I can’t say I’m not wishing that Anne and Emily wouldn’t have stayed to help out now, though.
I tip my load over the edge and jam it in reverse, but the truck doesn
’t budge. I try to look around and see why, but Angry Pants is still staring in at me, his growly rotten face snarling. I can only presume there’s a bunch of deader bones stuck under my wheel, stopping me from going anywhere. I floor it but only manage to budge the truck an inch or so. All the while, my sideshow companion continues to gnaw at the window.
I stick the truck in park
, my hands shaking uncontrollably, and try to catch my breath. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting worried, but surely the others would be coming anytime now. I look around, seeing only a wall of dead surrounding me just as Angry Pants hits the window again and a large crack shoots down the glass.
“
Sodomize me with a snow shovel, that is not good,” I yell, grimacing at both my colorful imagery and Angry Pants at my window.
I pull the gun from my waistband—a crappy old thing that Dean gave me. Apparently it was his gramps’; the guy had tons of weapons, but they’re all old. I spin the barrel, already knowing it’s full, since I loaded it fresh before we left.
I need options, good options. Options? Pfft, I can
’t see any viable ones right now.
I point the gun at the wind
ow while simultaneously shoving the truck in reverse again. “Come on, come on!” I yell.
If I
’m going out, I’m going out wild and taking as many of these pus bags with me as I can, I decide. Angry fists smash against the metal on all sides of the truck, the noise almost deafening. I try to control my fear instead of letting it control me, taking deep breaths and releasing them as slowly as possible. Fists hit the window next to my head again, and a split second later glass explodes around me and Angry Pants falls through and into my lap, his jaws snapping as I push on his forehead to keep his teeth away from my skin. I reach a hand across and grab the back of his head, my fingers clutching at dirty hair, and I yank his head backwards and away from my thighs as I force my gun into his face.
My e
yes squeeze closed as I feel his teeth close around the barrel and his growling becomes muffled by the metal filling its rotten hole. I fire the gun, gray brain matter and skull rain down on me, and I let out a high-pitched scream as I shove the body back out the window. I look out and see another deader attempting to climb up to me.
“Shit!” I bang the steering wheel.
The whole truck is rocking backwards and forwards, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t totally shitting myself now. The sound of revving in the distance draws my attention to the hillside, and a couple of seconds later Anne and Emily’s truck comes over the hill. Neither look surprised by the sight before them, but I don’t have time to register the whats or the whys about that. I’m just glad that I stand a fighting chance now.
Anne revs the truck even more, drawing the attention of some of the deaders to her. The front ones move away and give me
the leeway to be able to edge forward enough to turn my truck in a small half-circle. Something clunks under my wheel, and when I stick it back into reverse, the trucks obeys and I begin to slowly crush the life—death—out of the deaders behind me. Emily is firing into the herd and—surprisingly—is accurately blowing a ton of dead away. Anne is driving into some of them, snapping their legs like twigs and sending them to the ground, where her tires find their faces and crush them. I’m continuing to back into and crush the ones that are stupid enough to get behind me, and shovel the ones stupid enough to stand in front over the side of Lovers’ Lookout—and then my knight in shining armor turns up, all guns blazing, muscles twitching, and manly grimace shining through.
I would be all like,
‘bitch please, we have this totally under control’ and play my feminist card, but since he has a freaking machine gun and we
don’t
have it under control, I merely shrug and yell at him to help us. At least I assume it’s some sort of machine gun by the amount of bullets that are spraying out the end of it.
The deaders
’ bodies bounce around, gunk exploding out of them from all angles—out of the back, front, head. Some drop, some keep moving onward, relentless and ignorant to the amount of bullets that riddle their rotting bodies. Mikey isn’t even going for kill shots; he’s going for full-on destruction, a crazy gleam in his eye.
I scoop a bunch more deaders over the side, watching as the
y plummet away from this once beautiful lookout and into oblivion, or whatever is down there—maybe an ex-lover or two. Mikey’s gun has finally silenced, Emily’s too, and I reverse the truck one last time and park it up as calmly as I can. The blood finally finds its way back into my fingers as I loosen my grip on the wheel and survey the destruction around us.
The gro
und is littered with body parts and gore. Stringy sinew clings to the fronts of bumpers; the pure white snow has been drowned out with brown and black sludge, rotten intestines, and graying brain matter. Mikey jumps down from the bed of the truck and stalks his way over to me. A stray deader reaches up from the ground, its face partially caved in from the impact of something, its legs laying crushed behind its ravaged body, but Mikey shows it no mercy as he stamps his boot into the back of its head as he passes. In the silence, the sound of crunching bone is loud and echoes around us all.
Mikey climbs up to my door and yanks it open. His eyes wash over me and he
frowns when he sees the blacky-brown patch in my lap.
“Were you bitten?” h
e simply asks. “Are you hurt?”
I wonder if I were to say yes
that the deader had bitten me and I was bleeding to death if he would put a bullet straight through my brain, or if he’d look after me until the bitter end. I look down into my lap, feeling glad that I can answer honestly.
“No.” My voice comes out quieter than I expected, and it
’s then that I realize how scared I must have been—still am. “It just kinda gnawed on my pants a little.” I look to the edge where I tipped my last load of deaders. The view is still spectacular, but I can almost hear the angry groans from the semi-destroyed deaders down below, growling up to me and promising to find their way to me somehow, someday. Kinda ruins the view, if I’m honest. I shrug it off, clear my throat, and repeat, “No, I’m good.” I frown back, harder than him, and raise an eyebrow.
“
Okay then. Let’s get back.” He jumps down, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.
I
’m not sure if I expected him to kiss me, dragging me from the vehicle and wrapping me in his arms in a mushy embrace, but his indifference certainly wasn’t what I had in mind. I mean, he didn’t even shout at me for being reckless. What the hell’s that all about?
I climb out of my truck on unsteady legs, keeping my gun aimed at the mass of limbs on the
ground and being careful to not stand on any of them. I’m already a mess of nerves; the last thing I need is for one of these ugly fuckers to decide that they aren’t completely re-dead and grab hold of me. I climb in behind Emily’s seat and offer them a smile.
“Everything okay, girls?” I say nonchalantly.
Anne watches me from her rearview mirror. “Umm, yeah.”
Emily has turned in her seat to stare at me.
“What?” I ask with a shrug. “What are you staring at?”
“Nina…” she begins
, but then turns around without saying anything else. I have a feeling that she’s trying not to cry, but I’m not sure why. I know that was a close call, but I didn’t do anything stupid this time. It was just a plan that went to hell. I can’t be blamed for that.
I stare
out the window, clenching and unclenching my hands and begging for them to stop shaking. Anne swings the truck around, and as we turn to go back down the hill I catch sight of my snowplow. Forgetting the massacre that surrounds it—the bodies, the limbs, the gore—and forgetting that the plow is so close to the cliff edge that I’m not sure how it hasn’t fallen over yet, what’s so shocking is that the sides of the plow are so dented in that the paint has come away and pure metal is showing through. In some places the metal has been so badly knocked out of shape that it’s actually made several small holes
through
and into the inner workings of the plow.
Jesus, how did they have the strength to even do that?
I swallow hard, feeling Anne’s eyes on me in the mirror, but I don’t look up. I hadn’t realized how close—in so many ways—I had just come to death. Is that why no one is saying much to me? Because they know that it’s not my fault this time, but they very nearly lost me? Are they all as shocked as me? Are they waiting for me to freak out? If they are, they’ll be waiting a long time. I won’t freak out. I swallow down the lump in my throat, feeling the blood rush to my head.
The adrenaline leaks from my body in waves and I suddenly feel the very real urge to go to sleep.
Or puke. Or puke and then sleep. Instead I continue to stare out the window, feeling a little numb. As we make it back to the hydro plant, I notice that the fence has been put back up and looks much more secure now. It helps that the deaders have gone now, too—well, apart from the odd shambler on the way over, anyway. I guess that’s the whole point isn’t it? This thing—current, whatever—attracts them. It doesn’t matter that we just cleared a couple of hundred of them or that it nearly cost me my life; they’ll continue to keep on coming no matter what.
This
freak accident at the plant is both a blessing and a curse. They’re going to have this problem again in a couple of months, no doubt. I can’t help but wonder what the hell they are going to do about it then. Will they find other stragglers to help them, or have they made it safe enough to last this time?
I guess only time will tell.
*
We stay for another day or so, filling up on food and supplies. Dean and Anne are without
a doubt clueless to what’s happened in the outside world, but nothing any of us can say can change their minds on things. As we leave the town, they are both still convinced that everyone will come back once the government finds a cure for these sick people. I’m tired of trying to change their minds, and I relent.
“Be careful,
” I say, squeezing Anne to me.
“We will.” She smiles back.
I hug Dean—it’s awkward, but I do it anyway. I’m enjoying all sorts of physical contact these days: hugging, hand-holding—I’m a real touchy-feely kinda girl. “Stay safe…and keep dusting,” I joke with a smirk.
He doesn
’t laugh back and I roll my eyes at him. We leave by a small bridge that runs over the top over the river that feeds the hydro plant, and climb into a silver truck that Dean let us take.
“Do you think we
’re doing the right thing? Leaving them like this?” I ask Mikey.
“I think they
know more than they’re letting on,” he says.
I look back over my shoulder
and see them walking away, his arm around her waist.
“You mean they know everything is gone?”
He nods. “Yeah. Yet right now, this is their world, and they want to cling onto the normality while they can. I’m glad we could help them do that for a little longer.”
I nod, my mind deep in my thoughts. It feels like we
’re abandoning them, but maybe we’re not after all. Maybe they need to be on their own, and to have their little world back to themselves.
Five miles down the road, the truck breaks down and we
’re forced to get out and walk. I have a bitter and jaded feeling that Dean and Anne knew that would happen, but despite being pissed off I don’t say anything—none of us do. We get out and start to walk. There’s a saying, ‘no point crying over spilled milk,’ and it’s true. There’s no point in complaining; it is what it is. I’ll be sure to give the little shit a piece of my mind if we ever make it back this way.
I
look up ahead at Emily and Alek as they walk hand in hand. I’m still not comfortable with their relationship, but what can I say? He’s only a year or so older than her, he protects her, cares for her—clearly he has deep feelings for her. How can I tell them that it’s wrong? How can it possibly be wrong? If anything happens to me and Mikey, at least she has Alek to look after her.
I reach ou
t and slip my hand into Mikey’s. He looks across and offers me a small smile. He’s still lost within his own horrors; the memories of what he’s done—who he’s harmed—are still fresh on his face, like war wounds. I want to tell him that it will be okay—that he’ll sleep peacefully soon and won’t see the tortured faces of his victims—but I can’t. That’s more than likely a lie: those faces would haunt me forever, so I’m sure they’ll do the same to him. Goddamn Fallon and his backwards thinking.
I push it from my mind as we walk.
For the first time in days, the sun is shining. The snow is thick in places, and it’s still freezing as hell, but the view is clear: no wind, no rain, and no snow. If we keep at this pace, we could be at the barracks in a couple of hours. This is probably the calm before the storm. Literally. Winter is very clearly here, and things are only going to get worse.
God knows what we
’ll find when we get there. I can only hope that it hasn’t already been raided; otherwise this whole journey is for nothing. We could have stayed in Dean’s little town, settled in for the winter. There was food, it was warm, it was a real house—a home that we could have survived in. For as far back as I can remember, all I’ve wanted was a home again. Unfortunately, my immediate future doesn’t have one in it. I’m a roamer, wandering from place to place, town to town, trying to survive. Hell, half the world is doing the same thing now, but no place is safe. And isn’t that the point of killing Fallon and the rest of his stupid gang? To make what’s left of the world a safer place for other survivors? Or am I just grasping onto vengeance for my own personal means, intent on killing him and destroying his bastard army for no other reason than it might stop some of the burning pain that courses through me, that it might help Mikey sleep better? Fallon is a weed; he’s strangling the life and soul out of people because of his own agenda. Maybe I’m as bad as him.