“I didn’t keep count, but if there were seventy or so, we must have killed most of them, right?” Dave said.
I doubted it, but I said, “Yeah. We must have.”
Without ammo, the rifle was merely a bat. I held it in both hands. When I looked back, I saw that Palmeri was doing the same.
“Don’t forget your knife,” she said.
I looked to my hip. “Never. You ready? We’re not out of the woods yet.”
She didn’t smile. “I’m ready.”
# # #
Spade ran, bent forward, staying low. Dave, me and then Palmeri followed. We must have looked like giant ducks.
We reached the fence. I heard it, though.
The growing growl of a zombie moan. It came from behind us.
“Hurry,” Spade said.
He stood at the gate and waved us through. Only when I turned around did I see the fast zombies charging.
“Hurry, Palmeri,” I said. I don’t know if I shouted it. My head was off balance. I thought I might fall. Blood must have rushed to my head. Maybe from being bent over and running, or quite possibly just from being sick and tired of the constant fight during the last week or so.
She passed the gate, running hard, breathing heavily.
Spade rolled the gate closed. A zombie arm made it through. Spade did not hesitate. He slammed it between the fence poles, chopping off the protruding appendage just below the elbow. “Palmeri, hold the gate,” he said. “Hold the gate shut!”
She swapped spots with Spade. Did her best to keep the gate closed without having her fingers bitten. “Hurry,” she said.
Spade slipped off his belt, laced it through link on the gate, and then along the wall of the fence and buckled it. Tight.
“Unless they can unfasten that, it should hold them,” he said.
Don’t know why, but I smiled. It was as if we made progress by outsmarting them. Kinda felt like outsmarting a dog--throwing an imaginary ball and they take off after it. I wasn’t going to let that spoil the feeling. No. I wanted to relish the small victory. We deserved that much, that little. Showed that as long as the fuckers didn’t bite us, we could win. Survive… perhaps.
“Wipe that stupid smile off your face, McKinney. We’re not safe yet.” Spade spat a wad of shit out of his mouth, wiped his sleeve across his face and took off running along the side of the fence.
Just like that, my little victory was shat on.
The zombies had all made it to the gate. How fucking good for them. They stuck fingers through the links, and noses and tongues.
“Let’s go,” Palmeri said.
I pulled my knife from the sheath.
“Chase,” Dave said.
I jabbed the blade into an eye socket. Black goo oozed. Once I removed the knife, the thing fell to the ground. The others stepped on it. Two creatures looked up, as if they realized they’d just gotten a little closer to the top of the fence.
I killed another by stabbing a blade into its mouth, through the roof, and punching it up to the brain. Then, I used two hands to pull my knife free. This one dropped on top of the other zombie I’d just killed.
The zombies that had looked up before stepped onto this corpse as well. And again, looked up.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Chase, we’ve got to go. I can’t even see Spade anymore.”
“Did you see that?” I said.
Palmeri had my arm. “Yeah. You’re a real fucking bad ass.”
She pulled me along, as we jogged to catch up with Spade.
I think my mouth hung open the whole time with my eyes wide.
There was something else about them, something I couldn’t quite remember. Something I should remember. Right now, I was just too mystified by what I’d seen. All I could think, all that just kept running through my mind was, What the fuck just happened?
Chapter Twenty-One
0628 hours
The sun wouldn’t be up for at least another hour. Maybe a little less. It was November, after all. The fire burned, but we were farther from it than before. As we ran along the side of fence perimeter, I saw flames. They didn’t rage and fight away the darkness anymore. In fact, they seemed to make everything around it that much blacker. It was as if the fire sucked out the light and left the area in shadows.
We came to the part of the fence where we needed to turn toward the river to go back to the boat. Part of me did not expect to make it back here and that had been a terrible realization I’d faced, buried and attempted to ignore the whole time we’d been at the compound. Felt as if I should drop to my knees and kiss the ground, thankful to be alive, safe and back.
Spade held a finger up to his lips, as if we didn’t know by now to keep quiet. He might be an excellent shot, something of a leader, but right now, I was really hating his guts. I did my best not to return an eye roll. I kept my rifle in both hands, my knife back in its home. Staying bent forward, we crossed open area; the worst sound was that of shoes pulling free of the thick mud as we slogged our way through.
Spade stopped and stood up straight, with his arms at his side.
My stomach dropped and the muscles tightened. Something was wrong. He wouldn’t be stopped like that. He just wouldn’t.
“Boat’s fucking gone.” He shook his head, raised his arms, and then punched them back down to his sides. “The boat is fucking gone. And so is Spencer. Where the fuck is Spencer.”
Spencer had one job, which was to shoot the Captain if he tried to leave with the boat.
I was already doubled over. Vomiting made sense. I held it down, spitting out a mouthful of bile. “Dave?”
Dave was standing by Spade now, looking back at me. “Yeah, it’s gone. Mess of bodies on the ground I think. Too dark. I can’t tell for sure.”
Bodies?
Palmeri and I made it to them and the four of us stood there. We could hear the river, catching glimpses of the current when moonlight hit it right. Dave was correct; the grass around the empty slip was littered with something. Only thing that made sense was bodies.
I started running, but Spade grabbed my arm.
I shrugged it off. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“We don’t know what’s over there,” he said. “Look, I know you’re upset. This is bad. Okay, bad. But we can’t stop being smart because of our emotions. We need to--”
Fuck him. I ran toward the slip.
First lump I encountered was a zombie, as well as the second. I looked back. Palmeri and Dave scoped out the area as well, kicking over dead things for better views.
The corpses stunk. Sifting through a garbage dump in mid-July might have smelled better. Each new one I came across, I stopped before looking at faces, because I didn’t want to find…
“Dad? Dad!”
It wasn’t a yell, but more of a loud whisper. It came from my left. “Charlene?”
Something ran at me from the darkness.
I knew it was my daughter. I knew it, but I still stood, rifle in hand, ready to swing.
“Daddy!” Charlene said, dropped to her knees.
I let go of the rifle and fell in front of her. She wrapped her arms around me, burying her face into my chest. “Honey, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Cash,” she said. “Cash, Daddy.”
“Char, tell me what’s going on? What happened?” I pulled her head away from me. Dim moonlight allowed me enough glow to see her eyes that were red and puffy. She’d been crying since long before now.
“He’s been shot. He got shot. It’s my fault.”
Her fault?
“Where is he?” I said. “Where’s your brother?”
She pointed back the way she’d come. “Over there. Allison has him. She’s with him.”
It’s my fault, ran through my head. I wanted answers. There were too many questions. No time to ask anything. Charlene and I were up, and running. I heard the others behind us, our feet pounding cold, muddy earth.
“Over here,” Allison said.