Trepidation (22 page)

Asia was tough—that was for sure—but I was worried about hypothermia setting in. I knew I had to get her out of there fast. Raw fear gripped me, making my stomach churn. “Grab my jacket!” I said.

Shivering and gasping for air, she reached for it.

“Asia,” I said, “I want you to lift and kick.”

She stretched her arms over the ice and shimmied up for me to pull her out. Her upper torso rested on the ledge. I gave her another tug with all my might, and she pulled with her arms and kicked her legs to propel herself out of the water. I slowly heaved her up over the edge. My stomach was in knots, and I took a deep breath to calm myself.

Spluttering and coughing, Asia pushed the tangled, frosty hair out of her eyes. “I’m so cold,” she stuttered between shivers. Every muscle in her body trembled as she let out a shaky breath.

I was freezing too. My jacket was soaking wet, and the wintery wind whipping across my body didn’t help. My voice wavered as I consoled, “It’s gonna be okay, but the ice is weak. I know you’re tired, but we need to roll away from the water.”

She nodded, and we moved slowly away from the icy chasm, scooting carefully on our stomachs. I was so cold, and Asia looked miserable as water dripped off her dark hair. I knew she was freezing, even worse than I was, and my heart went out to her. We needed to get home fast as possible and get a warm fire going.

“Approaching zombie princess,” Asia said.

The zombie she was talking about was dressed in a big, puffy, torn, tattered dress and looked like it had stumbled right out of some kind of twisted fairytale. We scooted way over to the left and crawled past it. It was walking very slowly, either because the cold was taking a toll on it, freezing its already brittle bones, or because it was starving. As we passed, it let out guttural sounds and grunts. When I heard a
splash
, I turned my head and saw that the petrified prom queen had fallen through the weak ice and been swallowed up by the cold lake, just like the others.

“Guess Cinder
hella
didn’t have her happily-ever-after,” Asia joked.

“Yeah, well, maybe her Prince Charming is already down there,” I said.

“I just want off this ice,” she said. “Part of me is tempted to just start running.”

“You wanna end up like Seeping Beauty or that herd I took out?”

“No way.”

“Then keep shimmying across the ice,” I said, using my arms and elbows to slide along, knowing that keeping our weight evenly distributed was the key to staying alive.

She shivered violently. “Survivors do what they gotta do.”

“Yeah...and this beats running from cannibals,” I said.

“How do we find ourselves in these situations?”

Before I could answer, I was peering down at a sunken, hollow, diseased face with jagged, stained, yellow teeth. Its black fingernails scratched frantically at the ice. I froze, and my breath caught in my throat as I gazed down at the horizontal body, seemingly frozen right under me, flattened against the ice. When it opened its milky eyes and stared right into my soul from the other side of that glassy floor, I couldn’t do anything but gasp.

O
ne of the zombies I’d killed was floating directly underneath the ice. I stared in horror at the flesh-eating monster directly below me. Its hands pounded on the ice as it stared at me with those snow-white eyes. Somehow, the creepy thing had made its way over to where I was.
How convenient
, I thought, as a wave of nausea swept over me at the gruesome sight. 

Asia screamed when she saw her very own creeper staring up at her. “What the heck?” she asked, terror oozing from her voice. “They have this big lake all to themselves, yet they’ve gotta have their pool party over here.”

Multiple dead zombies floated below me. It looked like the ones I’d just killed. For a minute, I was too terrified to even talk.

“Dean?” she said. “Are you okay?”

My lungs constricted. “Yeah. It’s just...”

“Yeah, I know. More Stephen King crap we could never dream up in a million years.”

I placed a shaking gloved hand on the ice and moved on. “Yeah, something like that.”

Even though the ice was weak, I knew there was no way the zombies could break through; they simply weren’t strong enough. Another zombie floated to the top, then another. In a matter of seconds, the whole herd seemed to pile up right below us. My imagination began to play tricks on me, and I imagined them pounding their fists through the ice, reaching right into my chest to rip out my heart. With so many now pounding on the ice, there was a possibility they could break it, and the thought of that made my skin prickle.

“Asia,” I said, “what if they break the ice?”

She let out a long breath, then threw a terrified glance in my direction. “Let’s scoot faster.”

As I slithered as quickly as I could across the frozen lake, their haunting faces looked up at me while they floated around in the frigid water below. My heart drummed harder against my chest, and when I could finally breathe again, I let out another horrified gasp. The only thing between them and me was a thin sheet of ice. The whole thing felt surreal, as if we were acting out some horrible movie or videogame. I pictured the opening scene: Asia and I lying flat on our stomachs, spread eagle, inching our way across the ice. As that imaginary camera panned out, I imagined literally hundreds of zombies under the ice, fighting to break their way out. Shuddering, I shook my head at the thought.

One particular zombie with swirling blond hair pounded so hard that the ice spider-webbed in a dozen tiny, radiating cracks.

“The ice is breaking!” Asia shouted hysterically.

I gasped for breath. I knew if we fell in freezing water, we’d be torn to bits like shark bait, even before we died from hypothermia or drowning. Hundreds of undead had floated toward us.

One corpse moaned and snapped its teeth against the icy surface; the teeth shattered like glass. It wasn’t ready to give up, though, and when it started head banging the ice, I was mortified. Its face was so rotted that I could see every white bone beneath the skin and muscle. It kept hitting the ice with its head, and I could feel every vibration. My gut twisted.
Will the ice give way? Am I gonna sink into that icy soup and be devoured, limb by limb?

I couldn’t bear to look down at the creature writhing beneath me, so I focused on the blue sky and the tree line in front of me. I slid across the ice and tried to ignore the ravenous zombie under the ice, banging its head on the hard surface like some kind of heavy metal head-banger:
Thud...thud...thud...thud. Ignore it
, I said to myself.
Don’t look at it. Just crawl faster.

I crawled past it in no time, but more looked up at me. My jaw dropped when I saw a rotter with no eyes and no lips. It just had empty eye sockets and a smashed face, like someone had beaten it. It licked the ice like it was enjoying a lollipop with its black, mangled tongue. I crawled to the left to avoid the nightmarish thing. 

As we slithered along, our teeth chattering, a waterlogged zombie with dark, black rings around its eyes and multiple cuts on its face clawed the ice, determined to break through for a snack. Its black nails were grotesque, and half its cheek was ripped off, exposing flesh. What really freaked me out was that its face was swollen to the size of a beach ball. As I peered at it, it moaned, then sliced its jagged nails into its own face in frustration, slushing off layers of sagging, rotting skin. I looked away in horror.

I kept moving, but I couldn’t stop shivering, a result of the cold and the fear that were threatening to overwhelm me. I tried everything to fight off the vivid images in my head, but the ones beneath me were just as terrifying—and far more real.

Suddenly, a
crunch
pierced my ears, and a zombie’s icy hands wrapped around my boot. When I instinctively jerked, the ice shifted.

CRACK!

“Dean!” Asia said, with a deep frown planted between her brows. “Don’t move, or we’re good as dead.”

Fear crippled me. I knew she was right, but I couldn’t just let the thing make a drumstick out of my leg. I reached for my gun and fired, nailing its hand in one shot. The zombie let go and fell back into the watery abyss.

I inched faster and stopped momentarily when I realized how weak the ice was. Another zombie took full advantage of the situation, popping its head up directly in my path, mere inches from my face. Instinctively, I reached for my gun and blew its head off, spraying blood and gore everywhere.

The ice vibrated with every punch the zombies delivered, trying to escape from their icy prison.

My mind raced. “We’ve gotta log-roll to shore,” I said. “This is taking way too long.”

Asia nodded in agreement.

I began rolling across the unstable ice, being careful not to let my elbows or knees or the toes of my boots hit it too hard as I rotated around.

After a few dizzying moments, I heard Asia shout in joy. “The ice is pretty solid now!” she said, crawling on her hands and knees. “It’s a good seven to eight inches. I think we can walk the rest of the way.”

I couldn’t see through the ice anymore, which was comforting. I stared ahead at the coating of new snow, glistening like diamonds under the warm rays of the sun. I slowly scrambled to my feet, testing the ice with the weight of my foot. Then I gave the ice a few good whacks with my gun, listening for a deep
thump
. When I heard it, I smiled; there was no hollow sound, and that was a good sign the ice was firm and solid. It seemed pretty sturdy. I held out my hand and helped Asia up, and she embraced me in a long hug. It was such a relief to know we’d be able to walk upright, without having to see zombie bodies bumping up and down beneath us.

She looked into my eyes. “Thank you, Dean...for saving my life back there.”

I touched her face. “I’ll always have your back, Asia.”

Her lips trembled, and she gazed into my eyes. “I know...and I’ve got yours.”

I hugged her, rubbing the hard stress knots in her shoulders with my palm. As she clutched me and buried her face in my chest, my arms encircled her in a strong grip. “You’re my family now,” I said with heartfelt intensity.

“And you’re mine.”

Off in the distance, I heard more zombie moans.

Asia heard them too, because she clutched me and buried her face in my chest. “Dean, I’m so cold,” she said. “We need to hurry up and get off this lake, away from these zombies, and build a fire.”

My labored breathing eased, though my lungs still burned and my head pounded. “I’m freezing, too, but building a fire will take too long. We’d have to find dry enough wood, and most of its covered in snow. We’re not too far from Fairport. Besides, it’s not safe out here, and the smoke might draw a crowd.”

“Like zombies, hybrids, or Z’s men?”

“For all we know, Z’s men could be guarding the perimeter of the city, waiting for us. We can’t risk a smoke signal.”

“Let’s just get our butts to Fairport,” she said. “We can take the back way in.”

“Can you walk?” I asked.

“I’m numb, but I can do it,” she said, letting out frosty breaths. She tried to smile confidently, but her shaky voice gave her away.

“I can carry you if you need me to.”

Her mouth set in a hard line. “No way. Not a chance, buddy.”

“Still playing the macho card, huh?” I asked.

She smiled. “You better believe it. As long as I’m breathing, I’m not gonna let somebody coddle me. Just let me get dry first. She began picking up fresh snow and rubbing it on her clothes.

I wrinkled my brow in confusion. “What are you doing?”

“It’s a trick I learned in survival class. Light snow is really absorbent and will suck away moisture. It’ll help me warm up.”

I wrapped my arm around her to steady her, and we walked together through the frozen landscape. I wished I hadn’t soaked my jacket, though I was glad it had come in handy to pull Asia out of that lake. The cold seeped into my bones, and I was sure I’d never been so cold in my life. My lips were numb, cracked, and blue, and my body trembled from head to toe, but I dared not complain about it because I knew Asia was even worse off.

Just as we cut through a patch of twisting trees, we heard a low growl coming from a nearby shrub. 

Asia used her high-tech vision, and a horrified gasp broke from her. “There’s at least a dozen or so.”

“We’re so close to home,” I said.

My breathing was labored, but we steadily moved along and went a different way. We pushed through the thick undergrowth, moving quickly and quietly, like frozen ninjas.

As much as Asia didn’t want to admit it, she was getting weaker by the minute. Fortunately, luck finally smiled on us, and we didn’t have to fight any more zombies. I was thankful for the break, because I had never felt so miserable in all my life, and everything seemed a blur. I wouldn’t have been very valuable in hand-to-undead hand combat. 

A
s soon as we reached the city, thankfully unabated by zombies or fiends of the more human variety, we hurried to the apartment complex, eager for a warm fire, dry clothes, blankets, and some food. Lucas carried Asia up to our apartment, and she didn’t bother trying to shoo him away.

I tried to tell the others what happened, but they insisted that we warm up first. I took sips of hot coffee, and Kate threw thick blankets around us. It was so good to be home and alive. The place was freezing, though, so Val and Kate got a huge fire going and made beds for us in front of it. It had never felt better to put on dry clothes, and Val was a real mother hen, waiting on us hand and foot.

I glanced around and realized one familiar face was missing. “Hey, where’s Claire?” I asked.

“Guard duty, on the other side of the complex,” Val said. “We’ll make sure she knows you’re back.” 

Asia looked over at me. “This ain’t the Hyatt or anything, but we sure are getting the five-star treatment.”

Val smiled. “It’s the least we can do. Now, here’s my version of an electric blanket,” she said, throwing a huge red blanket over us after she’d warmed it by the fire.