“You think that’s what he is?” she asked, getting to her feet and leaning against the wall by the stove. “A hybrid?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. All I know is he looks like he has the virus but unlike the other zombies, he’s still alive. The virus is controlling him and using him to spread itself to other humans but it hasn’t killed him. Probably because he was vaccinated before he got bitten.”
She frowned. “Was he bitten, though? I can’t see a wound on him.”
She was right about that. Most of the zombies had very obvious wounds where they had been bitten when they were alive. Blood-stains on their clothing told the story of how they had ended up as part of the undead horde. But the soldier seemed to be bite-free. So how had he contracted the virus?
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Without taking a closer look, we probably won’t ever know. And I’m not volunteering to go out there and inspect him for wounds.”
She nodded and left the kitchen to see what she could find in other parts of the house. I heard her open the door beneath the stairs and start a search in the storage area there.
Twenty minutes later, the food was ready. I found plates and put them on the counter before filling them with rice, beans and burgers. Jax appeared at the doorway. “Smells good.”
“Yeah. We can’t eat it at the table since the table is blocking the back door so I suggest the coffee table in the living room.”
“Sounds good.”
We took our food into the living room and sat on the floor at opposite ends of the low table while we ate. The food brought my taste buds alive and I savoured every fork full.
“You find anything?” I asked Jax between mouthfuls.
“Not much. A pair of old binoculars, a hockey stick, tennis rackets, and some fishing equipment under the stairs. Some kid’s toys. Nothing else that could even be remotely useful.”
The mention of fishing equipment reminded me of the days on The Big Easy fishing with Lucy. Those days seemed so long ago now and I was almost sure I would never see Lucy or The Big Easy again. Getting a message to her on Survivor Radio seemed like an impossible task. We couldn’t even get out of this house, never mind travel to the radio station and take control of the airwaves.
“The fishing stuff will be useful,” I said. “We should take that with us.”
She nodded. I knew what she was thinking: Take it with us how exactly? You’re too unfit to leave the house.
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. I wondered how Jax had been affected by the apocalypse, how many loved ones she was missing. It seemed to me that Jax, Tanya, and Sam might have given themselves this mission to take over Survivor Radio to distract them from the reality of the situation. They must have family unaccounted for, people they loved who could be alive, dead, or somewhere in between. Yet all three of them seemed to be full of bravado and a tough inner strength.
Maybe they were just tougher than me. They were the type of people who were into extreme sports and martial arts. Competitors. Survivors. These were mentally and physically equipped to survive a zombie apocalypse.
A sudden idea hit me.
“You ever play tennis?” I asked Jax.
She nodded. “I used to when I was younger.”
“Were you any good?”
“Yeah, not bad. Why?”
I ran the plan through my mind again. It could work.
I said, “I think I know how we can get out of here.”
twenty-one
I stood in the double bedroom with the binoculars pressed against my face. I wanted to get a better look at the hybrid soldier. He had stopped prowling around and now he stood as still as a statue in the middle of the street. When he came into focus, I saw the bite on his neck. He had been bitten by a zombie after all but the wound was slight. Most people were almost torn apart by the zombies that killed them and the resulting wounds were deep and bloody.
The soldier had a simple set of bloody marks on his neck shaped like a set of teeth. I wondered how he had been turned. According to the notebook, Corporal Francis had been bitten already but Wilder’s note said Francis did not turn. He just wanted to be left alone and tried to wander off. Maybe Wilder and Jones were taking Francis back to base and Francis did finally turn and attacked them. The truck went off the road and Francis bit the other members of the team. But if that was the case, where were they? Why hadn’t all three members of Alpha 3 Victor been in the field near the truck?
I lowered the binoculars and went to find Jax. She was in the little girl’s pink bedroom, sitting on the bed and staring out of the window at the gathering gloom of the approaching evening. She had a faraway look in her eyes and again I wondered who she had lost in this apocalypse, who she was missing.
“Hey,” she said when she saw me.
I told her about the bite on the soldier’s neck then added, “So he was bitten but the vaccine kept him alive, turning him into a hybrid. He’s infected with the virus but it hasn’t killed and reanimated him. Also, I think it takes them longer to turn when they’ve been vaccinated. It sounds like it took Corporal Francis four days. I think he bit Wilder and Jones, causing the crash.”
She caught on to what I was thinking. “The last note in the book was written two days ago. So you think that’s Francis out there on the street and Wilder and Jones are still turning somewhere?”
I nodded. “Probably somewhere in that field. Or in those trees where Francis was standing.”
She thought for a moment then said, “This is bad, Alex.”
“Yeah, all the soldiers are being vaccinated. How many of those soldiers will get bitten by zombies? How many have already been bitten since they were injected with the vaccine?”
“There’s going to be thousands of zombie hybrids just like Francis,” she said. “The shambling dead ones are bad enough but now we’re going to have to deal with runners as well.”
“The virus will spread, a lot faster,” I said.
She nodded then said, “Let’s get out of here.”
We went downstairs to the kitchen. On the table we had placed the tennis racket from under the stairs and four tennis balls. I had no idea if this was going to work but it was our best chance to get back to the Zodiac. Evening was already falling. Tanya and Sam probably thought we were dead. I just hoped they hadn’t sailed away and left us in this godforsaken village.
I helped Jax put on her backpack and she helped me do the same. We would have to carry the second backpacks we each had and we were prepared to dump those if we had to. We were hoping we wouldn’t have to.
Carefully, we lifted the dining table and moved it away from the back door. Jax took the tennis racket and balls out into the back yard while I went into the living room and parted the curtains just enough to see the soldier.
He stood watching the street. Did he even remember what he was looking for anymore or was he waiting for any stimulus to spark him into action?
I turned to see Jax in the back yard holding a tennis ball in one hand, the racket in the other. She tossed the ball up with a graceful movement then brought the racket up swiftly. The ball went sailing over the roof of the house.
I turned back to the hybrid soldier. He was as still as he had been a few seconds ago. Then I saw the vibrant green tennis ball land in the yard of a house across the road and bounce against the living room window with a bang.
The soldier turned to where the sound had come from. He moved a step forwards, then another and another until he was walking to the yard across the street.
A second ball sailed into the street and landed on the roof of a Volvo before bouncing away down the road.