The woods were a canopy of misery. Sounds came from all around us as the rain continued to fall.
Haley was waiting for us inside the woods. She gave me a questioning look, but I shook my head. We pressed on, me in the lead as I tried to be a leader. I had no idea where I was, and there wasn’t even a moon to follow. How long had I been in the cage and never thought to mark the passage of our one orbital body? Or maybe I had and hunger and exhaustion had simply stolen away my memories, made me weak and confused.
I struck out between a pair of trees that led down a slight hill. At the bottom, we came across a stream. I almost wept in relief; at last, water!
I ran toward it, but slowed when I nearly tripped over something on the wet ground. Under the leaves and fallen branches, something crunched. As I drew close, the darkness played tricks on my eyes. Studying the ground, I thought I saw bones. They had to be branches or sticks, but it must have been the stress of being around all the dead things that did it to me.
The smell was the second hint. It hit me like a weight, as the scent went from clean rain and forest to rot.
As I closed in on the riverbed, I tripped on something and went down. I stuck my hands out, but I still hit pretty hard. The breath whooshed out of me, and when I got one back in, I regretted it. Slowly, I looked around the place where I had fallen, a few inches from the edge of the water. It was littered with bones.
Scott gave a low groan, as if in pain.
We huddled close to the water as we fought to catch our breath. I stared at the slow stream as it meandered by, wishing more than anything I could drink from it. The bones of the dead were everywhere. Chunks of meat and rotted tissue made a slippery surface for us to navigate.
Sounds to the side, near the break in the woods, caught my attention. A voice hissed at us. I turned to regard the approaching cluster of people. They stared at us, and I stared back. Scott must have recognized one of them, because he rose on shaky legs and approached them. They talked quietly. It was still dark, but I saw his head turn toward the stream, then toward us. He shook his head. The group of three moved off.
“Friends?” I inquired when Scott rejoined us.
“From another enclave. We used to trade with them. I can’t remember names but one of the guys was familiar. They are going deep in the woods. Lick their wounds. I don’t think they want company.”
I wondered if it was better for us to stick together. We would make more noise crashing through the forest, surely making ourselves a larger target for the ghouls to track. I started thinking of tactics against the undead.
In my years in the military, I was trained to think like that. Had I forgotten so much? Though tired, barely able to rise to my feet, we crept off into the night and away from the water and its filth. One drink from that stream would probably be the end of us.
As we walked, I went over old training exercises and tried to apply them to this situation. We were outnumbered, so guerrilla tactics would be best. Stay light and mobile, scope out the enemy, and only engage when we had the advantage. So strike one. We had neither the advantage in weapons nor the ability to hide and move, for we had no idea where we were.
We had nothing in the way of weaponry, but like all good primates, we could scrounge up clubs or staffs from fallen branches. My focus swept the ground as we staggered through the woods. I finally found something usefuclass="underline" a heavy stick about three feet long with a large knot in the end.
It was just in time too, as a walking corpse stumbled from between two trees. I stepped toward it so I was no longer in the light. He or she was still a few feet away, but I had to be sure. It could be a refugee from the camp—someone like us who spent days or maybe weeks in captivity and was now trying to survive.
The weird preternatural glow to the thing’s eyes gave it away. Not quite a ghoul, but still brighter than the dead we had encountered thus far. I didn’t need any further prompting. I swung the stick around in nothing approaching a graceful manner. The club came up in an arc that stretched from my knees to my shoulders, driving the heavy end into the zombie’s head.
It went over without making a sound and didn’t move. Panting in the dark, I stood over it and worked on catching my breath.
There was nothing quiet about our steps as we crashed through the forest. We took to the woods and let our fading adrenaline drive us along. I didn’t have much left, and I couldn’t imagine they had much more than I did.
What I wouldn’t give for a hot bath, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a six pack of cheap beer.
We moved for as long as we could before Haley begged a break. I panted beside her until I caught my breath again. Then I put my hand on her shoulder in what I hoped was a comforting manner. She reacted by covering my large hand in her cold slim one. Her eyes were large and glistened in the dark, as if she had been crying. I stood like a big dumb oaf, wondering if she wanted a hug or something.
She sat down on a log and stared back in the direction from which we had come. Scott dropped down beside her.
I sat as well, even though I was afraid I would never be able to get up again. I picked the most uncomfortable-looking section of the log, leaned over, and tried to catch my breath. Scott did the same next to me, as did Haley. She was having trouble breathing, but when I looked over at her she was still looking away, back toward the camp we had fled. I wondered what her thoughts were, but I kept mine to myself.
A bunch of black bulbs caught my eye. Reaching down, I pulled one up and studied it. I was tired and couldn’t afford to make a mistake, but we needed something to eat. After turning the mushroom around in my hand, I popped it in my mouth.
Scott looked over and gave a gasp as I chewed. I shot him my best grin and pulled up another one.
“You fucking crazy, man?”
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “Black Trumpet is an edible mushroom. We need the protein.”
He looked at the thing then touched it with his tongue. He recoiled, but then he stuck it in his mouth and chewed, keeping his eyes scrunched the entire time as if he were indeed eating poison. I would have thought a survivor of one of the worst events in the history of the human race would have a bigger pair, and expressed my thoughts. I was dog-tired but didn’t want to miss a chance to rib my friend. It was all in jest, and I thought it might take the edge off our situation.
“Whatever, man. I bet I can whip up some dog shit tacos you wouldn’t look at twice,” he countered. Haley looked on but didn’t say a word.
Her face was paler than I remembered, so I moved my hand to touch her forehead to check for fever, but she moved aside before I could make contact. She sat back, away from us, and wedged herself into the crossing of two large tree trunks. I tried to meet her gaze, but she didn’t let me. Instead, she closed her eyes.
I didn’t blame her. I was cold and tired too, but we had to stay alert. It wouldn’t hurt to let her keep her eyes closed for a few minutes.
Movement to my left. I caught the shadow of something just as Scott jerked his head to follow it. We might not have had weapons, but that didn’t stop Scott from picking up a large branch. He put it over his shoulder and gripped the haft with both hands. If he was anywhere near as exhausted as I was, he might get one solid swing out of the hunk of wood.
I dropped into something close to a combat stance and got ready to fight if I had to. Lucky for us, it was just one of the mindless wandering by. Its shiny bald head passed between a break in the branches and then moved on. I exhaled as quietly as possible and wondered if the things even had decent hearing. For all I knew, the zombies were deaf mutes that relied on something else to sense those around them.