Jason avoided Megan, unsure what to say to her. The shots had drawn him out, but now that he was outside, all he could do was watch Lydia run back toward her RV. He was sure she didn’t notice him standing there, because she was so focused on the children huddled inside.
No one besides Megan was out in the courtyard. The camp felt abandoned. He had only spent a day in the place, but it felt strange without the bustle of activity. Jason spied Cindy moving around on the roof of Ben’s RV and was tempted to yell up to her. She was the one adult still at the camp with whom he had no issues, but she made him nervous. Besides, she was hefting one of the rifles and didn’t look too interested in having a conversation.
There was more gunfire. Three more shots in quick succession. Jason ducked instinctively. The shots were off in the distance but thunderous, overwhelming. He waited to hear more and inched away from the RVs, afraid something was going to seep through the walls and attack him. He continued to back up, moving toward the center of the courtyard.
“What do you think is happening out there?”
Jason could not face Megan, even as she asked the question. Her voice fluttered as if she were on the verge of tears.
“I–I don’t know.”
It was a harmless enough response, noncommittal. Jason thought he heard her crying and desperately wanted to turn to Megan. He did not want to admit he needed her as much as she seemed to need him-having to apologize, to strip away his pride like that. Because it felt as though pride was all he had left.
He heard her footsteps behind him. Jason thought Megan would not come right up to him, not with how timidly she was speaking, but it sounded as if she was. His shoulders stiffened, and the footsteps stopped.
When the shotgun blasts began, Jason jumped again. They echoed like thunder, and he heard Megan gasp in shock.
“Jason, I’m scared. Please. I’m so sorry… about everything.”
He shook his head, not sure what to do or say. The moaning was back, the dreadful caterwaul of the dead, floating on the air from Manchester, excited and greedy. They heard it along with the gunfire.
Any hope that things would be okay was chipped away with each gunshot. Jason realized that George and Jeff were going to die out there and he would never get the chance to tell them he was sorry.
He could hear the moans growing louder. If they got any closer, the infected would engulf them. Right behind him, he could hear a softer noise, that of weeping. The last of his resistance fell away, and Jason turned, thrusting himself into Megan’s arms. As more shotgun blasts rang out, the two of them reacted as though electrical jolts were coursing through their bodies.
Somehow, when they held each other, the shock did not hurt as much.
Chapter 17
WHAM!
Jeff swung around, giving Ray enough time to maintain his balance as he fired at another stiff that had gotten too close. It was his third shot. The first had nearly knocked him and Ray over. The kick of the weapon was a hell of a lot more than Jeff had expected. As he adjusted to compensate, his second shot was just as bad, and he realized how pointless it was to fire a shotgun at a target more than fifty feet away.
The third shot was better. It drove the man in the white smock backwards until he tumbled, bowling over a woman behind him who had been slowed by a broken foot flopping at the end of her leg. The appendage kept getting snagged on different obstacles in the road as the rotting woman dragged it behind her.
Ray groaned, but tried to hang on, blood and sweat oozing out of him in copious amounts. He had somehow maintained a grip on the handgun despite his arm repeatedly bouncing weakly against his side. Jeff only grunted in response, trying to limit his words and conserve energy.
After they cut across the parking lot and hit the street, Jeff squinted back toward the field behind the general store. He could see more infected coming for him and Ray from that direction. The first ocher-colored body that crossed into the lot from the tall grass stopped and sniffed the air. Jeff watched with a mix of revulsion and relief as it and the two behind it pounced on Marcus’s corpse. He looked away, but not fast enough to avoid seeing one of them lift the dead man’s arm to take the first bite.
As Jeff and Ray limped away from the parking lot, they could feel the excitement building behind them. Howls and catcalls cascaded down on them from all sides, echoing off the buildings that surrounded them. Fear gnawed at Jeff, but he fought to resist it, refusing to let the numbing sensation consume him as he cast his eyes over his shoulder toward the horde chasing them.
WHAM!
Another spent shell flew out of the shotgun, and another round was chambered. Ray leaned on Jeff’s back so he could have both hands free to fire and reload. The man in the white smock-a former pharmacist? — had gotten back up, and Jeff was forced to splatter his runny brains across the pavement. The ghoul would not be getting up again.
“Jeff, I don’t think I can make it much farther,” Ray slurred. Jeff adjusted his position to get a better grip on the boy, and they moved down the street once again. Tremors wracked Ray’s body, and Jeff glanced down at the teen’s injured leg. The hemorrhaging had stopped, but the kid was getting worse. There was no telling how much time he had left. The infection seemed to spread at different rates with everyone.
“You can make it, Ray. We’ll get you back to camp.”
Ray’s response was drowned out as Jeff fired the shotgun wildly at a girl wearing a pair of bedazzled jeans and a High School Musical t-shirt. She looked like one of the less physically traumatized infected, which allowed her to move at a pretty healthy clip toward Jeff and the boy. But despite her lack of injuries and superior mobility, her body had swollen to an almost cartoonish level. Her clothes cut into her flesh at her neck and midsection, and a distended belly and breasts gave her the look of a pregnant woman, though she couldn’t have been any older than ten. Jeff thought at first that her eyes had been plucked out, because there were two cavernous recesses in her face, but a closer look revealed that they were still there, buried within the bloated flesh.
Jeff had seen her moving up and almost yelped as she got close. His crazed giggle was drowned out as he racked another round and fired at her a second time. Ray leaned against Jeff’s back, doing his best to remain upright.
The second round blasted a hole in the girl’s chest. The noxious gasses and rotten meat stored inside her erupted in a cloud of filth. Jeff steadied and took a third shot, which was close enough that he was able to target her mushy head. The shotgun pellets connected, and her skull exploded like a syrup bottle as she tumbled to the ground.
Click.
Jeff cursed the empty shotgun and turned so he could get his arm back around Ray. The ghoul he had been aiming at after finishing off the girl was still a good twenty feet away, but closing the distance rapidly.
“Jeff, just leave me here, man,” Ray groaned. “This shit hurts like hell, and I don’t want to go any farther. I’m slowing you down. Just leave me.”
Jeff pushed down hard on the creep of panic that threatened to overwhelm him when he heard Ray’s defeated words. Instead, he let the anger that had been bubbling below the surface ever since Michael had dumped him and the others on the side of the road rise up as he glared at the dying boy.
“Fuck you, Ray. I’m tired of listening to your shit. Just move your ass.”
Ray looked up at Jeff with a surprised expression on his face. Jeff’s anger bewildered him, and the boy seemed unsure how to respond.