“They can speak as well… it’s not full sentences and most of it doesn’t make sense, but they can say words,” I added, remembering the encounter with one I’d had at the Ex’s house. And even though I could not see Rachel’s face, I was certain that she was looking at me as though I had lost my mind.
“I think you’re mistaken,” she said.
“If I’m mistaken, then why is it concealing itself in the bushes instead of acting like the rest of those things?” I asked her. “They don’t have the ability to hide, because they cannot think anymore… yet there it is hiding, waiting for some unlucky fool to pass by.”
She pushed my convincing speech away and offered a more logical thought of her own. “I think you’ve been out here too long. Maybe we should find a way into this place and let you get some rest?”
I looked at her, realizing she didn’t believe me. “I’ve been out here too long, really?” I asked, yet didn’t give her the opportunity to respond. “So I’m seeing things now? Both of us are, but I’m the one that needs to rest?” I took aim with the short rifle and fired a single shot. The human figure stumbled backward and quickly shot to its feet.
“Am I still seeing shit?” I asked her and shot again. This time the figure was knocked to the ground. “Tell me I’m seeing shit, Rachel! Tell me this is all a hallucination brought on by me not sleeping or eating properly in the last nine days.”
The figure once again got to its feet, spotted us and burst through the shrubs in a full sprint.
“Go ahead… tell me I’m wrong again,” I said to her as the runner hit the street and continued toward us.
“Shoot it,” she told me.
“Why, I’m just seeing things, remember?”
The runner was almost across the street and quickly speeding up. Its movements called the attention of the undead around it and they too began shuffling toward us.
“Tell me I’m wrong!” My voice boomed, loud enough for anyone in the immediate area to hear me, the undead included.
Rachel’s fear of dying overloaded her logical way of thinking until she wasn’t sure what was real and what was fantasy anymore. “Shoot it, please!” She begged.
I raised the weapon once more and as the runner hit the driveway I put a single bullet in its head and watched as it hit the ground hard and rolled a few times. The undead, however, were still in motion.
“We need to go,” Rachel suggested.
I shook my head. “No! I’m not running from these assholes anymore… I’m not running from anybody anymore!” I said and rose to my feet and began killing each of the undead. One by one they dropped to the street and driveway, none of them spewing massive amounts of blood everywhere as one would see in a movie. They were dead and had been for some time now, so any bodily fluids they had once had, was dried up or had leaked out elsewhere.
I walked out toward the street with my weapon at the ready. Rachel chose to stay under the open carport, astounded at the recklessness of my actions and what it could have cost us both had something went wrong in those few seconds. The falling rain pounded the metal roof above her head and she processed the thought of running away while I was busy finishing off the undead that had only been wounded.
Where are we going to go?
Her mind questioned.
He might not be all there, but the poor guy is worried about his kids and if they are alright. Wouldn’t you be a little off if you were in his shoes?
There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he would let nothing bad happen to her, after all, he had risked his life to save Morris from almost certain doom. Yeah, it was for personal reasons, but it was still a leap forward from what others would have done. “Just cut him a little slack,” she said to herself.
I stood in the street admiring my handy work when I decided to take a closer look at the runner. I’d only seen them either in the dark or when they were charging me, so given the fact that the area was clear for the moment; I decided that learning something about my enemies might come in handy somewhere down the road.
“What are you doing?” Rachel asked walking up as I was kneeling to get a better look at the runner’s body.
“Trying to figure out what we are
really
up against now,” I said and proceeded with my investigation. From the very first seconds I could see that there was no difference between the runner’s and us. There were no signs of trauma or major wounds that could be considered life-threatening, so how does a person go from normal to what lied before me?
Rachel stepped closer, yet kept her distance at the same time. She wasn’t sure if it was really dead or simply playing the part and drawing us in closer before it sprang to its feet and viciously attacked.
“I can assure you that it’s dead,” I told her, sensing her fear.
“I’m perfectly fine right where I’m at,” she replied.
The runner smelled, but not of death. It was more the smell of someone who had bad hygiene and hadn’t bathed in well over a week. I raised one of its hands to see broken and unkept nails, healing scratches from it attacking someone or from when it was turned, I couldn’t rightly tell which. I dropped the hand and focused on its face, pulling the head more my direction to better see its face. Lifeless eyes stared back at me, yet they weren’t dull and faded as one would find with any other week old corpse. The eyes looked as if they were still full of color, not to mention life.
“Look at this,” I said to Rachel. “The eyes look like ours.”
“So,” she responded.
I looked up at her. “How does something that’s been dead for quite some time now still have the eyes of a living person? Eyes that appear to still hold life within them.”
“What is your sudden fascination with these things?” Rachel asked.
“It’s not sudden,” I said. “I’ve wondered this from the very first time I saw one of them. Plus, what does it hurt to know a little about your enemy? Maybe I can figure out a way to kill these things quicker by studying this one?”
Rachel wearily scanned the area around us. She wasn’t about to miss anything that could sneak up from nowhere, so the more her eyes panned from one direction to the other the better she felt. However, standing in the middle of the street talking in normal voices instead of whispering, counteracted her subsequent approach to a thin margin of safety. “Can we just go, please? I’m not real fond of standing here in the middle of the street making a huge target out of myself, and I’m starting to get cold,” she stated.
I ignored her words as my eyes swept down the body and stopped on a large wound near its right ankle. “Hey, take a look at this,” I said to Rachel, who out of sheer curiosity looked over my shoulder and saw the wound.
“It’s a wound, big deal,” she replied.
I closed in on the sight and got a better look. “This is a bite mark,” I said to her. “I haven’t been able to find any other marks on this thing, but right here on its ankle is a damn bite mark.”
“That can’t be,” she rattled. “This thing is bleeding from where you shot it.”
I hadn’t noticed the pool of blood forming beneath it until she said something, and now I was accurately aware that this thing, whatever it was, wasn’t dead like the ones that shuffled about. That single thought frightened me, yet at the same time gave me hope that this could be beaten and the world might actually have a chance at recovering.
“This thing was still alive, even after being bitten by something else – probably by one of those,” I said pointing to one of the nearby undead. “Somehow this person messed up and was attacked, yet was able to get away and instead of dying and coming back to life… they simply mutated.”
Rachel threw both hands in the air. “Okay, I’m done with this shit. They are all dead, so can we please get the hell out of here like we planned back at the house?”
I stood and looked hard at her. “But this proves my point even more,” I said. “Back at the house, you and Morris were so convinced that I was going to turn, but that thing right there says otherwise.”
Rachel looked at me with somber eyes. “It proves nothing of the sort, because it smells of sweat accumulated over the course of a few days… maybe less, Brandon. This thing could have been bitten a day ago or nine days ago. We don’t know and it sure as hell isn’t going to tell us anything,” she added.
A look of pure confusion crossed my face. “How the hell can you stand there and pretend to know how many days of sweat he has built up, like you’re some kind of fucking sweat expert?” My words were gaining strength and leading to anger.
“Just calm down a minute…” I cut her short by standing quickly.
“Screw that!” I began to grow louder. “Even
if
this guy turned days after being bitten, which is a very huge
if
to begin with, there would have been signs before it all happened and I’ve been chugging right along since day one like everyone else has. I was even in the school with you and your asshole friends – Smith tested me by taking blood – allowed to live because there was nothing wrong with me. How many of those other people that came through those halls are out here, right now?”
She said nothing, as she stood there staring at me. I might as well have been speaking Greek to her, because nothing I said resonated in her eyes as logical or truth. She had already made her mind up, hell it might have been made up a long time ago, but she was just using me to get away from the tyranny of Smith and Morris. Now that she had that freedom, I was no more a concern to her than any of those poor people who had been brought into the school under false pretenses had.
My eyes spotted something out of place, although I kept my composure. “So this is how it’s going to go down, huh?”
“What’s going to go down?” she asked in her perfect innocent voice, topped off with a coy look to accentuate her beautiful face.
I hit the mag release on my SBR and the mag slid out of the well into my hand, which I slid into my chest rig and pointed the barrel toward the street. “I have one round in the chamber and that’s it,” I told her. “You have a full mag in your pistol on your hip.”
“Well, yeah.” She replied.
“I’m going to count to three, at which time we are going to draw on each other and fire. The fastest one lives… the slowest dies, right here.” I stated with a glare of determination forged upon my face. I saw something flash on her’s that I took as fear.
“Wait a minute,” she started.
“There’s no time left,” I told her. “You don’t trust me, even after all I have done for you, so we’re going to let nature take its course… you know, survival of the fittest and all that shit.” I tightened my fingers around the pistol grip.
Rachel moved her hands away from her waist, trying to symbolize that she did not want to fight. “I never said any of that and you know it!”
With a cool head, I started counting. “One…”
“Listen to me! Stop counting and just listen to what the hell I’m trying to say!” She spouted swiftly.
“Two…”
I wasn’t listening to what she had to say or her pleas to stop counting, so she had to get drastic in the next microsecond or she’d be dead. “I had the ability to shoot you, back in the first house. I could have done it and been a hero in Morris’ eyes, but I didn’t,” she professed. “I didn’t shoot you, because after I realized who you were, I’d heard the rumors of what you did at the school all for your son and it broke my heart. Any father that would be willing to give his life to save his child’s life could not be bad. That’s why I didn’t shoot you… so I’m hoping you won’t shoot me now,” she said and let her arms fall freely to her side, showing her unwillingness to fight me.
“Three,” I said, jerked the short rifle up to her surprise and fired. A second later she heard something hit the pavement behind her and turned to see one of the undead, motionless. Her heart was beating so hard that she was sure it would explode at any moment and she’d fall right beside the rotting body. The sound of a magazine being inserted into a weapon pulled her head my direction. “You’re either the world’s greatest actress and deserve an Oscar for that performance or you meant every word of it? I’m going to choose the latter,” I told her.
Something abruptly slipped past us, disturbing the air with violent force. I should have immediately known what it was, yet I stood there for a few seconds trying hard to brush it off as nothing more than a freak occurrence of the above storm. It wasn’t.
“Run!” I shouted to her, turning in the direction that shot had come from and let loose an entire magazine indiscriminately. I hurried back toward the covered carport in Rachel’s wake, hoping to not get hit before I could get to safety. Another round came my way, hitting the ground an inch in front of my lead foot, sparking as it hit, bounced and flew helplessly off into nowhere.
Rachel ducked behind the carport wall and without being instructed by me, hung her pistol out and began shooting. There was always the possibility of luck and her scoring a hit on whomever was shooting at us, although the likelihood of that was almost nonexistent, it was still plausible to some degree.
Under the carport, I quickly began to reload as my lungs sucked in massive gulps of air. Years of smoking and spending my free time on the couch had worn me down, and then the heavy pack and gear attached to my body didn’t help any.